The retreat is over

I don't know what was wrong with me today, but I was not in the mood for the retreat today. I think I may have been the only person who was more annoyed leaving than I was going in. The days are pretty intense and I was really tired because the days started at 9am. I'm also having wicked pain problems - I was taking Percocet all day long.

I did get stuff out of the day today - in particular, there was one visualization that I found very powerful. Basically, while relaxing, imagine that you are holding a bowl in your lap. Any kind of bowl is fine. Imagine the love and light from inside you filling the bowl so that the bowl is now filled with light and sparkles and good. Then take each of the dark, negative emotions that you're experiencing, one by one, and drop them into the bowl. Let the sparkly light and love surround and overcome the dark negative bits until they're all gone (they said to imagine them swirling together, but I saw the light surrounding the dark bits and making them smaller until there was no more dark). Once that happens and the bowl is filled with sparkly light only again, lift the bowl and pour the light back into you. I really liked the cleansing aspect of this visualization. I felt energized and whole afterwards in a way that I haven't felt in some time.

Other than that visualization, the day pretty well sucked for me. At one point we were talking about our greatest fears.... mine, in case you were interested, is that I will lose the ability to reason or think logically; that I will lose my smarts, as it were. This fear is real because this happened after treatments for my first cancer. Anyways, someone in my group gave me this look when I said this and said "you're afraid you won't be smart anymore?"in this shocked, "I can't believe you just said that out loud" kind of a voice. Like I should be grateful for any smarts I have.

I explained that I'm not all that smart, but that I identify with my intellect, logic, and reasoning abilities. I use them in every aspect of my life, and I'm terrified that they'll go away again because I wasn't me when it happened before. I kind of felt like that when the person made that comment they were thinking that I'm some snob who's better than everyone else. I'm not - wanting to be my smartest is no comment on anyone else or their abilities - but I don't know if that person got that. Sigh.

I was really glad when the day was over. I think Ian got some interesting things out of it - if nothing else, the doctor who facilitated the event validated our view that you have to be your own advocate in this health care system. I don't know that either of us would go to one of these again, though. I've had enough support in that kind of environment to last me a long, long time.

When we got home, we watched 5ive Girls. It was pretty good in a cheesy, low-budget horror movie kind of way. I'd recommend it if you like those sorts of movies. There's not much gore, and the story is kind of interesting.

On a much more positive note, this weekend, the JET members on etsy will be having a sale. Each member picks their own sale; mine will be "Buy one, get one 1/2 off (of equal or lesser value)". I'll be adding a LOT of things to my store this week. So if you were thinking of buying something for yourself or for someone you know, I'd encourage you to buy it next weekend as you'll be getting a fantastic deal!!! :)