Trust

Run Away Before You Self-Destruct – Keep Yourself Safe
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Run Away Before You Self-Destruct – Keep Yourself Safe

This is a slight remake from 7/25/10. Hugs to all.

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When you feel the pull to do something that isn’t good for you, turn away from it. Do something that you can stand doing at the moment that won’t make you hate yourself now or later.

In the evenings, when the kids are just in bed, the backlash of the day seems to have a few last flicks. Despite the anticipated quiet, my shoulders are tight. Dusk, when the land meets the sky, is when I feel like eating …chocolate specifically.

I purposefully don’t bring it home, except the darkest chocolate sold with over 75% cacao for this very reason. It’s so dark, it’s practically bark.

Home is my safe place and I need to know that it is as safe as possible, even from me. I used to bring treats home that were to be eaten in moderation, but I found that when the monster in me crept out. I’d board myself up in the pantry and polish it off. That would turn me to self-loathing. It was a cycle. I got tired of being my enemy and knowing what was coming next.

Now, I choose to simply go out for my chocolate. I eat what I want when I’m out, when I’m less likely to eat myself into despair. Now, when I’m home, I can pick a different fight rather than fighting the urge to closet eat. Home is a little more safe for me.

Tonight, the kids went to bed ok, but I still took my turn around the fridge and pantry, even though I knew there was nothing, absolutely nothing, I’d want to eat in my house. I am in danger now of developing something of a ritual in this rummage around the kitchen. The good thing is that when I do make the turn, it leads me to the thought of just going to my bike and riding. Tonight, after a 30 minute spin, while watching the last 1/2 of the première to Glee, I am good again. I’m thinking about the muscles in my legs and the way my body doesn’t walk as heavy as it used to and I feel good about myself. Just like that, I feel a little less self-loathing. I feel more safe.

Self Care tip #1 – Run away before you self destruct. Be a friend to yourself.

Questions: Have you found a safe place? What is keeping your home safe for you? Please tell us your story.

Related Articles
Gathering Friend to Yourself Blog-Post References:
Choosing Safety:
  • basics on Weight Management 2011/06/25
  • Trusting our Clinician, or Not 2011/05/17
  • Self-Care Works You, Pushes You, Tires You Out Until You Are Happily Spent On Your Friend – You 2011/04/25
  • Participate – Work as Part of A Team With Your Medical Providers 2011/04/12
  • Choosing Connections – Take The Good and Take Care of Yourself 2011/04/04
  • Check Your Read. Even When You Feel Shame, Bullied and Herded, You Are Free. 2011/03/26
  • Living Where We Feel Safe is Part of Self-Care 2011/03/20
  • Afraid of Meds 2010/09/19
  • Get in Someone’s Space 2010/09/08
  • Run Away Before You Self-Destruct – Keep Yourself Safe 2010/07/25
Self-Loathing:
  • Number One Reason For Relapse In Mental Illness 2011/04/07
  • So Many Choices, So Little Time …For Self-Care 2011/03/05
  • Say, “I Can’t Control This” When You Can’t 2011/01/31
  • Emotions: The Physical Gift We Can Name 2011/01/06
  • Escape Self-Loathing 2010/10/29
Breaking Negative Cycles:
  • Loving Me without ambivalence – Perfectionism v. Passive Surrender 2011/05/28
  • You Can’t Barter With It. Sleep. 2010/12/03
  • Regardless The Reasons Not To, Go Get Your Sleep 2010/11/22
  • Choose, Gladly, Using Resources 2010/10/13
  • Sleep Hygiene – my version 2010/08/29
  • Pay a dollar 2010/07/29
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Reworking Choices With Your Physician as Part of Your Team

What do you want? 

It is one of my challenges as a physician when someone comes to see me for reasons I’m not able to accommodate.  I can’t validate them.  I can’t tell them what they want to hear.

