Michelle L. Rusk's Blog, page 29

Finding Joy in Life

My friend Bonnie taught me so much about not just sewing, but life, too. However, there’s a vision of her that saddens me and yet also is a reminder to me of the importance of how we live our lives. She shared much about her life which– like many of us– was littered with disappointments and losses. Her mother had disappeared at some point after Bonnie was married– mental illness taking over– and Bonnie was never able to find her again. Her daughter Sadie suffered some of the most extreme bipolar that I’ve been exposed to.

There were many other things, but I know those two haunted her and I have a vision of us sitting in her crafting room in the later evening hours, her smoking a cigarette, and her face filling with sadness as she shared stories about her life. I knew she was disappointed at much of how her life turned out, finding happiness in cutting and drying her lavender for potpourri, making quilts, devouring a new copy of Martha Stewart or a quilting magazine that had arrived in the mail that day. Or the show and tell she insisted we had when I would arrive for an evening of working on a project.

While he never said it, I also had the sense that my dad was disappointed with life, too. Quite honestly, I don’t really know what his goals and dreams were. My mom said once he wanted to leave her and take off for California and another time she told me that he was an enigma. He shared little, letting his pain simmer while he drank another beer and smoked another cigarette.

I get it. We get older and we question our decisions. Did we choose the right next chapter? The right next road? Did we miss an opportunity because we chose something over another? The routine of life can bog us down. The bills that force us to keep showing up for work rather than be the footloose and fancy free we believe would be more exciting. It’s easy to let sadness and anger boil over when we seemingly believe the grass is greener on the other side.

And that’s when it’s important that we reach back into our lives to find that time that filled us with hope, a time when we believed the world was our oyster and nothing (nothing!) would get in the way. When I feel down for whatever reason (I work at home– I am left alone with my thoughts much of the day– that isn’t always a good thing for someone who has been taught from my doctorate to dissect a lot), I reach back to that time in my life. I might play a song, bring back a memory. Just something that reminds me that I’m not where I want to be. And I can still get there.

Stay the course. The dreams are still alive. The joy is still there. Sometimes it gets lost and it’s up to us to uncover it. Never forget it’s always there waiting to be found again.

The Age Factor

I was doing pretty good for a long time. I had felt my body change at some point in my thirties and then around forty and I made adapted and made changes, mostly in my diet. My ophthalmologist had warned me– checking my birthdate in my chart– that I would be needing reading glasses at some point.

I’ll be honest, it’s disappointing. I keep running– although run-walking some days and trying to be okay with that– because the chronic injuries that I have are all dog or surf related, not from too much running (translation: don’t let your dog run her head into your knee in the stairwell of your house). I swim in the afternoon partly for my mental health, but also because the water makes my body happy, especially my feet.

And the list of foods I can eat in small amounts is growing larger. There is hardly ever bread in the house– or chips. I have no self control and I know it so I don’t keep them tauntingly around.

Finally, a pair of Kate Spade reading glasses rests on the sewing table because sometimes I can’t see well enough to thread a needle. I can’t read the dates on coins anymore without help although the ophthalmologist says I still have great vision, especially for someone my age.

What’s hardest is that we don’t enjoy our youth, the days of eating whatever we wanted to without worry. Or how much we wanted to. Running without feeling any aches and pains is such a happy morning, not one I can take for granted anymore.

I’m not complaining, I’m still lucky that I had parents who passed on great genes to me. Neither one of them really “aged” until the last ten or so years of their lives. Yet, it’s a challenge to find that balance, that middle ground, of being okay that as things change, all is still well. Is it society? Or is it my own warped view of myself? Probably a little bit of both. Sometimes it just feels like I didn’t appreciate all that I was given until it was starting to seemingly fall apart.

Then I ask myself what I was doing all that time that it didn’t feel like I had appreciated it. And I am reminded that I was busy living my life. Just as I should be.

The Challenge to be Yourself

The goals are high, the dreams are big. And yet I don’t believe I could do it any other way if I were going to be true to myself.

I realize that my life would have been easier professionally and personally if I had chosen to follow something more mainstream. However, when I looked at a future with a family and kids in the suburbs, and even life as a stay-at-home-mom, I knew I’d never be happy. I also saw that it wouldn’t be fair to the family I’d have. Families need to be nurtured and it takes time to do that. My time, I felt, needed to be spent birthing books and working in creatives realm that sometimes take time I might not have otherwise.

