“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.” -Dr. Suess

Earlier today, I was thinking about  something I learned in my Cross Cultural Psychology Class: mental health practitioners in Asian culture focus just as much on physical ailments in their diagnosis and treatment as they do the purely emotional symptomology. 

In American psychology we call this “somaticizing” and tend to treat it as a separate disorder all its own.  Hmm. Interesting. It got me thinking.

The mental and the physical: how can you separate the two, really? 

I really don’t think you can.

In the past year, here are some of the unusual things that have happened to my body.  I once  lost 10 pounds in 2 days (and gained later them back in the same amount of time). I have shivered while sweating clean through my clothes (without any physical activity). I have experienced severe panic, difficulty breathing,  almost daily headaches, jaw soreness, nausea, irritability, fatigue and for awhile my hair was falling out all over the place.

This probably sounds like I have some weird disease right? This is all nothing, compared to the feelings my body has tried to contain from the grief I have been experiencing over the loss of my mom.  But really, it’s not too hard to connect the dots between what I have been feeling and what’s been going on with me physically. The rapid, initial weight loss followed the two days after my mom died. My stomach hurt, and I could not eat.  I’m know the stress totally screwed my hormones up for awhile. This contributed to the headaches I have always experienced. Additionally, I have had a lot of grief nightmares which lead to the jaw grinding. This also makes the headaches worse.  When your body experiences significant stress, it is not too uncommon to experience a lot of hair fall three months later.

All connected. 

I’m still dealing with the headaches and fatigue, but I’ve been taking better care of myself and am doing much better than I was. I have found that the best thing to do was give myself permission to just “be”.  Since my job requires me to be “up” so much, I have to have some quiet, some “down.”  I am not tutoring after school this year.  Most days, I am not staying late to plan or arrange anything. I am reading more for fun and writing more. For awhile, I was doing some yoga stretches everyday (need to get back to that) and it was very relaxing. I have been eating very clean and supplementing my diet with Shaklee vitamins. 

Dane and I took a ballroom dance class together. We paint together sometimes in the evenings. We do more things just because they are fun things to do.  I’m not an open book to most people (you probably wouldn’t know that from my blog) but I have a few friends in my life now who have been so nurturing and healing.

It’s interesting, because many of these things aren’t usually prescribed to cure the physical, but taking care of myself  on all levels has relieved many of my physical symptoms. I also feel that being more balanced has helped me to cope with my emotional grief in a healthier way.  

Futhermore, the habits I have adapted to take better time for myself are things I have always been pulled towards.  It’s kind of funny that, in taking time to not “do so much,” I have found myself doing the things that matter to me most. Family. Friends. Creativity. Peaceful time. Adventure. I’m sure the list differs for everyone. Also, my work isn’t suffering. I feel a lot more able to perform than I did in the fall, when I would just come home and crash completely.

 All this without even getting into the spiritual element.  I’m not going to give you a Sunday school answer. My spiritual life has been uncomfortable. I’ve thought a lot more about what real love means, and a lot more about eternity. Big picture. Small picture. Big callings. Little callings. Why are we here? God loves me even though I’m selfish. I know I am. I know He still does.  I’d be lying if I said that I haven’t been angry with God over the last several months.  However, I also would be lying if I claimed to believe that God actually deserves my anger. I know that He doesn’t.  He’s God. I also know that He can handle my hurt and confusion with Him.  There are beautiful things in this nightmare, even though I’m not sure what they are yet.   I have faith that there are things that I just don’t understand, and can’t understand.  

There is a word in ancient Hebrew that can be translated into English as “nephesh.”   It is kind of like your soul, heart, mind, altogether, but even that’s not really it. It is the essential “youness” of you. Everything that makes you up.I just don’t think we can separate the “youness” (that’s what I’m going to keep calling it).  I especially don’t think we can do this when it comes to any kind of healing.  

 

In America we have such a “get it done” mindset.  We are machines who can do anything as long as we have a cup of coffee in hand and are well-dressed and on time. We don’t need sleep. We have to pick and  choose between what's left over after work: family life, social life, spiritual life, physical fitness. Some items will not make the cut. We have this tendency to be so business- minded, for our own “success”, that we lose track of what is really successful in terms of being a complete person.   

We treat physical sickness without addressing the state of the soul (check any hospital). We try to address the soul without considering the state of the mind (this is a tough question, and more than long enough for another post or thousand posts: how does the one’s mental state affect his/her spiritual life?). We judge the mind without compassion for the body (“Don’t go near that hobo. He’s crazy”…. “You don’t have to worry about talking to John. He’s a little weird since he got back from the war. PTSD.”)

I’m learning to accept people as a complicated creation-a piece of music, perhaps- which cannot be compartmentalized.  Every instrument, every note played (or not played) by that instrument affects the overall experience.  We are not just our bodies, or minds, or feelings.  We are even more than all three of those categories affecting one another.  We are not machines, and our actions and malfunctions are completely unpredictable. Therefore, it just seems obvious to me that the  things which hurt our very beings need to be addressed on every level possible, and not just one.

 

I’m open to thoughts, comments, criticisms, donations, whatever.

Being Mrs. Doubtfire

Today was the first day back to teaching, and it was a whirlwind of being properly dressed, arriving on time, giving information out (but not too much today), juggling a thousand questions that all seem to be asked at once, making a giant mess of papers on my desk and following little men around with a constant outpour of words flowing from my lips.

