Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Tag: love

Love Makes the World Go Around

Sacred Stories

She was writing in her journal about ‘LOVE’ being four parts of speech: noun, verb, adjective, and adverb.

She wanted to write a sentence using the word love as each of those. She wrote, “Noun: Love makes the world go around.”

Then she could not think of how to use the other forms, so she did a Google search for ‘Is love an adverb?’

Her Google search used her exact sentence: “OK, it’s not an usual adverb. Love is a noun and a verb. For example, “love makes the world go around.” …

Lessons don’t always have to be earth shattering. Just notice the way things are. The way things are is plenty amazing!

November 16, 2019
What Love Can Do

I could begin this article with an update on my SCS-Matters domain still being unavailable here on my home WiFi router, or that our underbelly of our mobile home is not yet insulated or ‘closed up’ as they call it and there is snow on the ground this morning, but I will instead begin by sharing what is important. Last evening we attended the visitation and funeral for the 34-year-old son of our cousin, Rita.

Chris was eccentric. Was that his soul’s destiny? Perhaps it a result of having been born in cardiac distress and immediately being whisked off to a children’s hospital several hours away from home. Maybe having lived his 34 years knowing he could die at any moment contributed.

Perhaps living our lives knowing we could die at any moment would be good for us all.

In the two-year Dharma study group this entire second year is working with the sacred darkness. You might be quite surprised how much fun and how easy the exercises are for this very challenging practice. Sit on an exercise ball, like the one my Dharma Sister, Patty, is leaning on in this photo and note the balance or imbalance until you can find inner stillness.

Another exercise is to hold a book in your hand, out at arm’s length. Notice the inner process. “This is silly. This is heavy. No big deal. I am going to hurt myself. I see no point in this. Kindness says to put the book down.”

You can see how these simple processes are pointing to a deeper state of awareness.

The third exercise is to take a raw egg and purposely let it roll off a counter and fall onto the floor and make a mess! I did this while on Zoom with two Dharma Sisters – one in Texas and one in the Sea of Cortez. We were to watch the tension and the mind activity. “This is wasteful. I am going to have to clean it up. What am I supposed to feel? Is this working? Did I do it right?”

Both of my witnesses said the SPLAT sound produced the greatest gut reaction for them.

I confess to being unwilling to waste one of the good farm-fresh eggs…. I noticed aversion, tension, and desire for control.

Many other events that are filling my days are too personal to share without betraying confidences of others. But one happening just now is worthy of sharing with you.

I was standing at the kitchen island writing this post on my laptop because the Comcast challenges that prevent my PC from having access to my blog. John came back into the house saying, “Look who I found outside raking leaves for a neighbor.”

My eyes had been against the screen and all I saw was a man in a heavy jacket wearing fogged-over eyeglasses and a stocking hat. I walked over to get a closer look.

“From Stevensville United Methodist churches young adult class years ago,” he said. “Scott.”

I recognized his voice!

He went on, “First let me say we have three wonderful children and five amazing grand children. And I want to thank you both for giving me such a foundation for life. You were so far ahead of us spiritually but you never let us know that and you were right there with us helping guide us along.”

“I call that ‘doubling back’ such as when an avid reader wants to inspire love of reading in a toddler. You have patience and kindness and meet them where they are to bring them along. It is such a joy to watch the love grow in them…” I shared.

I also told Scott what I had been told at the Oakwood retreat, “Debra, you love so deeply and you serve so many. You often worry is you are doing enough or if you could have done more. This week let yourself truly cherish yourself….”

I thanked Scott for being God’s answer to my willingness to truly cherish myself.

This morning I watched again the last Dharma Path video. I made a note in my journal about the book exercise: Ego cannot hold on very long. LOVE can hold on as long as it is needed. That is what love can do. Love can hold on as long as it is needed.

Thank you Chris, and Rita, and Comcast….

November 7, 2019
Grief and Relief: RIP Aunt Sharon

Tender emotions here…. Some of the emotions are frustration. I have spent the past two weeks without resolution to my WiFi/Domain not speaking to one another. Twenty three hours on hold with Comcast, Comcast, Comcast, and Bluehost.

