living a small, slow life in a small, slow town and loving every minute of it...please join my journal about aging, overcoming c-PTSD, living with chronic illness, and being creative in spite of it all.
For the first fifty-five years of my adult life, or so, I was in the habit of saying “we just have to survive February.” All bets were off in February…if we made plans, I might show up…might not. All expectations of any kind of productivity were off the agenda. We got done what we got done, and that was that. No resolutions (silly) and certainly no diets – fortheloveofgod. Never mind trying to thrive. Survive it. Celebrate the first of March – you made it. Bonus!
Born and raised in Michigan, I am used to bitter cold, dark winters. I’ve even come to appreciate them. But about 2 or 3 years ago now I noticed a shift. February became January. Maybe it’s global warming. Maybe the poles shifted just a smidge. Maybe the planets aligned different in the heavens. I don’t care. January is much harder than February now. By February I’m noticing the days inching their way tentatively toward longer. I swear after this recent solstice the days got shorter, not longer. It has been a particularly dark winter with precious little sunshine.
So I will honor my body and rest. But deep inside something is beginning to sprout…
Unless you have spent time in a cold, dark climate during a snowstorm, you might not have had the privilege of experiencing total, profound silence. As it happens, I live on a famous scenic highway (M22) in northwestern lower Michigan, very close to the big lake. But I am between two small villages that are summer resort destinations and on a blustery day like today hours go by without a vehicle passing. There is the occasional snow plow, for which we are grateful. I hear the furnace click on and the refrigerator run if I happen to be in the kitchen. Otherwise, nothing. It is blissful.
Right now, almost the middle of January, we have about two feet of snow on the ground. Snow acts as a buffer. The days are dusky at best, grey…and so very peaceful. Soft. Otherworldly. Magical. The nights are loud because of the coyotes. But the days are absolutely silent. I treasure this time. I wouldn’t trade it for all the sunshine in the world. This is my heaven.
It has taken nearly seventy years for me to come to this appreciation. When I was younger and always scrambling to catch up it was torture. Dull. Barren, bereft of life. Now I see the contrast of the birches against the bank of conifers through the huge white flurries, and am delighted. Of course, I am also retired and not digging myself out of a drift to white-knuckle it to work late…so I guess everything is relative.
I need this silence now. I’m realizing that the last year took a toll on me. This feels like a reprieve, a moment to catch my breath and renew my strength. Since we are addressing this room full of elephants this week, let me confess what I am only now coming to know: the last election broke me. It broke my heart. All my grief has come to light. It was a metaphorical – and perhaps actual – wake up call; a turning point. The world will never be the same.
And I need to incorporate this shift into my psyche, to pivot. To turn my attention elsewhere and learn to see the world otherwise. I will focus my newly committed attention on beauty. I will find the magic in living a heart-focused present. I will live in love – with my life, with all of nature, with the few souls I trust, and with the silence. I will appreciate every moment. Because I can no longer look outward for any indication of peace, for any encouragement that mankind is evolving or waking up or remotely interested in a better world. I can no longer be emotionally invested.
And I can only believe that this new approach is a healing. It’s a good thing. Now is the definitive divide between third and fifth dimensional reality, and although I have lost a lot and will surely lose more, I will not look back. I will sit perfectly still for now. For now I am winter.
Okay. Let’s address the elephant in the room. Actually, there is an entire herd gathering. It’s getting crowded in here…the most recent elephant is my ADHD diagnosis. I’ve been gonna talk about it, but I’m still figuring it out. When the doctor and I talked I had just started back on an antidepressant and was in for a three week consult. I was not feeling a whole lot better, which is to say that I was still having trouble functioning. Just that morning I had made a pot of coffee and forgot to put the carafe under the spout; coffee poured out everywhere before I noticed. My doctor was adamant that I give the ADHD medication a try, but suggested we postpone the start of that another three weeks. That way I was not introducing two new medications in less than a six week span. Sounded wise to me.
So I had my first dose of generic Adderall yesterday. I didn’t feel any different. Perhaps a tiny bit more able to focus – I am writing here, after all. That hasn’t been happening easily for weeks now. I will have to keep you posted on progress. I will say that the ADHD diagnosis has been a huge thing to come to terms with. I don’t want it. It feels like something that I would associate with children or young adults, and it’s embarrassing. But man oh man…it rather explains a lot. Like, my whole life. I think the hardest part to accept is how profoundly different my life might have been if this had come to light sooner.
