Today: May 17, 2020

My office

It’s taken me 5 months to sit down and write again. I have created this cozy coffee house writing space in my basement. I have everything I need, a comfortable chair, my ipad and Bluetooth keyboard, iPhone and wireless earbuds. Water is heating in the tea kettle on the stove so that I can make a chai tea latte.

My cats run and play. Shadow darts down the stairs and jumps in to the hammock we created, hiding from his sister, ready to pounce when she returns. Sunshine is no where to be found…

Life ebbs and flows

March 26 the governor declared a state of emergency and issued a shelter in place order. The corona virus had arrived in the US and fear set in across the country. The virus was spreading rapidly and people were dying. COVID 19 became a daily headline.

I suddenly had increased hours at the nursing home where I work on an as needed basis. The following weeks, I had no hours. The facility locked down, limiting new admissions, limiting the therapy caseload, limiting the need for additional therapists.

Hope

I discovered that even part time employees can collect unemployment. New federal funding and orders also now made it easier for individuals to receive unemployment due to reduced hours from corona virus. It was not so easy to get an account set up but a week later, I had one and then waited. Four weeks later, I received my first unemployment check and then I figured out how the system worked and what was required to qualify for unemployment each week. Every state has different requirements and different maximum weekly distributions. NC is one of the lowest.

North Caroline is beautiful with mountains and beaches and bass-ackwards when it comes to government programs and policies

The Times They Are A-Changin’

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’

Life will never be the same

We hear this phrase often now. I have said or thought this many times in my life during the many challenges my family has experienced. Yet, each day is a new experience and so the happenings of the prior day, render life Different.

I am both saddened and amused seeing adds on tv showing people connecting more… Parents teaching children at home, parents working from home, families spending more time together. I shake my head and wonder why it has taken a pandemic to get people to prioritize relationships and spend more time connecting.

My family has lived this way for a long time. My husband works from home and has since we decided to start a family. We have been homeschooling our children their entire lives. My husband and I have been growing a business together helping families… to connect.

Connection. And Balance

I have friends on both sides of the fence. Regarding this pandemic and government regulations and controls. We want to protect people and reduce deaths and we want the freedom to live our life. The dichotomy has contributed to the divisiveness that has been growing in the US. My personal.belief encompass both philosophies. And I wonder, why does it have to be one way or the other?

Some might say, you can’t have both.

I am hear to challenge the idea that we have to be on the side of Personal freedoms OR on the side of saving lives.

I have been concerned from day One about restrictions. I work with the elderly and confining them to their room in a nursing home or an assisted living facility can have a negative impact on their health. And keeping seniors in their homes can be detrimental to their health. Yet, these are the very people who are most at risk for complications from the virus and who suffer a higher mortality rate.

Are we merely delaying the inevitable spread of this disease?

I believe in boosting our natural immune system to fight illness and maintain health. The naturopathic medicine philosophy has been a part of my life and my immediate family for many years. Breastfeeding is the best way to begin building our immune system and far more effective than any vaccine. My younger two children never had an ear infection. I have been so much healthier since embracing this philosophy, including improving my diet and using foods to boost my immune system.

How do we allow for the freedom to live our life and protect the vulnerable population, minimize their risk for serious illness and death.

If we all followed a naturopathy philosophy of health, would a quarantine be necessary? Allowing personal freedoms means allowing people to make their own choices when it comes to their health, even if it means they choose things that diminish their physical health. We all choose things that are not in our best interests at some time in our life. We are human and living in this physical experience.

What if we looked at this pandemic from a spiritual perspective?

I think we might label it in a different way then by calling it a pandemic. From a spiritual perspective we could refer to this time as…

The time we became so wrapped into our physical expression of our body that we both lost sight of our higher purpose and also reconnected with our inner selves

It needs a shorter title, or does it?

We live in a culture of quick fixes, instant responses and fear inducing headlines.

From a spiritual perspective, I can see that I still have the freedom to live and be who I am even within the restrictions on entering the community. I can be my true self despite the government regulations and control. Yet, when I think of parenting and raising children, I see it differently. As adults, this is only a small period of time in our life but for our children, this is their childhood. How they experience life has an impact on how they develop and limiting their experiences can have a detrimental affect on their mental health.

