There are no great parents

I read this somewhere and it sure resonated wirth me:

'' I have a theory that there is no such thing as a “great parent”. There is only such a thing as a horrific parent and a normal parent.

Normal parents are good some of the time and bad some of the time. The best parents have a few better moments than the rest of us. But there are NO great parents.

 And if someone reads this and posts about how great their parents were. Well I would say you just happen to be a kid who was a fit somehow. Your parents got lucky and so did you. Give them a different kid with a different issue… or ask your sibling how great they are…


Loved this.

No great parents, just normal parents
.
Parents who love a lot, scream and yell a lot, encourage at times, at others criticise, make stupid parental mistakes but also have moments of intense bliss when feeling they are getting it right. And everything in between. 

And those who claim or are deemed as great parents?

Nope, no such thing. Only parents who are good at hiding stuff, thus showing off only the glam side of parenting. And since nobody knows how much  of their triumphs and tragedies a parent is sharing or hiding, really there is absolutely no way to tell.


I was very much a good fit for my father's parental style but not at all a good one for my mother's. Or my sister's and brothers, who all three of them were over a decade older than me and helped raise me in a way. I felt alien to most of the ways they related to me, but still loved them all to bits, especially my mum, whose raising of me I often considered as harsh and lacking in tenderness in my teenage years, when I didn't know any better. 

But hey, did that make her not a great parent?

No, it didnt, because like I said, there are no great parents, just normal parents who love their kids, and parents who are horrible and a mess and either do not love their kids or their love has traits of sickness in it.

Either case, dont try to shove your parental style into me.
At best, its just a variation of normal, different or similar to mine, according to your values and perception of the world.

Also, do not try to lead me or your parents down the guilt lane for not being a great parent and for making a ton of parental mistakes. If physical and mental abuse and neglect is excluded, chances are, they/we are all normal parents who love and care for their kids as best they can.

Not being a good fit with your parent or kid is ok.
It teaches you respecting differences in individuals and loving unconditionally. 

Noone said we should all be perfectly suited to one another and if you can accept that for other kinds of relationships, what makes you think it doesnt hold true for parent-child dynamics?

Love and mutual respect are enough when it comes to raising healthy, balanced kids and having  parents that remain sane and balanced.

Leave greatness and perfection to other planes of existence.
You aint gonna find them down here.

Musings

As my birthday is almost here,
I 've been thinking and contemplating about stuff 
and I 've come to realise one thing:

we all want to be happy,
but we rarely realise that sunshine, if it lasts forever, turns everything into an arid desert
Throughout my life, 
pain and trouble has been alternating with joy and success.
Just like it is in everyone's life.

When you're in the midst of pain,
you hope it will go away soon
When happy, you hope it will last for ever.

BUT THIS AINT HOW LIFE WORKS.
Rain and sunshine, sunshine and rain, 
sometimes a hailstorm or a snowstorm, 
all part and parcel of the changing seasons.

Dont wish for a pain-free life,
Not possible in this reality of existence.
Wish for peace of mind
that can outlast any painstorm and any sunshinebliss.

Wish for a better and stronger you.

oh, and another secret: 
Your painstorms make your capacity to enjoy sunshine bliss soar to the sky
so if you cant hail them as necessary
at least accept them for what that they are

Love from your webfriend
Eirini 

How to Keep Reinventing yourself

According to medical science, the human body completely renews itself every 7 years! 

The cornea replaces itself every 24 hours, the skin every 14 days, the blood cells every 90 days, the soft tissue every 6 months, and the dense tissue every 2-7 years.

The only cells that are as old as you are, are most of your brain cells. But then again I recently attended the lecture of a well-known neurologist who explained to us an interesting fact: the common scientific belief that we all use 5-7 % of our brain does not actually apply to mere potential, but also to the fact that the human brain is designed to last for a whooping 500 year span or even longer. 

That means that your entire body keeps reinventing itself.

Constantly and relentlessly.

Whether you like it or not,

whether you notice or not.

But wait a minute!

If the entire body is continually creating new cells, why do we still have illnesses and incurable diseases? Why are we aging and why dont we look much different, day in, day out? Why doesn’t the body just make new, healthy cells (instead of diseased or old duplicates) every time cells reproduce?

Simple.

Because the blueprint of said replacement is controlled
by you.

You.

Your thoughts and feelings and beliefs about what your body is supposed to be, look like and function
day in, day out and in the long term

You desighn, they faithfully execute your designings..

Of course, the whole process isn't controlled by your rational mind.

Noone wakes up one day and says ''hey body, I command you to age faster or get cancer a few months down the road''.

That rational part of you that controls decision making and logic simply has no inherent power to control body functions and processes like that. 