What can I do?  Help them “realize” that they came to see me for another reason.  Another way to say it is to help them “choose” another agenda.  A part of them realizes their need for help; they came.  A part of them believes I am a person that can help; they came.  A part of them.  A part that I and the patient are responsible to find and shift agendas deliberately or by any wiles possible.

Hands touching

Image via Wikipedia

We are an unusual team in this.  How often do you find another so awkwardly paired?  Yet these are some of my best patient-doctor relationships.

What do you want?

When there is a meeting up, a connection and everyone is working for the same “want,” both presence and movement are natural responses.  It’s like we’re standing still in the moment, senses taking it in, and moving all the while.  The process of moving itself brings pleasure and healing.  It is not always about arriving.  It is not always what we think we want.

Self-Care Tip – Enjoy your re-choices and what you will get from them.

Questions:  Have you every found yourself being “helped” to have a different agenda that improved your presence and movement in your personal journey?  Please tell us your story.

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Eight hugs a Day

Evening friends.  Spent the afternoon enjoying the company of friends and family.  Including enjoying a lecture from the “love doctor,” Paul Zak PhD.  Dr. Zak gave us a practice run on his upcoming lecture for TED in Scotland.  He told us about the amazing hormone, oxytocin, which Dr. Zak tells us is the morality hormone.  It increases any time we have increased social connection.  Oxytocin makes people trust, empathize and have increased moral behaviors.  Dr. Zak’s prescription is eight hugs a day (hugs increase oxytocin).  Awesome.

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Our Patient-Doctor Relationship Improved by Self-Care and Back At You!

NICU Nursery

Image by EMS Shane in Portland via Flickr

I am writing a series of blog-posts outlining self-care in which we examine the tenets of self-care:

Self-Care Tip #265 – Use your connections to help yourself and use your self-care to improve your connections (such as your patient-doctor relationship.)

Damaged and premature, my niece was born needing help to live. Now, one year later, I am playing ball with her on the floor. Her intelligent smile, thriving body, and especially the lovely nape of her neck with that baby-curl of hair lipping up makes remembering her near death-dive into life surreal. I don’t want to remember it anyway. But when I can’t help myself, what I like to think of is how my brother and sister-in-law were treated.

The clinicians at UCSD were unbelievable, my brother said. They included him in their decision-making and informed him of medical study results. If you don’t know, if you’ve never been sick or been in a medical setting otherwise, this doesn’t always happen. It isn’t traditional to share medical information directly with patients (such as x-rays, laboratory results, differential diagnoses, and to ask their opinion. Can you imagine?!  “…Um. Yes PLEASE! Can I be your patient!?” Sounds like fantasy.)

I’ve also struggled to collaborate. Hovering over charts and laboratory results, many of us practitioners behave as if our patients were at any moment going to throw us into court. It’s embarrassing, even though the truth is, too many of us clinicians are stalked by litigious intentions, whilst the truly awful practitioners seem to sail away on unsinkable malpractice without pursuit.

I have not enjoyed myself when I’ve done this. When I’ve acted suspicious of the very people I’m meant to team up with, work was not good for me. I don’t think my patients felt comfortable with the doctor-patient relationship either during those times. Hearing my brother talk about how he was treated has emboldened me to engage with more trust in the care I offer patients. Moreso, being friendly to myself has helped me be a better physician.  It’s tail chasing but with productive and enriching effects.

Making a choice to choose trust and transparency with patients and clinicians, even being present with the fear, is self-care although high pressure. With people’s lives on the line, clinicians and patients know mistakes will happen. The self-care will grow our ability to forgive each other.

My journey with self-care has brought me to see people differently. I look at them from the self-care angle. I look for those sticky bits where we can connect and collaborate. I expect things from them. I ally myself with their self-respect, with their intuitive desire to be friends with themselves. I am bored at work when I don’t do this. I am bored at work when my patients don’t do this too. Without self-care for myself and without my patient’s interest in self-care, medical practice becomes everything that the negative reputations advertise about the physician and the patient.

Yes. My quality of practice has definitely improved.

