Taking control, taking charge, taking care are incredible attributes.  It is a comfort to know someone's got your back; rewarding to give it back.

In a conversation with a hard-headed and very bossy friend this week, we talked over her loss of both parents in one short year.  The rushing of tight schedules from work to home to hospitals to feeding theirs dogs to sorting through a lifetime of precious possessions piled up over the grief.  It worked.  Her bigger feelings were smothered until her father's last breath, and then the silence. No sooner than it happened, she was rushing to solve everyone else's drama.

The momentum and adrenaline were still pumping like sitting in a car with the motor running after a car crash.  The spinning out of control stops.  You are still alive, but everything has changed.

Being in charge can be as addictive as Jack Daniels.  It fills the empty heart with numbing action and uninformed purpose.  In fact, it's such a revered characteristic that our culture enables the condition even when it has become out of balance. "Wow, she is so capable!"

For me the big question needs to be: Are you capable enough to be with your bigger feelings?  After coping with an inherited chemistry which doesn't allow my synapses to fire correctly, I've had to create methods of being with my being.  Sometimes depression or grief is a harsh teacher making you learn long division over and over until you ask for help and compassion because you can't find the answers.

The compassion for the soul has to be facing the blackboard, erasing the long division and writing a new, relevant story of being.  The story of right action does not become driving or fixing or running away.  Right action can become walking a tight rope.  Quiet focus, best effort and balance are key. You'll know there is a net below, but still slow your steps.

The last couple of months I've been wrangling with all things non-poetic.  This may not be a big deal for most, but it's a lack of oxygen for me.  Another form of poetry I have intentionally silenced has been music.  I love to be immersed in music and its altering effect on mood, inspiration, memory. The soundtrack right now to this block of time is reflection. Can I just listen to silence for a while?  This has been quite informative, really.  I can trace soundtracks to every phase of my life and experience a total recreation of that time.  Sometimes I can take it and sometimes it hits me like a ton of bricks.

The mix tape I made for my one-year-old daughter thirty years ago is probably my favorite.  I still hear some of the tracks when I'm grocery shopping at Kroger.  That's a good soundtrack. 

There are so many transitions happening in my life at this time, I have to be present to navigate them.  Sometimes the mix tape has to be my intuition: where do I turn; how do I do this by myself; how do I ignore what is no longer relevant?  

When I walk through the woods lately, I don't feel lonely with my thoughts.  I wonder how I will feel when I replay this soundtrack in a few years.

painting from the book "What's Left" by a participant of the Alzheimer's Art Therapy program