New York Times - Faces of Breast Cancer -

 I was at my daughter's house last night, and in the midst of celebrating a grandson's birthday, my granddaughter decided she needed to clean her bedroom (which was definitely the truth). As I was helping her find the floor in her room, she had tucked away in a basket with "important things" an article from the New York Times, printed in 2013, titled Faces of Breast Cancer. The cover page had pictures of several women in various stages of breast cancer treatments and healings. The photo of Tempest and me, taken by friend Nick, was on this page. 

I came home and found it online, with several others stories as this section grew. 

Enjoy - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/well/breast-cancer-stories/stories/589 

Friday, June 13, 2003 -

 Friday, June 13, will always be a lucky day for me. It is the day I began my journey of self-discovery and self-love. 

Newly graduated from Utah State University, I went to Crisfield, Maryland, with a group of about 20 people from a variety of backgrounds, to do research on this maritime community. Our assignment was to capture a snapshot in time of this area through photography, interviews, and our own experiences in the area, for the Smithsonian's Folklife Center. 

Crisfield was once considered the crabbing capital of the world, and with lots more imports, this industry was declining, hence so was the community and the ways of the crabbing culture. I've written about this several times on my blog. 

I made amazing friends, learned to love the comunity, loved the land and the water, and came home, three weeks later, a totally changed person with confidence, humility, and skills that have benefitted me to this day. Three weeks was all it took to put me on the trajectory to being me. 

I will always honor and cherish this time, the people I worked with, the people of the community, and those who made this possible. I'm reaching out in the best way I know how, to give my love to those who helped me learn to love myself. 

To Polly, Kristi, Tim, Brad, Dan, Rosemarie, Roberta, Maria, Jennifer, Gracie, David, James, Lora,     and others: 

May you be happy, may you be healthy, may you be safe, may you live with ease.

Holy Places -

As I sat through our worship service on Sunday I so wanted to feel the holiness I had felt the previous two days, and yet there was nothing. I felt the cold metal chair, heard the chatty children, listened to a couple of folks testify (or brag), and watched the time slowly tick away. As disappointed as I was in the service and my lack of any reverential thoughts, I was grateful for the time I had just spent with my sister visiting family in Southeastern Idaho. 

This space is holy to me - wide open fields with blue skies and white puffy clouds. A small breeze and a view for miles, stopping only at the Idaho side of the Tetons. My sister and I drove to Rigby for a cousin's funeral. The setting - the green green green of an Idaho spring - pines with yellow buds, cottonwoods beginning to share, crops peeking their baby green heads through the deep rich and newly furrowed soil, and water - water running down open ditches and canals to irrigation pipes and sprinklers that guarantee this cycle of growth and green continue. Holy ground. 

We visited Julie, 68 yrs old, cuddling with her fiance (first marriage for her), playing online Yahtzee, in her tiny apartment, and their love was strong, and the place holy. 

Aunt Marilyn's house was next, and even being multi-generational full, pets included, they were all happy, the dogs friendly, and the conversation genuine. Holy. 

We visited three cemetaries, and although I don't "feel" my people in these spaces, I honor these grounds for holding their physical'ness, for marking their spots with their names and those of their posterity. A holy place. 

My cousin's graveside service was tender, and of course, always there for the living. In a circle with cousins after Amen, we shared real talk, Idaho talk, and ask questions that one can only ask and answer in a safe holy space. And lunch, with family I see so infrequently, yet recognize as mine, again caring conversation and laughter with people who are mine, where holiness and sacred talk stays there, because the meaning lies in that setting, too sacred to take elsewhere. Holy space and place. 

On the drive home that Saturday afternoon, while conversing with my sister, I heard, "You are standing in a holy space." Uninterrupted, unfiltered time with my sister, conversation that moved from light to deep to children to parents to art to work, to secular to sacred. Holy indeed. 

For me any space, when occupied by those who are also witnessing the holiness, can be sacred. And I am always grateful to be blessed in these holy places. 

