New Home Forums Monthly Challenges November 2017 Fiona In For Busting Fashion Myths and related stuff

35 replies, 8 voices Last updated by  Fiona McAllister 6 years, 3 months ago
Viewing 15 posts - 16 through 30 (of 36 total)
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  • #61867

    Judy Brenneman
    Adventurer
    @judyb

    @fiona WOOHOO, Fiona!

    #62028

    Fiona McAllister
    Adventurer
    @fiona

    950 words for paper. page 13

    #62096

    Sara McCann
    Adventurer
    @saramccann

    Loving your consistent effort to it Fiona. Are you finding the challenge is helping you to stay focused and motivated?

    #62362

    Fiona McAllister
    Adventurer
    @fiona

    @saramccann yes actually it has been very helpful to stay focussed for getting this beast done!

    1100 on page 16

    #62426

    Sara McCann
    Adventurer
    @saramccann

    Excellent, so pleased! Keep going, you are doing amazingly well!

    #62486

    Fiona McAllister
    Adventurer
    @fiona

    690 page 18

    #62567

    Fiona McAllister
    Adventurer
    @fiona

    1600 page 23 and the rough draft is done.  Now onto editing.

    #62573

    Mars
    Adventurer
    @Mars

    Well done @fiona

    #62583

    Laura Koller
    Adventurer
    @laurakoller

    Woohoo!  So excited to see your progress!

    #62878

    Fiona McAllister
    Adventurer
    @fiona

    Thanks for all the encouragement everyone.

    This woman is one tired puppy.  I’ll be bowing out for a few days to recuperate.  That paper really took a lot out of me.  More than I was prepared for or expecting.

    It is in for grading right now, so I’ll know in a few weeks how I did.

    If anyone wants to learn more about forgiveness, you can read it.  Please please no sharing outside this community as I’m possibly going to try to publish it, and I don’t want it plagiarized before my name is attached to it.

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    #63820

    Fiona McAllister
    Adventurer
    @fiona

    890 words today.

    Today’s submission is not about my course but about some thoughts on a wonderful grandfather who I suspect is nearing his last breath.  He is 95 years old and has been the man to show me what men can be.

    Unfortunately due to very stressful circumstances growing up in a home with a terminally ill mother, as the only girl, my stressed out overworked father put all of “women’s work” onto me.  As a young child I could not know any different, and so took up the work placed on me by my father, as well as the attitude of man says, woman does.  He was often at the edge of his temper and yelled a lot and said disparaging things to us children.  He used his children as counsellors telling us things that 15 year olds should not be burdened with.  My father also did not intervene when my brothers took their frustrations out on me, even when I complained and appealed to him about it.

    So I was left with a very ill taste in my mouth around males.  Except for my grandfather.  This kind and loving man never hurt me, or called me names, or yelled at me.  He has been an example of steady kindness all the time I’ve known him.  And I am so sad he will be leaving soon.

    After watching my mother die 17 years ago and now watching my grandfather die in the present, and walking a similar emotional path and physical path with him that I did with my mother, and having 17 more years of life experience myself, I think that I’m learning to see a natural process in the cycle of life.
    We are young and we grow and we learn and we achieve and we become. We become successful in terms of earthly possessions such as owning things and earning awards and social standing. We face challenges and we determine from those challenges the type of person we will become by the choices we make in those challenges. And how we define ourselves. Do we define ourselves from the things we’ve acquired, and the social status and earnings we’ve achieved (like I used to) or do we define ourselves by the type of person we’ve become or becoming? The kind of Character we’ve built? A life lived truly in the service of God.
    Toward the end of our life (if we aren’t suddenly killed) there is a natural slowing down. An unwinding so to speak, before we depart this earth. The length of this unwinding may be short or long, months or even years for some. But it is in these years especially that it shows up what type of life we lived. I’ve spent much time in nursing homes between visiting my mother for the last 3 years of her life and now for the last 3 years with my grandfather. And to varying degrees I’ve seen two types of older folks who grace the halls.
    Those who’ve made peace with their lives and those who haven’t. The ones who focused on becoming good people, from a place of inner strength, not outer achievement, seem to have made peace with their situation, even when they were barely capable or incapable of the most basic physical acts such as feeding oneself. And those who are bitter about the lot life handed them.
    Is it easy to visit my grandfather? Not particularly. For I was used to seeing him playing hockey at 89. But I would be missing out if I allowed my own fears and insecurities about the nature of life to stop me from being in his presence.
    As Viktor Frankl said “The opportunities to act properly, the potentialities to fulfill a meaning, are affected by the irreversibly of our lives. But also the potentialities alone are so affected. In the past nothing is irretrievably lost, but rather on the contrary, everything is irrevocably stored and treasured. From this one may see that there is no reason to pity old people. Instead, young people should envy them. It is true that old people have no opportunities, no possibilities in the future. But they have more than that. Instead of possibilities in the future, they have realities in the past-the potentialities they have actualized, the meanings they have fulfilled, the values they have realized and nothing and nobody can ever remove these assets from the past.
    (They have) “the full harvest of their lives. The deeds done, the loves loved, and last but not least, the sufferings they have gone through with courage and dignity.”
    And even in the diminishing years of the physical body, for those who’ve achieved Character Greatness, there is still a regal presence about them. A quiet dignity, for those who are willing to see it. He doesn’t usually know who I am anymore, other than perhaps the piano lady (I play songs for him when I visit), but that is a role I am willing to accept to be in the presence of Greatness one last time before he dies.
    Now the work is accepting it. It is hard work to be sure. But the alternative is so much the worse. I am working on character. What type of person will you become in the dusk of your life? For none of us really knows when the dusk comes.
    #63835

