Re-establishing Link

Once upon a time, in this very place, I published my life. It was moiratoner.com, and it was my publicly personal sandbox, playground, refrigerator door and window into the world of me.  It was a personal expression made public as a side-effect of publishing practicalities.

As I descended into the purification ritual known as The Great Recession, moiratoner.com disappeared.  Went dark.  Was silenced. Put on ice.  Like a cryogenic corpse, no one, not even the corpus that gave the corpse its previous life, knew its future.  Might the corpus survive to revive the corpse? If revived, might it be fresh and beautiful to behold or a distended, freezer-burned mutilation?

Today, I flipped the switch to thaw.  The account is re-established, and at this moment servers are replicating my default password change.  Attempts so far to fibrillate via ftp have failed.  I am standing down to allow settings to sync.  Paddles are recharging.

With each failed attempt to transfer data from the cold storage of my hard drive to the placental cloud of web wonderland, I resist the compulsion to start changing the look, feel and content of the corpse. I do truly want to see it revived as it was.  I want to see me as I was.

It was 2009.  Was that so very long ago?  Financially, emotionally, experientially, yes.  It was several lifetimes ago.  Two years ago, I was an innocent. A child. Unbroken. Whole. I had not passed through the Dark Night of the Soul.  I had not loved again.  I had not been brought to my knees by lack. I had not been chastised for my circumstances. I did not know fear.

In 2009, I thought I had done all of that.  I had not.  It was yet to come.

Through all that came, I kept only one vow--to free myself of anything that might be stripped away, except my integrity.

When the object of their chastisement was humiliation, I denied them their victory.  I met their attempts to shame me with anger, and turned anger's flame toward my dark corners to see boldly what fear made me vulnerable to their attempts to send me lower than a snake's belly and grind me into less than dust.

When the object of his anger was fear, I denied him my pain. I met his attempts to cower me with anger, and turned anger's flame toward my dark corners to see boldly what fear made me vulnerable to his attempts to break my spirit, drink the joy from my bones and turn my heart back into a husk.

In every dark corner I found Truth.  Integrity's demand, desire and drive for Truth ripped and slashed through every shrieking, shielding fear to reveal Truth.

Fear is nothing to fear when armed with Integrity--the lightening rod for Truth.  And Integrity stills all fears of all Truths.

Truth can indeed set you free.  It is the light hidden by fear.  Fear is a boogeyman.  An illusion.  A myth we believe because the truth may be more frightening than the fear itself.  Integrity is the weapon that can drive light into fear, and keep us ultimately safe and whole on the road to freedom.

That's where I've been.  I never left, and I don't know if I'm back.

Clear!  

Attitude of Gratitude (12-Pack Guarantee)

There’s a few sayings that inspired this song.  “The pen is mightier than the sword.” “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.”  “God, don’t grant me luck, grant me timing.” Well, those and many more like them are all true, no doubt.  Maybe there’s a slogan that sums it up best.  That’s why I call this number,

Attitude of Gratitude (or 12-pack Guarantee)

I know and love his heart and his integrity

My time with him I took the bitter with the sweet

I love his heart, his soul his life

And I pity his new wife

She’s a walkin’ talkin’ 12-pack guarantee

He’s a good man like my daddy showed could be

When he wants to be the man he wants to be

He chose Bud Light over me

That’s when I refused to be

His walkin’ talkin’ 12 pack guarantee

Now I’m not being mean, that woman surely knows

From her tipsy frosted head down to her toes

It’s her job at Dairy Queen            

That fills his Jeep with gasoline     
She pays the trailer rent and light
The neighbors’ cars wake ‘em up at night
Her job’s a walkin’ talkin’ 12-pack guarantee

His Gifts of Venus can make any woman gasp

But barley brews keep it lowered to half mast

On the night they’re newly wed    

She’ll need the bunny in her bed
She’ll need more than a broom
To get the groom outta his own room
She’s just his walkin’ talkin’ 12-pack guarantee

[Slowly, with great feeling, like a hymn or gospel song…]

Now we’ve both said all there is to be said

To our waters we have both been surely led

He married beer and bread and board

Now it’s half his says the law and Lord

He’s got his walkin’ talkin’ 12-pack guarantee

I may have gone from debutante to double wide

That never hurt my love for me, just my pride

I miss the good man at my side

So strong and safe, he was my guide

But I’m no walkin’ talkin’ 12-pack guarantee

She’s his walkin’ talkin’ ice cream hawkin’
Bet my talkin’s set her sister squakin’

Better her than me…
She’s his walkin’ talkin’ 12 pack guarantee


Copyright 2011 Moira A Toner 

How to communicate with The Recessed: Humor

Let's say your friend, Bob, is recently widowed.  Today, you heard a great joke that has to do with husbands and wives.  Tonight, Bob calls you on the phone.  Do you share with him the joke you heard today? Of course not.


Please extend the same courtesy to The Recessed.  It may require a bit of forethought on your part since topics painful to The Recessed are not as sharply defined as those recently widowed, divorced, separated, etc.  I'm not going to attempt to list all of the topics, you're going to have to listen to The Recessed in your world and answer that one yourself.  I will, however, share an experience that illustrates the point.


One recent evening, my mind, body, soul and cat were firmly in the crucible's grip.  My water was being shut off the next day, which to my mind meant tomorrow might be the day I have to leave my home.  In other words, it was Homelessness Eve.  That night, I was talking on the phone with a friend and I cracked.  She said something along the lines of "Don't give up" and snapped about not having anything more to try and that in my world giving up meant death so of course I can't give up, and how about saying something useful.  I hung up on her.  OK, maybe my response was understandable all things considered.  It was still inappropriate and sub-consciously an attempt to pass on or force sharing of responsibility for my crap.


The next day, we communicated and forgave via the safety of written words.  Immediately following her first written response to me, she sent an email with the subject line "FW: Piss Poor."  I suspected it was one of her scorpion stings (not a criticism, we all have our natural and good defenses), so I did not look at it until the next day.  Sure enough, it was one of those "funny" emails that has been forwarded ad nauseum, this one was about the origins of common phrases and the first several were about being poor.  Apparently being "piss poor" comes from people who were so poor they saved/collected urine and sold it to tanneries.


I have a good sense of humor, and since my sense of my friend had me hold a day on reading the email, I was in a better frame of mind and was ready for the humor.  I was not ready for the scorpion's tail which read, "I can't help it, it had to do with water..."  This told me she knew fine full and well that it was inappropriate, and that the words she forwarded, if read, were going to hurt, offend, rub salt into the wound or otherwise inflict pain.  They did.  In the context of forgiveness, I wrote back "I'm selling.  Who's buying?"  It was my best attempt at an appropriately humorous response that did not acknowledge the pain, feed my shame or dishonor the forgiveness we had already transacted.  


My take-away was that I had hurt or frightened her on a very deep core level, and that level felt it necessary to return the favor despite the higher road of forgiveness we'd already taken.  No problem.  Understood.  We're human and that's what we do.  I commit to learning more about how I hurt people so that I can do it less. 


Post-it take-aways for you: 

• If you aren't certain if it will offend, don't.
• If you hesitate before clicking "Send," don't.  
• If you do it anyway, own the result.

Suggested Alternative: Instead, ask "Are you ready for a bit of humor about your situation?" or something of the sort.