Author Archive

Important Women’s Health Issue:  

n         Do you have feelings of inadequacy?   
n         Do you suffer from shyness?   
n         Do you sometimes wish you were more assertive?   
 
 If you answered yes to any of these questions, ask your doctor or pharmacist about Margaritas   
 
 Margaritas are the safe, natural way to feel better and more confident about yourself and your actions  Margaritas can help ease you out of your shyness and let you tell the world that you’re ready and willing to do just about anything.  You will notice the benefits of Margaritas almost immediately and with a regimen of regular doses you can overcome any obstacles that prevent you from living the life you want to live.  Shyness and awkwardness will be a thing of the past and you will discover many talents you never knew you had. Stop hiding and start living, with Margaritas.   
 
 Margaritas may not be right for everyone. Women who are pregnant or nursing should not use Margaritas. However, women who wouldn’t mind nursing or becoming pregnant are encouraged to try it.   
 
 Side effects may include:   
 - Dizziness   
 - Nausea   
 - Vomiting   
 - Incarceration   
 - Erotic lustfulness   
 - Loss of motor control   
 - Loss of clothing   
 - Loss of money   
 - Loss of virginity   
 - Table dancing   
 - Headache   
 - Dehydration   
 - Dry mouth   
 - And a desire to sing Karaoke   

 WARNINGS:  
n         The consumption of Margaritas may make you think you are whispering when you are not.   
n         The consumption of Margaritas may cause you to tell your friends over and over again that you love them.   
n         The consumption of Margaritas may cause you to think you can sing.   
n         The consumption of Margaritas may make you think you can logically converse with members of the opposite sex without spitting.   
 
 Please share this with other women who may need Margaritas.   
 
 Thank you.   

Today is September somethingth…I don’t really know.  Since I’ve downsized my life to accommodate the vertigo that makes me feel like the whole world needs a V-8, I don’t really have a calendar that is leading my daily parade.

Instead, I gauge my level of dizziness and nausea and I look around the house to see what task matches that degree of “tilt’ that I’m on.

If I bend down to pick up a piece of dropped laundry that I was folding, I suddenly become a floor-explorer because now, I’m required to sit and study my new relocation until the deep queasy feeling passes.

If I turn my head too fast when I’m cooking breakfast for the boys and rallying back between the sink and the stove, the world starts moving like I’m sailing on the high seas during a storm.  I have to turn everything off and walk quickly outside to where I can lay outside and look up at the sky.

I finally have time with the boys in school to conquer the garage, my desk, the back taxes, the scrapbooking, the under-the-bed cleaning and the closet organizing.  I have time to write thank you letters from last November’s b-day party, my first book, and condolences to friends who lost loved ones a year ago.

I have time.

But then again, I don’t.

Because if you can’t stand up straight or read your own hand-writing, it doesn’t matter how much time you have for a task - you just can’t get anything done - so, it’s almost like not having any time.

It actually gets to the point where my big #1 item on the to-do list is ‘Rest’.  Oh, it’s so aggravating.  

I’m such a “Go!” “Do!” person.  Time means ‘time to accomplish’.  

I don’t know if I was always this way - I seem to remember my youth on the East Coast being filled with space.  I’d go and walk through the cemetery across our street in Connecticut (it sounds gruesome, but it was charming and peaceful.)   I remember sitting and watching the rain pitter patterns on our windows or I’d close my eyes to hear the different sounds as it hit the puddles, roof and awnings.  I recall, lying on the hill at the edge of our property, for long periods of time, regardless of the season, and looking up at the clouds or stars or approaching storms.

I think I knew how to ‘be’ more then.

At some point, for some reason, I traded that natural inclination of slower rhythms, for moving at the speed of light. Not one of my better life choices.

And then, I had a wake-up call.

When I lived in NY as an adult from 2005 - 2007,  I had a profound encounter with my false self —  the self that was driven to please man and God.  The false self that had set up standards, judgments and rules about how life “should” look and how I ’should’ perform. I crashed and burned and my spiritual life and I got turned upside down. I started seeing that if I thought that I needed to be that driven, then I must have some interesting beliefs about a God who was driving me.

