I've always had the benefit of being a good sleeper. Regardless of what may be going on in my life, I can shut down and get some sleep. It's not always a restful sleep as my acupuncturist likes to point out, but it's sleep. The time to power down and close the world out for awhile.
I am very grateful for this ability as trying to sleep after you've slept with someone for as long as Howard and I did, can be tricky. Granted, the snoring is less but it's still different. I had never considered this before. I hadn't considered many things before that I do now. There can be a gift in experiencing such a big life event if one is willing to be open to them. I find myself amazed at what I didn't know before, that I am learning now, even as I try to navigate this newest adventure.
So, as I traverse this challenge of waking up and remembering every day, as if it's the first day after his passing, that the dude isn't downstairs drinking coffee (he was ALWAYS the early bird in our house), I got curious about this process.
Was it the waking up that was challenging or was it the smack of reality that hits shortly after? A few mornings in a row I did my own experiment to see which it was. Fortunately, it doesn't happen every day but enough that I could grasp the real issue. It wasn't the waking up or even the smack in the gut that was so hard, it was the realization that I had to get up no matter what was going on. I had a life to life on this side and laying in bed was not the type of life I wanted. Once I grasped this concept, waking up became less challenging.
Why was it easier to wake up after this awareness? Well, it became similar to any other day of my life. Like when the kids were little and I was so exhausted I didn't know if I could hoist my you know what out of bed or when we were running the store and working eighty hours a week and still had to open, ya just get up.
Not unlike when someone goes through a break up in a relationship, a change of vocation, a relocation, a passing of a loved one or any other millions of scenarios that effect us, we have to get up. Before we can get up, we have to wake up and we have to be willing to wake up.
Waking up isn't all about the sleep process. What occurred to me was the waking up was relevant to those scenarios I was talking about previously. Perhaps one has to wake up to the fact that their partner is not the type of person they want to be with or maybe they realize that the job they've been doing for decades really sucks and they don't want to do it anymore. Maybe it's realizing that family may be DNA related but the dysfunction is something you no longer are willing to tolerate. Whatever it is, waking up to the truth is a whole lot less taxing when you realize you already have the strength and the history of getting up every day.
What do you need to wake up to today? What have you been avoiding because you are more afraid of the sock to the stomach feeling than the memory that you have dealt with many others and got up after. When you remind yourself that you have indeed succeeded in waking up in other areas, the new experiences don't carry as much fear. Build that confidence by reminding yourself of all you have accomplished in the past. It really does help.
If you are someone who is afraid of waking and getting up, come see me, I'll help you shift that because this life isn't all about falling flat on your face and whining about it and staying on the floor, it's about getting up and saying, heck yeah, I've got this!
Sleeping is great but give me the awake time so I can rock this lifetime,
Vicki
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