Archives for category: health

I Can’t Fix You

April 24, 2018 //

Oh hey, good morning. 🙂

It’s true, by the way. I can’t “fix” you. (Maybe you aren’t even actually “broken” in the first place, however “broken” you may sometimes feel…) Similarly, you can’t fix that person who is dear to you, or even that yearning stranger seeking support. We are not machinery. What is entirely possible and totally within reach is to change our experience. We can change our choices, change our reactivity, change our potential for resilience, change our actions, change our words, and even change our thinking – which, as it turns out, is a very big deal. We each (all) have choices.

“Be Like Water” 11″ x 14″ acrylic on canvas w/glow and India ink. 2018

Pro-tip: If you regularly feel like you are spinning out of control and “have no choices” or “lack options”, taking some time to explore potential choices and options you have previously set aside as “impossible” or in some fashion unworthy, may be really worthwhile. If you’ve narrowed down the vast list of potential choices and options to just some small handful that from your present vantage point “all suck”, you’ve made at least one choice already; the choice to disregard some possible choices. I’m sure you have your reasons. Maybe handle that differently? Be open to more than what you, yourself, think is “obvious”.

Sometimes we need to step back to see things in context, or to gain perspective.

I spent the weekend delightfully, mostly painting and hanging out with friends. I provided comfort and support where it seemed needed. I felt valued and appreciated for “being there”. Realistically, I also know that I didn’t “fix” anything at all; I simply took time to allow friends to be fully heard, and supported their good hearts. Where helpful, I shared the practices that support me most, myself, hoping that these would be similarly helpful for my friends. I am aware, because this is how I roll these days, that very few of my friends will adopt practices that require real accountability, self-awareness, reflection, and… verbs. A lot of verbs, and slow incremental change over time, don’t sound nearly as enticing as a fad diet, or a horoscope, or a quick fix, or someone willing to tell us it’s “not our fault”. In a moment of emotional crisis, anything at all that helps calm the storm is welcomed. When the storm passes? Well… few people really want to do a lot work, though, right?

“So Deep” 11″ x 14″ acrylic on canvas w/glow, glitter, and India ink. 2018

I’m not mad. I already knew I couldn’t fix you. I just want you to be well, and to be whole, and to care for yourself. 🙂

I maintain a certain healthy distance from OPD (Other People’s Drama) as much as possible. This works for me. It doesn’t make me less sad, when I see a friend in tears, to maintain such boundaries – it does tend to make me less frustrated that I was not able to “fix them”, by allowing me to remain mindful that honestly I never could, and also, there are verbs involved – not all of those are mine. 🙂 We each have to walk our own hard mile. We each have to face our own dark night. We each “hit bottom” our own way, in our own time, over the things that hold most meaning for us individually – our dearest loves can not save us from ourselves… But we can. No kidding. It’s just those damned verbs, and the slow passage of time, and the lies in our heads that tell us any differently. It’s just one more bit of resistance (within ourselves) to overcome when we undertake healing and change.

“Down by the River” 11″ x 14″ acrylic on canvas w/glow, glow glitter, and India ink. 2018

Over the weekend, I also received the rest of my art work back. My Traveling Partner picked it up for me. I felt very relieved to have them returned to me. I find myself wondering about my attachment to them. It’s something for me to think over; it may be less than ideally healthy to treat them as literal pieces of myself.

“Because…Love” 11″ x 14″ acrylic on canvas w/glow and gold leaf. 2018

Here it is, time to begin again. Working from home, still sick, but I am at least sufficiently improved to work. That’s progress. 🙂 What about you? What will you choose to do differently to improve your experience? What will you change to become the person you most want to be? What practices will you commence to become, over time, someone other than you are? Are you ready to become the person you most want to be? There are verbs involved… I can’t do them for you.

Here’s a great place to begin again. You’ll still need to practice. 🙂

Tags be here now, be love, be the change, be the change you wish to see, begin again, being and becoming, choose wisely, choosing change, consider all your options, emotional self sufficiency, experience, getting through that dark night, good self-care, listening deeply, making choices, MBSR, meditation, mindfulness, mindfulness matters, OPD, p.s. I love you, perspective, practicing the practices, ptsd, relationships, sufficiency, taking care of me, TBI, The Art of Being, The Big 5, the map is not the world, there are verbs involved, walking my own path, walking that hard mile, what matters most?, when you hit bottom, who do you most want to be?