As I unpacked my relationship with God and committed false-self suicide, I learned something valuable.

I learned that once you give up believing in an asshole demanding God, then you actually stop trying to control everything. You start exploring trusting God instead of performing for God.  You start learning how to rest in the life you have instead of resisting because of the life you think you should have.

There’s an art and spiritual practice to resting.  There is something so profound about being able to choose to set everything else aside and simply do nothing once you realize that the God you’re getting to know (after you divorced the old  God) is not expecting you to jump through hoops.  I learned how to sit on the porch and look at the spruce trees swaying under the grey North eastern skies. I learned how to lose my phone and climb under the covers when I was tired instead of ‘pushing through’ one more time.  I didn’t use my spare time to catch up on the mounting magazines or the grocery circulars.  I wasn’t concerned with being efficient.  I was learning how to be alive.

So, here I am now - back on the West Coast and dealing with a health situation that, in some ways, is forcing my hand to ’slow down’.  I’m resisting.  Rest feels foreign and busy-ness feels like my friend again.  Both feelings are lying to me and I’m having to choose something beyond how I feel.

I am re-learning what I had grasped in New York and what I practiced in the days of my youth — the lost art of lolly-gagging and sitting in silence .  The moments of hearing the sound of your own breath as you drift from that waking place to that dreaming state as you lie on the couch with the back slider open so you can catch the breeze.

I’m learning that my life isn’t about ‘getting through’ this time as much as it is about ‘being in’ this time. This is the time to savor the odd and awkward moments when I am stepping on the ‘feet’ of God as he’s leading me to dance to the rhythms of peace and rest.

Today is September somethingth.  I’m not really sure what day it is but I don’t think that it really matters right now. I think that there are more important lessons at hand…

I set out to type my health journey, but am finding myself wanting to be very silent during the hardest parts of the journey.  It’s funny, in that ironic and not humorous way, that I’m treating this the way I treated September 11th, 2001.

Leading up to Sept 11th was a story that I have dared not write. It was so personal and in my heart that I didn’t want to devalue it with words.  Since it’s hard to record history in grunts and sighs and groans, here is my story.

I was traveling with an international organization as part of their spiritual conferences in hub cities around the US in 2001.  My schedule came in and I was going to be on the East Coast for Sept and October.  I was thrilled.

Having been raised in New Jersey, I was excited to create an extended stay between my Manhattan conference in Sept to my North Carolina conference in October with Pennsylvania and others in between.  It would be a time to visit friends, family and eat too much cannoli and ‘real’ Italian bread. Couldn’t be happier and my taste buds could hardly wait.

When I got the call in July that my New York conference had been given to someone with seniority and that I was being switched to El Paso, Texas, I was bummed.  I had already made plans and didn’t want to miss a drop of the fun (and yes, food.) So, I pressed in and told my coordinator, “I will switch ANY other conference of the year (including Hawaii) in order to keep this date.”

“Sorry.”  Was what I heard from the other end of the phone.

When I told my husband, he was surprised, “You let it go that easily?  You should push for it, Stace.  You had first dibs  – come on.”  He calls me his “Italian Spicy Meatball” and is used to me being more ‘intense” and intent on getting my way.

I said to him, “Rocky, I feel like something is telling me to back off.  Like something is ’staying’ my hand.” (Yes, I really talk like that in real life…)

In August of that year, we were flying back from a conference in Portland. I stood at the airport waiting for our flight to arrive and as I was watching the planes come in, this thought hit me, “There’s going to be an air tragedy in America this year.”  The thought hit me again like I was being punched in the gut.

I told my husband about the impression I had and  said to my Rocky, “We have to tell someone on our team and see if there is a group who is designated to pray.”

When we were on the plane, we prayed as we usually did.  As I started to pray, I heard myself say, “I stand against kind of  terrorism…”

I felt Rocky stare at me and he asked, “What did you say?  Something about terrorism?”

