July 25, 2012-The Last Blog: One more special message to go, then I’m done and I can go home.

The Adventures of the Blind/Low Vision/Visually Impaired (BLOVI) Girl-The Last Blog: One more special message to go, then I’m done and I can go home.

I am writing this last blog on the two year anniversary of my accident. In the last three blogs I focused on letting go of fear and the outcome and trusting in God. All these things have led me to be able to be open enough to live my unlived life, to do the things I always wanted to do. That is the focus of this blog. I am dispensing with the usual format to also talk about what I can see now, the things I miss about not seeing and the gifts my visual impairment have brought me.

My visual acuity is the same as it was a year ago, 20/400 and 20/800, but what I see has changed. My evolving brain is continuing to do a better job putting things together. So my depth perception is better, my color perception is better at times, and my brain knows how to fill in the gaps. My vision fluctuates daily, depending on the time of the month or if I have a headache or sinus pressure. There is no part of my visual field that is clear, even in the periphery. And there are some unusual aspects of my vision, like that I can see really attractive or really unattractive people better than I can see most people (which I think has to do with symmetry). I can fool most people into thinking I am fully sighted, most people have no clue until I tell them. I can navigate well, can run and ride the Ped E Cab with no problems, and have lots of ways to read and work.  In many ways I have continued to adapt and find the tools I need two work and live. My next purchase is the IPad 3 (which I am hoping is as awesome as everyone says it is). 

There are some things I miss doing and seeing like driving, reading a book I am holding in my hand and turning the pages, being able to relay see the beauty of nature and hiking difficult trails.  There are so many times I wish I could look at my daughter and see her face in detail (which is why I take pictures). I miss being able to tell what people are feeling because I am missing some of the unspoken language of facial expression. Sometimes I miss really being able to see my face or body, but in the end it has been very freeing. I also miss being able to see when Sadie is practicing writing in that moment or seeing her in the process of drawing. I can see it after under the magnifier, but it is not quite the same.

I have been given many gifts as a result of the accident. The knowing that we can survive almost anything and have amazing strength. The ability to see people for who they are and in their essence because I cannot really tell what they look like. The appreciation for the beauty of the world, which I can no longer see in detail, but in abstract. The growth that only comes from suffering and being humbled. The connection I have developed with God and the trust I have gained. The loss of the fear of the unknown and the ability to not only live with, but appreciate unpredictability and uncertainty. The confidence I have in myself and the willingness to continue to live a life that involves risk. The knowledge that I have the ability to forgive those that left after the accident because people just do the best they can. In the end I see myself as the same. I have chosen to be abled and not disabled, and I have chosen to have good boundaries and to be happy.

What this all has led me to is that I am, in sum, more open to life and to living that life. And what that means is living the unlived parts of life that I always suppressed or ignored. I could not be open if I had not done the work to accept what happened to me as part of my past and something I cannot change. In the stages of grief, acceptance is the last phase that allows you to move forward. I came to that place quickly and for that I am grateful.

For me, living my unlived life has meant doing all the things that I imagined would be awesome and make me happy. It was going back to what I wanted to be when I was little—I wanted to act, dance and sing.  So since my accident I learned an instrument and took vocal and dance lessons.  I will continue to dance and to sing and now that the songwriting has come out of nowhere and does not seem to be stopping, I am going to put my songs to music and arrange them with the help of others and maybe perform and record them. I want to take ballet next so I can dance in a high level contemporary dance class by January. And I will write the book based on this blog.

Living my unlived life also meant challenging myself to do physical things I never thought I could do. So this fall I really want to run a half marathon and next year (a year late) I will participate in a sprint triathlon. I am nurturing my spiritual side by studying the Baha'i faith, something I ran across years ago but did not pursue. And I will continue to work on my relationship with and connection to God. I am not sure what will happen next in my work life. All I know is that I love what I do and would like to do more of it and reach more people. Because I am deserving of and open to love, I know that one day I will find a stable, loving partner (and it would be a real bonus if he could look like Johnny Depp).

