Presence

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My Inner Demons and I are on the Same Side – Living in the Now

“I stop fighting my inner demons. We’re on the same side now. T-shirt”

― Darynda Jones, Second Grave on the Left

 

Monday came. I was not ready to tackle the day. I lay in bed a few minutes longer while I started to dread and plan for the day’s appointments, calculating drive times, meals, and accommodate everyone else’s schedules before I had even thought to blink open my eyes.

It dawned on me at some point that I was living out a day that hadn’t even begun yet.

The anxiety of the impending tasks, or the overwhelm that comes with trying to handle everything before it arrives, you know this too? The exhaustion that eventually overtakes us makes us ridiculously absolutely not excited about our lives.

Living in the future instead of now is like sprinting ahead of our own feet, if only we could! The only task we have to do is to actually wake up.

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Blood, Sweat, and Imperfections – Mommy Don’t Look!

Naked and Voyer

Naked and Voyer

Blood soaked and layered with fallen governments, the Acropolis remains, a witness and teacher to a summer fling. 

A tour of the Acropolis and its new museum taught much. #1 – Never go on such travel without a tour guide. She made all the difference. Without her, I might have lasted for an hour, or an hour and a half. I would have thought, “Check! Did the Acropolis! Next?” With her, I felt like I couldn’t get enough. Four hours later. Evi was an intelligent, independent woman, making her way in the world, with the talent of putting ideas together. Another mentor to pick up along my life journey. #gratitude.

(I’m going to try to describe Athens, as seen by a psychiatrist. Smile.)

Evi integrated the paradigms at play, seamlessly, and in flow, from the 800’s B.C. to the 400’s A.D. She spoke about the mathematics involved in The Parthenon architecture, the classical culture seen in the architecture such as the emphasis on the human senses, the development of language and democracy, and more.

None of the construction of The Parthenon is “perfect.” The columns slant, and the stairs bow in their middle. All of this is done to capture the human senses. It was constructed so that when you stand at one corner, you can see almost the entire construct, like inflation of air rounds a balloon. When you look straight on, you are almost able to see entirely around the balloon’s girth. The architect sacrificed perfection toward the ultimate and most valued goals – to experience all the human senses to their fullest, and the classical construction. 

The Greeks developed the idea that whatever is created by man, (scantily garbed statues, architecture, ship making, etc…) should demonstrate, but not surpass the excellence of the human at his or her absolute best. Perfectionism smechsonism.

The kids were a bit horrified by the genitals everywhere. “That’s inappropriate!” or “Mommy, don’t look!” with a hand posturing the Stop! sign, improved my experience 10-fold. 

The Greeks in the 400 A.D.’s recognized the irony in the loveliness of human senses; sight, emotions, spirit, intellect, etc, integrated with the flaws. We are greater, in the best of our imperfect self, than the perfect, mathematical, or any other kind of perfection, eg., 1 + 1 = 2, in a perfect world. 

For example, by tilting the columns, the architect understood that it would give an illusion of straight columns, yet still capturing more of the circumference as seen by the individual. Straight would be perfect. Tilted but looking straight is more representative of a human at her best. Never perfect. And the illusion created by the tilted columns made the construct look shorter, thus not surpassing “the human” capacity to sense it’s grandeur. 

Also, the government ruler at the time, Pericles, was the first known leader to integrate a form of democracy. He used citizens and slaves for the labor. Yet he paid them, including the slaves! Furthermore, he gave them freedom in their work to form independent decisions, stating that someone who is told what to do, doesn’t learn anything. Someone who makes their own mistakes, has the opportunity to learn from his mistakes. This was the fulcrum which our civilizations turned on toward human rights and free thought. Pretty powerful.

The Greeks gave their alphabet to the world, from which Latin developed, and thereafter the Latin languages. For example, I never knew that “Agoraphobia,” comes from the location, named at the time, “Agora,” where all the debates were held, again, inspired by this ruler during the 400’s B.C., spurring on freedom of thinking. You can imagine what happened during heated debates. Some people would suffer anxiety in that context, which would deteriorate into a disabling fear of being humiliated by another potential panic attack when in public places.

The priests of the Greek gods served also as their community’s medical practitioners. For example, they used snake venom to both treat headaches and prophylactic against strokes. It turns out that snake venom is an anticoagulant. Totally brilliant. Snake venom in Greek, is called, “physika”, which means “venom.” The caduceus, a symbol that we still use for the physician’s medical practice, shows a snake wrapped around a staff. Later Aristotle used “physika” to name his treaty on nature and the work evolved into “physician.” Way cool. 

The self-care tip: Work your damndest, while embracing and integrating your imperfections along the way, and in this Grecian effort, you will gain the greatest sensorial experience with the world around you, the individual beside you, and your own self.

Question: 1. How do your imperfections enhance your best self? Please tell us your story!