    Laura Koller
    Adventurer
    @laurakoller

    @fiona – WOW this is so powerful.  To think about all that you’ve gone through yourself and what an amazing man your grandfather has been in your life, and to think about the circle of life and the power in our older years.  And this line is so powerful:

    Instead of possibilities in the future, they have realities in the past-the potentialities they have actualized, the meanings they have fulfilled, the values they have realized and nothing and nobody can ever remove these assets from the past.

    Thanks for opening up and sharing this.  Many hugs to you.

    #64033

    Fiona McAllister
    Adventurer
    @fiona

    Thank you @laurakoller

     

    #64089

    Fiona McAllister
    Adventurer
    @fiona

    Just ignore this

    #64138

    Fiona McAllister
    Adventurer
    @fiona

    Victim to Survivor to Forgiver: The last entry for the November writing challenge.  757 words

    Survivor. Overcomer. Powerful Words.  It brings to mind images of those who have survived the holocaust, hurricanes, tornadoes, abusive families, attackers, plane and shipwrecks, animal attacks and so on.  We picture theme music in movies as heroes emerge from the throes of life.  What happens after the survival?

    What happens when being a survivor actually become detrimental?  Is there such a thing?

    We all know the person who is the victim.  And we have all played the victim at some point in our lives.  The victim is the one who had a tragic experience and who lets you know it every time you see them.  The alcoholic parent, the rape, the government who extorts its taxpayers, or just the person who refuses to take responsibility for any aspect of their life.  Everything is always someone else’s fault.  Now to be perfectly clear, I am NOT in anyway downplaying the seriousness of any of those events when they happen.  Because they are tragic and the victims of these tragedies need to be respected in their pain.  And the pain of anything tragic is acute.  Believe me of this I am FULLY aware.  Unfortunately some people are not able to move beyond the pain of the past (even though it is not their fault, the events that happened), and that is what locks them into the cycles of rehearsing and rehashing their pain and their experience.  Their identity becomes wrapped up in the experience of the pain of their past.  What I AM saying is we admire those who move from victim to survivor or overcomer.

    These are the people who acknowledge and feel the pain and decide to not let that pain run their life.  So they move forward despite the pain.  They make choices to move their life past the pain.  And they forge ahead and usually become very successful in a variety of ways.  That way may be teaching others who have had their type of pain and trauma how to move forward in life.  That way may be deciding to never have a drink of alcohol so they can be the type of parent they never had to their children.  That way may simply be getting back into a boat after a trauma with a boat.  There are so many ways that people can face their pain and show courage to try again.  Kids are the masters of this.  They fall off the bike, they get back on.  They fall over on the ice, the get back up and skate some more.  The lessons of overcoming are extremely important.  Overcomeing and surviving teaches us “I can try again and succeed” or “I can move forward despite what happened to me.”

    I have recently encountered a new phase that I have actually had a hard time finding information about.  There are 1000s of books relating the stories of those who have succeeded despite tremendous odds.  But what do you do when a life of overcoming actually becomes a detriment?  I’ve been finding lately that I don’t want my future life based on the past I’ve overcome.  I just want the future to be the future.

    I didn’t realize that a life of overcoming and surviving actually still depends on an identity based in pain.  Because we are who we are because of the pain.  We are who we are despite the pain.  I had pain and I overcame.  See?  Still all about the pain.  Even if the pain was in the past.

    I realized that if I keep going on the forgiveness path then my identity will no longer be about pain.  INNER CRISIS.  If I am not a survivor, an ovrecomer, who I am because of the pain, then who am I?  Who would I be without the pain? But can I be without the pain? I’ve an inkling this is the next step.

    I believe this is moving from survivor to forgiver.  I am speculating that the forgiver actually lets go of the past, not just overcomes it.  The forgiver no longer needs the story of the pain because the story of pain and the maintaining of the identity of survivor actually becomes a detriment to personal and spiritual growth.

    The forgiver, I imagine, moves through life with wisdom and grace, and occasional outbursts (still human afterall).  The forgiver does not necessarily forget the events of what has happened in the past, but there is no longer any emotional attachment to it whatsoever.  The forgiver has released the negative emotional attachment and need of the past events.  If a person asks, the forgiver would tell the story, but there is no longer a personal need to build an identify from the story.

    And that sounds like personal emotional freedom.  Heaven.

     

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