2019 Farm Life

[Hopalong]

Separate houses make so much sense, especially given how hard it is to contain those giving-directions, giving-advice impulses. I hear that.

It's really nice to hear about the moments when she gets you, you get her, but it's peaceful. I'm sure her separate abode will help you both. What's the timeline? And what happens when or if she resumes her career? Is her mountain-house going to be home base for a life of traveling, staying with sweetie, etc? Or is the vision that should she commit to one partner, they'd live on your mountain too? Was that the dream, initially? Is there enough City close enough?

Probably one reason I've become more tolerable to myself and my group of others in the last decade+ is that I've moved over a LOT of advice-giving to here!

I'm so grateful for this space to give and receive it on almost a daily basis that words fail...

But if I imagine all of it compressed and pushed into 3D relationships, I think I'd strain them.

xxoo
Hops

[sKePTiKal]

Hops, the simple answer is YES - some or all of your suggestions. Holly Hut will be "home base". And then, come what may - work, travel & a sweetie intent on building his own place on his own land - we'll see, but she has her OWN, as in ownership... place. She figured out last night, it's been 20 years she had her own space... either living with Matt or her sister... or someone else as roommate.

We've been editing the studio today, while it "weathers" outside. It seems a bit more functional, cozy and balanced (fung shui-ish) than it did. I have a few trips up to the attic yet this afternoon - stuff to come down, stuff to go up - and how COOL is it to have a dry attic in a studio???!

What we're doing today is in no way "permanent"... there are lots of future plans/ideas/changes that will happen over time. But it's been kinda fun watching how the feel/ambience has changed... along with what we actually DO in the space.

Up till now, it's been the replacement for the pool house at the beach - part party room, group therapy room, no judgement zone, spill your guts space... and rumination on ideas. That's changing again.

[lighter]

Sounds like you're creating sacred space, Amber: )

Lighter

[Hopalong]

And creative space, at so many levels.

A radiant idea that you're actually bringing into being, Amber.

Awed,
Hops

[sKePTiKal]

Hmmm. I think youse guys are seeing something "extra" in this. It's OK, I just don't see the process/result being quite that magical. Heck if it's COMFORTABLE, and decluttered, so there's ROOM for creativity/productivity - I'll be happy.

A lot of "personal" stuff - photos over the years, Mike's bar puzzles, and toys... stuff like that is going away. When I moved in, I really had twice as much "stuff" altogether as I could comfortably fit anywhere... and since I'd already selected just the pieces/boxes that went to the house, the movers took a lot of stuff to the studio. That all needed to be sorted, donated, tossed, etc.

We made "provisional" steps along the way... finding a decent place for the bookcases I had, unpacking the 30 some boxes of books... which I did a first sort, putting them on the shelves. Still have 4 boxes of what I culled... and I have to do another resort. We recreated the old "poolhouse" too... as both Hol and I were processing the life changes, and friends would come and do the same. What happened in the poolhouse, stays in the poolhouse - LOL.

Over 3 years, I've sat in that space and "just looked". Been there morning, noon & night. I know what kinds of remodeling things should happen now. I have a long range plan, for putting some intention into the space - not just a slapdash, make do, to make the space functional design. There are some limitations - like the outlets are 5 ft up the wall instead of near the baseboards. No floor outlets; and that's a problem since the floor space is like 20 x 40 (I can't remember exactly). I detest cords running all across the floor.

There are 3 french doors to the deck that people check out the view once - and then they're done. LOL. It's not covered, so it's not terribly hospitable in the rain, snow or summer afternoon sun. There were some serious corners cut in building that double-decker, 360 degree deck too. It doesn't feel overly secure to me. And total lack of forethought to keep both sets of steps to porches/decks uncovered - shovelling snow from steps is a major job, but necessary for safety. That deck will get rebuilt before the one on the house...

because out back - in the old hot tub space - is where I want my outdoor kitchen. It MUST have a roof; half walls - with SCREENS and maybe shutters, too - so the 2nd floor deck is going to get "edited" to accommodate that first floor enclosed - but not "conditioned" space. I can get a propane patio heater to make it bearable in the winter when we tend to large groups here.

The Holly Hut is the "investment"/building priority this year; all I'm working on is the generator and gardens. We are discussing a metalworking shop; but that isn't all that much money to put up another insulated metal building and the site I have picked out, will access the same power line as the barn (we planned for that ahead of time). The buildings come pre-cut/painted and are installed on a concrete slab. I'm thinking it will go in my current shale pit - once we've cut it back as far as we need to, to reinforce the wet spots in the road. Shale makes a better road "topping" than gravel, in the kinds of downpours we've had.