I am continually thinking about how to teach all these lessons to my daughter. How do I raise a child that is open to life and its myriad experiences and has the strength and wisdom to listen to her soul’s calling. One thing I know is that I am modeling that for her (and I know she is watching). The other thing I do is expose her to a range of experiences from which she can choose. And I try to always respect who she is and forget about what I would like her to be.

I do not know what is coming or what my life will be like in a month or year from now. What I do know is that in this present moment, two years after my accident, I am more fully alive, more grounded, more joyous, more wise and less angry, less scared, and less bitter or jaded than I was before the accident. That is what I call a miracle!

I want to thank all those who have been on my side these last two years. Thanks to all of you who have read the blog. I wrote it for me, as catharsis, but I hope readers took some nuggets away from reading it. The title of the blog, once again, is a Nirvana lyric. Here is the next line: “Love myself, better than you; I know it’s wrong, so what should do?” So try and love yourself and be open to everything. Be in the moment, pay attention, seek beauty and truth and laugh a lot. And keep moving forward, no matter how deep you are sinking into the muck.

July 18, 2012-Volume 74: Are You There God, It’s Me, Beth

The Adventures of the Blind/Low Vision/Visually Impaired (BLOVI) Girl-Volume 74: Are You There God, It’s Me, Beth

My last four blogs are focused on how I have changed in the two years since my accident and the key things on which I am working to live a fuller life.  In the past two weeks I have talked about getting rid of fear, and letting go and not worrying about the outcomes.  In this, my second to last blog, I am going to focus on my process of learning to trust in God and the Universe. This has not been an easy task, because the Universe keeps kicking my butt. But I have learned to look beyond that to what is ultimately important. But first…………………..

My WTF of the week is SC Governor Haley’s vetoes of critical programs and services. Once again, I am embarrassed to say I live in this state and appalled at its politics. Here are some of the (I believe it was 81 items) she vetoed. What this says to me is that we do not care about educating our children, protecting our vulnerable populations or our environment, or moving into the 21^st century.  Now it is time for our legislators to override these vetoes. And I know this sounds passé, but this is neither a Republican issue nor a Democrat issue, they are human issues.

$10.1 million to support teacher pay raises

$1.9 million for the Arts Commission

$500,000 in Arts Commission grants

$1.5 million for technology for the Judicial Department

$1.2 million toward boosting enrollment at the Governor's School of Science & Math

$454,000 for SC Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault

$428,000 for Sea Grant Consortium

$250,000 for Charles Lea Center for the disabled

This week I can’t get enough of rediscovering things you have not watched in years.  After a night of singing Nirvana songs (as you know I have a PA system and wireless mike, so there are many home Karaoke nights) I decided to go on YouTube and watch the 1993 Nirvana Unplugged and then watched some interviews with Kurt and the whole band. I had not watched that Unplugged in over 10 years and I was again completely mesmerized by the brilliance, beauty and pain of it. And the last interviews with Kurt are hard to watch. He looks lost to the world-a 27 year old that is completely spent. But, there is something to learn in it and something to marvel in at the same time. Then I watched the Shirley Temple movie “Heidi”.  Everyone in my generation has seen Heidi multiple times because it used to come on after the Super Bowl every year.  But I had not watched it since childhood, and I saw it in a whole new way. Heidi is totally philosophical and has better life lessons than most self-help books. It deals with fear, loss, change, the need for a place to be safe, spirituality, etc.  And I still could not get through it without crying.  I advise you to watch Heidi as an adult. There are tons of great take aways.

One of the hardest things I have been working on is in trusting in the Universe and God. This means so many things. It means I believe that God has a plan for me; it means that everything is going to work out according to this plan; it means there is something to learn in everything that happens and that everything happens for a reason. These words are easy to say, but much harder to believe in and live by. Mostly, because I am not sure what God’s plan for me is and most of the time I think the Universe is just trying to see how much I can take. 