From the age of six, I knew I wanted to be a writer and that has shaped much of my trajectory. I see now how life kept me from certain things, like solid romantic relationships before I moved to New Mexico. When I was a high school student and then a college student, while I wanted a relationship on one level, I also saw how it would have easily complicated my life and kept me from moving west. I’d always wanted to live in Los Angeles and while I didn’t quite make it that far, Albuquerque is definitely my home now and LA my other home.

But choosing that road has meant I have sacrificed opportunties along the way. I’ve also put myself on the outside ring of relationships because of the distance. In this, I have also learned that no matter what road we choose, there are sacrifices. What has meant the most to me is not just being who I believe I’m supposed to be, but being more than presently I am.

Most of all, I’m being true to myself which is worth every road I have chosen.

Life and the Ocean

I really hoped that on this LA trip that I would finally get to surf again. It’s been several years since my shoulder started to sub flex (pop out) and I’ve been scared in the water since the time it happened while I was paddling in the surf.

In the year since seeing an orthopedic who told me to go on with my life, that he wasn’t going to do surgery (not that I wanted surgery) because I would only lose range of motion, I’ve been doing exercises three times a week on a ball, hoping to strengthen my shoulder. After a dismal June gloom trip to LA in June, we decided we’d try one more time before soccer and school start again for Greg. The weather was perfect, the water comfortable, and I had lugged Orangey, my surfboard, down the hill from the parking lot to the beach.

Yet as I stood at the water’s edge I was scared. I knew I needed a day where the ocean looks like glass and I could paddle around without worry of getting tumbled around. However, I wasn’t going to get it. I thought I would swim a while and get my courage up. That lasted until I got tumbled around and– bam– the shoulder popped out.

Instead, I found myself standing at the water’s edge again, my arm popped back in, but sore, and knowing that it wouldn’t happen on this trip.

I started to ask myself what I’m so afraid of, why I chronically have dreams where I’m back in high school and late to class or can’t get my luggage packed on time to make an international flight– all signs, I’ve read, that I’m afraid to seize an opportunity. I have certain goals in my life that I want so badly to achieve and I’m constantly asking myself what’s holding me back from getting where I want to be.

The ocean is such a good metaphor for life. When I first started surfing ten years ago, I remember my fear of getting past the breaks in the ocean– in many ways right back where I am although for different reasons (the fear of my shoulder popping out). The breaks are the events in life, the ones that we have to traverse or plow through somehow.

As I write this I don’t have all the answers. But what I do know is that I’m constantly asking to move forward, to learn what I must learn to to move forward. And when I reflect back on the eight years since I first climbed onto a surfboard, I see what life taught me about moving forward as I navigated the end of a marriage, a divorce, and moving forward from all of it.

Now, when I’m not sure that I will ever surf again, I see that life is teaching me other lessons about continuing to forge forward, even in the face of the unknown. I don’t like them, yet I know that if I learn from them I will move forward, onto what’s next for my life.

Life is too short to not pay attention to the messages the ocean gives us.

The loss of something, the open door of something greater

Some years ago– not long after I had returned to Albuquerque after my short time in Chicago post divorce– I had a conversation with one of the priests at my church. I asked him about something he had said in one of his homilies, that sometimes God asks us to give up something for something greater.

I explained that in my divorce, I had given up the house in Albuquerque (we had a second home in my hometown in the Chicago area so that’s where I moved to) which also meant I gave up the swimming pool. I knew one day I would have a pool again, but I hated not having the instance access to the water that brought me so much peace and happiness.

When I had the opportunity to return, I told Fr. Anthony, I knew I wouldn’t give up the pool again.

So how could God ask me to give up the pool again? I asked him.

He thought for a moment and then asked me, “What if God asked you to give up your pool for, say, the ocean?”

What he meant was that when we are asked to give something up, it means that there is something greater for us out there.

I know, as I write this, that many people are in pain and doubting me. If something were to happen to me, I would doubt this statement, too.

At first.

But I have learned that when I reflect back on the road there is always something greater for us when we’ve been asked to give something up. The key is that we choose to make the most of our lives here on this earth, to learn as much as we can, and to be more than we presently are. Traveling that road isn’t an easy one, however, it’s the most rewarding one.

