Trying to Find My Rhythm Again

For most of my life, I have never understood the concept of “writer’s block”. The increasingly large array of topics that rattle around in my head makes it hard to contemplate what a lack of subject matter even looks like. Yet for the last few years, I have struggled to muster up the enthusiasm to maintain a journal, let alone a plot or storyline. Not a poem, not a deep emotional thought, not even a recounting of my daily life, in which there is never a dull moment. My goal this year is to concentrate my efforts on personal improvement, to include a return to my regular rhythm of writing. I used to write about anything. I used to write On anything. I used to write all the time, day or night, tired or busy, at school, at work. There was never a situation that did not call for an entry into my journal or on a small scrap of paper. Just as every day I live is infused with fascinating things to share and new episodes of the latest creative idea. However, nowadays, everything I do in life is an excuse not to write. I put nearly all activities, especially the irritatingly difficult ones, ahead of the opportunity to write. This is even when I am excited about something and the unfolding of it in my mind, desires to put it out in the universe for future consideration or admonishment.

Currently, my mental meanderings are a part of the mist you see in a dark room when a beam of light is streaking through it. Millions and trillions of thought particles float endlessly. No steady direction. Just moving to the pace of the breath of wind surrounding them. All aiming for a place in the universe to land and be discovered as a part of something meaningful to someone….anyone. I sit in the dark space, steadily mesmerized by the number of things I could possibly create out of my gift of words. Spending hours considering what to write, who may read it, and what their opinion might be. Is it something someone else has covered? What if there is negative commentary? Drafting it in my head. Rewriting it so that it sounds good enough to thwart any negative opinions I think folks may have of it. I worry about the end result of my chosen subject matter, that my gift is blocked by my own inability to decide on what, why, and how before I even pick up the pen. An unnecessarily anal form of perfectionism. I am so mesmerized that I get stuck in a dead zone and wind up creating none of it.

I learned recently that perfectionism is not really a THING. It’s merely anxiety dressed up as a stressor. I believe that I suffer from what is currently described as Imposter Syndrome, the Disease To Please, and what I like to call, The Perfectionist Paradox. I was thinking that I may just put working on my perfection issues at the top of my To Do List. But if I don’t have just the right plan of action…. I’m not sure it will work out the way I’m hoping. Maybe I’ll put it off til later. I’ll circle back when I’m done doing a bunch of other unnecessarily productive shit and let you know.

Random Poetry

Thank you for my husband
Thank you for my best friend
Thank you for my Soul supporter
Thank you for my Land’s End

Where the horizon meets my sunsets
And my dawns greet my beginnings
It’s every moment he gives in between
That seems to make life worth living

If Given A Choice…

Let it be known. This life. This choice. This union… has some of the greatest difficulties I’ve ever experienced — and NEVER saw coming. Which says a great deal because my overworking imagination is constantly processing the best and the worst of all scenarios to the very end of their potential. And the insane situation I have found myself in had not crossed my mind — even once. But had I the option before me to choose a different path with a different partner and better circumstances… I would whole-heartedly and with total honestly repeat this life again and again.

My love is in possession of a pair of blinders that they refuse to remove, as they walk the floors of the ocean’s abyss. So anything/anyone in their line of sight, will be a permanent fixture in my future. My heart hurts to process he idea of a future without him. My Sweetness has my heart and that places him in a direct focal point just between the left and right panels that align the temples of my love.

I would most definitively — do this all over again.

I have discovered a level of personal growth within the self-inflicted struggle. You learn how truly strong you are and to what depths you are willing to go for the sake of sacrifice. When analyzing it, you can find out a lot of TRUTH about YOURSELF and learn a large amount of useful information if you are open-minded and willing to accept the things you DON’T like along with the things you DO like. — And the useful part comes when you use what you learn to improve how you think, behave and make choices in life To improve yourself as an individual. It positively affects all that you do and how your life and karma unfold.

