Guest Post 2 at Selections of Reflections

Hi everyone — here’s another quick note letting you know I’m honored to be Diana Jackson’s guest for a second time over at “Selections of Reflections” with the following story.

I hope you’ll go on over, leave a comment and share the love.

Letting Go of Love – Lane ~ Pat Ruppel Says..

Thank You!

Pat at the ol’ kitchen table

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This Moment Matters

water drop splashing

Water drop splashing — MSN clipart photo provided by NVTOffice Clips

THIS MOMENT MATTERS . . . even in the writing of this story, I notice moments as fleeting, difficult to observe and yet compelling. My thoughts want to bounce around, sort, try to understand and decide what to do next. Herein, I believe, lies the secret that matters most in our lives, our happiness, and that is to take time and notice the moment.  Continue reading

Letting Go of “Love Lane”

aspens along road

Photo © 2013 by Pat Ruppel

I notice the more I write ― the more is released. There are parts of me I’ve tucked away long ago that bubble up and can no longer push down.

In writing, I get the chance to let it go, when I commit to what has shown up. It certainly was the case, when I wrote this story, “Love Lane”.  Continue reading

Digiprove sealCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2013 Pat Ruppel

Behind Closed Doors

Picture by MSN Clipart Provider

I recently read an Internet article on the Power of Perspective which stirred my thinking from perspective to perception. Perspective (outlook), perception (interpretation) and judgment (response) are all similar in meaning with different results.

I thought of my life and how can I best tell a story through my own writings … but wondered how it would be perceived.  I can only relay what I’ve learned and hope it makes a connection with you.

I believe one of the most important things in life is compassion.  I learned what you see is not always a picture of the truth.  What we see can be rain-colored through our conditioned beliefs and undeveloped mind and senses and we immediately make judgments.  Sometimes, it’s necessary to do so but too many times the conditioning takes over and clouds the perception.  Let me give you more of my history that has brought me to this understanding.

My parents, God bless them, raised my sister and I with their own beliefs and conditioning – they did the best with what they knew and I loved them very much.  My mother was a beautiful, intelligent woman with an LPN and my father handsome and strong, a World War II Veteran.

They were also a little eccentric you could say.  But as a child living in the same household I gained a different perspective and first-hand knowledge of the struggles going on around me.  It’s was a part of my life.  It was like day before WWII when my sister was born and night after WWII when I was born. From what I hear they were so much in love and then something happened, I never knew what.

We lived in a normal suburban neighborhood but apparently not so normal was my family.  My father struggled to make a living and my mother fought her demons of jealousy making the struggles mostly between them with my sister and me almost invisible.  The challenges they created for themselves made them distrustful of the world and everyone around them.

As a result of their struggles, many times we were without food and heat with my father having a hard time holding down a job.  Let me be clear – there was no alcohol, drugs or physical abuse – just the pull and tug between them.  There was no convincing my mother that my father was not cheating on her and over time it became an obsession.

To be fair, I don’t know whether he cheated or not but he’d have to be a miracle worker with her demands – no pocket-money, allotted so much time to get home from work, no phone and she was with him everywhere when he wasn’t working – to name a few.  I had come to the conclusion later that my mother may have possibly had a chemical imbalance or was manic-depressive which was never diagnosed but may have explained some things.

Family life presented some problems for my sister and me as we grew in trying to fit in with the outside world with neighborhood kids and school.  We saw and felt the judgments on what we wore, how our clothes smelled from a portable kerosene heater and how we appeared different.

As years went by my parents aged living in their own isolated world continuing their battles with each other.  We grew up, got married and established normal homes (I’m surprised) though not without our own challenges.  Things got worse for my parents in poverty having not provided properly for themselves in their ‘golden years’.

My sister took on the responsibility of helping them as much as possible with me half-way across the country but they were proud and stayed in their home even if it was severely run down.  It was their home.  My mother passed away in her late 60’s and my dad lived another 15 years coming out of his shell and trying to recover without her. It’s another story, another time in how I found closure on the loss of my mother through a vivid dream.

Having lived behind the same doors with the struggles of my parents I learned compassion for them through the good times and not so good.  I felt their tenderness for each other, my sister and I, heard their political and religious views, made my reconciliation pitches and wept with them when they faced some of their biggest fears.

Later in my dad’s life is when I observed my full awareness of my reaction to a neighbor’s perception who lived across the street from my dad.  Through some bad choices my father had befriended and trusted a neighbor and ended up losing everything he had to the final loss of selling his house for a minimal amount while in the hospital with heart surgery.

