Love, Empty Nest Syndrome, and From kind of a meltdown to Almost back to normal

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At least Fluff still lives at home. And a picnic below.

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I still miss my Aral tons. I really think we were meant to live as family units all our lives. This nuclear family bs is just that, bs!

Anyway, I sort of had a meltdown, crying all the way here from Buffalo, and this morning was no cake and ice cream walk either.

They say love is what a mother feels for her newborn, I mean the emotion of love is based totally on what a mother feels when she sees her newborn. Romantic love is just that feeling transferred to your romantic partner. So of course, when a mother is separated from her child, she is going to experience heartbreak, elementary my dear Watson. The first time I felt that awful, sickening heartbreak was when Aral went to college. I didn’t get out of bed for a week, could not stop crying for the Kohinoor diamond, and just felt, in the pit of my stomach, that nothing was ever going to be right again. Not ever. And I know other moms who felt the same way as me. Just today, at a picnic, a friend who is a mom said she is planning on buying three lots of land adjacent to each other, to build three houses, one for herself and her husband, one for her son, and one for her daughter, so they cal always live close to one another and never be separated. Yesterday, on the plane, the woman seated next to me and I were talking, and she said that when her first son went to college, she basically went to bed for four days and couldn’t even talk to her son for weeks because her emotions were so raw, that she was afraid she was going to upset him. Another friend used the exact same phrase as I did, “Nothing will ever be ok again” when her daughter went off to college.

This is what we women have to go through. Maybe mine is a little more extreme because I have a mood disorder, but not much more extreme. Or more likely, at this extremely stressful time, all moms “develop” mood disorders, temporarily. These are extremely powerful emotions, maybe the most powerful emotion in the world, the love of a mother for her child. It is a survival of the species thing, if mothers didn’t love and adore their children, they would not take care of them, if they didn’t take care of them, the babies would not survive, and if the babies didn’t survive, the human race would die out. Therefore, this love a mother feels for her child has to be so powerful that it leads to the survival of the human species. And when that bond is broken, then the strength of the pain is proportional to the strength of the powerful love. And so we have empty nest syndrome. Awful, awful, awful, heartbreaking, most horrible feeling in the world. I sort of go through that every time I leave Aral in Buffalo after my visit. If love is a drug, and as I have hypothesized, maternal love is the most powerful of loves, then we mothers experience the most powerful of withdrawal symptoms when our babies leave the nest. Aaaah! So not fair. And so awful.

Well anyway, I am getting over my Aral withdrawals, and becoming a person again instead of a human water (tear) producing system.

I have to learn my lines! My play practice is in a day, and I have to learn my lines. I’m taking today off for empty nest, and tomorrow, back to business and learning lines.

Self Compassion

LAO TZU

Self compassion: To treat yourself with love and patience. To not condemn yourself. To treat yourself as you would a very beloved child. People make mistakes, everyone does. It doesn’t help to be angry at yourself, it doesn’t help to denigrate your self. How do you think is the best way to teach someone? By yelling and screaming at them, basic training style? Or by being patient and benevolent towards them? The whole point of basic training in the army is to lose your sense of self. You no longer exist, only a subordinate, obedient, robot, who, when the sergeant says “Jump!” only says “How high sir?” You don’t question anything, you just do as you are told. This may be, tragically, how things have to be in the Armed Forces, but it is not the way civilian life is lived. We are all individuals, and we celebrate that individuality. People aren’t brow beaten or worse physically beaten to learn something. Also, if someone makes a mistake, there is no corporal punishment. Ideally, they would be told that everyone makes mistakes and not to worry. If we believe that that is how a person is to be treated, with compassion, patience and love, if we believe that, then why don’t we believe that we also deserve this treatment. I have a cat and she is going to be 20 years old in June! I would NEVER dream of yelling at her. I treat her with the utmost love and affection. I cherish her because she is my sweetest little one and now because I don’t know how much longer she will be here. In short, I absolutely adore this kitty of mine. Now do I deserve the same treatment from me as my cat gets? Or do I call myself stupid when I make a mistake and get really angry at myself?

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Truthfully, I think I am always too easy on myself and other people (is there something as too easy?) Maybe that’s why I’m not as disciplined as I should be. Wait, how much should I be? Uh oh, here I go “shoulding” on myself haha.

But seriously, wouldn’t it be great if we could hold ourselves in a loving embrace, figuratively speaking, and treat ourselves with warm compassion instead of anger, dislike and even self hatred? Do you think you hack a plant to pieces in a rage, that it would grow and flower for you? Umm no. What if you treated a plant like a beloved being, watering, pruning, even talking to it. Would it grow and bloom in this instance? Plants are living beings like we are. If love and compassion and care makes them flourish, what would it do for us?

Below is from the following website I found: http://www.mindfulselfcompassion.org/ They have workshops all over the country about Mindful Self Compassion. They also have books they recommend. Links below.

Mindful self-compassion is the foundation of emotional healing—being aware (mindfulness) in the present moment when we’re struggling with feelings of inadequacy, despair, confusion, and other forms of stress and responding with kindness and understanding (self-compassion). Mindful self-compassion also means holding difficult emotions—fear, anger, sadness, shame and self-doubt—and ourselves, in loving awareness, leading to greater ease and well-being in our daily lives.

***Mindful self-compassion can be learned by anyone. It’s the practice of repeatedly evoking good will toward ourselves especially when we’re suffering—cultivating the same desire that all living beings have to live happily and free from suffering. And as the Dalai Lama says, self-compassion is the first step toward compassion for others.*** Love this!

Books

Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourselfhttp://www.amazon.com/Self-Compassion-Judging-Yourself-Embrace-Being/dp/0061733512/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1288576732&sr=1-6

The Mindful Path to Self Compassion: http://www.guilford.com/books/The-Mindful-Path-to-Self-Compassion/Christopher-Germer/9781593859756