Friendshp

Jersey

Friendship — it’s a very simple word that has so many different meanings it’s hard to tell which one is best. I have several friends who have been in and out of my life, some who have known me for more years that I can count, and others who have slipped away unnoticed.

Over the last 5 years, I have had some very special friends. Despite my awkwardness at times of asking for help, they have been there without question.

In the last week I have had 4 friends, in 3 different states, stand up for me. It wasn’t something they expected, or for that matter, I expected. Past drama reared it’s ugly head — yes drama is ugly. I knew it was coming, they did not, but I did not expect it at the moment it appeared.

I spent a handful of hours with one of my far distant friends, who graciously listened to me and then listened some more. She was supportive and patient as I repeated the issues again and again. She let me vent, she told me to calm down, and for a few hours that worked.

I called another friend. We hadn’t spoken in some time. It was a long call, half of it to catch up and the other half to listen to my drama. She was very familiar with my on and off drama, but like friend one, she let me vent. She was quiet and listened, she offered her opinion when I took a breath and, as long standing friendships are, she listened — without judgment, without angst, and without impatience.

My third friend walked into the storm without knowing it. She made the mistake of asking about the upcoming drama without realizing the storm had blown in early. She got an earful, not as much as the first two friends, but still more than she expected.

Number four did not get an earful, she did not get a lot of details, but she knew drama was there, she knew that I needed a distraction. She threw out a life preserver and for one of the rare times in my life, I grabbed on to it.

I hate leaning on people, I hate asking for help; both smack of weakness and insecurity. I could easily list all the reasons why, but I won’t. Suffice it to say that past baggage has been delivered by the airport personnel (of all the luggage they cannot lose!)

In the last few years I have painfully, awkwardly, embarrassingly asked for and received help from several friends. These 4 (2 long time friends, 2 very very new friends) have listened to me, have supported me, have provided distractions for me.

These 4 currently have been most present in my life, but are not the only ones that came to my rescue.

A few short years ago when drama started there were a good half dozen people who rescued me. I should have listened better, I should have realized that my intuition was cloudy and unreliable, but I didn’t. My faulty intuition aside,the drama would have come no matter what, but maybe my stress level would have been less.

6 friends on the spur of the moment rode to my rescue, secured me, and even through exhaustion, made me feel loved and safe.

Now, as drama comes back into my life, I have reaching out for help again; this time it is easier. I don’t feel I am the one bringing the unknown into their life. I am comfortable asking for their support. I have grown and learned that the friends I thought weren’t real are. As Sally Field once said, “You like me, you really like me.”

It took a long time for me to leave the darkness and come to terms that I was not the one in the dark, that I had friends, that I was loved for who I am. That is a huge wall to scale, but past determination came back and I scaled that wall — with some help from friends.

I am eternally grateful for my friends, near and far. I’m quite sure without these friends (and half a dozen others) I would not be here today or I would be at the bottom of the wall looking up instead of at the top looking down the other side.

My friends have shown me what friendship is, they have shown me that I can be happy and when times get rough, they will be there. I will not be alone, I am not an island.

Even in the depth of pain, of confusion, or loneliness, there are people who care.

I am grateful that my friends are there, that even in the darkest days, most awkward and embarrassing days, I could call any of them — I can talk to them, and no matter what.

When the clouds clear and the drama comes to an end, we are going to celebrate. I owe them — all of them — more than words can say, more than I can show. So this post is going to have to do everything I cannot find the words for — that I cannot show:

Thank you for being there for me, thank you for listening to me, thank you for loving me.

Thank you for showing me what Friendship is.

Happy Birthday 23

Jersey

Dad Merchant MarineMy father would have been 93 today — had he lived. He was born after the first world war, but before the second. He started out life with 23 and ended it the same way.

He was named after George Washington because they were both born on February 23. My father however, despite all the teasing of being born in the 1700’s was actually born in 1923.

2/23/23 — see the pattern?

At the end of his life, I moved him into an Independent Care facility. The room they put him in was 223. You can’t help but chuckle over that.

My father was not an easy man to love, for a lot of reasons. He was a quiet man with bouts of anger. I think mostly, in hindsight, it was easier to be angry than ask for help, to show vulnerability.