Names on the back of my parents' grave marker - we are the next-in-line. 

Aunt Carrol and Cousins

Loving the Lesser - A Year Retired -

 Happy one year of "retirement" anniversary, and with that has come a year of reflection, reevaluation, remembering, and a butt-load of other "re's" that have truly helped me heal and move forward. 

First and foremost - I am not retired! I did retire from Intermountain Health as a healthcare chaplain, and yet I'm working about 3 days a week with my counseling practice, which I love. This was my intention all along; however, I think when many of us hear "retirement" we think of no longer bringing in an income, no longer working. I can't imagine not having my practice - some way to bring in income, of course, moreso as a way to continue to reach outside of myself, help others, and interact with others. My Pastoral Counselor certification has served me well in this adventure. I love what I do. Wren House is going strong, something of my own. 

And I've spent this past year healing - not necessarily from strictly work stress, but from thirty+ years of "go, be, do" seldom making time to reflect. Always moving forward, never looking back, and now, suddenly having the time to do so. I stopped with my 50 hour a week push, and all of my past came slamming into me. I have chosen to turn around, look at so much of this unaddressed trauma, change, "mission, vision, purpose, value," of my lives and acknowledge them. 

What does this mean? From getting married at 2 weeks 19, to rearing children, to living in Alabama, moving back to Utah, getting my higher education - and the huge commitment that was, reflecting on loss, transition, divorce, remarriage, careers, deaths, family - parents and parenting, siblings, friends, community, all the tangible things. Along with the intangible - identity, voice, spirituality, beliefs, perspectives, perceptions, value, intention, talent, love, vulnerability, compassion, regrets, questions. Spending time being, rather than doing, and doing so intentionally, has been my focus - taking these slow, resolving my weaknesses and my strengths, inhaling and embracing all of me, and deciding how to proceed. Reaching out to that tangled past and reaching in to the places and spaces it will call home. 

When I retired I made a decision that I would not take on anything new, or do anything radical, for this first year (something I highly recommend anyone who has had a loss, of any sort, do). I haven't needed anything new on my plate until I've resolved what has been unresolved. Or better yet - learning to love my shadows while also learning to love my light. 

(I just shared with my sister - processing, and then putting that into words, is exhausting. Being is so much more work than doing. And yet I'm finding great comfort in sitting with. I am grateful for the
processing time, and for the writing process.)

And while I could write a post about each of these paragraphs, each of these items, it is this poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, that hit me hard and speaks to this past year's work, truly, my focus of these past 12 months; to love the exiled parts of me, and in doing so, to love me. 

Loving Our Exiled Parts

I’m sorry. I thought banishing you   
was the way to become better,   
more perfect, more good, more free.   
The irony: I thought if I cut you off  
and cast you out, if I built the walls  
high enough, then the parts left would be   
more whole. As if the sweet orange   
doesn’t need the toughened rind,   
the bitter seed. As if the forest  
doesn’t need the blue fury of fire.   
It didn’t work, did it, the exile?   
You were always here, jangling  
the hinges, banging at the door,  
whispering through the cracks.   
Left to myself, I wouldn’t have known   
to take down the walls,   
nor would I have had the strength to do so.  
That act was grace disguised as disaster.   
But now that the walls are rubble,  
it is also grace that teaches me to want  
to embrace you, grace that guides me   
to be gentle, even with the part of me   
that would still try to exile any other part.   
It is grace that invites me   
to name all parts beloved.  
How honest it all is. How human.   
I promise to keep learning how  

to know you as my own, to practice  
opening to what at first feels unwanted,  
meet it with understanding,  
trust all belongs, welcome you home.  

Ted Lasso and Throwing Darts -

Recently watched the Apple TV Series Ted Lasso for a second time, this scene for the bazillionth time. It's amazing all the goodies that can be found in this series. 

Below is one of my most favorite scenes with one of the many lessons Lasso teaches. 

Be curious my friends, be curious. 

