On The Monkey Mind vs Spirit

Posted on 04/06/201801/03/2019 by Esterina Anderson

We are born with nothing, even clothes. At the moment of death we might be donning some attire, and perhaps be clutching something –a person, animal or object (or all 3). But those physical remnants remain. We come into the world with nothing physical but the body. When we leave, we leave even the body behind. The only thing that goes is that light in our eyes, our spirit.

So why do we become attached to anything? Why do we spend that precious time between life and death hauling around stuff? Worrying about stuff? ‘Stuff’ being our cars, clothes, friends, jobs, or status. The only thing that really matters is the imprint we leave on the planet, created through our spirit. We can’t haul anything but our spirit out of this world, so why isn’t the spirit the main focus of living? Why are we focused on stuff?

I started yoga like many others for the physical practice. My first experience was with a VHS tape at home in my living room. “This is easy!” I thought. It must be because I’m flexible and was a dancer when I was young. I moved from position to position and sat there waiting to see what I would be told by the TV to do next. I ignored the cues to breath “Geez, I know how to breath” and ‘open up’ “Isn’t that what I’m doing?”. I was annoyed at the end when the suggestion was to lie on my back for several minutes. “What a waste of time!”

I went to actual classes a few times, but I didn’t quite understand it. I only did yoga at home because I heard it was good for you. I didn’t particularly enjoy it and I absolutely skipped the lying on your back part at the end.

Until one day I went to a class at a local chiropractic office that was offering free classes for a week. The classes all had different names. I couldn’t tell them apart and really didn’t care. The time I was able to get home from work and get my husband situated with the kids was far more important. I went to a class Monday and Tuesday. Same experience, but this time I had to lie in silence at the end. I really disliked that part. However, the Wednesday class was life altering. It was called “Love your body yoga”. Yoga was yoga to me. The postures all even seemed the same. But there was something different about this class. Perhaps the teacher’s voice or encouragement, I don’t know; it was too long ago now to remember. Somehow though, I was able to do the postures better. I listened to the cues to breath and expand in certain parts. I moved slowly, mindfully, and with grace. At the end I was looking forward to the lying meditation (known as savasana – pronounced “shavasana”). During savasana the teacher came around with an oil for our foreheads. When she gently put her hands on my temples I felt at such peace I almost wanted to cry. The smell was like light and citrusy, but like incense. The experience was so comforting. When I left class I kept touching my forehead and smelling the oil. I felt a sense of peace.

My practices at home became a little different after that, although I was never able to get into a good routine and reap the benefits of yoga. Years later on a whim I signed up for a local class at the Park & Rec. I knew yoga was good for me, I knew how to do it (I thought), and I wanted a steady place where I knew I wouldn’t be lazy and skip it.

The first class was amazing. I drove away with a sense of bliss. That night in bed when I turned over in the middle of the night I felt space in my body as well as an overall sense of harmony. I kept going and the benefits kept getting better and better. It wasn’t very long before I had my first cry on the mat while in pigeon (something I now know is quite common). Soon after that; the mind, body, spirit connection was undeniable. Where has this been all my life? Do other people know about it? Why isn’t this more well known??? Our spirit is the key to life.

I didn’t know it until long after I started yoga teacher training, but the word yoga means “to yoke”. Particularly; to yoke the mind, body, and spirit. I know there are many other ways to link the mind, body and spirit. Others have found the answers in various different ways, but have come to the same sense of yoking. Once you sense that connection to the mind, body, and spirit it’s difficult to go back to the material way of living because you know deep down that it doesn’t matter.

Yoga isn’t a magical cure that works all the time. In fact many times I move through a whole practice and never feel ‘settled’. The difference is that I know my mind, body and spirit are disconnected and that I do not like feeling that sense of separation. I know that giving into that separation by trying to fill the space between with stuff only leads to suffering and a sense of even more separation. I know this and most of the time cannot master it. But the time in between remembering where the sense of true peace comes from grows a tiny bit each day.

The time in between birth and death is our life. In that life we accumulate things. Physical things. We become attached to those things. We become attached to people. We become attached to happiness and think something is wrong when we are sad. We need to eat, sleep, and eliminate to order to function and stay healthy. To stay healthy through eating, sleeping and eliminating we need stuff. So we spend our lives from birth to death hauling around stuff. Stuff to eat, stuff to sleep, stuff to look good in the eyes of others. At any moment in time we are likely hauling stuff, whether it’s a wallet, purse, tube of lip balm, or like me – bags and bags of food, drink, or ‘stuff’ I might need.

I’m not proposing that we don’t have stuff. We absolutely need to haul around things from day to day, or house-to-house, or city-to-city in order to function and stay alive. The disconnect comes in two forms: 1) From taking more than you need. 2) Becoming attached to that stuff.

There are two ways to not take more than you need and/or become attached. 1) You can listen to authorities that preach this. 2) You can discover for yourself.

The problem with number 1 is that most of those who preach it and know it at a spirit level do not practice this. Our parents taught us not to take more than you need, but we then probably watched them eat, buy, shop, and generally consume more than they needed. We observed as they became attached to their jobs, cars, houses, other people, stories, the news, etc. The same went for teachers, preachers, friends, family… the society that shaped our thoughts growing up. The message was conflicted and if you are anything like me, didn’t even question the confliction.

Discovering this for yourself is a whole different ballgame. Once you realize that non-attachment and taking only what you need is the key to liberation, it’s hard not to incorporate it into your decisions. Before the discovery on your own, the hypocritical authoritative voice in your mind may have caused a sense of guilt; but the knowing it is not right through your very own voice is far more powerful.

Old habits are incredibly difficult to break. There is not a switch that goes off where one starts to make perfect decisions from here forth. In fact there is more debate, guilt and remorse over not making the right decision than ever.

Wikipedia describes the Monkey Mind as a Buddhist term meaning “unsettled; restless; capricious; whimsical; fanciful; inconstant; confused; indecisive; uncontrollable”. The monkey mind is the voice in the head that never stops talking. Like a monkey it cannot sit still. It jumps from thought-to-thought, worry-to-worry, new shiny object to new shiny object, without a care in the world. It is like a toddler that never grows up. It responds to the wiring in the brain that lights up “like” impulse. It likes stuff – food, taste, status, objects. Its concerns are all about ‘me, me, me’.

The spirit on the other hand is quiet and all knowing. It knows right from wrong. It will make the best, most loving, decision on behalf of the good of your body and the the world every time. The spirit doesn’t talk to you, but if you ask it – it will give the mind the right answer.

Here is where you learn that the habits formed in your physical brain wire faster and respond more quickly to your mind than what your spirit speaks to it. Your mind has been accustomed to ignoring that wise, quiet, but all knowing spirit within because that monkey chatter is so loud. We give into it as we might a toddler, just to quiet it down. It’s why yoking the mind, body and spirit are so important. Once they are all on the same page – there is no conflict. The right path is clear.

Even if you haven’t yet made the mind, body and spirit connection on your own or have no idea what I’m talking about and are curious –

Consider not hauling around so much stuff – whether it’s physical or emotional.
Become unattached, knowing that nothing ever lasts.
Take only what you need.

Know with practice and time, the space between remembering becomes greater and greater…. and with that comes a sense of peace.

DailyPost: Haul

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A Frigid New England Morning

Posted on 04/06/201801/03/2019 by Esterina Anderson

I take a deep breath on this frigid New England morning. The air feels cold and steely in my lungs, but at the same time incredibly refreshing compared to the re-circulated dry, warm air in the house just two feet behind me. I am barefoot on the small, colorful, and very wet welcome mat on my back deck. From inside it looked a bit warmer out, but one inhale tells a different story.

The thermometer reads 22 degrees Fahrenheit. Even though the air is cold and frigid, there are several signs that spring is on the way. The most exciting sign for me is the red buds on the trees that boarder our yard. Despite the cold, the trees are aware of the subtle shifts in the atmosphere and are preparing to put forth an abundance of greenery in just a few short weeks. While I’m looking out I can see signs of frost on the top of the barbeque cover, yet I hear birds singing and chirping in the air. That is not something I can say in February. Just the mere fact that the porch furniture was put out means there was a day warm enough not long ago that prompted us to ritualistically begin preparations for the warmer months.

In the evenings while laying in bed at night, I am able to hear the peeper frogs through my closed bedroom window. In the late spring and summer when we sleep with the windows open, we not only hear the peepers; but all types of crickets and woodsy life through the evening.

For months the ground has been receiving precipitation in the form of freezing rain and snow. But the ground was solid, even during some of the unusually warm 50 degree days in the past few months. Despite the cold, the extra sun is warming our ground to sufficiently keep a thaw as evidenced by my weight digging ever so slightly into the dirt. This I notice while walking the dog after dinner or while cutting across the lawn to grab the mail.

As I stand on the deck looking out, I feel a flutter of excitement in my chest. Summer is on the way. The cover on the grill will be perpetually removed as we spend many evenings cooking outside instead of in the kitchen. The deck furniture will constantly be moved, full or crumbs and stained with ketchup due to the many hours we move the chairs from the sun, pull a chair in closer to watch a movie together around a laptop, and eat almost every meal al fresco.

A look over the deck down to the yard below has my heart fluttering a bit more. We have a really large garden that is now empty down the hill in our sloped yard. Very soon the asparagus tips will start shooting out from the ground on the right side of the garden, just outside the wooden boarders but inside the fence where we planted them several years ago. The strawberries will soon follow. Every year those crazy strawberries try to invade the neighboring soil in the garden after a few weeks above ground, but each year we gently pull back the little green pointers that latch quite firmly into the dirt.

In the summertime the garden is brimming with all types of crops – kale, lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, beets, squash, eggplant, peppers, green beans, herbs like basil, parsley, oregano, mint…. and more. Each year we try our hand at a few new seeds. One of the finer ways that I feel in touch with nature is preparing meals with ingredients that came from our garden.

