Tag Archives: Life

How my Wife Saved Me.

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Our life, our writing and who we are come together often. Sometimes we discover those who help us need help more than we do.

Each day I wake up, meditate, kiss my kids before they go to school and I always tell my wife I love her

The last part has many reasons, the biggest being how much she’s saved me in the 16 years we’ve been together.

When we first met, I thought she was something she wasn’t and she thought I was a kid who had a few issues.

The more we got to know each other, and when we started dating, I discovered she was as broken as I was and that together we became one whole person.

Tomorrow we celebrate our 15 year wedding anniversary and she’s done more to help me find myself than anyone who’s ever been in my life.

She’s never questioned my motives, never told me I shouldn’t follow my heart and gave me the wonderful kids we have.

She’s my editor when I need help, my confidant when I need counseling, and she always believes I can write better than what I wrote before.

I see more of myself in her every day and I since starting TM I’ve begun to understand why we’re still together and why we need each other.

She’s the best part of who I am and I’d never have the courage to write anything without her love and trust.

I see now that I’m better than I was, but I’ll always be better with her in my life than I could have been had we not met and helped each other when we needed it most.

I find comfort in her by my side and I know I’ve found the person who makes me better.

How TM Made Me Care Again.

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Night Shot of the Lego Tumbler lit from underneath.

Night Shot of the Lego Tumbler lit from underneath.

Our strength is determined by how we deal with our lives. How we handle adversity and how we talk to others when we’ve screwed up.

After I started TM (Transcendental Meditation) I sat down with my wife and told her all the times i thought I’d screwed up in our relationship and with our kids.

It was the first time I felt like I’d accepted responsibility for something bad that I’d done.

My wife forgave me for the things which had happened and we’ve been doing better since, but I’ve been wanting to have a family project, something all of us could do together.

Family game night failed and I found my opportunity in July, when Lego decided to make a larger scale Lego Batman Tumbler.

It was something I knew my son would love, he’s always loved Bats and he’s a Lego fiend.

We started last week with 12 bags of Legos and we finished it on Monday, my son putting the final pieces together.

My wife and spent a few nights putting together the Tumbler and my son and I spent time doing the same.

It was the first time my wife and I had done a project together since we put our son’s bed together, he’s 10.

Building it was frustrating, irritating and fun all at the same time.

I learned my son is an amazing Lego builder and my wife gets more frustrated than I remember.

All of us had fun building it, our four-year old was too small, but she loved to watch it come together.

TM brought out the best in who I’ve been, it scuttled the rest and I’m discovering my life, kids and how much I truly love my wife all over again.

I know that life hasn’t always been good, and there will be rough patches, but when things get bad I now have something that can help me get through those rough patches better.

My wife and kids are important to me, possibly more than they know, and I’m learning to accept that I wasn’t always a great dad or husband before TM.

I know I’ve found something that has altered my perception of who I am and it’s been an amazing ride and it’s something I will do for the rest of my life.

I will work to get others to do it, not just because I’ve seen the benefits in myself, but I know the benefits can change who you are, and I’m really liking who I am right now and it’s been a very long time since I was able to say that.

 

 

How Transcendental Meditation Has Rewired Who I Am.

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Problems will disappear as darkness disappears with the onset of light. ~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

We discover we’ve found what we’re looking for in life when it falls on us from the sky. This is how TM has been, but I didn’t know how much TM had changed me until recently.

I’ve always dealt with challenges badly.

Things which didn’t go the way I wanted them to, or when something happened which wasn’t in my control, these things always made me lash out at whomever I believed was responsible.

A lot of the times it has been my wife. This happened not because of her, but because I wasn’t in control. I’ve never hit her, but words are worse than fists, as I know from my childhood.

We’ve had a storage unit for a long time, longer than we wanted, but that’s what happens when you have kids, get older and don’t want to throw stuff away.

We kept our Christmas stuff, childhood toys and a few other things in there, but we’d always paid it…

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking through our banks statements and noticed the money for the unit hadn’t come out in a while.

My wife checked on it, and it hadn’t been paid in a long time.

My wife called me at work, needing to talk to me about it.

Never have I felt like TM had changed me so much as when I talked to her on the phone that night.

She explained what happened, my response, “It’s just stuff, we can replace stuff. Are you okay?”

Before TM, I would have yelled screamed and might not have come home.

We’ve talked about it since and we both agree, I would never have been as calm without TM.

All of the things we collect in life are just stuff. There’s nothing more important than the people sharing your life.

