(no subject)
Today has been one of those days when I woke up and the colors just seemed brighter! The sky outside my window was the most beautiful shade of blue, and things in general felt hopeful.
Over the past week or two, my life has felt fractured. My emotions have been all over the place, for no apparent reason. I've fallen into the cycle of self doubt and loathing on several occasions. The kids and I have been sick (yet again!) to boot, the house is a wreck - basically I've let everything around me go because I've been living in my head. It's hard to explain... even though I feel I have direction in my life, I still felt lost. The really odd part is that this has not been like my depressive episodes of the past - this one was interspersed with plenty of happy moments too, leaving me feeling rather bi-polar with unpredictable mood swings. (ick.)
I decided to post to one of my tribes on tribe.net, the Autoamory tribe. In trying to formulate exactly what it was I wanted to say in my post, I realized how much my own beliefs about love, relationships, happiness, and the purpose of life have morphed over the past year. Wow - I'm in a really different head space than I was a year or two ago. Yeah, I still get into my funks now and then, but they don't seem to have the same power over me that they used to. And, here's another thing I've been realizing - most of the personality traits that cause my self-loathing (traits that I've been trying to water down all my life in order to "fit in") are related to, if not direct symptoms of my ADD. What I've gotten out of this discovery is the knowledge that for me to stay happy, I have to find ways to quit looking at my ADD as a disorder, as a set of undesirable character flaws, and learn to find my strengths. I need to feel inspired every day. I'm a stimulation junkie.
OK, let's face it - being a stay at home parent is never going to be the here all - end all for me that it is for some moms. So, I have two options. I can either stay mired in my unhappiness, trying to meet some abstract ideal of what a good mom is, or I can seek out those things that inspire me - even if it means letting go of my preconcieved notion of what a good mom is and does. It means adjusting my expectations of myself as a parent and letting go of judgment. It may mean spending less time with the kids, but if I can find ways to manifest my strengths through activities and situations that I feel passionately about, my joy and inspiration will be obvious to my kids when I do spend time with them.
I've found it easy to feel inspired when I've visited Berkeley. I've found kindred spirits online. When it comes to doing the same thing here in Arizona, I've felt just plain stuck and completely uninspired. I don't like Arizona and never have, but it's where I'm at for the time being and I'm darn well gonna make the best of it. I mean, it can't be all bad here...
On that note, today I wrote an email to one of my former professors. She taught a seminar on Art Therapy out of her downtown Art Therapy studio, which is called Art Awakenings. Art Awakenings is a non-profit agency that contracts with Value Options (the state agency that provides mental health services to the uninsured and indigent populations). Arizona is one of the few states where art therapy, music therapy, and expressive arts therapy are considered valid modalities for emotional healinng and are funded publicly as such. One of the main focuses of Art Awakenings is to assist seriously mentally ill clients in their transition from institutionalization back to living independently. In my email, I inquired about volunteering at her studio in whatever capacity she could use me (one of the positive effects of my ADD is that over the years I've developed multiple competencies - I could be just as happy / competent making phone calls, organizing events, fundraising, or assisting the art therapists). IMO, Art therapy is one of the most under-rated uses of art today; it's a cause I've believed in for a long time now (since high school) but have never made the leap to actually be involved with. In reading the studio's website, it seems they've expanded to several additional locations since I took my class. Hopefully, they'll find some use for me. :D
Over the past week or two, my life has felt fractured. My emotions have been all over the place, for no apparent reason. I've fallen into the cycle of self doubt and loathing on several occasions. The kids and I have been sick (yet again!) to boot, the house is a wreck - basically I've let everything around me go because I've been living in my head. It's hard to explain... even though I feel I have direction in my life, I still felt lost. The really odd part is that this has not been like my depressive episodes of the past - this one was interspersed with plenty of happy moments too, leaving me feeling rather bi-polar with unpredictable mood swings. (ick.)
I decided to post to one of my tribes on tribe.net, the Autoamory tribe. In trying to formulate exactly what it was I wanted to say in my post, I realized how much my own beliefs about love, relationships, happiness, and the purpose of life have morphed over the past year. Wow - I'm in a really different head space than I was a year or two ago. Yeah, I still get into my funks now and then, but they don't seem to have the same power over me that they used to. And, here's another thing I've been realizing - most of the personality traits that cause my self-loathing (traits that I've been trying to water down all my life in order to "fit in") are related to, if not direct symptoms of my ADD. What I've gotten out of this discovery is the knowledge that for me to stay happy, I have to find ways to quit looking at my ADD as a disorder, as a set of undesirable character flaws, and learn to find my strengths. I need to feel inspired every day. I'm a stimulation junkie.
OK, let's face it - being a stay at home parent is never going to be the here all - end all for me that it is for some moms. So, I have two options. I can either stay mired in my unhappiness, trying to meet some abstract ideal of what a good mom is, or I can seek out those things that inspire me - even if it means letting go of my preconcieved notion of what a good mom is and does. It means adjusting my expectations of myself as a parent and letting go of judgment. It may mean spending less time with the kids, but if I can find ways to manifest my strengths through activities and situations that I feel passionately about, my joy and inspiration will be obvious to my kids when I do spend time with them.
I've found it easy to feel inspired when I've visited Berkeley. I've found kindred spirits online. When it comes to doing the same thing here in Arizona, I've felt just plain stuck and completely uninspired. I don't like Arizona and never have, but it's where I'm at for the time being and I'm darn well gonna make the best of it. I mean, it can't be all bad here...
On that note, today I wrote an email to one of my former professors. She taught a seminar on Art Therapy out of her downtown Art Therapy studio, which is called Art Awakenings. Art Awakenings is a non-profit agency that contracts with Value Options (the state agency that provides mental health services to the uninsured and indigent populations). Arizona is one of the few states where art therapy, music therapy, and expressive arts therapy are considered valid modalities for emotional healinng and are funded publicly as such. One of the main focuses of Art Awakenings is to assist seriously mentally ill clients in their transition from institutionalization back to living independently. In my email, I inquired about volunteering at her studio in whatever capacity she could use me (one of the positive effects of my ADD is that over the years I've developed multiple competencies - I could be just as happy / competent making phone calls, organizing events, fundraising, or assisting the art therapists). IMO, Art therapy is one of the most under-rated uses of art today; it's a cause I've believed in for a long time now (since high school) but have never made the leap to actually be involved with. In reading the studio's website, it seems they've expanded to several additional locations since I took my class. Hopefully, they'll find some use for me. :D