Monthly Archives: August 2017

08.30.17
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I will try

I woke up peacefully this morning.  I slept with the drapes over the open deck door wide open last night and the view overwhelmed me with contentment……I allowed myself the luxury of laying in bed drifting in and out of light dozing and soaking in the love and friendship of the girls weekend in Des Moines.


As fall weather starts the slow creep with cool overnight temperatures, I hope to wake each morning feeling love and peace and remove myself from the pain that seeps in during the day from the news of what is happening in our country.  because I can’t physically do anything about the ugliness all around me, I will endeavor to combine my peacefulness and love collectively with other loving souls and send it quietly out into the universe.  This will be a challenge to close myself off to the negative I allow to be fed to me.  But, I will try.

Until next time…..

08.24.17
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Weakening your opponent

Are we just harming ourselves?  I’m not sure yet if I believe in the karma theory but I know in the past from my mental flapping, I’ve entertained lots of negative hopes for those who have been on the other side of my personal battle line.  It is starting to sink in that you are what you think…in other words…negative attitudes and gossip or bad mouthing others is nothing more than a show of your own personal insecurity.  Continually trying to drag someone else down with your words and attempting to incite YOUR jealousies in others really only feeds your own negative agenda.  ESpecially if your opponent is wearing the shield of love and their own personal acceptance and self love.  It’s unflattering and harmful only to the person doing the bashing!

We have no control over how we were treated and loved or not loved as children.  We have no control over how other people treat us.  But we do have total control how we receive the information and more importantly our reaction to negativity.  After a conversation with a friend today AND my own personal experience, I’m convinced sometimes we must just cut ties with those people who hurt us with their words, actions and intentions.  As a people pleaser, it is often hard to stop the cycle of trying to force people to love us and respect us.  For the most part, these relationships bring us pain, sadness and personal retreat in order to save ourselves!  These relationships are not worth the angst experienced in your mind and in your heart!

Until next time….

08.24.17
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Batshit crazy dragonfly

So….in the safety of my own home this summer, I’ve had a cicada in the house and had to be rescued by Truman…then I had a largefellow try to take up residence in the curtains
Tonight I had two cats run through the house at warp speed to the deck door off the kitchen.  So, I followed because obviously they know something I don’t know.


Now I have a dragonfly storming head first into the glass of the deck door.  Over and over and over and I have two cats on the inside growling and scratching at the window.


Two questions…why is this stupid insect doing this and 2) it’s 2:00 in the morning, where is his mother?  Seriously.  Why is this happening.  it’s been going on for 20 minutes.

08.24.17
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I have something to say…

But currently I’m working through it.  I don’t have understanding right now.  This is why I journal…both privately and publically on ninasusan.com…For the most part, my private journaling is paragraph after paragraph of thoughts that either would not make sense to anyone else or would, quite frankly, piss them off….it may be a book someday.  This blog is a more polished version of what I think  I know to be true.  Sharing back and forth with others is like frosting on my cake.

I find clarity in meditation and journaling….clarity and healing….  I’m seeking understanding about love and friendships.  From somewhere deep within me, I’m realizing that in spite of the parenting I received, I was unconditionally loved by a grandparent from both sides of my family..maternal grandfather and paternal grandmother.  This has been life changing for me…the little girl who grew up believing that love had to be earned.

Through the years, I’ve had a few faulty relationships with friends and family.  I have worn myself out trying to figure out why some of these relationships don’t work….so I started to simply analyze the relationships that do work.  Here’s what I think….those who have grown up with unconditional love are able to love themselves and are free to share that love with friends and family.  It’s just who they are.  Those close to me who have the same vacant love history also have the need and capacity to love when we are connected with respect and “unconditional” friendship that blossoms….and one step further those who are unable to love themselves and have not learned to trust or respect others, for whatever reason, are satisfied with superficial friendships and just do not have the ability to form honest, trusting relationships?  

