The Crazy Creatives Cheerleading Camp's Come As You Are Party + Inner Champion Workbook: Chapter 1

Every now and then in the course of reviewing books, I discover a book that genuinely surprises me. This book has been on my list of potential reviews for a while now and I kept shuffling it down the list because I thought it was a workout book. I finally read the description and discovered that it was a biography written by a person who has dealt with a fair number of challenges, so I thought I would give it a read.

The book surprised me again, as I discovered that there is a downloadable workbook to accompany the ebook. I am doing the exercises in the workbook and will share them with you along the way.

The first chapter requests that we recall two major events that influenced us during childhood and then poses these questions:

What is the lasting effect? Is that effect helping or hindering you? If it has hindered you, how can

you leave it in the past and move forward? If it has helped you, how can you tap into that source

of wisdom and strength during difficult times?

Childhood Event 1:

This may seem like a very "nothing" event to most people, but it reveals what an alien I was very early on. While my father (RIP) and I were walking on a rainy day when I was three years old, I saw a dead butterfly on the sidewalk. I don't remember having ever seen anything dead before. My father tried to explain to me about death and I was very upset. To my naive and stupid three-year-old mind, it was impossible to conceive that butterflies, which I loved so much, could die.

When we got home, my grandmother (RIP) was on the phone and my mother handed the phone to me to say hello. I wailed "poor butterfly!" in the poor woman's ear and ran to my bedroom to cry. I don't know when I stopped crying. I don't know if I ever accepted the fact that butterflies die. I became stoic about it because there was nothing that I could do to change it. 

What is the lasting effect?

My reaction to negative events that I have no power to change is stoicism.

Is that effect helping or hindering you?

It hurts me in the long run, but it helps me continue functioning. If I acknowledge my pain, it will break me. I do not think that there is a way to leave it in the past. It isn't like I have a lot of support. I have to do what I have to do.

Childhood event 2:

Again, this may seem like a "nothing" event to those who are made of sterner stuff. There was a group of kids that I played with when my family moved from New Mexico into the faculty housing at the School of Mines in Colorado where my father obtained his job as a professor. I really liked them and I wanted so much for them to like me back. One day as I was running down the hill from my house to see if they wanted to play, I saw them walking up to the old gravel pits behind the housing development without me.

I took a shortcut and got to the pits first. They found me sitting in one of the pits and asked what I was doing there. I said I'd been coming to see if they wanted to play, but I now knew that they weren't really my friends, and I got up and left.

They followed me because they didn't want to get in trouble with their parents for ditching me. They told me that they (the brother and sister pair) just wanted to play as a family. I pointed out that "Marty" wasn't part of their family. The brother said, "yes, but he lives next door, so he's like family. But we want to play with you now."

I really wanted to believe them, but after a short time, they said they wanted to go watch TV. I said I wanted to come too. The brother said that they wanted to watch a show that I wouldn't like.

I said I bet I would like it. He replied: "No, you wouldn't. It's called 'mentally retarded.'"

He then repeated the words "mentally retarded" very slowly and pointedly.

I realized at that moment that my friends were not my friends. 

I was bullied and ostracized at school as well.

What is the lasting effect? 

I don't trust people. In fact, I tend to push them away before they can hurt me.

Is that effect helping or hindering you? 

It has hindered me and has destroyed relationships.

If it has hindered you, how can you leave it in the past and move forward?

I probably can't. I tend to form only very superficial relationships with people so they can't hurt me. Whenever I like someone, I always expect that they're going to hurt me eventually.

Well, that was certainly cheerful! But it illustrates how you can use this book to help you along your path. 

If you pick up a copy of Behind the Muscle through the link above, I earn a small commission from Amazon.

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November PAD Chapbook Challenge 2019: Day 29: Have iPhone, Will Travel

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

Have iPhone

Will travel

I've never seen the Northern Lights

I'd like to get them in my sights

To watch their ghostly green glow

As they put on their show

See them dance across the sky

And if I could fly

I'd like to dance into their beams

And leap from stream to stream

Have iPhone, honey

But no money

So I won't be going far

In my beat-up car

But when my beat-up body ceases to run

I'll go and have my fun

I'll ride on the green glow

Who knows how far I'll go?

Dancing in the Northern Lights

I'll become one with the night

~Cie~

Notes:

The November PAD Chapbook Challenge prompt for today was Have (blank.) 

This poem came out of nowhere. I just wrote it down.

Carpe Diem #1773: Tanka: Bury Me on the Lone Prairie

Image Copyright Aubrey Danielle

when my time is done

I want my last breaths to be

on the lone prairie

not in a hospital room

I leave with the whistling wind

~Cie~

Notes:

You happier chappies are probably saying "ugh, there goes that gloomy old Cie with another gloomy poem." But I don't think this poem is gloomy. I think it's real.

I worked in long-term care for most of the 25 years that I was in the medical field. I think that people who work in this setting tend to become very adamant that we do not want to end up dying in a medicalized setting.

My father died in a hospice center. It was a peaceful place with a spacious, comfortable room. He was in constant pain and losing his capacity to think and remember things. It was much better than being in a hospital or nursing home. But for myself, I don't want my end to be even that medicalized. I want to look out the window and see my Lone Prairie before I rise up and walk away on the wind that constantly blows in these parts.

Visit the Artist

Ghost Town Grover Sez:

"Dagnabit, Ornery, ya morbid ole cuss! Ya done went and made Cactus Clem gloomy with all yer chatter about croakin'. Now, I know I'm a ghost, but I've been a ghost fer near to 110 years. We ghosts like to whoop it up on Halloween night, but I ain't gonna be doin' much whoopin' it up if I've gotta be tryin' to cheer Cactus Clem up. So, what the heck are you gonna do about it?"