Who isn’t blessed when she sees the courage to face stigma, shame and bewildering illness? Who isn’t more informed every time someone chooses the freedom to do self-care, chooses to live, fights hard like my niece did and shows what that fight is worth?

Who doesn’t learn from that? When someone loses her identity to the defacing ravages of disease but still knows she is worth the fight, like PattyAnne, working beside her is one of the best places in the world to be. For Me. It starts and ends with Me.

Building trust in a patient or a clinician starts with us staying connected to others in our personal circle and along the ripples as the circle widens. We have to have a voice and hear their voice and we do this by maintaining a community of people.

Connection is part of self-care for both clinician and patient. In the case of PattyAnne, (yes, she’s still in our story,) she could take an action toward her self-care with the intention of gaining stronger connection to her community and to me. She could ask herself about her intentions. In fact, we both would do better self-care approaching each other this way.

Connection via the patient-doctor relationship is self-care and then back the other way too!

It starts and ends with Me.

Questions: Has your patient-doctor relationship been a friendly part of what you’ve given yourself?  What are some examples or in what ways have other connections you’ve chosen improved your self-care?  How has self-care inversely improved your patient-doctor relationship?  Please tell me your story.

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Getting or Giving Bad News Without Fear

Slalom skier

Image via Wikipedia

I was reading an article on awareness of obesity the other day telling us that many times, people don’t know they are obese until they are told by someone else.  Ouch.  Pass the Band-Aides.  But it aired our need to stay connected, speak up, and listen.  It also prompted me to reflect on mental illness.  How often I’ve sat with someone’s emotions-history in my hands, looked at them and realized they didn’t know.  They were there, emotions bleeding all over the place but didn’t grasp their injury.

Um, excuse me ma’am.  Let’s apply some pressure on that and get you some help.

Bloody news like this reminds me of my friend Jack.  He was waterskiing with my brother and I when we were college’ish-age.  Jack was not so capable on the water, although he wasn’t afraid.  As you probably know, three is the perfect number for waterskiing – one to drive, one to hold the flag when the skier is setting himself up, and then of course the skier.  Any more and there are way too many polite smiles and way too much advice for the bobbing body in the water.  Jack was working on his slalom moves, thrilled with his progress and after about the third fall, was still ready for another go.

Hit it!

Our boat, Rosewater, eased him out of the water and he was up.  Jack has a way of celebrating like no other.  He whoops and yells and his whole body joins in.  And so he was in his happy place, up on a single ski, unconcerned with the world at large.  It was lovely.  Until the wake of that other huge boat threw him down and his face slammed into his spectacular single ski.  Up he came and we just looked at him, quietly at first.  Jack paddled up to the boat and wondered if he should try again.

Um, sorry Jack.  Let’s apply some pressure on that and get you some help.

Jack had a huge gash, copiously bleeding all over his face and he had no idea.  He was wet already, cold from the water and didn’t feel a thing.  I still feel the creepies skittering up my arms and chest thinking about it.

When we told Jack, he was a little unbelieving.

Are you sure?  Is it bad?  I think I’m alright.  It’ll wash out and I can try again….

Oh there wasn’t much pleasure in telling him the bloody news.  Generally there isn’t that much pleasure in telling someone they are fat or suffering from mental illness either.  It’s the follow-up to that statement where the fun comes in.  The hope that we link the first punch-line to.  Good news is, …along comes the second punch-line.  Hope.  And presence.  Being with someone where they are at, as they are, and with patience doesn’t mean leaving him in the dark, bleeding out.

The reverse is true of course as well.  If we don’t stay connected with others, we may lose the opportunity to see ourselves through their eyes.  It is an opportunity.  When we are with someone we trust, respect and think see’s us as the precious thing that we are, it is.

Self-Care Tip #195 – Stay connected with others and listen without fear – something good is coming.  Be a friend to yourself.

Questions:  How do you deliver “bad news?”  What is the best way you’ve ever been given “bad news?”  Please tell me your story.

