The Last Machine

I seldom listen to songs after I finish them. I think it’s because I always feel the need to move on after I write them, or they were just so brutally painful at the time of writing that I just have to get away from it. Someone emailed me today saying they watched a video that one of our friends Jools on here made for the STEVER song, "The Last Machine" so I went and looked at the video on youtube again. She did a great job on it. I found myself looking at the lyrics again too, thinking how belligerent I was at that time, but you know I found that standing my ground when I was literally on the brink of death was my final choice, not my optimal choice. And I think I’m ok with it. ‘Firming up’ is a step and for me it was the bridge to my survival. I thought I’d share the lyrics here. I read them today pretending I didn’t write them and I gained a new perspective on The Last Machine and how important that song was for my healing. It really was my decision to be alive! Think I need to spend some time with the other songs on the record too, maybe I will find a new perspective now.

The Last Machine

I’m number 42328043 and I’m quarantined convening in between a bleeding team
Misleading Hallowe’en, the pumpkin seeds are centipedes that breed
There’s nothing left to eat in the world of silent leaves but in the concave side of my spoon
I’m bigger than you.

I’m not running in the opposite direction, I’m the last one standing
Time has come to make you see

They’ve all been dragged from me, steal them while I sleep
and I’m the last machine, completely overheated anarchy
Misleading entity, superseding paranormal beings
There’s nothing left to eat in the world of silent leaves but in the concave side of this spoon
I’m bigger than you.

I’m not running in the opposite direction, I’m the last one standing
Time has come to make you see who controls your destiny. Who controls your destiny?
Do you control your destiny?

You didn’t know when you left a skeleton that she would wake from emaciation
No threat of danger or crucifixion, hell’s just for those who face their condemnation
You didn’t know when you left my skeleton that I could haunt you without my ghost
Those objects in your side of the spoon are much bigger than you

I’m not running, it was a long time coming and now I’m left here standing
your time has come, I’m gonna make you see

I’m not running in the opposite direction, I’m the last one standing
Time has come to make you see you’re going in the wrong direction
I’m not running in the opposite direction, I’m the last one standing
Time has come to make you see you’re going in the wrong direction
Who controls your destiny? Who controls your destiny?
Do you control your destiny?
I’m not running…

Much love on you, whatever you are up against…
Karen :)

"Destiny grants us our wishes, but in its own way, in order to give us something beyond our wishes." ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Do you need to make a big decision?

About 5 years ago, I made a decision to move from Ontario to Los Angeles. That’s a little different than moving from one town to another. It’s a decision I didn’t take lightly and yet when I did decide to, I didn’t look back. I chose to bring one medium suitcase and one smaller one and said I would accumulate the essentials I needed after coming to LA. This wasn’t an "I’m going to LA to be famous" story, I had already solidified my pace before coming. There are Visas and tricky things between countries, so it isn’t just a simple jump. Never mind the crazy amount of thinking and spazzing out that goes on in the moments in between.

Today, I had to decide between 2 different types of juices in my fridge. I laughed and thought, "yeah uneventful is rather lovely."

It’s funny that before my big decision, I had so many pros and cons floating through my head. Some were real and some were imagined. Most of the things I put on the con side were a really big deal at the time, but now are not. Something like getting rid of my car was holding me to stay there so I could keep it, but I needed the extra cash to make the transition. The hardest thing was leaving certain people and leaving my pet of 12 years behind was devastating. I still go to tears over that. (before anyone questions that one, there’s a laundry list of reasons why I didn’t uproot her)

I’ve written before on my move, but what I want to focus on is the excuses we tell ourselves for why we can’t make the best decision for us. Most of these lies we feed ourselves are mostly due to not wanting to leave our comfort zone. I know someone in my extended family who stayed in a very bad marriage because she liked her house. I’ve seen people stay at their job because of benefits. Now of course, these days having a job is a great thing, but if someone is miserable, there should at least be a plan even if longer term, to move on.

