Simple? Easy? Maybe - Maybe Not

 Hi, I’m Judith Ashley, author of The Sacred Women’s Circle series, soul nourishing romantic women’s fiction with light paranormal elements. My stories show you what life could be like if you had a place like The Circle where you are unconditionally accepted, supported and loved. And where, with this support, you make choices to overcome the darkest nights of your life to choose love and light.

The following post is adapted from one that first appeared on The Glasser Institute for Choice Theory - US website in 2023.  

I’ve been on the William Glasser International teaching faculty since 1980. During that time numerous people who are taking the early phases of the certification training have commented along the lines of What’s the big deal? This is easy? And then, to their surprise it isn’t.

What I know is true is that life, in and of itself, is simple.

We have basic physical needs: food, sleep, preferably shelter, safety.

We have the need for connection, to be useful or important. We have the need to have choices and as Dr. Glasser taught, we have the need to have fun because that’s how we learn.

Most of us get up in the morning with an idea or even a clear picture of how we want our day to go. We have our schedule or agenda or to do list or calendar ---however you organize your days. Then we take action. At the end of the day, our list is finished, our view of how our day would go is manifested. We have a sense of accomplishment.

From Deposit Photo

What we also know is that simple is not always easy.

A fact is we don’t always have power to keep a monkey wrench from being thrown into the cogs of our daily schedule. And the list of those monkey wrenches is long because for most of us, those simple days require cooperation from someone or something beyond our control.

The washing machine works. The car has enough gas for whatever errands or business we need to do.

The weather cooperates with any outdoor tasks

Money is in the bank

The contractor, cleaner, auto mechanic (you get the idea) is on time and does a quality job

Your partner, children, employees, boss all do their part so that what you are doing is easily and simply completed.

And that’s when things run amok, when simple isn’t easy. Our simple day becomes harder because it depends on other people to show up and things like the car or appliances to run.

The reality is, unless what we need is totally controlled by us, there is no guarantee of an easy day. We are at the mercy of outside forces.

The Serenity Prayer talks about “accepting the things I cannot change” and since one of those “things” is someone else, we have to find our own simple. And that isn’t always easy.

From Deposit Photo

A recent “aha” for me: Those things over which I have no control and that I have little or no real interest in much less passion about are easy for me to accept and even ignore.

What about those things I do care about? Those things I have a passion for and interest in? That’s much more challenging.

It can be done. I’ve proved that to myself more than once in the last couple of days!

How?

One part is simple. I know I have no control over other people much less the weather, electricity, or machinery. There are times I can simply say to myself “reschedule” or “how important is this in the relative scheme of things” and I’m able to let it go.

What I’ve learned over the years is that I first need to take care of myself before I am of any use to anyone else. I will admit I’m not perfect on living up to that “knowing”.

Here are a couple of tips I’ll pass on to you

+ Much of what makes our life “hard” or “stressful” is of our own making

+ Worry is not our friend. Fear is but worry isn’t.

+ Making sure to take care of ourselves is vital, especially if other people rely on us for anything. The airplane adage of making sure you put on your oxygen mask before helping someone else has applications beyond flying.

+ Do trust your inner voice

+ Do trust your body. Sometimes the only way for it to tell us to slow down and take better care of ourselves is to knock us down. When that happens, take your time getting up or the next knock down will be more serious.

+ Pay attention to your self-talk. Are you encouraging, supporting, trusting, respecting yourself or are you criticizing, blaming and complaining. Everyone does better, ourselves included, when we care about and for ourselves.

+ Acknowledge the loss if that is what’s hard. Grief is normal and useful in that it gives us time to stop. If possible, remember the blessings. My longtime friend (July 1980) has dementia and as I’m writing this, I learned she no longer knows who I am. We had such fun and many adventures attending various Glasser conferences around the world and over the decades. And her loss of herself as the person she was has been a slow process. Remembering those adventures is bittersweet and while the tears do well, the ache in my heart eases.

Take the time to find what works for you. Look at the whole of what you cannot control to see if there is a piece, perhaps almost minuscule, that you can. And when you do find it, claim it and use it.

While our road in life will still have bumps and maybe even crevices, by claiming all that we really can control, we’ll find it easier to navigate.

Staying Sane in A Crazy World goes into the above information in more detail. By following the process outlined in the book using your own situation simple may not become Easy and it will become Easier.

I’ve got a free handout on “Plan making” available on my website under “Resources” www.JudithAshley.net. The Plan Making Handout is also included in my book.

You can find my books at your favorite e-book vendor as well as through my website www.JudithAshley.net

and Windtree Press. Print books are available at Jan’s Paperbacks in Beaverton, OR and Arte Soleil in Portland, OR. Get the addresses from my website. And be sure to ask your library if you’d prefer to read my books through that resource.

Learn more about Judith's The Sacred Women’s Circle series at JudithAshley.net

Check out Judith’s Windtree Press author page.

You can also find Judith on FB! 

© 2024 Judith Ashley

Lions and Tigers and Bears! Oh My! by Eleri Grace

 WWII novels aren't typically scary in the traditional sense -- not in the same way that a paranormal or suspense novel might keep you up at night. 

