August 15, 2012 -- Working Against Myself

(I had planned to continue the house tour by showing you all the backyard today, but the weather was so terrible, I couldn't take pictures. Therefore, my new plan is just to whine a lot.)

Today has been a dreary rainy day, after a night of really violent storms, punctuated by the urgent biological needs of The Worst Dog Ever, who will NOT stay out of the cat box and therefore has some big time stomach trouble.  Unfortunately, he's also incredibly afraid of storms so when he wakes me up because he has to go out in the middle of a monsoon, it means HE HAS TO GO OUT. I struggle out of bed because it's either let him out and wait for him to come back in, or spend my morning steam cleaning the carpet again.

Three times last night.

Which is terrible for me because it takes me about an hour to fall back asleep, and then there were the storms.  I feel like I've had about 20 minutes of sleep.

I went to yoga, even though I have this new injury (that I am NOT talking about. Nope. Although, let me just say that applying ice to this injury isn't nearly as fun as Fifty Shades of Stupid makes it seem.) Yoga was good. I am learning to curb my desire to go deep into every pose even if it means I'm aggravating an injury. Today, I really listened and when I felt something bad, I stopped. I came away feeling like I'd done the right thing--my injury wasn't made worse--but slightly defeated anyway. It's hard to feel like I'm making any progress when my body seems to be actively working against me.


Of course, my body ISN'T working against me. There are lessons I need to learn here, and I think my body is acting as a messenger for those lessons.  I'm pretty sure that the fact that I still feel the need to do everything as hard as I possibly can comes from fear --fear that if I don't give it my all, I will somehow forfeit the right to be mobile, fit and strong. I think I still have a lot of fear that my healing is temporary. I haven't been able to find my confidence that no matter what happens, I can come back from it.

I'm not exactly sure what to do about it.  It's a form of Post Traumatic Stress, I'm sure, but I'm not sure what to do about it. Maybe recognizing what it is and where it comes from will give me the mindfulness I need to respond in a healthy, loving way when I feel myself going down that path.

I'm pretty sure, though, that the healthy response to fear does not involve eating three cookies that I knew beforehand would make me sick.

It's impossible to hear the Divine Voice within when I'm huffing fear, you know.