Image by nancy sticke from Pixabay

Visit the Artist

Cactus Clem Sez:

"Aw, thanks Ornery! Them ghost puppies is jest the thing to cheer a feller!"

Happy Halloween from the Grover Hotel Gang

OctPoWriMo 2019: Day 16: Harried to the Grave

Image by fancycrave1 from Pixabay

it does not matter

matter one measure if

if you measure your time

time on an Apple watch

watch your time on an old

old beat-up analog tick-tick 

tick-tick the sound

sound as time is running out

out of your wasting life

life where triumphs come

come slowly and don't seem

seem to stick around at all

all the while your life is wasting

wasting away fast as a wish

wish you would stop

stop giving away 

away all your me time

time to see time as

as a commodity time

time does not come free

free time does not align

align with being a successful

successful mess who never

never ever stops

stops to wind her old watch

watch time slip away 

away until one day 

day when there are

are no more days

days are numbered from the first

first moment you take a breath

breath that leads to death

death comes for us all

all of us must fall

fall back into the time

time when time didn't matter 

matter meant nothing

nothing meant anything

anything was possible

possible dreams

dreams become schemes

schemes become obsession

obsession consumes life

life becomes lie

lie down and die

die and become

become as you were before earth

earth before your birth 

birth

earth

~Cie~

Note:

I was always one of those "I'll sleep when I'm dead" kinds of people. I worked long hours at physically taxing jobs. I worked long weeks filled with long hours. I was proud of being able to push myself well past the limits. 

My diabetes got worse, I had a small stroke, and I had a severe injury to the median nerve in my left arm. My ability to work long hours at physically difficult jobs was gone forever. At the point when I had a small stroke, I was fired from my job as a home health nurse.

I live with fairly frequent suicide ideation, but the actual planning levels are pretty low as a rule. After I was fired, I started making plans to commit suicide because I felt like the world's worst fuck-up, like without my job I was nothing. 

This is not going to be one of those "oh, but I'm so glad I didn't because I found God, got down to a single-digit pants size, somehow started looking half my age, married GQ Cover Model Guy, and now my life is a Hallmark Channel movie" stories. 

Nah.

Still a crabby, fat, romanceless, agnostic, middle-aged, broke-ass curmudgeon. Still would be homeless if it wasn't for my son's kindness. 

But I am glad I didn't commit suicide because if I had I wouldn't have been able to help my son get this house, and I wouldn't have found me.

Me is kind of an asshole, but we're on better terms these days now that I've had the time to get to know her a little.

Also, I have a feeling that sometimes those Hallmark Channel happy crappy stories about pretty people hooking up and living happily ever after might even make some people depressed. Like, you know, me. I think some people may need to know that an old crabby fat bitch learned that old, crabby, fat bitches have something to offer too without changing one fucking thing about themselves.

OctPoWriMo 2019: Day 15: Mother May I Be a Mother (Choka)

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

when I was pregnant

it was a surprise to me

planned for adoption

told I could never give birth

it was not my wish

but it turned out for the best

~Cie~

Notes:

Because I had PCOS, I was told that I would never be able to have children. 

I married young and had been married for 6 years. We used no form of birth control because we believed we couldn't have children. We planned to adopt. 

While on vacation to Montana and Canada in 1989, I started feeling sick. This was shortly after the death of one of my childhood friends, who was working as a park ranger in Yellowstone. She slipped into a river and drowned. One of the places we went to see was the site where she died. I was having nightmares and wondered if my queasy feeling was due to the trauma of losing my old friend.

I felt sick for a month straight.

Figuring I was dying (and not entirely unhappy about that prospect because my life had never been particularly gleeful) I went to the doctor. She ran some tests.

I rather melodramatically asked her if I had a tumor.

She laughed and said "of a sort, I suppose. It will resolve on its own in approximately seven and a half months."

She gave me a referral to an OB/GYN.

For some reason when the nurse practitioner asked how I felt about being pregnant, it pissed me off. I didn't let on that the question made me angry, but I didn't like it. The answer, really, was surprised. I said I supposed I was okay with it. She asked me to elaborate, saying that I didn't sound convinced that I was okay. I said "well, I wasn't expecting it since I wasn't supposed to be able to have children. I'm fine with it." 

I guess she wanted me to be jumping for joy and walking about with balloons and banners announcing my thrill over my unexpected miracle pregnancy. I was okay with being pregnant (other than the non-stop nausea) but the rest of my life was a mess. I had a plethora of untreated psychological problems and nowhere to turn, and I hated my job.

After my son was born, my marriage started to fall apart. My now ex-husband and I were polar opposites, and both of our families were invasive and emotionally unsupportive. He's an Aspie and I had undiagnosed bipolar disorder type 2, borderline personality disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. We were oil and water as temperaments went. As time went on, we became verbally abusive to each other and eventually started getting into fistfights. There was no saving the marriage.

We got divorced when our son was four. We started getting along better as platonic friends once we were no longer living together. Since that time we have on occasion had a roommate situation due to financial necessity, but I've always been glad enough for that to end. We're family now and I hope will be so till the end.

Carpe Diem Weekend Meditation #105 + Haiku My Heart: Lost In Time: A Senryu

Image by Reimund Bertrams from Pixabay

when my time has come

will my words be remembered

or fade as i do

~cie~