The last Butterfly Journal entry ended with me saying: I’ve always believed in feeling and embracing our emotions…Feel your experience, for it is part of the creation of you. This leads nicely into what I’d like to journal about for this month’s prompt:
Over the last few months we’ve had to take a long, hard, and realistic look at ourselves. We may, or may not, have liked whom we’ve seen, but we have a good foundation to build upon. Acceptance of who we have been and who we are allows us to surrender into this process of metamorphosis. We are now tucked away inside our cocoons healing, growing, changing, and transforming. For most of us, the darkness is frightening, but remember to keep faith and not give up, for we are well on our way to becoming beautiful butterflies.
For the fifth month, meditate on the aspects of yourself that have been difficult to accept. Once you acknowledge them, accept them, and surrender them to the process of change. Things will shift. Again, asking yourself “why?” may be helpful.
Another challenging part of my current situation has been working with the feeling of irritation. It’s not my mother’s Alzheimer’s symptoms, conditions, and behaviors that ignite this feeling within me, it’s the behaviors of her personality that the Alzheimer’s at times accentuates that make me feel irritable. The Alzheimer’s makes it impossible to even attempt to reason with her about her pathological lying, manipulating, and being secretive. She still does all those things because those are her habitual behaviors, bit more and more she can’t keep track of herself and forgets what she just said or was just doing.
Accepting, feeling, and releasing, as I discussed in the last entry, helps me deal with my mother, but it does bug me that I feel so much irritableness sometimes, and especially that it can continue on when I’m not watching my mother. At first it would irritate me even more when I felt irritable at other times; I did not like it. But, to let the feeling of irritation out, one has to feel it, and that’s when I realized that since I couldn’t address these issues with my mother, the irritation was working itself out at other times.
To work with this when I’m feeling this way, I’ve had to just stop myself and acknowledge and accept that I am feeling irritated and am irritable, and then allow those feelings to transform to the next best thing. It’s surrendering, embracing, and also loving what I feel that allows it to metamorphose into better feelings and into feeling better. What are the next best feeling(s) from irritation? For me, it changes into feeling feisty or sassy, which is much easier for me to work with, since these can be playful feelings. Often I start talking sassy with my pups, and then it becomes so playful and fun, all the irritation transmutes into smiles and laugher.
In the next entry I will go into the why’s, for the why’s have much to teach us!
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Through the Peacock's Eyes 
Julianne my heart goes out to you. My father-in-law had Alzheimer’s (and so did my Grandfather). We dealt with it with my father-in-law for YEARS and it wasn’t easy. It is normal to run the complete gamut of emotions and it is so frustrating. I am hoping you aren’t solely responsible for your Mother’s care….if so, you definitely need someone to help, you must also take care of YOU. If I can offer any help by listening if you need an ear, I am available. (((hugs))))
Thanks Caren. I watch my mom about 20 hours a week (that’s about the most I can or am willing to). She goes to day care, and my dad watches her most of the rest of the time. Most by her state would be in some sort of home. I don’t know if you’ve read the other journal entries, but my mother and I never had any relationship, so I have no sense of loss with this. I’m just helping my dad while I am here.
Giving ourselves permission to feel as we do is healing… We have to learn to go with the flow of feeling and also forgive ourselves also in those fraught moments…. Without them how would we learn patience.. ? etc….
loved reading your post, and I pray as the NEw Year unfolds both patience and tolerance will find and even balance as I hope and pray also for your Mother’s condition to become less aggressive… My thoughts are with you ..
Love and Blessings as you step into 2014 and beyond
Sue xox
Very powerful musing Julianne Victoria. I can relate with much that you’ve shared, from the acceptance practice, to the irritation practice, to the feisty or sassy (and maybe ‘and/both’) … though with my Feline Girls. Good Muse Food for this tender, young new year!
I love your posts Julianne!!! Keep smiling and stay sassy!
Thanks Jessica! 🙂
Feisty is fun indeed..i tend to be more creative in this head space..usualy starts with irritation..then huffing around then resignation that I am not dealing with an outside influence by internalising the irritant..then I turn the music on and garden or talk rubbish to the doggies..or dance or bake…soon I am glad because had I not been so irritated I ma have wasted the day 🙂 Hugs to you Julianne… Bev xx
I love being feisty, very cool 🙂
Thanks! Feisty can be fun! 😉
I too love the idea of transforming irritation into feisty. Now I think about it, it has happened to me before… My teacher says that it’s possible to be aware of two places at once, where the human part is indeed angry, and the spiritual part is in ecstasy. Well, I know the dual space where one part is angry and the other part is neutral.