Happy #116: Be in the experience.

Happy Regardless may have been better named Get through it, Regardless. Get over it, Regardless. Or Take whatever comes and then move the hell on, Regardless. ;) Something that says the only way to stability is taking the highs and lows and finding your way back to center, regardless. Happily and peacefully, if at all possible. :)

I started taking Christmas down yesterday. This amounted to ornaments, etc. coming off the tree and putting the tree away. After working through numerous hot flashes and using whatever excess energy I thought I had, but didn't, I had the tree packed into its box. Feeling thoroughly and completed exhausted, I had Kelsie sit on the box so I could strap it up. Why was I so tired??

Requiring more energy than I had, I flopped on my bed like a sack of rice and spent the next few hours doing something I never do: watching movies. (I do watch movies, just not three in a row...) Keaton was watching them with me, feeling absolutely delighted I was actually watching instead of multi-tasking, so when I passed out he turned everything off.

Today, I found myself square in the middle of the thing, whatever the thing was. I was packing up ornaments, Christmas balls, sparkly this, glittery that, nutcrackers, Santas, snowmen, beautiful everything, and I felt a sadness ribbon itself through the experience that I can't remember feeling while packing up Christmases past.

I felt as tender and green inside as those Christmas balls. But the raw kind of green. Not the shiny kind. The fragile, brand new leaf, barely braving to unfold, green. The one that says, I feel so delicate inside you could snap me into pieces between two of your fingers, green. Vulnerable green. All the memories of Joyce and Christmases for and with my children when they were little welled up inside of me. So I did what I always do. I took a hot shower, let myself feel, prayed for peace, and cried. Ok, bawled. I felt so sad.

Taking the time to be in the experience of any emotion is a gift of self-respect. Those moments, the emotion that is stirred in the feeling, and the connections the brain makes during the process won't come again. Because every experience changes us and by extension how we process and connect information.

This is one of the beauties of living. Being in the experience. Whatever it is. And feeling it.

I hope for easier feelings to find me. But in the meantime, I don't feel like a bowl full of wet noodles anymore. I have the peace I prayed for. (And the peace others have prayed for in my behalf, I'm certain.) And Christmas is tucked away for one more year.

Happy #116 is: Be in the experience. Because it's all we've really got anyway, whatever life is in the moment while it's going by. Being in the experience is where the real connection lives. In the giving experience or the receiving experience and the feelings that follow. And it's the real connection we're all after.

Plus, it's a kinder and more meaningful way to live and process life. And it's a good beginning to self-respect. The root of love...

So many benefits. :)

Are you feeling me?