Hearing Voices   

People who hear voices are not exactly the ones you want to hang around with; they are, to put it simply, crazy and in need of serious drugs.  At the risk of being labeled  a crazy woman, I have to admit, I’ve been hearing voices most of my life.   I remember my mother telling us to not go out barefoot to play because we would cut our foot open and bleed to death; I took my shoes off because the socks were making me hot and for once, threw caution to the wind and boom!  I stepped on a piece of wire and cut my foot.  There was no doubt in my mind that I was a goner, Mama was right, I cut my foot open and now I was going to die.  I wanted to run for help, call an ambulance have someone administer first aid to try to save my doomed self, but I knew the powers at work there in my back yard in Mereaux, Louisiana almost fifty years ago and I just fell on a stump and prepared to die.  Of course I didn’t, I bled a lot but once I put my foot into the mud and stated high tailing it to my house to try to find salvation, the mud stopped the bleeding and by the time I go to my mother, who, of course, threw these words into my face “Ya see!  I told you!” I was convinced that I might live.  There was a restaurant at the front of the road we lived on and we were forbidden to go in there.  As children it was easy, but when we turned to teenagers, there was something terribly appealing about Mutts Restaurant and Bar—there were games to play and of course French fries and the infamous Mutt Burger, which til this day has never given up the contents of the ‘meat’ it used to make those burgers.  I heeded the warning though, Mama said “do not go into that restaurant or you will be in trouble, and if you do, I will know.”  I stayed clear of it, my entire childhood I didn’t know what the inside of that place looked like because I was a goody goody and too afraid of what would happen to me if mama found out and she would find out.  I remember my brothers coming home who were two and four years younger than me, and she was giving them the third degree.  “I know you were in that restaurant,” she’d say and they stood their ground denying it.  “I can smell it on ya!”  And she could, if they admitted to it, they got punished; if they didn’t, they caught a beating and then they got punished.  I remember walking home with my brothers and staying a distance behind them because I did not want that smell to get on me.

 When we were older, my youngest sister and I were living in Virginia and my mother came for a visit and Maria and I were laughing at my mother’s words and warnings—If you go on a date with a boy by yourself you’ll get pregnant, if you eat pickles after six o’clock you’ll get a belly ache, if you kill a cricket in the house you’ll have bad luck, if you go swimming in the lake you’ll drown and the crabs will eat your flesh—we were laughing at her and wondering how we could have been so goofy to live under the fear of her statements for too long.  It was summer in Virginia and Maria had just had her first daughter, Brittany.  We wanted to take Brittany for a walk on the beach before dark, so we were packing our stuff and headed out the door with the baby when Mama came running after us with a blanket, two sweaters and another warning.  “You can’t take that baby out without a blanket, are you crazy?”  Maria and I looked at each other and thought ‘here we go again’.  But mama threw the sweaters at us and told us to put them on and to wrap the baby up.  She said “you know the air changes after four o’clock, you’ll come home with a cold and get pneumonia.”  We took the sweaters and the blanket, but as soon as we got into the car they all wound up on the floor as we laughed our way to the beach.  But the next day baby Brittany was sick with congestion and Maria was starting to cough, she called me after she’d talked to the doctor’s office and was fearing pneumonia.  We both repented right then and there for laughing at our mother.

 Do I believe the air changes after four o’clock and that by not wearing a sweater Maria and her child got sick?  No, I don’t, but I do believe in the power of words—words spoken over us as children and on through life.  Sometimes they lose their affect and we grow out of them, but there are so many instances when the words spoken over us land in our hearts and we have so much trouble getting out of them.  My sixth grade teacher said I was an idiot and I’d never write a good letter much less a story and I believed him, heart- broken for three years I hid my writing, was afraid to be laughed at and told how bad it was.  But in the ninth grade, another teacher saw my creative writing assignment as genius and encouraged me to do more.  By the time I was in the tenth grade, I was practically writing all of the articles in the Beauregard Bugle and had won poetry contests.   When I was a junior in high school one of my articles got the attention of a reporter on the local news and I was invited to the television station for a tour and told I had a future in journalism.  I got two scholarships when I graduated because of my writing; it’s a good thing I didn’t listen to Mr. Mean in the sixth grade, huh?  But I continued to listen to the nay sayings and the voices in my head, I let circumstances and fears keep me from taking it all of the way and instead of believing in myself and the talent I knew I had, I listened to the people who told me ‘you should be happy being a wife and mother” or “why do you always have your head in the clouds?”  or “You better learn how to be happy with what you have.  Who do you think you are any way?”  I let their words keep me from going on, I let their opinions cloud my vision, I let their doubt cripple me.  I went through life believing the voices, and not believing in myself.  I look back now and see all of the opportunities I had not just in writing but in music as well and wonder what in the world was wrong with me?  Why didn’t I just throw caution to the wind and just go for it?   I was afraid, afraid of what the voices were saying, afraid they were right and I would just fail.   So instead of doing something I did nothing and got nowhere. 