Having to make a big decision is the type of thing that ruins our sleep. For me, I had approx 700 sleepless nights in a row before making it and several years of gradual insomnia before it. Yup, now you are talking years. Years of worry, years of paranoia, years of stress and years of spazzing out about it. The actual sting of the move really did pale in comparison to the years of fretting beforehand. In looking back, I sure wished I just did it and was done with it, but it took a lot of thinking and accumulated emotion to get me to make those lists I have made reference to and to strategize as opposed to just being reactionary.

One of the things I noticed about myself was a stubborn streak. (well, that hasn’t completely gone away…ha!) My fight was no longer with the people around me. It switched to being against myself. I waged a war against me. "I need to get out." "No, you should stay, you have to stay." "No, this is bad for me, I must leave" "Nope, you have responsibilities to everyone… in the whole town even!"

The final argument I had was, "You must stay, you are INVESTED."

INVESTED, oh wow. Like stocks and bonds I had to stay and babysit my INVESTMENT! That was a turning point within the many tiers of my decision. "I am WHAT???? Are you kidding me? I just finished my 700th sleepless night and that is supposed to be some sort of INVESTMENT? This is completely ridiculous and this needs to be cut off."

When I looked at my whole scenario, pros and cons, paranoia and fear, the clincher was that I finally and absolutely viewed the whole kit and caboodle as INVESTING! I invested my heart, my soul, my love, my friendship. But you know what I found to be the problem? Investments require payback, and my return SUCKED! I had no sense of purpose because I was too busy wondering why nobody gave a thing back instead of doing things in joy, love and a giving spirit. That’s when I knew there was no reason for me to be there. I wanted to get back to having purpose and meaning again. This is not to be mistaken for me selfishly looking for something for me, I just wanted to be able to have meaning and make a difference in some situation where I could be appreciated, again not in a selfish way, but where I knew I could do some good.

Hollywood isn’t where I will settle. I said this years ago. I am a Canadian and my heart will always be there, but the creative people I have been working with in Los Angeles are all driven by a purpose to make a difference in the music business and together, we have infiltrated record labels without them even seeing us. We’ve given opportunities to artists where the bigger industry has failed them. We have flown under the radar in a sneak attack for the last 5 years and are making an impact while the record label heads are making smarter choices that they "think" came from them.

There is truly no war though, we are doing it with a positive healthy creative vibe, reuniting the people who deserve recognition and helping heal the people who didn’t give it to them. Healing is ultimately what I want for everyone because I know how it feels to be in massive amounts of pain. I know what it’s like for bigger people to be at war with the little people. I have always been the little people.

My point in saying this is because today I feel like I am finding a wonderful purpose without using hate tactics or anger, without hurting anyone’s feelings and the best part of this? I can look in the mirror and feel good about it.

My biggest choice at the core of my decision was that I was going to return to the person I was before all the madness happened. I was going to approach everything with love and not side with anyone; Hollywood big shots or the little guy on the streets. (well, of course if I had to take a side with a gun to my head, you know who I would choose) I wanted to serve as a moderator who could be there to assist in healing BOTH sides.

Yes, the educated, realistic yet pessimistic side of me will always say, "You can’t change everyone" This goes without saying and you know what? I’m not going to include that in my vocabulary anymore because it’s so damn brutally obvious of a statement. What I CAN do; wake up every single day and just be open to where I am needed, how I can be instrumental in healing and how I can be a friend to not just the little guy but bring the top down a few notches to meet them; with love.

Don’t believe it can be done? It’s already happening. Yes, it’s easier to just stand your ground and "stand for something" with a group who "has your back" but reuniting people while encouraging both sides is a bit tricky but wow, so extraordinarily rewarding!

