Category Archives: mental health

Mar20

asking for a friend…

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The Crappy Childhood Fairy, aka Anna Runkle, is another of my heroes. It’s no understatement that she changed my life when I first came across her several years ago. A decade ago I would have called my angst “social anxiety,” which brings me to a shocking discovery: our unhealed trauma evolves with us. Our symptoms adjust, our language updates, the common therapeutic terms change, we find new ways to define ourselves. It is easy to convince ourselves that we have healed our anxiety and are better able to participate with life, to be present.

Self-awareness is always a good thing. But here’s the rub: subsequently as we become increasingly committed to our healing we become acutely aware of how we mask our defenses. It’s a double-edged sword. Self-awareness has no real value without self-development. That’s a tricky word, development, and an even trickier achievement. It sounds a lot like maturing, and growing up is hard to do.

In the past I’ve lamented those “spiritual” friends who “are so heavenly minded they are no earthly good,” from fundamentalist Christians to devout Buddhists to professional tarot counselors. I’m not so impressed with your beliefs if your behavior is needy (myself included in all said here.) Spare me the buzz language of the divine. I really don’t care how many crystals you have, how many self-improvement books you’ve read, how often you attend church, or how diligently you meditate or practice your chosen rituals – are you living creatively? Are your relationships more healthy than codependent? Are your boundaries conditional depending on your mood? Can you justify your poor behavior with need? Asking for a friend…

About a decade ago after my marriage ended, my father died, and I became estranged from my siblings, I found myself orphaned at the age of 60. “When you dig down deep you lose good sleep, and it makes you heavy company…” writes Joni. Yep. Some people cut me out of their lives and over the course of the past decade I have gone no contact with several people myself. I still think of going no contact with people when they are petitioning for my attention. What is their agenda, anyway? I’m less and less inclined to help them discover it.

I seem to need an unreasonable expanse of quiet time and open space. My nerves are shot. For awhile I used this as an excuse for being distant with people, saying and believing that my anxiety would heal, that I would overcome it. It is not to be overcome; that is not how healing works. It turns out I must grieve for as long as it takes, healing or not, anxious or not. So here we are.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=HLvqeqLlF6g%3Fsi%3D3E3cPHgenEjnhHm6

Mar18

“she’s got magic to spare…”

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It was September 27, 1974. Two years out of high school my friend Melinda and I were looking to get together. So we tried to buy tickets to see Joan Baez at Crisler Arena in Ann Arbor. The concert was sold out. We decided to drive into Ann Arbor that night anyway, to see if anyone might be selling a couple of tickets outside. We went into a favorite little vegetarian restaurant on Liberty to grab a bite to eat before we headed over to the theater. While waiting for our food they sat Joan Baez at the table next to us. We briefly smiled and said, “we are hoping to get in to the theater tonight to see you, but if not, best of luck.”

She had us meet someone at the back door and lead us through, where we sat on the edge of the stage as her guests. She has some wisdom to share here, and reminds us that we don’t have to solve all the world’s problems. We can breathe instead.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=0aY2WyqHKPU%3Fsi%3D0B5lLK_RJWviz4I7
Mar15

I’m not havoc-ing it any more…

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Ugh. A friend reached out for advise this morning and I let her have it. The truth is that she’s been struggling for several years now with the same issues, and nothing is changing. And I’ve tried being nice. Being gentle. I’ve actually also tried being quite direct a year or so ago and that didn’t work either. She isn’t hearing me. She doesn’t want to hear it. She’s in an abusive marriage, and come hell or high water she is going to make it work. Except it won’t, of course. Someone will get sick. Or worse. It’s heart-wrenching to watch in someone you love. Here’s the tricky thing about narcissistic abuse – you’re confused all the time. You’re trying to figure out why you can’t seem to get along – and you don’t realize the actual issue, which is that your life is at stake. You’re a frog in a frying pan noticing an annoying warmth.

Let me give a disclaimer before going any further: no one is more stubborn than me. Nobody. I often say “been there, done that, still paying for that T-shirt…” In the school of hard knocks I am the perpetual student. I have lived a lifetime of being a “master codependent” according to Melody Beattie (and she would know, eh?) I grew up with a pathological narcissist and then I managed to marry two of them. I have PAID. MY. DUES. I am here to tell you that is the highest tuition of any school on the planet. Narcissists will wreak havoc in your life like a Tasmanian Devil. Chaos becomes them. And you won’t see it. Until you do, if you’re lucky enough to survive that long.