Don't Get Too Close - Professional Boundaries -

Keep your distance, don't share too much of you, it's about them/the material, not you, and on it goes. For the past 30 years I've kept my professional distance from students and patients, and because I have been the lone wolf at the University and at the Hospital, I have not had colleagues. So I've been swimming in this sea of "Don't get too close," for a long long time. 

When I first began teaching I loved my students; I wanted to invite all of them home for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, or even the weekend. I even invited them into my home to watch a couple of course reelvant movies each semester, until one day I was told that off-campus activities were prohibited. I realized I couldn't take care of them all, and I had my favorites - those who took more than one class, those who wanted to learn and didn't have any support, those from out of state without families nearby, those struggling financially. Those in the midst of a divorce, those struggling with addictions, with identity in a culture that told them who they were and what they were doing. 

The University culture did that to me too - this is who you are, this is what you do, this is who you aren't, thos is what you don't do. And I stepped back from my students, separated myself from them, in the name of professional distance. 

And yet - as an adjunct instructor, I wasn't given opportunities to mix and mingle and friendship full-time professors. In some ways adjunct instructors are looked at as a pariah, teaching when full-time instructors should be, taking jobs away. So, keep my professional distance. 

As I moved into the healthcare this same "distance principle" was taught, but to even a stronger degree - HIPAA. And as chaplain, well, few colleagues, with even fewer people who even understand who and what a chaplain is. I'm not a nurse, a physician, an LCSW, rather . . . well, truthfully, no one really understood, particularly because I couldn't perform LDS rituals in an LDS predominant facility. 

No colleagues here to commiserate with or share with; patients and their families typically only one to three visits, then either home or death. And those I did connect with, well, I think of those over the years where we did have a connection - perhaps six are still alive, still dealing with their ailments and diseases. I stay in touch with five of them, after having waited that official year, and having them reach out to me. 

That professional distance applies to myself and my association with others. I'm an introvert, and my areas of study - folklore and chaplaincy, have provided me with opportunities to get to know others, their stories, their ways of life, their beliefs, their interpretations, their journeys. And it's been ingrained in my that I'm on the path with them and their journey for a short time, so, "don't get too close, and don't share your story." 

It's a rare moment when I do share bits of me, and I think three times before speaking or sharing. I'm better at receiving stories and people and holding them gently, rather than asking anyone to take time to hear me. 

Sadly, this attitude has bled into my personal life. I will admit that I've allowed other family members speaking space rather than speaking-up. I've protected others stories rather than shared mine. My children and grandchildren know little of my life, although they've certainly told themselves a story, and I slap myself for that, often even wondering if they would care about me, about my past, about my life, about my thoughts. 

Now with my own counseling practice, Wren House, I find it a little easier to share bits of my life when applicable, yet the "don't get too close" mandate applies here moreso than any other time in my professional life, I'm on their journey for a moment. 

Professional bounderies have their place, they are protection, yet dropping those for intimate relationships, for heart-to-heart sharing, for friendships, is difficult. "Ronda, I need a counselor, can you talk?" "Ma, I need Ma the counselor, not Mom, right now." "Ronda, can you take your teacher hat off and just be with me?" There are times when I'm not sure how to do Ronda! 

This past few weeks my mantra has been, "Who loves me?" And when I reach out of my soul to find people I love, or who I think should love me, I quickly refocus on me, my heart, my soul, and feel the love of those who love me, those who dare bridge that professional distance and know me and love me. I've made a list, so that when I feel like I am giving to others and have no one for myself, I can find those people, who want nothing from me other than me, and receive their love. Closeness - communication increases vulnerability, increases safety, increases intimacy, increases communication. 

I'll save that for another post. 

Something to think about -

For most of my life my value has been determined by whom I belong to and what I do. 

For instance: Tyler and Jenna's mom; Scott's wife, a daughter of Gods; a chaplain, a professor, a gardener. 

I'm a possession and I'm possessed. 

And yet - is that how I define myself?