I see so many people with so much talent and I see them feeling wasted and going nowhere.  They say it’s not in what you can do it’s in who you know.  But looking back on so many years of that mentality now I have a different opinion.  I say it is about who you know—about who you know yourself to be.  If you have something, a gift a talent and you want to aspire to use it to do great things, I say go for it.  And by great things I do not mean lassoing the fashion industry with your designs and becoming the next Christian Dior. I believe there is greatness in following through with it—going beyond the drawing board and putting it on the back of somebody even if it’s just you.  If you’re a musician, it is so easy to make CDs today by setting up your own recording studio, if you have always wanted to be a recording artist—go for it, make it happen for yourself!  Whatever your dream, whatever your goals in life stop the halt—you know the one I’m talking about, the one that comes right after you get that big idea and start pushing to make it happen and then—whack!  Something stops you and you come to a frozen halt because you think maybe you’re not good enough?  What if they don’t like you?  What if you get rejected?  And whatever other voices have been put into your head to make you doubt yourself.  If you’re a writer pull out your writings, if you’re a musician, play something, sing something, if you are an artist look on the wall at all of your work—whatever your gift is—look at it and ask yourself—is it fair to keep this gift all to myself?  Plant a few seeds, give some things away and I promise you, once people see what you have they will want to see more. 

If you have the talent, use it.  If you have the opportunity, go for it.  If you seize the day, you will not regret the chance that follows—whatever it is, however it floats or falls on the floor you will know in your heart and mind that you did what you needed to do and there will be no regret.  And with every step, with every motion forward you will change the negative voice into a positive force.  Believe in yourself.  

Letting Go of the Hurt

                      Relationships are the glue in life that binds us to the things we love.

 I have always been very passionate in relationships and find it very hard to let go of a relationship especially when it is hurting me.  About a year ago, I had to let go of a lot of hurt and pain and I thought the only way to do it was to let go of the relationships.  Losing important people in my life was painful, but waiting for them to treat me the way I believe I deserved to be treated was even more painful.   So I let them go--picked up the love I felt for them, the agony I went through on a daily basis because of the way they were treating me, dis-respecting me, misjudging me--I bundled it all up in a ball and held it for one last time, hoping and praying that it was not forever and the pain they were causing me, the rift that had grown between us was only temporary and I threw it away.  But I must say that when I finally let go of those hurt feelings, the distress it brought me to feel alienated and cast aside was enough at that time to make me want to let them go.  As long as I was fighting the feelings of betrayal, resentment, anguish--I could not fix the problem that was in me.  Once I let go of what I thought was the problem, I saw that it was only a symptom of the problem.

The core of my trouble was in me.

 I am a needy person—I know that’s not cool, but I need attention, I need affection, I need affirmations and when I don’t get them I get a little nuts.  Not everybody is like me, they go on with their business, they don’t think obsessively, try to figure everything out, wonder why he said that?  Or, there must be a reason she did that!  It is my nature, I am indeed OCD and a little emotional.  Oh, alright, maybe I am a lot emotional and I don’t always need to be.   I realize that I created a lot of the problems that were destroying me.  I misunderstood things, took them to heart—let a comment or a harsh word bury me.  People say things all of the time that they are sorry for; it’s the heat of the moment that sometimes brings out the worst in all of us.  Usually, if you are not the thinker that I am accustomed to being, you can let the words go—even the ones that hit you in the heart like an arrow of hate and make you hurt like nobody’s business.  If you can be patient and wait for the sorrow to hit, those words will turn to barb wire in the mouth of the person who threw them at you and soon they will regret it and want to make amends. 

Not everyone knows how to say I’m sorry.

                It is often necessary to mend the hurts that we create, but some people don’t know how to say they are sorry.  It is beyond their ability to realize that they have created a mess, a hurt, an offense and often when they do, they rely on time to fix the pain that they have created.  This is not as it should be, but let’s face it, life is not always the way it is supposed to be and we sometimes have to make concessions.  So when you need that apology and it does not come, don’t hold on to the pain, the anger, the resentment.  The longer you do, the more you hurt.  It will destroy you.  Letting go of the agony of an attack against you, especially from someone you love dearly, is often the best thing for you to do.   You may never hear the words you wish for, you may never get the satisfaction of the apology that you really deserve but you must relinquish yourself from the anguish of carrying that offense.  Let it go, pack up all of the pain, the hurt feelings, the bitterness and resentment that it caused and roll it into a ball and throw it as far away from you as you can muster.  Once it’s gone, you can move on. 

                We are not responsible for anybody but ourselves.

                We want them to do the right thing, we want them to see the basic rules in life and follow them, but it doesn't always pan out that way.  Do not think for a moment that you can convince anyone to do what you think they need to do.  The only person that you can fix, is yourself.  The only power you have to make changes and bring about the reformations necessary in life, is the power you have to change yourself.  Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking you can force someone to see the truth and live by it.  The only person capable of taking the truth and letting it work a miracle in life is YOU.  Do the work, find the truth, make the changes and then celebrate the triumph in you.  Once you do, all of the relationships in your life will fall into place, not because they have found harmony with you, but because you have found peace with yourself.  

