mindfullness

The concept of mindfullness has recently been brought to my attention by several different sources. Its funny how that happens. I hear something once and it is new to me and then I start hearing it from all sorts of different people. I believe this is called the theory of synchronicity. One of the reasons I started this blog is because I was feeling really detached from myself, mostly my spirit. It was almost like I felt defeated. After ditching my career as a drug and alcohol counselor, I did not know what direction to go in. As a covicted felon, employment is limited to me. Our justice system is not set up for people to actually rehabilitate and enter the workforce. That one terrible decision will effect me for the rest of my life and I refuse to let it stand in my way no matter how harsh people can treat me. I am not a victim of myself or my environment. It was time to reinvent myself. School was where I needed to go. I enrolled in CSU's online program for teaching and learning in 2009 and I am set to graduate in December of this year. The funny thing was, kids I had worked with in the past started calling me for further help. As much as I wanted to put my counseling days behind me it seems like I will never be free of it completely and I am glad. Being there for them helps me remember where I came from. One of the few true talents I posess is the ability to listen and be empathetic. It could be the lady at the grocery store or a friend I haven't seen in years, people open up to me. It is amazing and it is an honor to be a part of so many people's path. I may never be famous, I may never write a best seller and I may never own a self sufficient house in the mountains but at least I can know that I have made a positive impact in a few people's life.
While observing the kids I had worked with and reexamining my own experience I have come to the conclusion that drug treatment centers, while useful for adults, can be lethal for adolescents. Most kids go into treatment with a GED in marijuana and leave with a Masters in Methamphetamine. Treatment is a billion dollar industry, and although they are supposed to assess individuals to see if treatment is appropriate, more times than not, they will jump at the chance to "help" your kid. But what does in-patient treatment really do? It gives kids a chance to get clean maybe, and then they meet and hear all of the glamorized war stories of their peers and decide that they need to go try that. The kid goes home to the same environment with the same friends and their parents wonder why they get high immediately. Treatment centers also make money off of referrals. For example, if Johnny 15 year old goes to a 30 day treatment center, the family is convinced he needs more support so they either refer them to a sober living house at $5,000 per month or they extend the stay at the primary facility for $1000 per day. This seems extremely unethical to me and it is one of the main reason I got out. I decided that what these kids need is someone to help guide them into adulthood. Someone they could trust that has been through what they had gone through and gotten through it to live a semi-normal, happy, successul life. I still do some counseling stuff with them, try to find the root of the problem, work with the family on dynamic issues, and other cliche counselor strategies but my goal for all people I get the privledge of speaking with is to then help them find their passion and hold onto it. Young People don't perceive having a lot to lose. If I work on helping them  put positive things in that persons life, if I help them find their passion, then I may have a shot in making a difference . Treatment centers focus on the symptom of drug use and they treat that primarilly. It is comparable to ripping a huge scab off, letting them bleed and sending them home before they have time to heal. How does that help in the long run?
Most kids I work with are terrified to grow up. Hell, I am grown up and stuff still terrifies me. Abandonment, self loathing, vices, fear of success, fear of failure, you name it, and I have feared it. I find that when I am being the best parent I can be, if I am helping others, and taking care of myself and my family, the fear dissipates. The problem with these fears is that they turn into self fullfilling prophecies. Over the last few years of ups and downs for me, I have lost many friends. Most of them left because it is very hard to be my friend during my times of crisis and I push the self-destruct button. The friends that have stuck by me are true angels masquerading as humans. When I am in those crisis' I want to leave myself but no matter how I try to get away and escape, I am always there. The friends I thought would be there forever are gone and some of the friends I never thought I would still have are here. Funny how that works. I am grateful to have lost them becasue if you are not going to stick through someone through the bad times, you don't deserve to be a part of the good times.
Back to mindfullness as I understand it. We live in a time where our focus is all external. For the few people that do try and make their focus internal, kudos, it does not come naturally for me. Being mindfull of what I think about, about what I am feeding my body, mind and spirit has really helped me try and find me again. If I focus on the negativity that pours out of the World I realize it is like a virus and a large quantity of the population is infected by it. Maybe everyone to some degree or another. What I have come to conclude is that the powers that be don't want us to be mindfull. They do not want us to be well. What else would feed the billion dollar industry of anti-depressants? I think that the World is heading in a direction that is really terrifying and that humanity feels it. If we are all running on energy from the same source wouldn't logic follow that we could feel it if we were destroying ourselves on a global scale? I hope that we can pull together and make a change for the better but we are fighting evil in the form of greed and the lust for power. It boggles my mind that socialism is shunned by the top 2% who holds the wealth but they relied on the government to bail them out when they were about to fail. Is that not socialism? How many billions is enough? How rich does one person need to be before they feel a moral obligation to give back? I don't claim to be affiliated with either political party because I feel they are all corrupted by the evil. I affiliate with right and wrong. A concept that seems to have made an exit from Washington and a concept that I hope makes a much awaited return to the powers that be. What right is right. I hope we all wake up no matter what we believe.