Any drastic change, sudden change or disruption to our routine can have a detrimental affect on our mental health, for all of us, no matter our age. It can and does also impact our physical health as well as our mental health in a cyclical manner.

I invite you to share your perspective. I challenge you to find a blending of the needs of personal freedoms and protecting the vulnerable. Please share. I would love to revisit this idea with the input from others. Respond in comments or feel free to private message me if you prefer to be anonymous.

I leave you with these thought provoking lyrics as you contemplate. These words are even more powerful listening to Kenny Loggins sing them:

Where are the dreams that we once had?
This is the time to bring them back.
What were the promises caught on the tips of our tongues?
Do we forget or forgive?
There’s a whole other life waiting to be lived when…
One day we’re brave enough
To talk with Conviction of the Heart.
And down your streets I’ve walked alone,
As if my feet were not my own
Such is the path I chose, doors I have opened and closed
I’m tired of living this life,
Fooling myself, believing we’re right, when…
I’ve never given love
With any Conviction of the Heart
One with the earth, with the sky
One with everything in life
I believe we’ll survive
If we only try…
How long must we wait to change
This world bound in chains that we live in
To know what it is to forgive,
And be forgiven?
It’s been too many years of taking now.
Isn’t it time to stop somehow?
Air that’s too angry to breathe, water our children can’t drink
You’ve heard it hundreds of times
You say your aware, believe, and you care, but…
Do you care enough
To talk with Conviction of the Heart?

Many thanks to Bob Dylan, Kenny Loggins, Azlyrics, YouTube, and to all of you who read and share my posts.

December 4, 2019

Five weeks ago I was sitting in a hospital room waiting on results.

Five weeks ago my concern was that they were going to send my husband home from the hospital with no answers.

I left the hospital that morning to take my youngest to a therapy appointment.

I did not know I would return to find out he had failed his stress test.

I did not know the critical care ambulance would be driving him to the main hospital.

To Presbyterian main where he spent 12 days recovering from his heart attack 8 years earlier.

I did not know he would undergo coronary artery bypass graft surgery, CABG,

Open heart surgery

On November 1,2019, my husband had open heart surgery

His heart was exposed

His heart was stopped, his lungs were deflated, he was intubated and put on a heart and lung machine while they replaced his clogged arteries

The arteries that supply blood to his heart so that the heart can beat

So the heart can beat and send blood to the lungs and to the body

So he can live

Genetics,

And stress

Stress

Stress can wreak havoc on the body

He does not look like a man with heart disease

He never has

He is tall and thin

Unlike his cardio thoracic surgeon who has a large gut

Ironic

His surgeon was wonderful and even personal

We are grateful for him

Yet, it has been hard for me to look at all the overweight people

To see obese people in the hospital waiting rooms, in the cafeteria

Not the people in the hospital beds, but the ones visiting

And wonder why my husband is the one with heart disease

It is what it is

The past month has been a whirlwind

Driving, waiting, wondering

Juggling responsibilities as a parent, as a wife, as an employee

Driving my family members to appointments and making sure the kids were fed

Being there at the hospital most hours of the day to hear what the doctors had to say

Accommodating the lack of schedule in the hospital

Managing my two prn jobs, where I work as needed

Canceling work hours and trying to find work hours

The game is continuous

The flexibility is my life line

The flexibility is a must for being the mom I choose to be

For being a homeschool parent

For putting my family first, making parenting my top priority

I used to say, if I could only get paid to be a parent

Now, I have that opportunity.

Don and I have spent hours developing our program for families

We have given presentations and spoken to groups of parents

We have been growing our business

To help families who have challenges, where anxiety resides in the home

For families with children with behavior issues

For families looking for a better way to help their children thrive

On October 1, when I lost nearly all of my regular hours at my primary job,

I declared to the universe that I was ready

I said, “I am all in”

I knew it was time to give 100% to growing our business

To my writing, growing my blogs and working toward that book I will write

To spending more time growing our business, speaking and finding clients

I need to continue working at my “jobs” as we grow our business

Yet, the stress of finding hours and dealing with the latest change in reimbursement for therapy services at skilled nursing rehabilitation facilities

The second change of its kind in the course of my 27 year career as an Occupational Therapist

I declared the stress of all of this, the job stress, behind me

I have bigger and better things growing and am working toward

No longer depending on that income to support my family

Live is so unpredictable

When I was a child, I used to find my life

Boring

Most children declare that sentence often,

“I’m bored.”