Monday evening, Aunt Sharon Basham passed. I met with her family on Thursday evening, went to visitation Friday evening, and I had the honor of officiating her Celebration of Life today. Everything about that service touches other places deep in my heart. Aunt Sharon lived with her daughter, Tracey, and son-in-love, Bo. The family supported Sharon in her wishes to be able to live her life out in the home they all moved into together on her birthday in 2008.

A powerfully relevant poem, “Two Mothers Remembered” by Joann Snow Duncanson, speaks of this unique bond when a daughter is a caregiver to her mother:

I had two Mothers – two Mothers I claim
Two different people, yet with the same name.
Two separate women, diverse by design,
But I loved them both because they were mine.

The first was the Mother who carried me here,
Gave birth and nurtured and launched my career.
She was the one whose features I bear,
Complete with the facial expressions I wear.

She gave me her love, which follows me yet,
Along with the examples in life that she set.

As I got older, she somehow younger grew,
And we’d laugh as just Mothers and daughters should do.

But then came the time that her mind clouded so,
And I sensed that the Mother I knew would soon go.

So quickly she changed and turned into the other,
A stranger who dressed in the clothes of my Mother.

Oh, she looked the same, at least at arm’s length,
But now she was the child and I was her strength.

We’d come full circle, we women three,
My Mother the first, the second and me.
And if my own children should come to a day,
When a new Mother comes and the old goes away,
I’d ask of them nothing that I didn’t do.
Love both of your Mothers as both have loved you.

They chose some wonderful music. In the Garden, by Alan Jackson. And Supermarket Flowers, sung by Ed Sheeran.”You were an angel in the shape of my mum….Spread your wing….And I know that when God took you back he said Hallelujah, You’re home….”

The Basham family is an amazing family. I married in to it over fifty years ago and I am so grateful….

Tonight Stacey sent a text message: “Please hold energy for Doug. He’s frustrated with stuff breaking, weather, etc. I just want to be supportive of him. This is his dream that I’m along for the ride.” (See FaceBook Sailing Lady Gail or Adventure of Doug and Stacey.)

We had opportunity for a voice-to-voice and I shared some from my journal this morning:

D: Last night I was kind to the person at Comcast (8:30-9:30 pm) and Bluehost (9:30-11:00 pm) while still being honest about the frustration.

D: What would you have me know?

V: Ask Jesus for help. Remember the Sacred Story you published that there is an angel for everything?

D: I am willing. I do see how my not planning to go to Indy for the Welcome Baby Party for Brian and Tegan was part of that greater awareness.

V: That is ALWAYS happening. Even the challenging situation with your domain is kind. You can do everything you need to do—just not the way you want to do it. Yes?

D: Yes.

V: Do you remember this is part of the Sacred Darkness? Watch the one who wants to control. As Barbara heard when she was trying to save her neighbor from drowning,”Stop trying. Relax. Let LOVE do this.”

D: Helplessness; confusion; grief. As I embrace that in myself I do it for all sentient beings.

I reminded Aunt Sharon’s family of the importance of celebrating little acts of love and enjoyment and remembrance.

It is OK to feel grief and relief.

In closing, these words to Sharon, and to each of you, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Well done….”

As I was hanging up with Bluehost I asked the guy what time it was where he was at. He said it was 8:00 pm and I responded, “It is 11:00 pm here.”

We are not actually all having the same experience, even when we are having the same experience.

November 2, 2019
Bare Perception

At the time of this writing, I am still holding space for resolution with the issue of not having access to the SCS-Matters.com domain using my Comcast WiFi at home that began 10 days ago. This morning I was successful logging in using the unsecure Xfinity WiFi hotspot, and I am on my laptop at home.YEAH!

Yesterday morning my “dharma study buddy” mentioned a term that I had not previously encountered in our study with Barbara Brodsky, and I have been searching Aaron’s archives for ‘Bare Perception.”

Emrich Retreat – February 26, 2000

So it’s important that you see that the qualities of pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral, are not innate to the object but depend on your relationship to them.

