Author: Magda Gee

This author has written 599 articles

What Is Love?

 

Driving through Compton, my boys, knowing just enough about the area,  questioned a billboard boasting,  “We love Compton” inside a giant red heart.  Baffled, they asked–  “Why would anyone love Compton?”  The organic opportunity to explore and share my thoughts on love in the moment was pretty sweet– that love is not just for people and things when they please us or make us feel good– That just means we enjoy them.  The billboard is communicating that there are people who care for Compton and are contributing to better living for the families of a  struggling community.  Laughing, I added- “While I always want what is best for you, you don’t always make me feel good, nor do I always enjoy you.  But, I do and always will love you.” (more…)

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Loyalty

Discovering loyalty, which, fingers crossed, will come bundled with learning to forgive betrayal-  is a BIIIIIG part of my journey.  Forgiveness is something I struggle to do the way my family demands grasp.  Or maybe I fully understand it and am ill-at-ease with the fact that my definition  not accepted, by those who do not accept me differs from those who think it means pretending It never happened. Deep sigh. (more…)

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Silence

Not stoic enough to be silent or aloof,  I am practicing saying and doing nothing in response to underhanded invitations to enter into indirect conflict.  While I
now set boundaries for only myself, without arguing to be heard, my abstinence from standard entanglement is labelled abandonment—“cutting them off”  because that is how silence is used in my family.  I just say No.  Or Sorry that won’t work until it no longer makes sense to say it again.

So, I have mostly quieted my mouth, but my head still spins with all the things I wish to say or stop feeling and thinking. Silence with a trusted other is golden.

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Golden Memories

Thank you, Joel Osteen, for a reminder that life is about making memories.  Shared experiences and connections….rather than required and posed photos with others in close proximity.  I have too many photos suggestive of good times and connection and have been often saddened that the lack of posed photos in recent years is proof of the opposite.  Truth, I hide from the camera because pictures can lie…or worse, they can tell the truth!  For OUR 2016 Thanksgiving, however, it would have been nice to have someone snapping pictures on the down-low, of us just doing our thing, laughing, playing, being who we are.  Journalistic photos are my fave.  Posing genuinely 100% pains me.  I wouldn’t mind some photos of us, in action, enjoying ourselves each other.

In addition to OUR sweet Thanksgiving Day,  today, the Sunday after Thanksgiving (maybe the start of a ritual-memory making) we decorated both Christmas Trees, while listening to COUNTRY holiday music- taking breaks to throw football, walk dogs, and eat pizza.   I experience the joy in simple moments when I am present enough to just show up.  I don’t recall too many good moments in my life.  I recall pretending but not feeling truly good, present, visible, and welcome.  For special occasions, I must ride only with those who will help me push!
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The Key

Humbled and entertained to recall a time I broke my key off in the lock, and out of habit or training, I mentally condemned all who surely contributed---the lock manufacturer, the key cutter,…

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Best Day Ever

Keep It SimpleFirst mellllllllow Thanksgiving ever:  Greg and I grimaced over the 7 menu items actually requiring work, imagining the stress of those with a vision for exactly how the grand feast must be presented and received.  Probably, easier done without consideration for children and individual preferences.   We were relaxed about our “plan”, and still– managing timing the dishes to be throughly cooked and hot -at all at once, felt challenging.  S1 announced that he was “starving” before the meal was fully prepared. So, he ate his meal in courses, while S2 and Greg’s son played outside-before the official Feast time.

Greg did the turkey breast, cringing for removal, with surgical precision, each of the less nice parts.  I love that we are united in our stance about wiggly meat and yucky parts. I grilled flank steaks as my alternative to the traditional holiday meats.   A nice compliment to Greg’s turkey, the potatoes, corn pudding, stuffing, and green beans. For dessert for my team enjoyed pumpkin pie hidden beneath mountains of whipped cream, while Team Greg had Chocolate Cream Pie. Everybody got to be, do, and eat as they like. Now, that is Thanksgiving! (more…)

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Thanksgiving Thoughts for Those Contemplating No Contact

screen-shot-2016-11-24-at-7-50-32-amToday’s post is for those who are suffering; doubting their worthiness. Nothing like special occasions to revive the myth that we, the unlovable, must hustle for our worth- that there are pre-requisites for unconditional belonging and nurturing love. There are those among us who understand and embrace our responsibility to share our experience and courage to Change the Things We Can.

Holidays, birthdays, and my wedding too, were times of dread, anxiety, and despair, and of course shame for not being a more happy and light-hearted and good person. “What is her problem?” “Why does she have to ruin everything? Why must she be impossible?” “Why cant she just smile for the picture?”  Un-ironically(Is that even a word?), I knowingly entered into a marriage equally nurturing, mirroring that dynamic, which for the first 32 years of my life, made me long for death.  Call me dramatic, whatever.  This is my story.

Looking back, I see that I was ill for most occasions. Vomiting has always been my natural and given response to stress and an immense source of relief for me.  My body knows the truth–keeps the score. (more…)

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Big Heart–Big Boundaries

screen-shot-2016-11-22-at-10-33-49-amMost of my life, I have wished for the ability to Act As If…

Being intensely feeling in an insensitive world does have a priceless upside:   Informed and compassionate, I  support my older son (S1) who is also highly sensitive with neurological differences making him more vulnerable to sensory input as well as emotional energy.  Atypical wiring holds our Limbic Systems at full throttle 24/7 .  A constant state of “fight or flight” causes fatigue, and lessens resilience to stress.  In my family, two of the kinder labels for this, were difficult and thin-skinned.

 

Without familiarity, I would be unable, perhaps unwilling to protect and empathize as children deserve.  S1 becomes emotional over perceived  unfairness or unkindness occurring in those subtle and hard to name ways.  His large reaction can steal the show and focus might be directed at teaching shaming him into gaining control of himself–purely to avoid punishment.  With little inquiry or action around understanding the  subtle or mistaken “offense”.

 

Whatever the offense, it will go dismissed unaddressed by those not wired to understand.  Granted, there are times where he is overtired and ovehard timer-reacting…but not always the case.  He recognizes the difference and we get to laugh later when he is ready to share without shame, that he was too tired to cope and had decomposed into crazy cryer.  Demonstrating how it is real and ok to be sensitive allows him to know when it is necessary to seek serenity and safety  (more…)

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Happy? Birthday

giftHello Friends,  Last month, my Darling stumped me with “So…what do you want for your birthday?”.

In a tone suggesting, “Please don’t make me think about it.”, my knee-jerk response was “I don’t know”.

Asked by some, “What do you want for your birthday?”, I might say:  “Nothing, really”, name something they’d enjoy getting me, OR roll the dice and share the truth-and wind up with a “gift” indicative of not being heard or valued. (more…)

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