There is a point every year where the yield is almost too much to keep up with. Especially the kale, spinach and lettuce. Almost daily I take a trip down the hill to pick the greens. Carefully cutting the leaves back to main stem keeps the greens producing all season, but it’s quite a time consuming task. The bugs are wild at that time of year. At least half of the time I will forget to slather on some bug repellent and get completely mobbed by whatever is out there. Often the sun is so hot that by the time I finish cutting back the greens, the ones I started to cut begin to wilt. Avoiding that wilt requires several trips back into the air-conditioned house where they will stay fresh until I have a chance to clean them. Getting back into the house is tricky business because my sandals, legs and behind are muddy, and I need to trek up the hill in the scorching sun. The trip doesn’t stop up the hill, I still need to climb steep steps of the deck. It really isn’t too far, but by the time I reach the back door I’m often panting from the exertion. A cool wave of cold air will hit me when I open the door to go in. Unlike the frigid air this morning when I opened the door (which felt like an unpleasant shock but very natural); the air-conditioned air in the summer feels pleasant, yet completely unnatural. I have to take off my shoes so as to not drag mud into the house. I need to almost creep into the house and try not to touch anything or shake the crops too much, as this will create all kinds of dirt and mess. After several trips to the garden to avoid wilting, it’s another several minutes to sometimes hours of processing the greens. They need to be soaked several for rounds, then spun and bagged. There is always more than we can ever eat; so our neighbors, co-workers and friends often become the unwilling, yet very thankful recipients of our labor.

I take a step back from the railing overlooking the hill. The deck feels cold and frigid under my bare feet with every step I take. As long as I don’t move, my feet seem to begin to warm up the peeling wood beneath them. My next thought wanders to the peeling wood. We need to paint it again. It needs to be painted or touched up annually, notwithstanding the promises on the labels of every deck paint we’ve ever tried with pictures of freshly painted decks that promise a 5-year guarantee. That is a chore to add to the to do list. As will be the weekly hassle of weeding in addition to the more than weekly imposition of mowing the lawn, weed wacking, cleaning up the mulch that looks plain awful after the lawn clippings or dog diggings. Ugh, not to mention the constant sweeping of the decks, walkway and sidewalk in front of our home. As I look around the yard my heart starts to flutter in anguish this time thinking about how much work the summer is. Why am I looking forward to it? The winter seems nice and simple as the upkeep of the home is only fractions of what the summer warrants when you have a large lawn and garden. I rather enjoy coming home in the dark at four in the afternoon, changing into comfy clothes and parking on the sofa with a good book by the fire for the evening. It feels wrong at this time of year at 6:45 pm to not be fully dressed. While the sun might be shining, it’s way to cold to enjoy the outdoors.

At the moment I’m cold and I have nothing on except my flimsy pajama pants and my daughter’s college sweatshirt, I make the crazy decision to walk down the steep stairs of the deck to take a look around the yard. There is the fire pit in the grass and Adirondack chairs that are sitting under the deck waiting their time to come out for the summer. We have a swing under the deck with an orange cushion and two pillows that is great for summer reading, but also a prime spot to be bitten by mosquitos. I start to walk around the house up the hill and remember how steep this is. I am reminded of the flower bed on the side of the house that is a whole lot of work to keep up as well. My heart starts to pound now as I am exerting energy up this little hill while my lungs are taking in the frigid cold. As I round the flower bed and step into my driveway I see the crocus’ that came up a few weeks ago in full bloom. They are the first of the flowers to come up. Their little green shoots are often seen in late February. Just a quick look at them makes my heart slow down just a little.

As I come up the walkway I see more crocus’ on the flowerbed to the other side of the house. They too are in full bloom. And right next to them are daffodils that are about to burst forth. Their yellow petals are closed, but any day now they will open up to their full beauty.

I smile internally. I love the flowers in the summer. I love to prune them back, clean up the mess around them, and bring many of them into the house. All summer we have fresh flowers around the house. Every single time I look at them I am awed by the sense of their beauty. It is one of my favorite things about summer. As is having the windows open at night. As are the fresh fruit pies I make, the salads we often eat, the fresh tomatoes… oh my.

All seasons are beautiful by their own right. When the days start to become shorter and the mornings in late August and early September chillier, I begin to dread the winter. I can’t conceive how it could be dark in the morning or in the evening. I can’t imagine not sitting out on the deck for meals and reading in the evenings by the light of tikki torches and sound of crickets. But as the days do start to shorten I thoroughly enjoy the colors of the trees, the browning of the flower beds and garden, and pulling out the sweaters and fuzzy boots. While there is a certain satisfaction and connection to nature from caring for the outside for several hours and then enjoying the view with a cool beverage, there is also a certain contentment with putting away the garden tools and lawn furniture for the winter and turning inwards.

I walk back into my home through the front door and feel the unnatural warm blast of air hit me while I wipe the dirt from my feet on the doormat, closing out the frigid morning behind me. I’m content. Nature is beautiful and I’m feeling completely grateful.

via Daily Prompt: Frigid

DailyPrompt for Frigid

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On the Wonder of: What’s wrong with me?

Posted on 04/04/201801/03/2019 by Esterina Anderson

Have you ever sat at work at your desk in front of your computer and felt completely immobilized? Perhaps staring at the screen, not being excited about one single thing that you should be working on? Conceivably like me you’ve procrastinated with just one more thing before you delve in. One last bathroom trip, one more cup of coffee, one last check of your personal phone sitting off to the side… for the 15^th time… in the past 5 minutes.

Maybe you’ve been so unmotivated while sitting at your desk you’ve taken to Google “motivation”, “new jobs”, “career changes”, “inspiration”… and alas you become desperate because nothing is lighting a spark, so you Google “depression” or “what’s wrong with me?”

I used to be motivated when I was younger. I was the most motivated, happy person I knew in real life if I was honest with myself and took a break from being so focused to notice that others around me didn’t exactly have the same spark in their eyes about the silliness and mundane work we were doing. At some point I started to feel my energy and motivation drain. It was depressing because that didn’t feel like me.

After Google searching any and all possible search words to unearth whatever could possibly be wrong with me, I slowly started to tap into a new reality. I began to wake up realize what a cog in the wheel I’d been. Just a little part of a big giant system churning out widgets at a rapid pace, more rapid than anyone could want them. When people were sick of their widgets and had one too many, advertising was invented to convince people that they should want and need more than they are satisfied with or they will not be happy or ‘successful’. So people kept working harder to churn out more widgets, only to buy more, only needing to work harder and longer to do so… only to be constantly chasing their own happiness and wondering what was wrong with them.

A quick Google search on my smart phone this afternoon revealed to me that butter was invented anywhere between 10,000 and a few hundred years ago. Just a small range, right? None-the-less, sometime, somewhere, at some point a distant time ago; a human being not too different from you or I sat churning butter at home thinking “I can’t wait to finish this churning, it’s SO monotonous.” The cream likely came from a cow just yards away on the farm, not but a few hours before. It’s likely the butter-maker fantasized about a device that could do this for them, so they could spend more time enjoying life. Perhaps the butter-maker didn’t over eat butter because he/she knew how much work went into it. Perhaps they didn’t really overeat anything at all because they understood how much effort went into getting the food before them period. If they didn’t hunt and gather it themselves, they knew they individual who had and likely exchanged their butter for it.

At some point in the past few hundred (or thousand) years, humanity’s inventions surpassed our common sense. We made machines to do just about everything we used to do, including butter churning. As a race we literally left our homesteads and went to work in factories to make things that people needed. The machines churned widgets out so fast, that we made what we needed fairly quickly. It should have stopped there – taking only what we needed. But we kept on churning it all out. It was monotonous. Perhaps even as monotonous as churning butter manually. The only way to get out of this precarious situation and move onto bigger and better things was to churn out widgets with more speed and adeptness than your co-workers around you, so you could instead supervise the line from the catwalk above. It probably was around that point in history that we stopped working together as a human race and started to compete in ways that were harmful to ourselves as a species. The shiny new line supervisor watching from above might have realized that it could feel quite lonely at the top. Perhaps he looked down at the line and missed the camaraderie and teamwork. However with that increase in pay and social status, he wasn’t about to say anything. He ‘made it’ after all. He should feel happy. But he doesn’t’. What’s wrong with him?

Just a mere few hundred years later we live in a world where we want for nothing yet face ridiculous cutthroat completion. So much so that our young children in elementary schools are on medications because the stress of having to ‘succeed’ is too much to handle; and there is so much stimulation coming at them from every angle, that they have difficulty focusing.

We are sitting at desks churning out reports no one reads, crunching numbers that can be manipulated so many ways they’ve become useless, and feeling superior for going through more emails than the guy next to us. We are pressured to keep up the sales numbers, sell-sell-sell, beat the competition, beat your neighbor, and keep improving upon all of this before your next performance review. To what end?

At least back in the manual butter churning days we felt connected to our food source, the earth that fed us, the animals the provided for us, our families and friends that we worked collaboratively with on a regular basis in exchange for life’s simplicities. There was a sense of purpose and belonging. One could see the fruit of their labor. Rarely did anyone take more than they needed. There was no need for speed and churning out widgets at a rapid pace to meet an invisible, unnecessary sales quota that felt completely empty to you after the pat on the back in front of your team… when you went back to your desk to stare at your computer and wonder why you aren’t happy.

There is nothing wrong with you. There is something wrong with society. We are so far removed from our food sources, our nature sources and simplicity that we have lost our connection and relevancy to the earth and to ourselves. We have little meaning & purpose. We feel bored and lonely. We get all the wrong messages from society to do more, be more, and compete more. We are too tired at the end of the day to spend quality time with family or friends, to volunteer in our community, to go to a town meeting, to fight for anything we care about.

