Resolving things.

It's hard not to blame yourself when things go wrong. Small things, big things, every thing in between. It's so easy to get into a pattern of "If Onlys."

There's a lot of traffic on the way to work. "If only I'd left earlier!"

Your kid gets bad grades on a book report. "If only I'd helped her more!"

Your husband has an affair with a morbidly obese woman who has a mullet and back hair. "If only I'd been a better wife! If only I'd stop biting my nails, start wearing make up, learn how to walk in high heels, been a better cook ..."

I am doing a lot of If Onlys these days. And now that the initial shock of discovering the affair is wearing off, I'm ready to start healing. Part of healing is erasing the If Onlys. The past is gone. It is never coming back. The future may never arrive. You only have THIS one moment, this one breath. I refuse to waste this moment on If Onlys. They don't help. They never help.

And in the case of infidelity, the If Onlys will only serve to hurt you more. No good can come of it. They will haunt you, drive you insane, tease you in your dreams and slap you in your face when you least expect it. You must recognize them for the false thoughts that they are. Don't give them power. Giving power to false thoughts is like giving credence to false words.

I have been taking the time to recognize these false thoughts and tell them, sometimes out loud, "Stop. Go. You are unwelcome." Sometimes I have to visualize the thoughts leaving my head. I imagine a stream of letters dancing out the side of my head and going away out into the hills like on cartoons. Sometimes I snap myself into reality with a pinch on the wrist or a tap on the temple.

It's hard. I think the hardest thing is the pride. I don't like worrying what others think of me, but you can't help it. Even the most devout, skillful practitioner of the Dharma is going to have those feeling occasionally and it's hard. I don't want people to think I am a pushover, simply because it appears that I am doing nothing about the problems I'm facing. I don't want to them to think I am naive simply because I have started the process of forgiving. I don't want people to misunderstand that my feelings of compassion and love for my husband are separate from his actions, that I love him and feel compassion for him simply because he is another human being and all beings deserve our love and compassion, regardless of their actions.

The Husband has a broken arm and continually misunderstands when I bathe him. He can't get his cast wet and therefore can't properly bathe himself, so I have been bathing him, washing his hair and body and rinsing him, shaving him, and drying him off. He thinks these actions mean that everything is going to be okay in our relationship - and I can't guarantee that. I would bathe anyone who needed a bath. If a homeless person showed up at my door needing a bath, I would bathe him. If a dog or cat or any other animal showed up needing a bath, I would bathe it. It's simple human compassion.

I am working my way through this volcano of pain. In this moment, right here, right now, as I drink my coffee and watch my children playing on the floor, everything is okay. And this moment is good enough for me.

My way,

If I could have my way, I'd sit in my room and cry and listen to punk rock as loud as I can for a month or so, and I would come out of the hole (literally and figuratively) a new woman.

If I could have my way, I'd snort vicodin until my nose bleeds and my soul is numb.

If I could have my way, I'd stab myself in the heart with something long and dull, maybe a screwdriver.

If I could have my way, I'd slice my arms with razorblades just to watch the blood flow.

If I could have my way, I'd dance naked in the snow until my skin is red and raw and the pain is gone.

If I could have my way, I'd lie in the bathtub for hours and pretend the world is gone.

But I can't have my way. Life isn't like that. You get what you get and it's rarely what you want, so you have to try to suck it up and push through, make do with what you have. You have to make the situation you're in be the situation you want, or you'll spend you life wishing for something else, and miss what you've got. One day it will all be over and you'll have nothing to show because you'll have wished your whole life away.

I'm cracked but not broken. I'm dying but not dead. I'm sick but I'm healing. I'm alone but not lonely. I'm a work in progress; this is just one misthrow of the potter's wheel.

Change.

Everything is temporary, and my current life situation is helping me to learn that deeply. Our lives change minute by minute, not only in big ways but in tiny, subtle ways too.