I write this in the hopes of encouraging others who feel pulled to be part of hateful movements to consider what it is doing to your own character and I write this in the hopes that if you are faced with a very important decision in your life, that you will do everything in your power to preserve your character, take the high road, rise about the gossip, hate and divisive groups and be YOU(or an improved version of YOU…heehee) –whoever that is. I believe we all still have the child spirit in us that looks for the good times, that values friendship and family, that places an emphasis on healing and forgiveness, that sees the beautiful innocence in things, recovers our optimism and strives to make this world and our communities more loving, more productive and worthwhile. I've learned this is called "the higher calling".

Each of us has the power to do this. Call me naive if you must, but I have not lived a sheltered life. I’ve seen way too much already and tried 1500 approaches. NOTHING works like love. Nothing feels as good as love either.

And you know what? Even if my love doesn’t work, I still can look into my mirror and fall into a wonderfully deep sleep because those 700 sleepless nights have to be recovered.

Much love on ya!

Karen :)

　

"You cannot catch a child's spirit by running after it; you must stand still and for love it will soon itself return." ~Arthur Miller

It is Lonely Being Right!

You may have seen in my kitty section, there is a picture of Tabby who is a feral I've seen in the back parking lot behind my apartment building. Unfortunately, he is far too wild to let anyone near him. In the last year or so a kitten who looks pretty much identical to him has been hanging around. They are so indistinguishable from each other that I think it’s a family member. Together, they secured the back lot and it’s one of the only parking lots I have seen in Los Angeles where there are only two cats. (Right now I think the statistics are 4 million strays in LA, so make sure you adopt and spay/neuter)

I have seen other cats come in and these Tabbies have driven them out. I have never seen them fight with each other up until recently though. The original Tabby is one that Filthy would fight with (the stray that I had for 3 years who I lost last year) Well, after this fight finally happened between the two, the younger one has now driven the older one out. I did see the older Tabby up on a rooftop last week not looking too good, so in looking back I wonder if Filthy was getting sick and that is why he was also driven out. Cats quite often get more defensive and ornery when they are sick.

Well obviously this happens in nature, although not for one minute do I believe these outdoor cats are part of the wild animal kingdom, that’s just society screwing something up. Whatever the reason, there is one kitty left to sun himself back there. I didn’t see him today because it was raining in LA, but after the fight happened, he seemed to enjoy his kingdom for a time but he grew a bit bored and dare I say lonely. (it’s an odd trait to give to cats who are so independent) The leaf blower came out earlier in the week and he took off scared.

How many times do we do this? I am known to become crabby when I don’t feel good. I know it’s not a perfect parallel, but some things just spur a few thoughts from me. So many times we have to feel like we are right and we drive people away from us out of principle. Sure, we have the space to ourselves, bask in the sun. But the cats looked happier and formed a better team when they were together. (I know, I know…it’s just how it goes) Do we become any happier when we are right and alone? Are we driving other people out because they are no good to us anymore? Do we discard them because they are sick, sad, lonely, depressed or low on the totem pole?

We have the capacity to cut each other some slack and get over ourselves. As people with the capability to show love and compassion, why are we so consumed with marking our territory over being inclusive and loving? Sure, that may be our instinct to survive and protect our own interests as well, but I personally want more out of my life than mere survival.

Much love on ya!
Karen :)

"There is nothing in the world more stubborn than a corpse: you can hit it, you can knock it to pieces, but you cannot convince it." ~Alexander Herzen

Do you write in pen or pencil?

If we both have 10 stressful areas in our life, it would be fair to say we have equal stress. (not usually the case though dependent upon the depth of each problem) But, what could shift those numbers is if one of us has the inability to deal with stress which would tip us over the edge at 11. The eleventh thing is the heaviest weight.

"We all got problems" is a popular saying. Sure, everyone is going through something but some of us can even double our problems by simply adding unnecessary fuel to the fire.

Simplifying it; say for instance, there are these 4 problems;

1. Lack of energy/ health issue

2. A relationship/family problem

3. Job loss

4. Threat of foreclosure

From what I can tell, there are 2 main areas which we will add to the number 5 position.