We must be willing to give up something for an unknown behind a door we haven’t opened. And believe. And trust. And know that when we reflect back on the road, we’ll not just understand it, but be grateful for it.

What do you say?

When my sister died– and it was over twenty-five years ago when there was much more stigma surrounding suicide than there is now– I remember thinking how could she end her life, believing that she valued and cherished life much more than I did. And that also meant people often didn’t know what to say to me.

But there is another time that leaves people speechless– after a suicide attempt.

What do we say to someone who has attempted life? Life is the whole of everything we do and believe and when someone tries to end it, we know it goes against everything we’ve been taught about preserving it.

In the years that I trained people in suicide prevention and in the experiences I’ve had working with suicidal people/attempters, I’ve learned that it’s an opportunity to be there for someone, a time not to speak, but to allow them to speak. Suicidal people are looking for a way to express their pain and when they don’t find it, they might attempt to end their lives.

They don’t need to hear from us how wonderful their lives are and how great they are. They are trying to reconcile feelings inside themselves that we might not have any idea are there.

We have a tendency to want them to stand in a sunny place with us. The spot where they are standing is stormy and they don’t want to move from it until they have an opportunity to express the pain they feel, the road that led them to the attempt, and how much they hurt. It’s like the clouds in the sky continuing to hover until they’ve had a chance to drop moisture on the earth. Expressing the bad allows us to see the good again.

It’s a relief for them to express their pain and sometimes enough for them to move forward. Others might need more help in the vein of a therapist or someone to walk the road for them as they try to find a way forward. There might be other circumstances around the attempt that they need to cope with as well. No matter the depth of their needs, there is a place for all of us to be there for them to some extent.

Ultimately, I think of the founder of the field of suicidology, Edwin Shneidman, who said that it came down to two questions: “Where do you hurt?” and “How can I help?”

Resting in Prayer

I will be the first to admit that I live a fairly hurried life, much to my own choice. However, what many people don’t realize is that I pray twice a day and it’s during that time– especially during my second prayer– that not only do I rest, but so do my requests for my life.

I have written before that my first prayer takes place on my run with Lilly around 5:00 am every day. That time is set aside mostly to say thank you for everything that happened the previous day and throw out any requests as well. It also helps the run go faster by keeping my thoughts centered.

Then after the dogs have been fed, but before my shower, I sit with a lit candle for five minutes and that prayer is devoted to throwing out my requests. In the colder months, I do this at my desk, however, in the summer, I let my feet rest after my workout on the top step of the swimming pool.

Not only are my feet resting in the cold water, but so are my thoughts, my requests, my hopes. And I am getting a rest before I venture into the rest of my day.

I’m not perfect at prayer– I will be the first to admit that I am easily distractible– but it’s a consistent effort on my part to rest and let go of what who and what I want to be. Plus those five minutes allow me to center myself for the day ahead. Resting in prayer helps me recharge and reminds me what’s important and not get caught up in drama or negative thoughts.

I am more productive– and happier– because I take the time for this rest.

The Fun House Mirror

A friend asked me recently what I enjoyed sewing the most and I thought for a minute and told her it’s the swimsuits. There is a dichotomy though because it’s actually really hard for me to post photos of myself in a bikini. I learned a long time ago that how everyone sees me is not how I see myself. Each time I look in the mirror, my mirror is a fun house mirror. Somehow somewhere along the way, everything became distorted.

Some days it looks really good, other days, it’s really hard. This isn’t something new in my life– I skipped wearing bikinis between about age 8 and age 26 because I didn’t believe I looked good enough to wear them. But I also have come to understand that my distortion comes somewhat from the media but mostly because when I lack control in other aspects of my life, what I believe I can control is how I look.

If I’m having a bad day, if I’m tired, or if I’m irritated that my professional life isn’t progressing where I’d like it to be, Isomehow let the control seep into how I look. Knowing where it comes from hasn’t made it dissolve from my life, but it has allowed me to at least understand it which– for me– is the first step in figuring out how to let it go.