My life now is anything but boring

I joke about wishing I was bored

I am going within

I am going within to find the strength and fearlessness that I felt on October 1

When I declared to the universe, “I am all in”

Maybe Don undergoing urgent, but not emergent bypass surgery

Is what we needed to dive fully into our business

Now his heart can function better

Now his arteries are free and clear

Now we know he has at least 10 or 20 years of life…or more

Now we can live more freely

I have gotten wrapped back into the stress over the past several weeks

As I have poured time and energy into finding work hours

Finding hours to make up for missed hours

Finding work hours to meet our expenses, or at least not completing deplete our savings

The savings we had build while I worked 30-40 hours all summer

Today

Today, I declare to the universe once again

I am all in

I am ready to dive back into my chosen life

I am ready to stop the life of getting through the days

I am ready to begin to live with more intention

I am ready to live the life I choose

I am a writer

I am a parent

I am a wife and a partner to an amazingly strong and resilient man

I am a parenting coach, a behavior transformation specialist

I am a business owner, a co-owner of

Focused Healthy Family

Even amounts the chaos that life can bring,

Our vision and intentions for our family have focus and purpose

We might lose sight of our core values and beliefs from time to time

Yet, we have done the work and continue to do the work

To be the best parents we can be, to empower our children to be the best they can be

Our desire and our mission for our business is…

To help other families find and achieve greater harmony and balance in their own homes

To live with intention, connection, and respect

To collaborate with their children

To have coping strategies to deal with anxiety and other challenges

To find the life that works best them, so that each member of the family can be empowered to be fully who they are

Life will still be messy at times

We will make mistakes

Life is unpredictable

How we handle life is the key

We can learn to respond to life challenges

Instead of reacting to the challenges,

Instead of reacting to our children’s behavior

We can choose our words and our actions

We can choose a new way of parenting

And live a more empowered and healthy life with our children.

Freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, “the right to protest for right”

I read Martin Luther King Jr.’s last speech this morning in honor of his passing 50 years ago: April 4, 1968.

His last speech was delivered in Memphis, Tenn on April 3, 1968. I visited the Loraine motel several years ago with my family and visited the museum in honor of him. He had great influence on the America of today, the America where Barack Obama was elected President. I want to honor him and his life.

Reading his last speech was more powerful than I could have imagined.

His words in his final speech are powerful right now in light of all the challenges we face today.

And as I read these words, I thought about the teens who are protesting and marching today for change because of the large numbers of people who have been killed by gun violence, the children who have died while attending school.

And I have thought about the people who call the youth of today names and make comments about their marching and protesting, telling them to “go home” and “do something more productive”, implying that they are not worthy of the rights of all Americans.

Martin Luther King Jr. said these words after the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

He said them in Memphis, Tennessee on April 3, 1968 because of the sanitation workers strike due to poor pay and dangerous working conditions and the death of workers Echol Cole and Robert Walker who died in garbage compactors.

This great man spoke out in the places where great injustices were happening.

All we say to America is, “Be true to what you said on paper.” If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they hadn’t committed themselves to that over there. But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of the press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right. And so just as I say, we aren’t going to let any injunction turn us around. We are going on.

Watch this part of his speech, the end of it here:

.youtube.com/watch

If this great man were alive today…

I can only imagine the great things he would be doing if he were alive today.

He inspired many people and inspired great change in America.

Now is the time for more inspiration.

For great change is needed.

To all the young people of the United States of America,

I say this to you

Speak up

Speak out

March and protest peacefully

Words are more powerful than guns

Words are more powerful than violence

Words can change the world.