5. Anger

OR

5. Calm disposition

Speaking somewhat from experience here, I would say ‘anger’ just adds another problem to the "problem list" whereas a ‘calm disposition’ can be the catalyst to truly erasing the other 4.

It’s like writing in pencil vs writing in pen.

*Anger is either our liquid paper (which I don’t know that I have ever seen a document with liquid paper ever look good) or it can be a giant red marker haphazardly strewn across calligraphy.

*A calm disposition has the ability to be an eraser. We may still see the hint of pencil on our page, but it doesn’t render the page completely useless. The problems are not entirely gone, but we can still write on it.

For me personally, I have been spray-painting my problems onto brick walls all over the city. All the clean-up crews out there have attempted to paint over it and clean it off, but I was so sure these problems were permanent, so good luck getting it off!

But it’s a personal decision I made. I chose to make my own problems permanent by adding anger to them. I chose to write in pen (and oil-based paint) not pencil.

Writing things down is a great way to get a handle on our problems. We can in light pencil see exactly what we are up against. Writing in pencil (or keeping this calm disposition) reminds us our problems are not permanent. I am a big proponent of lists for the things I need to get done…good things, and the bad but the lists always need to be crossed-off. I need to as a historically depressed person, feel like my problems are not permanent and that I am doing something to move onto my happiness.

The hope is to concentrate on number 6; ACTION. Not REACTION.

Of course, I did buy this white board this week… I like it. I can alter the state of the problem before removing it. ;) HA!

ROCK ON!
Karen :)

"Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath." ~Michael Caine

Left with Lines and Wrinkles

"As we grow old, the beauty steals inward." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I don’t know that I could ever tire of reading Emerson. There is a ridiculous amount of wisdom. You may have seen the status comment I put up which is also a quote from him, "Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience."

I have a two hour window MAX these days for how long I can stand being out and about. This degeneration may very well have been from Sunset Strip. I get invitations to see horrible sounding bands in awful rooms like the Cat Club where the sound system is unbearable. Couple that with the waitress who’s perfume smells like the inside of a dead skunk (Gramma used to say it, I don’t really know what that smells like) and you have 2 easy reasons why I want to dash home immediately!

But it seems like wherever I go, I completely max out at the 2 hour mark. While I feel like many areas of my life are improving as far as patience goes, I am growing increasingly impatient with the same old dribble. It could be that I am not so impatient but rather I simply have better things to do. Same with the radio; I can’t sit through 20 seconds of bad song-writing even if I was paid to do so. It’s a lot like intolerance, but that word is something I loathe! I would hate to place myself in that category. ;)

So there I am ‘stealing inward’ into my cave. I think the good part is that I am not doing it to be reclusive because I have sat in the West Wing of Seclusion before (Big Lebowski reference) and I am not sad, mourning or depressed. I steal away to do things I love and to try and not waste life.

I use this example to draw a bit of a parallel with the initial Emerson quote. It seems like as we grow older, we make up little jokes and sayings to excuse the fact that our outward appearance is aging. I hate when we do it, but I know why. Deep inside many of us feel a nagging sense that death is creeping up but more often than not many of us see regret when we look in the mirror. The lines and wrinkles just remind us of what we haven’t accomplished at this time in our lives. The lines and wrinkles feel like what is left of whatever life we had that we accuse others of sucking from us.

I am ready in my life to get past the big joke that is aging. I don’t want to go back to my youth. I didn’t like the person I was as a teenager but life just is what it is! I don’t feel especially regretful anymore. When Emerson said "the beauty steals inward", I am struck by how incredibly beautiful this is. Think of how unnecessary looks really are. Think of how much a good character matters and couple it with how remarkable it is that our soul has the unique capability of marinating a personality, stirring it, adding spices to it and it can just grow and grow! I hate the term, "It’s all downhill from here." Well of course it would be nice to couple a good character with a fit body so we can go experience life to the fullest. But the beauty that is inside of us, that steals away to its meditating place in order to strengthen its peace is bigger than our physical being. The beauty of character has the ability to transcend all the radio fodder and propaganda and sit cross-legged in the middle of a violent storm. How breath-taking it truly is!