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A Tiffany Diamond Isn’t This Good

Patient-noncompliance-terrorism

I’m in San Bernardino today, working in a small community clinic. I am in the company of four licensed and practicing physicians who are donating their time. I am blessed.

One physician I’m working with tells me he has taken care of himself in his medical practice, “basically by not being a hypocrite.” He describes this by lifestyle choices of diet, exercise, etc… He likes surfing, which surprised me! “That’s why I’m skinny.” The man is not wearing california-traditional surf-wear. He’s wearing a general Sears-white button up with black slacks and comfort shoes. And he is old! He is in disguise. The age-disguise. I judge people too often by what I “see,” and this guy is a total surprise. Mr. cool.

There are medical students, college students, and nursing students here as well. One of them is a phenomenally gorgeous import to the US with a magical accent. Currently she’s eating a large bagel with cream cheese, dressed in a pencil skirt, stethoscope slung around her neck. Maybe I hate her just a little. She told me about her own “really good” personal experience with psychiatry and counselling. Her parents divorced when she was in college and “it helped” her get what she needed to get through it. Maybe I love her a lot. A woman of courage.

A patient I saw is a mother of seven. You may think, “Let’s just stop right there.” Anyone who wants to use “all her eggs” would need “help.” This woman has had to be sooooo strong! She’s been abused, used, neglected, and more since she came into this world. Even so, she pushes forward. She demonstrates self-value and Love. Where did this come from, I wondered.  Who taught her or gave her that? Today, she has even finally come into a willingness to get in the space of cultural dissonance, and consider for the first time, medical care for her emotional and behavioral needs. “I need it! I will do anything to get out of all ‘this.'” These words should come in a velvet lined blue and ribboned box. Gimme. Gimme.

We are talking now in the break room about patient and self-experienced medical health care stories. A hospitalist is explaining the difference he sees in his patients between noncompliance versus nonadherence to clinical directives. It’s a like a rocket just shot off! Every one is bothered in some way. You may remember from previous posts in this blog site about the “Number one Reason for Relapse” – treatment noncompliance. I now renege. Let it be known, I was wrong. I’d like to say, “nonadherence.” Forgive me! Noncompliance is an arrogant judgment, implying a decrease of mal intent or purposeful disobedience. There are many paradigms of reasons that interplay into any of our choices and performance in our personal medical care. I love that! Yes.

My colleagues here today, our patients, we all have much to teach each other, much to learn from each other. Today I came here thinking, I want to treasure the person in front of me “right now.” It makes a difference when I engage that way in “whatever.” #Gratitude for one more day where that happened. Those day are surrounded too often by many others when I forget.

Self-care Tip: Treasure the person in front of you.

Question: Who is in front of you right now? How can you treasure this person, this experience, this…? What are you getting from it? How is this perspective and what you get, kind to you?

Be a friend to yourself. Keep on!

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I’m peaking in my career

  
Supposedly, I’m peaking. And this isn’t about egg yolk and marenge pie. I’m 43 years old, have been in medical practice for fourteen years, and am looking at a canyon in 360-degrees from where I stand. That’s what the data says. I wonder if I am going to do the electric slide or how I’ll boogie through the next years of medical practice. I try to think, “This is the best moment of my life, right now,” any time self stigma and fear of mortality creeps in. (That’s not saying, “This is as good as it’s going to get!” Ha!) I want to cherish the gift of practicing medicine, for however long I am blessed with it. 

It’s a popular discussion amongst my colleagues these days, about how long a physician should practice. There’s a newer’ish respected program called, PACE, that evaluates physician competency to practice as they get old.  This is a huge shift in the culture of medicine. It’s meant to respectfully assist rather than discriminate with ageism. I try to imagine what it might feel like if I were approached and asked to take the test. 

So what does a psychiatrist rocking her best jeans have to show for herself anyway, you may ask. Well, (tapping the mike), “I’d like to first say thank you to my sponsors….” Wink.  I mean my patients! Thank you. 

…Hey! This peak is crowded! Give me some room!

Ahem. But at my “peak,” at the best of my career, I thought it would be fun to play around with, “Why?” What’s in my doctor’s bag that is so special?