I went with him to meet this neighbor out of curiosity to understand his trust in her and was met with another forceful, opinionated neighbor she had asked to join us. He proceeded to ream me up one end and down the other about the kind of daughter I was allowing my father to live in those poverty conditions.  He only had the physical perception of the conditions of the house and what life appeared to be from the outside.

As I watched this neighbor rant and rave, I noticed my father as his head hung down realizing the bad choices he had made and could only love him more.  He finally understood what my sister and I had lived trying to fit in this world of perception and nothing more had to be said.  My only rebuttal to the disgruntled neighbor was, “The only way you would understand is if you had lived behind those closed doors.”

I think so many times of the people you hear stories about on the news and the misfortunes that have fallen on them.  I wonder what life was like behind their closed doors, the pain and their reactions to it that brought them to the life they now live.  I hope they can make some sense of it, find understanding and compassion along the way and pass it along.

We all have our stories, perspectives and perceptions – may we all take more time before we make our judgments.  I hope you will share some of your stories.

Hooking Up – Finding that Connection

If I had to answer the question, “What is your calling?” the closest response I could give – hook up and find that connection. It seems like in our society today we keep trying to find ways to separate, yet through internet access, cell phones, blackberries, etc., we appear to be more in touch with each other than ever before. True, technologically speaking, but can we talk to our children? Do we know how our elderly mother or father is feeling when they’re facing assisted living care? Or, what is going on with me? I can’t seem to be able to connect with my feelings or express myself. I’m too busy. This is complex and I don’t claim to know what’s happening here. I just want to present it to you.

If you’ve ever been around horses, you’ve probably heard the names of Tom Dorrance and Ray Hunt. They are pioneers in horse training and animal communication – horse whisperers – who I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and seeing in action. When you watch them work with a horse in a round pen, you’ll see something beautiful happening in the dance between man and animal.

There’s a broken link being reconnected where the horse, in his struggles to trust the human again, slowly yields, stops and turns facing the man. This is what is called “hooking up”. You can see it in the horse’s eyes when he makes that choice and looks to the human for help and guidance. It is the beginning of a relationship of give and take, learning from each other and is beautiful to see.

How can we translate this to us? How can we hook up to our husband or wife, our children, co-workers, friends and be truly present with them, plugged into what they’re saying and doing?

Growing up with my parents and sister in a small town southeast of Philadelphia, I learned early that I was living in a home where there was very little communication.

There was much disharmony and mistrust and arguments to the point I wondered if they knew I even existed. This went on throughout their whole lifetime and somehow I always wanted to find a way to help them reconcile with each other. I never knew the root of their issues only the evidence.

When I married and moved out to Colorado, I kept in touch regularly and went back for visits. Each time I went back, I would think, “Maybe, this is the time I can get them to sit down and have a heart-to-heart talk where they would consider each other’s feelings and talk it out.” In 1985, my mother died suddenly in her sleep and I flew back to help my Dad and sister.

The arrangements were in disarray in that they had made no preparations and had no money. Dad was a mess, my sister and I were heart broken losing our mother and the opportunity to help them reconnect lost forever. After the burial, I flew back to Colorado and I can remember sitting on the plane still in shock and emotionally numb. I kept asking, “Why?” “Why did they have such a life of arguing and fighting and poverty?” “Why couldn’t they change or see past it?” I couldn’t get over it. It kept rolling over and over in my mind that it seemed like such a waste.

When I got home and went to bed that evening, I still couldn’t shake this and, when I finally fell asleep, I had a vivid dream. I could see my mother with steel cables coiled around her from head to toe. Off to the side, I could see a hand holding a pair of clippers. The hand moved toward my mother and cut each of the cables until she was totally free. I remembered this dream the next day when I awoke and it helped bring closure and peace.

We often are so stuck in our beliefs and how we think things should be. We’re hurt and can’t get past the pain, like my mother. Her trying to control the situation and acting out the pain only made it worse and ruined what life they could have had together.

Are you holding onto something so tight you’re willing to give up your life for it – unable to yield like the horse and consider another way? I learned a big lesson that day – one of compassion. We don’t know what each other’s feeling or the pain but if we can gently give guidance and help point to healing and trust – like the horse whisperer – what a new world this would be.

Where is the human whisperer? There are people out there for you and me: a close friend, relative or someone in your church, who have gentle compassion and can direct us safely to a place where we can trust again and connect to our relationships and a healthy life. We just need to be willing to yield and hook up.

From the kitchen table – Pat

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