Today I am joining with Honoré and sharing an update on my journey with my 2020 One Little Word, Open.

I find myself thinking about the word open a lot. In my darker moments I strongly dislike (I won’t use the word hate but you know I’m thinking it) this word. It has challenged me in ways I never could have predicted and it has been difficult. Difficult to be open when life is scary and I want to close down. Difficult to remain open when all I want to do is hide myself away from the wor(l)d. And now, particularly, difficult to re-open the parts of myself that I shut down to protect myself from trauma.

As Dale has gotten stronger and more independent, I find myself wanting to protect him more. Even though I longed for this back in the days when he was very very helpless, now I find myself scared of it. Scared to let him drive a car by himself. Scared to have him go up and down the stairs alone. Scared, frankly, to let him out of the bubble I closed him up in to protect him and enable him to heal.

That bubble of protection? The one I stuck him in when he came home from the hospital? It’s very similar to the the one I put myself in a lot when I was a kid and I had to deal with the trauma of my childhood. The bubble is pretty and safe. It’s calm and quiet and the walls are thick and nothing can get in unless I allow it. Not fighting parents and brothers who leave, not alcoholism and chaos and domestic violence, and definitely not accidents and death. The flipside, of course, is that nothing can get out either. And nothing can grow or change because the bubble won’t allow for that. The bubble keeps us safe. The bubble also keeps us stagnant.

As we approach another month, I know that I have to put the trauma bubble away. I have to open up and allow for change and growth as we move into the next phase of recovery, both physically and emotionally.

The reality is that I might not be ready to put the bubble away completely. I might still need some protection from the chaos of the outside world. But I’m definitely ready to put some windows in the bubble and open them up to let the light back in.

Today I am joining with Honoré and sharing an update on my journey with my 2020 One Little Word, Open.

I chose this word late last summer during a guided meditation. Part of the meditation was to visualize a box and see what was inside. When I did this the word Open floated up out of the box. At the time that I chose it I had one specific thing in mind: Hannah’s wedding plans. I haven’t talked about it here at all but Hannah and her fiance Mikey are planning to get married in August of 2021. It will be a super small wedding. In Iceland.

Friends. This is not even close to anything I ever dreamed for my girlie’s wedding. And accepting and adjusting to the fact that this is her dream has been challenging for me. Of course I understand that it’s their wedding and it’s about their dreams and not mine. But I’m her mom and I’ve pictured what her wedding would be like many, many times and it sure wasn’t in Iceland. And it certainly wasn’t without us being surrounded by lots of family and friends. So the word Open was initially about being open to this destination wedding. And beyond that being open to ideas that aren’t my own and dreams that don’t match the ones I’ve had. I’ve made a lot of progress on this front, Hannah and I have had some heart-to-heart talks about what this wedding will look like and how it will work and I have definitely found myself being more open to the whole thing.

But this word. Oh, this word. I feel like each time I make progress with it the universe throws something else at me to challenge me.

You are good now with your daughter’s wedding plans? Great. How about coping with a pandemic.

You are acknowledging your feelings surrounding the pandemic and actually enjoying being at home with your husband and your daily routine? Awesome. How about your husband gets hit by a car?

The lessons in dealing with Dale’s accident are new and changing every day. The overarching one, though, the one I picked up on almost immediately, was that I need to be open to accepting help. Help in handling the work that Dale usually did that is falling on me. (I’m looking at you, heavy ceramic containers that need to be filled with plants and placed on the deck.) Help in coping with the trauma and emotional fall out of this experience. Help in the form of food and gifts and flowers from our friends and neighbors.

Learning to be open to help is a tough lesson for me as I tend to view accepting help as a form of weakness. Despite that, though, I am seeing that allowing people to help me is actually an action of strength, for it takes strength to say I need help with this.

Being open to help is a whole new world for me and I’m seeing the benefits of it daily. But if the universe decides that this is the last big lesson I need to get from this word I’d be okay with that.

It’s the last Tuesday of the month and that means it’s time to join with Honoré and reflect back on the last four weeks and my journey with my One Little Word.

In case you forgot, my word is open. And I’m sort of struggling with being open right now. It’s mostly, of course, because of the pandemic. Being open sounds so . . . vulnerable. And not vulnerable in a sharing my feelings way but vulnerable like not protecting myself against the virus way. If I look at the word metaphorically, though (and really, that’s sort of the whole point of this One Little Word thing) then I can say I’ve made some progress with being open.

What I’ve really tried to capture this month, and it’s not an easy thing for me, is being open to my feelings. I’m a pretty big believer in acknowledging (and celebrating!) happy feelings but when it comes to the other feelings . . . the feelings I’m having a lot lately . . . the feelings I label as scared, confused, frustrated, uncontrollable . . . well, I’d just as soon avoid those in the same way that I’m avoiding the grocery store these days.

You know that doesn’t work, right? Because when I fail to acknowledge my feelings and emotions they don’t actually go away. Oh no. Instead, they tend to show up in physical ways. I cry. I pick a fight. I overeat. It’s not pretty, it’s not healthy, and it’s just plain not good.

The key, I am learning, is to acknowledge the feelings and lean all the way into them. The crappy feelings go away (not always immediately but always eventually) when I name them and accept them and release them. In other words: the feelings I don’t like go away when I am open to them.

So, in this time of pandemic, I want to acknowledge the fear and uncertainty and disappointment. And in doing so, I open myself up to the lessons I am learning and I vow to allow them to help me grow.

The irony of my One Little Word being open in the midst of a pandemic where it feels like everything is closed is not lost on me. My library? Closed. My favorite stores? Closed. My go to restaurants? Closed.

Guess what’s not closed, though?

My eyes. To the beauty around me . . . the new furniture we bought for our living room, the pansies peeking above my window sills, the daffodils in my garden, the bluebirds at the feeder by the kitchen window, the pictures and videos of Jackie that Jessica makes sure Dale and I see.

My mind. To new ideas about what staying home feels like. To finding creative ways to “see” friends and family. To using books to take me to anywhere I might want to go. To learning new things and honing new skills. To possibility.

My heart. To loving every minute of every day even when it feels tedious or scary or uncomfortable. To feeling grateful for so much extended time with Dale. To being resilient in the face of so much uncertainty. To protecting myself and my family through temporary sacrifice. To accepting hope however it shows up.

Maybe being closed off from the world is exactly what I need to show me what being open is really all about.

I completely missed that yesterday was the 4th Tuesday of the month and hence I didn’t do my monthly One Little Word update on time. The old me would have let it pass by and not blogged about it since I missed the official day to do my monthly update. But. I’m all open and stuff now so I’m doing it today even though I forgot about it yesterday. This being open thing is very . . . eye opening. Ha!

For this last month I’ve been trying to be open to accepting help. I’m generally the person who holds everyone else up, who supports the people around me when they are hurting, who carries the weight of other people’s pain. Randy’s death, though, has exposed a lot of that as bullshit and defensiveness and made me realize that it’s not my job to make sure everyone else is okay, that it’s fine for me to accept help from others and not always be the one who is the helper.

And also,

Being open means being vulnerable and that’s okay.

Being open to love and support and help is very rewarding even when it’s hard.

Being open allows for new ideas and opportunities.

Being open creates space for gratitude.

Being open means being present. And being present is my continuous goal.

Being open means thinking about things from a different perspective.

Being open means being alive.