And then in true Emerson fashion, he cracks a joke at the same time he draws a picture with his words… "steals inward" which is the opposite of "stealing away"; a term often reserved for young lovers and risk-takers. How eloquent that he would touch on something so youthful and allude to the essence of true beauty being in growing old.

We can make jokes about aging because after all, life is pretty funny! But aging is something I am quite enjoying for everything youthful that I am physically losing is like a metamorphosis, a transformation. This is going to be ok! You see, it could just disappear from our outsides and never place itself on the inside and then oh what a truly empty shell of a body we would be!

Take care of you, but please…take care of your spirit!
Karen :)

Oh why not add a third Emerson quote, right?

"Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think."

Are you ok with being alone or are you perpetually lonely?

"We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone." ~Orson Welles

There is so much to agree with and disagree with in that quote. See while we are ultimately alone in everything we do, there are 7 billion of us now so I’m not sure we were ever meant to be alone. Still, I find a tremendous amount of strength in learning how to be alone without being lonely.

A few decades of my life have been about trying to glue myself to the hip of one other person. It’s always been tough for me to sleep by myself, go walking alone or stay home on a Saturday night without a social buddy. My issue comes maybe from losing my father at a really young age but more so, I am an artist which means I am more about emotions than anything else so I thrive on the emotions of others. But, being an artist means I like my alone time too. But that is only more recently. For years, I really liked creating with and for other people. Now I am at a point where I don’t mind being alone with my art and I like doing it for me. I figured out what happened though; I exchanged some of my dialogue from actual people and replaced it with dialogue between the characters I write about in my creative writings. This has been a big break-through for me. The only other time I felt ok about being alone with imaginary people and creatures was when I was under the age of 10!

Orson was right when he said we can create the illusion we are not alone through love and friendship. It’s very cool and I don’t take anything from that but he’s also right when he said we are born alone, live alone and die alone. It used to be super depressing to hear it said like that. You feel like you want to give up. But instead of that portion of the quote being some kind of mantra to live by, I just grab a lesson from it and move on. The lesson is that if we can learn simply how to be by ourselves, we will ultimately have a strong presence that will not become needy when it comes to others. Through learning to be by ourselves and alone with ourselves, we could possibly develop a muscle which enables us to give to others and not be such a taker of life.

I say this because overall, I believe our reason for being with others is to not suck their soul dry of its content, but to have something to offer. If we are sure our own character has the ability to do this, we may in fact become better at finding the right person who we can share our lives with. Think of how many people gravitate towards people who are simply not good for them! I think if I really dig myself first as an individual, I could very well recognize who is the best person to pair up with! Simply put; if you like yourself and your individuality, you’ll pick someone who matches that. If you are needy and dependent, you most likely will pick someone too dominating for you.

The most common advice you may hear after a bad break-up may be, "spend some time by yourself before moving on". Nobody likes to hear it. If you are used to having someone around no matter how crappy they are in your life, you’ll settle for something that does not even come close to being good for you.

There are so many people in this life who have not partnered up with someone and found a great purpose. I think learning to love ourselves should be a priority. That way, if you end up being alone, you’ll be ok. If you end up partnering up, you both can share your spirit instead of stealing each other’s.

Are you ok with being alone or are you perpetually lonely?

Much love on ya!

Karen :)

(quote at the top…lol)

My Favorite Flavor...

"What is your favorite flavor that you could still consume WITHOUT added salt or sugar?"

See, I didn’t say FOOD, I said FLAVOR.

I actually expected larger gaps of time for people to respond, because it’s something I would expect that most of society has to think about. It’s not our fault, we have been completely misled on what flavor is.