Whoever created the whole damn process knew it was too important for survival to be left in the hands of logic which  could turn so irrational and crazy at times that it has the potential to become self-destructive.

So reinvention happens in another way.. It is involuntary up to a certain extend, but follows a certain pattern that is controlled and desined by your feelings, emotions and beliefs.

But guess who controls your feelings and beliefs.

Yep, they are under your control, if only you actually care to do so.

-Your rational mind controls your thoughts-

-Your thoughts control your emotions and beliefs-

-Your thoughts emotions and beliefs control the reinventing process of your whole self, your body included.

Yes, your body keeps reinventing itself.

However, as is most often the case, it's a reinventing that you rarely get to control deliberately.

Unless you choose to do so.

Push the restart button.

Tell yourself, ''since my whole physical self keeps reinventing itself, I might as well try to assist it in the process by giving it a new, improved paradigm, a new blueprint to create upon, one more suited to my prefernces and wishes.''

How do you do that?

You do that by doing it.

You sit your ass down and decide what you want your physical and non-physical self to look like.

No matter your age. Yes, you still have time. I once met a woman online in her early sixties who decided to get braces for her teeth. I asked her how she took that decision and she told me ''In two years time I can be either dead in which case it wouldn't matter anyway,  I can be just two years older, or I can be two years older with straight teeth, so I picked the third option''.

You get to decide how you'd like to reinvent yourself. 

You decide by examining your innermost wishes 

and by making the right probing questions.

-What do I want to accomplish this year?

-How am I going to accomplish it?

-What do I need to become in order to accomplish this ?

Plan. 

Written if possible

No plan and no action= nothing accopmlished,

A plan and no action,=still nothing accomplished.

No plan and action= little accomplished.

A plan plus action= reinventing yourself

And remember -transformation doesn't have to be about something so big and auspicious that the world notices and cheers.

( though wouldn't that be fun too!)

It's not about monumental changes, it's first and foremost about how you feel with yourself and actually seeing results in your life that matter to you personally.

Happy reinventing

Why do you keeping doing that, Eirini?

The other day my sister phoned me to complain (yet again) of the same old shit.

She said, ''People we both know keep phoning me, telling me how you post stuff of nude women and keep talking about orgasms on your fb''

 I laughed out loud. Well, after I had started yelling like a rebellious teenager :''Orgasm, orgasm, orgasm, orgasm! I'll be posting and repeating it as much as I want to! Fuck those haters!'' Finally, it seems that I have succeesed in shocking half-numb-from-boredom people out of their drab existential everyday drudgery, havent I?

Being shocked is a good sign, good people. It shows you're still alive. Plus, it's the first-timid, but still- step towards the road to awe and wonder. So basically, I guess my work is done.
Folks, you're on the right track and you're bound to see results pretty soon, I promise.

But the burning question still remains unanswered: 

Why do you keep pοsting those semi or butt-naked pictures of skinny models and talk about sexuality and orgasms on you fb wall, Eirini?

First off, because its fun.

Because I am a heterosexual woman that enjoys seeing human bodies of both sexes in all their God-made glory and Enjoys means I am not getting turned on by either of them, unless the context is explicitly pornographic or sexual.

I find it deeply DISTURBING, to say the least,not to mention hypocritical and unnatural IN EVERY SENSE the fact that we live in a culture in which parents of 13 year olds dont mind at all their kids' watching films and pictures of human bodies being violently and sadistically torn to pieces by every kind of weapon imaginable, and yet they object to those very same kids seeing a tasteful and beautiful picture of nude human bodies in all their God-like glory...



EROTICISM IS A BIG PART OF OUR LIVES, IT IS LIFE ITSELF...THOSE WHO DENY IT, SOON WITHER AND DIE OR STAY DEAD INSIDE UNTIL ACTUAL PHYSICAL DEATH COMES ALONG..

Having said all that, there is also the aesthetic part of the whole argument: a young healthy and fit person, just a few years out of God's hands, looks and is as close to physical perfection as possible. As we get older, because of our laziness, poor eating and lifestyle habits , bad thoughts and plain stupidity, we lose this perfection  (if you dont believe this, see how athletes'bodies stay young and vibrant looking at an advanced age).

 So, we try to justifty our bad choices by telling ourselves the convenient lie ''its all part and parcell of aging, so inevitable''. When we are presented with a perfect human body, no matter its age, our first though is ''''he/she's still young, that's why they look like that'' or ''they are plastic, this is surgery'' or ''sure, if I were as rich as they are or had all this time in my hands, I'd have the perfect body''. 

Now here we come to the core of the problem:a naked body is usually disturbing for two reasons: because it arouses in us or in others sexual feelings that we deem as bad and inappropriate or because with its perfection it reminds us of our own imperfections (or a combination of both)

 I suggest-and practice daily on my wall- we get over our petty insecurities and phobias and give life a chance...