I am seventy years old. Relationships have been hard all of my life. I am a classic under-achiever, often procrastinating important deadlines until the last minute and then exhausting myself to meet them. Anxiety has been a lifelong companion. It was my Mother’s lifelong companion, and all four of my siblings. Out of seven people in my biological family I am the only one without substance addictions, and the only one who never smoked cigarettes. I have a son, a niece and two nephews. They all have it, I’m sure; the younger two were treated with Ritalin in grade school, which was a new treatment 20 years ago.
All of us, all four generations if I include my grandparents, exhibit the symptoms. And it is debilitating. I have seen counselors all of my adult life, so for the better part of fifty years. I have gone on and off antidepressants with mediocre results. It is entirely possible that all of this dysfunction and struggle could have been alleviated to some degree with the diagnosis and treatment of ADHD. But it’s relatively new for doctors and therapists, especially to address in older women.
There will be follow up with a specialist I must wait to see, and I will explore all the options for treatment and hopefully find something natural that will help. But I will seek help. I will always seek to be ever-increasingly healthier mentally and physically. Regardless of age, I will always seek to improve myself, my life skills, and my quality of life. That’s a given. I hope the same is true for you. Let’s get well and then let’s get better!
“If ever there was a story without a shadow it would be this: that we as women exist in direct sunlight only. When women were birds, we knew our greatest freedom was in taking flight at night when we could steal the heavenly darkness for ourselves, navigating through the intelligence of stars and the constellations of our own making in the delight and terror of our uncertainty.” – Terry Tempest Williams
“I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.” – Galileo
For decades I’ve been told that I am hard on myself. I’m not convinced. I am unequivocally uninterested in lowering my standards. For anyone. Including myself. If anything, I think that I let myself off the hook too easily.
But perhaps they are referring to my self talk. It isn’t nice. I once had a telephone conversation with my sister about my other sister. She said, “I’d much rather talk to you. At least you don’t start your sentences with ‘you know what your problem is?” I replied, “No. But I do often end them with, ‘what were you thinking, you stupid idiot??!!!!!” We laughed.
How do you talk to yourself? Do you know? Do you catch yourself saying things you wouldn’t say to anyone else? I often start my self talk with, “well, if you’re so smart…” followed by whatever the current mess happens to be.
I will say this changed a great deal when I was so sick a few years ago. I was hospitalized with Lyme disease, and I was in the worst pain I had ever experienced. Intravenous Dilaudid (morphine) was not helping and I could do nothing but lay as still as possible, tears flowing down my cheeks, barely breathing. I remember thinking that I had never been in that much pain. Now mind you, I gave birth to a 9.6 pound baby completely naturally. I’ve had laparoscopic surgery with no anesthesia, and extensive dental work without novocaine. None of those things touched the pain from the Lyme infection.
The nurses who were caring for me that week were so enormously kind. It was dramatic and astonishing to me how different it felt. I felt like a little child being nurtured by a kind and loving caretaker – and I had to admit to myself that I had no conscious memory of ever feeling that way before. I left the hospital days later just wanting to learn how to live more softly. Wanting a softer life. Not an easier life, but softer in all the ways possible. I wanted to eat softer – more fresh fruits and green veggies. And lay in softer, warmer, sheets and blankets. I wanted to move slowly through the world; quietly. I wanted to speak in whispers. Kindnesses…just kindnesses…
I was changed. Sickness does that. Grief does that. I lost a lot of weight that summer; I shed a lot of grief. I have to admit today that I have fallen back into a lifelong habit of being rather unforgiving with myself, let alone others. And I am not happy about that. But today I am reminded that I want to live softly. I need to learn to live softly. I want to find my magic again. Magic is soft. Magic is kind. Magic is a sweet child skipping through the world in awe of life.
I love my life. What do you need to love your life today? Do you have any idea how magical you are?! You are. And I appreciate you.
There is a part of me that thinks I must be really stupid. How on earth could I get to be seventy years of age and just now be figuring myself out?! It wasn’t until I was well into adulthood, into my thirties certainly, before I began to realize that my life wasn’t all light and love. I thought I had a magical childhood. And there is much truth in that. In many ways it was.
And there was trauma. I wouldn’t even catch a glimpse of that until the lives of my siblings began to unravel. In my twenties I divorced my son’s father. He was a drunk, and a mean and ornery one. But in my mind, I had made a bad choice. He was a bad guy. It was all his fault. None of that had anything to do with me. But it did, of course.