The hardest part is not-knowing the larger picture. I think if God or The Universe provided us with “The Mission Plan” and a small explanation, the grind towards the goal wouldn’t feel as rough. But the truth of it is that most of us would be trying to rationalize why our plan makes more sense or why our opinions, ideas, or suggestions be seriously taken into consideration and immediately initiated. And then, when we think no one is paying attention, we’ll be attempting to revamp the playbook. So, painful as it sounds, the “Need To Know Basis” thing ya’ll got goin’ on is probably best. We’d only slow the progress of the inevitable. Our very nature as a human race. Animals, not so much. We should pay more attention to nature.

Again — Like a chosen life in reincarnation… I’d do this all again.

Showing Gratitude of Growth & Life

***Dedicated to my daughter Journie Theriot… She knows why***

What To Do With Folks?

Two of the most important humans in life to me are at odds with one another. Their reasons for keeping a significant distant is quite understood from my perspective. One feeling offended by past behavior and in said offense, offering uncomfortable behavior in return. The other feeling offending by present behavior, distances in an attempt to thwart more of the same. Now, although I have clearly picked a side, I will not divulge said choice. But its important to know that I love them both dearly and long for the day when we can share peaceful and joyous memories together. However, in the mean time and in between time, I am in the sticky place of balancing my emotions over the situation. Wishing I had the power to fix things, but fully accepting of the fact that I do not. Being careful not to mention the name of either too often, so as not to arouse a conversation that will leave me even more perplex and up in the air. I have decided to let Karma, The Universe & the willingness of these human spirits work it out as I remain as much of a bystander as I can.

Offering advice and direction only when asked of me. There’s no telling what will come of it in the end, all I can do is keep a steady head for them. Support the side I’ve chosen and try to get the other side to see the logic, sensibility and love on the opposing end. Try to get them to change their way of thinking so that peace can be restored. And hope that peace is actually what they want. It has been a pleasant thing to see that each in their own way, has expressed a desire to see the distance come to an end. How that actually comes about will be up to them. I’m trying to, in every possible way, eulogize their efforts so as to support them both on the way to becoming closer and more whole as individuals.

On a more specific note, one of my nearest and dearest has ghosted me. I’m truly not sure what to think of it. I have gone through a myriad of emotions over this situation. Surprise, concern, upset, frustration, worry, irritation, anger, disrespected, ignored, confused, pissed-off, and more. My typical response to a person behaving this way is simply to shrug my shoulders and move on with life…..Without Them. Turning a blind eye to their life and any future interest of theirs in mine. I have learned to sever ties with a fairly decent amount of ease. But this individual is one of my Precious Six. A group of 3 men and 3 women that have showed a love and loyalty to me strong enough for me to call them brother or sister and make them my family. The time, love, money, energy, years, dedication, memories, and efforts put in to these relationships are equal to blood. You don’t walk away from that without a truly good reason.

But right now, my only reason is that my feelings are hurt. Little hurt or big hurt is irrelevant. What matters is that I hurt and one of my Six is the source of said pain. The largest part of the problem is that they will not communicate with me and I am not sure why. I have tried to reach out in every possible way and even sent word through a mutual friend. Their response to the third party was that they were unaware that I was trying to reach them. Which by any social medial and technological measure is wholeheartedly untrue. And still….they have not made a move in my direction. I’m tired of trying to figure out what’s wrong, what’s going on and what this is all about. But more than that, I miss my friend and am tired of my feelings being hurt. I am stumped and my upset has me teetering on the razor’s edge of just tossing in the towel and resorting to The Ole Standard method of handling things. But that method is reserved for those who don’t mean to me what this individual does. So what to do?

