Tag: Writing

Set Boundaries. Your Heart Will Thank You for it.

I’m a full-blooded, empath people-pleaser with a built-in pain detector. A complete stranger can pour out their heart to me, and tears gush from my eyes like Niagara Falls. Sometimes, I even feel guilty, as if it were my fault somehow. And I always, always, always want to dive in and fix it.

People love empath, people-pleasers. Right? They will stick to them like glue, treat them like royalty, and never, ever leave them stranded in a dark and lonely place. Right?

WRONG!

People with a false sense of entitlement love to be pleased by people-pleasers. They love controlling, confusing, and gaslighting them, making them feel helpless and believing they could never live without them. The world is full of predators like that. And they can crop up in the least expected places.

I think my first introduction to reality was when I bought a car from this guy recommended by a friend. The only problem was, he needed a few weeks to get it up and running. I was a single mom in much need of a car with a motor and four wheels. But what I got were empty promises from a jerk who took my hard-earned cash, and built himself a Nomad, dream car using the parts from the phantom car I bought, and skipped town, never to be seen or heard from again.

Was I angry? Not one bit. I just wanted to wrap my fingers around his scrawny neck and choke him till his eyeballs popped out of his head and rolled across the floor! I just wanted to hammer his brains out, rip off his arms and legs, and drag him to a den of starving lions. . . Over and over again!

Still, my stubborn, fearful heart refused the silly notion of setting boundaries. Besides, Christians aren’t supposed to have boundaries. Christians are supposed to turn the other cheek, wash people’s dirty feet with their tears, and keep giving away their soul.

But, where does it say that in the Bible? Matthew 5:38, where Jesus says to turn the other cheek, is He telling His followers to be doormats, allowing others to walk all over us? Is He telling us to be weak and surrender to our abusers?

No. But that’s what my twisted, religious brain believed. Now, a thousand years and a million scars later, I believe that Jesus was and is teaching His followers to live in peace with one another; to hold on to our integrity by snuffing out the flames of revenge. Turn the other cheek and walk away. But, if they follow you, stand your ground. And if they come at you with a knife, fight like hell to protect yourself. That’s what I believe today.

But how do you set boundaries when you’ve never had them before? When you’re afraid that people will hate you for it and turn others against you because of it. How will you survive without your family and friends?

You start by saying no. No, I won’t allow you to hurt me anymore. No, I won’t be manipulated and controlled anymore. No, I refuse to bow down and kiss your feet just to keep you in my life when you’re killing me. No more crossing the line. No more sleepless nights. No more guilt and shame. No more! You choose to believe in yourself, to love and respect yourself, and to live in peace, with or without them.

My circle of friends is very small these days. And that’s the way I like it. The less people I have in my circle, the less stress I have in my life. And at my age, I don’t have much time left to waste on users and abusers.

I’m still an empath. I still enjoy pleasing others. But not for the same reasons anymore. The people I once allowed into my heart broke it to pieces. The scars run deep. Recovery has been long and painful, like crawling through a dark, slimy sewer with a zillion rats eating me alive. That’s when I finally woke up. When I finally realized that my own family was killing my soul. That’s when I put up a no trespassing sign and closed the gate and locked it. And that’s when the painful healing began.

With the heart of a lion, I endured all the ramifications of walking away; the glaring eyes, the shunning, the blame, the gossip, and overwhelming feelings of anger, hurt, and shame, hours spent questioning my sanity, and the fierce temptation to fall on my knees and beg forgiveness. The story of my life. But not this time. This is the time I break the chains and take back my life. This is when I dig deep into my troubled soul, scoop out my broken inner child and learn to love her. This is when I planted my heart in the rich soil of truth, watered it with my tears, and slowly began learning, forgiving, and growing.

What about you? Do you allow people to take advantage of you and hurt you over and over again? Do you grit your teeth and just bear it? Maybe it’s time to figure out why you keep allowing that abuse. Maybe it’s time to draw the line. Even if it hurts. And it will hurt like hell. You just gotta be tough and do it. If you don’t, you will never have the peace and satisfaction you long for.

Overwhelmed

So, it’s been a while since I’ve written, or even wanted to. For many reasons. A library full of reasons. All frustrating. All senseless. All just down right debilitating.

As some of you know, I’m old. Some days, I’m walking on air. Most days I’m crawling over broken glass. Naked. My mother told me not to get old. But I never listened to her. I have my own way of doing things. Besides, getting old can’t be that bad. Can it?

Oh, yeah!

Of course, I do have a Chicken Little view of life; a mind-set I’ve been working on for ages. And that in itself is bad enough, especially when you’re old, and everything is falling apart, with no signs of things ever getting better, because your body has gone on strike!

Yep! The sky is falling! The sun has quit shining and will never shine again. The only thing waiting for me at the end of this suffocating, dark tunnel is a pine box adorned with flowers that are doomed to shrivel up and die, too.

Old age is scary for people like me. Even people with their heads screwed on tight have their scary moments. But Chicken Little people are just, flat-out doomed!