Very occasionally that relationship is what we call “bare perception”, being just with this object as it is in this moment without any prior conditioning to influence how you relate to it. As a simple example, if you had never seen fire, somehow you had lived your entire life and never seen even a candle flame, if you came into a small village after traveling through a cold winter night and somebody invited you into his home where fire burned in the hearth, giving off warmth, in that moment it would be very pleasant. Right there, nothing but the fire. Nothing but that moment. No past conditioning. Yet even here, there is past conditioning that equates warmth with comfort, so already there is some slant.

Think how different it would be if you were traveling on that cold dark night because your home had just burned down and all your family died. There might be a pleasant sensation of warmth from the fire, but your overall experience of fire would not be pleasant. Usually you bring this old conditioning into the moment and so it taints your experience in this moment. It’s very hard to see clearly just what’s here right now.

It’s not easy to bypass that old conditioning. Often the best you can do is to know, “My response here is conditioned by old experience” and to allow a spaciousness which is not so attached to the view, “This is good” or “That is bad”. One notes, “In this moment this feels good to me. It feels pleasant and wholesome. But I acknowledge that consciousness in part is based on past conditioning.”

My past experiences with being on perma-hold, then getting a non-native English speaking entry-level person who asks me the same questions as the last person just asked me has been anything but pleasant.

Last evening I was with my sister. She was saying she felt sad. She was able to say she could see where the sadness was coming from, and she recognized it as old conditioning. She said she knew tomorrow she would feel better.

This morning, I see all of this so related to the talk I gave at St. John UCC in New Buffalo yesterday. I was speaking about the way the news creates a false sense of the world as unsafe and unkind. I encouraged people to pay attention to their own experiences. I suggested making lists of the kindnesses we receive and give. We spent some time reflecting on the true nature of the world.
–
It is because we are raising our standards that things seem to be getting worse.

This is true about our world, and it is true about my sister.

We care more than we have ever cared before.

I would like to add the sermon to this post but I have not yet figured out how to do that with the cobbled-together process. You can send me an email message asking for the audio file of the sermon if you would appreciate listening.

I am here with my fingers on the keyboard, grateful for improvement and I know tomorrow I will feel better….

October 28, 2019
Holy Hissy-fits
Holy hissy-fits, Batman, have I been navigating the sacred darkness this week!

Last Friday morning I realized I was not able to log onto the SCS website. I @$$sumed our website was just down for some reason so I sent a text message to Joel and to our webmaster, Rebecca. Rebecca responded that she was able to log in just fine.

There-in-lies-the-problem….

Everyone can log in except me. And I can log in everywhere except on my home WiFi. I can even log on from home connecting to an unsecure xfinitywifi hot spot.

Hours of calls.

Many words of frustration.

If I had to give the same information to one more person, I was going to jump out of my skin.

I know I was not being kind to them. I was also not being kind to ME.

As I hung up the phone, still awaiting a resolution, an email message popped in from Barbara Brodsky, about the Dharma Path homework for this two weeks:
I wrote back to Barbara: “Do you think the 8 hours I have spent on the phone with Comcast trying to get an issue with my domain cleared counts????”

Barbara wrote back to me: “Aaron is smiling and asks, ‘What did you learn?’”

This morning I wrote in my journal about an email exchange I had with Roann (one of my Dharma Sisters) following our Zoom gathering at which I shared my frustration and cried.

I was very tired and feeling sad last night when I attended my online two-year intensive. One of the women wrote to me afterwards. “Where do you allow for protection of yourself, where you’re not a ‘doormat’ for everyone else’s tsuris (trouble or woes)? Or maybe you want to be in that position and play that role. If you weren’t available to everyone and their mothers uncle… Who would you be? If you didn’t put on the apron in the kitchen, what would happen?”

I wrote back in my journal:

D: You know my heart. I put on the apron in the kitchen because it is a joy to serve. Like rinsing out the coffee pot for Pat on retreat. Easy to do. The state of darkness is not about that. What am I feeling?

V: You are appropriately feeling grief. Yes, you are also knowing your helplessness but you are aware nothing you are going through is permanent. The unkindness (being hostile, rude, short-tempered) doesn’t bother you because you are in an “I shouldn’t be feeling this” mode. You know who you are and the unkindness bothers you because it feels awful. Some people have no baseline for feeling freedom and peace. You have that. Since Friday you have spent many hours on the phone with Comcast without access to this natural state of openness. That causes grief.