Then, fence will come into play too. Hol is talking about alpacas, for the wool. She works primarily with fiber arts; I've talked about weaving off/on. And if it sounds like I'm biting off more than I can chew, for stuff to take care of... like I told the generator guys: it keeps me out of trouble and off the streets! LOL.

[Twoapenny]

Wow, Skep, busy busy as always, always so much going on!  How do you manage to keep track of everything, do you have to write it all down or can you just remember?  It seems like dozens of different projects to manage, big and small!  Alpacas sound really cute, although I can never remember the difference between them and llamas (and wouldn't know which was which if I was looking at them).  Both cute, though! xx

[lighter]

About the term "sacred space."  I feel it when I clear out clutter, then clean a space down to the corners, and baseboards.... I can actually feel my Grandmother's farmhouse clean around me.... I can remember the smell, and feel of her sunny rooms, and what it felt to be in a space someone created for for me, and all she loved. 

It's like throwing a switch..... sacred or not sacred space. 

Sometimes I feel it in the kitchen after I break glass, then clean the floor so I'm 100% sure there's not a sliver of glass left.  SO CLEAN, and it's how care and time and attention FEELS when space is attended to with such care.

For me.

Lighter

[sKePTiKal]

Hi y'all!

That windstorm we had was mighty ferocious. By the morning, there were 43,000 Potomac Edison customers (First Energy has 3 different power cos.) in WV. By Friday morning, I still didn't have power and there were only 1400 left to reconnect. By 4 pm Friday, I was back in business though.

Holly carried 10 gals of pond water up to the house a day, so we could flush. I had both wood stoves rockin'... and the stove top is propane, so we ate. Amazing how many things I have stored though, that require the oven. That needs to change, I guess. I have plenty of solar lights - but turned out I didn't have a good way to charge ipad or phone. Phone I charged in the car.

All in all, that 4 days kept me hopping a LOT till I finally went to bed. Slowly but surely getting caught up with what went on in the mean time.

[Hopalong]

Frankly, when I think "Amazon" -- I think YOU!!

Just amazing.
And sounds like H is too. 10 gallons of uphill water carrying?

Wowsers. Respect.

Still, old lady, be sensible. (I can pee on any parade...)
Don't hurt youssef!

Hugs
Hops

[sKePTiKal]

Oh I respect the limitations - too much, according to the kid.

But I was able to keep up with both stoves and not wear myself out too badly. Getting ready for snow, now tomorrow - and kinda still "recovering" from the ABBY-normal we've been through.

[sKePTiKal]

I've had a new idea tossed at me, that I want to run by you all. It's confusing me.

The idea is that we can simply CHOOSE to not feel old feelings from the past and instead free our feelings from the past associations and simply feel something new/different in the now. That it is simply a matter of choosing, will, and practice.
-------------------------------

It sure wasn't that way at all, grieving Mike. Those feelings would show up when I least expected them. Sometimes with no trigger.

So, ok. I know affirmations can be useful to feel differently. I know certain realizations can lift the 16-ton anvil of "over-responsibility" for others and their feelings; sort of a manic "personal responsbility" to "save the world"... and that's not ANYONE'S job.

But I also know that acceptance of the feelings associated from past experiences is absolutely necessary, to heal from them and that trying to avoid them - pretend they don't exist - or telling yourself you're "choosing" to not feel those things is one reason those feelings just DON'T.GO.AWAY (and some of us do suffer the psychosomatic physical consequences) and almost anything can trigger them... and you can find yourself years later still stuck in feeling the same emotions as in the past, almost AS IF - it is part of WHO you are.

That it's not just something that happened to you years ago; and you felt a certain way then - and have moved on, but that it was important to your definition of your SELF, to incorporate those feelings into your everyday reality. Whether anxiety, fear, terror, paralysis... guilt/self-blame for not being a super-hero...

I'm kinda rambling to get the ideas in my head, OUT where I can see them; where you can see them too... and maybe offer some "and" to the "either/or" opposites of these two ideas and our very real experiences. Maybe chronic abuse and trauma emotions differ from the more "garden variety" life emotions. Maybe a part/parcel of those extreme experiences have permanently altered the neural pathways and really ARE a "part of who we are" now.

I dunno what I think exactly. I am hearing a bit of subtle assumption that feeling those old feelings is somehow "wrong" or "limiting" or a waste of life moments. Which I know for a fact is NOT true, when you're actively working on yourself. But maybe there's an aspect of it which IS true, when a person is so attached to that one defining experience that it becomes a defining characteristic of one's self.

I kinda also think that we Amazons have been, still are, actively involved in sorting out this bit of "emotional logic" for ourselves, in a way that frees us from those old reflexes of feeling, at all different levels. So of course, I'm posing this puzzle to you all for imput! From your own experience.