Trust me, old age is tough. Especially for those of us who takes the bull by the horns and does whatever needs to be done. People of action. People of strength and determination. That’s me. And that’s the woman I miss. My younger self. The one who packed up her bags and left me stranded just when I need her the most. Just when the house is falling apart, the yard is washing away, the weeds are taking over my flower beds, the trees are sky-high and dropping limbs all over the place, and everything is shot to smithereens. Betrayal of the worst kind!

Frustration laced with anger and confusion and fear and grief and loneliness and depression hardly covers the overwhelming feelings at times. Bawling my eyes out helps. Talking to God helps the most. I do that a lot these days. Who else understands me more? Who else can give me the strength and wisdom that I need? Who else can calm my fears?

So, now you know why I haven’t been around for a while. And now you know for real that old age ain’t fun. But it’s not all bad, either. I don’t have to set the alarm anymore. That’s a plus . . . I think.

Legs Are Made for Walking

As a kid, I didn’t think twice about walking five miles to my friend’s house, a mile to the bus stop, or three miles down the road just to see the old paper mill still up and running.

Walking was never a dreaded chore. It was sheer enjoyment. A means of transportation. A trip around the world and back. It’s what I did.

As a single mom with no vehicle and no money to buy one, I walked to and from work, to the grocery store and the Goodwill across the busy highway. I’d put my baby in the stroller and off we’d go. Just the two of us, down the old tree-lined, cracked, broken sidewalks of Wilmington, Delaware.

I was thirty-six when I started jogging and fifty-three when I stopped. At sixty-two, I started jogging again, but not with the same commitment or enthusiasm. It soon dwindled from walking when I felt like it to not walking, period.

But I never quit thinking about how much better off I would be today, had I never quit jogging. Because, now, two years shy of turning eighty, with neuropathy and back problems, it’s tough just getting out of bed.

But, I’m not in a wheelchair, or on oxygen, and because I don’t want to be, I’m going to walk. Maybe ten minutes. Maybe an hour. Maybe three days a week, maybe four or five. Maybe, only one day. But that’s better than not doing it at all.

So yes, I walked today. Really fast because it was freezing. My fingers were on the verge of breaking, and I was a hair from calling my husband to come get me!

A New Beginning

I just finished a brisk twenty-minute walk. Yay! I mention this because I stopped walking when it got so hot last summer, promising myself to start back in the fall. But, everything happened but that.

You know how it goes: I’m too busy, too tired; too not into it. I’ll do it tomorrow. A thousand tomorrows later, my walking shoes sit and cry in the closet.

Thinking about getting fit and making excuses for why I can’t only cause a guilt complex. And already there’s no more room in my brain for that! So, I pledge, not to the New Year, but to myself to get out the door and walk.

If it’s not snowing. Or raining. Or too windy. Or someone mentions shopping!

Just a Dirty Red Brick

A head lacking ideas is an artist’s worst nightmare. It’s like sand running through their veins. Like a near-death experience. Like creative juices stop flowing and their arms and legs fall off. Their brains fall out. And they die. Slowly and painfully, like a zombie.

It was a day like that, sitting at my art table, staring at the bone-dry paintbrush in my hand. Brandon, my then six-year-old grandson, was watching Beauty and the Beast for the umpteenth time, and studying the eye-catching images on Disney DVD covers.

Between Belle getting locked up by the Beast, and refusing his demanding dinner date, I got an idea! Suddenly, the juices started gushing, my heart arose from the dead, and my brains flew back into my skull! I’m alive!

Jumping down from the stool, I said, “Hey, Brandon! You wanna help me build a birdhouse?”

Like a puppy on steroids, he jumped to his feet and followed me out the door, across the backyard, and behind my husband’s workshop. That’s where the bricks were. Neatly stacked against the building, as if waiting for this very moment to become useful again.

Excitedly, I looked at Brandon, his beaming face now drenched with doubt. I guess I’ll just have to prove it to him, I thought to myself. I will create it, and then he will believe it. And that’s what I did. Now everyone believes it.

Final words:
I created many of these brick birdhouses, churches, and schools, and gave them away. I sold a few from a local Christian bookstore, but they were too heavy and awkward to package, so I quit selling them. I kept the one in this post, mostly to see the look on people’s faces when I tell them it was once a dirty red brick.

Things I Believed That I Don’t Anymore

God is mad at me
God is punishing me
God is disappointed in me
God expects me to be perfect

I have to go to church to be a Christian
I have to obey church rules
I can’t dance, take a sip of wine, wear shorts
I can’t question God

Real Christians sacrifice themselves to serve others
Real Christians have faith to jump out of their wheelchairs
Real Christians tithe, even if they can’t pay their mortgage
Real Christians never say no

If your feelings are not Christ-like, hide them
If you have a conflict with your neighbors, bake them a cake
If you speak the truth that hurts, apologize
If you don’t get along with everyone, something is wrong with you

A woman should never leave her abusive husband
A woman should bow down to men
A woman should be seen and not heard
A woman doesn’t deserve respect

I believed all those things and more
Because I was brainwashed
Because my eyes were closed
Because I believed it was the Gospel truth

But, I don’t anymore
God opened my eyes to the Truth
I no longer walk in darkness
Because the Truth has set me free





You’re Only As Poor As You Think You Are

1949. Landenberg, Pennsylvania. Most people never heard of it. But it’s a real place where cat-sized bullfrogs lived, and cows, chickens, roosters, lizards, trees, hills, valleys, brooks, streams, and spring water trickling from ancient rocks. It was a child’s paradise. Better than PlayStation. Even better than iPhones.

