Category Archives: healing

Award acceptance!

Posted on by

4

I am blessed and honored with receiving the Very Inspiring Blogger Award from Elyn at Letters to dom, as well as the blog pensées sans frontières.

Here are seven things about myself:

  1. Chihuahua dogs are my favs. My grandmother raised chihuahuas, and I thought all kids got their first dog from their grandma. Unfortunately, in adulthood, I’ve developed a dog allergy, so I’m getting allergy shots so that I can get a chihuahua soon.
  2. I am very accident prone. This is why I don’t ski, snowboard or do anything remotely daring as a sport. I create enough mishaps just going through everyday life!
  3. I have a very loud laugh that is also easily identifiable. People know I’m laughing from rooms away!
  4. Libraries and bookstores are favorite hangout places of mine.
  5. I am a tea snob. No coffee for me!
  6. There is no explanation for my love affair with Ireland. I don’t have a drop of Irish blood in me. In fact, I’m Mexican. I can’t get enough of the music, the tea, the food, the geography, learning Irish history. My soul is strangely, but beautifully Irish.
  7. I love rain and snow. I think it comes from a childhood in the desert.

This is hard, as I’ve only been blogging since July 9th. Though these two bloggers below have already received this award, I still want to mention them because they have great talent and heart. Also, Bourbon at Crazy in the Coconut was the very first blogger to follow me! I especially love her for that! And WeeGee at How Do You Eat An Elephant just makes me laugh.

Crazy in the Coconut

How Do You Eat An Elephant?

The nominations:

My nominations are three bloggers that I started following recently. All three blogs are different, but very special. Please check them out.

Curly Miri

Discovering Serenity

defying ptsd

The rules:

  1. Display the award logo somewhere on the blog
  2. Link back to the blog of the person who nominated you.
  3. State 7 things about yourself
  4. Nominate up to 15 other bloggers for the award and provide links to their blogs
  5. Notify those bloggers that they have been nominated and of the award’s requirements

Thank you everyone for all the support thus far. This is a great community of writers. I learn so much every day from all of you.

Much love,

Beatriz

Pull those weeds!

Posted on by

5

Garden Weeds

The floatiness came upon me when I woke up this morning, and it would not leave. It stayed like an unwanted guest. All day I felt like I was walking in swaths of cotton. I texted my friend Jack, and he had an idea, or at least I thought he had an idea:

Jack: Come over and weed my garden. It’s therapeutic 🙂

Me: Ok. I’ll come over after dinner around 7.

Jack: Seriously? I was kidding, but you’re welcome to weed if you like.

I had not weeded a garden for decades. My grandmother’s garden was the last garden I ever worked in, and “worked in” is putting it loosely. I puttered in there, and she worked.

As soon as I arrived, I dove right into pulling those damn weeds. The earth in my fingernails felt real and grounding. I pulled those weeds, and after a while, I was pulling my mother’s hate, her wrath, self-loathing, and rage. I pulled as if I was pulling those demons out. I would still be out there pulling, but night fell, mosquitoes came, and my body hurt. I think I have dirt in my teeth, but the floatiness is gone.

(Photo credit: Auntie P)

Try, try again

Posted on by

4

Sunday was one of those days where I had to try a lot of things in order to try to not feel shaky and anxious. Waking up at noon after being unable to sleep until after 3 am did not help matters. I finally just got dressed, and went to the nearby coffee shop to write and finish homework. While in the coffee shop my anxious state did not improve.

So, to make things even more challenging I told myself I would go to an AA meeting at 5 pm. I drove to the other side of town for this meeting. But again I got freaky the closer I got to the meeting, so I quickly turned into the Barnes and Noble parking lot, and went in there instead.

Finally, the serenity of the bookstore started to calm me down, and I decided to stay there, and skip the meeting. Then it came to me, I would go home and make Irish meat pies. I went to Ireland in April, and I felt very peaceful there. I thought meat pies would bring back that feeling of serenity.

So I made meat pies, as you can see. They turned out okay, could be tastier. But, the cooking smells and the activity got me out of my head, and I started feeling better. Yay!

Today I kept up the activity in the kitchen, and I made watermelon aguas frescas, which is basically watermelon, ice, lime, and sugar blended together. It’s a favorite drink from a childhood near the Mexican border.

I know this post may make no sense … PTSD and food? But, I’ve learned that, if I am able, sometimes I just have to keep trying different things until I feel better. There are times when I am so triggered that doing anything in the kitchen is out of the question. I can’t tell you how many cartons of buttermilk I’ve thrown out with the intentions of making muffins, but then getting so triggered I never got to making them, and then the buttermilk went bad.

Yesterday turned around, and today was not bad. Sometimes trying enough things until something works will change things for the better. It’s not a guarantee, but I’ve never felt worse by trying different things.