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Just to Feel Pleasure

week-end-pleasure

Image via Wikipedia

Self-Care Tip #189 – Heal for yourself, and you’ll see that also, everyone heals.

The best thing I ever did was go on antidepressants.

Bianca sat, but her whole body was talking.  She was telling me about her changing life.  She had read some of her journal from a year ago when she pounded on herself for her behaviors.  She thoroughly grieved the time with her children when they heard her scream about small things that kids do.  She told me about her sons face when she was irritable.  He showed all the waiting tension that an open child will when waiting for Mom to lose it.  She was trying to push it aside and think rather about how she now could finally enjoy them.  Bianca said,

I just had no idea before how much better life could be.

Bianca’s face became tight and she didn’t make eye-contact,

There’s no way to describe what it’s like to not enjoy your kids – My own kids! – for most of their born lives and then wake up and experience something different.  I just can’t explain what it means to now actually like being with them.  I’ve always loved them but I didn’t feel the pleasure and I hate that.  I want that time back but I can’t have it and I can’t give it to them either.

I’m so scared it will end, the pills will stop working and I’ll lose this new life.

Before her medication, Bianca worked hard at taking care of herself.  She was a check-list of responsible self-care.  Bianca thought it was important that I knew this.

  • Aerobic exercise – check!
  • Healthy diet – check!
  • Sleep hygiene – check!
  • Bianca talked about God but things got confusing for her there.  She didn’t like to think about Him being on “a list.”  He was in her life and didn’t feel He failed her even though she couldn’t feel pleasure or joy.

Still, she continued to coil up and release hard punchy words at her kids and then hate herself for it.  She had prayed so much about this and wouldn’t even mind if God had to puppet her, if that’s what it took, in order for her to treat her kids better.  She could not stop herself from being what she called,

Crazy Mommy.

But now, after she was treated, Crazy Mommy was gone.

Aside from dropping the shame, the best thing for Bianca was knowing that her kids could trust her, felt safe with her and that she felt safe with herself.  Everyone was healing subsequent to Bianca healing.

How many of you have told us a similar story.  A similar rescue.  Yet, never-the-less others of us are afraid to go there.

Question:  How are you present with others who don’t understand your rescue story?  How do you stand beside someone who needs medical help for emotional illness but won’t accept it secondary to stigma?  Please tell us your story.

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Grieve to Be Present With Yourself

 

Maria Yakunchikova "Fear" 1893-95

Image via Wikipedia

 

We grieve when we get sick.  And we grieve again when after getting well, we get sick again.  Then the grieving can be even more terrible because you know what’s coming.  In Pearla’s case, she didn’t know she was grieving but she knew she was sad and terrified at the same time.

I asked her if she thought that staying in bed, loosing interest, isolating, crying jags out of the blue might be related her grief about getting sick again.  She said no at first and then said, “I’m disappointed.  I thought this was over for me.”  All over, she couldn’t trust herself.

Pearla was afraid. And that fear was always there.  Now she couldn’t put it out of her mind.  “What if I have another panic attack?  I can’t take it!”  “What if,” was always on her mind.

Readers, a panic attack is more terrifying than just about any immediate experience.  If you’ve never had one, it is almost impossible to imagine the depth of terror it causes.  It is so horrible, that people even change professions because of it.  I remember a surgeon who actually went back to residency and studied a new specialty because he linked his panic to his profession.  That’s another 4 years of grueling work, readers.  That’s the kind of fear panic produces.

Pearla was not only in the throes of this fear, she was also in the throes of grief.  This is a deep sadness any of us who have lost a beloved hope can relate to.  Pearla didn’t know that was why she didn’t want to get out of bed.  All she knew is over the last 2 weeks she was loosing herself and in exchange, getting something she desperately did not want.

Somehow though, after hearing about her sadness from her own mouth, Pearla agreed.  She saw the grief and after seeing grief, she could be more present with it.  It was almost like her face materially came out from hiding.  Grief lost some hold on her.  She was a little less sad and a little less afraid.