I stayed single for many years. Not because I wanted to; I just kept meeting losers. In that time I began to look at alcoholism. It was pervasive in my family, and seemingly in my friends as well. My siblings were drinking and drugging and they couldn’t seem to keep jobs or housing. They were all struggling to function. I understood there was a problem. I wanted to understand the common denominator. Alcohol became the scapegoat, the cause of all their difficulties. I didn’t drink, so I didn’t have a problem. I was alright; the world was all wrong.
When yet another of my romantic relationships went south, I sought out a therapist. There seemed to be a pattern emerging here. And that brilliant woman kicked me out at the end of the first session. She told me to get my butt to some ACOA meetings before I made another appointment with any counselor. What the heck was ACOA?
Days later I walked into a church to attend a free meeting, just to see what it was about. ACOA. Adult Children of Alcoholics. There were a few people bustling about, setting flyers on each of the seats. I picked one up as I sat and looked at it. “Adult children of alcoholics guess at what normal behavior is.” That first sentence was a gut punch. And my first clue.
But over the next decade or so, as my self awareness began to be explored and expanded, I would come to see that alcoholism was not the problem, but a symptom. A symptom of a deep psychosis that had been passed down from generation to generation, likely for centuries.
It was only the first symptom I would see. I would learn about fetal alcohol syndrome, and see evidence of that throughout my family. There was some sort of actual brain damage. Then I learned about autism, and saw it everywhere I looked. In my 60’s a counselor diagnosed me with Complex PTSD. And then I learned about narcissism – and narcissistic abuse became a huge piece of the puzzle. And most recently being diagnosed with ADHD. That’s enlightening. The dominoes fall, one by one.
If I continue to be lucky and stay healthy, I presume that I will likely run out of life before the puzzle is complete. This is a lifelong discovery. And it is coming full circle. I wasn’t wrong about having had a wonderful childhood; it was just not the full picture. I want the full picture.
What I now hope for more than anything is that I recover the magic of my childhood. Because I now understand that my magical childhood wasn’t an imaginary construct. It wasn’t fragile. It wasn’t fleeting. It was me. I was the magic.
You are the magic in your life. Let’s explore how we know this, and how this works in the days and weeks to come…
Recently, in my never ending search for more input, I stumbled upon the PBS Masterpiece Mystery called The Marlow Murder Club. I’m obsessed, for several reasons. I’ve watched the existing 4 episodes of season 1 twice now. I almost always watch every episode at least twice of any show that I enjoy – certainly any mystery. I have terrible anxiety watching the first time. I cannot stand not knowing what will happen. And so, sitting on the edge of my seat fretting, I miss a lot of details. I pick them up the second time through, when I can relax because I already know the outcome. Yep, I’m one of those people who always reads the last chapter before starting the book.
The protagonist of the series is Judith Potts, my new imaginary best friend. Do try to live up. One of the things I related to is her job. Or perhaps her advocation. She is a crossword puzzle setter. As a child, when I wasn’t drawing my own paper dolls (anatomically correct, of course), I was creating crossword puzzles. I made them up for my friends and siblings. Honestly, I think I only stopped because for some inexplainable reason they weren’t interested! It was my idea of fun. Apparently not theirs.
Did I ever tell you about the nightmare I had repeatedly as a child? I walked home from school, into the house, found my Mom at the kitchen sink…and when she turned around to greet me, it wasn’t my mother. The woman asked me my address. This was it, so I must have remembered it wrong. But I didn’t know any other address. I went out and retraced my steps all the way back to school and home again. But it was a stranger’s house, and when I had no way to find my way home I woke terrified.
In retrospect I find the nightmare revealing. I knew I was amongst strangers by the time I was going to school. I never fit there, in my family. I never fit in my school. Town. World. I have never fit. And yet I have spent the better part of seventy years trying. And now I’m not.
Now I am exploring who I might really be, you know, if I am not trying to fit or be accepted. If I am not trying on others’ lives. So I’m going back to the wonderfully satisfying hobby of puzzle setting. For the shear joy of it, because it relaxes me…and I might take up writing murder mysteries, too. Spell check!
Early this morning I woke from a nightmare. A silly common nightmare, you know the kind…back in high school, can’t find my class, hearing snickering behind me as I realize that my shoes don’t match. And I also woke realizing that I am terribly dehydrated. So up, feed the cat, put the coffee on, and down a big glass of water.