I was surprised as he was. We flew home to Orange County and there was a lingering sense of something heavy in our hearts.

On September 9th we were being whisked from a concert we were performing at in Long Beach, CA to the airport.  It was time to take that all-inspiring trip to…El Paso, Texas.

Almost every thing had an odd vibe to it .  I couldn’t explain it but when we woke up on the 10th of September and were getting ready for the conference to start, “I’m going to fast and pray today - I’m just really troubled.”  When he asked me for the purpose of my fast, I just answered, “I don’t know…I just feel really unsettled.”

Throughout the day, the conference was rough going.  The speaker was new, he got messed up on the time zone, rushed through his speech thinking he had run out of time when actually he had hours more.  Never had happened before. There was this sense that we couldn’t get our footing.

That night, we went to dinner and Rocky said to me, “Just eat something. If you want to fast again tomorrow, you can.”

Still unsettled.

We went to bed at 11 or so and I woke up around 2 a.m. in the morning, restless inside in a way I had never known.  I was tossing around on the bed, praying and couldn’t figure out why I was awake and so bothered deep in my soul.  For two hours, I spent in that deeply bothered state.  My final selfish prayer was, “God, please, you know I’ve got to do all this music today, I’m exhausted. Please just let me go to sleep!”

At 6 a.m., the alarm went off. The sun was up already in El Paso. Rocky and I decided to not turn on the tv to see the morning news and instead have some together time. We made love, got  out of bed and got ready for the conference.

As we walked through the hotel lobby towards the van, people were standing and staring up at the news on the television. We all gasped in horror as we watched the footage of the second plane flying into the second tower.

We joined the rest of the team and attendees at the conference site. People who had just met two days before were hugging like long-lost friends, tears everywhere, shared pain and prayers for those in the tragedy of that moment. Our team in Manhattan, getting ready for the conference, was trapped in the basement of their building — right diagonal from the World Trade Center.

That night, at dinner with other people, we heard story after story of people who were awake and writhing, in similar ways as me from that same 2-4 a.m. time.  The stories were remarkable.

We had no way to get home to California - planes were grounded and cars were $1000. a day. I was praying for a car.  In fact, didn’t even mention it to anyone.  An older woman who lived in the town came to us, “I bought my husband a brand new car 3 months ago, but his vision went out on him a few weeks ago and he can’t drive.  We have a son in Pasadena. If you want to take the car back to California, you can drop it off at my son’s and we’ll get it back on our next visit out.”  The offer was amazing.

I remember those beautiful, terrible days. We drove back to California, looking at the big flat Texas and New Mexico sky. Not a plane or a cloud in the air and the odd silence of it all. Surreal was the best way to describe it.

I had my journal sitting on my lap but found that I did not want to put any words in it. There was something almost too sacred about it all and I wasn’t sure how much of the pain I wanted to remember. Similar to what I’ve been going through with my health.

I lost someone I had loved in my youth, in 9/11. Our family priest, was Father Mychael Judge who had become the chaplain to the NYFD.  The news showed him being carried out by his devoted fire fighters as Father Mychael became a hero of love on that tragic day.

And I gained someone I will love forever. For the morning of September 11th, was when our first son, Caleb Samuel Robbins, was conceived.

Yes, September 11th. I pause and reflect on what that day was and what it brought to our lives - connection to humanity, appreciation for our military, a gratitude for our safety, the realization of the brevity of life, and the wonder of new life.

It is a day that, for many reasons, I will never, ever forget.

FALL 2009

On November 14th, 2008, I turned 40 - it was one of the top-of-my-list HAPPIEST days of my life.

Champagne brunch with 17 of my closest friends in Michele’s grand home with she and Cathy hosting and the theme “A Breakfast at Tiffany’s”.  Blue and white mixed with crystal made me feel like a princess and the blue and white “Tiffany box” style petit fours filled with raspberry were divine.

I don’t know that I could have been happier.