  • Ask, “Why do you want to be alive?”
  • Start all work-ups with a medical work-up. 
  • Give full informed consent with the 5-Treatment Paradigms of Psychiatry: 
  1. chemical (medication), 
  2. psychotherapy, 
  3. hospitalization (inpatient and outpatient), 
  4. alternatives (such as acupuncture, massage, sleep hygiene, lifestyle change, etc.), 
  5. stimulation therapies (such as ECT or TMS).  There’s nothing else (that I know of 🙂 ) that anyone is going to offer you in psychiatry, no matter who’s clinic you go to. 
    • Push to full treatment response. 
    • Work toward quality of life, not cure, not perfect.  Ask again, “What makes like worth living for?” Design treatment toward those goals. 
    • Routinely and deliberately consider the flow of patient’s treatment agendas with physician treatment agendas. 
    • Mood journal. Nobody believes they were “that bad” after they feel better. Everyone wants to stop treatment when they feel better. (This is why there are so many repeat pregnancies, for example!). We all need our own voice (mood journal) to look back on and speak the truth. 
    • Fight for oxygen. If your patient has sleep apnea, don’t stop working toward treatment compliance. There are no medications that can take the place or make up for oxygen to the brain. 
    • Community. More community. 
    • The third eye – a therapist. None of us can be a mirror into ourselves. We all need someone outside of the “triangle” to speak.

    I’ll be thinking of more as I try to go to sleep tonight, but it’s bed time. I’m off! Sleep hygiene! Arg!

    Self-care Tip: Evaluate your position in your lifeline, and treasure where and who you are with deliberation. Keep on!

    Questions: Where are you in your lifeline? Are you struggling with ageism? What gives you value? Please speak! I, and the rest of us, really need your voice. 

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    Know You Are Blessed

    ulysses

     

    Think of the worst of us.  Think of the worst about us.  Think of those with self-loathing.  Those with low self-awareness, the violent, and the violated, think of them.  Where is the blessing?

    Blessed are the depressed and anxious.

    Think of the healthy.  Think of the diseased.  The misunderstood, the ones who live miles apart from connection, who ever push like a dingy from the peer into waves and self-destruction, think of them.

    Blessed are the poor and lonely. 

    Where is the blessing when your real estate is brought low by the creeping up of low-life.  Where is the blessing when you get cancer just when you might retire, when your own body calls you stupid, when you lose your eyes after training as a surgeon?

    Blessed are those whose bodies are dying.

    Think of every corner, every shadow and open space and the turns you still don’t know about inside of your life.  Think of the unacceptable, the character you wrestle against to moderate away from extreme.  The rope you swing on and try to bring to rest, think of the grey you think you will never achieve.  This bit and chapter, this part of your construction, this surprise in how you deliver is Loved.

    There is no aberration from the norm that can separate you from that Love.  There is no addiction or misdemeanor or illness or mutated cell that can lose blessing.

    This is fact.  Our life is to live with it.

    Blessed am I.  Blessed am, “Me.”

    Question:  Where is the blessing in what you like least about yourself?  Please tell us your story.  We need to hear you! Keep on.

    Self-Care Tip:  Be your own friend in adversity as in prosperity.  Know you are blessed.

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    Bearable Disappointment

    Guest Post!

    Read on 🙂

    We’re aware as smart single women that we can’t expect perfection.

    But life still manages to throw us curve balls.

    Maybe once you’re into your mid-thirties,

    it shouldn’t be called dating,

    it should be called waiting for the other shoe to drop.

    …

    Why is it always something?

    Unless you’re in a problem free relationship with TiVo.

    – Sex and the City

     

    Despite the fact that the mention of TiVo dates this quote (remember TiVo?!), it still rings true. And you don’t need to be in your mid-thirties for it to apply. Any woman, or person for that matter, who has dated for a length of time knows the meaning of this quote in his or her bones.

    You meet someone. It is electric. You connect over so many things. His father passed when he was small too. She loves Quentin Tarantino movies as much as you do. You both want to travel the world with nothing but a backpack. You share a love of fine wine and cooking extravagant dinners.

    Before you know it you are sailing off in a sea of hormones and dreams of a future with this new, amazing person. You spend time at work day-dreaming of all the romantical things the two of you will share and your heart skips a beat when you see a new text/call/email.

    You are twitterpated. Crushing, hard.

    The intensity of these new-love emotions makes you feel as if this person is your destiny. This is deep and something you have never felt before. He is “the one”. You are ready to introduce her to mom.

    Suddenly all of your hopes and dreams come crashing down, shattering into a million smithereens.

    It could be any number of different things. “Deal breakers” are different for everyone. Prince charming could have said:

    • “Well, I am a musician, but it’s more of a hobby right now. I work at Big 5 to pay the bills”
    • “I live with my mom”
    • “I don’t actually have a college degree. I said I did because I’m only 20 credits away”
    • “I’m impotent”
    • “I have a daughter”
    • “I don’t want to see you anymore”

    Sigh.

    At the very least you are disappointed. You might feel devastated. Even worse, you might consider throwing your standards out the window to start a relationship with this individual anyway.

    Let’s get real and break it down.

    Getting real: You don’t know this person. Really, you don’t. You feel like you do because of the adrenaline, dopamine and serotonin running through you. It is also very likely that you have projected a huge, unrealistic fantasy onto them that has no basis in reality. That whole engagement speech you dreamed he would be reciting on bended knee? Yeah, you made that up in your head. The home-cooked meals and coffee dates with your mother you thought she would be making? Also fiction.