Oh, and haters?

You needn't call my sister to hate.
Tell it to my face. I wont bite, I promise.Or kick.

Why Rephraming sometimes sucks.

I've always been a big fan of reframing.

That is, repraming all experiences as positive.
Even the harrowing ones.
Trying to find the silver lining in every fuckin' cloud.

What exactly is reframing?

''Reframing is a way of changing the way you look at something and, thus, changing your experience of it. Reframing can turn a stressful event into either a major trauma or a challenge to be bravely overcome. Reframing can depict a really bad day as a mildly low point in an overall wonderful life. Reframing can see a negative event as a learning experience. Reframing is a way that we can alter our perceptions of stressors and, thus, relieve significant amounts of stress and create a more positive life before actually making any changes in our circumstances.''



Yeah,I've been doing that all my life.

Like, when I was a teenager and I had to wear this horrible body cast day and night for two and a half years, not being able to breethe , this seering pain in my spine each time they made it tighter, each time I became the target of jokes and ridicule by cruel classmates at school, I'd lie in bed at night thinking:
''This is making me stronger emotionally, I can do this, I can do this! Plus, this cast is giving me a timy waist, in times gone by women would wear corsets to get temporarily what I'll be getting permanently''.

Some reframing, huh?

And I've been following on those lines throughout my life.
In all major and minor crises of my life.

Being always the happy one.
The cheerful one.
Holding it all admirably together.

Don't complain.
Don't fret.
Don't break down.
Do the right, the admirable thing.

Then today, a flash of indignation hit me,
making me realise  that rephraming aint always a good thing.

We were at my brother's car,on our way to the hospital to see and care for our mum. My two brothers were discussing stuff and challenges they're facing in their lives and generally catching up on their news. When it was my time to talk and tell them about a particular problem at home, after they listened, one of my brothers said: 
''C'mon Eirini, it can't be that bad, after all look at you, you always find enough time for all the things you love, you always look impeccably groomed and cheerful, if things were the way you're describing, you'd be a mess!''

Then it hit me.

People, even those nearer and dearer to you, cant possibly fathom your pain if you keep fuckin' reframing every experience as positive.

If you keep putting up a brave, brave front for too long,
they dismiss your challenges and pain as trivial or nonexistent.

If they don't see you breaking down in the middle of the night into a crying mess, they believe you're thick skinned enough to withstand everything.

After all, pain is always detectable, right?

Wrong.

Watching my mum going through trauma and pain and losing all sense of dignity and control over most things bravely and uncomplainingly drove it more home to me.

Most people , my family included, seeing her like this kept repeating ''She's losing all sense of awareness, that's why she is like that,'' or I kept seeing nurses dealing with demanding, complaining patients more and dismissing my mother's pain because she's patient and well, doesnt make any commotion, does she?

Fuck that.

Watching this in action made me realise how much I'm trully her daughter, burying my pain, putting up a brave front, sucking it up, taking it up to next level even, not just refrain from complaining, ut also fuckin' rephraming every experience as positive.

Then, becoming dissacociative from my pain, or having people to refuse to offer help and sympathy I so gravely need somewtimes, because, well, look at you, you're holding up together so well!

Reframing aint always good.

Sometimes having a screaming feat is all it takes for people to realise you're human too, with needs and challenges that need to be addressed.

Sometimes rephraming sucks and swearing the living shit at people gets your point across much, much better.

Desired Feelings Reminder

I am full of beautiful intentions and new years resolutions.
Like most people.

But I keep forgetting,
as life keeps getting in the way.
Like most people.

For this new year I decided to take more drastic measures.

My top three goals for new year:

-Exercise 5 times a week for 45 minutes 
-Have 5 more students for my private english lessons
-Increase and strengthen love in my relationship

Although all three of those goals are realistic and totally doable, 
they still require daily focused and conscious work.

And the best way to stay focused is of course
to concentrate on the desired feeling that each of these goals will bring along once accomplished.

For example, how does Eirini feel once she has completed a year of working out 5 days a week for 45 minutes each session?
She feels confident, fit, pretty, attractive, full of energy and zest for life, sexy, desirable etc.

To speed up the process and keep myself on track,
I have to remind myself to feel exactly the way I wonna fell once my goal is accomplished.

So I started writing the desirable feeling on my palm
(see picture above).

A different feeling each day.

To concentrate on it, recreate it, make it stronger.

And guess what.

My little experience taught me that 
we can experience any and all feelings we wish, regardless of the circumstances around us.

I swear it's true.

More effective than drugs, or alcohol or even external events that can influence your mood.

All it takes is practice and focus.

Try it out, it's fun.
And effective