Two days later, I got a pain in my right side.

I kept going on my morning walks and proceeding with life as usual despite the odd, new pain.  I went to my chiropractor, that didn’t fix it.  

A week after my birthday, I was in an Urgent Care and being put on Cipro after begging the doctor to check to see if I had an infection.  He kept telling me it was a muscle and that I was anxious, until he tested me and told me that my “women’s intuition” was right and that I had a pretty significant infection. What an asshole.

My friend, Ken told me not to take the Cipro because he said, “It’s like a hand-grenade in your body, Stace - it will wipe out everything.  That’s why I have it in my freezer in case of a biological attack”.

I should have listened to him.

I went on Cipro and within two days my fingernails started getting deep grooves and I started feeling outside of my body.

After finishing the treatment I was still in pain.

I went back to my GP and she said, “It’s probably just a muscle.”  I asked for an ultrasound just to make sure.

The day before Thanksgiving, the ultrasound showed that my right ovary was twice the size of my left and that there was a big cyst in there.  The technician said, “Gosh, you must be in pain just even walking, going to the bathroom, having sex…”

Somebody understood. 

A week after Thanksgiving, I got into see a specialist who said,  ”You stil have an infection, let me put you on another antibiotic.”

Round 2.

Two weeks later I felt better.

For one day.

And then, the pain returned.

I waited until after Christmas to go back to the doctor.

I had yet, another infection and was put on another round of antibiotics. By day two, I grabbed an apple and tried to peel the sticker off with my left hand and couldn’t grip the sticker. Later on that day, I was in the car with my kids and couldn’t pull my seatbelt with my left arm.  My thoughts immediately went to trouble shooting, “Heart, stroke or muscle.” Wanting to think horses, not zebras (my chiropractor says, “If you hear footfalls coming, think that it’s not the exotic thing like a zebra — think common, like horses.”  I guess that’s one way to talk myself off the ledge so, I headed to the chiro to see if it was muscle.

After an adjustment, I didn’t feel better.

I went home and my husband instant messaged me to see how I was.  When I told him my left arm was weak, he told me to “hold on”.  When he came back he wrote, “Call the doctor right away.  That is a serious side effect of the antibiotic you’re on.”

And so, I headed to the ER…

(stay tuned)

Okay, I’m going to do it.

I’ve actually been avoiding posting for two reasons:

1. Because I’ve been going through something so hellish that I don’t want to put it out there.  I want to just ’seem’ fine. And as a side note, I’m not excited about potentially being judged.

2. I’ve been working on my book and I’ve been trying to ’save’ my inspiration for the book.  Only thing is, inspiration isn’t something you ’save’ - it’s something you use and when you don’t ‘use’ it one place - you don’t tend to have it to ‘use’ in another.

I’ve also had that mix of, “It’s too late now, this started 7 weeks ago (or 10 months ago) (or 5 years ago) (or 40 years ago…) but I’m going to take the FLYLady’s (www.flylady.net) motto and apply it: 

“You’re not behind so, don’t try to catch up; just jump in where you are.”

So, this is the health stuff that I’m going to be writing about because this is where I am.  I’m going to give voice to it because as I put it out there, people will be helped and people will get free.  Yes, people will judge but that’s going to have to be their business since, I can only work my side of the teeter-totter.  I can’t work someone else’s side.

And even though this is health, trust me when I tell you it’s spiritual, because this health thing has pushed every spiritual button and belief system I have.

So, I’ll start there.  This is my opening blog about the journey from hell to health  Okay, it’s not really been ‘hell’ compared to what a lot of people go through, but it’s been my own version of it so, that’s all I can write about.

Warning:  it will be honest, I’m not going to do it perfectly, and there may be a few, or more than a few swear words splattered throughout. It will be entertaining and the parts that are boring will probably be the technical stuff of the health and symptoms but you can gloss over that.  The people who are suffering with the same stuff will be feasting on those parts so, they’re there for a purpose.

Will have more soon.