    It is so easy to become disappointed and exhausted by dating, and life in general, when we live in the future instead of the present. When we live in the future we set ourselves up for disappointment and hurt feelings.

    If you feel wounded by your dating life, only you can change that.

    Be present. Make reality your friend.

    Being present: Don’t wait for a partner to make your life happen. Enjoy every day. Plan trips. Have fun. Be grateful for everything you do have. You have so much! I keep a gratitude list on my phone that I add to and read when I am feeling sorry for my single self.

    Making reality your friend: By realizing that that the initial excitement of dating a new person is not a promise for the future, you will save yourself a lot of heartache. People are often not who you perceive them to be (this is usually not their fault). And while it is frustrating when individuals misrepresent themselves, that is part of the dating game. Have compassion for people who don’t feel comfortable being up-front about who they are, and move on, (without them!).

    Putting all your emotional eggs in one basket is your decision. Allow a potential partner to earn that over time. Let them demonstrate through actions who they actually are and that they are trustworthy. As the song goes. “You can’t hurry love, you just have to wait.”

    Also realize this disappointment you feel is not personal. It is not a reflection on you. You are worthy of love. Have hope and stay positive. Remain grateful.

    Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.

    – Kurt Vonnegut

    Question:  How have you and do you endure well when disappointed?

    Self-Care Tip:  Remember that this disappointment is not personal.  Keep on.

    20140224_182909Jessica Adams:  I am a science teacher in Southern California who thinks about relationships, human health, love and of course science. I am passionate about doing what is right for kids and personal growth.

     

    Lupita Nyong’o Speech on Beauty – W-O-W! And, thank you.

    “…and my mother again would say to me you can’t eat beauty, it doesn’t feed you and these words plagued and bothered me; I didn’t really understand them until finally I realized that beauty was not a thing that I could acquire or consume, it was something that I just had to be.”

    This woman gets us. Friend to yourself. Keep on.

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    Quirky Blessings

    photo-1

    I did it again!  Left the house in my slippers.  Mercy.  Didn’t realize until I parked at work.  So, I think again about balance and slipper reminders.

    Oh, and about the socks… I have my reasons.  Smile.

    Question:  What has been helping you toward balance?  Please tell us.

    Self-care tip:  Allow quirks in life to be the blessings that they are.

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    Your Fabulous Stardom

    Image“Taylor Swift is a rock star!”

    The girl was in awe.  She had written versions of this all over her paper in various star-quality designs.  Everything was about Taylor Swift.  I was watching her at the park and drifting among my own thoughts, when her father leaned over and said, “Now write, Susan is a rock star.”  Young TS-Fan, alias Susan, looked up with an expression capturing a combo of wisdom with a big flip-off.  My thoughts were not adrift.  She was my interest.  She was a star.

    And so was her dad!  What a guy!

    Think about what your temperament gave you.  Think about what you like most to do, what your thoughts noodle when you aren’t “thinking.”  Is there someone who emulates the “star?”  Write that person’s name down in a bumper sticker statement.  Now write your own name in another.  You are peers.  Meet your cohort.

    Susan’s dad had it going.  Be productive at any age.  Know that you have something to offer.  You have valuable stock.  Put you name out there, where ever that is.

    Christian is a brilliant gardener.  Mindy is being her real self all the time.  Craig works words in classic timeless style.  You are a star.

    Self-care tip:  Put your name into print.

    Question:  What are you a star at?  Please tell us your fabulous story of self.

    Conditional Love With Me

    frayed rope

    We have a tenuous relationship with ourselves.  Very conditional, as if we were in a constant state of probation. Have you noticed?  Conditional love: part of the human condition.

    I was reading the The Golem and the Jinni: A Novel, by Helene Wecker, and found myself getting into her golem-philosophy, that went something like this,

    Since so many of us have it, can’t you just say it is the way things are, and not about freedom or fairness?

    Wecker in such eloquence ironically describes the human condition from the story of two inhuman beings.

    The New York Times, , describes it as,

    When they are later confronted by the evil power who controls their fates, they discover that the ultimate expression of free will may lie in the embrace of limitations.

    In considering our limitations in loving our own self, this idea can be useful to come to terms with the day in and out internal conflict of loving what is imperfect and distasteful, with what we would otherwise rather not identify with, and with the acts of friendship toward this seemingly inhuman part of our selves.  In embracing our limitations, we may find less conflict in loving Me, less conditioning, or perhaps a shorter probation each day.  We may experience the probation differently, Chava, The Golem, when we say, “It just is this way with all of us.  I have the community of humanity.”

    Getting into the space of where our “tenuous bond” between what we love and would otherwise not love about ME, in fact diminishes the frailty and increases the strength in our personal journey.  Rather than putting us into further danger of internal conflict and self-loathing, it allows us to experience what will happen from and in the company of the tension.

