A summer update: steps along the journey of caring for an elderly parent

We’ve noticed a shift in my almost 89-year-old mum in the last couple of weeks. Suddenly, she seems older, frailer. She’s feeling it too.  She talks more frequently about feeling like she’s on the way out. She expresses how she just can’t seem to find her energy, and doesn’t know who she is anymore. Her level of forgetfulness is definitely worsening. We have honest conversations about death, and choices. I give her lots of hugs.

Our visits to the doctor are getting more frequent. We’re investigating how her heart is functioning. A new round of tests and specialists. And in the midst of this, a move to a new care home this week. Her current place is just a bit too far from us, and it’s on a busy street, the sound of traffic bothers her. Her new home is only a few minutes away from us, with a lovely quiet back yard that looks out onto a field of beautiful trees. She finds so much solace and peace in nature. A lovely living room with the type of furniture that reminds her of home back in England, with a piano she can play.

It’s a big decision, the upheaval of a move when she is already frail, and has experienced so much change in the last six months since her husband died. And yet, in spite of how she is feeling, she is up for it, which gives me hope.

I spend time with my granddaughters, and watch them grow and change, delighting in the new persons they are becoming, and mourning just a tad the little girls they used to be. With my mum, it’s the opposite… she becomes more childlike, more dependent, and there is more mourning than delight in watching her change.  And yet, I remind myself, this is just the natural rhythm of life… and all I can do is be lovingly present for it, in whatever stage, and adapt to what is needed of me to support what is happening.

It’s a bit scary sometimes, to be so needed by her. I go away for a few days and she misses me terribly.  Tells me she feels like she can’t function without me, that I’m her other half. We have some short week-long trips away planned this summer, a dear friend’s daughter’s wedding in Boston, our yearly pilgrimage to the Yuba river. I worry a bit. Am I doing the right thing by going away? Can I, should I, do I want to, put my own life on hold? It’s hard to know… and so I take it one day at a time, being grateful for this bitter sweet time with her, loving her, being gentle with myself, and trusting that I will know what to do at each turn of the corner on this journey we are walking together.

My Memorial Day Clean Up

Whenever I am going through a period of change and transformation, and I feel that things are re-arranging themselves internally and I am not sure which way is up and which way is down, my go to solution is to embark on a de-cluttering project.

So yesterday I tackled the bathroom and ended up chucking out two large shopping bags full of outdated lotions and potions and supplements.  As I was gleefully discarding 10 years worth of obsolete stuff, it dawned on me that this was the perfect backdrop for also getting rid of outdated mindsets, beliefs and worldviews.

You know the ones I mean. “I can’t do that.” “I’m too old/too young/too you name it.” “I’m not qualified.” “I’ll never be able to learn that.” “What if….”

Stepping out and stepping in – who leaves and who comes back?

It’s truly amazing to me that thanks to modern air travel, in the space of 24 hours I went from a tiny village in the highlands of Chiapas back to my home in Santa Rosa, California – two such different realities.

But the really interesting thing is that, just slightly more than 24 hours after my return, I realize I am not the same person who stepped out from my front door two weeks ago.

It’s peculiar- how many times a day, a week, a month, do we step though our front doors, go out into the world, do our thing, and then step back in…. without even thinking about it, and probably assuming that the person who stepped out in the morning is the same person who steps back in some time later?

So what is it about life’s experiences when we are out in the world that changes us in some profound way? I’ve often had the experience of going on vacation and coming back refreshed and renewed, full of new memories and experiences, a more relaxed and happy person. Or of witnessing some challenging or even tragic event, and coming back shaken and vulnerable.

This 2-week time period time in Chiapas feels different. Not a vacation, but an immersion into another reality, a time of such intense focus that the rest of my life seemed almost like a distant dream. I realized it’s rare these days, with so many responsibilities and distractions, to spend a period of 2 weeks with such single minded concentration.

I don’t know if I could tell you what it is that has changed in me, what layers of inner transformation are making themselves slowly known. But I do know that as I allow it to be revealed, and give myself the time to sit in silence and contemplation and resist the temptation to rush helter-skelter back into the daily realities of life back home, that the mystery and the grace of embracing a new opportunity and challenge will continue to reverberate in my being.

But perhaps it doesn’t really take a 2-week odyssey into foreign territory to precipitate a change in consciousness, maybe all it takes is a willingness to be open and vulnerable to the mysteries that always surround us, and to give ourselves the gift of a pause when we step back in the door to reflect and integrate the day’s gifts.

So dear reader, who will you be when you step back in the door tonight?

A pause for reflection along the blogging trail

“I sense a change in you,” says a good friend.  

“You’re happier,” answers my hubby when I asked him if he had noticed any changes in me since I started my blogging commitment  2 months ago.

Well, 36 blog posts later, it seems like a good time to pull off my backpack, pull out my bag of paleo trail mix and sit a while and reflect on my blogging journey. Like any journey, it’s had its surprises, challenges, discoveries and joys. 

Having set off without a map, I’ve been guided by the compass of my inner voice, supported by my partnership with the Divine, doing my best to get out of my own way and allow That which seeks expression to have its way through me.

So here are some lessons I’ve learned along the way. I’m sharing them in the hopes that they may inspire you on your own journey to greater self-expression, whatever form that may take.

• It’s not necessary to be perfect in order to out yourself out there.
• It’s actually perfectly OK not to be perfect in order to put yourself out there.
• People appreciate vulnerability.
• You have no idea where your words will go, and whose heart they will touch.
• There is a deep sense of satisfaction that comes from bridging the gap between “I want to do it” and “I am doing it.”
• Sometimes you get to a river and you have no idea how to ford it. That’s when you trust and jump in and find it wasn’t as deep as you thought, or a log comes floating by you can hang on to.
• Sometimes there is a fork in the road and you’re not sure which way to go. It turns out there are really no wrong turns, only different choices.
• You never know who is going to reach out and lend you a helping hand.
• You can keep going even when you think you can’t. You just take the next step.
• The world is waiting for that which only you can give.

 What is waiting to be born through you, dearest reader?

PS In case you missed the beginning of my blogging journey, and would like to see how it all started, you can catch up here:

 Making the Unknown Known – Day 1 of my new blogging journey

Into the Wild – Day 2 on the Blogging Trail

Lightening my load - a daily practice

Summiting my Capitan – Day 4 on the blogging trail