Category: life (Page 2 of 10)

Celebrating a birthday in the mourning

October 3, 2016 / Michele Minehart

Last year I bought myself flowers, for my birthday. I have historically celebrated a birthday week (or two) and have been known not to do it quietly. My last year in Troy, I planned my own GNO party, and even created my own facebook event – this year I did the same with a text picture of yours truly. I’m that person who will try to use every free marketing gimmick in my inbox. (Related: who’s free for Red Robin this month?!)

This might come across sounding quite brattish, as if I make all the noise in order to get people to celebrate me. But that’s not the case. I am surrounded by loving and friends and family who remember me, without my noise. I don’t have to celebrate my own birthday; I get to.

My special day falls amid a string of October dates that my favorite people on this earth marked with black pens. My husband and his family lost his 16-year-old sister suddenly. My best friend buried her mother after a hateful illness. A dear patron saint of our church died abruptly years before we were ready for her to go. Another young boy in our local school system fell to October’s cruel grasp a few years ago. A former employer will face the dreaded two-year mark of grief for her husband. All within this span of 31 days.

Needless to say, no one in my town likes October anymore. Pumpkin spice can’t wash away the bitter taste of loss. My dear friend Kristy says you can step into the crisp morning and smell death in the air.

And here I am, buying flowers and drinking margaritas and asking everyone to smile for the picture. Rude, right?

Living in the wake of loss with those close to me has provided me new wisdom, such as, people say stupid things from a good heart. “Heaven needed another angel” is at the top of the Don’t Say That list. Folks like me who believe in an afterlife in heaven seek to take comfort in those celestial promises. Of course, they’re “in a better place.” But the distance between there and here hurts. Real bad.

Which can only lead me to one conclusion: life, here, matters. If it mattered little, it would hurt little. The more you love, the more you fill days with joy and curiosity and adventure with other people. And the harder it is to see them end.

So if life, here, matters, then… what? I’m only left with one option: to live it in celebration and in gratitude for another year at living it.

I give my loved ones plenty of space to grieve throughout this horrid month. I really do. I try my hardest to be attentive to the calendar, to give space, to nod in solemn agreement that this sucks. We miss her. Grief knows no expiration date and I’ll never ask others to chipper up for the sake of a party – that’s simply not fair.

What I will do is attempt to honor the lives that left too early by approaching my birthday not with disdain at “getting older” but with appreciation that they keep on coming. I’ve got another year on this globe, so what will I do with it? I’m facing 36, an age that others didn’t get. How can I do it justice?

For me, it’s not skydiving or rocky mountain climbing*, but rather the way in which I sow love into my life. It’s more hugs, more forgiveness, more gratitude. It’s acknowledging another work of art in the sunset from my front porch.

It’s also mandating a friend eat unnecessary amounts of nachos with me. It’s acting surprised when my kids hand me a haphazardly wrapped gift. It’s requesting your parents spend too much money renting a cabin in Hocking Hills for the weekend. It’s drinking one more because “it’s my birthday!”

Not in my honor. But in honor of life. In the honor of the gift of another year, another month, another day. I’ll wear the birthday sombrero for a chance at that. I’ll blow out the candles and hold the hands of people I love, at least one. more. time.

*Thanks Tim McGraw for setting that up for me so poetically.

Finding Safety in Fault

May 30, 2016 / Michele Minehart

Just a few nights ago, I began reading a new book – A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy. Most notable: the author’s name: Sue Klebold. The mother of Dylan Klebold, of the 1999 Columbine tragedy. It’s challenging my idea that parents can be at fault for the actions of their children.

In the introduction, a journalist who met the Klebolds writes that one of two reasons we blame parents for the crimes of their children is, “because in supposing that, we reassure ourselves that in our own house, where we are not doing such wrong things, we do not risk this calamity.” He continues on, “I didn’t want to like the Klebolds, because the cost of liking them would be an acknowledgment that what happened wasn’t their fault, and if it wasn’t their fault, none of us is safe.” (Emphasis mine.)

Thankfully, because I keep a pretty compassionate FB friend group who are speaking avidly about considering the feelings of the poor mother who’s toddler escaped into the gorilla’s habitat, I’m hearing more of this spoken – even if we don’t all realize the underlying truth. If we can find cause and point blame, we mistakenly begin to believe that we’ll never run such risk.

It’s the same idea behind the study which recently found that people who considered themselves not a target for advertising were significantly more susceptible to buying from an advertisement. There’s folly in believing you will never be a victim.

Of course, living fearfully that everything will happen to you is it’s own brand of magical thinking. Both approaches to the world are convincing you that you’re someone special. As if who you are is an indicator of how life will treat you. The temptation is to believe everything terrible will happen to you, or nothing terrible will. The truth is, some of it could. And those are the only guarantees we get.

Blaming others, finding the reason, reducing complex situations down to simple solutions won’t save you from tragedy. Perhaps learning from tragedy will save us from history repeating itself, which is its own gift, and one we can turn to for comfort. Finding someone to take the fall will rarely insure our own safety, though it often feels like it can.

Strength and flexibility

May 8, 2016 / Michele Minehart

I can often tell at the outset of the week when I’m about to get myself contorted. My schedule paints an accurate picture of the times of my life when I ignore reasonable boundaries of pace and order. I use my flexibility to work and rework the schedule until I can fit everything I want into it. And if I move quickly enough from item-to-item, I can complete the process without noticeable effects.

I hyperextend. Instead of being strong, I flex. The parts of me which bend well, I allow to hold all the weight.

Let’s back up. Certain parts of our bodies were designed to work in certain ways. Some parts operate to provide us with strength and stability. Take our long leg muscles, our glutes, and the many core muscles that wrap around our midsection. They hold us up.

Other parts give us flexibility and movement. Our joints allow us to bend, our shoulders and hips rotate to allow us to walk, reach and grasp. They move us.

Having one of these abilities without the other significantly impairs our experience. Most humans have some degree of both in their lives, but very often we have a favorite mode from which we operate. For example, I tend to hyperextend in my joints. Where the average elbow will stop, my elbows will see how many more degrees it can stretch. This sounds fancy and fun until you turn 65 and have spent your life asking your shoulder function as your back muscle should have been all along, because it often turns into other issues. The joints get inflamed and fired up at the overuse.

For folks who operate out of their strength, change of position becomes a challenge. That hamstring is a humdinger of a powerhouse for athletes, propelling bodies faster down the field. Yet it can be a challenge for many people with such powerful strength to bend over and touch their shins, let alone toes. All strength and no flex spells injury when you try to perform in not-so-perfect conditions.

Neither operating out strength nor flexibility is “bad” or “good.” They just are.

As my teacher says, “As the body, so the soul.”

So my hyperextension manifests itself in my life as well. I can bend and work a schedule until I can do everything I want, often to the expense of other people or my own exhaustion. Other folk do the opposite. We all have our ways. We figure out our shortcuts based on our habits.

So now, I reflect. I’m asking the flexibility of my schedule to hold me up when perhaps I shouldn’t be (such regular activity will eventually result in burnout, I’m sure). So where are the places designed to give me strength and stability and life that I don’t tend to lean into?

Perhaps my schedule isn’t the only place I ask flexibility to do the work. Marriages, friendships, nutrition, rest – all of these things can be sources of strength or flexibility. But in what ways do they exhibit evidence of over-extending or strength to the point of rigidity?

As the body, so the soul. So, for now, I watch, I listen, I observe. I notice the habits and perhaps I will decide to try a different way of moving about in this world.

Category: life (Page 2 of 10)

Celebrating a birthday in the mourning

Finding Safety in Fault

Strength and flexibility

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