My Therapy

Writing is good therapy. Therapists usually suggest writing down your feelings and significant life events...typically nothing extraordinary happens externally (unless you're Mike Birbiglia), but that emotional connection that occurs when pen meets paper is priceless and 100% intrinsic. So here I go, but I am pre-warning you that I will probably ramble and not make sense at times.

A while ago, when I had a moment of clarity, I wrote about the importance of knowing yourself: how you think, how you feel love, how you give love, and how events affect your individual perspective. But I think I left off one important piece we need to find personal understanding with and that is our intuition and how to act on it.

My intuition is a complicated feeling of peace. It has a compilation of emotions and memories from my childhood. In an instant it takes me back to Washington in the rain, it has a smell that I can't quite place, it has an anticipation and excitement that I used to feel when other people were opening their gifts and I wanted to help, and the laughter from when my mom or dad would tickle me silly. This intuition is so familiar and powerful that it shakes me a little when I feel it unexpectedly. It has only been recent that I have tied this feeling directly to personal decisions. It's not like a 'yes/no' answer to some random question. It's something I feel when I have been pondering something important to me. I think the reason I am only just starting to act on this feeling is because I have kind of given up trying to fully understand what the prompting means. I have had too many experiences where I knew what I should do, but didn't act on it because I didn't trust that my intuition knew what the ending would be.

But you know what? Whenever I act on it, I am more at peace even if the decision was harder. Since I know who I am, how I think, how I feel and give love, I need to start trusting my intuition with my most sincere and important needs. I'm not going to settle on something else because I don't know what the outcome will be, I'm going to start holding myself to the standards of my intuition and cry through the hard times, and hope for the best times.

So when things don't feel right, I am going to start listening to those promptings.

Duck, duck, goose!

I'm a good citizen, for many reasons, but this post has been inspired by a recent act of goodness. My neighborhood roads have been getting re-surfaced this week and so there are all these reflective barriers in the middle of the streets. Today on my way home from work after the sun had gone down, these two little girls were out in the middle of a dark street playing with the reflectors and waiving at passing cars. So I rolled my window down and said strongly, 'get out of the middle of the road it's dangerous!' I probably saved those girls lives and I hope I scared them enough to make them never do that again.

I feel so blessed to come from a family and religion that puts family first. I was able to share a little bit of the testimony I have in families tonight with a guy  I am working with to move his mother into our community. He was asking me if the transitional time was for the elderly to get acclimated to the new environment was 2 weeks and if he should plan to visit after 2 weeks to make sure it's easier for her (she's not all there and doesn't recognize him half the time any more). Immediately, I was responded with, 'No. I think family is the most important thing to her right now. No one would be better suited to help her with this transition than her own family. No one knows her better, has your family smell, tone, and attention. Transition will be hard enough with the support of family." I felt just a great sense of comfort between him and I for that moment. Like he was thinking about a concept he had never considered before, but something he probably believed in his heart without realizing it. It was a cool feeling.

Some cute stuff from work (I work in an Assisted Living for the elderly):

A couple times a week little old ladies chatting in wheelchairs smile and say hello to me as I pass them in the hall and turn to one another and say loudly (because they are both going deaf) "Wow do you think she could get any taller?"

Mary is a lady I say hello to a couple of times a day, take her to meals and help her find things that she has misplaced.
Mary: Excuse me young lady you have very good posture. I used to be a therapist so I can tell and you do*smile*!
Me: Thank you Mary! My mom always told me to stand up straight.
Mary: How do you know my name*concerned face*?!
Me: Mary I work here.
Mary: You do?!