About a month ago, my husband and I were called into the principals office. My son's second grade teacher was there and informed us that our son possibly suffers from ADD. She went on to tell us that she has seen medicinal interventions work miracles and that we need to take him to see his pediatrician. Mike and I both cried. They also informed us that they think he is depressed. This broke our hearts. Soon after the sad, hopeless feeling left my body, anger took over. It consumed every fiber of my being. How dare she suggest I put my son on speed so that he would conform to her class. I am not going to dope him up to make anyone's job easier, including mine. Don't get me wrong, if it works for your kid that's fine but I am not ready to do that and I will probably never be.  What message does that send?  Addiction is already in his genes and if I put him on that wouldn't that say "drugs help you, but these are different drugs, these are the good drugs." ADD drugs are a form of methamphetamine. I hope more than anything that we can utilize other interventions to help him in his struggles. He has A's and B's. Seriously, if he is that bad, why is he still passing?I understand in extreme cases that medicinal interventions are necessary and I am not passing judgement on anyone who is a true believer. I am sure they work. But I truly believe that we over diagnose some of these childhood behavioral issues in order to try and label our children, medicate them, and hope that they get fixed. My son has a beautiful mind. He is loving, he is an amazing artist, he is empathic, funny, creative, caring, giving and has good manners. For the most part, he is amazing and I am aware of my bias. Now, I am still in the middle of this obstacle but recently, he was changed to another class. The first day of that class he came home a totally different kid. He was happy. Now for the depression, wouldn't you be depressed too if all the feedback you received from your teacher was negative? Mindfullness. For me, I need to be mindfull of what comes out of my mouth. Will it hurt someone? Will someone perceive this as a negative message? If I am truly being mindfull, and it is a new thing for me, I tend to hurt people less. Parents model behavior for their kids. If you model hate, your kids will hate. My kids hate to clean. Wonder why? I hate to clean.
Mindfullness has been left behind in our society. We are too busy being distracted by our gadgets, and other shiny things we focus on rather that looking at the real problems. At least, I do.
Someday, our dream is to build a nice home on our property in the mountains that is completely self suffiecent. When this day comes, the concept of mindfullness for me, will be realized completely and until then, I just have to remember to work as hard as I can to focus on what matters to me and keep the rest of the garbage out. If I focus on not being able to be mindful until we get out house, I am being the opposite of mindfull.
Now that all of you know most of my story, I am not sure if I will continue writing. I am not of the opinion that what I have to say is important enough to subject you to it. I believe everyone has something wonderful to give to this World. Words are one of humanity's most powerful tools. There is so much that I omitted however that I may remember things that come up. Life throws situations our way everyday and it helps me to write about them to get it out of my head. It helps me sleep better at night. I am just an ordinary woman, living an ordinary life with a less than ordinary backstory. I am grateful for the good, bad and the ugly. I apologize to anyone who was hurt by what I have written and I have done my best to make amends to you all. This was not supposed to be about anyone but me and my life. It is difficult to give a backstory without mentioning other key players. I intentionally left several incidents out becasue I thought they would hurt people and I realize now that I should have been more mindfull of what I did write. Several people have asked me why I feel it is necessary to share this story on the internet and the only answer I can come up with is "I wanted to see if I was alone in the way that I feel and maybe by some chance, I will help people feel as if they are not alone." In this World, I can find hate around every corner, on most channels, in all media outlets and walking down the street, if I choose to look for it. On the other side of the coin, if I choose to live in a place of gratitude, live in the moment and remember that I am not where I should be and I am not where I could be but, for whatever reason, and a lot of hard work, I will never be where I once was, I can find love. Some people think that the idea of peace and harmony is hippy crap that can not possibly happen and if I over analyze it, it may not happen. It is a tall order. It is my choice to try and work at living as an example to my children. Show them that love, tolerance and acceptance of all others will help ensure that the microchasm we call our life can embody all of these things and will transend the crap. This blog was a good start. Thank you to all that took the time to read it and to those that have messaged me about it. There is nothing like getting a message from a complete stranger saying that you have helped them. It is this reason that I will find time to write whenever I can. Hope to write more later this week and I hope that all of my readers take the time to smell the flowers at the grocery store, grab a coffee and people watch at your local coffee shop and laugh so hard that you pee your pants.