We need to take our lives back. The butter churning days may have been monotonous, but at least it had purpose. At least the butter-maker directly benefited from what they were doing. At least society was working together for a common purpose and felt a part of something bigger than themselves. What is the purpose of what we are churning out now? Machines were invented so we can spend more time enjoying life. Why didn’t that happen?

Daily Prompt

via Daily Prompt: Churn

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Lexapro Journal (Continued)

Posted on 03/29/201801/03/2019 by Esterina Anderson

I’m writing this blog as an update to the Lexapro 100 day Journal one that I wrote back in 2016.

I don’t blog that often, but when I do check the statistics for the number of readers, I see that between 3 and 15 people each day read this article. It is the only article that picks up any traction after the first few days post publishing. I has received more hits recently, so I’m not sure if it show up higher on search engines; but in any case it’s amounted to a few thousand people who have at least opened it. Doesn’t mean they read it through though!

When I tried to go off Lexapro just a little over a year ago, I wrote another blog entitled Lexapro Rollercoaster. I haven’t written anything about it since. I’ve been approached by so many people (some I know well & others hardly at all) who have read my blogs. Folks have asked for advice, inquired how I’m doing, or wanted to share that they or someone they love has experienced the same thing. Because I see that a few thousand strangers have read some of this as well, I wanted to follow-up as Lexapro wasn’t my answer.

I didn’t particularly have a love affair with Lexapro. I started it in March 2016. It seemed at first to be to a miracle drug. After several months the side effects kicked in. Particularly they were the two I was most afraid of – decreased interest in sexual activities and weight gain. Initially I thought it was a fluke and both would pass. But as pounds kept adding on and I felt less and less inclined to indulge in carnal activities, I knew it was the medication.

In January 2017 I didn’t feel like I needed Lexapro any longer. I felt stable emotionally. My primary care provider talked me through tapering off. It was a little difficult because I felt physically sick, but that passed after a few days. A few days later I felt off kilter emotionally again. I went back on Lexapro the same way I went off, but this time I held the dose steady at 5mg to test out how that made me feel. I immediately felt better, as I had the first time I went on. At 5mg I didn’t have the unwanted side effects. Fortunately my BMI had always been on the low side, and even with all the weight gain I was still in a normal range. I didn’t lose any weight, but I didn’t gain more either. The other department I feared was also in check. But my moods weren’t steady. I could get hyped up at anxious about almost nothing, and angry at the drop of a hat. I felt off balance. Nowhere near as badly as I originally did, but not as great as I did at 15mg either.

I believed with some meditation and a deeper yoga practice I could keep taking 5mg, feel better and go off completely. I set a soft goal to go off Lexapro before the start of summer in June. But I didn’t deepen my yoga or meditation practices. I didn’t have time to, I was as busy as ever. Although I cut down my professional hours at work; I taught as much yoga as I could without being picky and I wasn’t even doing my own practice. My husband and I started renting out our second home in Branford and I was managing all the rentals and turnovers. Even though I changed the stressors in my life, I unknowingly added different ones back in.

In May that year I took a 50-hour training in domestic violence and sexual assault in order to teach yoga at safe houses in Connecticut. One evening during a presentation about PTSD, I realized with unbelievable clarity that the slide I was looking at described me perfectly. Until then I have prided myself for rising above being a childhood victim of domestic violence and putting it behind me. It wasn’t until that evening I realized I was indeed affected by my past. The ground slightly shifted beneath me, but I wasn’t sure what to do about it.

My emotions became more tumultuous after that. If I was more aware of myself I may have noticed Lexapro really wasn’t helping anymore. One evening in July I had the worst emotional breakdown I ever had. I knew I needed help in a different way. After a little research I filled out some FMLA paperwork and cleared my calendar so I could spend a month in intensive outpatient mental health treatment.

Under the care of the facility, I started to decrease my 5mg of Lexapro daily to once every other day until I went off completely. I felt great. I had no responsibilities during this month other than to care for myself. I journaled daily after my sessions. For the first time ever, I had the time and was willing to really think about how I feel, where my assumptions and habits formed, and how I got to be where I was mentally, physically and emotionally. I was able to sit and question whether or not I wanted to do those things or if they were just maladaptive habits I had from childhood. I made conscious, well-thought out decisions about what I wanted to do, what I wanted to keep in my life and what I wanted to let go.

I needed follow-up after the program with some type of regular treatment. I’ve gone to weekly couch talk therapy for years on an off and never found it helpful. With the advice from the program I just completed, I researched local therapists that specialized in the exercises we used that I found most helpful. I messaged a few by reaching out and providing a short background about myself. It was easy to discern who I might have a connection with through upfront written communication. I settled on someone local that I thought might work.

When I finally met my new therapist, before she asked me anything about myself; she explained some practices and tools she uses and why. She described the energy and meridian lines that run through our bodies and explained that most people start to question their lives after they meet their goals toward success (or the second half of life). She didn’t need to go on any further, I was sold. Energy, questioning life and it’s purpose, Pema Chodron quotes on the wall, a jiggle jar on the table, a semi-organized non-dusty dank/dark room… This is the therapist I was looking for and never knew it. Additionally, since I had just finished a month long intensive therapy treatment, I knew exactly what things I needed to work on and where they came from. For the first time I felt like I had clear therapy goals and found someone who spoke my language and could help me.

Around the same time I started therapy, I started a 9 month advanced yoga teacher training. This training wasn’t all that different from the standard 200 hour teacher training, but it was far more in depth. This time, having a new-found goal of self-care and making time for myself, I was actually deepening my own yoga practices. I also started a daily sadhana (spiritual practice).

I was only in the training a few weeks and saw my new therapist a handful of times before taking several weeks off for a trip I had previously planned with my husband. I was off medication and only using some new techniques and my sadhana practice to keep everything in check. It was going very well.

Once we returned from vacation I had to cancel my next therapy appointment. I got busy and fell back into the older routine of not making time for myself. After just a few days of skipping sadhana and not doing the therapy exercises, I was completely off balance. It took a full week of being back on the wagon before I felt like myself again. Two more weeks passed and I again made the decision to skip my practices for a few days because I became busy with the holidays. Again, not shortly after I felt incredibly unstable.

For a myriad of reasons I didn’t have a therapy appointment scheduled for several weeks. One day during work when I felt like I was completely unraveling, I called my PCP for an appointment to discuss anti-anxiety meds again. I received an appointment for me the next morning. I spent the evening online looking up various medications that I might ask about. I didn’t want to use Lexapro again and was fearful about gaining even more weight or losing that loving feeling again.

When my provider asked why I went off Lexapro, she asked me to consider Effexor (Venlafaxine). It’s not for everybody, but most patients don’t report weight gain or sexual side effects. I had nothing to lose.

The first evening I took Effexor I felt incredibly sick and disoriented. My husband said I looked and sounded drugged. The next morning I woke up feeling like I had a really terrible hangover. I was groggy, dizzy and nauseous. Sometime around dinner the next evening I didn’t feel dizzy if I wasn’t moving. I was able to eat. I was almost feeling normal by the time I was ready to take the next pill. The next pill brought the same side effects, but they were about half as bad as the evening before. The following day by lunchtime I felt as good as I did at dinner the previous evening. On the third morning I had some vertigo for just a few short hours. I have since experienced zero effects.

Exactly one week after beginning Effexor, I made a nice dinner for my husband and I. We enjoyed it with some wine. As we were cleaning up and getting ready to watch a movie, I was dancing around doing silly kicks and laughing. My husband said I looked and sounded really happy. To which I replied “You know what? I am!” He said it must be the wine. I laughed it off but thought about how we have wine often but I often don’t feel that way. I considered that it might be the meds. I hadn’t felt that good in a long, long time. Before I started “waking up”, having anxiety, questioning the second half of life, giving myself time to contemplate the trauma that I made myself too busy to think about…. I felt like my old self, minus all the stress.

The next day I realized I felt just as good. I felt good the day after that as well, and so forth for the next several weeks. Sometime in January I became busy again and starting skipping self-care. Like the previous experiences, I wasn’t myself. However, this time it took just two days of practice to feel good again. Then again two weeks later I skipped my self-care and practices three days in a row. Not surprisingly I fell right back into the hands of anxiety and stress. It was then I realized that I need to continue to make self-care a priority.

It’s been approximately 2 straight months since I have felt balanced without excessive anxiety. I continue to take Effexor, go to therapy and do the “work” and self-examination it takes to improve mental stability.

Thanks to the program I spent a month in last summer, yoga, and therapy – I’ve received the reinforced message that it is not only ok, but necessary to take care of yourself. I know some people take that too far, but for me taking it too far was never even close to an option. It was almost a necessary survival tactic to stay so busy that I would never have time to relive some of the trauma I was trying to avoid until my body was ready to process it. Instead of running from it, I’ve learned it’s not going to hurt me and sitting with it is the only way to get through it. Sitting with [dis]-ease has only become easier and helped me in all types of other areas of my life.

I still don’t have a magic answer for anyone looking for help. Lexapro was my start. I have my own personal combined strategy that is feasible and working for the time being. For anyone struggling with anxiety or depression – there is no magic pill. It has taken me two years to find something I can keep up with and works. I had to look to where it was coming from. For me that was a strain of PTSD. I had to figure out what works for my body. And I had to find a therapist that I really feels can understand the issues that I struggle with. I hope to sustain some level of sanity while I heal and deal with old issues that have plagued me. I truly am happy and feel more better and better each day. I trust there is something for everyone and it won’t look anything like what helps me. Like I said, unfortunately there really are no magic pills.

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On the Mysterious Secret of Slowing Down

Posted on 03/24/201801/03/2019 by Esterina Anderson

Last Sunday evening after dinner I was washing a pot. I was washing it very mindfully. I was noticing the feel of the warm, soapy water on my hands. I thought about how the pot was made and how I infused the homemade vegan chili in this large, heavy blue pot with love. Most importantly I was slowly and methodically removing the food that was stuck to the bottom of the pan. I thought back to a lesson I just cannot seem to always remember – “To go faster you must slow down”.

