Do something .. anything will do when you feel stuck.
I clean because I have it in my head that even a spontaneous solution to being stuck, should be productive. So, if I am going to do something, anything, at least I will come out with a clean space. Cleaning and moving things around makes room for more ideas, possibly different stuff and easier movement. Don’t you feel calmer, or even more creative in a cleaner, lighter space?
Instinct derailed.
It’s best for me to do something physical that requires cleaning or motion, like a walk. Getting out offers the added benefit of seeing nature and maybe talking to people. It liberates me from a confining space and from the negative thoughts that crowd into my head.
Scientists, mindfulness mentors, and others say humans remember bad things better. Why? Safety. Survival. Being aware of bad places or choices we make keeps us from repeating actions that might endanger us. Now, it leaves us awake at what seems to be the universal hour for such things at 3:00 a.m. to ruminate.
The double whammy is that the bad begets more bad. The more we think about it, talk about it the more the ‘universe’ picks it up as an order you are placing for more of the same.
Like anyone reading this note, I have some history of trauma in my life.
- Circumstances I was born into: Older parents, Holocaust survivors who have lost their childhoods, their spouses and children to war and strife and danger just for who they were born to be.
- Early childhood: Tumbling through the immigrant experience of travelling from Poland to Israel, to Germany to Canada.
- Educational programming: Alone from elementary school to matriculation in the same building with a heavy academic double load of English and Hebrew studies half a day each. Exposure to teachers who were sometimes good and kind and nurturing of our minds, but many were mediocre, some abusive in their role in our lives and alone as my parents were not involved and never held anyone accountable. They had expectations but it was a challenge given they knew nothing of Canadian education or any of my subjects and didn’t have the school experience to even think of supporting me. My father and mother were robbed of their childhoods and education as they were born into war in 1902 and 1912 respectively.
- Young adulthood: I was on my own a lot. Part-time jobs, student loans and finding and managing student-style rental units while making 100% of the decisions in learning and life. I lived so much responsibility as a child of immigrants and then a solo student, taller and seemingly more mature than my classmates and then university life that I falsely thought I might be ready for marriage.
It is understood that choosing the right partner in life can help or hinder your future and your immediate, daily development
Since I departed from all that I lived before dating what turned out to be an incredibly unsuitable partner, left me vulnerable. I no longer accessed the practice of my heritage, the languages I loved and my family’s and culture’s traditions. I met, dated, cohabited and then allowed a marriage to the completely wrong person. It was one of my 3 greatest life mistakes.
The process led to a lack of clarity and eventually confidence to heed my instincts. I overrode my foundation and stifled that small still voice we all have. Bad things happen when you make all those tiny compromises and drift far from boundaries. More on all that later.. but for now I write to uncover.
Many writers say they don’t always know what they are thinking until they write it. That is true for me. The writing out also helps me feel. It takes words, for some of us to identify emotions. In a therapy session with two separate practitioners, who were not able to help me identify what was going on.. They each had to pull out a sheet. The cognitive behaviourist’s sheet of feelings typed out like the handout for an elementary class. The EMDR practitioner showed me a sheet in protective high school project plastic with smiley faces that were labelled to identify the emotions that the little lines and dots represented.
I return now to writing out details and in the process discovering the drama of my life, and perhaps some new directions.

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