Michelle L. Rusk's Blog, page 28

Giving God a Chance to Talk

I’ve been talking too much in my prayers.

I hadn’t thought anything of it until I was stopped in my tracks last week by a Facebook post that had a quote from a book reminding me how easily prayer can become a one-sided conversation. That’s totally me lately– there’s a lot of movement and traction I’m trying to put into place before a major job change in late January. I’m afraid time is running out on me and I don’t want to miss any boats, planes, or trains that I’m supposed to catch.

So I keep talking, I keep asking. But I realized I wasn’t giving God a chance to speak to me.

While I know that the answers I seek aren’t always found in the prayers– many times they come later in unexpected places– I am also aware of the important of silence to give God a chance to speak.

On Saturday, we joined what we call “the winter pool” so that I can swim all winter– outdoors in a heated pool while our pool has dipped into the fifties and we’ll be closing it in a month. I made a promise to myself that when I go to swim each day, I’ll take that time to do a better job listening.

And I’ll use the silence to make sure that I’m not missing the messages God’s been trying to pass along to me and I’ve been too busy talking to hear.

Making Each Day Meaningful

Pain, routine, life in general. You name it and it can be hard to get out of bed in the morning. No matter what’s going on in our lives, the days can be monotonous or we might dread them for a variety of reasons. Or we can simply be bored because life in general is routine.

That’s why it’s up to us to find the joy in each day. Even when the list is long, someone is always nagging at us to do something, or we have a time consuming project that we simply don’t want to do, we have to find something meaningful in that day, something to not just keep us going, but to inspire us in our journey.

I know that my posts are generally positive and that’s done for a reason– if I post anything negative (like the time the health insurance company had me irked to no end many years ago), it leaves me feeling angry and that anger it starts to fester and eventually ooze. That means I can’t function, or move on.

But by posting things that are positive, inspiring, motivating, and/or meaningful, the vibe of the day ahead for me changes. The glass is half full.

And it’s the same for finding meaning in each day. There are days where I feel tired or just don’t want to do the items on my list. Sometimes boredom sets in because, while I have plenty to do, there is a monotony to writing and sewing when I have editing or stitch removal to do. None of that is fun, however, it’s during those times where I have to find something small to do, something that will make me happy and feel better. Then the tasks don’t feel so overwhelming.

Often, I’ll choose a project I can finish in a few hours simply so that I have completed something, so that I can see what I’ve completed, and I can enjoy what I’ve done.

There is meaning to be found in each day if we choose to. It’s not always the same, but even something small can turn the day around into one of gratitude.

The State of Suicide Prevention

Yes, New Mexico, this is for you, but the reality is that it could be for any state – or any country.

Several weeks ago, The Albuquerque Journal ran an article about suicide here in New Mexico talking about how much the numbers have gone up. When I thought it was time to move on– that I had done everything I needed to– the numbers were increasing, but we could see what was happening. The economy had tanked, but there also were more people reaching for help. And today it’s hard to really know how much numbers compare when suicide has become a more acceptable death for people with terminal pain and illnesses.

The discussion always turns to the increasing numbers of teen– and younger– suicides. People term these the most heart wrenching because of a life that barely starting ending early. But people also forget that we lose more middle-aged men to suicide than other other age group. That means that these teens are losing their fathers, their uncles, their role models.

While we don’t exactly know how much influence a suicide has on the bereaved, anyone left behind to mourn the death, we do know there is an effect. And we know that when you’ve had a suicide, that word becomes part of your personal vocabulary. I used to say it was no longer something that happened to the family down the street on the “Tuesday Night Movie.” While we say it’s not an option to those of us who have had one, yes, it is an option because it’s happened once before and now it’s in our own orbit.

I used to train people on warning signs of suicide, how to ask the question if one was suicidal, what to do when someone was worried about someone. However, what we were never able to do was to keep going back and inoculating people year after year. You can’t just get trained once. Every place– and this should include school bus drivers, cafeteria workers, coaches, and anyone else who comes in contact with kids in any sort of setting– should be trained yearly as staff changes, as situations happen and people have questions maybe they didn’t have before.

The end of the article stated that they had reconvened a group that would suggest recommendations to make changes here in New Mexico. They aren’t reinventing the wheel, what’s changed is the people doing the work. We’re not talking about it more than we used to. Rather people are more likely to listen. However, true change will only happen if we continue to educate people – no differently than on the ill effects of smoking, on CPR, on how to spot skin cancer, how to do a breast exam– year or after year.