Self-Care Tip #111 – Let yourself grieve.  Be a friend to yourself.

Question:  How do you grieve?  Was it worth it to you?  Please tell me your story.

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Trust The Momentum of Your Own Desires

Writing every day has blessed me.  It has however also taken away.  Aside from the obvious such as time, I’ve missed reading in the evenings.  I used to spend most of my evenings jamming happily through fast page turning books.  I love bound paper.

I’ve always had something of sensory issues.  My girlfriend Marlo Albritton, MS, CCC-SLP always laughs at me in the car – every other moment adjusting the angle of the vent or the pressure or the direction of the air that can never hit my face or the temperature.  In books, it is so many things as well that get me.  The smell and touch of course, the sound of fingers on page, swish there’s a turn, the visual in my hands or when I set it down.  I fidget but any way I turn, the book is my focal point, a lover!  The book keeps pace with me too.  When I wander, it waits patiently, unpressured and available.  When I must rush because I might die if I don’t reach the story’s climax, the book is the perfect buddy swimmer.  Like a good psychotherapist, the book is there for me.  It is a unidirectional relationship.  There aren’t many good unidirectional relationships.

I listen to audio books sometimes.  When I exercise or drive alone, and they are good.  But they are the fast food of the book pantry.  Never as satisfying.  They leave most of my senses quite alone.

I realize it is of course my own fault!  Not the blog or the writing.  I make the choices that keep me from reading.  I’m going to have to figure something out.  I can’t not read!  Remember when I said that time and energy increase when you do what you love?  (See “There is Room In Our Wanting Selves.”)  Well that’s what I’m putting my money on.  I’m going to trust the momentum of my own desires.

I’m off to read.

Self Care Tip #66 – Trust the momentum of your own desires.  Be a friend to yourself.

Question:  Do you have a sense of where your own momentum is taking you?  Please tell me your story.

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Collaboration Between Work and Play

All my options were poking at me like specters and I’ve been distracted.  Sitting in the coffee shop.  2 hours later and I’ve just started to write.  This is the first in eons since I’ve had open space in time during daylight hours.  I vaguely remember doing this in my past lives, but can’t remember how to do it.  I’m awkward.  It’s hard to know how to press into an area without boundaries.  I’ve walked on the moon here, trying to know how to foot my thoughts.  And now that my unbelievably free time is almost over, I realize I’ve procrastinated.  A daily planner all filled up just dropped down and I can see what I should do.  There’s a comfort in it.

A collaboration between work and play is healthy.  We slide or trip across the arc that connects them.  The path back can be harder to return to when we stay too long at one pole.  Like an unused muscle.  Sometimes people get sick and need time off work to recover.  They often look at me with bewilderment and ask, “What now?”  It’s like telling a kid, it’s time to nap.  Everyone else who hears desperately wishes you were talking to them.  We can lose the flow and someone or life or a force has to show us how to get back into sync.

Gratitude helps swing the pendulum.  That awareness, gratitude, moves us back and forth to see our options, what we want and what we have.  

Humility is another fair guide.  Kids get this.  I respect that about them.  Their hearts are open flowers, vulnerable, wanting.  They move trusting the momentum and direction from which they pivot.  We get more friction as we age.  It takes humility to accept redirection.  Humility is different from insecurity though.  It takes confidence and trust in something to know when to let go.  Kids do that better than me too!

Today, some of the resistance in my journey left, and I have more gratitude for my work and for my play.  I hope that I respond more easily when I should.  Like Samuel who heard God calling, I hope to know when to answer.  Let me be like a child.

Self Care Tip #33 – Live with gratitude, humility, and confidence.  Be a friend to yourself.

Question: Does this resonate with you?  What do you think?

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Trust What is Inherent

Does loving and liking go together? Not always. I like to think of loving as a constant not entirely dependent on us. Thank goodness!

Waiting to like someone is like waiting to go to the gym until you’re in shape. Or, not getting to know God until you are a good person.

