Today is the first day of the merry month of May. It’s a good reason to take up the poem by Thomas Dekker in 1599.
O, the month of May, the merry month of May, So frolic, so gay, and so green, so green, so green! O, and then did I unto my true love say, Sweet Peg, thou shalt be my Summer’s Queen.
April was good and gone. I hope to make May the same. This writing space has been a healing place for me. It’s good to return again and again to tap out self encouragement, self analysis and self care. Lately, I’ve been reading a bit of Ordinary Mysticism by Mirabai Starr every morning. It’s a wonderful book full of treasures. It took me awhile to discover that. A passage from the book:
“Twentieth-century Jewish philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel said, ‘Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement….to get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.”
I certainly learned that the hard way this past year with the passing of my mother, the sudden loss of my hearing and its recovery. My whole world and awareness shifted. I learned not to ask why alot and to accept of what is. Like Mirabai says, I don’t have to have all this shit figured out. “The invitation is to notice what comes and bless what goes. To take refuge in groundlessness and rest in boundlessness.”
I love her words. I love words and the music they can create. It is a restful practice to be here, tapping them out and keeping the ball rolling – even without a challenge.
It’s day 15th, the half way mark, of the Ultimate Blog Challenge. It feels like forever. I’m counting again. Today we are talking about adversity. It’s a topic that I’m sure all of us are familiar with. It’s the running mate of stress. We encounter it as soon as we step out the door. It is defined as:
“Adversity is a state of hardship, difficulty, or misfortune that one deals with in life. There are six types of adversity that one can face, and facing adversities in life can break or make a person. It may lead one person to improve their life by finding ways around their challenges, or it may lead another person to turn todrugs or alcohol to lessen the psychological toll that their hardships cause.”
The 6 types are physical, mental, emotional, social, spiritual and financial. I’m sure I’ve gone through the whole lot. I would like to think adversity made me instead of broken me. Breaking may be the first step in mending and healing. And who is to say we aren’t the stronger for it. I met physical adversity very young, at age 2. I suffered severe burn to my left arm up to the elbow. It took a long time to heal ending in a huge scar. I remember my memory of the incident and bicycle trips to the doctor. But I do not have memory of the physical pain. I have full function of my arm but suffered body image pain in my adolescence. I wore long sleeves even in the heat of summer. I got over it when I went into nursing.
I guess I can lump the mental, emotional and social aspects into one. I can see how all those things developed. I never ‘saw’ my father till I was 6. And I was a stranger in a strange land at age 8, having immigrated to Canada. There were only 2 other Chinese families in our town. Then my parents moved to NYC and I decided to stay and start university in Saskatoon. I felt a deep loneliness even though I had 3 roommates, 2 from my hometown. I don’t think adversities are all ‘bad’. It is just how life developed and was. They added textures to my life. They are giving me something to talk about for this post.
I did suffered depression in adulthood and sought medical and psychological help. Who haven’t? Life is f**ing hard. Nursing is a hard profession. We do eat our young. Women do not always make good managers then. At least not some I’ve encountered. They did not help nor have compassion. Rather they slice you open and cut you off at the knees. I’m only speaking of my own personal experience. I’m none the worse for wear though. I stayed in it for over 30 years. I know I loved my work. I would not have stayed otherwise, not for any amount of money.
Have I told you before that I almost flunked out of nursing training? Well, I almost did. I was going through a bad marriage, worried about money, had a part time job and was not cutting it on my clinical. I can’t remember what I had done wrong but on an evening shift my instructor told me I was flunking. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I told her I quit. I had to stay behind after the shift. We had a long talk. She had to give me a ride home that evening because my ride was long gone. She told me I still have time to pull up my socks but I had to quit my part time job. The school would help me get a loan. I pulled up my socks and graduated.
I’m proud to say that I don’t lack in spirituality. I’m tenacious. I’ve always had the faith in myself and the world. Adversity have fortified rather than broken me.
onethousandandtwo 