I led a fast paced adult life until about 2 years ago. So fast that I hardly had time to think. Washing a pot with food stuck to the bottom has always reminded me of this paradox; thanks to a visit from my mother a few years before she passed away. When my children were young and I was first married, we had little money, but I kept a really good home. I felt very on top of things. But I was rushed back then too. I was so rushed that I never really had time to deal with pots that ended up with years worth of stains on them. In late 2001 my mother came to visit with her new husband Boris. I had only just met him, and I know he made my mother very happy. He was from Venezuela. My mom talked so much about how laid back he was and how he got her to slow down, grow out her hair, and stop fussing so much with make up and keeping up the house. I made a big dinner when they came to visit, and afterward there were many pots and pans that needed cleaning. My mother and Boris came into the kitchen to help and stationed themselves at the sink; she on dish duty, he on drying duty. What seemed like only moments later while I was putting the leftover food into containers, I noticed Boris drying off one of the pots. What caught my eye about a particular pot that usually had brown and black soot on the bottom was that it was so shiny and clean. Years worth of food and cooking build up was gone! I asked my mother how she did that and so fast… she only smiled with a glint in her eye and said “Boris showed me how”. She never told me with words, but with her eyes she told me to slow down and go easy. The next time I had to clean a pot and ever since I’ve taken my time, used far less pressure than I ever would have and they have always come clean. Working in a rush and with too much pressure used more time and never yielded the same results. I never understood how, it’s just the way it works.

I learned this 17 years ago, but I still don’t always remember or practice this principle. Two years ago I slowed down immensely, truly savoring the small, day-to-day moments, and oddly enough I found myself to be happier, more at peace and with more time than I ever had. It’s not only time, but also about ‘less’. Doing less, trying less, having less… all equal less stress and more joy.

Last week I had the luxury of traveling with my husband and a group of amazing individuals from my yoga studio to a jungle sanctuary in Costa Rica. Getting to this sanctuary required two commercial flights, a puddle jumper plane, a 45 minute car ride, and then a 20 minute hike crossing a river four times. It was hot and humid; the type of humidity where you never dry off, even after a shower.

The only way on and off the sanctuary is a 20 minute-plus hike. On the last full day of the trip, my husband Daren and I ventured off the property to the sanctuary’s closest neighbor Nena, in pursuit of pure organic extra virgin coconut oil. It was a short walk over a bridge that overlooks the ocean to Nena’s house. For the previous two days, Daren & I opted to take some excursions off the property with our group. Both days were a little hectic and obscenely hot at times. I felt ambivalent all morning about whether or not we should take the walk down the hill to get this coconut oil, mainly because it was hot. For some reason I said I’d like to go but I wanted to walk slowly. So off we went to Nena’s house for coconut oil.

Daren and I really took our time. We stopped and looked at monkeys. We watched little birds. We passed our friend the white cow. When we left the property and crossed the street we stopped on the bridge. Actually, Daren on the bridge and called out to me “Babe, look at this view!”. Slightly annoyed, I stopped to look. I was initially feeling rushed, looked at my watch and started calculating how much time it would take to get to Nena’s, buy this coconut oil, trek back, “relax” at the pool, and then dash off to the next yoga class. However, when I turned my head to the left and saw the scene, my heart rate actually slowed down a bit. I couldn’t believe I was about to just walk by and miss this scene! I took it in. While standing there I couldn’t help but notice this insane harried American thought pattern and I pushed it completely away. When I stopped and didn’t worry about the time, I was able to remember that I was here in this beautiful place, at this beautiful moment, with my beautiful husband and a group of beautiful well-lit individuals. I stopped my physical, then mental body from the rush of insanity and fleeting thoughts to appreciate the view and the view of my husband appreciating the view.
We stood there a while in silence. I took a few pictures and resisted the urge to snap more. More is not better. More pictures, more talk, more activity… more, more, more… No, no, no… I know this, but I live in a world that tells me the opposite; so it’s easy to forget.
It was I who broke the silence after a long while. I had the profound realization that because we walked slowly we weren’t as hot as we were the rest of the trip. I intellectually knew that before we walked and even made that suggestion, but it was even more profound to experience that it worked. It dawned on me that every time I go anywhere where the weather is warm all the time, the locals move slowly. I heard other Americans and Canadians joking about how the natives live on “Costa Rican time”. I’ve heard the same joke in other places. All these Americans and Europeans thinking it’s so funny to crack jokes about how slow everyone moves, when really the joke is on us. What is wrong with us? We are the dummies sweating in the sun because we are rushing around like lunatics. It’s our culture that is uptight, wound up and stressed. What are we in a rush to do anyway? At that moment on the bridge I decided to put my watch in my pocket and let the day pass as it may. Strangely there seemed to be just the right amount of time for everything once I stopped worrying at all about it.

Daren with our friend the pretty white cow who was often on the path onto and off the sanctuary.

When we start to move too fast, we often do not see what we need to see. (Huffington Post 2015 – Why Going Slow Will Make You Go Faster). This applies to work, our lives with our families and friends, or achieving any of our goals. Maybe it’s not just what we need to see, but what will enhance our everyday experiences.

In the midst of this jungle last week we were surrounded by wildlife. It was beautiful, simple, exotic, intoxicating, and natural. This was a yoga group at a yogic sanctuary. Yogi’s might be more aware than most about the beauty of being conscious, but are no less human and subject to falling prey to being unconscious in a world that keeps dangling shiny temptations all around. One of my teachers deliberately did not go on one of the daily excursions on a day that every other single one of the group did. She said she did not want to feel rushed, and she sat watching monkeys for several hours that day instead. The message she took away is that the monkeys were there all along, providing the same level of awe and entertainment, but had one not taken the time to just stop and observe, it would have been missed.

The evening we returned to Connecticut from Costa Rica, Daren and I found ourselves on a line at a McDonald’s drive through on the way home from the airport at 11:45 at night. By that point in the day we had been up & en route home since 5:15am. We had only one square meal. We were tired, dirty and stressed. Hurry up and wait. We almost missed a connecting flight because Passport Control was a hot mess when we got back into the U.S. We were waiting on a very long car line at 11:45pm for an absolutely nutritiously poor meal (well Daren was waiting, I was looking forward to some soup at home). We were stressed. Daren was tapping at the wheel. I was mentally trying hard to not fall into the trap of ordering something greasy or feeling upset over the slow moving line, all while trying to stay cheerful so my husband could stay positive too. In my mind I was doing math again about the number of things I needed to do the next day to get ready for the week, wondering how I could fit them in. How much mail was there? Who is taking the dog to the vet Thursday? What should I pull out for dinner tomorrow? Should I go shopping? I needed to inventory the food situation at home first, right? With every thought I felt my blood pressure rising. And every time I noticed my breath becoming rapid and shallow or my heart racing, I made the conscious decision to breath deeply and live in the moment. That only lasts a few moments out here in the “real world” until the thoughts & heart start to race again. How could you explain this feeling to someone in the third world?

We may have been in the middle of the jungle, but the concrete jungle creates artificial stressors that make living life to the fullest impossible. It’s impossible because living life to the fullest was taught to me that one need to fit in as much “fun”, work, and activities that one possibly can. This means learning as much as you can, moving quickly, multi-tasking, making lots of money to do these amazing things (because heck they aren’t free!), AND providing these amazing experiences to our offspring. Making money means more rushing and more stress. For most, making money means sitting in a car or in some form of transportation for unfathomable periods of time each day, to do a job you hardly ever see the results of or feel connected to, for far too many hours each day. Then rushing home to activities and usually harried, unhealthy meals – if you are lucky with loved one(s). Weekends for the most are spent putting your living quarters back together from the rush of the busy week by cleaning, doing laundry, shopping, shuffling other humans around and spending “quality” time with other humans you are supposed to care for to keep your social life active and your role as a parent connected with your children. In between you must squeeze in the “fun” and “experiences” you are going out to make all that money for, but also it’s very important to exercise, meditate, perform self-care, visit the doctor-dentist-optometrist regularly, prepare healthy organic, locally grown ingredient-based meals at home and sleep enough hours per night just so you don’t get fat, stressed or sleep deprived. You know… so you can be happy and experience life to the fullest. Sounds insane to me!

The Harvard Business Review writes about how this slow to go fast paradox works in business as well. When we take the time to get things right, rather than plow ahead full bore, we are far more successful in meeting objectives (Harvard Business Review 2010 – Need Speed? Slow Down).
Physics teaches us that time is relative. Slowing down means time slows down with you. I can’t explain why this is, it’s just is. Another exquisite paradox is that it also helps you appreciate and truly experience more. Additionally life and experiences become less expensive, less material and far less stressful. This article is a bit more on the holistic side, but resonates with me because it talks about how when you work less you work better, find what really makes you happy, have the ability connect with others, and are able to savor life (Wholesome Living – 10 reasons why you should slow down to go faster).

The overall message for me is that slowing down = living life to the fullest. I keep forgetting, but the time between which I do is growing larger and larger. I hope that others who haven’t given it a whirl do! There’s nothing to lose but old, tired ideas of what it means to life our lives to the absolute fullest.

Sunrise one morning from the Tower at the Sanctuary

Sunset one evening on the beach of Santa Theresa Costa Rica

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On Giving Gifts that Heal this Holiday Season

Posted on 12/21/201701/03/2019 by Esterina Anderson

After food, shelter and clothing; true lasting joy and peace can ONLY come from within. No toy, car, phone, pet, room, house, grade, job, college, friend, significant other, anything… can ever bring true happiness. It sounds so cliché, but it’s true and sages have been saying it for thousands of years.