Categories Allegories, anger, Anxiety, Art, art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, Frustration, grief, health, Healthy Living, inspiration, Logic & Reason, loneliness, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being, Words

When Practice Feels Like Failure

April 23, 2018 //

Intense connected weekend, deeply emotional, profound, moving, close, intimate, filled with friendship, community, heart… and love. It was pretty wonderful. It was also very weird. Like all of our hearts were cracked open by our own pain and circumstances, and what spilled out was how much we all really care about each other. It was splendid… and deep. I can’t do a whole lot of that over a prolonged period of time, myself, I am open and raw, and struggle to manage self-care and boundaries. It can go very wrong if I don’t make a point to get a few minutes of space and take care of my own needs, also.

This past weekend was lovely. The closeness, authenticity, and emotional complexity of it all apparently hit me right in the immune system, though, or brought me into too-close contact with someone recently ill. By Saturday in the early afternoon, the itch in my sinuses was already giving me a heads up that I had picked up some passing virus. I thought little of it, and began drinking more water, and taking steps to be more well. Practices.

By evening, I just wasn’t “up for it” – any of it – and not in a mean or unkind way, I literally couldn’t cope with the sound of human voices talking over each other, however happily. The stream of information felt more like… a flood. An avalanche. A tidal wave. It was just more than my broken brain could handle in the moment. I took a step back. I returned later; no change. Apparently, this head cold comes with an optional “cognitive impact” package – no extra charge. I ended up taking my leave early in the evening – no hugs – and keeping to myself, drinking tea and drifting in and out of awareness. At some point I considered making the drive home that night… and thankfully either thought better of it, or just… didn’t. I wasn’t at all up to it. Hell, I wasn’t up to the drive home when I finally did get into the car on Sunday morning – but I was still holding out hope that I’d be working on Monday.

It is Monday. I’m not working. I’m home sick. The only reason I am “out of bed” at all right now is that the “coffee alarm” in my brain went off, and I got up to have my measured amount of morning coffee before I collapse back into bed to be sick “more skillfully”. lol I’ve literally “no business being out of bed right now” to quote my Granny from many years ago.

The drive yesterday was surreal. I don’t take some types of cold medicine (contra-indicated due to other things), so I made the drive feeling fairly shitty, but not further impaired by OTC mix-n-match weirdness. I observed the effect of this particular “head cold” (is it? I think it is…) over what seemed a longer than usual drive. I could still assess distance and speed fairly well, but my ability to determine relative risk (decision-making) was definitely impaired. I often felt confused, slowed down, or dithered when some choice suddenly wasn’t so certain – while driving at freeway speeds. I was happy to arrive safely home. There were definitely one or two points along the drive when it was not a given that I would.

I got home feeling a stew of aggravation, frustration, anger, and all manner of nuanced negative emotions. My heart felt like a snarl. Not a snarl, as in “tangled”, nope; I was the embodiment of snarling confrontation waiting for someone to step to me and make something of it. lol Omg. Seriously? Why is there even such a thing as head colds that tamper with emotional balance or cognition?? So not okay. I unloaded the car haphazardly, reserving 100% of my fucks to give for the precious cargo in the trunk; I have my paintings back. I make a point of pausing to really appreciate that. I settle in for the evening, make tea, have a shower, change into comfy clothes, bundle up, have more tea, and go to bed. I exchange messages with my Traveling Partner later, and go back to bed. Between 1 pm and 5:30 am this morning, I slept about 12 hours. I’ll be going back to bed for more of the same once I finish my morning coffee.