    More specifically, in brain health, getting into the space of our conditional love for our self, allows us to do things like seek medical treatment when needed, ally with help, with medical treatments that once repulsed us, with something as formulated as putting a pill in our mouth seven days a week indefinitely.  Or another treatment, such as ECT.

    We are conditional with ourselves.  It is part of our human condition.  That is pretty close to, “Normal.”

    Question: How often are you aware of your own difficulty loving yourself, your Me?  What improves this?  Why does difficulty with loving Me recur and recur without end?  Please tell us your story.

    Self-Care Tip:  Get into the tenuous space between the “good and bad” of Me where you are normal.

    Related articles

     

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    Getting Older and Getting Born

    Sana_Set09_LeoChaves_032

    Sana_Set09_LeoChaves_032 (Photo credit: LeoChaves)

    Turned another year over. Forty one now. Sometimes I already feel like there is a toe tag on me. Other times I ride the consciousness of now and innocence, as if I have forever to do whatever it is I am living for. As if fear did not pulse around me, as if life held no shame, then I carry my 41 years as lightly as a daughter spatters kissies over her mother’s arms.

    Getting older is all the hype now. I was not alive 100 years ago but I wonder if 40 was the “new sexy” then. Gwyneth Paltrow is lovely. Me and Gwyneth. We have so much in common.

    Huffington Post featured 30 Celebs Who Are Aging Gracefully. Tina Turner, Sting, Sigourney Weaver, the list is full of real people sharing our life-space. Remember Working Girl? Boom.

    I look at my parents, friends, patients, myself, strangers on the street and stories that symbolize a person’s life lived. I look and I think of someone who climbs Everest. I think of frostbite. I think of a long long journey. I think of death.

    The day before my birthday, the excitement made waiting too much to endure. A small chocolate bar, a handmade card with misspelled words and two tightly folded dollar bills disregarded the calendar date. Neatly arranged on my night table, I was told by their giggling toe-toe hopping agents, “Happy Birthday tomorrow, Mommy! I’m so glad you were born!”

    And I was born again. Just like that. Love labor.

    Some women have birth the way it is supposed to happen and others suffer. After my third child, my OB-Gyn, I love that woman, told me with nothing more than fatigue and honesty, “Sana, you should probably stop at three. Pregnancy and delivery is just not easy for you.” My pregnancies and deliveries were not that easy for her either.

    Our rebirths also come easy and come hard. We almost die. We cruise through as if we were made for it. “She was made to have babies!” (Dodge the loogie I cannot help but hurl. Damn those women with baby-making bodies!)

    I know we think things like this about people without brain illness, (if they even exists.) Maybe we think they do not have the suffering we do. Maybe we think we have it worse. We think at least we are misunderstood, when we hear,

    “Get over it!”

    “Just calm down!”

    “Would you relax?!”

    Breath. Yummy. How we love that. The list of these is longer than the path up Everest. And so helpful. Who has actually calmed down when told? Notice the exclamation points. Exclamation points symbolize emotion, in case the mountaineering porters saying the helpful emotion-directives did not know.

    During our long long or short journeys we get to be born once, twice, forty-one, or the last time, because of Love. We do not get a Love that is measurable liquid or linear, like Time. Love is not healthy or unhealthy. It does not curl into our DNA, and is not dispensed by privilege. Nor a jury of Sherpas. Calm down.

    Love is. Love is, and Love offers us a newness over and over and over and over because.

    We have different birthing experiences, but I am glad you were born. You are loved.

    Self-Care Tip:  Allow Love to bring you new beginnings.

    Questions:  How has birthing gone for you?  What have been some of the new beginnings you knew Love brought you.  Please tell us your story.

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    More on Life-ers. (Those darn perdy dandelions.)

    Taraxacum, seeds detail 2.jpg

    Image via Wikipedia

    I had an interesting comment a couple of days ago on the concept of Life-ers.

    If you have a weed in your garden, you pull it.  If there’s something wrong in your life, you don’t fall in love with it.  You get to weeding.

    However, there are Life-ers that are both weeds to pull and weeds to just plain garden I reckon.

    We here at FriendtoYourself.com, got one of the most practical life examples of a Life-er.  It is both one that can be weeded and one that cannot.  Emily said in response to blog-post, One Woman’s Struggle,

    …I have been a self-identified compulsive overeater (or binge eater) since I was a child. It has always loomed large (pun intended) in my life. I have successfully dieted and lost 30-40 pounds at a time, and then I’ve gained everything back — with interest. It has been my obsession and my bete noir.

    Eight years ago, out of pure desperation, I went to a Overeaters Anonymous meeting. I didn’t necessarily like it at first, but I recognized my problem as an addiction. If you hold my experience up next to an alcoholic’s, there is no difference. I struggled a long time with the program, but today I am living what OA calls an abstinent life. My definition of abstinence is three reasonable meals a day with nothing in between. I am shrinking to a healthy body weight.

