So here goes. I’m going to share something from my stash of stuff never seen and never to be seen by others. Famous last words. So to my 12 fans out there, here it is. This includes me (to bulk up the numbers), my husband (because he loves me), my sons (because I send them a direct link and then ask them later if they’ve read it), my sisters (because they love me and I send them the direct link) and finally 4 loyal friends for all of the same reasons listed before.

A Writer’s Tragedy

They form like the bubbles in a hot spring
propelled by mystical energy
filled with excitement of possibility
they race to the surface and explode, releasing
inside, outside, everywhere, all at once
“Here we are!”
their wordless cry
announcing existence boldly
they are

then like good little soldiers
these words gather round
consumed with direction and purpose
they grasp and hold
disappearing into collective rationality

why do you run?
I want you so badly
we cannot be caught
they scream in pure glee
we are wise

pure

creativity

Now the words do what words always have.
They organize, add grammar, semi-colons; stops.
And sadly in doing so, the best of it
lost.
Beyond our control,
we have no other choice.
Even cliché’s must have a voice.

This burden we carry
This challenge we take
This compromise we make

Whether we like it or not, our experiences change. It’s an inevitable product of life. Sometimes these changes require very little of us. For example, noticing a colour of a rose that we haven’t seen before means that we have to expand our knowledge of roses to now include that colour. Some changes, however, demand much more from us. These are changes that affect many aspects of our emotional lives. Take a person who has never had to cope with anxiety but at the age of thirty, has a panic attack. This often causes chaos resulting in emotions such as confusion, denial, helplessness, anger and depression. This is because it is not simply the anxiety that this person must now deal with. Their entire belief system, conscious or unconscious, is placed in upheaval and must be re-organized to accommodate this new experience. This is complicated further by the existence in many cases of opposing beliefs. For example, it is common for someone who has never experienced anxiety to have formed a belief about themselves to include a “that could never happen to me” statement or worse, “people with anxiety are weak.” That many of these pre-existing beliefs are unconscious, does not help matters. When beliefs about ourselves oppose our experience, havoc occurs. The key to dealing with anxiety or any other uncomfortable emotion is acceptance. This acceptance has to be from the inside out, from the very core of who be believe we are. Acceptance requires that we change the beliefs that counter our ability to accommodate a new reality. This process can often begin with a question different from the one we are already asking. “Why is this happening to me?” must be replaced with: “What do I believe about this that prevents me from accepting it?” Don’t confuse acceptance with complacency. As unintuitive as it seems, these two are conversely correlated. When we are in a state of non-acceptance, all our energy and focus is on keeping our experience in a negative holding-pattern. This is complacency. Acceptance frees us to focus on moving forward, a place much more likely to house resolution for any state of mind that we happen to be in.