Where I'm At

I'm currently conserving my psychic and physical energy for later this week when we move back into our condo after 4 months of flood repairs. This Thursday morning, the movers will be arriving with all our furniture and boxes, and the unpacking will begin. I am assuming our kitchen cabinets will have been completed/installed and the paint finish will now actually match the existing cabinetry. And I am assuming I will be able to react calmly and sanely if they do not match.

I just keep telling myself "this, too, shall pass" and that soon it will be like the sewer back-up/flood, move out, and 4 months of living in a hotel never happened. These are the times when I really wish life had a fast-forward button.

I'm very happy that I'm finally losing weight due to proper, complete BHRT (now including replacement thyroid hormone, which has made all the difference), diet (elimination of alcohol and refined carbs), and exercise (Rebounder trampoline and 3 lb hand weights).

I haven't been on the Rebounder lately as much as I should. I need to do it first thing in the morning before I eat and drink, otherwise I get acid reflux from jumping up and down, and also have to go to the bathroom 3 times during a half hour work-out if I've drunk coffee (diuretic effect)!

If I sit down and look at Vibrant Nation first thing in the morning, I usually get involved in reading and posting, and there goes my work-out time. Next thing I know, my husband is serving me breakfast (lucky me!) and my work-out goes by the wayside. I kid myself that I will do it later on, after I've digested my food and before my next meal...and that just never happens. But I never stop thinking it might.

Lately, I've been surprised to find out who has discovered and been reading my blog, either here at VN or on Blogspot. Different things surprise and/or resonate with different readers. Lucky I'm really just writing this for me, and not for any particular audience, because I could drive myself crazy wondering and worrying about what a reader will feel or think in response to my unvarnished feelings and thoughts.

I recently heard from a former client who was concerned to read about the state of my life, and the "jolting" (for them) realization that there is a difference between the professional coach they thought they "knew", and this menopausal woman quite openly and frankly airing her life in cyberspace.

This former client found it hard to reconcile the "cluttered" existence revealed on my blog with the "minimalist" and "psychologically unshakeable" coach they thought they knew. The thing is, I am all these things and more. I am capable of being cluttered and minimalist. I am capable of being psychologically unshakeable and breakable. I am capable of being completely available for other people and being completely self-focused. I could go on.

The point is we are all capable of contradictions and are not just purely one way or another all the time. There's some kind of famous quote around this...something about a developmental benchmark of being capable of simultaneously holding two opposing thoughts in your mind without going insane. I walk that tightrope a lot!

My coaching clients require me to be spacious and uncluttered in my work with them, and I abundantly bring that. Coaching is all about the client; the successful coach should actually be invisible in facilitating the process. But being invisible for years on end, facilitating the processes and championing the success of others, while rewarding in many ways, has probably led to my blogging because of my need to express my own voice at this time in my life.

I think, for most women, there comes a time in midlife when something has to be about, or for, just you. The bulk of our lives are made up of phases where we have to fulfill others' needs and expectations - from our boyfriends to husbands, to our employers, co-workers and clients, to our children/grandchildren, and then our aging/failing parents...someone always needs something from us. If you aren't careful, you can wind up with nothing left for you. Blogging is the means through which I currently explore and claim my voice and existence.

Others read my blog for entertainment and have told me some of the posts read like a mini-movie script which they find themselves mentally casting actors to play the various roles. For my blog post "Once Upon a Time in Rome", a reader told me he was thinking John Cleese for the role of the amorous Italian front desk clerk. We then discussed Helen Mirren or Judi Dench to play my mother and, when asked who I saw playing me, I yelped "Duh, why Cameron Diaz, of course!" So I haven't completely lost my sense of humour...yet.

Todo bien. (It's all good.)