Advertisement and modern society tells us something different. A few gifts can help to bring this inner joy. This is my own concoction of gifts that can help bring forth that inner joy. The secret is that you have to be willing to give these gifts to both yourself and others.

Acceptance

Acceptance of what is.

When I was 15 I found a Yin Yang charm on the beach. I didn’t know what it was, but I liked it. I strung it along some fishing line with black beads I somehow had, and held it together with a safety pin as a clip. I wore it for years around my neck, like a thin choker that was popular in the early 90s. A few years later one evening at my church’s youth group, I sat across a boy who was in my circle of friends but I had never talked to very much. We both sat backwards on some chairs off to the side while our friends chatted and danced. At some point during the conversation he reached over to my neck and touched the Yin Yang. He asked me if I knew what the symbol meant. I didn’t. He explained. I loved it even more. We dated all through my senior year.

It is my favorite symbol because it says it all with a simple circle. The world is made up of opposites, and they always circle back to one another at their extreme. We can only understand an expression through the existence of its opposite (hot/cold, dark/light, happy/sad, health/disease, love/hate, summer/winter, life/death etc). These things all exist naturally, are a part of the universe we live in; they ALL belong, and we should expect them to show up. That means there is nothing wrong with disappointment, sadness, anger, something not working, or any “negative” expression or feeling. It should come as no more of a surprise as joy, love, things going as planned, or “positive” feelings. There is no fighting this natural, universal law, and expecting anything different only causes disappointment.

How does that translate into real life? When we aren’t happy it doesn’t mean there is something wrong with us. When someone is grumpy or annoyed (even if it’s with you), it doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with them or you. Pretending a negative feeling isn’t so, or trying to change an outcome or a mood is unnatural; not to mention completely exhausting.

Acceptance of what is doesn’t mean accepting nonsense in your life OR that it’s ok to make the same mistakes over and over. Accept, learn, & grow. That means changing what you have control over, letting go of what you can’t and having the wisdom to know the difference. Someone coined that long ago.

Let go

Let go of contempt and forgive.

Oh… so much easier than it sounds. Regret and lack of forgiveness can seriously block true inner happiness. Like a dam blocks the flow of water. This is true whether or not you are holding onto contempt for yourself or others.

Regret can be about anything that would represent ‘woulda’, ‘shoulda’, ‘coulda’. Lack of forgiveness for yourself is often about regret. Consider being compassionate with yourself and recognizing that you are human, but learn from the experience. Accept how it went and move on. If you don’t forgive yourself, you will often make the same mistakes over and over.

Lack of forgiveness towards others is often about being angry because another individual did not act in a way you wished them to. Consider accepting that it is about them, not you. and let it go. Holding onto contempt only stops you from being happy and wishing you could change a person you cannot.

Both forms of not forgiving will block you from being happy. Forgiveness is the greatest gift you can give yourself. It’s absolutely NOT about making the same mistakes over and over, or allowing certain behaviors in your life. Forgiveness is about acceptance of what is and not fighting against things you cannot change. Accept yourself, others, and the world for what it is. You don’t even have to let another person know you forgave them to feel the benefits of letting go. Whatever you might be holding on to with anger, regret, or contempt: give yourself the gift of letting it go. It’s freeing.

Not everyone is ready to forgive. If you can’t, at least wish that you could want to. And if you can’t even do that, at least wish that you were the type of person who could wish they could want to. But be honest and reflective of where you are: ready to forgive, wishing you were ready, or wishing you could wish you were ready to forgive. The sooner you are honest with your private self (you can’t really lie to your most private self), the sooner you will move on, come closer to forgiveness and the sooner you will set yourself free. But only you can do that.

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Give

Give gratitude. We are human and as simple as it is, it’s hard! There are thousands of quotes, articles, podcasts, movies, songs, apps etc that talk about how gratitude can change your life. And I can attest to it. Living in gratitude makes life miraculous and SOOOOoooooooo….. worth living.

Look around. Stop living in lack. I listened to a Podcast on the way home from work on Tuesday about Oneness. To sort of, kind of, steal the lines from the person giving the Podcast, she talked about how we live and focus on lack constantly. From the moment we open our eyes in the morning we live in lack. Before another thought enters our mind; more often than not we think we didn’t sleep enough, weren’t enough yesterday (didn’t exercise enough, ate the wrong things, drank too much, didn’t do enough), and that we don’t have enough time in the morning to get ready to start the day. This is before we even get out of bed! This is the story we tell ourselves throughout the day. We focus on all that isn’t rather than ALL that is. Giving gratitude and being grateful for what is doesn’t come naturally.

Most of us are healthy and have several functioning relationships in our lives. We have food, shelter and way too much clothing… in fact we feel confused about choices on what to eat and what to wear when we are lucky enough to have those choices to actually make! But we focus on what doesn’t fit, the people who have slighted us and who we don’t have a relationship with, the poor food choices we made, the fact that there is traffic, a bill we didn’t expect to come… and then we beat ourselves up then for not being thankful.

On how hard this is –

We are human. We are animals. In a totally unrelated, yet totally related story… I’m in a 300-hour yoga teacher training and there is a student who comes to many of the classes at my studio where I teach and train. He is in his 70’s, legally blind, and a retired psychologist. He is awesome. He will often stay behind after community classes that are open to the public and share some of his insights about yoga and the way the mind works. I’m going to share one of his stories. I will call him “Harry”.

Harry was involved in a study with chickens all not too long ago. Basically, they taught the chickens how to find a pellet in a maze. Before you read further, try to take a wild guess about how long it took the chickens to find the pellet in the maze. Flabbergasted? It’s normal! From the folks I’ve told this story to, they’ve all guessed between 2 and 50 times. I believe the answer was somewhere around 9.

Then Harry’s study changed something in the maze that required the chickens to adapt to a new pattern. The pellet came out in a slightly different way and the chickens had to learn that doing the same thing over and over didn’t work. How many times do you think it took them to determine the new pattern? Flabbergasted again? Again… it’s normal. Most of the people I’ve talked to and told this story to after learning it was 9 times guessed anywhere between 9 and 40. For all those folks I’ve told them it’s much, much higher and it would blow their mind moved their guess to between 50 and 500.

The actual answer is over 42,000 times. It’s mind-boggling. I would hate to be the person who counted that study! Harry told us about that study, and I share this study with you because it’s freeing to know that it’s very difficult to change patterns and the way our neurons fire and give us direction. There is nothing wrong with us if we can’t change a habit in a heartbeat. We aren’t failures, we are living creatures with wiring that makes it so. Again & again, not an excuse – but an opportunity to accept the nature of what is, forgive ourselves, and give gratitude that we have the mind power to change patterns since we have a little more thinking opportunity than chickens, and can be self-reflective.

It’s all good.

Closing Thoughts –

So be good to yourself and others. We are just frail little humans. We think materialism, acquiring more things, brings joy – but it doesn’t. Use this season, this beautiful solstice, to learn something new. Focus on acceptance of what is, letting go of the past, and being grateful. These are some of the most beautiful gifts we can give ourselves and one another.

As I stated at the beginning of this blog: true inner joy & peace can only come from within.

Happy Winter Solstice 2017.

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2017 Anderson-Messeder Holiday Greetings

Posted on 12/15/201701/03/2019 by Esterina Anderson

2017

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The kids

I will start with the kids because when I see people I haven’t seen in a while, it’s the first thing they ask me about to break the ice.

Starting with the oldest.

Tom is now 20. He has been going to college at the University of Southern Maine for 2 ½ years, majoring in English. He met a sweet girl the fall semester of last year named Aisy. I had the pleasure of meeting her for the first time on my birthday this year. Tom spent the summer with Aisy and her family in Rhode Island while working at a tent/party set up company. He says it was the best summer and job of his life. He’s had a myriad of jobs in college and is currently working in Whole Foods. But only temporarily. As of today he will be moving back home and finishing school here in Connecticut. Aisy is also moving back home with her folks to finish school in a more economic manner. We are very much looking forward to having Tom back home with us, Koji & Devin. It’s rather quiet in our house these days!

Tom, Aisy & Koji at the beach in Rhode Island this summer

Gabby. She is now 18. She finished high school last June and is currently a freshman at the University of Rhode Island (URI) studying Geographical Oceanography. She is challenging herself the first two semesters with several lab classes and an intense course load. She is also in the Honors Program. The last days of senior year brought all kinds of fun and memorable activities like prom, award ceremonies, trips and of course graduation. Gabby worked at Panera Bread for the past year through the time she started college. She is still a seasonal employee and will be working through winter break. It will be nice to have her home for the next month too. Other than one of the cats, I’m the only girl left in our house. Gabby does add a nice feminine flair!

Prom!

Last visit to URI where Gabby decided she wanted to attend this school

Last fending tournament last March

Kieran. He will be 18 in just 14 days from today. He is a senior at Hopkins High School and just got into Harvard! Yes, Harvard – wow! 3^rd generation (both his parents & maternal grandmother). We found out just Tuesday evening after his winter concert while my in-laws were visiting. Kieran has many highlights this year. Most notably he made it to Nationals for singing. He was in Disney with the nationals group just a few weeks ago following the Thanksgiving holiday. He had many roles in school plays and recently was cast as the lead role in Heathers for the Spring 2018 Musical at Hopkins. For a variety of reasons he hasn’t been spending considerable time at our house, but we are very proud of his accomplishments.

Kieran and his good friend Michele on the college visit circuit we took them on in March. On that trip we visited many schools including Brown where Michele learned yesterday she has gotten into!

Devin. He is now 14. He finished up IDS (the elementary/secondary school he has been in since he started school) this year in June. It was emotional as he said goodbye to teachers and friends he has known since he remembers pretty much anything. Of course in this day and age it’s not goodbye – as he is pretty much on a perpetual group chat with his old friends on a daily basis. Devin is now a freshman at Cheshire High School (CHS, where Tom & Gabby went to school). He is also in his last year of playing hockey with the Whalers. Next year he will transition onto the high school hockey team. He is still playing the trumpet and we were treated to yet another great holiday concert at CHS last night.