Gratitude Sounds Like This…

Let Music Be A Part Of Every Part Of You

I was sitting on the back patio with My Sweetness, listening to music and enjoying the sunlight. Today I am grateful for the sense of hearing. We LOVE music. It soothes, motivates, encourages, comfort, educates, reinforces, and so much more. It moves Everyone. And to each one, their personal beat resonates differently. It breaks down the strongest emotional walls. And for My Sweetness and I, it draws us closer. Even, amid a disagreement, or heated discussion, music and the lyrics provided, create a sort of emotional soup that we first wade in and as the momentum builds, the lyrics and beats begin to switch up causing the feelings to ebb and flow. As if the cells themselves ta on a rhythmic movement of their own and without any inner or outer influence, there we are, steeped up to our necks in a pool full of high and lows, slow swirls of memories, wisdom, poems of courage and strength are creating a marbled effect in the mind, shocks of deep bass and the pings of sharp treble awaken the 3rd Eye deep within sending the message of love and what’s required of us to the heart. Nowhere in the midst of this is the ability to fight what is hidden in our truth.

When music is done with us; when music has had its way; The cooperation is always easy, the decisions are not as hard, the connection is undeniable, the love is incrementally larger, the bond is unquestionably stronger. To remember the feelings of mutual and joint empowerment in this moment is key. This memory will take you back to the 1st Lessons of Strength. Go to the source. Sometimes we’re too wrapped up in our emotions to pray for a positive outcome. But to simply choose to play music in the midst of talking, even if only to use as a buffer in between the words being expressed, or to simply lubricate the environment with something other than the toxic essence of merely needing to prove a point – regardless of the legitimacy or founding facts.

The end result is or should be, to come to a collaborative place of acceptance — not to issue newly laid plans for our partner to abide by because we’ve been proven right.

Music can get us there. Ego aside. More than we tend to give it credit for, music is as much a healer of as a great many things as laughter is.

Today ~ I am grateful for my sense of hearing.

Reality Is A Sticky Situation

So what was removed was diagnosed as Stage 3 Cancer. 😞A 6-Week round of radiation treatments are scheduled to begin in January. This means that a very necessary jaw surgery that was planned to realign his teeth so he could finally eat without struggle….well, that procedure is no longer an option for him. 😞

Surgery to have the tumor removed went well and he and I shared a few special moments before our bus ride back to Atlanta. I love that we reconnected on a much needed level this go round. His treatments means that I have more reasons to come visit. So it is bittersweet. 😉 I have an odd numbness that bounces around inside me like a ping-pong ball. When it hits my head and my heart I enter a state of confusion. As it springboards off the rest of my innards I am allowed to ignore life’s sensitive emotions and focus on my priorities and responsibilities.

Without any warning, I am unwillingly inducted into a membership of cancer-effected citizens. My eyes close and open slowly as I come to the realization that I am HERE…in that place no parent, no person ever wishes to be. I am One of Them….Those affected by an affliction that they have no human control over…standing in a pool of upset and frustration spilled thickly around your shoes like you stepped in some kind of heavy lubricant. Whatever it is, is representative of the thin layer between hope and reality. It’s sticky and remains on the bottom of your feet so that every step you take stains your path as a reminder of what your new path contains. This thing….this affliction.

God Guide My Steps
I pray the Universe encases the mind of my child with a cloud of knowledge that will comfort and sooth his nerves, his heart and his struggle to maintain his Peace of Mind.
From A Mother’s Heart to the Outer Limits of Possibilities

Cha Cha Cha Cha Changes… Time To Face The Strange…

This morning just before 5 am my youngest son arrived to find me and my husband waiting at the Hospital of the University of Philadelphia to have a cancerous tumor removed from his lower jaw. I came here to ensure that he feels all of my love in the midst of this life altering experience. My tears for him are of mixed emotions, but are primarily shed for the fears that he has chosen not to acknowledge or face. Those things that we keep only to ourselves in the moments that could ultimately change who we are or how we view ourselves. I cry for the lack of a connection to The Divine, The Universe, The Spiritual that he has chosen to comfortable living a life without…and how in This of All possible moments in life, he has to fight alone from the inside without any one of these.

Pray for him. And….for a mother’s heart. I can’t even process my own feelings for all the processing I am doing of how he must feel. If I could only trade my heart for his during this, so that he would have faith, hope and belief to hold on to instead of a simple expectation of clinical explanations from doctors with a mindset of choosing what options are left for him after its all said and done.