I have just spent another hour on the phone. This time with a woman who works security at the back end for the company that hosts our website.

I dialed Comcast again. I am going to take it one step at a time, with an open heart.

Aaron says, “See where you are. See what the next step might be. Do it with love. And if it’s not effective, stop and meditate again, and see what a different step might be.”

Welcoming prayers and energy holding….

P.S. In case you are wondering, I also spent time on a text chat with Comcast, and they offered me a $5 credit off my bill because I have been inconvenienced. Then I called the number the text chat gave me and was told an open ticket is already in process, so I just need to wait until they resolve the issue and someone will call me. Now I am at the office using the WiFi there to post this.
October 23, 2019
NOT Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop

It is interesting where sayings come from that sit in our memory banks and shape our experiences without our noticing.

One such saying comes from the late 19th and early 20th centuries when two-story apartment houses sprung up during the manufacturing boom. Cheaply built, with identical floor plans on the first and second floor, it was common to clearly hear the person living above kick off the first shoe, and be waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I was the ‘responsible adult’ with a dear friend having cataract surgery this week. I spent the night and the following morning she and I were enjoying the gorgeous view from her deck, each of us sipping on our morning brew. We were both writing in our journals when this Braham Kumaris thought for the day popped in:

Suddenly the following poem poured onto my journal page.

View from the Deck

We will die. What dies?

Wasting the gift of this moment

living ‘waiting for the other shoe to drop’

When heart is open, eyes looking up

Every moment is precious ‘living on borrowed time’

Butterfly flits across the sky

Sea gull sings in the distance

Big dog toe nails tap dance on the deck

Being present to your breathing

feeling my heart beat

Carried beyond the chasm of panic

through the valley of doubt

fearing no evil

remembering all is well

with my soul

Is my soul other than this?

Light pierces the darkness

because that is the nature of light

Darkness offers a way of seeing

that transcends the human eye

Seeing suffering calls forth compassion

Sadness itself reaches for joy

Loneliness, despair, sheer terror—

calling cards each one

saying, “Come. Rest. Renew. Receive.”

Spring always follows winter

Which phase of the moon IS the moon?

Laugh at the gyrations when you see them; theirs is a false god

Fog is rolling in—thunder in the distance—so be it

The sun has not been touched

Be with yourself as the weather shifts

it surely will
Debra Basham August 20, 2019

As I finished reading the poem aloud to her, she burst out, “Waiting for the other shoe to drop! That is how I have lived my entire life.”

I told her that had been the working title for the poem….

We went out for a decadent breakfast of banana bread French toast, then she had me read the poem to the surgeon when she went for her next-day check.

She has had some cloudy vision, neither of us expected that. It is probably due to a burst blood vessel and a small blood clot.

The surgeon will see her again at one week, and he assured her all is well.

It will be wonderful if rather than expectantly waiting bad news, now that she has gone through this process, she can continue to appreciate the evidence that she is making progress. All is well. She is for sure seeing more clearly every day.

No more waiting for the other shoe to drop!

Weather shifts…. it surely will.

August 21, 2019
Saddest of Days

This past winter has been the f-a-s-t-e-s-t in my memory. We enjoyed visitors beginning the last week of January, and continuing right up until the week before we headed north.

Some groaned when I shared that, speaking of how difficult they found it to maintain balance with guests. I would clarify how fortunate I am we enjoyed everyone (well, maybe not everything about having brother-in-law, Jack, come down with stomach flu was altogether enjoyable).

We found an easy schedule, and I had time while many of our guests rotated activities they did without me—like shuffleboard or Tuesday night 60 cent shrimp at The Waterfront.

I honored my Tuesday afternoon meditation group, my Sunday morning online meditation, and my Tuesday evening Dharma Path study group. I attended my writers’ groups. I wrote my daily pages in my journal.

We enjoyed boating with Florida neighbors, going to Karaoke, playing dominoes, and watching HGTV and Wheel of Fortune.

I rode my bike, I enjoyed eating one meal per day, and I ORGANIZED.

