My Christmas Message for 2011 - Tradition! Framily! Acceptance and Growth.

Last week, I made a trip over the snowy, Colorado Rocky Mountains to visit people before Christmas.  Half to visit friends and fun, and the other half to visit friendly colleagues and have some fun while meeting about various mutual interests.  I got to thinking that I visited with Catholics, Protestants and Jews on my trip.  I am GRATEful for my father's having insisted on the atheistic approach, although my mother and grandmother slipped in some of their Christian beliefs here and there.  I believe it allowed me to nurture a different approach to spirituality on Lumigrate. I also have come to use a word I might have 'invented' long ago: "framily".   

Having lived my whole life in Colorado, I have a variety of friends spread from the northernmost part of the state and all the way down to Colorado Springs, known as the "Wall Street" of Christian businesses in the United States. One of the people in Colorado Springs who writes on Lumigrate is Petie the OT, whose wonderful 80 year old husband, Bob, took a lovely picture after we kept up with him at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo's "Electric Safari"; it was a relatively warm evening and he took advantage of having me as the 4th person to go along with them and Petie's son Thomas, who continues to grow and mature in his forties; we have talked elsewhere in the forums with his permission/'blessing' about his having developmental differences.  I met them initially when they came to consult with me when I worked for a driving school, adding 'driving' to my list of specialties I've accomplished as an occupational therapist.  At my next job after that, Petie was also doing PRN/on call work at the facility I was at and she stepped up to the plate when I badly injured my ankle in a dark parking lot picking up Chipotle for dinner on a Sunday evening.  

So here we were, the four of us, all these years later, enjoying a nice dark night at the zoo! Truly, the eldest and youngest were getting around just fine.  I was exhausted by the end and used the excuse of needing to go check on my cat at the motel to not stay long when dropping them off; Petie wanted me to see the framed artwork of porcupine quills from the porcupine who was out in his tree at the zoo; she and Bob are docents/educated volunteers.  You can see in the photo of us the quills, which were simply captured as they fell in a towel the zoo veterinarian had the porcupine on when an exam was done, and then framed.   

FUN lights at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, a modern variation of traditional holiday/Christmas outdoor lights which have become a NEW tradition for many.  

Petie and I have a lot of fun conspiring on the phone and in email about pieces she might write for Lumigrate.  We also talk a lot about religion and politics, though cautiously because she and I are VERY opposite in our opinions on some things; we also overlap on a lot of things, particularly progressive 'spiritual' beliefs, although she is Christian as well.  I consider her a 'progressive Christian'.  Oprah is one as well.  As was my hairdresser of 12 years in Fort Collins from the time I got my first 'real job' interview, through my career administering the now-famous NPS visibility project which lead to the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 and scrubbers on coal-fired power plants across the US and potentially beyond as time goes forward.  

Raised Lutheran and a practicing Christian, I was starting to think she was going to chop of my head and not just my hair if I didn't go to her client who had been on the Oprah show related to her being the astrologer newlywed of the astronomy professor at Colorado State University. I was used to Christians insisting over and over that I get inspired about their beliefs and I had grown used to politely not taking them up on it; I'm so glad I followed through on this attempt though --  that hour and $80 was the most potent in my life related to spiritual growth. Ask anyone that knew me in my youth and young adulthood, I was 'frugal' or 'good with money'; my husband's life being 'here today, might be gone tomorrow' made me think very differently about how much to save and how much to spend.  I would like to think that for 50-something and owning my own business I'm still on track; that's been a matter of opinion and debate in my 'framily' which has been a source of 'dramedy', and has interestingly, required me to sharpen my skills about my beliefs at this point in my life.   

I likely refer to things I've learned from Gail Culver, Dr Roger Culver's astrologer wife, every day since summer of 1996 and that first telephone reading in some way or another.  Her being a former social worker who morphed into another profession and way of working with people certainly has been an inspiration even subconsciously to me, just as seeing my hairdresser friends making money from product at the same time they were cutting my hair!  (Or the doctor who took out my uterus five years ago saying 'Mardy, as an OT, you don't make any money at night, my customers are 24 hours a day.... there were on average about 25 people on Christmas Eve reading at Lumigrate, something that was a GIFT to my eyes!)   

But my having different beliefs than others has sometimes created frictions, misunderstandings, and hardship in relationships continuing. These things sadly come up and to the surface at Christmas more than any other time for many people. The "Holiday Season" used to feel to me like something to be 'endured' in many ways, and now it continues to but more in my seeing the push about gifts and consuming foods that are just BAD for people, and then everyone's going to be New Years Resolutioners again, never really making the changes to have a balanced and GRATE life.  

