What’s in Your Bucket?

To dream the impossible dream…To try when your arms are too weary/ To reach the unreachable star.

Those in the know have observed that individuals having the most difficulty in the last stage of life as they prepare to pass through the veil are those with the most regrets. Thus, we have coined the term Bucket List for those things we want to do before we die. When you consider the really important things in life, I’ve been truly blessed and in terms of what’s left to do were I to write it down, I’d have a fairly short bucket list. So when a dear friend shared her excitement about a new program for holistic nurses, I was surprised at how much I regretted that it was no longer an option for me. The regret is more a holdover from years ago than something I truly desire to do today. One of my blessings was “accidentally” getting in on the very beginning of the Healing Touch Program and what a ride it was. In a real sense, I was ahead of my time in our culture and, oh, the changes I’ve seen in health care over the past twenty-five years. There is an opening and interest within health care now for the body/mind/spirit concepts of integrative health care and for the program my nurse friend is excited about; that I’m excited about for her.

Now retired from acute care hospital nursing and from my role as a Healing Touch Instructor, it’s challenging that I find what I can do, what dreams remain. In my adolescence I dreamed of being a movie star. During my stint as editor of our high school newspaper, I had the thrill of lunching with alumni; journalists who had risen to the top in the Seattle P-I and Seattle TIMES so, naturally, as I prepared to go off to college, I fantasized about being a journalist. I never dreamed or fantasized about being a nurse and yet that was my calling. I hadn’t even heard of energy medicine and yet I was called to it. What am I being called to in my 70’s? What is your “being” called to?

I think I always fantasized about being a writer and got a teensy thrill recently when an article I wrote was published. I have found that in the doing you discover your being. I don’t know that I’m driven to a “glorious quest” but I’m still growing up, yes? John Lennon’s mother told him that happiness was the key to life. In school when he was asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, he wrote down, “happy.” They told him he didn’t understand the assignment. He told them they didn’t understand life. Don’t you think that being happy is a glorious quest at any age? What makes you happy?

And I know if I’ll only be true to this glorious quest/ That my heart will lie peaceful and calm when I’m laid to my rest…

The Impossible Dream from Man of La Mancha.

Guten Tag

Like a tunnel that you follow/ To a tunnel of it’s own/ Down a hollow to a cavern/ Where the sun has never shown.

My mother who lived just long enough to observe 100 years struggled with painful arthritic knees and other condition often associated with aging.  Like many others she often declared that getting old wasn’t easy.  During the Tapping Summit (referred to in the March 5th blog), I listened to a presentation by Pat Carrington, PhD on Aging Gracefully.  She’s in her late 80’s, without any health problems, doesn’t take prescription medications but does take supplements.  Certainly her perception of life and aging is different from others her age or even younger. One of her health tools is tapping.

Our culture fosters growth in our young, i.e., growing up.  Growing old has a whole different connotation, a negative one.  Carrington focuses on the word grow.  “We need to see ourselves as growing.”  Part of her tapping script is, “I choose to notice how different I am than I was a year ago or even a few months ago.  I choose to find it natural to learn new things.”

How am I different than I was one year ago?  I’m wiser.  I was eight months into widowhood then and saying a final goodbye to my mother.  I’ve had to deal with a plethora of challenges, i.e., I’ve had to grow.  I’ve had to grow up just as a first grader has to learn and grow.  Some lessons are harder than others.  I’ve had to do taxes!  And this new Alpha-dog computer program hasn’t been easy — dominating way too much of my time and energy.  Currently I’m learning German in anticipation of a trip to Germany later this year.

My newly acquired wisdom is teaching me to embrace the challenges and not resist.  It’s an important lesson.  As they say, what you resist, persists.

Tap with me (anywhere): I choose to expand my horizons in unexpected ways as I age.  I choose to be ever more my real self as the years go by.  I choose to be more and more me as I GROW older.

Auf Wiedersehen.

Like a door that keeps revolving/ In a half forgotten dream/ Or the ripples from a pebble/ Someone tosses in a stream.

Windmills of My Mind.  Songwriters: Michel Legrand, Alan & Marilyn Bergman 

Windmills of My Mind

Like a circle in a spiral/ Like a wheel within a wheel/ Never ending or beginning/ On an ever spinning reel.

It begins with an aura of bright light and then the end of the word I’m reading disappears.  A familiar experience although not a recent one so before losing my speech and before the migraine takes hold, I gobble down an anti-histamine and Excedrine.  The immobilizing headache still comes on but the meds blunt its impact.  I can only rest in the recliner and wait for the headache to subside while I ponder the emotional causation.  In addition to physical factors (it’s definitely allergy season), there’s always an emotional element.  I connected with a current issue that had me feeling sorry for myself, however, clarity came the following morning in meditation.  I was just days away from the first anniversary of my mother’s death.  We all know the effect of anniversaries on the grieving process and still they have a way of silently sneaking up on us.

There are medications for the symptoms of grief but not for the cause.  “Coincidentally,” I had previously registered for Nick and Jessica Ortner’s online Tapping Summit that was just beginning.  EFT or Emotional Freedom Technique involves tapping on acupuncture points while addressing mental/emotional issues, beginning with reverse psychology (a negative) and then followed by a positive, e.g., Even though I miss my mother and have this excruciating headache, I deeply and completely love and accept myself.   You can view a demonstration of tapping on YouTube.  While I taught a most effective Healing Touch technique and used it in the hospital to relieve migraines not controlled with powerful narcotics, it requires a practitioner or super long arms to use on yourself.  Tapping works.  My friend, Joanna Cummings, author of Kicking Butts, and in her alter ego as Nicotina, uses tapping for smoking cessation, and has been teaching tapping to veterans as a way of managing their PTSD.

The images unwind as I reminisce about my mother; her grit and determination and her sense of humor even as she began her transition.  I cry at times.  Beats a headache.  Meanwhile, the roses are pruned thanks again to the Rose Man’s friend from the Seattle Rose Society, Jason, and a yard full of neighbors who once again showed up in spite of the drizzle.  A Rose Garden Party is planned for June.

As the images unwind/ Like the circles/ That you find/ In the windmills of your mind. 

Songwiters: Michel Legrand, Alan and Marilyn Bergman.