So many practices being practiced. Boundary-setting, self-care, communication… all involving careful use of practices learned over time such that they feel pretty natural when needed (which is good because right now I’d struggle to do anything “new”) – but, being sick, none of it “feels effective” – however effective it may actually be. It’s a good time to be alone, and calling out today is a wise choice. It’s hard though. It’s Monday. I try to “never take Monday off”. I notice the chills, again. I finish my coffee. Treating others well also involves not bringing further contagion into the office space where coworkers would soon be dropping like flies, themselves. Treating others well involves making the (hard)(adult) choice to respect work spaces, and the quality of the work experience, by not bringing heightened ferocity and reduced resilience into the calm productive emotionally neutral space that is our work area. Acknowledging that I am “not myself” is also less than ideally easy; we often don’t want to admit it when we are not well, sometimes due to nothing more than “FOMO” (for fucks’ sake, really??) because we don’t want to pass up some event, activity, or connected time “just because we’re sick” (no, really??). I allow myself to be the adult in the room in my own experience; I call out.

Coffee’s gone. Even when I’m sick there are opportunities to begin again. This is one of them; I’m going back to bed. lol

…And anyway, the point is, practice does matter, and it is there for me when I need it most. The skills develop over time, and are useful in circumstances I may not have anticipated. I’m just saying; keep practicing. 🙂

Tags I hate being sick, I have a cold, I'm okay for some values of okay, it's just a cold ffs, mindfulness matters, practicing the practices, ptsd, sufficiency, taking care of me, TBI, The Art of Being, there are verbs involved, walking my own path

Categories art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, health, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Practices, Relationships, Spring

Human Means a Lot of Things

April 15, 2018 //

I woke during the night with an unsteady tummy. I took steps to be prepared for being sick if things were to turn for the worse; I left the light on in the hall bathroom and a hair tie on the counter. It’s not the closest bathroom of the two in this place, but it is bigger, and more suited somehow to being ill. It’s near enough. Easy to get to, too. So. I was prepared, and I went to back sleep.

I woke sometime shortly past day break. 6:30-ish. I slept in. 😀 Well… that’s my idea of sleeping in. I’m usually up by 4:30 am. I woke to a tidy home, a clean kitchen, and a smile on my face. Nice. There are a few things to do today, to face the short work week ready to travel: some tidying up, laundry, vacuuming, empty the dishwasher of clean dishes… basic household care. It’s a good day for it. I feel rested. The gray featureless sky doesn’t tempt me to the trail – or to the studio. I have brunch plans, and a partially read book. Brunch and housework sounds like a fine when to spend the day, and winding things down with a quiet evening reading sounds lovely, too.

As I sip my coffee, first one brunch friend, then another, lets me know they can’t make it today. I hear from my Traveling Partner as we cross paths in the digital world, as I wake up, and he winds down from a long night. By the time I finish my coffee, brunch “with…” has become “brunch solo?”. I barely register any disappointment – and perhaps this sets me apart from some sorts of people; I genuinely value and enjoy time spent with myself (particularly now that I’ve learned to treat myself well, generally).

I pause for a moment to consider, seemingly rather randomly, that “genuinely” and “generally” positioned so close to each other in a sentence seem a tad repetitive, even though they are totally different words. Then I find cause to be irked with the frequency of -ly endings. I notice my coffee is finished. I feel irked by that and slightly irritable. I take a deep breath, relax, and allow myself to recognize that I am, actually, a bit disappointed about brunch falling through. Acknowledging the feeling, however fleeting, prevents it from becoming festering discontent. The moment needed nothing more than awareness, respect, and acknowledgement, and the feeling dissipates. Emotions are funny that way. Fight them, they fight back. Embrace them, feed them, they deepen, and sometimes take over. Resist them completely, they flare up in the background, influencing our experience of other circumstances in sometimes subtle ways, and altering our understanding of other moments. Acknowledge them with awareness, respecting the experience without fueling the fire, and they become a sign post on a journey, a reminder, and a moment observed; that tends to be what I’m going for these days.

I find myself still a bit irritable, and not finding anything in my immediate environment or experience to explain that, I pause my writing and do a quick “self inventory”. I take a moment to simply breathe and feel my feelings, both those of my physical experience (sensations) and those of my cognitive experience (emotions). Emotionally, I feel pretty at ease, and content. Physically, I find myself having to take note of a substantial amount of fairly ordinary arthritis pain in my thoracic spine. Well shit. Okay. That’d be enough to feel sort of grumpy and out of sorts “for no reason” – only, there’s clearly quite an obvious reason to it, once I am aware of it. Awareness is such an amazing tool! I continue checking in with myself, and notice that in spite of the arthritis pain, no headache. Hey, that’s pretty nice. Uncommon these days. I enjoy that experience, and allow myself to sit with the awareness of “no headache” awhile, while I decide on the morning, and what to do about the pain.