    I have also developed my spiritual side and my relationship with my higher power (that I get to define) is what makes it possible to eat like a normal person. My obsession has been lifted, one day at a time. Like an alcoholic, this is not something I can do on my own.  This is supported by about 25 years of data.

    I am experiencing freedom I couldn’t even imagine walking in the doors of my first meeting — freedom from fat, freedom from compulsion, openness to change and growth and a life that is no longer nearly as self-centered.

    Sana, you asked if it helps to think of it as an addiction — for me, it’s not an analogy; it IS an addiction. I use the Big Book for the solution. My recovery is just like that in any other program.  And it’s the ONLY thing that made a difference — not just for me, but for the dozens of people I share OA with. I hope this is something health professionals will understand one day. OA is an underutilized tool, and I think that could change with better understanding and guidance.

    Thank  you Emily for your story.  I haven’t been able to get you out of my mind.

    Addictions is a weed we could more often agree is a Life-er.  That is not to say there are not those of us who think that they can yank and be done with, but the general consensus in medicine is that addictions are Life-ers.

    There are other Life-ers besides addictions.  Recurrent major depressive disorder, treatment resistant major depressive disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, okay – a gazillion other medical illnesses that will not be eradicated by weed killer or a gloved garden-grip.  There are also non-medical Life-ers, such as poverty, natural or unnatural disaster, stigma and so forth.  We could even use the biopsychosocial model to catalogue them if we wanted.

    One of the things that intuitively sits poorly about Life-ers in our culture and communities is the perceived helplessness that can soil it.  However, we are not implying helplessness at all.  The opposite in fact. Just as this courageous Emily described, when we take care of ourselves, when we befriend ourselves, we take accountability for where we are now, our yards improve neighborhoods.  We have more freedom and choice.

    For the world out there who is scared to garden over the long term, let’s get over ourselves.  What we are growing is worth the space we occupy and of high value.  You may never know it but we are and have bank to show for it.

    Questions:  What is your response to those who call your Life-ers weeds to pull?  What are some examples of Life-ers you have fallen in love with and how did you? How do you get away from perfectionism? Please tell us your story.

    Self-Care Tip – If there is a weed in your life you can pull, pull it.  If you cannot, or if you do and it just keeps growing back, fall in love with it and grow a garden with those perdy dandelions.
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    Live with an agenda

    dionna, 1991.

    dionna, 1991. (Photo credit: paul posadas)

    The blue dragon lifted her head from near-sleep.  She knew.  Pouncing onto the rocky ledge gave her the advantage.  No one would challenge her.  The fresh corpse was for her alone.  As she ate the remains of Dionna, the red dragon who had never flown, the memories of Dionna infused her.  The blue dragon in this had saved those memories and would live them into the forwardness of time.  

    Why is it that we repeat the mistakes of our forefathers?  It would be nice if we could somehow be able to capture their hard-earned life experiences.  If dragon lore were true, perhaps.

    In Papua New Guinea, Congo, cannibals on the Disneyland Jungle Cruise and who knows where else, eating brain to preserve the life force, save your daughters or avoid the mistakes Dad made gets you a bad and yucky disease called, kuru.  Nothing good comes from eating brain.

    And so the blue dragon, whose scales shone in the morning sun, began to tremble and seemed confused over the years.  Her brain got holes like a sponge and she laughed at inappropriate times.  

    We just cannot get a leg up on wisdom and experience.  We are not made for it.  Each of make our own mistakes, have to work our own fingers to the bone, and other knowing clichés that in this case just are the darn truth.

    What blue dragon and kuru are trying to tell us are that the agenda Love has for us is not to build up experiences like some sort of mental tower of babel.  It is not about the mistakes.  It is about our life experience.

    We cannot help but wonder, though.  After working in psychiatry for these many years, I wonder what a joy it would be to give that experience, knowledge, skill of practice and such to my daughter some day.  Ah.  As if it had its own life force, passing it on to my daughter feels like a bit of immortality.

    When I die, just eat my frontal lobe, darling.  Not the limbic system.

    We are meant to live.  In that living, we inevitably repeat foibles and build up muscles and manage to survive all kinds of suffering.  In that living, we are beat up and rejected.  We are perfect.  We are flawed.  We are marvelous.

    Maybe the agenda is not to get it better with each generation or to get it right.  Maybe the agenda is to live.

    Question:  Have you ever been frustrated at how quickly your gains in life will be/are lost?  What is the agenda of your life?  Please tell us your story.

    Self-Care Tip:  Live life with a quality-experience agenda.

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    Day # three. Say it out loud.

    I like my short hair.