Letting Go of “My Story”… of loss

Grief is a multi-faceted response to loss, particularly to the loss of someone or something to which a bond was formed. Although conventionally focused on the emotional response to loss, it also has physical, cognitive, behavioral, social, and philosophical dimensions. While the terms are often used interchangeably, bereavement often refers to the state of loss, and grief to the reaction to loss.- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grief

Yes, I just quoted Wikipedia, this is my blog, not a research paper.

I choose that definition because of the last statement ” grief”  “the reaction to loss”.

Merriam- Webster defines it as “deep sadness especially for the loss of someone or something loved”.

Sadness is a reaction to the loss. There are many other reactions to loss, other feelings and states of being.  I think they are missing something.  I personally think Wikipedia does a much better job of defining it than Merriam-Webster.  It is muti- faceted.

And I am going to go one step further and define it as reaction to change in one’s life.

We can grieve the loss of a job, change in our financial situation, change in our life roles, and so many other large and small changes in our life.

Change

It’s time for a change…

Today, I decided to let go of my story of loss.  I wrote out all of my losses over the past several years, all the big ones, and decided I would let go of “my story of loss”.  What does that mean? I don’t know but what comes to mind is Debbie Ford.  And so I googled to jog my memory and found this:

http://www.debbieford.com/media/NewAgeRetailerArticle.pdf

The following is taken from an article in the  New Age Retailer from Jan/ FEb 2007.  The author and editor in chief is Kathy McGee.

You will find the following starting on the bottom left of page 5:

The interviewer, McGee asks Debbie Ford how does she get rid of her self- criticism and self- doubt.

Debbie Ford replies:

I haven’t gotten rid of it.  When I dip into my story (the negative internal dialogue that keeps us stuck), it’s there anytime I want to revisit it.  It’s part of the collective unconscious, it’s part of our humanity. But today, I know that’s the inside of my story.

When I feel like I’m being self-critical or insecure, I know that I’m deeply in my humanity. Inside our humanity, inside our story, it’s all fear-based.  We compare ourselves, think there’s something wrong with us- we’re not smart enough, pretty enough, don’t have the right whatever.

I try to pop myself out of my story and into my divine self.  I ask myself, “What do I have to do right now?  Do I need to get on my hands and knees and pray?  Do I need to meditate?”  it’s as simple as asking, “If I totally trusted and were in connection with the Divine right now, what would I hear?”  Start to listen to that new frequency, and it raises you right out of your story.

I think what you just asked me is so vital to the process, because most people are trying to get rid of their self-doubt, their self-criticism, and their fears.  you can’t get rid of it.  It’s part of your humanity.

And then the interviewer, McGee, sums up the rest of it when she adds, “And by trying to get rid of it, we’re creating more fear and digging ourselves deeper into our story.”

And Debbie goes on about fear saying that it is a healthy emotion.  She says to identify the feeling of fear and ask what it looks like, what it feels like in order to give fear its own personality, different from your own.

“Anything we are identified with has control over us. So, if you’re just scared and in fear, fear has total control.  If you can make it separate from yourself, you will have control over it.  If you give fear a different name, face, smell, color, or size from yours, it becomes something other than you.  You can say, “OK fear, I see you.  What do you need from me to lie down and be peaceful?””

Today, I wrote the post, What Does it all mean?, and now I can understand that I was “in my humanity”.  I was also in my story and therefore in fear.  What is wonderful is that I have a better understanding of what it means to “let go of my story”.  I have only read Debbie Ford’s First book, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers, but here I am understanding better what I sought to do when I first posted the title for this blog.  The beauty is that I had no idea where I would go with this when I wrote the title.  I only knew that I was in fact, ready to let go of my story of loss.  I used prior knowledge and found my answer.

I don’t have to get rid of my story but I can move away from it. I can also see when I am “in my story” and use my tools to step outside of it if I choose.  No matter what, I don’t have to beat myself up about any of it.  I can be ok with being in my story and with choosing to move out of it.  Because I choose, when I am consciously choosing, to move out of fear, I know that I can have more moments of moving out of my story and stepping back from it.  Even Debbie Ford, author of 7 books, speaker and founder of a Life Coaching Business, admits to still  having dark days.  It is a process.