At the Muse & 30 Seconds to Mars concert we went to at Jones Beach this summer. On the left is Anna Sara – beautiful relative from Sweden we had the pleasure of spending time with

Trips

Daren and I traveled quite a bit this year. We started the year on a work trip (Daren’s work) to Newport CA. In April we took Gabby and her good friend Kelly to Disney for their senior year. Devin and his friend Cole joined us. We also took some day trips & weekend trips to Long Island and around New England to Kingston RI, Portland, ME, Stowe, VT, Grafton, VT… to name a few. But our biggest trip was definitely to Africa! We went to Africa to celebrate Daren’s 50^th birthday. We visited Cape Town, South Africa, Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe and then went on an overland safari that started in Zimbabwe – went all through Botswana; and landed us back in South Africa in Soweto.

At Disney in Anaheim during the Newport Visit this year

Victoria Falls!!

Chobe National Park Botswana

Random beer tasting trip in Rhode Island

The Hubby

Daren turned 50! He is still working at CHC (Community Health Center), rocking it with doing 3 jobs and writing grants and papers left and right. In the off time he still runs, reads and plays piano. This summer he spent quite a bit of time working on the lovely boat the Melanie’s parents (Melanie & John – our good friends) no longer wanted. After fixing it up he got down to Branford as often as possible to take her out on the water. And the ol’ piano needed some serious fixing. All the keys recently got replaced last month in a serious several day long event.

Branford boat

Daren & I putting up backsplash at Summer Island last winter

I would say this year was even more about yoga for me than last year. I started the year out by opening my own LLC (Yograzia Balance). At first I was holding classes at a home studio. It was going well until someone complained twice about zoning. I’ve taught at a variety of places throughout the year. Most notably I became certified to teach trauma informed yoga at domestic violence shelters. It is the most rewarding teaching I do. Currently, I’m enrolled in a 300-hour yoga teacher-training program, which will finish in June. I’m loving every minute of it, as the material transfers immediately over to my personal life and practices. I’m continuing to work part-time at the VA. My job is not quite as challenging as others at the VA have been, but it works perfectly for our lifestyle at the moment. I also take care of the house & rentals in Branford. More below.

Summer Island

The rental house in Branford has been a success to date! We had over 25 renters this year and got nothing but rave reviews on both vacation rental sites. We used the house ourselves for 2 weeks in the summer and almost every time it was empty. In 2018 we have it blocked for 4 weeks in the summer and hope to make it down more often in the off season. Turning it over and answering calls and texts on the weekends from the renters is not my favorite thing. However; I learned a lot this year, made many adjustments and changes, and hope to have a better handle on the rental process and turnovers next year.

The Reality

That’s all the good/positive stuff. On a more realistic note –

I’m still struggling with stress, anxiety and PTSD. Being 100% honest, it’s been the most challenging year I’ve ever faced with treatment, medication(s), and my own personal growth. Grades are a struggle for some of our brood. Work, school, and home challenges often get in the way of a mood, sometimes an evening. We’ve have blended & biological family struggles, hurt feelings, and harshness exchanged. We had a flood from our dishwasher into the basement this summer that knocked our kitchen and basement out of commission for a while. We had contractors in the house almost every day for about 6 weeks. Devin had emergency hernia surgery. Tom’s car broke down on the Fourth of July holiday.

My ex (John) moved away to Tennessee to start a new job and life. My brother Mario has been staying with us when he can while trying to start a new life away from Long Island. Our pets bring us so much love and joy, but they also destroy stuff, throw up, cover our homes in hair, scare away guests and delivery people…

But we are so blessed. We have food in our bellies, a warm place to stay every night, healthcare, clothes in our closet, JOBS, and as the late Dr. Seuss would say, brains in our head and feet in our shoes. No one likes a struggle, but I’m actually thankful for them. They bring insight and make the good times even more sweet. I’m learning that struggles are as normal and expected as joy, and to not be so thrown off when they show up knocking on the doorstep. Learning…. Not there yet – but I am enjoying the path to learning to be ok with whatever I wake up to face each day.

Here’s to the closing of 2017. Onto the next!

Wildflower garden at the back of the house in Branford

At Powder Ridge this fall

Maria & Koji on Mario’s 40th Birthday

Gabby’s graduation

At Stony Creek Brewery

Sunset across the street Daren & I caught

Kofi about to get some doggie ice-cream

Kofi swimming after Tom in the kayak

Mother’s Day 2017

Koji hanging out with Aisy’s dogs

Gabby with M&M (the only other female creature in our house)

Maria while she stayed with us at Summer Island this July

Koji & Gilmore

Pumpkin spice with cream cheese frosting cupcakes I make every year in honor of Daren & I’s anniversary. I made them for our wedding too.

Maria & Ella reunited with Anna Sara at JFK

Dropping off my little girl at college

All 4 animals lounging on our bed

Long Trail brewing company in VT

having fun

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Don’t go back to sleep

Posted on 11/12/201701/03/2019 by Esterina Anderson

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want.

Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the door sill

Where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.

Don’t go back to sleep.

~Rumi
This is one of my favorite Sufi poems by Rumi. The first line sits with me. It’s said the veil between worlds is the lightest just before dawn. I’ve felt that when I’ve been up early. There is just something light and magical in the air. At early dawn it feels as if the world is vibrant with possibilities. Shhh… listen to the breezes and enjoy this time. But the poem means so much more.

In 2012; through a mix of rediscovering religion, turning off the radio, listening only to uplifting music, and discovering a myriad of podcasts on spiritual living – I proverbially “woke up”. Waking up means different things to different people. For the purposes of this blog, I am writing about spiritual awakening.

I didn’t do this on purpose, and it wasn’t something that happened over night. It noticeably started when I went to a two-day work training on the Seven Habits of Highly people. It was on March 1st that year. Something seemed to deeply resonate in my soul from that training. There were quotes I may have otherwise looked past which the instructor stopped to explain. Those quotes seemed to make so much simple sense.

After the first day of training when I got in the car, I made the rare decision to keep the radio off. We had just completed a journaling exercise, and I felt like I could have kept writing all evening. I really wanted to keep that sense of peace and pondering I was experiencing. I wanted to continue writing, and to contemplate the simple truths I leaned that day. I decided to keep the radio off the next morning too. Then I set a goal to keep it off for a week and avoid all media during that time. That week turned into two, then three. When I opted to listen to music again, I decided to first listen only to things I loved and made me feel good. I started with U2. I haven’t really watched the news or listened to the radio since.

At first I wasn’t sure what happened. I just felt different and more subdued. Noises, people, work, media; they all started to really bother me. Not annoy me, but get under my skin and really eat away at me. I was more irritated than ever. During a period of a few months I only listened to U2 if I listened to any music at all. I was doing more thinking than I ever had. Thinking about why I felt so irritated by the world. Why billboards and convenience stores would turn my stomach. What was wrong with me?

I started really hearing U2’s lyrics and began to understand the deeper meaning behind the words. Bono actually sings about waking up, being born again. Popular songs like ‘One’ and ‘Mysterious Ways’ took on a whole new meaning. Less popular songs screamed of rebirth – off hand ‘Unknown Caller’, ‘Moment of Surrender’, ‘Elevation’, & ‘Walk On’ to name a few.

Waking up is about noticing what you hadn’t before. Discerning what is good for you, your soul, mankind and all living creatures. It’s about realizing that what we consume (through all senses) becomes our thoughts, cultural norms and even our physical body. How could it not? How hadn’t I thought about this before? And why is the predominance in the world toward things that aren’t good for us? Am I the only person who is noticing this?
These questions lead to others. I’m sure it’s different for everyone. For me it raised questions about social injustice, the environment, consciousness, the power of the mind, animal rights, the products we put in our bodies… the chemicals in them. Questions I googled, questions I spoke to people about, questions I found; others before me have asked through art, poetry and song.
“I’m waking up!” Imagine Dragons screams into our radios. Breaking out of the prison bus we all live in. Conditioned by the world to just follow unquestioning through life helping to possibly benefit the selfish and “privileged” that just hope the masses stay asleep. I started journaling again, drawing pictures of cogs in the wheel… wheeling us off to places that I didn’t want to contribute going to anymore. How to get off the bus? My whole world and life as I knew it before was on the other side of the fence I just crossed, pulling me over. I was happier on that side, blissfully unaware of what I didn’t know.

Others wrote, sang and painted about this too. The Dark Night of the Soul. Again, this looks different for everyone. For me it was about the fear of changing things. My family, friends, hobbies, job, life style- I couldn’t just walk away from it all. And even if I could, where would I go? What on this giant green and blue earth would I do? While I had some deep conversations with people that seemed to understand what I’m saying, they were living in the world in a way I no longer wanted to. The people and answers online wouldn’t provide that sense of community I craved. However, continuing to do what I did every day and being a cog to a world I don’t want to see seemed impossibly depressing. Just thinking about it made me want to absolutely crawl right out of my own skin. Although many of these same blogs I read about this topic promised that after living through the ‘Dark Night’ it becomes very possible to live in the world again with a new perspective. Live in it? I just wanted to run away!

As I write this blog I’m on a two plus week trip with Daren to Africa. It’s one of the most exciting trips of my life, but I was truly nervous about being so close to wild animals, being with people who get some kind of high from getting closer and closer to more and more dangerous animals in hopes of getting a ‘like’ worthy picture on Facebook. Lots of people I know have done similar excursions and had the time of their lives. They reassured me I’d love it.

