Category Archives: Living

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Living, Mental Health, Survival

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.

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Details of a cobweb
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.

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humpback whale moss on branch
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.

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Frank Cone Pexels
Living

Looping Me In

Drawing a circle over a circle over a circle

That’s how Kate Bowler describes anxiety.

I laughed knowingly as I read it out loud

because I know that feeling, that repetitive loop

of thoughts, of sensations

But now my ‘normal’ anxiety loop is piggybacked by the dopamine loop

of what I use to ignore my anxiety –

or what is causing my anxiety.

And as hard as it is to get out of an endless cycle of anxiety,

I worry if I’ll ever be able to escape this other addictive loop.

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Amarita Getty Images via Canva
Living, Poetry

Ode to a Dinner Roll

Going gluten free has taken away the joy of a dinner roll.

What is it about that plump pillow of yeasty goodness

that inspires joy

that conjures childhood holiday dinners

Fresh white linens nestled into the silvery swoop of a bread bowl,

cradling the warm treasure inside.

Peeling the paper thin square from its side,

folding it into my mouth where it immediately melts,

before pressing a cool smear of butter

against its warm surface

leaving enough of a layer

so the salty bite stands on its own for just a beat before

it melds together in all its glutinous glory.

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Living

An Inside Job

Am I the only one who finds the relentless stream of self-improvement programs this time of year depressing?

Not only because their purveyors are capitalizing on someone’s idea of self-worth

Not only because they remind me of my own lack of self-actualization and self-love

— Or maybe that’s what drives my major bone of contention:

That it is never as simple as ten steps, six sessions, and three weeks. 

There is no miracle mini-session that can cure the complex web of what has gotten us to our present state of . . .

And that’s what I think depresses me.

The false hope.

How many times can a title draw you in, only to be left wanting more after a superficial few paragraphs.

When nothing exterior can help, when it’s all an inside job.

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Photo by Lisa Fotios: https://www.pexels.com/photo/yellow-black-pencil-sharpened-above-the-white-paper-in-macro-photography-109255/
Living, motherhood, parenting

Will I Graduate?

Ten years until I graduate.

My dad used to say that the start of a new school year was his favorite time of year. It meant crisp yellow pencils, a bright pink eraser. A fresh start.

I do recognize the importance of cycles, their ability to restart or refresh us.

But I feel like I’ve been in school f o r e v e r.

Thirteen years of my own. Four years of college. Eight years of teaching. Then herding, leading, prodding my own for . . . fifteen?

There was a time when the sight of a school bus would spark anxiety in me. On weekends away from the classroom already too short, I needed no reminder of that place that triggered so much in me. And perhaps it is residual tension from those teaching years that bubbles up as I cycle through the start of each new year with my own children.

But I feel like a prisoner in this academic calendar.

Last year I had a student in every educational environment.

Elementary, Middle, High School, and College.

All represented.

It was a cool factoid. A sign of our wide-ranging and crazy family. I named the blog post I never wrote: All Ages and Stages.

Now as I anticipate walking another child through the college gauntlet, when I don’t even feel I’ve recovered from the last go-round, I’m tired.

I will support the homework and the lunch-making, the pick-ups and drop-offs, the reminders and subsequent nagging, the atta-boys and better-luck-next-times.

But I look forward to the day I finally graduate.

Yes, I am singing Third Eye Blind as I type the title . . .

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Image by Csillagvirág from Pixabay
Living, Survival, Technology

Deluged

In nature
I wonder how many streams
is too many streams

Excepting flood stage
what is the maximum
confluence
of streams

Because 
we humans
are not smarter
than nature

and yet

we try to support
multiple inputs,
audio video sensual,
all at once

It is no wonder 
our consciousness 
shuts down
zones out
is washed away
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The Partnership in Education
anxiety, Living, Survival

A Day Such as This

On absolutely amazing days like this, when the air moving around you feels like the wind’s caress, the pockets of sun and shade dance across the ground as the leaves move, your very skin feeling lighter and less oppressive.  On a day such as this, which you can’t even imagine in the dark dank days of winter – how can the horrors of the world coexist? 

Thoughts of war, cancer, needless violence, anorexia and body dysmorphia, seizures and convulsions, burns and heartache, loneliness, listlessness. . . how can all these exist on a day such as this? 

When some unnameable something grips your head and heart, a firm and gradual tightening of the vice.  When everything around you says, be well, enjoy – and your brain clamps down. 

It must be for times such as these that the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique was created. 

But I’m not in acute stress.  And when I’m done counting and grounding, the things that wound me up will still be there. 

I am living my low-level constant state of anxiety that seems to be this season of life – with friends more like family and family who need support and kids who need parents no matter what age they are.  With health scares and inconsistent schedules and interrupted sleep. 

On a day such as this, I need to sit right down in the center of it and soak it in.  If only I could exist there. 

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