After all, isn’t life itself worth that?

Exploring Deep

I believe one of the hardest things for people to do in life is explore deep inside themselves. There are a lot of reasons for this, but mostly it’s because it, well, it’s painful and it’s work. After all, wouldn’t it be easier just to coast through life on the surface where everything looks okay, especially on a sunny day?

I don’t know where I heard this– and it was related to swimming, but it also can be attributed to life– someone said that what’s really important is what happens below the surface. For swimming, that means your breathing, your strokes, your body movements. But in life it means what’s inside you, what’s happening in your soul, in the deepest depths of who you are and who you want to be.

And that’s where the most meaning of life is. While it’s great to have lots of social media likes (believe me, I don’t mind lots of likes because it’s then that I know that people are seeing and reading what I’m posting), it’s what’s inside ourselves where we find true meaning. But if we don’t allow ourselves to “go there” then we’ll never know that. Instead, we stay on the surface and continue to coast.

However, in that coasting, we also find that things don’t necessarily come together or work out. And we wonder why!

After my divorce, I bought a book by a therapist about how to move forward and find the man of your dreams sort of thing (I gave the book away and now have no idea what the author’s name or book title was). I was trying to figure out why I was attracting the wrong sort of man (lots of emotional unavailability there!) or not attracting men at all (unless they were my mom’s age– if you’ve never heard the story about what happened in the church parking lot after morning mass one day…).

I was in LA and had driven south to Huntington Beach for some surfing. After I was done, I decided to take the book to the beach and read for a while. I’ll be honest, I don’t remember exactly what the book told me, but at first I was thought, Oh, that doesn’t apply to me.

What finally admitted to myself was that DID apply to me and the sooner I admitted it and figured it out, the better off I would be. But it was my resistance from reaching deep inside of me that was keeping me from finding deeper meaning and from truly moving forward.

It’s uncomfortable to reach inside ourselves, to walk a rocky, uknown road. But it’s well worth the journey when you see the view from the other side.

Is the Grass Really Greener on the Other Side?

We are very fortunate to live in this time for many reasons. One of those reasons is that we have many choices, whether it be for toothpaste or laundry detergent, or even what career to choose. But it also means that we might be spending more of our time looking at how the green seems greener on the other side, especially when it comes to the romantic relationships in our lives, wondering if we’re missing out on something better.

There are definitely areas in life where we always should be looking to be better, to do better, but is that always the truth in relationships? In marriages?

While usually I speak about moving forward, about letting go of the past, about helping people see that they can do better, this time I’m taking another perspective because I’ve watched many people do this and the unnecessary havoc it wreaks and their lives and everyone around them (and I’m guessing most of the people I’m referring to will never read this blog because they are seemingly unaware or in denial of the havoc they are creating for themselves). In another way, they are keeping themselves from moving forward.

There was a time– and I think back on a conversation Fr. Gene and I had about a year ago when he had twenty-something come see him and the man was feeling so confused about getting married because he felt there were so many options of women and relationships that he wasn’t sure he could settle on one. And what about the person in a marriage who looks around and doesn’t like the way things are and peeks out the window and wonders if maybe things are better across the street, down the road, or that the grass in the next town grows greener?

It’s easy to believe what is right here in front of us isn’t enough because we see what others have– especially in the misconstrued social media spotlight.

Spin it around though.

I’ve been married before and I’ve had other relationships in my life and there’s a huge major positive I can say about Greg– he makes my life easier. And because he makes my life easier, my inspiration cup has been bubbling over so much in the past few years that I can’t keep up with it. I know that all the stress I let relationships cause in earlier parts of my life– when the grass was definitely greener on the other side– kept me from being who i’m supposed to be.

So what if I thought that the green were greener on the other side? I clearly believe mine is the greenest it can be- and should be– and if I were to start looking elsewhere I’m the one who would be missing out.

Go ahead, take a look at where it might be greener, and then take a look around you and see if it really would be better over there. After all, there is much you can’t see from a distance– like crab grass and dandelions.

Maybe the focus should be on making your own grass greener through looking inside yourself and wondering why you think it might be better over there. That sort of reflective journey is painful and challenging for many people, but it’s a road worth traveling because it’s about finding you, not about finding who you think will make you better. If you’ve really got it good, don’t let it go.