    My hair has been long since I was round eight years old and I miled, by way of identity, with that dark healthy slightly curly low maintenance face-frame. Life yuck and plain old dying processes turned a few strands gray.

    My tendency to anticipate the impact of loss on myself and my relationships, it’s been a while now that I’ve wondered and wanted over aging on Me. In my effort to toward myself into the inevitable rather than be taken by it, I cut my hair.

    That may or may not make sense to you, but when I went home and spread the shorn trusses that used to be part of me out around trees and dirt, I liked myself a little more.

    Day three of our, Say It Out Loud, challenge is here. Come and say what you like. Say what you delight in, in you.

    Say it out loud.

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    Say It Out Loud. Three Day Challenge.

    Hello friends. Please join us at Friend to Yourself in a three day, “Say it Out Loud,” challenge.

    Throughout the next three days, whenever you think of something you like & are grateful for about yourself, say it out loud to us.

    I’ll start! 😉

    I like my body.

    Say It Out Loud.

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    Let your calendar serve your own needs this year

    stress elf

    Sometimes, a holiday is just a day.

    So much of life happens off of the calendar.  Why the holiday, then?  If we unclicked the icon on our google calendar, the blue letters would disappear.  Just like that.

    Sometimes letters are just letters.  “Words are just words.  Ways to capture the real thing.”  And to add to this from Ally Condie, I’d say, sometimes a holiday is a just a day.  A way to capture the real thing.  

    Self-Care Tip – Let your calendar serve your own needs this year.

    Question:  How does a holiday help you capture the real thing in what life is about for you? And when it doesn’t, how do you let it be?  How do you let it be just another day?  Please tell us your story.

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    1.  Scheduled Intimacy – Mother’s Day: The Good and The Not So Good

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    Cultivate Fantasy To Improve Reality

    I am the proud finisher of the SF Half Marathon.  It was the most beautiful run I’ve been on and  my miles ran one minute faster (twelves) than I had planned (thirteens.)  My husband coached and joined me as my birthday present, (yes, I’m rounding my fourth decade,) and I was listening to another sumptuous novel.  Oh my.  Thank goodness my emotions caught up with the undeniable blessings.  Too often, we dutifully list off our gratitudes detached, like reading a latin prayer-book.  And not often enough do our fantasies connect with our realities.  Delightful! when they do though.

    Best T-shirt ever was on the road.

     

    The runner told me that the quote comes from the Rocky Horror Show.  I could barely stop giggling.  Just awesome.

    That was a random bit of joy I wanted to share!

    Pairing our duties with our pleasures brings bank.  But today’s self-care tip is something a little to the left – cultivate fantasy and see what it brings to our reality.  (This is a brief post but I hope to write more another time too :).)

    Question:  Where does fantasy fit in to your friendship with yourself?  Please tell us your story.

     

     

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    How Your Indulgence Improves Your Friendship With Yourself

    Ann Morgan Guilbert as Grandma Yetta.

    Image via Wikipedia

    I remembered my grandma’s hair today.  She had this little vanity.  Used to roll it up at night and put her net over.  In the morning she was careful about it.

    She had good hair.  In her 80’s it was still pretty full and it was white.  Really white like forgiveness.  Something about it carried a message.  “Here is a woman who has beauty.”

    When my grandfather died, I am told that there were men who wanted to marry her.  Men with farms, a business or something to offer.  Grandma, when she thought the time was right, would introduce them to her four sons.  Big sons, with big bones and the quietness from working in the inconsiderate conditions of nature and element.  Sons who had a father once but lost him, like a ring that slips off your finger in the water without you knowing it was gone.  Worse than that.

    It’s important to have a message when you live under working conditions, where horrors happen.  A little sister burns to death in front of you.  Your finger gets twisted off in a washing machine like a bottle cap.  You canned.  Canning was never a hobby for Grandma but I never had the sense that she disliked it.

    What made Grandma’s hair stand out so for me and my brothers was that it was her indulgence.  Why an old woman with no teeth, in a wooden farm-house sleeping next to a man she didn’t marry for love, (although she loved him), would roll her hair every night as if she was going to have family pictures in the morning – just has to make you smile.

    She used to leave her dentures in a cup of water by her bed and her mouth would leak a little when they weren’t in.  How good her kisses were.  I’m glad I didn’t know to think they were gross.  Even when Grandma got really old, smelled like medicine and her rotting insides, I didn’t think so.

    Mom would go in and roll Grandma’s hair for her because her fingers turned at odd angles.  She couldn’t do her hair and she couldn’t play piano.   Later, when moved into a nursing facility, there was a beauty contest.  My mom found out about it and enrolled my grandma without her knowing.  She told Mom afterward that she won because of her hair.  I had never heard Grandma talk about her hair like that, even though the rest of us had, and my brother’s and I laughed until we cried.  And then we cried some more.