No one living there that I knew had running water, heat pumps, or inside toilets. In the old rickety outhouse, newspapers and pages from the Sears catalog served as toilet paper. In the summer, kids went barefoot because they didn’t have shoes to wear. In the winter, we all nearly froze to death.

We swam in the creek in front of the house, ventured through the woods, and straddled fallen trees and limbs pretending they were horses. In the winter we played in the snow, made silly snowmen, threw snowballs, and drank hot chocolate near a blazing fire in the rock fireplace. Living in those plush, rolling hills of Landenberg, Pennsylvania, our family was many things, but poor wasn’t one of them. We were the richest family on the planet.

It was going to be our forever home until sickness drove us out. Doctor’s orders. The house was too damp, he said. I guess he was right because, every winter, Daddy suffered bouts with malaria, complements of WWII, and Kenny and I had rheumatic fever.

It was night, and Mom was in the hospital when Daddy rented a truck, packed our few belongings, and drove us into the real world with all its bells and whistles; so-called luxuries that people couldn’t live without. Bigger houses, fancier clothes, and a schoolhouse with more than one room. It even had running water, toilets you could actually flush, and real toilet paper.

We moved to Cooches Bridge, a historic district located at Old Baltimore Pike, Newark, Delaware, not far from Landenberg. However, we didn’t move into a bigger, fancier house like those down the road. We moved into a tiny, upstairs cinder-block apartment with dozens of homing pigeons roosting and cooing below. I called it the pigeon coup. Daddy had his woodworking shop down there. He liked it. It had a flushing toilet.

Mom liked it there, too. She didn’t have to carry in firewood, wash clothes on the scrub board, and get up in the freezing cold each morning to start the fire in the wood stove and fireplaces.

I loathed living there. Compared to our magnificently, rundown, creaky, little three-story farmhouse in paradise, this was like a grassless, treeless, waterless, critterless, rockless prison! I was too ashamed to tell anyone I lived there. Every afternoon getting off the school bus, I’d creep like a sloth toward the long, dirt driveway leading to the cinder-block pigeon coup. Of course, everyone knew. I just pretended that they didn’t.

Reality soon became a nightmare of trying to belong in a place I didn’t even want to be. Like a fox without a den, I was lost, frightened, and alone. I never knew I was so utterly shy, timid, and poor.

In the heart and mind of that carefree, little girl, swinging on the swing, the wind toying with her golden-red hair, nothing was missing from her life. She had it all. There was nothing more she needed.

Now, sliding quietly behind her wooden school desk, feeling naked, and exposed, she crawled inside herself, closed and locked the door. No one could know her fear. No one must see her tears. No one can ever know how much it hurts.

Yes, she was introduced to a new world with all its modern-day baubles and trinkets. And though this new world tried convincing her she needed more, she’d race back to that place few people ever heard of, where her life began and flourished like a beautiful blossom, where dreams came true, Santa Claus was real, and no one was poor. No one died of starvation. No one went naked. Landenberg, Pennsylvania. Always in my heart, forever on my mind.

Be a Survivor or Die a Victim

That moment stands out in my mind like the Empire State Building. That moment when my third-grade teacher threw up her hands and walked away from my desk. That torturous moment when my face burned with embarrassment and frustration as the tears splashed on my desk like pouring rain. As hard as I tried, my brain just could not grasp it!

Math has always been my worst enemy. Worse than a snarling, junkyard dog. Even worse than that tall, skinny school bus bully. And somehow, between my frustrating disabilities and feeling like a complete failure, I got this crazy notion that if I messed up, the world would stop spinning.

Childhood trauma. We all have our painful stories to tell. Some even bear traces of humor, like the time my mother dragged me kicking and screaming to our next-door neighbors and made me apologize for being sassy. I needed a straitjacket that day!

Some memories fade over time, while others stick in our hearts and minds like superglue. And, the humiliation of being singled out that day as the sole classroom dummy left a deeper scar on my heart than the tattoo on my leg.

But what we do with those scars of yesterday is what makes us who we are today. Do we stay crippled for the rest of our lives? Do we blame others for our misfortune? Do we blame ourselves?

I love watching the documentaries I Survived. It’s amazing how people suffered unthinkable acts of torture, were left for dead, and came out alive. Later, many of those victims chose to become law enforcement officers and advocates for other victims. Some found love again after their faces had been butchered and scarred beyond recognition. But all of them bravely pushed through it with a better understanding of who they are.

Our lives, one way or another, have all been changed. None of us leaves this world with the same, baby-smooth skin in which we were born. Whoever we are, whatever we do, rich or poor, we all bear the scars of life, but only the brave survive.