Taking a Step Back

I am easily irritated by many things, especially when they seemingly get in the way of my list of items I want to complete in one day. Don’t get in the way of my grocery cart and make sure you use your turn signal if you’re going to cut me off in traffic.

But I have learned to take a step back when what feels like continued derailment of my day is wreaking havoc with everything I want to accomplish. I have also learned to take a step back when someone irritates me. Or when people in my life react in unexpected negative ways.

While I might not like it, there is always a reason that things are unfolding the way that they are. I might not understand it now, or even in the next ten years, but I believe at some point I will get it when I reflect back in the rearview mirror.

Thinking that way has made it easier for me to cope with many situations and also to remember that we’re all navigating something in life and not to take it out on others (well, except when you blatantly cut me off in traffic and I’m driving faster than you– but maybe we’ll address that another day– I usually try to move on by turning up the radio and singing along with an eighties station).

I also have learned that somehow the list gets completed. Maybe not on my schedule but clearly someone else’s– let me poke the sky at the universe for that one.

In the meantime, often the best we can do is roll along and remember that a step backward is really several steps forward in own growth. There is much we can’t control in our lives, except our on reactions. That’s where taking a step backward matters the most because eventually– by doing that– we’ll be taking two steps forward instead of anything backward at all.

Keeping the Dream Alive

I have this memory of my sister Denise. I’m not exactly sure where we were, somewhere in Florida, and we’re playing in the waves. I was in high school and she was in junior high. I remember us laughing and the sense of feeling free that we had, a trip Mom had taken us on when she worked for Midway Airlines.

On this past Friday morning while I was out running, I missed Denise. But as I thought about it more, I realized what I missed is not being able to share Chelle Summer with her because so much of what she and I did together– drawing, making houses and clothes for a our Barbies– and the late 1970s into early 1980s and the styles of that time– form the nucleus of Chelle Summer.

And then I remembered that she is with me. We can’t have a conversation, which is what I felt I wanted when i was thinking about her, but she is still part of this journey. I just wished I could share with her the influence our time together has on what I’m doing today– share it in a way where we have a two-way conversation.

Then I began to think how there probably would be no Chelle Summer if she were here. I probably would be a sports journalist or something similar. While I will never truly know, I’m not sure I would have tapped into our style and fashion history to build Chelle Summer.

The reality is that I can’t bring her back and because of that I’ve tried to embrace the journey as much as possible. This has become more prevalent to me in each passing year and the more I embrace it, the more creative I’ve become. So in a sense Denise is responding by helping me choose what I create.

And that’s enough for me, even on days when I doubt everything, that I am keeping the dream alive. And I won’t give up until I get where I want to be.

How we've complicated the message

Today– September 10– is World Suicide Prevention Day and I’ve been thinking about what kind of message I want to spread today. While there are many directions I could go, there is one aspect that sticks in my mind and it’s how we’ve complicated the message of helping people.

In the last year or so of Ed Shneidman’s life, the father of suicidology, I was lucky to have several phone conversations with him. He came off as a gruff man, although that must be prefaced with the fact that his body was failing him which made it harder for him to see and walk. But there is one important message I came away with from those conversations and his not suggestion but assignment that I read his book, A Commonsense Book of Death.

That message was that ultimately it comes down to two questions when we are trying to help people: Where do you hurt? and How can I help you?

How simple that is, yet we’ve complicated it so much, especially in this time of anger and animosity we have toward our fellow human beings. We have more suicide prevention resources (I’m not talking about hospital beds– that resource we have never have enough of and that’s another topic for another day), but the phone numbers to call, the billboards that remind people to reach out, newspaper articles that discuss the warning signs of suicide.

And yet our numbers keep climbing.

I don’t believe we will ever get to zero. It’s wishful thinking that we will eradicate suicide given the pain of both the terminally ill and the severely mentally ill and their constant struggle to find peace in just one moment in a day. However, there are still things we can do to minimize the pain for so many, help people see there is hope in the world, that hope still exists.

I know that life isn’t all warm fuzzies, but don’t be scared to ask someone where they hurt or how you can help. Maybe you don’t know what to do, but there is someone you can ask (there is Google and the national toll-free suicide prevention line is listed there right at the top when you type in the word suicide (1-800-273-8255).