Maybe it'll help me find an "aha!" somewhere in my thinking on it. Maybe you will find one.

ETA:
This "choosing what you feel" idea seems popular. Not necessarily effective... this article kind of makes sense to me on the topic:

https://heleo.com/choosing-happy-doesnt-work-heres-instead/10498/

ETA2:
Maybe the feelings don't stop/go away and are an accepted part of who we are -or rather WERE... AND... we can allow ourselves to change, grow, and not let those feelings be the "defining characteristic" of us???

[Hopalong]

What a deep and powerful question, ((((((((((((Amber))))))))))))).

I think it's taken me decades of repetitive stuckness to begin to see the reality of healing. But I measure it differently. What I see now isn't so much a change in the meaning of pain, as a change in the intervals and in the force of the pain.

The pain is pure and true and honest and reflects realities I have been through. To deny it would be to lie. But it's also okay to have hope and to notice change. Healing can't be a goal because somebody else thinks one should "get over it." Anyone who says that is only displaying their discomfort, their capacity for empathy becoming exhausted. That can surely happen, it's not evil to feel drained...though it's unkind to put it that way to someone's face. One should instead simply focus on self care to replenishment. And in some situations, one has to pass the torch to others who have a greater capacity at that moment or stronger filters just because they're made that way.

The fact that when it comes now, it comes at longer intervals, and its intensity and pitch, although real, feel less destroying...that's how I think it changes for me.

I was explaining to M recently my earliest realizations about sexism. Little stories from young childhood as I absorbed shocks about what it meant to be a girl. What I've come to accept is how profound that shock and grief felt from about age four onward. I didn't just think about it, I felt it like a blow to the soul. And I respect that little girl's pain and shock and disappointment in the way things are.

Now, it is something I accept as a deep part of who I am. I can't escape injustice and it won't be gone in my lifetime. But those emotions are part of who I am. Just as I'd never expect a black person to somehow eliminate all grief, all pain, over the culture they endure, how could I ask the same of myself or any woman? So it's part of me and rises now and then. But I'm not bitter. I'm just clear.

They're painful but the reason I think they will always be with me is that they are honest. Denying that pain would be denying myself. My voice.

I just keep minding the intervals, which get longer and are more filled with peace. The capacity for happiness increases over time, I find. The present gradually gets more important than processing the past.

As someone who went through the traumas you did, I can imagine that those particular emotions are something to respect. To honor. To recognize as deep and honest parts of your humanity.

What's disabling isn't the pain but fear of it. Or a sense that you've not "done your homework" if it recurs. I think accepting and embracing yourself with deep company, deep respect for the purity of grief, deep realization of the humanity of what you feel, is strengthening. You're not "failing" if old pain revisits.

Grief is like ripples and it makes no sense to "require" someone to be done with it. Each wave is a greeting from your purest heart. I don't perceive you as stuck, just so frantically busy that maybe a wave from Mike takes you by surprise.

It's terribly hard to sit and let the wave hit alone. It's labor. I'm glad you bring it here.

love and comfort,
Hops

[Twoapenny]

I've had a new idea tossed at me, that I want to run by you all. It's confusing me.

The idea is that we can simply CHOOSE to not feel old feelings from the past and instead free our feelings from the past associations and simply feel something new/different in the now. That it is simply a matter of choosing, will, and practice.
-------------------------------

It sure wasn't that way at all, grieving Mike. Those feelings would show up when I least expected them. Sometimes with no trigger.

So, ok. I know affirmations can be useful to feel differently. I know certain realizations can lift the 16-ton anvil of "over-responsibility" for others and their feelings; sort of a manic "personal responsbility" to "save the world"... and that's not ANYONE'S job.

But I also know that acceptance of the feelings associated from past experiences is absolutely necessary, to heal from them and that trying to avoid them - pretend they don't exist - or telling yourself you're "choosing" to not feel those things is one reason those feelings just DON'T.GO.AWAY (and some of us do suffer the psychosomatic physical consequences) and almost anything can trigger them... and you can find yourself years later still stuck in feeling the same emotions as in the past, almost AS IF - it is part of WHO you are.

That it's not just something that happened to you years ago; and you felt a certain way then - and have moved on, but that it was important to your definition of your SELF, to incorporate those feelings into your everyday reality. Whether anxiety, fear, terror, paralysis... guilt/self-blame for not being a super-hero...

I'm kinda rambling to get the ideas in my head, OUT where I can see them; where you can see them too... and maybe offer some "and" to the "either/or" opposites of these two ideas and our very real experiences. Maybe chronic abuse and trauma emotions differ from the more "garden variety" life emotions. Maybe a part/parcel of those extreme experiences have permanently altered the neural pathways and really ARE a "part of who we are" now.