I can honestly say God and I were not on the best terms after the accident. I was not sure why I was handed this fate or dealt with a series of truly life changing, heartbreaking events. But then I started asking the question I continue to ask today, “In my blindness, what am I supposed to see?” And it was the asking of that question that caused me to begin to pay attention to the Universe and not try to control it. Like an investigative reporter, I began questioning, why, how and what. Sometimes you get answers, sometimes you don’t. But the important thing is to ask them and to be present enough to look for the answers. So how does this paying attention translate into what I do and how I live every day. What it means is that I am more tuned into my inner voice, more present in the moment, more aware about what is going on around me, more interested in reality and not illusions, and more concerned with authenticity and deep conversations. I am also more open to learning and exploring outside of my comfort zone (which is now a huge zone).

The second step in my journey was learning to trust in God and the universe. I truly believe and always have, that I am here for a reason and that I can and have impacted the world. But I also used to believe in two things which I now believe are ridiculous, bad luck and deserving something. Being raised Latin means you hear a lot about bad luck and  evil spirits (and the need for all sorts of things to ward them off).  I used to think I had a ton of bad luck because crazy, bad things were always happening to me. And I used to believe that God was playing a huge joke on me and that the goal was to pull the rug out from under me whenever I felt stable. Now I think this is all untrue. What has happened to me, all the lows and highs, are part of the plan for me and in those times I was supposed to be learning and growing; gaming strength, insight and a little bit of wisdom. Mostly so I could handle the next thing that came along.  And that is why I could handle the change in my vision and could move forward so quickly; my life had prepared me to do this. And I did not deserve what happened to me and no longer think people deserve what they get or “what goes around comes around”. What I know is that bad things happen to good people and what it boils down to is not putting negative energy out into the Universe.

My life continues to prepare me for whatever is next. Sometimes I get annoyed at God because I have no partner, or because my business is not doing well (like everyone else’s) or because I just can’t seem to catch a break. But in the end I know that this is all happening for a reason and as part of God's plan. So instead of being mad all the time or feeling I deserve something more or comparing my life to other’s (always a bad idea), I have decided to trust that she/he and not I know what’s up. Every day I repeat the affirmations “I trust in God”, “God has given me everything I need” and I ask for the vision and strength to carry out God’s plan for me.  It and I am still a work in progress, but the change has been powerful and positive.

Next week, in my final blog, I talk about how I am finally living my “unlived” life and my hopes for the future.

Keep Moving Forward,

Beth (BLOVI) Medlock

July 11, 2012-Volume 73: Letting Go of the Outcome and Living in the Moment

The Adventures of the Blind/Low Vision/Visually Impaired (BLOVI) Girl-Volume 73: Letting Go of the Outcome and Living in the Moment

As I said in the last blog, my last four blogs will focus on how I have changed in the two years since my accident and the key things on which I am working to live a fuller life.  The four things on which I have progressed, and on which I continue to work are getting rid of fear, letting go and not worrying about the outcomes, trusting in God and the Universe and living my unlived life by letting my inner voice guide me.  In this blog I talk about how I am learning to let things go and to not get caught up in the end result. This was particularly challenging for someone who had consulted in outcomes evaluation and strategic planning for 15 years. How my mindset has changed is the focus of this blog. But first……………

My WTF of the week is how bad things happen in three’s (and maybe even four’s and five’s). It seems as if a cloud of negative energy has been hovering over my house for the past two weeks, causing crazy stuff and accidents to happen.  There was the Ped E Cab Trifecta of a broken seat belt, a pedal falling off in a major intersection and the charger not working. There was another crazy hate e-mail. Four lights in the house that require me to climb up a big ladder went out in two days.  There was the trying to curl my hair too quickly curling iron drop that resulted in a large burn on my leg.  And the best was the massive hair extension knot that occurred while I was swimming. Let’s just say it involved almost all my hair and took 6 hours to get out. What the heck is going on? Does this happen to anyone else?  I am doing my affirmations to dispel the negative energy. I may need to smudge.

