Tag: healing

Food For Thought · Life in general

I’m still here….

Tori LennoxLeave a comment

It’s been a long three months for a lot of reasons. Mainly because I was torn by my writing. I wasn’t sure which book I should finish or whether I wanted to continue submitting manuscripts to publishers. Not because I’m bothered by rejection notices. Actually, the rejection notices were promising. However, I continued revisiting the reason I wanted validation by a large publishing house in the first place for a few weeks and realized it was no longer relevant. I decided to learn everything I can about self-publishing and do what needs to be done to promote my books myself instead. It just makes more sense since I already have several books finished and I have the time to do the work now.

Another reason I haven’t blogged is because I had family coming in from SC in February. Actually, it was Mom’s family. That was a hoot and not in a good way. I ended up getting verbally attacked in a restaurant because mom wasn’t there by her sister-in-law, her daughter, and her son-in-law who seemed to believe I could have influenced her to come with us as she used to do. They missed that Kathy and thought I was either to blame for her staying home or that I could have made her change her mind.

Neither was true and I miss that Kathy, too. But she doesn’t exist anymore. First off, Mom is 93 years old. Two and a half years ago, she had a bad fall that almost killed her. Two years ago, she had her first stroke. A year and a half ago she had her second stroke which led to me leaving my job to come home full-time. Added to that, she has health issues that make her a poor candidate for the covid vaccine, so no shot. That’s the downside.

The upside is despite all of that, she’s doing great. Her mind is sharp, and she has no bad deficits from the stroke. She’s healthy and vibrant. However, she uses a rollator and she doesn’t have a lot of endurance. It takes everything out of her to get ready for an outing. But she’s living her life to the fullest the way she wants to. She no longer does things just to make other people happy like she did before her fall. She dictates her life and I let her unless it’s something unhealthy or potentially dangerous for her. That’s the “influence” I have over her.

You might wonder why I’m writing all of this. It’s because this whole incident made me realize something important – we need to love people for who they are. Not who we want them to be or who they used to be. I was deeply wounded by the attack until I realized how pathetic those three really are. They’re so preoccupied with their selfish wish for what used to be that they’re missing out on the pleasure of what is.

I love spending time with Mom watching the birds and the squirrels. I enjoy watching tv with her. I enjoy going outside to sit in the swing with her. I enjoy knowing she’s still as sharp as she used to be in so many ways. I love the fact she has so much life in her. They should too; but they don’t. Mom’s response to the whole situation was, “They just won’t let me get old.” She’s a wise woman who doesn’t mind being old because she still finds so much joy in her life. That’s a lesson we should all learn.

Another reason I’ve been gone is because, in addition to visiting family (we had another family member down from Tennessee the next week), I was editing my best friend’s novel. It was an “interesting” take on a common theme and, I believe, it would have been great when it was finished. Unfortunately, I received a call from his girlfriend six days ago informing me my friend had passed away three weeks earlier. She found him on his bedroom floor. “They” think he died from a blood clot. While I didn’t cry, I felt like everything inside me was going to implode for a couple of days. I just couldn’t process the whole thing. I was too shocked he was gone. The sad part is I’d sent him an email a couple of days before to check on him and promise to send the rest of the edited manuscript up soon.

My friend was a 58-year-old attorney who’d recently retired due to health issues. However, his sudden death was not expected! We’d spent a lot of time talking about what he was going to do next. We were talking about finally starting that publishing company we’d been tossing around for six years. He was starting to write again and hoping to develop a whole new career path. The last time I spoke with Robert, he was doing well.

Due to conflicting schedules and the fact we lived almost five hundred miles apart, I hadn’t seen my friend in close to twenty years. However, we were still close. We spoke on the phone every month or two and emailed more often. My friend was more than a friend. I loved him dearly. I would have done almost anything for him, and he would have done the same. We’d been friends over forty years.

What started as acquaintance in junior high became casual friendship in high school became deep friendship in college and law school over “Crazy Kate” to eventually a dating relationship a few years later. Unfortunately, although we tried to make it work three or four times, I never felt the degree of love for him that he felt for me and that wasn’t fair to him. However, we both valued our friendship more than a failed romance despite the bump in the road.

Although it may seem otherwise, there is a point to this rambling mess and that’s to treasure the people you love where they are for who they are. Find great joy in your relationships knowing they aren’t perfect and never will be. Don’t take advantage of others’ feelings even if you can. I could have made it work with Robert; but I would have been settling and denying him the depth of love a truly good man deserved. My mom’s relatives are missing out on incredible moments by not accepting her as she is. Honestly, their loss is my gain.

The best advice I can give anyone is spend every second you can with family and friends just basking in the little things. Don’t take for granted the idea they’ll be here when you have the time. Or when it’s more convenient. They won’t. I lost my mother when I was 32 and she was 51. My now “mom” is my ex-mother-in-law. I lost another close friend last year on March 4. She made me want to pull my hair out more often than not; but I loved her, and there’s a huge hole in my heart where she used to be. Brenda was only 66, and like Robert, was found dead unexpectedly on her bedroom floor. Likely from a heart attack. She was much too young to go that way. They both were.