But during this time that I’ve been able to understand this for myself, I’ve also started working more closely with women to make custom clothing and I’ve begun to also understand how much we all have some aspect of ourselves we are uncomfortable with and want to cover up, particularly as we age. While I know what parts of my body I struggle with, when women reveal to me what they don’t like about their own, I realize then how we all have a fun house mirror of ourselves.

I don’t have answers, I’m not proposing any here, but I do believe that somewhere inside us we all have the ability to let go of that distortion. The question is how we get there. I am hopeful that in time I’ll be able to do that for myself and perhaps help others do the same.

And maybe it’s yet another part of Chelle Summer, teaching me that it’s more than making clothes, but another step in helping others go forward in their life journeys as I go forward in my own.

A Time of Reflection

Sometimes when I think back on years past, it’s hard to believe how much has happened.

Last year this time I was recovering from having my uterus removed. While I dealt with anesthesia complications for several months, what’s more amazing is to see how much I’ve accomplished since then, especially regarding my sewing.

I can admit now– I didn’t then because I was trying to push through it– that I really struggled getting my sewing projects done. More than anything, I was holding myself back because of my own fears. I can’t explain what it was– was I afraid things would come out wrong? Was I afraid I couldn’t figure out how to do something?

Whatever it was, I finally managed to tell myself to suck it up and just make things and not worry about how they came out, that each item I messed up in some way would be a reminder of how to do it better next time. After all– and I can hear my mother’s words echoing in my head to go practice my flute– you don’t get better unless you keep practicing.

And not only do you get better, you realize you can accomplish more in the same amount of time because you are better. So while things aren’t perfect, my skills are increasing because I’m constantly experimenting and trying new things.

After spending last summer between anesthesia complications and running off to various doctor and physical therapy appointments trying to help my shoulder heal (obviously unrelated to my uterus) from continually sub flexing (popping out)), I gave myself time to heal and take care of myself. As summer turned to fall and then winter, I felt as if I could put the focus back on my projects and I did so with a vengeance.

As the inspiration continues to fall like stars in front of me, I can only hope that this new road will lead me to the new places I’ve been itching to go for some time. I’ll keep walking, keep creating, and let the rest fall into place.

Wanderlust

I was raised on wanderlust.

I didn’t know it, but from my childhood on, the importance of travel was implanted in me through life experiences. My maternal grandparents lived so close to O’Hare Airport in Chicago that if you were having a conversation on the phone when a jet flew overhead, you had to wait for the jet to pass to continue the conversation.

But what I remember most are the drives to and from their house– from our house in the western suburbs– that not just took us right by the airport, but along the tollway lined with billboards of the places that airlines like Pam American and Eastern were now flying to. There was non-stop escape to islands and the idea of visiting homelands like Poland. New high rise hotels replaced the smaller two-story ones as I grew up, O’Hare added terminals.

The world of travel increased and with it went my grandparents behind the Iron Curtain to Poland to see relatives. And to Egypt to ride camels (at least that’s the memory I have– I don’t have the photo evidence that I once saw, but my sister Karen has the stuffed camel they brought our mother back from the trip). They always brought us ten grandchildren gifts home including a wooden doll from Poland, a coin purse from Rome, a beaded necklace that I’m not sure where it’s from. There was always something, something I didn’t understand about the significance of where it came from.

There also were trips to the airport– all of us grandchildren tagging along– to see Grandma and Grandpa off on yet another trip, the long-gone days when we could all trek to the gate and see someone walk through the door to the jetway to the plane.

My mother longed to travel and we did all over the United States in the station wagon, my dad content not to leave the continent because he had “seen the world” in the Navy in late 1940s into the 1950s. Mom went to travel school and to work for the old Midway Airlines so that she could take us (particularly my younger sister Denise and I) on day trips like to shop at Macys in New York City (long before we were mad at Macys for taking away our beloved Marshall Fields).

While we’d been all over Canada and over the border to Mexico, it wasn’t until 2005 that I took my first trip overseas to Europe, staying with my junior high and high school pen pals, people I’d never met before but whom I shared my life through letters and photos. And who then shared with me their worlds in person.

My world became smaller and life led me overseas once or twice a year for multiple years.

For some people, Morroco might seem far away, like another world, and in many ways it is. But for me, it was yet another place to explore and learn from, just as I’d seen in the magazines and books in one of the bedrooms of my grandparents house as the jets flew overhead, taking people all over the world.