Remember when you get angry to take a step back and think, “How will this effect our relationship?”

When you look at who you are; are you happy with how you act towards others? Do you find joy when you’re discussing your life with others? And most important, Are you happy with who you are?

Five months ago I would say no to each of those. Today, I find more peace in talking to people, but nothing gets me upset, not like before TM.

I’ve found my happy place. I’ve discovered where I’m supposed to be and what I should be doing with my life.

TM has rewired who I am, and I no longer worry about my temper, because it’s no longer there.

When You Live in Fear, Writing Isn’t Easy.

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Growing up I was afraid of doing things wrong. This came from being told I had to act a certain way, had to keep my chin up, and that I couldn’t, ever act up.

Do you know what it’s like to grow up and believe you can’t do anything right?

I also believed if I did any of the things I mentioned above the wrath of god would be unleashed and I would never be able to do anything fun again.

Because of this, I lived in fear anything I did could jeopardize my life.

This became one of the hallmarks of my childhood.

When I was 14, and began writing, I kept my stories from him for I knew they’d be ejected from his vision without cause or purpose simply because they weren’t something useful, or that they wouldn’t help me when I got older.

I left his domain, moved away, but those fears of being accepted by him were still there.

These things caused me to stop writing until my last year of high school.

I found in high school, people like me. Those who wrote because they liked writing. I no longer had to keep things hidden about my writing and discovered that I was starting to get decent.

After high school I didn’t write as much, but I still wrote, which saved me a few times.

Once I left the god’s domain, I learned, though not quickly, god wasn’t as powerful as he thought he was and that my life was under my control, not his.

This changed when I entered back into his good graces. I started writing again, but kept every journal stashed away for fear he wouldn’t understand my writing or that it would be judged as something it wasn’t.

Once I finally left god’s domain, without any reason to turn back, I leaped free of his domain and set out on my own.

Soon I discovered there were things beyond his realm. Things I discovered which changed the way I viewed him and because of finding love, I found out that he was no longer of use to me.

About the same time I found love, I discovered the ability to write again.

Though, because of the hallmarks of my childhood, I was still afraid of his wrath or that I would disappoint him in some way. Because of this I didn’t write the things I wanted to.

I was too afraid of being smote by his wrath.

He was at a distance during that time and though I’ve let myself write again, it wasn’t until the last few months when I decided, “I’ve been without him as constant in my life and I’ve become a better person for it, why would I want him in my life, when I’ve just become comfortable in my own skin?”

Because of this revelation, I have turned in my halo and started my march in to hell.

My march has led me to find things about myself, and my writing, I never knew existed.

I thought his approval was required for everything, it isn’t. I now know that my life is my own and I’m in control for one.

I no longer care, nor do I require his approval for my writing or otherwise.

I’m finally in control and it’s time to write without fear.

 

Writing to Help Others.

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We disguise who we are from ourselves. We do this to keep others away, keep ourselves happy and to, hopefully, chase the demons we deal with.

The disguise we use often depends upon the nature of the demon. Childhood trauma is a big one, but hiding from things we don’t want others to know, this keeps us happy, but also maintains the disguise.

Keeping up the illusion gets harder as we get older, and creating ways to deal with our demons may lead us down a darker path.

A path filled with pills, bottles and cutting, but writing creates a forum for our demons. It brings them to the forefront of who we are, and more importantly who we strive to be.

Writing, like meditation is our outlet and with that outlet we discover we’re stronger than we believed possible, even if we must discover it through our fiction.

Fiction is the one outlet which we can put a character in a situation and possibly work through the issues we’ve dealt with through them.

The process is difficult, but leads us to a different path, one devoid of pills, bottles and hopefully cutting.

Finding the right story to get through our trauma may be difficult, but keeping a journal of the trauma and story ideas helps.

In the pages of our journals we find an avenue to get through the life we had, have and hopefully will lead us to a better day.

Writing fiction helps us to find ourselves through our characters. It encourages us to get through another day and discover, we are better than we were told, and it helps us to know, just like our characters, things to get better.

They get better because we keep writing. We keep trying and we decide the disguise, though useful, isn’t necessary anymore.

When we write, we discover there are others who’ve needed the help. Who’ve waited for something to help them through their dark paths.

We write because we know there’s that one book which helped us, and we want someone else to feel the same hope we felt.

We lose our disguise because we no longer feel the need to hide from the world. We abandon the disguise, we get through it and we write to help others.