As we prepared for departure, my organization really made the difference between struggling and savoring. For example, days before we were to leave, I took everything out of the fridge, washed all the shelves and drawers, placed clean paper towels on two shelves and in one drawer, and placed all of our stuff on those. I returned the homeowner’s fridge items to the door. On departure day, all I had to do was put our stuff into the cooler and toss out the paper towel carpeting.

Voilà!

Maybe because my overall birth number is 2, I live Habit Number 2 of Stephen R. Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People®.

The morning of our departure, I rode my bike to the Snowbird Poet’s group. There was confusion about the time and I sat waiting, writing in my journal: What gift to just be.

Workers were trimming a tree two houses down the canal. The heavy-duty equipment was VERY loud. I continued to write: What do I do with the noise? Do I story tell? Do I acquiesce? Might my peace coexist with the sounds? It has been a holy season. I’ll let my heart savor the sound, grateful I can hear.

Then a poem came through.

Saddest of Days

We buried her today

way too soon

Nothing prepared me

for the shock

Then soon she rose up

gathering all of my memories

Reaching the depths

of my despair

Singing my sadness to sleep

so our joy could dance on….

Debra Basham 04-01-2019 (WC 40)

My journal entry included: It is a time of releasing. Notice how easily it is here, then it is gone.

I’m very aware we are all here and gone, too.

You are, and you aren’t. Many of you are “gone” more while you are “here”, and will be more “here” when you are “gone”.

Just be present. That is enough.

You are enough.

Tell all who know. They all know.

Love, Holy Spirit

Today is Day 91, writing down my soul in my journal. Today is another day to let joy dance on. The saddest day is any moment we forget that….

April 4, 2019
Inter-Are

I have been wondering about the distinction between self care and nurture (kindness and wisdom) and “distraction.” Might we be doing wholesome actions such as exercise or journal writing, or playing music, without being skillful?

Additionally, I wrote to Barbara Brodsky, Founding Teacher of Deep Spring Meditation Center, asking about all of this. “We are encouraged to skillful practice of support practices, Metta, Tonglen, etc., that are a part of Buddhism. Might it also be appropriate to develop skillful support practices that come from outside of Buddhism? For example, Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). Tapping on the meridians, while being present with difficult body or mind states, and saying skillful statements can support insight and release of painful karmic patterns. One does not try to avoid the emotion, one feels (touches) the emotion, then moves through a process of working with the emotion at the level of energy and awareness.”

Barbara clarified that the primary distinction isn’t the specific practice but what truly has drawn the practice forth. Was the motivation genuine kindness or was fear present, thereby was the real desire to “fix” something?

Barbara went on to say that all support practices from any tradition are helpful when motivated from a spacious and kind desire to attend, rather than from a contracted fearful need to fix.

Barbara said the ‘Daily Quote’ from Aaron clarified the question perfectly.

When we release some of the self-identity and separation, we come to feel our interconnection with everything. The tree dances with the wind not because the wind forces the tree but because the wind and tree literally inter-are. They share the same core of being. The wind is the tree; the tree is the wind. And so they dance together. You can dance with life in the same way. ~ Aaron

Barbara’s summation was simply, “When our practice comes from that place of interconnection, we are attending with skillful support.”

At the relative level we appear to be separate, but at the ultimate level, there is no separate self. You can understand that no wave is separate from the ocean. The wind and the tree and you and I dance with life. We inter-are….

March 29, 2019
The Aftermath

You see, I have this weird, but in my experience, validated faith that if I surrender myself to my own words, the ones that came without too much cogitation or premeditation, they will lead me to a place I didn’t know I’d be visiting; they will show me 1) What I didn’t know was on my mind when I started, and 2) What I didn’t know I knew about that particular subject.

Sydney Lea, page 195, The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop, by Diane Lockward.

Sitting in my Snowbird Poets group, I placed my fingers on the keyboard barely breathing and witnessed The Aftermath.

Time is nonexistent, Dear One, non-exist-ant

Standing barefoot
I am aware
of things I am too young to know

Stripped of my innocence
when he climbed on top of me
in the courtyard
beneath the Viburnum

That snowball bush was in full bloom
while I was not
yet
but soon would be

Ten years later
I hear from some
deep drug-induced fog:
“If we don’t get her awake
she is never going to
have this baby!”