Three days ago we went from the city of Maun in Botswana to the Okavango Delta for a two night camping excursion with no facilities or electricity. We were in the middle of the Delta with little to no cell reception, no toilets, no lights, no electronic devices and no showers. The only way off the island was an hour & a half makora (sort of like a canoe) ride that is done by a poler through reeds of the Okavango river. A poler is a native of the delta area who moves the makora with a long pole. We lived right on the land that the animals do. In the middle of the night I awoke to the loud sound of hippos mating. Zebras roamed the open grass. Birds sang loudly and landed on branches. Impalas roamed and hopped around.

Yesterday when we left Okavango, we took a plane ride with the majority of our travel group over the Delta. Had I not been there, I wouldn’t have appreciated what I was looking at. I wouldn’t have know that those large grey objects were termite mounds, that the green land was actually reeds that spread apart pretty easily and provided life to frogs, hippos, crocodiles, lily pads and beautiful water flowers; or that the bushes spread nicely apart were perfect little private bathroom areas. We flew over a massive heard of water buffalos, tons of elephant herds, zebras, impalas, hippos, and even two prides of lions.

It was a unbelievable experience that I’m still glowing from. We slept just outside the delta last night in the city of Maun again. While showering this morning I felt like I didn’t want to leave. Next week when I’m back home in the concrete, fabricated world; those lions will still be here. The polers will be poling their makoras through the reeds, and the natives will be singing and dancing their traditional customs in the evening. This world is more real. I feel connected to nature, the environmental balances and myself. I was also thinking about all the other people I know in the states that have done similar excursions and wondered why they didn’t come back changed. They seemed to know how it felt and told me how I’d feel. They were right!

As I thought about it further, it seems like for a temporary period some activities “wake you up”. They wake you up to what is actually real. About what feeling connected really is. To our inner selves. To feeling truly and deeply present and alive. Lots of activities do this and it varies [again] for everyone. For me, I sometimes gain this deep understanding through hiking, writing, yoga, or having deep connected conversations. But why don’t we hold onto it? Why does it disappear? And then it hit me, because we go back to sleep.
Most people probably wake up for short bursts in their life many times. Whether it’s through sailing, running, sky diving, or even through every day mundane activities like driving or putting a baby to sleep. Others wake up more harshly for longer periods like I did in 2012. Where the sense of inner peace clashed against the known world. At first it’s wonderful. It’s like you’ve gotten a taste of this delicious sub-world living right below the surface of the known world. Everyone has access it to, only most people are stuck in what they believe is reality. Sometimes because I don’t know how to handle going back and forth; I’ve gotten agitated, judgmental, sad or anxious. I’ve gotten through it by going back to sleep dozens of times and getting re-absorbed into the drama and superficial world I’m used to. It feels safer there. The community is larger and it’s fun to not care, close your eyes and go on. But the period on which I am comfortable staying there is getting shorter and shorter. I feel more off, and sooner and sooner I feel as if I’m not following my inner compass. It always feels right when I open my eyes, willingly wake up and go to the other side. I know deep down it’s the right side of the fence to be on.
Humans have struggled with this very thing through the ages. A few hundred years ago Rumi wrote

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.

Don’t go back to sleep.

Take advantage of that light veil. Stay there, explore. Question things.
You must ask for what you really want.

Don’t go back to sleep.

You will be and experience what you consume. Be careful about what that is…. what you think, eat, listen to and surround yourself with. Take in what you actually want to experience.
People are going back and forth across the door sill

Where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.

Don’t go back to sleep.

We have the power with our minds to make decisions about which side of the door we would like to be on. The openness and roundness of makes it easy to cross back and forth. But if we stay awake we will stay on the right side.

Don’t go back to sleep.

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On the Tangled web we weave

Posted on 11/05/201701/03/2019 by Esterina Anderson

Where to begin?

Daren and I have been in Africa for the past week. We started out in South Africa and are currently in Zimbabwe. The economic disparity between the first world and third world is almost inconceivable. The modern day effects of corruption and apartheid are prevalent with just a glance out the window. How can such an atrocity be in the year 2017?

It’s so complicated. We have been having conversations with one another, friends, and locals about this very topic for the past week. I think we were both surprised how much the lower paid locals know about the US political system and have critically considered how to remedy an ugly situation created by our ancestors and governments. There isn’t an easy answer.
What has also surprised me is seeing first hand what South Africa looks like today and reading older media materials about their apartheid. From a brief glance, the population of mixed race was not enraged or agitated about one another; it seemed to be something the government was enforcing. Many citizens were recorded to have said even though apartheid laws were on the table, they didn’t think they would be passed. Then when they were, they thought in this modern day there is no way that can be enforced. Until people of non-white descent were suddenly removed from their homes. That was not but 50-70 years ago. AFTER WWII and all we learned as a human race. The same thing happened here in Zimbabwe but on this end the whites were forced off the land.

Then interestingly enough, I heard an entirely different perspective from the “white” side. We have some friends from the states that have been living out this way for the past 9 months who have met all types of locals. They have friends of Dutch descent that presented a point I had not considered. In essence the passed along viewpoint is that if we are forced to live together with two different viewpoints for living, it can make for an ugly situation. For example- if one party doesn’t believe in taxes, schooling, and maintaining the land and the other does; the party that doesn’t only makes it more difficult for the party that does. From their Northern European perspective, apartheid was meant to separate folks by their beliefs. They say when their ancestors arrived no one was on the land, they didn’t push anyone out (disclaimer, I don’t know the specific facts of the Dutch settlers particularly in SA, and we all know that it did happen in many other places). A few hundred years later, the cultural beliefs were still clashing. For instance, the Dutch wanted their schools one way, and other groups wanted it another way. So instead of trying to mix and mash when one party won’t have a conversation with the other about it, they felt it might be best to live apart and do what each party would both like in separate camps. So apartheid laws appeared. Since it was the European settlers who built the infrastructure and cities, they felt they had the right to keep that part and the others could have the land the way they found it when their ancestors were there.

Wow… on the smallest scale within my own home, having a blended family I completely understand how trying to mix two backgrounds in a living situation is practically impossible. And in my family we are almost completely similar in color, believes, religion, education; not to mention a really small group of people. How can you mix communities, countries and cultures that have hundreds of years of history ingrained into their being and ask people to get along and work together? I do know apartheid wasn’t the answer. As I know Daren and I setting up separate homes or rules within our family wasn’t the answer either.

The answer is that there is no easy answer. Some might point to education, but education doesn’t make you smarter or right about how living in the world should look like. What is wrong with living in a hut and dancing around in the bush? Is the ultimate goal to keep building and making things to make human kind’s life easier? What is wrong with just loving life, living with the land and passing away when and how the universe decides? Is spending your life looking for a cure to make someone else’s life better someday so noble that you don’t appreciate what is around you in your own life? Does that make you a better or more important person? If you believe that, does it give that person the authority to make decisions for others that don’t believe that?

Let’s not forget about the people that were enslaved, killed, and removed from their land. This is still happening in 2017. What about those who were freed? How can their groups catch up and make a living and have the basics like food shelter and clothing when the commonly accepted mechanism to get a job is education. You need money for the basics. You need even more money for an education. You need a job for these. No job = no basics and education. No education = no job. A rather circular problem that one can’t escape. Their culture before enslavement didn’t require this, but they are forced to live in it now with little opportunity for a way out. In some ways they are still enslaved. Should those folks just get back some raw land to live as they did before enslavement now that we have introduced them to medicine and technology and act like there is no other civilized way to live but this way? That is what I believe apartheid tried to do. No one has even taught them to farm the land. And forbid they were given any where useful minerals and resources were abundant.

Affirmative action is one solution with lots of complications in and of itself. It could be a whole other blog. It’s a conversation we have included alongside this one in the past several days.

These are complicated questions. Questions we don’t consider often in our day to day lives. It’s so much easier to proverbially close our eyes to get on with the day, tending to our own small lives. That is important too. We need to keep our own house in order for any chance of success in happiness and being an asset to our communities.

The scariest thing I believe I heard in the past week was the trust in government that all the free people in South Africa had when apartheid was announced. No one was scared because they didn’t think anything unfair could happen in such an advanced society. I shudder at how the US could easily fall apart if we allowed the differences in skin color, gender, sexual orientation, culture, country of origin, etc to influence any kind of law when any human can lose any human right(s). I know our government deals with absolutely nearly impossible dilemmas with limited resources and has to make decisions for the greater good. I wouldn’t want to be in higher office with the pointed fingers when most people have never considered how incredibly complex and tangled the web we have woven is.

It’s almost too much for anyone to contemplate. But is it too complicated and messed up for an individual to make a difference? I don’t know. What I do know is that we have domain on how we show up in the world. Perhaps we should consider the following recipe for living:

– Be kind to others.

– Don’t take more than you need.

– Treat everyone equally.

– Learn to think critically.

– Become informed about potential laws and take action as a voting citizen.

– Make decisions for the greater good in your own life.

– Take care of yourself and your family (sleep, nutrition and movement) so you can be healthy and gain the respect of your community.

– Make time to relax and play so you are the best version of your creative self.

– Find just one to two things you really believe in and feel passionate would make the world a better place. Direct your working energy toward that. You can make a difference.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead

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On #2 Leaving the Nest

Posted on 08/31/201701/03/2019 by Esterina Anderson

…THE DAYS ARE LONG, BUT THE YEARS ARE SHORT

August 29, 2017

Gabby leaves for college in a few days. Similar to when she was born and had a blank slate to life; she is now beginning a brand new chapter of her life with a blank slate. This time she is beginning with a host of 18 years worth of experiences created through childhood behind her. Anything is possible. Some of the potential possibilities are controllable, and others are circumstantial.

Two years ago I wrote my first blog about the experience of Thomas leaving for college (A Cold August Morning). It’s hard to imagine that half of his college years have elapsed and Gabby is now leaving the nest too.