Stay tuned…

Peace,

Stacey

I think I’ve figured out why Jillian and Bob, the ruthless trainers on “The Biggest Loser” scream at the top of their freakin’ lungs at the contestants on the show.

Because the conversation that is going on inside of a fat person’s head is so persistent that the trainers are simply trying to force a new conversation into the stubborn brain.

Kind of like when the military uses loud rock and roll to mess with the concentration of the dictator they are trying to oust from their hide out.  These top-of-the-lung commands interrupt the habitual mental banter that has undermined the weight-loss success of the folks on the show.

It seems like J and B are angry. And if they were yelling at me, I’d want to stuff my fistful of Twinkies down their throats.  But when I step back, I can see that they are not yelling at the person.  They are really confronting the lies that have taken up residence. They’re yelling at the mental machinery that spits out mind-screwing sentences like: “You can’t do this.” “You’ll never make it.”  ”You’re not worth it.” and on and on and on…

I think I’m getting ready for someone to scream in my face because there are some false realities that need to be exchanged for the whole truth regarding my weight and worth.

Hmmm….should be interesting….

Freedom is coming.  I can feel it.

Today was a weird day. 

I had called Rocky early in the day and said, “Today feels weird.”  He thinks I’m weird.

Then, I found out that Farrah Fawcett died.

Then, the shocking word was out that Michael Jackson died.

I wrote on Facebook, “Has anybody checked on Patrick Swayze?  I’m afraid to look…”

These icons who are gone were part of my youth. Farrah’s poster in her red bathingsuit was on my wall when I was entering into Jr. High..  I went to many salons with my mom begging for a Farrah Fawcett hairstyle but I had wavy hair of the “not cool” variety  and instead of sweeping, easy beauty, I looked deranged and like I was trying too hard.

Michael Jackson’s Thriller video on MTV was the reason that I turned OFF my winning game of MegaMania on Atari.  It was totally worth it. The video was completely captivating. MJ’s music was what I played on my first Sony Walkman cassette player as I walked all over Florida on my summer vacation after 8th grade.  His music was the soundtrack that made my life seem like a cool movie in 1982.

These bits of my past that I don’t notice are a part of me until something like this happens. 

I don’t have any great wrap-up…I’m still processing it.  Meanwhile, there’s some big voting on the environmental bill…I’m all for  being responsible with our planet but I hope this one gets shot down.  Yes, I want to drive more environmentally friendly cars and I think humanity needs to to take greater responsibility and not be  greedy to completely ravage the trees and all but geesh, my body is made out of carbon — what are we going to start doing?  Eliminating PEOPLE to save the planet?

Don’t get me started…

I’m not sure if I should be concerned but it just hit me that the two reality shows that have to do with being a housewife, are from the two main areas that I’ve lived my whole life:

The Housewives of New Jersey (where I was raised)

The Housewives of Orange County (where I lived for almost all my adult life).

Nothing profound about it.  Just noticed it.  Gave me pause.

It’s a reckoning moment for me.

Last night, I had wine (not an excessive amount  - 2 or 3 glasses) which is usually fine for me.  Plus, I’m on the larger size of the weight scale so, alcohol doesn’t usually make much of an impact on me. Last night was different — wine on an empty stomach and apparently taken too close, timing-wise, to my thyroid medication and I ended up in a state of ‘not so great’ as the world around me looked like it was on marionette strings — bouncing up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down and…

barf….

Yes. Repeatedly.

Since I haven’t been in that kind of situation since I was in my 20’s, I forgot how bad, bad can feel.

But that night, I didn’t realize that my empty stomach with yummy wine and my medication were going to collide in this moment of “oh. my. gosh. - God HELP me” kind of thoughts in between dry heaves.

I learned a lesson.  But I learned it the hard way, in some respects, and in other respects — I got off easy.

Spiritually, I’ve been learning a lot.

Having been in the church world for a long time, I learned a lot of things that worked for my life:

- Seeking God

- Praying for wisdom

- Being in community during good and hard times with people.