Routine is my new best friend. I say new because, well…recently at the doctor we had the conversation about getting a formal diagnosis for ADHD, and trying some medication. I can’t stay focused; I am literally losing track of time. Like a living nightmare, I must admit to myself that this is a typical pattern for me around the holidays. And I am far too old for this.
I’m too old to be just waking up and seeing how debilitating this has been my entire life. Better late than never. I guess. It suddenly occurs to me that this is why wisdom doesn’t seem to stick; I repeatedly have to learn these patterns over again. It feels like psychological amnesia. Hence the school nightmare.
But what I do have is a toolbox, a repertoire of resources, developed over the decades. At 70, I finally have a doctor I trust and love. That only took way too long. I have a therapist who knows me now, 3 years into treatment. A support system of friends. I know who has my back. Those things take a lifetime to develop when you are dysfunctional. And they are precious.
That’s the only gift I have for you this Christmas – learn psychological self care. Learn to recognize when you are being gaslit, yes. More importantly, learn to catch yourself when you are gaslighting yourself. When you are undermining your self esteem, or making compromises that threaten your integrity.
Will I continue to have nightmares of being back in school all my life? I suspect I will. I am certainly committed to being a student all my life. I would never want to stop learning and growing. I would never want to stop being curious. Just a little more curious than scared. That’s all it takes to keep moving forward. As my Mom Doris would say, “move along smartly now.”
You’re in the constant company of God. Act accordingly.
Well…as I am slowly getting back into writing daily, I find myself with a couple of short posts this week. This one is just for the fun of it, and who is more fun than Stephen Mangen? I’ve always admired how he thinks fast on his feet. He reminds me of my brother who was also astonishingly quick witted. My Mother carried that trait into our family, and my son inherited it. I, on the other hand, am one of “those people” who suddenly think of a clever retort at 3 a.m. the day after the conversation.
“If we are lucky not to be displaced by war or poverty, the places we live are like bird’s nests.” – Gloria Steinem
I have long since lost count of how many times I have moved. Here’s a confession few know about me: I have been married four times. Three husbands, four marriages. All four ended in divorce. My first husband was a high school boyfriend. My parents had agreed to send me to boarding school after I threatened to run away – and I did so one summer. I managed to hide out for a couple of weeks in friend’s basements before a friend’s mother agreed to intervene on my behalf. By the age of 15 I couldn’t live at home any longer. I instinctively knew the situation was abusive, although it would be decades before I even began to unravel that situation.
I was 18 the first time I got married, and it only took a few months to figure out that my husband had a drug problem, and a few more months to realize there was nothing I could do about it. So I went “back home” to my parents, but only for a few awful days before finding a girlfriend I could rent a room from. And I never looked back, although I did go back again and again to pack up my younger siblings one by one and move them out. Not soon enough, of course, as the damage was done. Scrambling for survival myself, a safe place to sleep was all I had to offer.
By the third time I got married in my forties, I was no longer enduring physical or sexual abuse. That marriage would also prove intolerable, and not once, but twice. To this day we are still friends, and to this day he yet fails to comprehend any responsibility in it’s failing. As he so often said, we didn’t have a problem. I had a problem. As it happened, he was right, and my problem had a name.
The first fifty years of childhood are the hardest. I survived them by being scrappy. For the first 3 decades of living on my own I was able to find decent work, and when an emergency or large expense threatened my housing and independence, I would supplement my meager income by selling off family heirlooms, primarily beautiful antique furniture. I wish I could have kept it. Only a few small momentos still exist.
But this way of life (which I am only grateful for) leaves it’s scars. One of mine seems to be a deep, simmering grief for the home – THE home – that I have never known. It is truly all I’ve ever wanted for. A home of my own. Safe. Clean. Beautiful. A nest. Perhaps that is why I have always been fascinated by bird nests?!
In October of 1990, House and Garden magazine published an article by Gloria Steinem about her newly decorated NYC apartment, ‘Ms. Steinem on the Home Front.’ I still have that magazine. Somehow weird items have survived all the relocations…but in truth, this article made my heart sing. It has continued to inspire me all these years.
This morning, the 12th of December, 2024, I opened my YouTube feed and found this story. Gloria Steinem talking about her home of 58 years. I am watching through tears. If I had no other inspiration at all, Gloria would be enough.
A Painterly Home 