Spiritual Endeavor

It’s amazing how time flies. I remember when I was in high school wanting to marry, my then love, and have like 6 kids and saw the world very black and white. Then I grew older and slightly more grey etched into my view when more and more people (including me, much to my dismay) made choices that weren’t so moral or ethical in contrast to my past viewpoint. My spiritual philosophies have changed and grew ever more expansive in hopes to be less judgmental to myself and others. Deleting dogma and trying to stay in present moment. As I get even older and more experiences fill my life, I realize that I am at once, not one thing all the time. I am a hypocrite. I am righteous. I am judgmental. I am obnoxious. I am loving. I am affectionate. I am a jokester. I am serious. I am sensitive. I over think and don’t think at all. I can get upset quickly and get over things quickly. I am friend and foe. I mumble. I sometimes talk with eloquence and sometimes sound like an idiot. I humiliate myself constantly when it comes to giving to much info about how I am feeling or thinking. My friends say here is the line and here is Jen Heart. Knowing that I have crossed the line yet again, I am comic relief for my perversions or outlandish speech. I am glad I am an idealist even if life circumstances or situations aren’t ideal. I am good person with some bad tossed in for flavor. Some days I do way better than others. I try (Yoda says there is no try) to make choices in my life that won’t hurt me or others. I sometimes do hurt people without intention. I am more grey, its a better than being 100% black.

In the blink of a moment life can change. I meet someone and sparks fly and fire licks up and down my whole body. I meet really great people who end up in the friend zone within 30 seconds. Best friends for years leave when the challenge of taking sides or we are reminders of old times come into play after a divorce. I left relationships that were my everything even when there was so much history, love, and friendship due to feeling invalidated and where I never felt I had a voice. The older I get I know that major life events change dynamics, sometimes just time changes things. New friends can come in to my life and eventually either totally enmeshing in my world or fading out.

A friend who knew me when I was more green about life when I was about 16 to 23 by fate and opportunity contacted me again. It’s amazing how different and similar we both are to the people we were oh so long ago. My friend who knew me when, started to inch back after my Mom passing. She loved my mom and Mom always loved her. I can’t believe it’s been 3 years since my Mom’s stroke. I know sometimes I express more of a dark view of my Mom. I saw the sides she never showed to the outside and being a caregiver to her there is still some charge of not being cared for in the way I needed or wanted. Even for all yucky, I know my Mom was an awesome, spectacularly strong, inventive, intelligent, sweet and loving woman. She was so generous in giving appreciation or wanting people to smile she would give gifts to even the cashier at the grocery store. My mom made a lasting impression on people even if meeting for just 5 minutes. After her passing I had duty to contact her business contacts or people she would chat with on the internet. My mom was a mix of a social hermit. I get that from her I assume. Where is my hole to hide but first I must dance with my comrades. Ha-Ha! Mom’s social network were the people she would sell, help out, or give away things to on the internet. So many of her net friends showed so much love and told me how much she touched them. Those emails reminded me that she wasn’t the completely horrible person or parent I made her out to be. Less grey even still, I grow. Soon life will be all white by the time I am dead and gone.
Mom taught me so many things about people, how to see people in their brightest light even when they weren’t showing it at that immediate interval. She taught me how to change my thinking and see the situation change when all I did was think about it from a different often positive or learning perspective. The black and white of her was that she was not always mentally available or financially stable for me. I was a great love in her life, as was my brother, but many times when I was expressing an emotion or myself in a way she didn’t want me to be she’d tune me out, literally. The grey in all my negative circumstances is that I got so much from her by her not being the perfect parent. I gained strength, knowledge, and a knowing on how to love the imperfect. Among so much more. The hardest part is throwing that unconditional love my own way or even at those whom I judge harshly for things that I may do under the right “lighting” or “motive.”

I never talk about It but feel it’s important for others to know that it’s ok to ask how I am are doing when it comes to Mom’s death. I know people don’t know what to say. Don’t want to bring up for fear of making me upset. I know everyone is different and deals with death in a very personal way. I still don’t know what to say to other people when they lose someone dear. The times of thinking about Mom grow in longer stretches but I still am sad that she won’t be here when I am in a relationship with the love of my life, see me get married, or even have babies. I am so happy she got to dance with my Brother at his wedding. I am happy that she got to live with me (even though it was brutal and nearly killed me) and she got to live with Billy and Lisa. We had all had the chance to see the best and the worst of her to the bitter end. I know I am blessed to have had her be my teacher, my mother, and friend.

After all these years I can see I am different but similar. I still want to marry but have reduced the number of kids in my mind down to two. Realism of cost and actual time to devote to my kids of which I want to give everything I never had. Quality time, validation, listening to who they are and what their needs/feelings entail, resources and security to name but a few. I know I already love them more than the moon and the stars. I can’t see them but I know they are waiting for me to get my act together. Ha-ha! Whenever that maybe. I want to give them everything so they can be the best people they are meant to be. I want to devote my life those whom I love, my friends, lovers, and my passions in poetry, song, and pure creation. I want to be better that I am now but be ok and love myself even if I am not perfect. I want to show that life Is better in the grey. It might not be easier but better that I can attest.

We are ever changing, who we are, our lives, and obviously our world is changing so quickly we sometimes can hardly breathe. I want to breathe more but I also want my breath taken away more. Here’s to the grey and all the colors that make life sooo not boring and far more complicated and exciting than I ever could have imagined.

Love and Hugs,
Jen