Then: “It’s a girl!”

53 years later
my twenty-year-old granddaughter
takes off on a bicycle
as a sinking feeling
of fear
flashed fast across my face

Of course, she was right
I would have let her brothers go—
without so much as a second thought

But the Viburnum will bloom
again and again
unlike a young girl’s innocence

Debra Basham 03-18-2019

See Processing.

Pearl Bailey says there’s a period of life where we swallow a knowledge of ourselves and it becomes either good or sour inside.

Bailey’s words sing the truth. I had come from a legacy of women who had worn the shackles of sexual shame. My mother had a first marriage she did not tell us about, and I did not learn until I was in my forties that she had discovered she had a sexually transmitted disease at the same time she found out she was pregnant for me.

I became pregnant on New Years Eve, three weeks before I turned sweet sixteen on January 22, 1966. I got married, and I was forced to leave high school in tenth grade. (See Loved and Wanted: Listen to Your Mother.)

My daughter, and my granddaughter have carried that legacy of sexual shame, but none of us need carry it any longer. It is time for all women to be free….

A Course In Miracles

LESSON 60

God is the Love in which I forgive.

God does not forgive because He has never condemned. The blameless cannot blame, and those who have accepted their innocence see nothing to forgive. Yet forgiveness is the means by which I will recognize my innocence. It is the reflection of God’s Love on earth. It will bring me near enough to Heaven that the Love of God can reach down to me and raise me up to Him.

I do not have written permission to share these words from Each Day a New Beginning: Daily Meditations for Women by Karen Casey © 1982, 1991 by Hazelden Foundation, but the message must be shared:

For too many of us, feelings of shame, even self-hatred, are paramount. No one of us has a fully untarnished past. Every man, every woman, even every child experiences regret over some action. We are not perfect. Perfection is not expected in the Divine plan. But we are expected to take our experiences and grow from them, to move beyond the shame of them, to celebrate what they have taught us.

Each day offers us a fresh start at assimilating all that we have been. What has gone before enriches who we are now, and through the many experiences we’ve survived, we have been prepared to help others, to smooth the way for another woman, perhaps, who is searching for a new direction.

We can let go of our shame and know instead that it sweetens the nuggets of the wisdom we can offer to others. We are alike. We are not without faults. Our trials help another to smoother sailing.

I will relish the joy at hand. I can share my wisdom. All painful pasts brighten someone’s future, when openly shared.

March 22, 2019
Processing

Our granddaughter spent this past week with us. It has been six years since she had done that, and it was quite a week! As her mom said, “You cannot spend a week with Gammie without processing!”

Our first processing was my bout with an intestinal bug the day she arrived.

The second processing was my missed opportunity. Stacey and all the kids refer to a winter visit with us as retirement training. True to form, our big evening event after watching Wheel of Fortune was a game of 500 rummy at the dining room table, during which Courtney said, “I am wishing I had my car.”

My missed opportunity was to just be honest with her and let her know I understood her feeling. Instead, I launched into an unskillful articulation of why it was best for us that she not have her car.

We did not have an overt scene, but there was definitely a loss of rapport, and as soon as the game of rummy was over, she retreated to her room.

I took the lump in my throat to bed with me.

The following morning, I continued processing as I sat with my journal (See Writing Down Your Soul).

Gratefully, after she got up, Courtney and I sat on my bed for over an hour just talking heart-to-heart about LIFE. I shared my painful history around the sexual double-standard. I admitted to having been unskillful the previous night, and I thanked her for not giving up on me.

We spoke of significant things including: my mother’s having hidden a first marriage; my pregnancy at age 16; the culture that forbade my attending school because I was sexually active and a bad influence on the other girls; Courtney’s mom’s divorce from her dad.

Generations of sexual guilt and shame has been carried by the women in our lineage.

Courtney and I took turns with the tears…

Thursday night she sang karaoke at the American Legion and she killed it! One women came over to our table after Courtney’s first number and said, “My husband has an amazing tenor voice. Your singing moved him to tears.”

At the end of her last number, the DJ took the mic and announced, “We have taken a vote, and Courtney R. cannot go home. We are going to adopt her so she can stay here with us on Pine Island.”

