I’m not sure of my verb tense there.
Is it still his birthday if he is no longer here to celebrate it?
Should I have said ‘today is my Dad’s birthday’?
Damned if I know.
But one thing I’m sure of is that I’m really feeling the truth of the adage that grief is love with nowhere to go.
As part of a series of posts I’m writing this month, I’m drawing a gold star every day.
It’s fun figuring out new ways to present a star, it’s a creative practice in itself.
I spent a little time yesterday evening doing a creative review of 2023 from some prompts I found online.
I was expecting to feel a bit disconcerted or let down by my results but I felt exhilarated.
Because of my grief over the loss of my Dad, I felt like I had been haphazard with my creativity, working in bits and pieces but not really doing anything cohesive.
Actually, though, I taught lots of workshops and made zines and took workshops and experimented with using fabric in my art.
That means that despite my difficulties, I kept turning to my creativity to remind myself of who I am and what I need.
I’m really proud of myself for that.
There is a winter storm warning here today.
But so far the snow is just falling gently and it hasn’t even started blowing around.
It’s really perfect weather for walking the dog.
I woke up at 5am with a migraine in progress.
This was a silent migraine not a head pain one so my main symptoms were nausea and vomiting. (Not a fun way to spend your time, by the way.)
And I had the other symptom that plagues me during this type of migraine – intense stress and anxiety about something I can’t change plus a big dose of self-recrimination.
I have always that that stress was one of those things that brings on that type of migraine. Maybe it is but I have had a lot of stress in this past year and I have had few, if any, of this since March of 2023.
Last night, as I was lying on the dark with my mind racing, not sure whether throwing up would make me feel better or worse, I realized that I couldn’t move my thoughts away from that stress. I literally couldn’t make myself think about anything else.
(Usually, when I get stressed in a non-migraine situation, I can make a conscious choice to explore some other idea and breathe my way through the worst of things. Not last night though.)
And that made me realize that this problem often happens when I have those type of migraines.
So now I am wondering if those type of thoughts are a symptom of my silent migraines instead of the cause of them?
Interesting to consider but I hope that I don’t have much opportunity to figure it out one way or another.