He could charm the ladies and tell a tall tale without a hint of a smile or a glimmer in his eye. His laugh was deep and contagious.

He liked to be alone, but not out of touch. Fox News ran 24/7 in his place, up to and including his death.

He liked football, he loved the ocean, and remained loyal to the Navy.

He was my dad and today is his birthday. Happy birthday day. I miss you.

MS 150 – Houston to Austin: 3 Reasons to Ride

Jersey

I have never ridden in a MS 150 Ride. Like ever. It always sounded like too much for me and truth be told, like a support system I did not have. However, there are 3 really good reasons I chose to ride the BP MS 150 Houston to Austin ride this year.  MSRIDE_LOGO

The main 2 reasons I had for not riding before are that I’m a shy person and trying to find a team, a good supportive team, was always overwhelming for me. Not to mention the funding aspect. I’m not very good at asking people for money — I have no problem donating money, but asking people for money makes me feel awkward.

However, late last year when I was talking to a biking buddy of mine I decided to throw caution to the wind and push outside my comfort zone, physically and mentally. So on April 15-16, 2016 I will officially be riding in my first MS Ride.

There are a lot of reasons people ride. Some are very personal and their stories hard to hear; for me, the following 3 are what made me decided to give this a go.

  1. For those who Suffer: I now personally know a handful of people who have this illness. There are a lot of unhealthy catastrophes out there, but this is the only one that I know to hit home so closely. A few years ago after suffering with a variety of symptoms I reached my limit and saw a doctor. While I do not, at this time, have MS I do have quite a few symptoms that fall into the autoimmune category, of which MS is one. My doctors and I have discovered that I have a couple autoimmune diseases already and the indications of a few more as I get older. MS is on the list of possibilities. So while I ride for my friends with this debilitating disease, I am also riding to help find a cure for a disease which may impact me directly later in life. Which also leads me to my number two reason for riding.
  1. To Get Healthy: There is not better way to deal with health issues that to be healthy mentally and physically.

             Mentally: I started with meditation. I take time every day (well almost every day) to sit still, forget the pressures and stresses of my life. Mediation is truly me time and while I can only sit still for 30 minutes, it is 30 minutes of pure relaxation and focus. Yoga also is a great way to combine both the mental and the physical (if you think yoga is easy, think again).

            Physically: This ride is a great reason to keep up my training through the winter months, something I’ve always struggled with. It isn’t something you can just hop on your bike and go with no prep work. That would be disastrous. I have spent the last couple of months not only biking longer and longer miles with each ride, but training my body how to endure what will be hours on the bike. I have to watch what I eat as well, not only because my thyroid is pretty non-existent, but also so I can trim down and excel on my ride. I have ridden 75 miles a few times in my biking life, but never twice in two days. In getting healthy both physically and mentally I will be optimizing my complete self to tackle any more autoimmune diseases that are likely to come my way in the future.

  1. Support of the MS Community: It is a way to personally give something of myself versus just giving money. I know I will be funding raising for this worthy event, but there is something to be said to combine what I love to do with giving back to a community, to help not only those I know, but help thousands that I don’t know.

There are lots of worthy causes out there, but I hope that you decided to support me and my team in efforts to raise money and awareness for this particular disease. Thank you for taking your time for reading this post and if you are so inclined, please donate or ride with us.

Donate and support my ride

If you want to donate, please click here: http://main.nationalmssociety.org/goto/cjspurr

Join our MS Team: ALPS

If  you want to join our team and ride with us, please click here: http://main.nationalmssociety.org/site/…/Bike/TXHBikeEvents…

10  Facts about MS

  1. Multiple sclerosis is a chronic, unpredictable disease of the central nervous system.
  2. More than 2.3 million people are affected by MS worldwide.
  3. Most people are diagnosed between the ages of 20 and 50.
  4. Women are much more likely to develop MS than men.
  5. There is no evidence MS is directly inherited.
  6. It is challenging to diagnose MS.
  7. No two people have exactly the same symptoms.
  8. MS symptoms can be invisible.
  9. The majority of people with MS do not become severely disabled.
  10. MS has no cure.

 If you want to know more about MS or find resources, please click here: http://www.nationalmssociety.org/What-is-MS

For all of you who have donated to me or anyone else riding in the MS ride, thank you.