Perhaps we will talk about the liberation of learning to set (and keep) uncompromising boundaries. But let’s really, REALLY, for the benefit of the people in the back – let us LEARN HOW TO RESPECT OURSELVES. It’s an uphill battle in this culture where narcissism is coddled.

I’m reading a new book, IT’S NOT YOU, by Ramani Durvasula, PhD. Please read it. Yes, she has a million YouTube videos, but the book is a solid reference that will walk you through this process. I mean, read it right after you read CODEPENDENT NO MORE – again. I do not care when you first read it. I do not care how many times you’ve read it. Read it again. And I recommend you re-read Scott Peck’s People of the Lie, the sequel to The Road Less Traveled. Both books are more pertinent in my life today than when originally published. All of these books live on my nightstand.

A news report came out of Texas years ago: Texas did not have a no-fault divorce law (I don’t know if they do now or not) and so the plaintiff had to prove that the defendant was at fault for the failure of the marriage. The woman stated her reason for petitioning the court for divorce as HE IS A BORE. When the judge asked her to define bore she read from the dictionary: A PERSON WHO DENIES YOU SOLITUDE WITHOUT OFFERING MEANINGFUL COMPANIONSHIP IN EXCHANGE. That hit like a gut punch.

After the breakup of my marriage in my late 20’s I sought counseling. The therapist said something to me that shocked me. She said, “Every thought, word, and deed is either nurturing or abusive. There is no grey area in relationships.” I thought she was nuts. And I have spent five decades trying to disprove that statement. You try it. Because, when it was up to you…

https://youtube.com/watch?v=OdbrRB_QwTY%3Fsi%3Dq7Lk8t_CmGYmW0xu
https://youtube.com/watch?v=xJaFLxCGq0o%3Fsi%3DxSaQsEBkogvCX-dh
Mar13

the nature of rest

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They call it toxic positivity for a reason. I have a photograph of my family taken in my parent’s kitchen where we are all tan and smiling broadly. We all look so happy. I remember commenting back then that we look like we’re posing for a toothpaste ad. It would be decades before I uncovered the truth of that insight.

We looked happy because we were told to smile. One big happy family. And much of that was true, but not as it was directed – rather, as it was felt, intuitively, unconsciously, in the moment. In glimmers through a child’s heart.

Despite the dysfunction of drug and alcohol abuse, there were also fantastic experiences together as a family. My happiest childhood memories are of long vacations on the boat. We had a Chris Craft cabin cruiser and traveled in caravan with other young families, all over the Great Lakes, through the 1,000 islands of the St. Lawrence Seaway, and to my favorite destination: Georgian Bay, Canada. It was barely populated back then, and is still one of the most beautiful places on earth.

Nature was our sanctuary. Everything moved slowly. We scooped our drinking water from the lake. Spent hours in the hills picking wild blueberries until scared off by a distant bear. Lingered lazy hours away in the sun. I remember swimming underwater as a shortcut from one protruding rock to another, only to surface right under a snake as long as me! (I would later identify it as a water moccasin.) Life was fun and blissful, otherworldly. I purchased my first record album in a little country store on a remote island – Joni Mitchell’s Ladies of the Canyon. I’d never heard of the singer, but I was fascinated with the drawing on the cover. It looked like something I would draw. Some awareness would wake up in me that summer and my life would never be the same. Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone?

At the age of 12 my brother Ward was the youngest registered member of The American Power Boat Racing Association. My parents bought him an outboard hydroplane which would have to be weighted to prevent becoming airborne, and he would blur past the back porch practicing for the annual race on the Detroit River. He was having the time of his life.

Ward died last year at the age of 62, apparently of a heart attack in his sleep. I am still reeling from the shock and grief. Ward was not speaking to me at the time of his death. I was hopeful that we would get through that and become friends again in our old age. But Ward’s story is not one of childhood fantasies come true, it is instead of enduring abuse, of giving up cigarettes, of overcoming alcohol and drug addiction, of never being able to kick his gambling habit. It is a story of decades of struggling with mental illness and depression.