When my colleague JoAnn and I used to do suicide prevention workshops around New Mexico, we always told people that if suicide were so easy to solve, we’d give them a piece of paper and send them on their way.

I don’t expect everyone to know everything about suicide, but I hope that if you are worried about someone– or yourself– that you’ll reach for help, that you’ll hold on for another day (just like the song) because you don’t know what tomorrow will bring. I often say that when the sun comes over the Sandia Mountains just east of my home in Albuquerque– as I’m walking my dogs Hattie and Ash– I have the sense that the slate has been wiped clean during the night and I get to start all over again, no matter what happened the day before.

When people are down because of the way they see the world today, I remind them that if I thought that way, I would just stay in bed rather than get up and attack a long list of things I’d like to accomplish. Whether I might be down about the world or about something happening (or not happening in my own world), I remind myself to reach inside to what does make me happy, what makes me tick.

The glass is half full. Life isn’t easy. Be courageous, I have begun to tell myself.

Telling Stories

I started Chelle Summer mostly to fill a gap for myself– to create items that I really liked. I didn’t expect that along the way I also would create a brand that is about telling stories.

While this idea has sat in the back of my mind for some time, it came to fruition in many ways over the weekend when I was selling at the New Mexico Prickly Pear Festival.

I knew it wouldn’t be enough for everyone to want to stop at my booth– despite the bright colors and prints– some people would need to know that there is a message behind the items I create. While most of the first items I made were created from new fabrics, much of my recent work (with the exception of clothes, however, much of it comes from end rolls or leftovers from manufacturers) is made from either upcycling a vintage item like a dress or fabric that I found at an estate sale.

For me, turning embroidered dishtowels into a tote bag is a way to give those dish towels new life. When I see an item at an estate sale that resonates with me, I realize that the woman who lived in that house kept that item because she either made it or it told a story about her life. And while I will never know what her story was, I know that I can at least give that item new life.

As I pointed out items and told stories about the various fabrics behind the items at my booth to people, many of them told me about the items they have at home that they haven’t figured out what to do with (I do custom work) and others were happy to see items not end up in the landfill (a huge trend in the fashion industry although I had been doing it before it hit “trendy” status).

Ultimately, it goes much deeper than that for me. There are items that belonged to my mom that are long gone, mostly because she and I weren’t sure what to do with them. I think of the shift dress she wore to my first birthday (among other events) and a small piece of fabric that she had made a shirt from and how I hope to recreate one day.

With the cars packed up at the end of the event, I turned mine on and immediately “Hot Hot Hot” by Buster Poindexter began to play on Sirius radio. My mom loved that song and each time I hear it, I know she is with me, doing what my sister Karen calls her “hip shake.”

In that moment, after being present with people all day and sharing the stories of my Chelle Summer collection, I realized Mom was with me, cheering me on. All those items of hers that I mourn in some way gave me Chelle Summer and many more stories to tell.

Perspective

It pains me when Greg’s team loses (especially only the second game of the season), so much so that I found myself contemplating why on my 26-mile drive home from his school on Saturday. An early season loss isn’t a bad thing as long as it’s used as a learning experience. While my head knows that, I don’t think my heart could acknowledge it on Saturday as I left the field.

But I was quickly reminded of my own experiences in high school as a runner and how they have a deep meaning in how hard I work today. And that’s what I realized bothered me so much about the loss.

As a runner (and as I have written in the past), I worked extremely hard and when I started to experience the success of accomplishing my goals, I saw that if I continued to work hard, I would eventually have more success. There was a caveat to this though– I had a hard time overcoming the intense pressure I put on myself and the negative thoughts that plagued my mind.

Because of that, I never truly ran a race up to my potential. I left high school feeling as if I had wasted many opportunities and promised myself, especially after my sister ended her life three years following my high school graduation, that I wouldn’t allow that to happen again.

Deep inside me, that is probably the base of the fire that is always lit inside me and why I have accomplished all that I have (with still much to come!). That’s what I draw on to motivate me each day through a long list of items I want to accomplish, and what I remind myself of when life events and experiences try to drag me down. I take myself back to that teenage girl on the track or at a cross country course and remember the disappointment I felt all those times I finished a race knowing I had squandered yet another opportunity.

We don’t realize how short life is, but it provides us with repeated opportunities to grow and learn and be more than we ever thought we could be. That’s what drives me and keeps the fire inside me lit.