Category: Journaling My Days

I journaled for years on paper and I expect to be doing it in some form until my last days. In short summary, I teach mindfulness to parents of kids with challenges; I garden as often and as much as I can in Wisconsin and I am working through the threads of grief six years after my husband’s death. I am very grateful for finding and chasing the joy in this unexpected life.

a purple cast & deep learning

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If It Grows Together ~Duy Huynh

I don’t believe that everything happens for reason. Or that there is some sort of divinity arranging events. However, I do believe that the examined life demands that I take advantage of my experiences as teaching and learning moments.

And that’s where I am today.

Last week I canceled almost everything we do.  No cello lesson, therapy with Marilyn, speech therapy, reading group, Chinese brushstroke painting, ice skating for Julia or songha for me.  We stayed home.  I went to a show on Friday night with a friend driving and we went to church on Saturday Night which had the bonus of a potluck meal afterwards.  I did homework with Julia every day and we found time to write to thank you notes that she owed but without other obligations she also had free time to play video games, listen to music, and draw Sonic. This morning I had a chilling awareness that what we did last week, no therapy and just a little bit of learning, could be what Julia’s life post high school could be like. It could become a lonely life of unrewarding work and coming home to an evening of mindless TV.  I know it’s four years away and she will change between now and then but my mother fears bubble up. What if she doesn’t change or grow during these years? What if at 21 or 25, Julia is not curious and needs me to fill her days for her in some productive way? What if only me wanting this fuller life for her? Immediately, I went down the rabbit hole of worry and fears.  What if… What if… What if. Continue reading →

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dreaming

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Art by Day Huynh

“You need only claim the events of your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done… you are fierce with reality.” ~ Florida Scott-Maxwell

Last night I dream of David. I haven’t dreamed about him in a very, long time.  I was one of those real-feeling, ordinary-day-feeling dreams.

This last week has been intense and concentrated, filled with reading and writing and two long phone conversations with an old friend who reframed some sad events of the last few years. During the course of our conversation, my friend told me about a phone call that she had with David.  A call that either I did not know about or had completely forgotten. Either one is possible. It concerned her, not me any way. But hearing about it after all this time blew a little bit of life into the dusty ghosts of my imagination. Continue reading →

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help, aides-moi, aiuto,मदद, 帮帮我

img_0086This morning my eyes opened before the alarm rang to the reality of the next month or so. OK probably it’s going to be six weeks. The pain is subsiding and I’m feeling somewhat claustrophobic and trapped inside my house. After a few days of trying to do things with one nondominant hand, I’m ready to admit to the utter uselessness of that hand for anything other than picking stuff up off the floor. I need some help.

First, I need to find someone to clean my house. I can go through a service.  Any recommendations of either a service or a particular person would be most appreciated. I’m not a clean freak but I’ve tried vacuuming with my ultra light stick vacuum cleaner and it might have made an decent SNL sketch. I can’t imagine pulling the sheets off the beds or cleaning the bathroom with one arm.

Second, I’m thinking of getting groceries delivered. Does anybody in Madison do this? Does anybody in Madison use Woodmans to do this?

Third, over the next two weeks or so, we could really use a few dinners. I have stuff in the freezer I can defrost but not enough for the next month. Cutting and cooking anything it’s almost impossible right now. Once I get a real cast on I think I will be able to hold things with my left hand but I don’t know if I will ever be able to do anything with a knife with my right hand and not end up in worse shape than I am already.

Fourth, salads and fresh fruit make up a good part of our diet and I cannot cut vegetables or peel any fruits. Julia is helping out some but I hate to put too much responsibility for food prep onto her. Would anyone consider coming over once or once every few days to cut up some cucumbers, apples, avocados, etc.?

That’s all I can think of for now, but if anyone, who has been through this one handed thing, sees something I’ve clearly missed, please let me know. Thanks for reading, thanks for offering to help. I am grateful that I feel free to ask for this kind of help. I do have an incredible community around me. Love you guys.

Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 3

doings

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Julia’s impression of the Women’s March

Promising myself for my birthday that I was going to write every day come hell or high water . . . umm, last night I was ready to sit to write about 10 minutes before my eyes were ready to close.  Some of it busy but some of it just puttering.  What am i avoiding? I can’t even do a sit-down-write justice right now, but I can scribble a few doings. Continue reading →

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resolutions 2017

1296_52378848781_5943_nLast year I began my resolutions by reflecting on the old year and reviewing the resolutions and goals that I had proposed.  The process bore fruit.  An overarching idea surfaced and I realized a guiding principle.  Not that I always acted from that principle or could check off all of the tasks that I set for myself, but I appreciated the guidance.  The principle was a simple one: To allow.  Right now, I can remember so many times when I forgot it, when I pushed and strained, when I insisted.  And many of those times turned out badly, or merely not in anyone’s highest good.  Although I feel the need to move on from this principle, I want to remember to allow without thought of success or failure, without expectation or grasping.