Ward was crazy smart. He could fix anything. He didn’t know how to rest. He worked hard all of his life. As it happened, he called his employer and apologized for feeling too sick to work the day he later died. We shared a love of music, especially the blues. He would never have a successful love relationship, he would be homeless from time to time all throughout his adult life. I would kick him out of my home twice, decades apart. I accompanied him to court when unfairly accused of domestic violence for defending himself. He would be violent at times, and he would be the victim of violence. Like me, he would always be a loner and prefer the company of animals to people. I am the eldest of 5 children; he was the fourth born. We had the same parents, grew up in the same house, had some of the same teachers in school. His story and my story are intricately entwined, as are the stories of our other 3 siblings. It feels like a betrayal to tell Ward’s story, and it feels like a betrayal not to. I love my sweet little brother deeply and I will miss him the rest of my life.

Our other 3 siblings will not speak about the abuse in our childhood. So from now on I will only tell my story, and note the common thread, the scarlet thread, the blood that bound us. Perhaps then I will enjoy rest. Until then I will practice rest as resistance. And I will allow nature to be my sanctuary.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=aZnySL8XB4w%3Fsi%3DFvv4XQJt-9l-wXOk

“You are exhausted physically and spiritually because the pace created by this system is for machines, and not a magical and divine human being. Your body has information to share with you, but you must slow down to receive it. There is power in knowing you are enough right now and always.” – from The Nap Ministry’s REST DECK by Tricia Hersey

https://youtube.com/watch?v=1T5NuI6Ai-o%3Fsi%3DGn7t5UDcLUStCtll
Mar10

But Mostly, It’s Both…

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Imagine a world without oppression. There is a powerful movement I am only now learning of as I read Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto. The Nap Ministry is compelling us toward stillness because grind culture is killing us before our time.

Author Hersey refuses to “donate my body to a system that still owes a debt to my ancestors for the theft of their labor and dream space. We will have to take a look at the ways in which this culture traumatized us,” she declares. I agree entirely, “…and then begin the lifelong process of healing.” It requires we grieve. If I know anything of grief, it is that we must acknowledge more than the physical loss; we must also grieve the lost potential of what might have been and never was. Imagine a world without oppression. “Grieving in this culture is not done and is seen as a waste of time because grieving is a powerful place of reverence and liberation.”

This book is written from the perspective of a black American woman. She is speaking about a history built upon unrelenting greed, cruelty, and enslavement. I cannot speak about this; I can barely imagine it. I do, however, know oppression. I do know trauma. And I can imagine a world without oppression.

My ancestors owned slaves. I am the direct descendent of more than one founding father, and cousin to more than one American president. When I turned 18 I was courted by the Daughters of The American Revolution. And in my rebellious, bratty, way I told them where they could shove their corrupt theology. But I could do so at no personal risk, couldn’t I? I grew up in the affluent suburbs of Detroit, and my private school classes were cancelled during the riots of ’67. The Vietnam war was on the television day in and day out. Bess Myerson told Mrs. Smith how not to buy war and we talked about it in the kitchen. We wouldn’t buy a used car from that man – but then, we didn’t buy used cars. My parents were listening from the comfort and safety of our home on the hill overlooking the pool and the river. But we were listening. And despite the addictions all that privilege enabled, my dysfunctional parents inadvertently gave us the greatest gift: they taught us to think for ourselves. Always a loner child, I took the horrors of observed injustice to my room. And I thought and thought…the seeds of an inner revolution were being televised.

Like you, my personal story is complex. I am an old woman now. I watch my genius child and my beloved family suffer the ravages of multi-generational addiction and abuse. They think the cancer of their poverty and sickness is about finding the right job or getting the right prescription. They know nothing of the immorality that financed their ancestors. But psychically our bodies know. The DNA remembers; the sins of our fathers have created a legacy of exhaustion.

I still recoil at the political and environmental atrocities perpetuating a dying culture, a culture too far gone. First you have to survive shock to even realize you’ve been traumatized, before you can stop and take a stand and have a hope of healing. From inside a deep knowing of right from wrong, of the healing that comes only with grieving, I identify with Tricia Hersey’s story. We are profoundly tired, and the only way out of this is through grief. It is time to honor ourselves and each other, to still ourselves and listen to the innate wisdom of our sentient bodies. We must learn to be more human. We must rest.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=WH87f6LkTXc%3Fsi%3D5Kf4cykuHid9oAlQ
https://youtube.com/watch?v=rb67fKALxnw%3Fsi%3DoKBdjfAuKidzh-_t

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” – Rumi

Feb4

A Limited Gig

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Are you okay with dying? Artist Peter van Straten says no. He’s completely fallen in love with reality. “If you don’t take reality for granted, then whatever is in front of you is miraculous.”

