Reorganizing

Sometimes, when I haven't written in awhile, I like to look back to where I was two years ago and see how far I've come. (Or not.)

I have been feeling a bit blue lately and my first thought was, "Well, you're not married anymore, so you should feel relieved and happy!  And free!"  And a part of me does feel that, but also a part of me recognizes that my ex was not the cause of my unhappiness, really no one else is responsible for my moods but me.  I am responsible for myself and therefore there is no one to blame or criticize (not even myself.) When I looked back this morning, I read this quote from Pema Chodron:

"The first noble truth says that if you are alive, if you have a heart, if you can love, if you can be compassionate, if you can realize the life energy that makes everything change, and move and grow and die, then you won't have any resentment or resistance.  The first noble truth says simply that it's part of being human to feel discomfort."

So I accept that I feel some discomfort today.  And I also acknowledge how far I've come from two years ago and how grateful I am for everything - all the difficulties and all the accomplishments.  I won't list them, I'll simply say it's been a period of reorganizing.  In a grief workshop I went to two years ago (you can look back at that blog post, which was in October 2009) the leader of the workshop talked about different periods of grief (other than the Elizabeth Kubler-Ross model) - and the final stage was reorganization.  That is where it feels I am today. 

And although the country and the world is in no better shape (well, actually worse in many ways) I feel encouraged that there are some interesting people showing up, including Elizabeth Warren, who talks about truths and ideas for the economy that make sense.  My hope is that Wall Street will be held accountable for their part in the mess we're in.  Is this dreaming?  No, I don't think so.  I think we are slowly starting to wake up from the past thirty years of policies that have almost ruined our country - and that now we will make changes, we will get mad as hell, and I feel hopeful that the stage we are moving into as a nation is "reorganization."