Dictionary. com says this about its use as a noun; (which is how I used it)

1. Distinctive taste; savor: a flavor of smoke in bacon.

The flavor is the smoke, bacon is the food…unless I guess you want to say have bacon-flavored fries. Then the fries are altered. (I’m German, that is a food…lol) But all preaching aside….lol my point is that we have forgotten what flavor is aside from just calling it food. When you burn your toast, it has a burnt flavor to it!

Then to really add confusion, I ask what is your favorite flavor WITHOUT added sugar or salt. A person may like Cinnamon or Vanilla (and those are flavors), but have you tried either on their own? Try sticking your finger into cinnamon or pure vanilla and tell me you’d eat it while watching a movie. :)

Something I started doing years ago was drinking my blueberry tea without adding sugar or anything else. The kind I buy is just pure blueberry. Now, in all fairness blueberries have naturally occurring sugars in them but mine is so weak that I learned to identify the blueberry flavor because in a weak tea, you can’t taste the sugar, just the flavor. It caused me to look at flavor differently. Lemon is a flavor many people like, but you’ll hear them say they like it in pie or lemonade. While people say sugar brings out the taste, it essentially just adds sugar to the taste we like to make it consumable for us. This isn’t all bad, it’s just a reminder to know the difference. It’s like we should set up a taste test of flavors and see if people know them without the enhancement of salt or sugar.

For me, diving into flavor and experimenting with it makes me understand how dependent we have become on sugar and salt. Now I do know we need a "certain" amount of it in our diets, but most food if you read the ingredients has 2-3, sometimes 4-5 times the sugar or salt in one item of what we need in an entire day.

When I was doing weight-loss counseling, I would hear women say, "but I crave the salt, I need the sugar." My response, "Actually, you’ve already consumed 2000 mg of sodium in your breakfast without even knowing it. No, you don’t."

The body tends to do two things with salt and sugar;

1. It confuses you into thinking you need them because it is lacking other vitamins.

2. It becomes addicted to them based on us feeding the addiction…

Our body just goes with the flow really and works very short-term. There is a scientific breakdown of what our bodies require in a day but we tend to have no clue of how to go about filling the need.

Grabbing carbs (while our brain needs them in a 40/30/30 ratio) makes us feel better because sugar is the fastest thing to flow into the bloodstream. Instant fix! Falling off happens because your body can’t do anything else with it. It’s an empty energy that gives us a jolt, makes our heart race and then we are twice as tired when we fall. So, instead of falling, people tend to keep on going with more sugar, salt and caffeine. Imagine what the poor heart is going through!

But then one step further, I think it’s important to understand the pancreas. When you consume sugar, our pancreas secretes insulin. Insulin stores itself as fat around the middle of your body. It’s why many people only carry weight there. When you eat in a proper 40/30/30 ratio of Protein/Carbs/Fat, the pancreas functions normally and has no reason to store it, unless you are just over-eating which is another topic. You can’t consume more than you burn, that is simple mathematics.

When we eat balanced, the body doesn’t flip out and make our heart and pancreas (amongst other organs and our spine!) do crazy over-worked actions, therefore, we should have a more consistent energy in our day. (unless of course you have something genetic- I am not a Doctor)

LOVING sugar and salt is a dangerous addiction. We laugh about it, I like sweets a lot too! But there is something called moderation….and more than that, we are still coming up short with the vitamins our bodies require.

I am genuinely concerned about our health in North America, not because I want everyone to look like some svelte model, but because we have families, friends and our own art and creativity that are waiting for us to grasp life and enjoy every aspect we can! When we feel tired and sluggish, we can’t even begin to think about taking on something else. All of our energy is consumed by simply not passing out when we stand up! THAT is not living!

LOVE you guys, take care of YOU!!

Karen :)

"Self-respect leads to self-discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt, that's real power." ~Clint Eastwood

When Devastation Strikes

Devastation is a really hard word that I don’t think should be applied to too many personal things BUT IT IS! If you research the history of the word, it was usually used when talking about weather disasters or in war. Some of the synonyms are destruction, desolation and wreckage.