    Question:  What is your indulgence?  What is the message in it from your secret self out to the world? What does it bring to your ability to be your own friend.  Please tell me your story.

    Self-Care Tip – Celebrate your indulgence, acknowledge its message about you and see what it brings to your ability to be your own friend.

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    In Gratitude. Commenting is good self-care.

    In gratitude I move between these letters.  My step is often clomping and loud, but is that what we would name a “sure-step?”  Not always.  Even tripping and clipping corners bruising my legs, with my mistakes returning echoes to remind anyone who wants to know what my shifting sounds like.  Even when, I move gratefully.  And it is for you and Me and God.  We have decided confidently once at least.  At least once we have in like-minded strength chosen to dedicate our force to move us to the purpose of becoming a friend to yourself.  Many, more often than once.  Many have decided as often as they deliberately step, like a recovering spinal cord injury remembers just how to lift the leg, tilt the foot and ease it down.  Many find this purpose we have chosen at least as difficult as that.

    How bout you?  More?  Less?  Gratitude is an assist for Me, as are the woven combinations of all that make up my process, my presence or we could say personal journey.  Within that weave, there is this thing that runs on the fuel that only kind feed-back can generate.  You people.  In truth, I can not move very far with out you.

    I have two specific thank-you’s of this kind.

    Some time ago, Beth Parker, gifted the Liebster Award and more recently, Cathy gave the Versatile blogger Award.  These girls are kind.  They are friendly and they are funny.  They give and some of what they give, specifically incredible generous feedback like this, is essential to Me.  I’m pretty sure it’s on the periodic table of elements.  Without it, I’d poop out, like an old jalopy in the desert.  I am grateful.

    There’s a bit of an overlap in some spaces of these awards and I’m going to snip it back a little since the day is spent.  The good stuff really is naming off you wonders out there who have voices that must be heard.  I’m going to remake the to-do’s of these awards, because I can and that’s the kind of girl I am ;).

    My deep gratitude compels me to name off the folks who comment.  They talk.  They speak and connect and let themselves know and be known.  What an honor.  You, and to all have had the courage to write your vulnerable self into words and engage – Thank you.

    This commenting-thing is more than pom-pom action.  When we speak out loud, we open closet doors, shame is aired, fears are invited for tea and then ushered out more easily.  We hook into the self-care tips and make them our own when we breathe out audibly.  We may not know it but we claim them and the people in this community of “Friend to Yourself-ers” or FTY’s.  (How do you like that?  FTY?)  This is awesome and powerful and free.  As we say here, “speak.”

    You may or may not be on this “WordPress” generated statistic of commenters, but either way, you are here with us.  You fuel us in our life journey uniquely and importantly.  For those who read but don’t comment, thank you as well for letting us share ourselves with you.  Comment if you will, but keep coming either way.

    In gratitude:

    Nancy 64
    Carl D’Agostino 50
    Col 34
    Cindy Taylor 26
    duckofindeed 21
    livingvictoriously 17

    Sincerely, 

    Me

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    The Gift in Wanting – Water, is Taught by Thirst

    Water, is taught by thirst. 
Land -- by the Oceans passed. 
Transport -- by throe 
-- Peace -- by its battles told 
-- Love, by Memorial Mold 
-- Birds, by the Snow.
    -Emily Dickinson

    “Some people think of the glass as half full. ...

    I have been quiet here for what seems like a long time and I am happy to be talking out “loud” again.  Thank you for being, friends.

    Over the past year-and-a-half of writing and reading with you, of speaking and hearing, teaching and learning – instead of diminishing my interest, exhausting my energies and instead of completing this “task,” I am rather in process of crescendo.  This thing called, being a “friend to yourself,” apparently must continue.  It must because otherwise we would not.

    Emily Dickinson knew the value of what was missing; but more so, she knew the value in the wanting of it.

    Water, is taught by thirst.

    I am ever aware that you and I do too.  It is this wanting that spurs in us our creative genius in this effort.  In any area of interest, in fact, whether it is this, to cultivate the caring of our own person, or to improve our eye of canvas, to swing our sword or to put pen to paper – if we do not sense potential, pleasure still to come, if we do not see beyond where we are to what might be and if we don’t want it, we will miss our selves.  We will lose our pearl to the muck that hides us.

    Counter to intuition, presence is in fact enhanced by our wanting.  We clarify our point of reference to each other and to Love when we realize that we are toward something greater than ourselves.  Having that point of reference is nourishing.  It is active and it is connected.  The understanding of what we want still, have yet to obtain, rather than destabilizing or isolating us, it improves our footing and our community.  And like Emily, we give up much just to experience the exquisite process of joining our own journey.

    This is what thirst has taught me.  What about you? Please tell me your story.

    Self-Care Tip – Before the gift of your thirst, pursue it knowing you are blessed.  Be a friend to yourself.

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