I think over the day ahead. I’ve got what I need, generally speaking. Maybe a bite of brunch and a stop for art supplies somewhere? I head to a search tab to look up my options…

It’s a great day to begin again. 😀

Tags awareness, be here now, be the change, begin again, breathe, choose wisely, emotional self sufficiency, experience, good self-care, I am my own cartographer, love and lovers, mindful living, mindfulness, p.s. I love you, practicing the practices, ptsd, relationships, self inventory, so human, sufficiency, taking care of me, TBI, The Art of Being, The Big 5, there are verbs involved, walking my own path, what are feelings?, what matters most?

Categories art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, health, Healthy Living, inspiration, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, solo hiking, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Taking a Breath

April 10, 2018 //

I found myself having a tense moment yesterday. It could have gone very wrong. I caught myself on the edge of making a point very clear that would not benefit from being over-stated, and the circumstances themselves had done enough. I took a breath. Another. I relaxed as I exhaled. The moment passed. It’s not the answer to every challenge. It’s not the solution to all the problems. It doesn’t answer every question. It also definitely doesn’t hurt anything to take a moment – and a breath – before moving on with things. 🙂

I got home fairly tired yesterday. My headache was aggravating. I did what I could to ease it. I finally just gave up and went to bed early, hoping that a few minutes of quiet meditation in dim light would put things right enough that I could sleep. I definitely slept, so I must have been tired. I woke 9 hours later, seconds ahead of the alarm going off, feeling rested – and for the moment, headache free.

Having been told with some firmness and plenty of diagnostic data that this headache is likely neurological in origin, I am treating it as something I can resolve – given the right practice(s). So, I deal with it, right now, as with any trying circumstance or condition. First – and it’s a powerful tool – I pay real attention to moments that are headache free. I take deliberate notice. I am observant, and aware, and make room in my consciousness to appreciate the lack of that headache, on the chance that over time, the experience of the headache may have grown to fill my awareness, simply by focusing on it too much. It’s not a cure, but sure enough, moments that are entirely headache-free do apparently still exist in my experience day-to-day. There’s a chance that focusing on those moments, versus the ones with the headache, may hold the potential to grow them larger in my implicit awareness, over time. So, this morning, I am enjoying my coffee, and the awareness that my headache isn’t there, right now. 🙂 If nothing else, why the hell would I not take a moment to appreciate not having a headache?

Our implicit biases are powerful things. They handle a lot of our day-to-day, moment-to-moment decision-making, and we don’t even notice that we’re on auto-pilot. Everything from that suspicious stranger, to the specific foods we don’t eat, and all manner of other things we react to immediately with a sense of certainty, without having paused to consider anything at all, is part of that system of implicit biases that exists in our “programming”. Those things aren’t “real” – it’s not actually a fact, or any sort of certainty, that lima beans are gross. I just don’t happen to like lima beans. Actually, let’s be clear, I have learned to insist that I don’t like lima beans without having put a lima bean into my mouth in… more than 40 years, for sure. I can say I don’t like them, and maybe that’s actually true, but… I was so firm on not liking them so early in life, and have held on to that understanding of myself for so long, that it has become an implicit defining truth of myself that entirely lacks any basis in fact. At all. Seriously? How the fuck do I even know if I do or don’t like lima beans? That’s sort of my point. I actually don’t. Clearly, I’ve got some bias against the idea of lima beans – but that should hardly be the basis of my decision-making without some sort of legitimate validation. Otherwise? It’s just a bias. It’s not truly a preference – how the fuck do I even know? I simply don’t. I’m just saying words, and holding on to some construct in my personal narrative that lacks basis in fact. People do it all the time. Doing it with one’s food preferences is fairly harmless, but it’s not a great cognitive habit, generally.

Test your assumptions. Fact-check what you are certain of. Explicitly confirm expectations. Take your life and your consciousness off auto-pilot. You may discover a world of flavors (and experiences) that you would otherwise miss entirely. You may lighten the burden weighing down your heart. Yes, of course, there are verbs involved. Your results may vary. You may find yourself hurting in moments that you’d previously be so certain were full of wonder. Disillusionment can be an awkward sometimes painful process – and it can set you free.

I begin the day feeling well-loved, well-rested, and ready to begin again. I’m curiously eager to try lima beans (nothing like a good metaphor to kick off personal growth). lol I wonder where the day will take me?

Tags be here now, be the change, begin again, breathe, choose wisely, emotional self sufficiency, for headache pain, good self-care, lima beans, MBSR, meditation, mindful living, mindfulness, mindfulness for beginners, mindfulness matters, p.s. I love you, perspective, practicing the practices, ptsd, sufficiency, taking care of me, TBI, there are verbs involved, walking my own path, what matters most?

Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, health, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Spring, The Art of Being

…I’m Not Dead Yet

April 6, 2018 //

Nothing like spending 8 hours of precious limited lifetime in the freakin’ ER to remind me how much I enjoy doing just about anything else. LOL

I’m okay. Just middle-aged. 😉

I resented the request to go to the ER, in the first place. I negotiated with my primary care physician like I was making a deal with the devil, when I finally spoke to her. I made work more important than my health and went in to the office yesterday still dealing with the ferocious headache that continues to plague me. The nurse in Neurology finally reached me directly yesterday mid-morning, and was fairly firm about seeing me immediately if possible. Damn it. I interrupted a productive work day figuring I’d go/come back, no problem…

8 hours, 2 blood draws, 2 IV insertions (1 failed), and 3 separate CT scans later… we ruled out most of the scariest stuff for adults in my age group worried about a headache. We’ve narrowed it down to… a headache. <sigh> No, for real? Back to Neurology. I can’t be mad. I got some first-rate care (and one failed attempt at an IV insertion that was both painful, and hurt like fire when imaging attempted to make use of it), and a chance to enjoy “Hospital ER” as a sort of live-action drama with all the pettiness human beings can bring to bear, as I quietly eavesdropped the conversations from the tiny treatment room I spent most of my time in.

Luck of the draw – I got a really good young doctor in residency. Because he’s a psychiatric resident, he “got me” on an entirely other level, and was able to do more to support me as a patient. The noise and lights and aggressively purposeful busy-ness of the ER aggravated other symptoms a lot (a lot), and that could have been a distraction for an MD who didn’t fully understand what seeing a c-PTSD diagnosis in my charts could mean. This one did. I wish he would be my full-time primary care doctor! By the time he actually saw me I was literally in tears from the noise; he took steps to ease it, first thing (ear plugs, a closed door, another closed door). Suddenly the experience was so much easier. I gotta say, hospital ERs are not actually designed to “heal” people as much as “repair” them. The noise, the actual moment-to-moment callousness (seriously, just watch, you’ll see it) of being entirely practical and attempting to be efficient, too, while serving as many customers as possible as quickly as feasible. The bright lights and infernal beeping of machinery and grinding or sliding of automatic doors. The repetitive nature of all of it just hammers at my consciousness – no stillness. Even the waiting is noisy. Nothing soothing. And for a place of healing? Holy crap they are going at such a breakneck pace that simple self-care stuff is entirely overlooked. They keep people there for hours and hours without calories or drinking water. lol Fuuuuuuck. Hospital ERs are no place for the ill.

Today is a whole new day. I’m definitely ready to begin again. LOL

Tags begin again, breathe, cluster headaches, did I mention that headache?, emotional self sufficiency, good self-care, headache, headache pain, hemicrania continua, listening deeply, migraine, occipital neuralgia, ptsd, sufficiency, taking care of me, TBI, that hurts, the map is not the world, the relief of knowing, what matters most?

Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, health, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Spring

I Can’t Fix You

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When Practice Feels Like Failure

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Human Means a Lot of Things

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Taking a Breath

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…I’m Not Dead Yet

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