New Start Blog
16 March 2012
1016 words
Well it’s not quite a whole
year since I have blogged! Just two-thirds of one! My last was in July. I was planning on blogging a little more
consistently really did think about blogging, but I guess I was working hard to
pull myself out of the doldrums I’ve been in since I lost my job, my dogs, my
sister and my health way back in the last quarter of 2007.
Today, seeing it said on
screen in black and white makes me have a much better appreciation of that 90
day “war” that more or less paralyzed me.
The war was the beginning of
a lot of firsts for me: first time I’d been on unemployment being the real
revelation. I was much vested in being a
productive working woman, one with a talent:
Fraud Investigator and it became my identity. I worked over 30 years in an industry that
valued my abilities, hired me specifically for them and then one day no longer
wanted my services.
A few years later I saw
clearly why. My employer had gone to the
dark side, dealing in fraud, not trying to avoid it. When I first sensed the turn, my weight
started to layer: hired for one thing then beat up over it.
Then the other grieving
didn’t help much. Treatment for my back
injuries caused me to gain more weight and created a moon face, someone I
didn’t recognize represented me for several years.
My 401k lost about 30% during
the Bush Years, which I call the Zips due to the many Zeros involved; and,
undiagnosed physical disabilities surfaced big time. I dissolved my small business I created
because I never was sure when I could meet a commitment or not. I really took a dive, figuratively as well as
physically.
Looking back it appears my
brain and body provided some real down time for me. One always gets what one needs whether it is
wanted or not.
Last year when I dropped the
business, the remaining “wraparound” months of depression, accidents and
lethargy served in re-energizing me by preventing me from much activity!
It didn’t seem like I was doing
anything at all, but I’m sure seeing results -the best of which is a rather
dramatic weight loss. I’m thinking the
weight is sliding off because my emotional/physical balance which had been so
out of whack became balanced. It took
about ten years to pack my weight on and so far just months to slip down a
couple of sizes. You are what you eat
they used to say. For me I am
"when" I eat – which requires grazing, not hard to do if one keeps
handfuls of nuts and fruits (yep I’m 5th generation Californian) and
tread lightly at the Wine Bar. I’m sure
it will be enhanced now with some regular home exercises.
I’m expecting I can go back
to walks long enough to tire my Border collie.
After all, I’m approaching my Third Act, as Jane Fonda calls it. Like Jane, I’m working on my own
memoirs. I come from a shattered
background, but I never knew much about my parent’s lives as neither liked to
discuss the subject; maybe I was too young to inquire.
So I was born in a dark room
that got darker with each passing of my immediate birth family. Nobody lived as long as I have so far, not
even my brother Bill, who was eighteen months older then me. I used to think I would write The Great
American Memoir about my life after everyone died. The title I selected was to have been Now That
They’re All Dead.
Well, they are all dead, having
been for 15 years now. And happily I am
finding that all are not dead! Not
everybody!! No, I am surrounded by cousins I never new I had; and one, Mom’s
sister’s son, who I recall vaguely from my toddler days. He laughed when I said all I remember was his
trousers, his looong trousers with his pin-head on top. I couldn’t have been older than two or three,
and he was a teenager.
I remember a number of people
this way from the toddler days, especially my mother’s mother “Nana”. She was so mean that I made it my business to
avoid her at all times. She was a grey
haired troll with a tiny head perched above enormous bosoms. She might twist my cheek if I got close
enough. Later on I hated Nana because
she always made my mother cry. A half
century later I learned why she made her cry:
it is the adage of the scorpion.
I decided to try an online
genealogical site offering free trial for two weeks. I have now been on it for nearly two years
and am amazed at the story unfolding about grandparents I never knew I had and
their parents – all emigrated as colonists! I doubt that either of my parents knew
anything about that.
And research indicates that a
big “Booga-Booga” that affected my parents and their families at the turn of
the 19th Century: two
scandalous divorces, several abandoned children, a riffraff of step parents and
half-brothers, an unknown adoption, and finally, my mother’s kidnapping by her
natural father.
I now have a great respect for
the difficult upbringing my mother gave me:
she created a survivor, because she didn’t know what the hell to do with
children. I only wish she could know
that I not only was going to be okay, I would be successful, well travelled,
and resilient, even into my own Third Act!
Every day I am writing about
3,000 words and am seriously pursuing my dream of writing. A memoir for sure, but I think instead it
will be called Living an Unremembered Life.
That will cover their past histories coupled with my own experiences in
dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
It may not sound like much of
a happy note I’m ending this on, but believe me, it feels like one.
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