Five Years On

I’d like to blame my current malaise on COVID.

Not the having of the virus, though two times was punishment enough. (I know, it certainly could have been worse. Believe me, I know.)

And while the pandemic and attendant lockdown messed with my time-space continuum royally, it started in the months before.

When I let myself get so low, I had a near-panic attack just going to the doctor’s office to ask for meds.

When I got so low, I let my mind trick me into thinking needing meds was a moral failure on my part.

When I stumbled around in a fog so thick, I didn’t realize how bad it had gotten.

And then as I climbed out, I felt the need to tell the story.

I knew I needed to explain how I’d gotten there – for the mental health narrative and for my own mental health.

But the story was so huge. The path so steep and craggy, I knew not where to begin or how.

And the more time passes, the harder a thing is to tell. Details forgotten, edges dulled.

And then the world stopped.

We were all in survival mode. Myself acutely.

I thank God for the fortuitous timing of that first appointment.

For if I hadn’t started meds when I did –

thrown into ‘homeschooling’ and online learning and personal loss from afar. . .

But after months of bizarre, those details began to be forgotten and those edges dulled.

And this was life.

We were expected to pick up the baton and keep time

when time was wonky, hearts were broken, and psyches scarred.

Five years on

I’ve picked up bad habits, sloth and sipping alcohol.

Smack-dab in the middle of perimenopause

and the slog of midlife.

What started as peeling back the layers of over-exhaustion and exertion

flipped the other way into inert.

Achieving perfection and avoiding failure by not attempting at all

has settled into paralysis.

And now, what is life, but this fragile thing that can be taken and wrenched dry in mere months.

When the acute sorrow is gone and you’re left with nothing but the days

and another load of groceries to unpack.

Five years on

and I still can’t tell you how I got here.

But I have begun.

Survival

To those of us in middle age

Who curse out our parents for ‘giving it to us’

– whatever it may be:

diabetes, depression, attention deficit disorder –

and then turn around to our teens cursing us out for giving it to them.

Who move children into college

and come home to crap they’ve left behind.

Who are exhausted in every sense of the word.

Whose friends are going through it.

Whose parents are ill or actively dying.

Who alternately sweat or shake with chills or shit after drinking wine

It all feels like too much –

but this is life for a lot of us right now.

We are not alone and we will survive.

Weekend Write-Off

To Again Become

When she can’t sleep at night, she tries to remember the details of all the rooms where she has slept: the one she shared with her parents until the age of thirteen, the ones at the university residence and the Annecy apartment facing the cemetery. She starts at the door and makes her way around the walls. The objects that appear are always linked to gestures and singular facts: in her room at the summer camp where she’d worked as a counselor, the mirror over the sink where some boy counselors had written in her red Diamond Enamel toothpaste, ‘Long live whores’; the blue lamp in her room in Rome that gave her an electrical shock each time she turned it on. In those rooms, she never sees herself with the clarity of photos, but blurred as in a film on an encrypted TV channel. Or she sees a silhouette, a hairstyle, movements – leaning out of a window, washing her hair – and positions – sitting at a desk or lying on a bed. Sometimes she manages to feel she is back inside her former body, not the way one is in dreams, but more as if she were inside the ‘glorious body’ of the Catholic religion, which was supposed to resurrect after death with no sensation of pain or pleasure, heat, cold, or the urge to urinate. She doesn’t know what she wants from these inventories, except maybe through the accumulation of memories of objects, to again become the person she was at such and such a time.

The Years, Annie Ernaux

Poetry

Reptile in Amber

If I get a pet snake
I'll name him Nigel

inspired by "Making Plans for . . ."
as I drove home late at night
reminded of Geoff

who like a frustrated spouse
told me I didn't discipline our campers enough
and always made him the heavy.
But we laughed together when we heard 
XTC sing about Nigel
on our lunch break.

And I think of him every time I hear it
his laugh ever present in the quirky name
though some crazy cancer
took him before he could ripen into a man old enough to carry a name like Nigel

Poetry

True Pops of the Fourth

Not the fireworks

But the smash and crash of the

Glass Monday morning

Living

Supporting Details

There’s a fine line between staying out of the media stream for self-preservation and sticking your head in the sand.

I don’t get direct feed nightly news to the kitchen table like I did when a kid.

Part of that is by choice. Being told to hold a story until Tom Brokaw had said his piece made an impression.

Part is logistics. Having cut the cord on cable and not hoisting a big enough antenna high enough on the house means over the air locals don’t always come to visit.

Part is self-preservation. With an electronic rubber-necker in my hot little hand, I make conscious decisions to not seek out tragedy, violence, and discontent.

Call me uninformed, a bit ignorant. I call it regulating my hope and mental health.

But not poring over the details of disaster does not mean I am not aware of what is happening in the world. That I am not worrying over brash acts of global consequence.

Yes, I can put down my phone and think that land is far away; that I will never step foot on it; that I will never meet its people.

But no matter where on earth is home, humans have the same needs and desires. Life being topmost.

If we take the position that we are safe in a bubble, a mushroom cloud can burst that in an instant regardless of geographic distance.

