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Monday, November 25, 2013.  Time seems to stretch out behind and in front of me – slowly – as if these recent huge changes in my life have shifted the way things appear in my own rear-view mirror of life and in front of me as I anticipate horizons I move along toward.  I have been in Fargo, North Dakota at my daughter’s house since October 12.  The skies hang heavy and gray above this flat landscape nearly all of the time.  As winter approaches the winds often slice at life harshly.  Much to adjust to.  Much that is wonderful.  Much that is hard.  Just plain MUCH sometimes!

It is wonderful beyond words to be with my two grown daughters and with my little grandsons (ages 17 months and 3 1/2 years).  I have been staying where the babies live but have finally secured a one bedroom apartment beginning December 1st.  I am a country (wilderness) woman, not a city dweller by nature.  Neither do I do well in apartments but that’s where I have placed myself — by choice.  Careful choice.

I often think now about the complexities of life lived as a human being — which is of course all I know.  I think about the range of the complex emotions I feel.  If I give myself permission to just LIVE with and through them I understand that ALL emotions are life.  There are not “good” ones and “bad” ones.  Not even “positive” emotions versus “negative” emotions.  I watch my young grandsons LIVE their emotions — and at their ages, at their stages of development, living only ONE emotion at a time is what they do.

It is going through these stages of early development being loved and safe and securely attached that will allow these boys to grow to increasingly more advanced stages of being able to feel MANY EMOTIONS AT THE SAME TIME!!  Feel them, live them, live with them — be alive to each moment whatever it brings.

The little ones cannot make the kinds of choices an adult or an older child can make about how to name feelings, change them, act upon them, let them go, rearrange them — and all the other kinds of more mature things humans can do with their emotions.  Of course for people like me and for many of this blog’s readers, we never had ANYTHING we needed to move through those early emotional-developmental stages in “ordinary” ways.  That certainly doesn’t stop us from FEELING!

Fargo is kind of known as a STOIC region of the country.  Well, that ain’t me, babe!!  I am working on toning down my comments and complaints tied to how much I detest cold winters (!!!) — but I will not deny my reality on the one hand in favor of a fancier, more “user-friendly” reality on the other hand!

Physical life on the material plane is temporary.  Transitory.  At 62 I suppose I think a lot more about that then I did when I was considerably younger.  I am going for the bigger gold now!  I wish to have a positive impact in the lives of my grandsons that might — should they ever have children — travel into the future along with shared DNA.  At the least I hope to help them in some ways to have a better life that will positively impact everyone they are ever in contact with.  I couldn’t do that sitting down there on the Mexican border in that place of mountains and so much milder climate!

I do worry about myself living in a 702 square foot apartment that has one small west window in the bedroom and one sliding glass door facing west in the living room — and the rest is just plain a CAVE in my universe!  I have much I am adjusting to, and complexities of PTSD, anxiety, well – all the rest of it – don’t make these kinds of adjustments “a walk in the park.”  But I needed this change.  I needed to grow stronger again not just more complacent.

My girls and I love one another – and have missed one another for YEARS.  They help me in every way that they can.  I am working to be balanced in what I expect of myself as these changes continue — but I will not settle for STUCK!!

This is the first blog post I have written for what seems like years (in that odd time-stretching sort of way).  I am NOT USED TO these kinds of heavy blanketing gray cloudy days!  Where is the brilliant Arizona blue splashed with the brilliance of sunlight?  Left behind me.  Left far, far behind me as I reach for a different, inner sort of warmth and light.  There is MUCH to be had of ALL of it!  That which is hard.  That which is easier.

Everything IS OK!  Everything WILL BE OK!!  I reassure myself nearly continually.  I CAN do this!  I AM doing this!  (The 17-month-old is no longer in daycare and is in my care.  He’s fussing about afternoon nap.  My anxiety level goes up like a thermometer!  I assure myself, “This is NOT a big deal!”  And – in such small ways – I am being useful!)

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