This week I can’t get enough of the Baha’i Faith.  Years ago, after I did my own comparative religion study by reading books on both western and eastern faiths, I decided my beliefs aligned closely with the Baha’i faith. I looked up the groups that met and then, interestingly, did nothing. A few months later I found myself back at or in the safety of what I knew, the Catholic mass. But that stint did not last long. I was reminded about the Baha’i faith as I was watching Super Soul Sunday on OWN (which you should be watching too). Oprah was talking to Rain Phoenix front The Office about his project Soul Pancake (which you should also check out). He is a Baha’i and was talking about his faith and said some awesome things like creativity is a form of prayer and how in the faith everyone and all religions and perspectives are accepted. So, even though I am not supposed to talk about religion, I am. Soon I will be saying, “Hi, I’m Baha’i:

I used to hold things tightly, to be driven and oriented toward making things happen.  I used to get anxious when I could not control things or get things right. Those things made me driven, on the one hand, but stressed on the other. I also did not handle loss well. There was a lot of self-flagellation when things did not go my way or turn out as I expected. That is who I was before the accident. In sum, a person who at times felt the weight of the world on my shoulders. But when the randomness of the accident occurred and in the aftermath so many people did not act like I expected and things did not go at all like I thought they would or should, I realized I cannot predict or control anything.  With my expectations and my plans completely shot, I had two choices; give up all control and let it go or drown in “what if’s”, remorse and regrets.

For the past two years I have been working on letting things go. First what this meant was realizing how little of life was in my control and how little I could know about what others thought of me or impact how they acted toward me. The letting go was of not only control and the feeling I could have an impact on other people's perceptions or behaviors; it was also a letting go of anger and forgiving others.  I have talked about forgiveness in past blogs and it has been a theme for me.  It all started with forgiving myself for causing the accident, I was the one that rigged the bands that knocked out my vision and it was an act of stupidity.  If I could not have forgiven myself for that, I would not be where I am. And if I could do that then I could forgive anyone. Letting go also meant letting go of who I was in the past and what I could do. The dreams and plans I had which in part relied on my ability to be a sighed person were no longer a possibility and I had to let go of those goals and create a new reality for myself and in that new reality, new expectations and new dreams. My new reality has just become reality and in this reality I don't focus much on the future or on how things will turn out.  Mostly because I have learned despite my best efforts and past notions that was somewhat of an intuit that I have no clue what will happen in the next month or week or day. And because I cannot predict, I do not live and act with the thought of how will this all turn out.  It’s a waste of my energy and time, and it is also freeing.

Letting go of the outcome means I try and focus on listening to my inner voice guiding me to do what I think I need to be doing in the present to best fulfill my mission in life and Gods’ plan for me.  I have things I want to do, of course, like write a book, but I am more interested in the process of the writing and don’t think much about what it will be or if it will get published or reach an audience. I am like this in my work life, I find myself not planning events ahead or thinking about marketing or coming up with a new way to draw in clients. My focus is just on putting out good stuff and working with my clients as best and authentically as I can.

Letting go has made me feel lighter. I know most of what other people do or think has nothing to do with me, that I really can't change people (especially those closest to me) and that there is no point in having an expectation or illusion of how things turn out, because that typically leads to disappointment. I have given up living in a world of illusion, which is a focus of A Course in Miracles, and have chosen to live in reality and to try and let that reality unfold and be revealed to me. I am neither the center of the universe nor master of the universe; I put my trust in God because that is his/her job. Because of all this, the weight of the world is no longer on my shoulders. And it feels awesome.

Two blogs left. Next week more talk on trusting in God and the Universe.

Keep Moving Forward,

Beth (BLOVI) Medlock