Conscious Parenting: Reaffirming my Parenting Choices: Looking back on the early months when we first realized our daughter was suffering with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder ( 2010)

I wrote the following post in summer of 2010. I was a week away from beginning an online 7 steps group to empower me to be the person I wanted to be. For me, that involved writing and being a better parent.

Reading it now over 8 years later, it reminds me of how the challenges of having a child with a mental illness has both shaped my parenting and helped me to be more of the parent I choose to be. Yet, the automatic reaction response method of parenting still permeates me even to this day. It is a continual process of being more conscious in my choices, in how I speak to my children and how I handle difficult situations.

Writing through my experiences helps me both in the moment and years later when I reflect back on where I have been.

I encourage everyone to stop and write even just a few words or sentences on a regular basis. Writing can be very revealing and healing. Even when I write a blog, I often don’t know what I have to say until it has been written. I write for myself and if it helps even one other person, then it is worth the extra effort to continue my public blog.

Here is the post as I wrote it (with minor grammatical corrections) from about July of 2010:

I have been working on my parenting skills but know that working on myself will help me be the parent I would like to be. I have had a very difficult year. My 8y/o daughter’s already difficult nightime issues got much worse and escalated around April and May to full blown OCD. It has been the most difficult thing I have ever gone through. She is my middle child. I too am a middle child and always wanted 4 children to avoid having a “middle child” but here I am at age 40 with a 12, soon to be 13 y/o son;8 year old; and an 18 month old son and I can’t imagine having another child now.
I know this course is about ourselves but this experience with my daughter in many ways has been like a mirror of my own issues, a magnifying glass better descries it because I feel what she is going through feels like my issues magnified. I have never had an OCD episode like she has been having and as tough as it is for me, I know it is even more difficult for her. Yet, I see OCD tendencies in myself and my family of origin as well as my immediate family like my oldest son and my husband. But in different ways for everyone. One of the most common threads is the black or white thinking…right or wrong, this way or not at all.
I have been learning so much about myself while helping my daughter and feel the experience is helping me be a better parent. Yet, f I could take away what she is going through, I would do it in a heart beat because it has been heart wrenching for all of us and disruptive to our family. The pain of seeing her go through this makes all of my labor pain combined from 3 births seam like nothing. Ironic because my daughter’s birth was the easiest and as close to pain free except for transition as I could imagine a birth being. It was wonderful. And when I think about the day she was born which was the most empowering day in my life, I tear up. She was so perfect at birth and I know spiritually she is still perfect yet it is hard not to blame myself for mistakes and things that could have contributed to her serious OCD episode. And sad, that her childhood now includes this traumatic, difficult experience. Traumatic because of my and my husbands reactions to her behavior as we were going through the worst of it.
I was supposed to be the kind of parent I never had, attentive, available, emotionally nurturing and affirming, as well as respectful and supportive of her choices and interests and decisions. And I thought I was being those things most of the time. And yet, here she is going through something more difficult than I went through as a child. Its painful to see your child go through something like this. And then, finding advice and experts that match my nutritional beliefs and my parenting beliefs is an extra challenge in finding help for her. The experience has pushed me into being the kind of parent I have aspired to be and it is a continual journey of rethinking how I have done things and stopping the automatic reactions and stopping my (automatic parent voice in my head) . And then for a day or two she seams like her old self and it feels so good that I think unconsciously, I want to act like the OCD thing never happened and I easily fall into old habbits and then I get reminded with a slap in the face to continue to pay attention and know this is a journey and she will come through this but it may be slow .
It feels so good to write about all of this and really good because she is asleep at my side right now and her arm is outstretched and pressing against my side. She fell asleep next to me but not touching me. I like when she is asleep near me and I know she is alright. Her sleeping and falling asleep before 11PM is truly amazing and wonderful given our night experiences over the past several months. I need to remind myself how wonderful it is that we read together and then she turned off the light and went to sleep. And on my other side is my toddler, Jason, asleep as well after nursing. And Jason asleep is beautiful too as he is a very active, busy and noisy little boy. And I love him for it. And I love my daughter, Abby, for who she is, animal lover, kind and generous soul, stubborn and opinionated and patient and fun loving with her little brother and full of energy and motion, a dancer and social butterfly. I do love her for who she is and it may be hard to understand but I needed the reminder.