I guess my bottom line is I must stop trying to earn love and friendship.  Relationships need to have the right ingredients to form and grow and for me, negativity is not one of those ingredients.

Your turn, Please!

08.22.17
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Six Months 4 Days

This blog has been taking up space in my head for 4 days now.  I’ve been off antidepressants for 6 months and now 4 days.  

  • I no longer feel drugged.  I’m able to function in the real world like everyone else.
  • Now when I look back at those 2 weeks of Hell going cold turkey, I have no regrets.  Kind of like childbirth!
  • I don’t sleep as well…I think I sleep as deep…just not as long.  I seldom get 8 hours now.
  • The anxiety is now manageable.  I have been meditating every day.  It is as important to me as my morning coffee.
  • I finally am able to feel emotion…things make me laugh and I can tear up nearly on demand.
  • My thoughts seem to be more rational.  I credit meditation with opening my subconscious to assist.
  • I have had some moments of irrational anger…or let’s say I’m no longer medicated so I feel the anger.

Every day is a lesson to be learned.  I missed out on a lot using pharmaceuticals for a long as I did 15 years.  I wish a doctor had given me encouragement to try real life!

It is an empowering experience.  

Until next time…..

08.22.17
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Being content just being content

19 to 59 years old, I really could not be stopped!  I look back at those years now and wonder who that person was..59 was just two years ago.    Seems the moment I walked into my first job for an insurance company roughly 40 years ago this month, I began my 40 year energizer bunny phase.  Jobs, kids, vacations, volunteering, senior family caregiving and socializing when I could.  I don’t think I regret any of it.  Oh, sure, in the abstract there are things I would do different.  Several of those “if I’d known then what I know now” moments…and the obvious lineup of old pictures showing my weight fluctuations and hair styles.

I remember as I got older that I craved to dedicate one of my days off just to myself to be able to sit around and do nothing.  Sometimes that helped…sometimes it made me dissatisfied because it gave me the time to ruminate about how to get off the roller coaster and relax…but I always belted back in and continued.

Now that I’m retired, I frequently have to psych myself up to get in the car.  I’m content to do whatever it is I do all day.  When I went to the mailbox yesterday (which is my daily outing), I noticed my retired neighbor outside working in the yard …. dripping sweat…later she sent over tomatos from her garden and I learned that she had canned several tons of tomatoes and salsa.  I thought, ya…I used to do that…don’t wanna!  The fact that I don’t wanna really bugs me.  I’m just content doing what I’m doing….but I want to be content with being content.  I still haven’t been able to cleanse my brain of “should”!  Will this eventually happen or do I just need new batteries?

Until next time…

08.19.17
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Friday night humidity

Closer to September 1st than August 1st so for some reason every night I set myself up thinking I’m going to step out the front door and it is going to feel like the 72 degrees that my watch reports…not 72 degrees with 94% humidity…..and every night between 11P and 2A, I say to myself…UGH !&$@!  Perhaps there is something I should be grasping here….

Each night I take Frannie out for her little relief break.  She lays in the kitchen doorway and always looks up when I let my recliner foot rest down….it can be several times during this late hour…..to fill my water  vessel, to reach for my IPAD, grab the remote…whatever……she looks up.  But, it’s not until I pick my phone up off the side table and slide it in my pocket or more likely down my shirt that she jumps up, toe nails scratching the tile floor and beats me to the door for her walk.


We don’t go very far (see temp72 degrees, humidity 94%) but that doesn’t seem to matter.  There are things to smell, places to squat and rabbits to get excited about.

Then we head back to the house and Truman is always sitting at the front door waiting for us.


Waiting to be knocked over and trampled by Frannie just as excited to get in the house as she was out.

As for Truman…maybe we need to talk…perhaps there is also something he needs to be grasping here!

Until next time….