And some things that didn’t work:

-Learning formulaic ways to approach God

- Dealing with people from a sense of hierarchy — the pastor’s the important one, the worship leaders the next important…etc… –

and the ultimate downfall:

- Transferring the performance-based relationships that I had with others to thinking God expected me to perform for him.

That last one really screwed me up.

The disparity between this God of unconditional love and this church of conditional acceptance became a journey for me and a conversation between me and God. I started to talk to God very honestly, in the middle of my pain, in the middle of my confusion, my everything….and a lot of times, I just didn’t talk at all.  I shifted from this desperate clawing for God of “You HAVE to answer me, you HAVE to bless me, you HAVE to, OR ELSE!!!” that I had lived in for much of my faith… and instead, I felt the peace that came in not having answers, and experiencing new trust that He was simply with me and I began living with self-honesty on my spiritual quest.

To some of my Christian friends, I seemed New-Age-y and scary, like I was forsaking my faith.   And I was.  I was forsaking my performance-based faith. And trust me, at times it was scary.  Because I was pursuing an unnerving adventure:  I was being with God and letting him show me who he was, in whatever ways he was going to do that instead  of me telling him who he was and looking for him to show up in those selective ways.  I was giving up control.  Trust me, that scared me.

I wasn’t defining myself by “Christian”.

Or my political party.

Or my stance on social issues.

I was stripping away the identities that I had formerly been defined by and that had allowed me access to specific communities.

I started referring to myself as a “human being” and I realized that calling myself that, didn’t leave anyone out.  It was all inclusive.

I just was ‘being’ where I was at — without condemnation or apologies. Even my husband noticed a difference. Rocky said to me, “I see ‘peace’ in you.”  

I began to experience this very ‘Zen’ sort of peace.

I started considering, what if everyone goes to heaven? (if there is such a place, I started wondering…) Because as a parent, I couldn’t imagine not having one of my children with me for eternity.

I started living with a paradigm of “God is love”.  What if  ”love” made us and “Love is in all of our DNA” and what if some of us recognize that and some don’t but we still all have it. 

I began to feel connected to every person, like we were a long-lost relative just reconnecting.

What if we aren’t black with sin from birth?  What if we’re part divine and part human and a glorious wonder — and what if life is all perfectly imperfect and that’s the way it was planned.

That flew in the face of so much of the Christianity, but it was so ‘Jesus’ to me.

When I started seeing life in those new ways, I found that I got intolerant of some formerly accepted commentary I heard around me: 

I got tired of people from non-denominational churches whispering about Catholics the way that they whisper about someone having cancer.  Saying things like “Oh, they’re so great, even though they’re Catholic”.  

I got tired of people asking me if I was “witnessing” to our gay family members at holidays as if that would be the only justifiable reason to be attending an event and as if the only thing that they were, was “gay” or that they some how needed to be witnessed to…

I got tired of people talking to me like I was a rebel to God simply because I didn’t agree with their theology.

It’s just tiring to be approached out of fear which requires agreement in order for there to be acceptance.

And here’s an honest confession:  I know all this stuff because I was this type of person.  The kind who was trying to save you, and change you, and fit you into the box. I was that person judging you.

I’m sorry.  And I’m not in that space anymore.

I’ve learned some lessons the hard way, like my little drinking explosion last night. Spiritually, I’ve lived judging and judged.

Today is a new day for me, as the last 5 years have been, and I can either live in my mistakes with self-condemnation or I can live in the learning that came through those times.

My choice today, and every day is this: I can be ‘against’ the people who don’t agree with me or I can be ‘for’ love.

Since my heart is to short-cut people through some of the hard part of life let me share this little tid-bit of wisdom:

Living “for” love gives you a lot more inspiration and energy than living “against” any denomination, political party or person.

And note to self: Next time you’re co-hosting an event, have a little food before you have a little wine.  You’ll be able to stay and serve the guests rather than barfing behind the bushes and going to bed. It’s a lot more fun to be at the party…

Oh well…

You live, you learn….