This morning I woke up to the sound of dishes and quiet excited little voices. There was a vibe of energy in the air. My eyes were still blurry and crusty and my mind in a haze of, “What’s happening here?”

Some mornings I wake up to the anxiety of hearing other sounds. Someone wasn’t being nice to someone else. Wondering if I was going to have that job for the rest of the day of refereeing and…. Some mornings I am afraid. Some mornings when I wake up, they know I don’t like them. Because we love each other so, it just hurts all of us.

But today I couldn’t believe it. The kids had folded and put away the laundry and were unloading the dishes! Before I woke up!

Why? They knew the deal. No going to their friend’s house to bake cake until finishing all their chores. So, their motives weren’t all lined up right. They didn’t do it out of largeness. Nor did they do it for me. After licking that wound, I jumped up and down and whooped for them!

We don’t wait to go to school until we have knowledge. That’s the point of school.
God doesn’t care why you go to Him, he just wants you there. He’ll take care of our motives.
We don’t keep off the game field until we already know how to play.

  • …We all get it.

    With my children, I’m hoping some of how I felt was noticed by them. Maybe they’ll remember some of how they felt. There was a joy in the house that a time-out just doesn’t invoke.

    Moving back to loving and liking, well, they don’t always go together either. The inherent goodness in something like that is responsible for drawing forth the other. The same force I’m counting on to move in my children. The same force I’m counting on for me when I wake up scared. When we trust that force, we’re more able to be present with what is already around us. We can say, “This is enough,” without giving up on what we still hope for.

    Self Care tip #20 – Trust what is inherent. Be a friend to yourself.

    • by

    Sunshine

    My daughter came out of her room. “I can’t sleep Mommy. I feel lonely.” Part of me wanted to run the shadows down, throttle them and take revenge. Another part of me, stopped at what I saw in her eyes. It was as if she was saying, “Am I ok?” And I felt happy with the question. I knew there was my sunshine.

    Am I ok? Am I the only one who feels this way?

    My husband and I went to hear Rob Bell talk about suffering. He had us all write down on cards “I am not alone.” Then he asked us questions about suffering. “If you have loved someone who has died, please stand.” “If you or someone you know has had cancer, please stand.” “Who here is struggling with their finances?” “If you…,” and the questions went on. Pretty soon, there wasn’t anyone in the many hundreds of people attendance not standing. We looked at each other, exposed and awkward. Our crusty’s and defenses barely in place. Then Rob Bell asked us to give our card to someone we didn’t know. He did this over and over until we realized materially, that none of us were alone. I don’t know who’s writing is on my card but it reminds me that someone(s) out there share my suffering and I theirs.

    For now, my daughter is small. For now, I hold her card. I knew what to say, and it felt like sunshine.

    You are not alone. Many people feel that way all the time and feeling that way is normal. But you can’t trust your feelings. When you feel lonely, remember what you know to be true. You are not alone.

    My daughter, looked at me and I saw that I got it right for once! We connected through something like a sliver of magic. I was so glad. She nodded, hugged and kissed and went to bed. It was dark outside but there was light in my heart.

    Self Care Tip #19 – Share your card and take one – You are not alone! Be a friend to yourself.

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    Find your Trust

    A knot of tension moving and changing and can’t be trusted is there. Tightness around the eyes and mouth and there is a grim determination not to pull the pin. The determination is supported by love, by choice, by insight, by all that is good.

    However, like a dog on a slope, paws outstretched, gripping at the pebbles and dirt, there is the gravity to account for. The mass of triggers accumulated into a planet – kids woke you up and you couldn’t fall back to sleep, emotions, people not keeping their word, your birthday was a flop, knowing that when you get past this moment there will be more and more and more. All this is a force you know you want to suppress.

    Wanting is good. But like Randy Travis sings,

    “I hear tell the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but Momma, my intentions were the best!”

    Like him, we find ourselves with wings singed, wondering how can we try something new? Whatever we’re doing isn’t working. We want heaven to start right here on earth.