On the upside… I have about 18 years of unresolved feelings of guilt for fucking up as a parent at some point (which I believe most parents manage to work a little of this in during their assignment as caretakers & developers of the next generation of the human race. Its not rocket science, but it does come with Responsibilities, Requirements, Rules and Regulations…and NO operations manual) . However, you do get a lot of advice from those who have held the position plus videos and random literature on the topic from others strugglin’ thru the same shit with a different set of circumstances than yours, hoping that there story may help your situation. You have to agree that there is bound to be some Operator Error in a 18 year job under these kind of conditions, and if you haven’t accomplished it in that amount of time….that’s okay. Just Wait….There’s More!!! Because the job doesn’t stop. It just changes when they get older, and the 4 Rs are still in place, except at this point they have evolved into something new and are essentially different than the guidelines you were using on them as whippersnappers . Oh yeah….. and the New R’s…..yeah, well, they don’t come with a manual either. So you’re just figurin’ shit out LITERALLY along the way … forever. (blank stare)

That being said, I needed a moment or two to make sure that he and I were emotionally cool, relationship-wise. That there was no animosity for my previous fall off the parental-wagon many moons ago, and struggle to get back up and look like a full-functioning parent again. In a little corner of the hallway, ducked off from the flow of hospital admittance traffic, was where I was able to take advantage of the moment of truth required of my spirit before he went to be prepped for his procedure. I didn’t cry but my soul was already filled with tears in the expectation that there was some mending for some nearly unforgivable wrong that I’d done, that I needed to do to make sure that our bond would regain strength. But to my heart’s great surprise, I learned that my lack of presence in his life is what has caused the distance between us at this point and there was nothing about my past or behavior that had him feeling anything outside of Loving & Liking him mom. I expressed my happiness that things were fine with us and shared that I’d be restructuring my life to create my presence as a more frequent thing for him. And his siblings.

I miss my boys, both of them. But my heart has pained over the emotional distance between myself and this particular child, for years. As I have just been informed that they are taking him back to the O.R., he is not privy to the depth of feelings behind this moment, this opportunity for me. I have a gratitude that cannot be expressed right now, but it is offered in small portion to Kevin for allowing me the chance to hear his heart and in larger part to God for creating a moment in the midst of all this, so that my son & I can have a precious memory of our very own just before the next 4 hours change his facial profile and his life.

It felt so nice to hug him..to kiss him, to touch his face. I miss my baby boy and the closeness we shared as we essentially grew up together. (I was 17 when he was born). I look forward to rekindling the tightness and making memories in the future just as fantastic as the ones in our past.

Thanking God, Mother Nature, The Universe for aligning the time, weather, opportunity and open hearts to create the first of many healing moments.

Faith Is The Substance Of Things Unseen

It’s Here…And On Sale !!!

The final edits to my 1st book (published this past Friday the 13th which fell in July) are done.  Due to a few technical issues, I was unable to market my long awaited project as I desired.  Just recently I discovered how to fix my glitch and was nearly bursting with joy.  With much haste I popped over to the KDP website and uploaded my document.  I chose to change my publishing platform from Barnes & Noble to Amazon to adjust a few professional creativity and marketing preferences on my part.  So without further adeu I present to you here my very first published book on Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP).

For Purchasing: Go to http://www.amazon.com  You can find it by typing in my name or the book title.  It’s on sale right now and I can’t wait to get feedback…. of any kind. Constructive criticism is only a building tool.  I’m super excited and I hope all who partake, thoroughly enjoy.

Peace~

Personal Lessons & Their Naked Truth

Toi Reed-Theriot 

Know Me

My 1st marriage set ablaze the Forest of Trust where Faith and Hope flourished in great abundance.  Then my next love stole the seeds & seedling so there was nothing left to plant and grow upon.  The remnants of the Me I knew, was lost somewhere near the end of my foreign experience.  It forever changed me.  Not it, the event… but it, as in the collection of events that we call life.  And thru a series of spiritual lessons, I have come to learn the unfortunate truth of her untimely demise and how, as much as I and others miss her, anticipation of her return is an enormous waste of time and energy.