Yet historical novels can include scenes driven by psychological terror or danger, and I like to believe my novels include plenty of page-turning scenes that leave the reader in suspense. I've written here about the fear of heights common to so many pilots and how that sense of control that most pilots feel in the cockpit evaporated in the face of WWII combat flying, especially with the ever-present odds of being forced to bail-out of a damaged plane. 

My Red Cross Girl heroines likewise faced dangers and fears during their service. In my debut novel, Courage to be Counted, my heroine Vivian was forced to flee in the dead of night when German forces overran the previously-peaceful R&R town of Clervaux, Luxembourg in the opening day of the Battle of the Bulge. She and her fellow Clubmobilers bedded down in the French countryside in the same fields as the advancing American troops, with artillery shells booming overhead. Vivian also experienced a close call with death when a German fighter bombed a US Army work-crew she was serving, forcing her to dive for cover under a nearby Jeep. 

In my 2nd Clubmobile novel, my heroine Hadley's journalistic curiosity lands her in one sticky situation after another. Wanting to write stories of substance for her newspaper back home, she accepted a pilot's offer to go up in a small plane for a quick reconnaissance trip, yet ended up in a combat scenario. Chasing a scoop, Hadley ignored protocol for having a male escort for any drives beyond their immediate work territory in New Guinea and took a female war correspondent into a remote jungle region where they were nearly killed in a crash. 

Though it has no title or cover yet, I decided to share a brief scene of danger and fear experienced by my latest heroine Maggie in my work-in-progress (ever-hopeful that this 3rd Clubmobile Girls novel will be published early next year). Maggie is serving with the Red Cross in eastern India, near the Burma border. She and her fellow Clubmobile worker Jill had done a Clubmobile run to serve doughnuts, coffee, and cheer to the work crews building the Ledo Road, which would later provide the much-needed land route from India to China. Though they had a male Field Director escort in the Clubmobile runs on the Ledo Road and camped overnight with Army troops, the women shared a basha (small hut constructed of native bamboo and grasses) at the edge of camp. An unexpected visitor to their basha kept Maggie pinned to her cot in terror for hours one night. 

Source: Davidvraju via Wikimedia under CC BY-SA 4.0

Consciousness returned in gradual waves. Her body didn’t want to relinquish its hold on a deep, restful slumber, yet something in her brain continued trying to rouse her. 

Something warm and moist nudged the mosquito net flat against her face and moved the netting in a gentle caress over her nose, her cheek, her jawline. Like a lover nuzzling, hoping to reignite an earlier passionate interlude. 

It was the deep throaty rumble near her ear, similar to a cat purring — but deeper and with a hint of menace — that jerked her mind into hyper-alertness. Every muscle in her body tautened. 

Its warm breath near her own mouth carried a coppery tang — an unfamiliar smothering scent that spiked her already rushing adrenaline levels. Blood. Blood in its breath. Blood on its mind.

With soft chuffs, it raked the mosquito netting down her arm, then across her hand. As it nudged its nose against her waist, Maggie’s heart froze in her chest. 

Her escalating fear could prompt it to attack at any moment. An ice-cold shiver snaked down her spine at the thought of its sharp teeth and claws. The engineers and work crews working on the Ledo Road had reported several tiger attacks — men who had been mauled, grievously wounded, or even killed. 

Maggie fought through her suffocating panic and forced herself to center enough to consider options. 

What did she know about tigers? Was it a tiger? It was a big cat — she had grown ever more certain of that. The deep rhythmic sound it was making — akin to a saw scissoring through wood — put her in mind of a cat. It wasn’t a continuous purr like a house cat makes, but similar enough. There were bears here too, but she didn’t think a bear would make this sort of sound. 

 To Maggie’s ears, its investigatory noises reverberated through the basha. Could Jill hear it? She might be deep in sleep and blessedly unaware of their plight, or she too might be lying there, frozen into panicked silence. 

It might grow bored and disappear. As badly as Maggie wanted that outcome, it seemed unlikely. 

If one of them screamed for help, would that scare it off? Or would it pounce, snarling and ripping and sinking its long teeth into her tender flesh? It was the threat of the latter that kept her eyes squeezed tightly shut, her body completely rigid and still. Her every breath seemed to amplify and must be every bit as loud as the birds and other animals who continued their nighttime conversations, oblivious to the mortal danger in which Maggie and Jill found themselves.

Its soft fur brushed against her arm, what might be its tail swished in the air near her ear. The deep chuffing noise allowed her to follow its progress as it moved around her cot and now pressed against the netting on her other side. Maggie still didn’t dare open her eyes. Feigned sleep had worked so far. On the other hand, it surely must sense her wakeful state from her thudding heartbeat and accelerating pulse. 

It circled the cot twice more, insistently pressing its nose against her body from head to toe through the netting. It seemed to like the texture of the netting - Maggie had the sense that it was rubbing its face against it as cats so often rub their heads against furniture and objects. Grandpa said cats rubbed against things to mark them as their own. Was this one marking her as its next meal, or was it merely enjoying the texture of the soft, feathery netting? 

I hope you enjoyed the above teaser (and yes, Maggie is the heroine, so she does survive her night of terror, though the experience left its mark). 

In case you missed my earlier novels, you can find my Clubmobile Girls novels on Amazon. You can learn more about me and my writing on my website and by following me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.