This year there are two ideas surfacing: Use ego as a foundational tool and strength.  Allow my generous heart to serve as guide.  In one sense, the two may appear more active.  They are.  On the other hand, they feel like continuations of allowing.  Certainly, the second grows from allowing plus a few resolutions that have been on my list for a few years.  The first comes from need.  Recently, I’ve come to a realization that I may never have a partner again in this lifetime.  Okay, duh! To the extent that partner means an intimate relationship, I’ve been partnerless for six and a half years and perhaps I should have taken the hint sooner.  But it is more.  I have been dependent upon others in a way unhealthy for for my soul’s growth and it is time for me to find my own foundation and my strength.  This is not the severing of connections.  I am valuing my connections, my friends, my community and certainly, my family more than ever.  But they are not purpose and not for survival.  Those are up to me.  Alone.  And although feeling rather inarticulate about the fullness of this feeling, I hope to explore it and grow with it in the coming year.

2017 guiding principles: Use ego as a foundational tool and strength.  Allow my generous heart to serve as a guide.

And now for 2017 resolutions:

Sit
Be gentle with dualities
Give more, expect less
Love extravagantly
Ask for help
Cultivate courage in fearful circumstances
Keep moving
Write
Turn off the screens and read

And now some tasks for the first six months of 2017:

Teach Julia about friendship
Develop Mindful Circle
Plan travel
Question high school and contemplate home
Schedule posts for the website and blogs
Write panksy
Consider the possibility of home projects

*art by Duy Huynh

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thanksgiving

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Bryant Park at noon.

Back from a week of NYC travel.  A different kind of holiday, a different kind of time spent in NYC.

We usually spend Thanksgiving with old friends in a country setting but that didn’t work for us this year and so, Julia and I were in NYC, actually Kew Gardens, Queens, with Cheshire.  The time was notable because we spent more time in her apartment than we have in the past and did not do any visiting of family or friends.   Continue reading →

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of rabbit holes and safety pins

I’ve started writing almost every day since Tuesday and went straight down the rabbit hole of self-pity.  It was a greater pity than “self,” making the hole deeper and wider and so easy to tumble into.  Having no partner to debrief with adds to the rabbit hole quality of the writing.  I read articles by those who have written eloquently.  What do I have to add?  I thought of posting links to all the articles that I’ve read.  For days, I could post links.  Instead, I tried to find quiet.  Not an easy tasks with the furies and demons circling. Continue reading →

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open hands

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Noxious weeds gone.

In 1851, The Whale, the English edition of Moby-Dick, was published, differing from the American edition with thousands of punctuation and spelling changes, and over 700 different wordings.  In 2003, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth book in the series, was published with 864 of similar differences between the American and British versions.  Has our understanding English improved in the last 150 years?

Joni Mitchelle’s For The Roses this morning.  Comfort music.  Not quite my first Joni but the first album that I bought when it was released.  Prior to Joni, I had been such a musical snob. I appreciated trained voices and songs that were a part of stories.  Musical stories. Oh, there were the Beatles, The Dave Clark 5 (my best friend’s favorite) and other distractions.  They were inconsequential, or so I thought. The American Musical Theater was my ‘real’ music.  And then Joni, thanks to a boyfriend, and also our newest Noble Prize winner.  I’ve been humming Dylan albums straight through all week.   Continue reading →

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of murals, tears & voting

img_4845Morning mural painting at Randall School stretch way beyond the scheduled noon ending time.  A tryptic on the retaining wall that surrounds the gym equipment that so many of us worked for so long to become a reality.  Now, five years (Really, five years?) after the ‘new’ playground equipment was assembled, there will be art behind it.

The day dawned unpromisingly gray and I was so concerned that there would be very few people to paint that I texted Kati, the organizing teacher, that we would be a little late.  When we arrived, however, there was a bevy of painters young and old applying color to the walls.  It was noisy, frantic and busy.  I held my breath as we dove into the fray.  Julia has not always been able to handle happy, noisy crowds, no matter how friendly. Continue reading →

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