Creating a Writer

Jersey

It wasn’t until I stood up at my mom’s service to speak, something I was not planning on doing, by the way, that I realized something.

It took ten years for my mother to pass as she had predicted, she followed in her mother’s footsteps – exactly. Ten years of misunderstandings, of bitterness, of laughs, of love, of drinking.

It was after the slow death occurred that family from around the country came. It was the confrontation of the past that allowed memories to form and connect that the realization came, that the writer found a home.

You see, through no fault of the humanity called family it occurred to me that my mother gave me the greatest gift of all time.

As I listened to the eulogy given my brother, followed by a speech from my stepfather and then a reading of my mom’s poetry by my sister, that I felt I should speak. After all I was the oldest child. I should say something right?

It was not what I wanted to do, it was not something I had prepared to do.

While public speaking does not bother me, it is something I have to prepare or outline, at least in my head. I can write gangbusters and spin tales like nobody’s business, but speaking eloquently on the spur of the moment is not my forte.

As I stood there and all words fled my mind, leaving my tongue and throat dry, I wondered what made me stand, why did I walk to the front of the room to look at all these people.

I frowned briefly before explaining that my mom and I never talked much, especially while growing up. I left out the part of her changing from a happy and fairly social person to one that harbored resentment and anger at the slightest misstep due to her celebrating daily in champagne. I told how I had issues talking to people, for asking for help. I struggled with finding the correct words at the right time.

I started writing things down and left them on the corner of my bureau before leaving for school. It wasn’t like I was asking for an answer or trying to take the chicken way out, so I was surprised when I returned home to find that someone had left an answer.

It may not have been proper way, but I was spurred on by a response. It became a daily habit after that. I would write something, leave it in the morning and by late afternoon a reply would follow my words.

They weren’t always complaints or great thoughts of wisdom, but they were words of encouragement and advice. It gave me the time I needed to formulate my thoughts and express myself eloquently when I lacked the quickness of mind to find the right words in the heat of the moment.

The letters went on for months and it taught me to write…it taught me to be creative.

One of my few regrets is not having the maturity of knowing I should have kept those written conversations. Those precious mementos of childhood, of a mother-daughter connection.

In the end my mom gave me the greatest gift: she created a writer.

My Blank Page

Jersey

The blank page. There is something about the white clean slate of if all. There is no beginning or ending, no anger or happiness, just the possibilities.

What does one do with it, create from it?

A blank slate can be freeing, a rebirth, a new start.

It contains the fear of possibilities or endlessness.

I think people become too sedate and flow with the words from others. They let other people write on their blank page and because it has words on it they follow it like it was written in stone.

For years I fell into that trap. I would turn the page to stare at the whiteness of possibilities, but before I could put pen to paper, someone had written on it.

My page filled with words and I followed it, believed in it, but they were not my words. It would take a long time before I realized they were not my ideas.

They sounded like me or some paler version of me, but they were not mine.

Time had passed and the message changed ever so slightly, unnoticeablely until eventually, I believed the thoughts were mine.

I guess to some extent they were because I allowed them to be. It was a slow realization that those words which were not mine changed and deviated from the path I envisioned for myself. It was the day I realized that I was not the author of my life that gave me back my power.

The ghost writer had no power over me.

It was a cold hard shock. How could this writer let someone else write for her?

It is easier to read than to write. What takes one person a day to read a novel, takes years for the novelist to write — to craft. Words chosen will be swapped out for more accurate ones, for more eloquent, subtle ones, more colorful ones. The slight word changes drastically impact the meaning.

It it the difference between choosing a new path or a slightly overgrown one. To stand on your own two feet or to continue in a fog thinking the feet you put one foot in front of the other are yours.

When you stop reading, take a breath, and look up you may realize that you too are not the author of your life. If this happens what you do?

Do you drop your head and continue reading or do you take the pen away from the ghost writer and find a quiet place to write?

For me, I chose the latter. I took the pen back, found a nice quiet place to write, and then set pen to paper. Today these words are my own. The whiteness before me hold many great possibilities.

I am a great friend, hugely popular writer, I travel as I want on my own terms. I am free to travel about the world and document what I see and hear.

Why? Because that is what I chose to be, me and no one else.

What will you write on your blank page?