08.14.17
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After death

Death of a parent can really screw with your life.  For anyone who has had a wonderful, deep, loving relationship with a parent that has died, I know the pain is so great that you really wonder if you will survive.  The immediate overwhelming grief is incompacitating.  Sometimes after a parent has passed, intellectually we can feel relief that it is finally over and I’m speaking of long, painful or difficult illness and dying process.  Somewhere you  grasp the reality that you love them enough that you are thankful they are finally without pain and fear!

But there are others of us out there who do not have the wonderful, deep loving relationship with a parent.  These relationships are colored with many different crayons.  The reasons are many and very personal and obviously painful.  Death in these kind of relationships are difficult because the survivor’s grief is all wrapped up in the fact that this is the end….there is no turning back, or fixing the relationship mixed in with the emotion of not feeling anything at all.  Yet a devastating understanding that this is not how you are supposed to feel…knowing full well that your memories of the life you shared negates any real emotion you have about the death.

……my answer after my mothers death was to dig deep and work and work and work to find some peace within myself…understanding that she did the best she could do with what she had to work with.  Understanding that mental illness is not just an excuse but an actual disease.  Letting go of the painful negative and remembering the positive memories that are now able to be recalled.  8 years ago today, the healing began.  I still don’t feel a lot of grief in her death but I am able to feel some affection for the woman who raised me.  R.I.P. Mom.

Until next time.

08.13.17
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A weekend in August…

Sometimes impromptu gatherings are the best.  There’s no time to plan and/or anticipate what you might have forgotten to do.  Brother and sister in law came for a visit from Des Moines.  It had been a couple months since we had seen each other in person…it never feels like it starting with the first hugs.  I messaged our niece …our camping/kayaking niece….that they were coming and wanted her breakfast burrito recipe.  She altered some plans to come also and offered to bunk at our house and make the burritos for her aunts and uncles Saturday morning….seriously!  She’s the best!  Then she asked if our daughter, her cousin might also be available….they said yes….so we ordered tacos and chips and cheese dip from the mex restaurant so we could just visit and no one would be stuck in the kitchen.  At midnight, Christie loaded the aunts and uncles along with blankets in her car and we found a dark drive way to a construction site, layed out our blankets under the stars to watch the meteor shower….ho hum.

After breakfast burrito bunch…we headed downtown KC to visit the World War 1 museum.


Got in some great Italian food and spent the rest of the weekend with some HBO and talk therapy.  I feel love!

Until next time……

08.09.17
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On my last nerve….light switches

Or more to the point ….. I question the placement of light switches….or even more to the point…I actually question muscle -memory or, in this case, memory-memory.

Just as a precursor, I have very limited spatial  skills.  This is not new.  I’ve always had an issue with right or left…something that is just instinct for most people.  Anyone that has ever spent any time with me in a car knows to use “your way” or “my way” as a direction….which is odd because I can look at a map and know left or right…this might be a surprising handicap for someone who worked 30 years as a dispatcher.  I also cannot load a car trunk or camping cooler efficiently to save my life.  So I’ve been really questioning myself on light switches…is it me or was it some type of practice joke by the person who placed them.

I give myself the excuse that I’m living in a different house.  I’m used to light switches being in a particular place for a particular use/convenience.  Using this theory, it seems the problem is just that I’ve always considered there is a “standard” placement.  I just now turned on the light in the garage (switch being on the laundry room wall)to throw a box into the recycling bin and kept swiping to shut off the the non existent light switch for the same light on the garage side of the wall.  I do the same thing in the master bedroom bathroom.  The light switch is on the inside wall of the master bath which isnt really a bathroom but more of a transition room with no door…..two sinks and tub with doors to the closet and toilet/shower areas.  Both of which have their own light switches…on the outside wall so you don’t have to reach around to find these switches. I constantly reach for a non existent light switch on the bedroom wall as I walk into the bathroom.

This is starting to mildly irritate me and the fix is either 1)accept that I might just have a short circuit, or 2)in the grand scheme of things is there no standard or 3)is it worth asking him to add more lights switches, or even 4) perhaps motion sensitive lights throughout the house so I can just mindlessly roam without any responsibility?

Until next time……