I do my personal spiritual practice privately, as to me it's really not something I feel a need to share in a communal way.  Everyone has their own way of relating to their spirituality or lack thereof.  What matters most is that we all respect that in each other.  I thank Yenta for having done that, AND for having sent me for Christmas last year (and Chanukah), the Peace Fleece.  It was NEATO to have Lynn Hellerstein and Beth Fishman, my former brain/eye doctor and vision therapy OT who now are book authors and collaborators helping educate people at Lumigrate have FUN with it last week on my trip to the Front Range.  They're sisters who have operated professionally together for maybe their whole careers, I will need to get their details of their history more sometime.   (Lynn on left, Beth on right heading to H&Bs sign for photo) - Stay tuned to Lumigrate's Forums related to our visit and the 'real' photo' -- this was a FUN one for here!)

I have since come to recognize that my spiritual path really started to move in a direction when I was home recovering from a pretty bad case of chronic fatigue syndrome at the age of 29/30.  I had overworked in my personal and professional life, burning the candle at both ends, so to speak.  The air quality indoors, ironically, at my job working for the air quality project, was full of formaldehyde outgassing as my boss' brilliant strategy for proceeding with the research had yielded good funding.  Deep in thought, relieved that I was starting to get better, I asked one day looking out of my living room at the mountains "why did this happen to me", and the answer was "It has something to do with out there".  And my instinct was to start looking into churches.  None fit, even the ones that were not Christian were modeled after services which just didn't fit with me.  It also didn't fit for my husband, that I was exploring things he wasn't interested in.  We were divorced within a couple of years.  I graduated with my degree in occupational therapy four years later, and met Petie and Thomas about two years into my career.  I badly needed a mentor; she has been that since then, and I am happy to say, become a good friend.  Bob and Thomas as well!  So I very much appreciate their including me in the zoo outing.     

Petie and Mardy (lightburst like Lumigrate logo over shoulder!) with Cheyenne Mountain Zoo's porcupine's quills in the towel used at veterinary visit as art!)

I realized the symmetry not only of us helping each other out getting there and back in the dark, it was some teamwork for sure and nobody fell down or got hurt, I'm happy to say, but also about Electric Safari.  The Saturday after my internships in OT were completed and I'd been hired to work for Novacare at a VERY good salary, I threw a little party at my condo in Denver, where I'd done internships at the Denver VA.  It was, by coincidence, winter solstice, a day that to me is a spiritual holiday.  The friends who came were varied from Fort Collins and Denver, some I'd grown up with and some were relatively new.  My 'best friend' called just before the arrival time to say she was just TOO miserably pregnant at six months to come; I just saw her last week and her wonderful son and husband on my way back from Colorado Springs -- he's now in high school and I showed him some driving strategies even!  

One of the women who came had been my best gal pal since coming to Denver, an international flight attendant who I'd read about in the Denver paper way back when I was married and was getting over the chronic fatigue episode.  She had just returned to work after her dominant forearm had to be amputated after a missed-diagnosis of malaria and she credited her occupational therapist with getting her through such a difficult time; I had been putting off taking night classes due to my immediate family's health problems and those within my family of origin, which were two hours away.  

I was going to write out Christmas cards that day so included one to her telling her of my recent challenges and those of my husband, who had almost died of a missed-diagnosed MRSA infection in his brain/fluid, among other things. I sent it to the reporter at the paper and asked it be forwarded to her, and that happened! It arrived when she was on her first work trip and returned home thinking it was too hard and she couldn't do it; she wrote me that my card encouraged her to persist.  I have it to this day, it is one of my most valued possessions as she was just learning to write with her left hand and by the time we were friends in Denver hanging out riding our bikes or snowshoing and going to Starbucks a LOT hoping to meet eligible men, she wrote 'normally'.  She even got into making jewelry! Nothing stopped that woman! Her OT introduced her to a man and she's been happily married ever since, moving on to another state where I have only had time to visit once.  

This Christmas had found me thinking about the transitions of life and traditions and framily, and how some of my framily, even the contributors at Lumigrate, have had such a 'traditional' life, and how nontraditional mine has been.  But what I mostly realized is how we relate because of what we have overlap with AND respect for our differences of opinion.  That takes maturity of the people/souls involved, and hope that continues to shine from Lumigrate to increasing numbers of people finding Lumigrate and it's information of benefit.  For all who read this, I very much appreciate what YOU do for Lumigrate: just coming and reading once is 'something', like a grain of salt.  Enough of those add up to being something worthy of 'exchange' that has value.  

And to me, there is ALWAYS my appreciation that my initial goals were rapidly accomplished, with being able to help patients/customers at night -- anytime, and as many per day as I used to working directly with people billing insurance so seeing people 1:1 as was required.  My goals going into what will be our year #3 on the Internet is it will sustain me financially, directly and indirectly: it serves as a good advertisement for my consulting work as well as the ways all websites can make money.  And ultimately, I want the Earth and the people on it to be healthier because of my time on it.  So thank you for helping that happen: It is a gift to me that you read this, and I hope you consider this my gift to YOU.  ~~ Mardy