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Vibrant Days….

Flourishing with Sensory Processing Sensitivity

December 2016

 

Relate

Welcome to December. In the Midwest the chill has arrived along with Christmas lights, yard decorations and bright white snow. Although my body resists the arctic air my soul delights in the bulging moon, the sight and sounds of the migrating sandhill cranes and the haunting call of the owl at night. I’m finding comfort in (some) Christmas music, candles, fires and blankets. Book addict that I am I’m trying to consume less words and close my eyes instead, gifting stillness to my brain and body. It only takes a line or even a word from an advent reading to cast my thoughts elsewhere. In suburbia there are less nativity scenes but my eyes note them and remind me there is something remarkable coexisting. And somehow I’m a part of it.

Of course pangs of sadness appear as I realize who won’t be with me this Christmas. I’ve been engaging in remembering (recalling, reminiscing, calling to mind) and gathering the love from that person and literally pulling it/them closer to my chest. Then I sit enfolded in their love and spirit and suddenly the “I” becomes a mystical “twosome” of togetherness. Although their bodies and faces are no longer in front of me I bask in their love and receive. Thank God there is no end to love.

So Christmas blessings to your soul from mine. My heart beats with yours. p.s. good luck with the small talk at gatherings!

Watch

This short video is worth watching if only to see the end…

Participation

I’ve often wondered if I am some kind of freak.

I hated my job as a nurse for the smallest of reasons — the smell in the elevator before my shift would start, the physical exhaustion that would overtake me after 12 hours on my feet, the lack of any kind of privacy in the onslaught of the artificial, fluorescent lighting that buzzed even at 3 o’clock in the morning.

What’s more…any sort of violence makes me physically ill — I will never watch horror movies and I have to divert my attention even from road kill. Environment is super important to me — I prefer my house to be picked up, the lights to be dimmed, and a candle lit before I sit down to work, and wearing the wrong type of clothes can ruin my whole day.

In my marriage, I am often frustrated when my husband won’t have deep, philosophical discussions with me. I’m burning the midnight oil contemplating the meaning of life and he’s all like, “Eh, what does it matter? We’re all going to die anyways — I’m going to go watch TV.”

Turns out, there’s nothing really wrong with me and there’s nothing really wrong with him — I just might be a highly sensitive person.

– Chaunie Brusie

Ponder

Surrender

The ecstacy of being….

that moment when I lay the whip down

which I’ve used for so long to usher me into action

when every cell of my body cried only for stillness and quiet.

The moment of surrender…

where I lay down the phone, the pen, my plans, and my head in the grass.

I look up to the sky and say,

You take it, I’m done. 

The shiftings of middle age ….

When life becomes less about the ornamenting of the body

And more on nourishing the riches in the soil of my soul.

As the truth of my smallness and insignificance

Brings peace, allowing me to give up the striving,

To become some other person I always thought I should be.

After years of seeking and flight,

I land on love…

the people and music and sunsets and treelined trails that I love,

And still learning how, somehow, to love myself

Not selfishly, but in hopes that by filling this vessel with love,

my love might pour out to touch the broken others 

who are still striving to be that other person they always thought they should be.

– Carol Williams, L.C.P.C.


In this together,

Candy