Often I hear people talk about the divorce process as a roller coaster. I think it's a little more complex than than. Roller coasters don't change second by second, minute by minute.

One minute I am calm. I am able to think clearly. The next minute I am blaming myself for his affair. And the minute after that I am using every shred of self control to not rip his throat out.

He wants to reconcile. I want to forget this ever happened, deny deny deny, pretend it's okay. But I will not compromise myself and my values.

On the other hand, I do believe he is truly remorseful.

I hate that I have allowed his bad behavior to alter my thoughts so much. I hate that I allowed myself to be mentally Attached to him. Not attached like you might think, but Attached as a Buddhist philosophy. This describes it better than I can.

I am an angry, scorned woman. And yet I am compassionate. What a horrible mind state my soon-to-be- Ex must have been in all these years. What a terrible place for your heart to be. How awful must it have felt to be him.

I look to His Holiness the Dalai Lama and his struggles with China. He is compassionate toward the Chinese and does not fight for Tibet. I think most people can't understand this, but I can. I am trying to apply it to my marriage and life. But I don't understand.

I feel as lost as I've ever been.

Anger Pt. 2

I lost it. I completely lost it. Flipped out, broke things, broke my pinky finger. (I never realized how much you use your pinky while typing ... damn!)

I am trying to tell myself that I am not destroyed. Instead of feeling like this, I should be invoking Chenrezig. I should be pouring out my compassion, forgiving, encircling the wrong-doer with altruistic love.

I am not there yet. Perhaps one day. Now, I am working with my emotions. It's my old friends, hurt, lies, dishonesty, betrayal. It's sickeningly reassuring to know I have felt this before, and I survived. It's disgustingly familiar.

Holy Shakyamuni Buddha said:

The whole secret of existence is to have no fear. Never fear what will become of you; depend on no one. Only the moment you reject all help are you freed.

Anger.

Buddha said, "You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger."

Think about this for just a moment. This is karma - our actions coming back to haunt us, not by some imaginary divine being or universe, but by the actions themselves.

Think of a situation in which you were really angry. The last time I was really, really mad was at one of my children. I had asked her to pick up the playing cards that had been scattered all over the linoleum, but my request went unanswered. I asked several more times, and each time I heard an excuse.

I walked into the kitchen and slipped on the playing cards, and I was furious! I mean, I was ready to really knock some heads together!

And then I stopped.

What good does being angry do?

Honestly. Think about it for just a second. What good comes from anger?

The last time you were angry - did your anger change the situation? How do you feel when you are angry? If you're like most people, anger makes you feel ugly inside, twisted up, explosive. It's not a nice feeling.

So who suffers for your anger? Sure, the offender may suffer, temporarily. They may suffer the brunt of your actions, which are the result of your inappropriate response to anger. But do they suffer long term? Probably not.

No, the one who really suffers is YOU. You are the one stuck with the negative feelings, the hatred. The offender, be it a fellow motorist or a spouse or even your precious children - they aren't stuck with those feelings. They go on about their lives.

Acting on anger creates bad karma. How? Emotions wear grooves in our minds. Allow an emotion to take hold long enough, or frequently enough, and it will create a groove, a habit. Anger will become your go-to response, hurting you more and more.

The good thing about habits is they can be changed. Oh, I'm not saying it's easy - but it is.

First of all, realize that your emotions do not define you. They are just emotions, and they are temporary. Recognize your anger when it rears its ugly head - "Oh, anger, I know you." Recognize it, name it, see it for what it is - a temporary mind state. Now just as you watched anger boil up, watch it fade away. Don't act on it or feel it - you don't have to. It's just an emotion, just a hair-trigger reaction. It's not you. You are not obligated to act on your impulses.

"You, as much as anyone else in the world, deserve your love and compassion." Buddha wasn't wrong about this, you know. You wouldn't wish your unhappy negative emotions on anyone else, would you? You deserve to be happy. You are made for happiness. Your mind is there to experience peace and bliss. Help yourself. Dissolve your anger.