Things like:

“Do you have your agenda?”

“Are you reading?”

“WHAT are you READING?!”

“What did you do over break?”

“Can you please throw your lunch wrappers away before you switch classes? I am not yo maid”

“No parkour inside the classroom. Get up off the wall….”

  When I have my own kids, I will let them jump around like monkeys sometimes if they need to. Sometimes I let my school kids jump around like monkeys, but it has to be strictly monitored-there are many of them, after all. Could be dangerous.

There is only one of me, however, so I allow myself to jump around like a monkey sometimes.

No monkey jumping today though. It’s a brand new, shiny semester, which means it is time to start things off on the right foot. Time to lay down the law.

That being said, I get annoyed with myself being so rule-oriented at school because it’s not really a natural part of my personality.  

I am reminded of one of my all-time favorite movies,a cinematic epic of the highest achievement…

Mrs. Doubtfire.

 Please tell me you’ve seen it? If you haven’t, here’s the sum up.

Daniel Hillard loves his kids and just wants to play. However, after his childlike approach to parenthood (and marriage) finally goes too far, he becomes separated from his kids by an uncomfortable divorce. 

He must put on the wig, he must put on the dress. He must assume the  general -like persona of a no-nonsense British nanny. 

He must become “Mrs. Doubtfire,”  his own  kids’ new nanny. 

This allows Daniel to spend some much-needed time with his children. However, he knows that his previous methods of parenting won’t cut it by Mrs. Doubtfire standards,so he must learn how to properly look after his children (as well as himself!)

By the end of the film, Daniel has managed to reconcile both sides of himself, becoming at once the fun-loving dad as well as a pulled-together adult. 

I'm not sure how applicable this is to everyone working in a kid-focused workplace, but for me, here's how it applies.

Sometimes I feel an incredible urge to be a beginning-of-the-movie Daniel Hillard (though I rein it in usually).

 Most of the time, I find myself to be more like a Daniel Hillard watching from behind the sterner mask of Mrs. Doubtfire (but loose enough to dance like crazy with the vacuum-cleaner).

See here if you don't know what I mean by that:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuqYNx8zaXM

Sometimes I am the Daniel Hillard at the end of the movie, having found my inner child and sensible adult working together in perfect synchrony.  I guess that’s the goal of working with kids, that's what you really want.

Except for, you know, the weird cross-dressing, don’t-tell- your- kids- it’s –really- you- stuff. 

I think Robin Williams is really the only one who can pull that off without coming off as a complete creeper.

Yeah, Dane won't let me watch that movie any more times.

Winter Magic

Fog drifts through the black toothpick trees outside until it’s impossible to see where they begin to grow up from the ground and where they taper off into the sky. 
The marble-colored fog has a slightly blueish hue, a reflection of the brilliant twilight above.
I inhale deeply and note the scent that comes this kind of night, the sharp metallic smell of ice edged with smoke.

I am glad leave the porch and return to the sitting room, to curl up in an armchair by the roaring fire with my book. Through the window, I watch the bitter cold creep into the woods.  I am a soldier armed for battle, secure in my refuge, anticipating that mystical event that has been rumored to occur in wars of this nature..

 the white magic

-beautiful, intricate, delicate, powerful-

 Snow. 

Upon waking

100 days- Day 2

I have a lot of dreams with my mom in them that leave me waking up to confusion. In some dreams, everything is normal and she is just there, participating. Sometimes it is only that way until I realize, within it all, that it is unusual for her to be there.  I talk to her about this when it happens, and she just nods and gives me a sympathetic smile, “You’re right” she might say, or “I know.” Sometimes she hugs me tight and I can feel the soft warmness of her and smell her smell as I feel her arms around me and my face pressed into her shoulder.

She’s in my thoughts when I first wake up in the morning, not ready to open my eyes yet. I know if I open my eyes and see the framed picture of her sitting on my dresser, it is real.  It really happened.

There are mornings when I keep my eyes closed extra-long after waking, wanting to look at the dream, not the picture on the dresser.

100 words, 100 days

 I'm not promising clearcut topics or well-made points or great storytelling. I'm not even promising correct spelling! I just would like to give this 100 words a day thing a shot!

The CD “Celtic Tides: A Musical Odyssey” stood out among the 75 other Celtic CDs on the display rack at the antique store today.  It has a funky, hippy kind of cover with bright colors against a black backdrop. It was only $2. I imagined, for some reason, that all of the stuff in that particular section of the store (one of those places where people purchase stalls in which to display their wares) had belonged to an eccentric old man who had just passed away. He was of Irish descent and his relatives were rednecks who did not understand his Celtic jam nor tendency to collect random soundtracks such as the score from Ghostbusters, so they had brought the eclectic selection of music and labeled everything $2. Simple enough. 

 I just popped  in “Celtic Tides” , and it’s quite a jammer. It’s Celtic,( kind of), but also (kind of) techno, bluegrass and pop (judging only from the first track of course). Just now, my musical experience is made even more interesting by the fact that Dane has put on display, in the background, a muted documentary called “The Life of Mammals."  The combination makes for quite an interesting music video. 

 Dane does things like this, on purpose, very often.  I believe he is this way for a very simple reason.

 His brain is a mutant. 

However, his mutant brain clicks with mine and I believe that Dr. Seuss would take that to mean that I love him. On which point, Dr. Seuss would be correct.

I like this wickedly weird CD. To take matters further, I think I would have liked that old man, if indeed he ever existed.