    Break it down.

    There is the matter of trust. Where do we put it? Where is our hope?

    There is the matter of patterned behaviors. Have we put up roadblocks? My kids are delighted to see the growing dollars in our family money jar. They are also delighted when a day goes by when nothing went in there. I see it in their growing comfort around me.

    There is the matter of biology. Do we remember that the brain is indeed attached to the rest of our body? Do we remember that emotional health affects the rest of our body? That it is contagious to our kids and partners and families. That we can control it as well as we control our liver function. …That doesn’t mean no control.

    But today, I’d like to turn back to trust. Trying to stuff emotions can be like trying to push springs into a box. We know at some point, the lid won’t shut. We can’t trust that method.

    Each of us needs to find the answer to that question and hold on to it. That is where our energies go when we succeed. Holding on to what we trust with both hands. Then we can let the rest go. Both hands are occupied so to speak.

    This morning, I did that. The most beautiful little girl then came, cuddling me in bed, laughing and joking in a way that I knew could only mean she felt safe. I was rewarded with my own self, present with her and my source of Help. It felt like Christmas.

    There is the next moment to contend with and the next – the same way. We can put this in the category of coping skills and biology as well. The brain is messy that way. One thing affects the other.

    Self Care Tip #17 – Where is your trust? Hold on to it and nothing else. Be a friend to yourself.

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    The Paradox

    On my mind today are the unfortunate kids I have seen in clinic. One in particular whom I have treated for several years. I now realize the horror of his situation. I’m angry at myself because I have treated him for this long and didn’t realize till last week in clinic that he was being trafficked. I now understand that other kids I work with are also. He’s suffering emotional neglect in his home. It looks like his family despises him. Last week I told his Mom that I wouldn’t see them again in clinic if she didn’t go to parenting classes. I’ve also been recommending regularly that he go to a group home until things get better. I finally heard the reason that for years, she has refused. She said, “If he goes to a group home, we’re going to be homeless.” Ouch. She and hers are living on the government support they get for “taking care” of him.

    Upset, I told my husband about this form of child trafficking and he said he’s seen something similar in his profession. Whole families become homeless once their mother (government supported), dies. They don’t want her to die. It’s not the same though similar. It would be more similar if they were neglecting or abusing their mother while “taking care” of her through the dying process. That probably happens too in other families.

    To make matters more complicated, I found out from my nurse, that now the government requires the families to pay part of the group home placement to offset the costs. And if CPS is called, they just ignore it. She cited one case when CPS was called 13 times, each time stating that there was insufficient evidence. Apparently the funding to CPS has also been cut down significantly.

    Today in my son’s church school after collecting offering, the teacher prayed, “May this money go to help all the children who need You around the world.” I found my prayers were for these people. A handful of coins and dollars to help. And prayer.

    My husband‘s friend, Emilio Russ, quit his work a couple of years ago and went to the Philippines to fight child trafficking. He started a home and school for those prostituted and enslaved kids – “My Refuge House.” When he came back with his pregnant wife and 3 kids, he didn’t have a job. But they were uncomplaining and loud mouthed with praise and hope. Many months later, my husband’s friend has a job and those kids in the Philippines still have their home and school. Wow!

    Madeline L’Engle, says that we’ve forgotten how to walk on water. I’ve seen skeeters do it and I don’t think it’s that many steps away from me being able to do it. But I’ve forgotten how somehow.

    “Madeleine L’Engle understands that real art is only created when the artist gets out of the way and allows himself to be worked through, which, paradoxically, requires work on the artist’s part.”

    — AIDAN GRANO

    These states of horrible suffering call for something amazing to happen. All great work, even on our own selves allows for what I call magic. Magic of letting go, but at the same time giving all your passion and muscle. I am angry at myself for not seeing what is around me. I think in this case, that is the beginning or maybe the continuation of something magical in me. I plan on getting my water feet yet.

    Self Care Tip #15 – Embrace the paradox. Be a friend to yourself.