But even without that threat, we cannot bury our heads in the sands of our privilege – be it distance, race, resources. Whatever.

To be a good human means to care for other humans. Regardless of the details.

Writing

Am Writing

When one is task oriented and working to deadlines,
the work becomes scripted and static.

Sure there are moments that shine,

but they're in the initial spark of the idea
or reserved for the intro or concluding paragraph.

Never in the middle, in the meat of the piece.

When one is free to write for writing sake, 
the work becomes invisible
         or even ceases to exist.

When creativity has no bounds

it often flies away.

Living, Uncategorized

Beautiful and Terrifying

Outside

moss consumes everything.

Entire branches swallowed down and in.

To extract takes an unearthing you didn’t even know was needed

until the last.bite.left crunched underfoot.

At night

whales swam overhead, a beautiful and terrifying snow globe effect

as tidal waves stacked up on the periphery,

walls of water threatening your wooden stance.

There is beauty and potentiality

in design

intention

in terror.

You just have to keep the forces of nature at bay.

childbirth

The Dish on Doulas

As this past October dawned, I woke early on a Saturday, put on some presentable clothes, and drove an hour north to a farmers’ market – and I didn’t even need any produce.

I was researching an article on doulas for Rhode Island Moms. My initial idea was “An Interview with a Doula” to create a personal connection introducing how and what doulas offer. After discussions with three doulas I either knew personally or through a few degrees of separation, the article’s focus became more broad-based. When I saw that Doulas of Rhode Island (DORI) was hosting a Meet the Doulas event at Lippitt Park in conjunction with the farmers’ market, I knew I’d learn even more.

What is a doula?

Click to read more of my article on rhodeislandmoms.com

My trusty little notebook quickly became filled with the emotional and physical support these women provide to mothers everyday in hospitals and homes. I spoke to Emma setting up the table and welcoming guests. I spoke to Katherine, membership coordinator for the doula organization (who connected me with Paulette who gave me more info via phone). I met Ava, based in my neck of the woods and friends with a Warrior Mom doula I know. I met Emily, who had just relocated to Rhode Island and was getting the lay of the land for mamas here. I met Shay who translated her own birth experience into a way forward with future moms. Some of these women prepare mothers in the prenatal phase and see them through labor. Others support them during labor and at home postpartum. Some prepare nutritious foods and provide childcare while mom sleeps. Some do it all. All establish a solid and supportive foundation for moms to thrive.

While it wasn’t meant to be an article about mental health, that is often the lens through which I view issues. I asked several of the doulas what they do to support and assess mental health/illness in their clients. They obviously all watch for the signs and know when to call in help, but I was shocked by the surprisingly simple, yet profound, response Lily had. As a postpartum doula and overnight nanny, she emphasized the benefit of sleep, how even PMAD treatment programs and hospitals focus on mom getting adequate sleep.

How refreshing that if we ensure moms get what they need (ie sleep, nutritious food, companionship, informed decision making), mood disorders may not even arise!

And THAT is why doulas are a force to be employed, paid attention to, and celebrated.

I spent over two hours speaking to and circulating around the doulas of Rhode Island and their table. I told Emily that I could talk about maternal (mental) health all day. “Me too,” she said.

The article that went to press November 5, 2024 could not contain all the stories and wonderful women I met. The way I serve women and mothers is affected by them. I am thankful for their work and their sharing.

With a community like this, women and mothers cannot go wrong.

The doulas who shared their work and time with me. . .

Many thanks

may is maternal mental health month

Female Fulcrum

Who would’ve thought that being an adult volunteer with Girl Scouts would pay such dividends? Obviously there’s the bonding with one’s own child and building experiences for all in the troop. But the connections between the grown females is what always moves me.

At our troop’s camp-out this year, another mom and I rallied the girls to set up an oversized see-saw contraption. Essentially a wooden dock on a fulcrum, we had to slide it from ramp position to a teetering position so as to ‘ride the waves’. Two grown adults couldn’t do it by themselves and everything Girl Scouts is GIRL-led, so the entire troop found a spot and together we lifted and slid the slab into place.

As the girls leapt onto the sloshing see-saw one by one and experimented with movement and weight distribution, the mom and I marveled at the power of the physical example right in front of our faces.

Teamwork. Small actions combining for a great force. Empowerment. Goal realization.

I remarked how important it was for girls to be in an environment solely for them with ample space for their voices and desires. This led into a conversation about this mom’s experience as a personal and fitness coach, saying that a young man in the administration of her organization had tried to offer tips for improving her practices. She and her core group had already found an incredibly enriching and cohesive bond. She, as a woman, in a different age bracket, and a mother, had all she needed to interface with these women. She had lived in experience.

“There is such power when women gather,” I said.

“Absolutely,” she said. “Especially when it’s a space just for them.”

We looked at each other knowingly, nodding, and I know my eyes were certainly filling.

And all that from a cold, rainy, muddy weekend at camp strong-arming a wooden raft into a precarious – or perfectly balanced – position.

But the community and calm knowing that comes from a gathering of women is what I want to celebrate and what I know to be at the core of maternal mental health.

Chopping Potatoes

and other metaphors for motherhood

Author Archives: Jennifer Butler Basile