You are Bigger Than the Scale

Everybody loves to win--we get all pumped up and confident, we look at ourselves in an entirely different light and as we complete the game with  a win we are hearing "We Are the Champions" in our head and being lifted on somebody's shoulders and carried around the stadium while the entire world throws confetti at us.  We can live in the glory of that moment for a while--or at least until we slide down into a defeat.  Then, once we are sitting in the mud facing a loss, we are not quite so triumphant any more.  It's like that with weight loss--as long as the scale is dropping, we step off with confidence, arms raised and full of gusto and zeal.  But let him tell you something different, like you've gained 3 pounds and you can pretty much count on having a poo poo day.

Why do we put so much confidence in a box that weighs ounces and pounds?

We are, after all, trying to lose weight, so the scale is a tool that is valuable to our journey.  It is what tells us how we're doing, how much weight we've let go of and how successful our program has been.  But should the scale be the only tool we use to measure our results?  Every diet program has it--the weigh in, there is no program without it.  I've known people to go to a weigh in at night, starve all day because they don't want to eat anything that will make it look like they've gained weight.  I used to belong to a group called TOPS and they weighed every Friday Night.  There were people who had gone all day without food sitting there, ready to get weighed--they were weak and cranky and couldn't wait to see what the scale said so they could go back to their chairs and open the goody bag they'd brought to eat after they weighed.  This was a weight loss group, and while the leader was talking about healthy recipes and taking a walk for exercise everyone around her was eating their stash--I watched a man pull out an entire french bread and a pound of ham and cheese and make himself a giant sandwich; another woman ate chips and dips and yet another rewarded herself with brownies if she lost weight.  Yet, week after week they came in and got on the scale and managed to see a loss.  I thought it was amazing.  I was too shy back then to eat in front of people, I was one of the good meeting attendees who waited until I was on my way home and stopped at the Burger King on Judge Perez Drive to get my after weigh in treat.  The thing that amazed me, and still does as I look back on my many weight loss attempts at PALS, Weight Watchers, Physicians Weight Loss, Healthy Styles and now the Wellness Center is that in every program people are the same.  They work hard to get past the scale on Monday night, some of them are fasting the entire day and throwing snacks around the table as we get ready to have our meeting and they are always ready to make a stop at the Barbeque Place a few blocks down.  What does that tell me?  They fear the scale so much, they refuse to eat, spend one even two days fasting and taking fluid pills and laxatives trying to get a better result, trying to appease the scale so they can walk away feeling better about what it tells them.  I for one break out into the sweats before I weigh in--I hate the scale, I wish it would disappear into the wall.  I take off my shoes wishing they would allow me to get naked so I wouldn't have to count any clothes as part of my weight, heck some of my dresses weigh over two pounds, I know because I've weighed them on my food scale.  It is terrible to fear the box with the numbers, not knowing what it's going to tell you, but when it shows me numbers like minus seven, minus 8 minus 4--woo hoo!  I want to hug it and kiss it and buy it dinner!  But when it says minus five ounces, or plus 3 pounds--I want to turn it into a bag of bolts.  I could be feeling healthy, spry and full of energy, but if the scale does not tell me what I need it to say, I am down for the night and possible the week worrying about why I didn't lose weight and what if I step on the almighty scale next week and it tells me I've gained more?

There is something to be said about the non-scale victories.

They don't give us the "We Are the Champions" song in our head, but they do tell us that we are succeeding.  My first non-scale victory was when I got into my SUV without help.  It may sound lame to you, but when I get to the door my husband has to hold me steady enough to stand on one weak leg so I can hike my big butt into the seat and he usually has to give me a boost as I'm teetering on the edge of the seat.  But one day I got to the car and while he was getting into his strong man stance, I hopped in there all by myself.  It was glorious.  My next non-scale victory was when I walked to the door--the front door of my house, I hugged walls, I was out of breath, but for the first time since I'd accepted the fact that I would probably be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life I was walking.  That was glorious.  When I got on the bicycle for the first time in 2 years and was able to pedal full circles for five minutes--I cried--mostly because it hurt like hell, but I did something I thought I'd never do again.  When I stood outside and threw the ball for my dogs and played fetch and rope tug with them for fifteen minutes, standing....that was a victory and a reminder that what I am doing is not all about the scale.  When my husband asked me if he could do my Tai Chi Workout with me because he had pains in his arms and knees and wanted to gain flexibility and strength like ME, that was a victory.  Even more so when he couldn't make it past five minutes without moaning and groaning and finally making up a door bell so he could leave the room and escape the oriental torture but I was able to complete the workout with no complaints--now that was proof that I am not the woman who started this thing back in the beginning of December who couldn't get out of my chair by myself, much less do a 30 minute workout.  I have come so far, in spite of what the scale says.  I should revel in that.

Within each and every one of us is the ability to see a dream and make it happen.

Faith make you step out of your comfort zone to challenge yourself to do the things that you thought were impossible.  Courage defeats the nagging fear that jerks in your stomach and tries to rob you of your dream and when you take that first step you're shaking and unsure, but once you face it, seize it, complete it--you have something you thought you'd lost confidence in your ability to save yourself.  We are the master's of our destiny--we are in charge of the only success we will ever encounter.  Don't let a mechanism that weigh ounces and pounds define you, we are more than that.