I am different now.  No longer the woman I was or know her to be.  And more importantly, still discovering who it is I will become while trying to figure out who I am now.  And not recognizing anything as familiar but my past self.  But she no longer fits in this life.  And the job description has changed too drastically.

The adjustment to one’s new self is a tedious, confusing, stressful & painstaking process.  Add to that the demi-psychosis that menopause brings and you can imagine that one might feel a bit crazy.  In that state of mind – having to tackle 12 personal deaths, (to include both grandmothers, both fathers & my only other sibling), a cross-country move – 3 times, not having my own home, going to jail, changing professions mid-life, changing life goals mid-life, creating & building a business, etc. etc….

…..the idea that I didn’t handle everything well, nor made the wisest decisions in the midst of these years is not surprising.  But to be fair — I was not myself.  Still trying to find her.

    One’s 20’s are usually the period during which most fulfill this quest.  But my time was filled up with early parenthood and dreams of the art of Legalese.  I lost something key in this phase that caused all my future choices to be based on a narrowed perspective of a portion of life’s picture.  But my goals at the time reflected where my heart lay.  And there was nothing that held me more desperately than the mother’s passion I had for my little ones & education.

    So now the little ones are no longer, yet I am still a mother.  My studies continue, yet my lessons are vastly different.  And still in all of this, I’m discovering who this new woman is and what her new role will be.

~SK

Precious Memories of Mom

PERSONAL JOURNAL ENTRY FROM:
January 19, 1990 – Friday 9:11pm
(I was a 20-year old mother of 2 living in California in a sad excuse of a marriage and my mother was over 2500 miles away living in Florida)

Dear God,

Whenever I start to write I wish you allowed the hand to move with faster grace.  There is always so much on my mind with so little time to cover the maximum of my feelings.I want to speak on my mom and I.  I think about my mom alot. I love her so much.  I sometimes regret not being closer to her while growing up, but I have her now & that’s what matters.

I went to get some icecream this evening and had to stop to pick up around the house before getting in bed to eat it.  When I got to it the scoop of icecream had melted some on the sides.  As I began to swirl the spoon

around the sides, eating the melted part and turning the ball of icecream over and over in my glass, hearing the tingly clank of the spoon against the sides of my glass and slurping and spacking my lips to the enjoyment of the whole experience, —– I had a memory flash.  I was remembering my mom and how, when she had a glass of icecream, she would eat and enjoy it in the exactly the same way.

As I stared into the glass and watched myself in motion, I was the same picture that I did 10 years ago while staring at my mom & icecream.  I always ate icecream straight from the glass.  But mom, she would swirl that ball of icecream around just long enough for the ball to fit on the spoon without falling off.  She would then lift the icecream from the glass and eat around the ball.  Licking, but mostly slurping.  Periodically plopping it back into the glass to roll it around in any melted ice cream that may have been left behind.  Relifting and eating it until gone.

I was nearly finished, yet still thinking about mom & her ice cream, when I decided, just for the heck of it, to pick up my ball of icecream and begin to slurp on it.  I put it back in the glass and kind of laughed at myself in my imitation of mom.  I thought it was silly really, but still I felt a bonding with her.

Wondering, if my children were watching me, whether they would see me through their eyes as I had seen mom so long ago.  Not in any particular way, but just as something, some-time, some-moment to remember.  I may see trivial to most, but to me and my complex thoughts, it’s not just a memory of coincidence, it’s a footnote in a book of similarities between mother & daughter.  This particular mother & daughter.

Thank you Lord for our differences that allowed mom to be who she was as a mother then and still allows me to be who I am as a mother now.  Thank you for our similarities that help me think of and remember her as a mom & a friend.  I think I mentioned this before, but I miss my mom, alot!  Nevertheless this time apart has helped me to grow more independant as a person and as a parent.  But best of all, it has strengthened our relationship and allowed a friendship to form.

God bless us both.

~Me~