It was such a HUGE night of affirmation for all of us.

Retirement training continued….

Friday morning Courtney played shuffleboard with her Gampie and all afternoon she sat in our TV room with him and a half dozen of his senior citizen friends playing mountain music and singing.

After the music, Courtney decided to ride her bike over to Ragged Ass. She did not ask to use the car. She said she would go for a little while before dinner. She asked me to send her a text to let her know what time dinner would be.

Our rockin’ Friday night was to be spaghetti dinner and dominoes with some of our Michigan friends. Her last night of spring break.

As Courtney took off on her bike, I had a sinking feeling. I could not even tell you exactly what it was, but our good friend, Nancy, saw it in my face and asked me if all was well. I said, “We will see how it plays out.”

A few moments later, as I finished putting the house back together after the music gathering, I could not find my phone. I had John dial my number. Courtney answered! “I took Gammie’s phone by mistake.”

As we hadn’t finalized the time for dinner, and now I did not have my phone, I asked John to send a text message to our friends asking what time we were planning to eat. Dinner would be at 5:30.

Because I knew we would be out for the evening, and busy off-island all day on Saturday before taking Courtney to the airport, I had several things needing to be attended to. I asked John to send Courtney a text message telling her I needed my phone. He did that.

She did not reply.

A while later, I asked John to clarify exactly what he had said to her in the text message to about my phone. He had written, “Gammie needs her phone.”

More time went by and still no response.

I looked at John’s phone to see what time he had sent the message.

He had also sent her a message saying dinner was at 5:30 so she needed to be back to leave at 5:15.

I told him it was unfortunate he had done that as it had given her an implied permission it was OK to not return home with my phone before then.

I was trying to calm down, willing myself to accept what was happening, but as time went by with still no reply to the text messages, I was having a harder time finding my center.

John and I were both becoming more and more triggered, and clearly we were reliving a difficult event when Courtney had come to Michigan the previous summer.

John grabbed his keys, headed for the door saying, “I’m going to get her. I’ll throw her @$$ in the car and put the bike on the rack.”

(The bike rack was on the car, because we would be returning her borrowed bike to the friends we were having spaghetti dinner and playing dominoes with.)

I told John going to get her and embarrassing her would not be kind to any of us and would only make things worse. Already after 5:00, it was too late for me to take care of the things I had wanted my phone for, so we both needed to just calm down.

I called Courtney. “Baby, I need you to come home. Your grandpa and I are in a big drama that all started because you took my phone and then didn’t answer our text messages. Since you’re in the middle of it, we need you to come home and help us work through this.”

When she came in, she was red-faced from racing home on the bike in the heat, and she was obviously now upset too.

Fortunately, it only took us a couple of minutes of processing to realize John had been sending the text messages to my phone — thinking that was the only phone she had! She obviously was not checking messages on my phone.

We all saw choice points….

Courtney said she could have returned with my phone as soon as she realized she had it.

John said he could have asked rather than assumed if she had her phone too.

I said I could have used John’s phone to send the text messages myself rather than asking him to send them. I knew she had her phone.

It would have helped if I had noticed he was sending the text messages to my phone rather than hers when I had looked at the time of the messages!

It was important to me to have Courtney know her Gampie had been so triggered that he wanted to ‘drag her @$$ out’ and I had stopped him from doing that.

I thanked her for helping us release not only the difficult time of her visit the summer before, but more importantly, an old pattern of the painful triangle of parenting between Debra/John/Stacey. John would let me be seen as the bad guy.

We all cried and we hugged and Courtney said it really bothers her to be yelled at.

I clarified that I had not yelled at her. I had been emotionally upset, but I had told her what was going on and I had stated clearly what I needed from her.

We were able to recover without any additional processing; and I think we all enjoyed our spaghetti dinner. I know Courtney enjoyed winning at dominoes!

She sent this precious text message while waiting at the airport:
“I loved my week with y’all! Even the processing…. haha.”

Here are two treasured photos taken at the same restaurant near the airport: the first in 2013 when she was 14, and the second after an amazing week of processing with this beautiful woman who calls me Gammie.

This may be the most significant week of processing of entire my life!

March 17, 2019