I dunno what I think exactly. I am hearing a bit of subtle assumption that feeling those old feelings is somehow "wrong" or "limiting" or a waste of life moments. Which I know for a fact is NOT true, when you're actively working on yourself. But maybe there's an aspect of it which IS true, when a person is so attached to that one defining experience that it becomes a defining characteristic of one's self.

I kinda also think that we Amazons have been, still are, actively involved in sorting out this bit of "emotional logic" for ourselves, in a way that frees us from those old reflexes of feeling, at all different levels. So of course, I'm posing this puzzle to you all for imput! From your own experience.

Maybe it'll help me find an "aha!" somewhere in my thinking on it. Maybe you will find one.

ETA:
This "choosing what you feel" idea seems popular. Not necessarily effective... this article kind of makes sense to me on the topic:

https://heleo.com/choosing-happy-doesnt-work-heres-instead/10498/

ETA2:
Maybe the feelings don't stop/go away and are an accepted part of who we are -or rather WERE... AND... we can allow ourselves to change, grow, and not let those feelings be the "defining characteristic" of us???

Skep, this is more or less where I am at the moment so what you wrote has rung a big bell for me.

My thoughts, for what they are worth, is that the current, fashionable "you create your own reality with your thoughts, what you put out you get back, you attract your experiences to you, you don't have to let your feelings control you, you can chose how you respond" - and so on - are fine for the day to day, not too troubling stuff - the bus being late, the delivery not arriving, dinner getting burnt - but really no use at all for traumatic abuse, long term stress, grief, divorce, loss of a child, and so on.

I'd go so far as to say a lot of this stuff feels like victim blaming to me.  It feels that there is a trend now to be dismissive of the way someone feels - and if someone's having a nervous breakdown over a broken nail then yes, I'd be dismissive of that, but to suggest to someone who is grieving, for example, that they can chose different feelings, is not only a bit like treating someone with cancer as if they have a bit of a cold, but is also a rejection of reality.   I think that pit you can fall in to after something dreadful happens can be so deep and dark that most of us are lucky if we get through it without doing ourselves some serious damage.

I'm all for being proactive, problem solving, becoming self aware and so on but I'm also - as you know from my other threads at the moment - really keen on accepting the feelings that seem to be considered unwelcome.  There was an interesting Facebook discussion a while ago started by a woman who'd lived in a number of communal settings and who felt that the New Age "you attract your experiences into your life" was being used by some as an excuse for abuse and essentially browbeating victims who were being made to feel that it was their fault they'd been assaulted - same old story, just being told in a different way.

So no, I don't think we can choose to just feel differently.  I am currently in day four of my stupor.  I've done yoga, cleaned the house, read self help chapters, taken flower remedies, meditated, chanted, re-arranged the sitting room, watched comedy shows, visited a friend, been out with son, cuddled the cat, napped, had nice baths, eaten regularly - and I still feel like shit.  In all honesty, I'd cut my own arm off it it meant I never felt anything negative or unpleasant so if simply choosing not to feel like this worked I'd be delighted   I think it minimises the intensity of some life experiences.  I don't know if this makes sense!  It does to me at the minute but it might not later.  Lol xx

[Hopalong]

I'd go so far as to say a lot of this stuff feels like victim blaming to me.

Me too, Tupp. I kind of feel like mentally slapping people when I hear too much of this. I do get we can make effort to not be disabled by pain, just as we'd endure PT for the eventual hope of physical recovery. But the "you attract everything that happens to you and therefore are responsible for attractng a cure for everything" is bullshit, imo.

We need the help of others, interactions, being heard and validated, to heal. And some kinds of injury require more of this and some less. And that's just real, imo.

I also think that in some cases of stuckness, including my own at times in my history, true chemical depression has begun affecting the brain. I don't need them now, but for about 15 years, antidepressants were a massive help.

Not to sidestep essential pain, but to cope with too much darkness, more than my personal set of filters could cope with then. I feel no shame about that era at all.

xxoo
Hops

[sKePTiKal]

Maybe acceptance of those difficult feelings is easier for some people than others? So, once accepted fully - they then "choose" to no longer linger over them? Moving on, so to speak. I wonder about the process of accepting involved; and whether it's TRULY accepting, acknolwedging, honoring and living with those feelings... and forgiving oneself for being human, warts & all... or it's more avoidance, shutting the steel gates to those feelings... hardening one's heart to the voice within??

I'm just trying to wrap my head around the ideas and understand to the best of my ability. So, this is a new age-y thing? 20-30 years ago, "new age" had a whole different set of ideas. Then, feelings were idolized and mattered more than anything else.

I can't keep up with all these things. LOL.