It’s not any easier. It’s just as beautiful, yet heartbreaking. It is actually like a piece of me leaves with them. I feel emotionally like I’m giving birth again, and a piece of me is being taken away from me. There is an emptiness in my body. I know from the experience with Thomas that they pain goes away after a few days, very similar to the way a body heals itself after the birthing process.

I’ve spent much of this summer off the grid and taking care of a very intimate, private matter. Perhaps one day I will consider blogging about it, but for now it’s very personal and may always stay as such. It also happens to be a transformational time of my life with my youngest biological child morphing into an adult and going out into the world solo before my very eyes. I have spent some time journaling, contemplating, and thinking about the passage of time. Certain experiences will string together to create a future you cannot yet see or imagine. At the time you have no idea how important certain things are.

Gabby is beginning the journey cut off from the age and necessary schooling restrictions that kept her close to me and under my care for the past 18 years. I’m so excited, scared, and happy for her. I wish I could keep being there in the day-to-day, knowing when she gets home from work, what she is wearing, etc. But that is unhealthy. It’s time for me to let her use the wings I helped her to grow.

How did my experiences get me to this point in time?

October 1994 – One fine morning around 3am

I am 18 years old. I am freshly out of Coast Guard boot camp and on watch of my first duty station on the USCGC Boutwell. I am standing my first “mids” watch in port. It’s dark, I smell diesel, and I can barely make out the visuals of my new surroundings. I hear water lapping up against the hull and my feet hurt in these dress shoes I’m wearing in the middle of the night. I am on Coast Guard Island in Alameda, CA. It’s a little chilly and I’m wearing an issued jacket over my uniform that isn’t very warm.

I’m standing watch with a BPOW (brow petty officer of the watch) on the brow of the ship. My role is that of the messenger. Sometime around 3am I am instructed to wake up the folks who are on the 4-8am watch shift. My thoughts become slightly fearful… wake people up? I thought about how I was woken up around 11pm, by a male voice. It is still a bit strange and new to me to be in close quarters with strangers; and even more so, to be exchanging such intimacies with males such as waking someone up. Until now it didn’t dawn on me that I would have to do that too. Earlier the BPOW walked me through who I was to wake up and where their berthing area was on the ship. I took notes. I have 4 people to wake up. One is a female and the other three are male. Of the three guys, two are in the same birthing area and one is in another. I plan to start with the female to get my feet wet, then the single male, and then the doubles. I glance at their names on the list. Everyone addresses one another by their last name. I don’t know many people yet and I don’t know any of these folks. One of the names is Messeder. He will be my direct replacement as Messenger of the watch. Messeder the Messenger I smile quietly to myself.

October 1994 – That same fine day around 1pm or so…

As the daily work is drawing to a close, I am assigned to sweep the port side of the ship with a handful of other Seamen. I am sweeping not far from someone I am pretty sure I hadn’t seen before. His hat covers most of his face since he is looking down as he sweeps. When I’m not paying attention I hear him say said “Hello DeGrazia”. I look up. He has a semi-confident/semi-nervous smile. I think to myself I haven’t seen this one before, I would remember him because he is cute. He has a nice crooked smile and eyes that seemed familiar, almost like I should know them. I look down at the nametag on his working blue shirt. Messeder.

August 1995

Messeder and I are out on a Sunday afternoon. At some point in the past 10 months, I started calling Messeder by his first name, John. We have been dating a few months. However, since dating is prohibited amongst shipmates; we need to stay clear of any places we may be spotted.

This particular cool, sunny August afternoon we drive south from my apartment in San Leandro toward San Jose. We have no plans other than explore the area and hang together. Somehow we hap chance upon a Zucchini festival in Hayward, CA. We walk around, eat fried zucchini and play some games. We walk toward the end of the festival and onto the side walked street. We continue to walk a few blocks until we find ourselves in front of a movie theater playing a movie called Nine Months. Since the movie is a few weeks old, it only costs a dollar. We decide to watch it.

In the movie, the unexpected pregnant main female lead reads the book “What to Expect when you’re Expecting” and wanted the baby’s father to read it as well. He wasn’t interested, they fought and broke up… and in the fairy tell end; he read the book and was there for her when she had their baby.

Nearly 4 years later

May 1999

It’s late in the afternoon on a weekday. It’s warm, bright and sunny. All the windows are open in our Cape Cod unit on Otis Air force base. John and I are now married for 3 ½ years. I’m in the kitchen preparing dinner and reading. We have a two year old named Tommy and I’m 8 months pregnant with number two.

I’m rereading the same book I read with Tommy “What to Expect when you’re Expecting”. Apparently this book is quite popular amongst parents to be. With both pregnancies each month I read the chapter that corresponded with my gestational timeline to learn more about what was happening inside my body and the baby.

Since I’m 8 months pregnant I decide to read the 9^th month and the closing chapter as well. I don’t remember reading this with Tommy, but the book writes something to the effect of how crazy and messy the house and life will be once the bundle of joy comes home, and it will be like that for years to come. However, once that little baby grows up and goes off to college; and the house is in pristine condition and quiet once again – you will miss the sound of chaos and children running around. I tear up and get chills. That is so long from now, but it will be so sad.

18+ years later

August 26, 2017

It’s a bright, sunny cool day. The summer is drawing to a close. The sun is rising later each morning and setting sooner each evening. The air in the morning is far cooler than the past few weeks, and last night it was downright cold while I was sitting outside on the porch with Thomas (we call him Tom or Thomas now).

John, Thomas, Gabby and I are having an early lunch at Outback Steakhouse in Southington, CT. It’s only 11:30 in the morning and the restaurant is quite empty. It’s dark inside, but the sun’s light floods the windows. We haven’t sat together for a meal just the four of us since Gabby’s 12^th birthday in 2011; soon after John and I divorced following 15 years of marriage.

Thomas spent this past summer between his sophomore and junior year in college working and living in Rhode Island with this current girlfriend. He came home last night and is leaving tomorrow morning to go back up to school in Portland, ME. John drove down from Pittsfield, MA this morning where he lives. He just accepted a new job in Tennessee and will be training in Germany for two months. He is leaving in just over a week. Gabby lives with me, but has been working at Panera nearly every night this summer. She is asleep when I leave in the morning and gone by the time I come home each afternoon. She will be starting her freshman year at the University of Rhode Island next Sunday.

John and I are on one side of the table. Thomas and Gabby are on the other. Thomas is across from John and looks like a younger version of his dad. Gabby sits across from me. For years people have commented that she is my little twin. We now have two grown children who are 20 and 18 years old. This is the nuclear family John and I started when we were not much older than these two in front of us. They very much look like we did back then.

What to say? There has been a combination of 23 years of laughter, fun, tears, pain, and growing together. Beginning tomorrow, the four of us are going our separate ways; farther apart than we’d ever been before. Sitting here during this meal, we have a lot of conversation about the mistakes we made in the past as individuals and with one another. There is a lot of apologizing, explaining and understanding. Gabby is the most cut off from the group – texting her colleagues about the evening’s coverage at Panera. John and Thomas are at the brink of potentially arguing a few times. I’m the one who probably feels the most surreal. I happen to look over at Thomas while he is talking to John. He has his father’s eyes. The same eyes I somehow recognized on the Boutwell that day.

While it’s incredibly likely we will be together again in the future, this is the last of the raising children part as childhood is officially over for these two wonderful grown ups sitting in front of me today. I didn’t know that first mid-watch on the Boutwell when I read the name Messeder that it would be my name for 18 whole years (as old as I was at that time), or that it would be the name of my future children. I couldn’t have possibly predicted what was in store.

Today

August 31, 2017

Tonight I’m sad and having a little difficultly coming to the realization that my time as a mom in the way I’ve known it is over. I still have an important role though I don’t know what it is yet. The uncertainty of the future stirs up a bit of anxiety. Life is uncertain. I want to use these experiences as reminders in my life that every moment counts. Some will shape the future and others will just be a blip in the passage of life. But every single moment has potential. I want to be present more and just enjoy what is.

The years with Gabby were nothing but a blessing. She has gone from a helpless little baby to a fully-grown woman. I can’t help but think back to some of the younger days when she needed me. Times when she was afraid of having bad dreams and I would dust her arms with “sweet dreams powder” before bed. She used to snuggle up next to me on the couch and often put her arms around me and tell me that she loves having a compact, portable mommy (for whatever that meant!). I coached her soccer team and while braiding her hair one day one home she said she imagined the other girls on her team would be jealous because she is getting her hair braided by the coach. She used to want to work at the VA with me and said she was going to buy a house next door and always live near me. Recently I came across an old mother’s day card from her where she said to do nothing but relax, if I need anything just look to my right and she will be there to do it for me. She always loved cats and McDonalds. Those little trinkets the kids buy at school Holiday fairs that say #1 mom and similar sentiments mean more now than they did then. When Gabby found out her dad and I were divorcing she was so sweet. We went to Hubbard park that day and sat on a picnic blanket. Once settled down she said she understood and even kind of predicted it. She was 11. She’s taken after me with planning, organizing and baking. She works hard but has a healthy balance of taking it easy when she feels stressed (I wished I learned that a bit earlier on). She’s also pretty stinking intuitive. I’m so proud of her.

I put a lot of heart into honoring Gabby on her 18^th birthday (On This Day) just over 2 months ago. I knew the coming weeks were going to fly by and I’d be here, in this very place where the excerpt from What to Expect When you’re Expecting said it would be. Where the noise, chaos, laughter & tears will be missed once the house is back to normal and the car packed for college.

Though we aren’t back to normal quite yet. I am still a step-mother of two more that haven’t left the nest yet. It’s a more complicated, undefined role. Daren & I’s story is equally as complicated and full of what initially seemed like uneventful life experiences that shaped the circumstances that led us to where we are today. It’s just about time to shift gears and move onto the next stage.

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#yograziabalance

2017

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly