Question: What are the real reasons you chose to be a friend to yourself in the first place?
Self-Care Tip: Remember why.
Filed under: self care | 4 Comments »
Question: What are the real reasons you chose to be a friend to yourself in the first place?
Self-Care Tip: Remember why.
Filed under: self care | 4 Comments »
We have been meeting Thursdays, as you know, for our workshop. Every meeting takes me by surprise by how well it goes, which may be a bad sign but that’s just how my nerves go – setting me up for some denuding catastrophe. I don’t think Billy Graham or Martin Luther King had that problem. Even so, pressing forward, I and the rest of the group have done the hard work to get ourselves there and the inherent energy and brilliance natural to being good to oneself did the rest.
One of the attendees spoke for a couple minutes and I though you might want to know what her prompt notes looked like. This woman is one of the courageous. She has been victimized horribly but she is not a victim. She has chosen freedom.
I WAS ASKED WHAT IT MEANS TO ME TO BE A FRIEND TO MYSELF
Starts and Ends with Me
Awareness of situations and circumstances that are unfriendly to me
My employment:
Related articles
Filed under: self care | Tagged: Billy Graham, Martin Luther King, Religion and Spirituality | 4 Comments »
I’ve taken this week off, mostly at least. Besides a couple half-days, I’m living the non-income life, otherwise known as “vacation.” In any sort of self-employment, that’s what vacation is – a carefully calibrated force with another opposing, calibrated to keep me from mutating. All for the price of income.
It was getting close there, and just in time, after the significance of making wrong change and missing signatures finally broke through, I found myself here. Vacation. #gratitude.
But what does one do, “relaxing?”
Yesterday, someone asked what Adam and Eve did before the fall. I loved that question. What did they do all day? Reminded me about my thought-thumbing through what a heaven or eternity would be like. Where’s the delicious tension from living this way, dynamic and traveling persons? I’m very interested to know what will keep my attention for eternity.
Anyhow, vacation is like what one patient described as counting the days, either with anxiety or happy anticipation, of when you will be going back to work. I would say that it’s an exercise in calibrating the forces in ones life, before she mutates.
I remember as a little girl, with tangled hair in my eyes and muddied toes, hearing, “At the end of someone’s life, no one ever says they wished they worked more.” It scared me. I sensed the intent behind these words to threaten whoever was out there working and not spending time with their family. I was scared for them and at the same time for myself. This has replayed many times in my mind since then, in shifting sounds and shapes as my thoughts took on the years and experience of what family time offers/takes verses work time. And then finally one day, I said to my sister, “When I’m in the dying stage, I don’t think I will agree with that. I can’t imagine ever not wanting to work more.”
When one gets to do something as fun as work in psychiatry, with heroes and see magic and watch what all that does to their own person in a process no less than what a dreamers canvas would display – they don’t ask for less. They will always want more, and so will I. This is not a qualifying statement of how much of my family I want in my life at all. One of the major problems with the original scare is that it is based on assuming either-or, either work or family. That’s ignorant, same as my fear.
So tonight, after a pajama day cleaning out the toy room, kids and movie time, my flow was interrupted by thoughts of patients’ narratives and personalities, and I missed them. Vacation, against that, makes for a pretty relaxing time. #gratitude.
Self-Care Tip – Calibrate the forces in your life. Be a friend to yourself.
Filed under: caregivers, Personal Journey | Tagged: Adam and Eve, God, psychiatry, Psychology, Relaxation, Religion and Spirituality, vacation | 10 Comments »
Work can be fun!
Guest Post by DeeAnna Merz Nagel
I mostly work from home and that can be challenging. How do I adjust my days so that I stay in flow and practice self-care? The balance is not always easy but the balance is important. I started the Online Therapy Institute a few years ago and anyone who has started a business knows how much time and energy the effort takes. I had already started a part time private practice seeing just a few clients a week in the office and a few clients a week online. After a couple of years (literally) of trying to find my work groove, balancing work at home, work in the office and occasional travel to conduct seminars and workshops, I finally found a rhythm that works for me.
I am an introvert by nature, so give me a cozy environment and a laptop, access to coffee and tea and a pastry or chocolate here and there, and I am golden. Sometimes the challenge is not to indulge my quiet side too much. So instead of stacking my client appointments to one day a week, I found it works better for me to see clients a few days a week. Even if I have one client during the day at the office, that gets me out of the house. So while I could arrange my work week so that I only go to the office one day a week, I purposefully plan my schedule differently.
I also found that when I work from home, I do well to move around in my space. I might sit at the desktop (properly- in an ergonomic chair at a desk) or I might sit on the sofa, or lounge in the guest room when on my laptop. Moving around gets me up and out of that “headspace” for a bit.
I also move around with my tasks, perhaps answering a few client emails in the morning and answering a few in the late afternoon. The rest of my day is filled with writing curriculums and answering trainee and consultancy questions. I use social media as a way to relax online. It is my communication portal and draws out the engaging side of me. I like the conversation and dialogue that social media can foster.
I also take breaks during the day to just play – whether that is reading something really gossipy or juicy on my new Kindle Fire, or watching a talk show, going to lunch with a friend or a colleague, or taking a few hours during the week for shopping or spa-like activities. Mostly, I try to lean into the mood I am in and when I am not creative or ready to begin work, I don’t fight it. I allow myself to putter and trust that the work mindset will kick in (it always does).
I am fortunate that my office is 5 minutes from my house and that I live in a small village on the Jersey Shore. I can live the quiet life and wave to the Manhattan skyline – only a ferry ride away! Working for myself allows me different luxuries that I do not take for granted. A nice spring day might give rise to seeing a matinee on Broadway. It is all right here at my fingertips – the world in cyberspace and the world outside my door. Finding balance to enjoy both the online and the offline world is important.
Today I woke up with every intention of finishing up a curriculum. Instead, I puttered with Polyvore and created an expressive piece about work: http://www.polyvore.com/cgi/set?.svc=twitter&id=43800377
tee hee!
Questions: What’s fun about your work? How do you keep it about you? Please tell us your story.
Self-Care Tip: Keep work about you and you’ll have more fun. Keep on.
DeeAnna Merz Nagel is psychotherapist, coach and consultant. She co-founded the Online Therapy Institute and the Online Coach Institute and is Managing Co-Editor of TILT Magazine ~ Therapeutic Innovations in Light of Technology. Her counseling and consulting specialties include relationship issues, alcohol and drugs, surviving abuse, internet addictions and understanding how technology impacts our lives. She offers online counseling and in-office psychotherapy in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey. Find her at http://www.jerseyshoretherapy.com & http://www.trainingcoachesandtherapiststoworkonline.com
Filed under: accountability | Tagged: Kindle Fire, Mental Health, Polyvore, Psychology, self care | 16 Comments »
I am a poster child for sinners.
Sitting with a respected mentor, a leader of women in medicine, I couldn’t stop myself as usual from playing with the ideas of being a friend to yourself. She caught on quick with where I was going and I felt wishes winging in.
I wished I could have practiced with her, have had her for a peer, a voice in the room that gets me, a mind that might even have resonated and crescendoed the healing process that comes from being a friend to Me.
Oh that guy is as stiff as they come! She knew.
He always made me feel like I was a poster child for sinners. …And I knew I loved her. It wasn’t just me.
Sometimes, remembering that “it’s not just me” seems like reciting folklore. The longer that Time clutters up between real encounters with like-minded folk, the more magical the thoughts brew of being chosen to suffer, I am alone and I am special for what hurts me. However, perhaps a good this or that can come out of even things such as these ( – insert, “human connection.”) Is that so much to ask? Do I really have to sacrifice a chicken on a full moon over whitened bones of a unicorn to make it happen?
In becoming a Friend to Yourself, we know there are many times when living with not much more than our better choices for company is almost more than that stringy thin young muscle of self-care can sustain. But know this. Just when you think you might collapse, the Truth that “you are not alone” will wing in. More than a wish or a perception of reality, “you are not alone” is Truth. Something great comes to us, like,
I am a poster child for sinners.
Stigma comes from ignorance after all and in being a friend to Me, well, our community has undeveloped awareness about it. Some who don’t know that everything starts and ends with Me feel threatened, angry and even verbally aggressive toward us. But, just when we think that the whole world is touched with ignorance and cruel responses except for Me, we find Thee. (Yet another variation on the quote by a Yorkshireman – ”Everyone in the world is quite mad, except for me and thee. And sometimes I have my doubts about thee.”.) Me finds Thee, just in time.
And suddenly we see ourselves for the stud-muffins that we are, courageous and in company. Leather pants may be included if you like.
Self-Care Tip – Remember the Truth – you are not alone, even in being a friend to yourself. Keep on.
Questions: How’s your company these days? Do people ever treat you like you are a wrong-doer for loving yourself? How does that go over? Please tell us your story.
Filed under: Connections, Morality, self care | Tagged: God, health, Mental Health, psychiatry, Psychology, self care, stigma, women in medicine | 12 Comments »
To u who came, thank u for spending that hr w us, making us part of your moment as well as life thread.
To you who weren’t there last night, we missed u n noticed your absence.
Keep on, friends.
Filed under: self care | 4 Comments »
Looking forward to seeing you tonight at our workshop.
Please note:
The address is 41866 Kalmia St.
The number on original address was wrong
see u soon
Filed under: self care | Leave a Comment »
The older I get, the more reputation I accumulate. I am an old rug.
Have you ever seen a child – their smooth, unblemished skin like marsh-mellows;
their eyes, innocent cupcakes, (my children’s are chocolate);
the way they look at the world open-mouthed swallowing flies;
the way the world looks at them? Both sides hungry.
We say about these kids in contrast to us old property, “They have it all.” They have it all because they just have not been around for very long. They do no have a bunch of mistakes accumulated, crafted and woven into their lives; mistakes that could not be outed.
Children do not have a limited supply of first beginnings. When you have been around a while like us, first beginnings seem like they have changed their constitution. On this side of the freeway, even though we have the freedom to start over at any point in our lives, starting over means something different when you have been around.
It is not a matter of value. Being around does not devalue Me. It does not take away our worth. It does not improve our worth – the Me we speak of. Perhaps it will improve our worth in other ways or lessen it – but it won’t touch Me.
There is nothing like a veteran office staff who knows how to do everything that your office needs. That person is different from somebody out of high school. Better for the position – yes, but not a better Me. There is nothing like having a physician who has practiced for ten years and seen patients walk out angry, has seen patients die, has seen in action which treatments do what. There is nothing like a physician who has worked with a medication long enough to know the inside of it; that there is good and there are things that happen that are not so good and that when you cannot unravel those things from that therapy, you try to see it together. A more valuable physician for the job, but not a more valuable Me. The office staff, the physician and the child have reputations. Those who have been around would take up more ink.
Treatments are like that too. The longer they have been around, the more reputation they have. It is like being at a party and you see somebody who has been to all of the parties, somebody who has been the first to come and the last to leave, who has hurt people and been hurt, and who has gossips surround them. When you see that person, you walk in the door and you think, “Oh boy!” Or, “Yes! the party girl is here.” But no matter what you think of them, there is something to say about them lasting as long as they have in these circles. There’s a reason they keep getting invited and a reason they weren’t taken off lists. A treatment that’s been around a really long time, that has gotten a bunch of heat and perhaps even been referred to as “barbaric,” has remained in circulation for reasons worth knowing. If it didn’t offer lasting and unique benefits, if it’s benefits weren’t considered greater than the risks and potential negative outcomes, if people’s lives weren’t improved more than they were damaged – that treatment, like so many others, would have extinguished on their own much earlier in history.
Questions: What do you think when you see the treatment that you have been offered. Has it been around long enough to get a reputation. Or is it the new kid, the new child with velvet for skin? Their eyes have not woven in shards of particled light that tangled the loom perhaps? You with reputations, who are older than this and still around, tell us your story.
Self-Care Tip: When considering treatments, consider their age as you consider their reputation. Be a friend to yourself.
Filed under: Electroconvulsive Therapy, Medication, Treatment | Tagged: medication, Mental Health, psychiatry, Psychology, psychotropics | 22 Comments »
If Archie isn’t going to take care of himself someone else will.
Whoever wrote that line, should have written the rest of the script of Suburban Girl (2007). The movie moved from something I couldn’t believe I was watching, to worth it; just to hear those words.
If Sana isn’t going to take care of herself someone else will.
Taking care of ourselves is what we have to participate in freedom. Not taking care of ourselves is as much as saying, “Here. Take my freedom and make my choices for me.”
Self-Care Tip: Take your freedoms back by taking care of yourself.
Question: What does your name sound like in this space? ”If _________ isn’t going to take care of herself/himself someone else will.” And what does that mean when read that way? Keep on.
Filed under: accountability | Tagged: Alcoholics Anonymous, God, health, self care, Suburban Girl | 11 Comments »
The physical home of emotion – the limbic area, is located in the center-region of the brain. The limbic system consists of a series of interconnected structures that include the frontal area, the hippocampus, amygdala, hypothalamus (anterior thalamic nuclei), septum, limbic cortex and fornix. It is believed that these structures support a variety of cognitive, emotive, behavioral and biological functions including emotional behavior and long-term memory often necessary for emotional behavior to occur.
It is NOT essential for you, the reader, to know the names and functions of these structures – although it could benefit you. Knowing that there are anatomical, electro-bio-chemical and hormonal correlations between your emotions and your brain is, however, critical to improving your emotional intelligence. Although you may decide not to know these structures, you will have to remember, at minimum, where your emotions live.
Your emotions live in your head.
More specifically, your emotions are an expression of your thoughts.
Without thought, you would have no emotion.
If you wish to change your emotion, you will have to change your thinking.
The limbic neighborhood, when in balance, can be described as resting. While at rest, however, it can be instantaneously energized by thought and perception in an all-out effort to protect the body from real or perceived harm or the threat of harm. The stress response will cooperate with your thinking and automatically release neurochemicals and hormones into the bloodstream that are intent on providing the fuel you will need to protect yourself from real or perceived threat. You can expect a sudden increase in heart rate, perspiration, flushing of the skin, hair standing on end, etc. All designed by Nature to give you the strength, energy and focus to run away very quickly, fight very bravely or just to freeze, motionless, in the hopes you will appear unthreatening to your attacker.
Let’s find a more familiar image to understand this phenomenon.
Imagine that you have a paper cut.
Blood flows from the cut, no matter how much you are against that from happening.
It is an automatic response to injury.
You can commit to do something about the cut by attending to it. You might wash it, put it in your mouth or cover it with a Band-Aid (or plaster). Your effort to stop the bleeding will likely shorten the time the wound is active and susceptible to infection. While attending to the cut, you commit to memory how the accident occurred and tell yourself how to avoid similar injuries in the future. Injury and trauma are, in many ways, opportunities for learning.
But how does cutting your finger and attending to it compare to the expression and remediation of emotion?
Your perception of an event as threatening or dangerous is like injuring the nuclei of your brain. Your thoughts activate a response in the brain that starts an automatic flow of neurochemicals and hormones into the bloodstream. These hormones and neurochemicals:
Much like cutting your finger, there is an automatic flow of neurochemicals and hormones into the bloodstream that happens without your consent. Similar to tending a paper cut, you can be a passive observer or you can actively respond by providing wound care.
You can put a Band-Aid on your emotional injury.
Here I will provide you with some self-care techniques and suggestions.
First, it should be noted that if the injury to the emotional areas of your brain were visible – if the flow of neurochemicals and hormones rushing here and there inside your head could be observed, rather than having it all happen deep inside your skull, you may be more active in responding to it, without all this comparison to a paper cut.
Instead, we will just have to imagine and increase our awareness of the phenomenon.
Wounds inflicted by thought require as much attention and enthusiasm for treatment as an injury to skin or bone. We might imagine the paradigm from the following perspective:
The next time you encounter some perceived danger or harm, try these techniques and suggestions. How did it work for you? Would it help to keep the suggestions in your purse or wallet, for when you find yourself in the middle of misfortune and want a quick guide?
Michael Cornwall, PhD is an author, lecturer, clinical supervisor, educator and child behavior therapist in private practice. In our community, you may know him as the author of blog, Emotional Intelligence Theory.
(502) 564-4321 x 2008
Filed under: self care | Tagged: anxiety, brain, emotion, Limbic system, trauma | 7 Comments »
Hello Friends. I don’t know if you’re interested or not, but we’ve opened discussion on ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) in the past and because it remains open, I wanted you to know that I just ran across this TV episode online that is done surprisingly well. Check it out and let us know what your thoughts are. Keep on.
Filed under: Electroconvulsive Therapy | Tagged: electroconvulsive therapy, Fluoxetine, Major depressive disorder, Mayo Clinic, Mental disorder, Mental Health | 4 Comments »
Please join us!
Do you want to be empowered?
aware of your freedom?
have more to offer others?
and do you want to like yourself while you do it? Do you like yourself?
A series of Thursday-Night Workshops
Workshop and Q&A: 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm
Workshop Address:
River Springs Charter School, Murrieta Campus
Recreation Room
41862 Kalmia Street
Murrieta CA 92562-8825
Filed under: self care | Tagged: Charter School, Education, Murrieta California, Riverside County California | 2 Comments »
What is being a friend to yourself? As long as we have been talking about this, we still wonder. Although a dynamic concept, we have a premise that doesn’t change. Everything starts and ends with Me.
Seated in any test, laid aside any stressor, blocked by a wall of most threatening construct, being a friend to yourself begins here. We have that to guide us and will never ever have to ask again, “Where do I start?” We never will lose ourselves to the confusions around us of looking for our home; our point of reference and direction. There is immense usefulness in this.
Question: How has this starting point helped to reorient you, to decrease negative climax and increase presence in your life? How has starting with Me been friendly and/or how is/will be starting with Me be friendly? Please break it down and tell us your story.
Self-Care Tip: Start with Me to start being a friend to yourself.
Filed under: accountability | Tagged: emotional health, Family, Mental Health, Parenting, positive psychology, psychiatry | 4 Comments »
If only for a day I had a woman’s beauty, Not wisdom, love or courage But a spellbinding face / Long limbs, thin frame, And an entitlement to silence, Which one is only given By beauty’s tender hands; / I wonder what it’s like To be admired Not for a timely joke Or for a kind embrace / But simply for one’s presence – The presence of a candle In a world lit By pale glow of plain lamps / If only for a day I knew this power Which all the elements Are willing to obey / Next day, I know I’d have to be devoured By the monstrosity My mirror’s used to showing
Filed under: self care | 15 Comments »
So what brought you here today? What are you looking for?
Want to parent better? Kids don’t take care of themselves? They aren’t responsible? Accountable for their actions? They are disobedient?
They don’t realize our loving motives? If they do, they will be able to find more pleasure in life. If they …they will have more freedoms, they will have spending power, they will have decision making ability, they will be present in their life, able to connect with others and with their own personal journey, they will. You name it. They will find the shortest, most direct route to their brilliance and resources to achieve what they were designed to do – service in any form. Is this so much to ask? Wink.
How can we help them see? By starting with Me. Do this generosity for ourselves. How many times do we point outside of Me to find a place of control for Me? Even to the small about packing lunch – as if forced to pack our children’s lunch, we point out.
Drifting down, how many times does our child complain of what we put in their lunch? What would happen if they packed it for themselves? What would happen if they ate what they packed? Oh, just junk. …Who purchased the junk food? Where did it come from? It swirls on.
But here’s the anchor. We are free. We are free caregivers.
Freedom is like a lovely package wrapped in the most exquisite paper, tied with a bow so lovely that we know it came from God. It is sitting in front of us. Like all real gifts, the gift of freedom is free. It has nothing to do with my bank. It came because of the Giver, not because of the merit of the recipient – Me.
Me, that is to say any one of us, cannot unearn the gift either. Freedom is like that gift that keeps reappearing no matter how we try to get away from it. Does it become a curse? We are free to make it one because even if we don’t claim it, even if we don’t choose to be accountable to our decisions, it doesn’t change that we are. And when we are finally able to look in, with insight, and have knowledge – we are accountable to what we see.
Paul said,
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
Job said,
“therefore have I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not. …but now mine eye seeth thee.”
Does the gift, freedom, turn into a curse?
Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.
Every person who grows in knowledge and understanding at some point hopefully says that they grow also in understanding how little they know and have yet to learn. This is what comfort we have in knowing that in the eternity of forever that comes ahead after this life, we won’t run out of things to do.
We all talk as if we know more than we know, with pride and forgotten humility. I want to turn this over, but repentance in this case cannot be as implied – once and for all. It is recurrent at best and I surrender the frequency and my degrees of insight to God and you. Feel free to take Me gently along with you on our travels. I hope our kids will be that good to Me when given the opportunity. I have no doubt, they hope the same of us. But you can see, it starts with Me.
What is a true friend? It is one who loves. Starting with Me. What is parenting better? It is giving to yourself what you want your kids to have.
The Stoic, Seneca the Elder, wrote,
“What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.” That was indeed a great benefit; such a person can never be alone. You may be sure that such a man is a friend to all mankind.
(And here I thought I was the one who came up with, “Friend to Yourself!!!!” Oh nasty tumble.)
This is what it is; hard, easy, soft and difficult. Having each other to help Me be friendlier to myself is a big advantage. You are so valuable to Me. Knock Me down and catch Me – whatever pride and forgotten humility leave Me needing. Thank you.
Question? How does being a friend to yourself improve your parenting or caregiving of others? Please tell us your story.
Self-Care Tip: Be as good to yourself as you want your loved ones to be to themselves. Be a friend to yourself.
Related articles
Filed under: caregivers, Parenting | Tagged: First Epistle of John, God, Mental Health, psychiatry, Second Epistle to the Corinthians, Seneca the Elder, Stoicism | 17 Comments »
A Series of Thursday Night Workshops
Filed under: self care | Tagged: family mental health, Mental Health, mental health issues, Murrieta California, Skype | 7 Comments »
Guest Post, by Wendy Young, LMSW, BCD
In the unlikely event of an emergency, put on your own oxygen mask first. It’s a saying that’s standard for air-travel and has become a common cliché for life in general.
Taking care of ourselves is often associated with getting more sleep, eating less of the wrong kinds of foods and more of the right ones, moving our bodies to our personal limit, finding the right work/leisure balance, considering our kids’ needs as well as our own, managing our reactions to things, and sometimes doing things that are not so fun. Not so fun at all.
Or maybe it’s just that they aren’t so “easy”. We like “easy” much better. “Easy” is quicker. “Easy” is familiar. And “easy” keeps us stuck. I suppose as long as we are comfortable, we’ll keep choosing “easy”. Don’t be fooled into thinking that “easy” doesn’t give us results, though. It always does. Not usually the ones we say or believe we want, but “easy” always bears fruit.
Do you like what “easy” has done for you? Or, is it time to give “easy” the boot?
A Fond Farewell
Sometimes our better judgment starts to crowd “easy” out. Those of us that are lucky get wake-up calls that help us bid a fond farewell to “easy” as we usher in a new relationship with the real work of self-care. Cultivating this new relationship can be difficult or not. It’s entirely up to us.
Bidding adieu to our habits, even though we know they are counterproductive, is often difficult. Our brain craves consistency. It wants us to do what we’ve always done. Change requires that we desire a different result, one that can only be had by doing something different than we are used to doing. It has been said that when the pain of doing what we have always done starts to become great enough, then we will change. Sometimes, we can withstand a lot of pain. And then some.
The Voice is a Choice
That voice in your head can tell you “I hate exercise!” or, “My body enjoys each new move that brings it toward health!” Likewise, that same voice in your head can drone, “This is never going to work!” or, “I’m sticking with this because I’m worth it.” This is where the rubber meets the road. Are you ready to do the real work of self-care, or do you just like the idea of it?
That voice in your head is a choice. It is your own and you direct it.
Proverbial oxygen masks are easy. Doing the real work of self-care is not necessarily so easy at all.
Have you been holding out on yourself? Is it time to come “un-stuck” and be more intentional with the voice inside your head? What do you need to change-up?
Self-Care Tip: Be intentional about getting what you want from yourself. You can start anytime!
Wendy Young, LMSW, BCD, is a mom of three school-aged children, a Child & Family Therapist (practicing in Michigan), and the founder of Kidlutions: Solutions for Kids, because kids have problems, too. She blogs at Spin-Doctor Parenting {and teaching} and is the behavioral health expert for momtourage.com. She monitors the voice in her own head and works to get herself “un-stuck” just as sure as everyone else does. She smiles through it all, because she can, and because it’s her favorite thing to do!
Filed under: self care | Tagged: Family, Parenting, self care | 8 Comments »
When I was a just a bit, dirty feet and pig-tails, spending the summer on my grandparents farm with my three similarly dirty big brothers, we took grandpa’s two green John Deer out for a drive. We all delighted in the enormous strength in those beasts. The tires were taller than me, which meant nothing but fun at the time. I never thought about falling out, but I could have.
I rode with one brother and the other two were up ahead. We were toward pasture and hoped for a long run of it. The boys were yelling at each other, provoking and jocular. I was, as usual, amazed at my luck to have them for my own.
Somewhere before we lost interest and after we lost sense, the boys ahead hit mud. My goodness, but we, coming up from behind hollered laughter. Jeering, we watched them whiz those monster tires deeper and deeper. Oh the tears! right up until we followed them into our own mud-sink. Humiliating.
My grandpa farmed corn and hay and some other grains but all I remember about that field is that the ground was really wet beneath tall grass. The green came up almost to the middle of the tractors and the blades were wide and thick. We got to business pulling grass out and feeding it to the muddy tires, thinking to build traction. About an hour later and after the grass had taught our hands a lesson, we tramped back to the barn-house. Nothing to do but tell Grandpa.
That was the last day of our vacation and we heard later that he had pulled them out with his truck, gracious as ever. Grandpa Jack was such a kind and gentle man.
I remember the grass when I’m with Eilene. She is my patient with moderately treated mood and anxiety disease. The rest of her though is not well. Eilene is pulling grass to help her move. The best I can do is stand beside her.
I wonder what I’m missing in my life now. Where am I stuck? When will I get over to the barn house to surrender?
And you? Please tell us your story.
Self-Care Tip – Surrender to help. Be a friend to yourself.
Filed under: Connections | Tagged: anxiety, depression, john deer, psychiatry, Psychology | 18 Comments »