Bowing exercises.

The children and I have been having fun practicing bowing like monks. You can try it yourself, Lama Jigme has a wonderful video available on YouTube on how to bow.



Where Lama uses the words "sky, scalp, lips, and sternum," we say "Sun, Head, Lips, Heart." It's easier for the kids.

Try it in the morning, as soon as you get out of bed. It's fun!

When I was infertile.

A lot of people don't know about my struggles with infertility and recurrent miscarriage. They look at my husband and I and our five kids and think conceiving has always been easy for us. That is not the case.

I had m first child when I was 19. I was in a relationship when she was conceived, but he left shortly after we found out I was pregnant. He doesn't know she exists, and that's the way I want it.

The Hubs and I met when I was 20, and got married when I was 21. I was four months pregnant when we got married, but that's not the reason we wed. It just happened to happen when we were planning our wedding.

I lost that baby a month after our wedding. He was a little boy that we named Jean Kelle. He would be eight years old this June.

We conceived our second daughter right away, and my pregnancy was uneventful. She was born right on her due date.

We wanted kids pretty close in age so we started trying right away. I could not get pregnant. I had ovulation confirmed by ultrasound, charted my temperatures and cervical fluid, took Clomid and Femara ... and no baby.

After awhile, I started to conceive, only to lose the pregnancy a few weeks later. This happened many times, and even though I took progesterone and did all I could to hold on, those babies just wouldn't grow.

I found myself pregnant again in June 2006. I was ecstatic! Everything seemed fine, the weeks went on and there was no sign that anything could be wrong. Then one day I started having brown spotting. I went to the Urgent Care, they checked my cervix and it was closed, and they sent me for an ultrasound.

The ultrasound showed a mass of white stuff with black holes in it, kind of like that bologna with olives in it. No baby, but I thought for sure I saw the flickering of a heartbeat. The doctor said it was a molar pregnancy but I refused to believe it. I wouldn't schedule the D&C but did schedule a repeat ultrasound the following week.

The next ultrasound was exactly the same as the first, except the mass was markedly larger. I then decided to go ahead with the surgery. I was devastated. I felt like my life was a huge joke. No one was supportive. The worst thing anyone has ever said to me was said during this time in my life. I won't dwell on it, but it hurt. It hurt more than any words have ever hurt before.

I had the surgery. The baby I had wanted so badly was gone, literally and figuratively. Later we learned it was a complete molar pregnancy and there had never been a baby, just placental tissue.

I had to have my hcg tested weekly to make sure all aws well -- apparently, molar pregnancies can become cancerous, and this is indicated by rising hcg numbers. That was hell. The receptionist at the lab was pregnant and was always so cheerful when I came in, excited to see my numbers. She never realized why I was really there, that there wasn't a tiny embryo growing but a mass of potentially deadly tissue.

A few months later, my hcg numbers started going up, and the doctor wanted to do a D&C right away. I decided I wanted an ultrasound first, and I will never forget that ... there on the screen was a tiny flashing heartbeat. It wasn't the mole returning, it was my baby girl.

She was born in July 2007, and after her birth we did not use birth control because my past experience had taught me that a healthy pregnancy was not something I had to worry about. I figured I wouldn't get pregnant, or if I did, it wouldn't go to term.

The joke was on me ... when my daughter was four months old I found myself pregnant again. And it stuck. The baby grew and grew and then finally he was born in September 2008, when my daughter was just 13 months old.

Five months later, while using reliable birth control ... it happened again. I got pregnant. I was shocked. How could this happen? I was infertile! I couldn't keep a baby growing! And now not one, not two, but THREE unplanned pregnancies??

That baby became my second son, fifth child, born just 14 months after his brother and 27 months after his sister. Three babies in two years, after two prior years of infertility and repeat miscarriage.

There are days when being a mom of five, three under three, is really, really hard. But mostly, I savor the days and am thankful for the opportunity to be their mother. It really is a miracle.