I have personally used the word when referring to my own break-ups, deaths around me or upheavals in my world. But in hindsight, while I was feeling especially devastated as though an elephant sat directly in the middle of my chest, it was nothing compared to a village being flattened or some of these national disasters we’ve seen.

Preservation is the opposite of devastation although I don’t feel like the word is useful in present day. Of course prevention is better than trying to fix something after the fact, but our reality has become we all have to fix something that is pure devastation in our world now. Prevention was like some fleeting thought passed across a board room table in yesteryears. Please don’t mistake this as me not being a believer in prevention, I am …but the immediate needs of people are to fix things, to correct the devastation and just get to step one of survival.

But try telling any of that to someone who swears they are devastated. See, today I listened to a girl who said she felt so devastated by a break-up that she wanted to take her own life. I wish I could say this was an isolated incident because it would be nice to chalk that up as nonsense, but the reality is that she was sitting in the middle of her wreckage and felt as though she’d been crushed by a fleet of elephants. Ah see, devastation is in fact relative! To tell her that what she was feeling was not devastation would be diminishing her feelings and really not at all helpful, so suffice to say I left my history lesson off the table. :) I do however, hate to hear anyone crippled by their emotion because it soaks up valuable time where they can be out there being creative or building a cool life!

The one common thing that a person who is emotionally devastated will feel which is in alignment with the historical definition of devastation is the sense of loss, the overwhelming lack of direction, the crippling sense of numbness and quite often the talk of taking one’s own life. For these reasons and many others, I find people likening their break-ups to disasters because all the symptoms creep in.

So in all cases of devastation, how does a person even begin to take step number one to come up from the ashes? That is a novel of an answer, in fact it could be a whole library of afterthought along with it. In my own instances, all I could do is something called a reality check.

In every case where I have felt devastated whether real or imagined (very real to me in any case) was to ask myself "what just happened?" Before getting a grip on how to fix it, I sorta had to know what was broken. My mind is the Queen of Imagination. This works well for me sometimes and other times it’s an alternate reality I have made up.

Break-ups have always seemed like the death of me because I always invest more than my heart could take on. So, in the case of break-ups, I had to ask myself if that other person was really MY WHOLE WORLD like the love songs suggest, or if they were perhaps just a person along my path at that time, at that place in my life. Then I could really ask myself, is this devastation or really just a crappy hurdle?

In looking back it was a hurdle, nothing more. At the time, I was crushed.

My reality check when I lost my mother was the worst hurdle in my life because I considered her to be my whole world. But here is where I may come off insensitive but I don’t mean to be. My Mother’s death hurt like nothing I could ever have imagined, but the lesson I learned was that she left a piece of her with me to move on and do things…to involve myself in the bigger picture and seek out my purpose here. I am certainly very sad about it and felt instantly devastated, but I had to zoom out and find my reality check. The reality was I had a FANTASTIC Mom like no other and I was blessed. The reality was that I was going to move on. The reality was this was something I was going to turn into art. My reality check is how I began to heal.

When devastation strikes, we all feel like we cannot go on. But suicide will devastate someone else and the reality of life is none of us are free from feeling devastation and I find great comfort in knowing it’s not just me.

If you feel the need to take your own life over something you have found devastating to you, I encourage you to seek out like-minded people and there are MANY of us who maybe don’t know exactly what you are feeling, but together we are all coming together to find our reality check in it all.

This life can throw many curveballs at us and can suck so badly in so many ways, but I have crawled out of what has felt like devastation and I am finding a beautiful world out there with cool spirits and green fields. It’s not all bad like the news suggests and it’s not as devastating as our love songs try to infer.

It may feel bad right now, but we are given a day at a time with sleep in between. I personally never thought I’d be here to make new friends because I have attempted it. Nobody could convince me at the time that I was going to make it through. But here I am feeling like a kid again. At times, I really can’t believe it!

Much love on you…we’re all in it together…and you are NOT alone!
Karen :)

"All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming." ~Helen Keller