In closing, this is Brenda, my mom, and me. Yes, I have an eyebrow that decided to do its own thing at some point after I’d left home! It’s okay, I still like the picture, and you can laugh with me!

Until next time,

Calla

Been There, Done That

Figuratively Speaking…

Tori LennoxLeave a comment

Been There, Done That…Had the Smashed Up Face to Prove It leaves me raw and naked. It strips the flesh from my emotional bones and leaves the structural integrity of my life exposed for all to see. Making peace with that reality was the hard part of the process. However, not putting the book out there was never an option. I knew this story would see the light of day before it was ever written. I also knew I had to reach the point where I wasn’t ashamed of my life or I wouldn’t be able to do what had to be done. That took a little while longer.

I wish I could say I turned back to God, and, “poof,” everything wrong in my life was suddenly right again. While I do believe that’s possible, that isn’t how things happened for me. While I did get incrementally better as the years passed, and my faith grew, it’s only in the last year that I fully turned that corner from chronic shades of gray into the light.

I won’t say I don’t still have my moments. I do. My life is a constant battle to uproot the sneaky little weeds before they become deep seated issues. There’s nothing unusual about that. Life is a twisting, turning journey of discovery and growth until it is no more. What sets people apart is what we do with the lessons we learn. Do we use them for the greater good, throw them away, or hoard them selfishly for our personal benefit. That choice is up to you.

For me, there wasn’t a choice. The desire of my heart was, and is, to prevent others from going through what I’ve been through. That’s the reason I wrote the book and why I’m writing this blog in the first place. While I won’t deny writing my memoir was cathartic, it was traumatic as well. Much worse than I expected. I had to face a lot of ugliness head on and lay a lot of painful moments to rest. I experienced a lot of tears, anger, and generalized craziness in working through a lifetime of festering toxins that oozed through the emotional bandages I’d slapped over the gashes in my soul. Once all the pus was out, I no longer felt the crippling shame that leads to nothingness. Releasing the shame started me on the road to emotional healing.

While not being ashamed of the life you’ve led doesn’t sound like much, it’s a key to turning your life around. To turning the nothing you think you are into the something you’re meant to be. It’s the moment you accept you’re responsible for the actions you took that put you in a negative situation. It’s also the moment where you refuse to take responsibility for the actions of the person or people who chose to hurt you. Most importantly, it’s the moment you finally realize you own your life and that’s truly liberating.

Enough said.

Until next time,

Calla

Been There, Done That

Out on that limb…

Tori LennoxLeave a comment

I’ve already taken those first tentative steps by putting Been There, Done That on Amazon. I haven’t started advertising it or pushing it in anyway. I still have one or two things I need to do before I do that. One of them is to honor my initial promise to write about my life and the lessons I’ve learned on this blog. I could say, with Dorian looming, I wasn’t in the frame of mind to deal with anything that serious. I’m not a liar; so, I won’t. The truth is it’s far easier to write about where I am now than revisit where I was then. But, I’m a big girl wearing her big girl panties, so I can only procrastinate so long. It’s finally time to bite that bullet. So, here I go. Well, almost.

Before I really start writing what I should, I need to say a couple of things. First, I’m not a supporter of movements or mind sets that think vengeance and unforgiveness make everything all right. Neither of those things undo what’s already done nor do they heal those jagged gashes in the soul. I’ve walked the unforgiveness path and it doesn’t work. It only makes you someone you’d never choose to be.

However, I’m also not saying criminals shouldn’t be punished for their crimes. Don’t think that for a minute. There’s a right way to do it. One that doesn’t destroy the survivor through bitterness and hate. Again, that’s my opinion. It’s one I reached after forty years of struggle when I finally found peace. You don’t have to agree. That’s what makes life interesting…the differences between us.

The second thing I need to say is I’m not a feminist – not as the term is defined today. I do believe in equal pay, equal opportunity, and a few other tenets I won’t go into here. I know, as a woman, I’m as capable and intelligent as any man. I don’t, however, embrace some of the more radical elements of that movement. I am feministic in the sense that I believe women can do anything. Survive almost anything. Live to fight another day when they’d rather die instead. I’ve been there so many times that mindset became boring. However, it’s why I’m still alive. I couldn’t give in. There was some spark deep inside that fought to live when the rest of me wanted to die. I tie a lot of that to the fact I am a woman and to the inner strength I learned from my mother and her mother before her.

You might wonder why I’m telling you all this, and I’m not sure it’s obvious. It’s because these are the beliefs that shaped my life and made me who I am. These are the beliefs that have allowed me to move past being molested, beaten, given to other men by a well-educated, white collar husband who should have loved me and almost destroyed me instead. The list goes on. And these are the beliefs that eventually allowed me to forgive my tormentors. But, more importantly, these are the beliefs that allowed me to forgive myself.

Now, that I’ve done the set-up, I’ll start posting what I need to say in the coming blogs. I’m finally in that frame of mind where the words will flow.

Until next time.

Calla