How insightful he is, to realize that when you are not friends with yourself you are in solitary confinement. That’s very different than choosing solitude. Only recently have I come to understand that I have been a solitary person my entire life. I craved it as a child and still do, probably more solitude than most people could handle. I am my own best friend. If you have learned how to be your own worst enemy, you can learn how to be your own best friend.

Solitude restores me. I’m just beginning to realize what a gift that is. But I have had to fight for solitude my entire life. I have never taken it for granted, nor the company of my imagination. I’m not saying I’m always happy; I’ve just never held happiness as the measure of a meaningful life. My emotional state is and always has been like the weather – wait a bit and it will change. Deep at the core of my being there is a peace that has never faltered. I believe it was hard-wired in at birth. I think that’s why I fell in love with Lady Gaga the first time I heard Born This Way. We are born this way; we are born whole. That attitude has allowed me to fall in love with reality in all it’s resplendency.

This chaotic, insane, completely buggered world is fascinating to me. If offered a subscription renewal, I’d sign up again. Like anyone, I fear suffering or being a burden to my child. But I don’t fear death. I’ve had far too many spiritual experiences to ever think that this world is all there is, and so I’m infinitely curious. I’ve never doubted an afterlife. That’s the long game. It is this limited reality that is surreal, and therein lies the miracle.

How do YOU remind yourself to BE? Because there ain’t no other way – you’re on the right track, baby…

https://youtube.com/watch?v=scDF8eIfoNs%3Fsi%3DMW-70a0Al5i3OkkM

“My Mama told me when I was young – we are all born superstars…” – Lady Gaga

Jan24

Interiors Are Hilarious, like me…

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Can interiors be humorous? Haaahaha….of course they can. Have you ever paid personality fees? I believe in them. Even today in my own home, I refuse to think in terms of resale value.

I’ve heard it said that it’s never too late to have a happy childhood. I’d like to propose a deeper perspective: that to have a meaningful childhood you must grow up first, re-parent yourself, and then gift yourself the childhood you have always wanted. The real childhood you wanted, the one with all the love and acceptance. It’s work. It’s grief work. First you have to grieve the life you haven’t lived, the life you thought you wanted. You have to get to where you can earnestly be grateful for the life you have.

As an adolescent I painted murals on my bedroom walls. One day as I was painting a tree up the wall and out onto the ceiling, my Mom walked in. She did a double take and asked, “what are you doing?” and I looked at her perplexed. Was this a trick question?! “I’m…uh…painting a mural.” “Oh. Okay.” She set down my folded laundry and walked back out.

In many ways my childhood was a dream. We lived in a big old house on the Detroit River. We had cool cars and a built-in swimming pool and boats docked at the end of the yard. We had dogs and cats and rabbits and even a horse among our menagerie of pets. We had a sugar bowl of cocaine in the kitchen cupboard. We had Taco Tuesdays because there were often no parents around, so we took cash out of the drawer to feed ourselves. We had everything you could ever wish for as a child, and much you wouldn’t.

I’m an old woman now, and I wouldn’t change any of it. Early in life I knew the world would never make any sense, and I knew that it wasn’t my fault. I learned to trust my intuition. I learned to be content alone; I taught myself to draw. I became a voracious reader. I learned to think fast on my feet. I learned to love art. I learned the value of anger – it can get you to your grief, where all the grist is found.

“A happy childhood is the worst possible preparation for life.” Kinky Friedman

https://youtube.com/watch?v=eYHE7UIVpTs%3Fsi%3Dtog0hhf74of8Wf-X

Jan21

“We’ve lost our relationship with unpredictability.”

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We all seem to be struggling to live with our chronic anxiety. I posit that it has been systematically introduced into our culture by design, quite purposefully. Individuals who are able to think for themselves are hard sells. There is nothing natural about order; it invites anxiety. To accept that chaos is natural is revolutionary thinking. The way to overcome our addictions, including to the neurosis of our culture, is to learn to embrace the mystery. If you are going to practice getting through “one day at a time,” let it be one day of being uncomfortable with chaos. Be a revolutionary.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=dmqkF6wrpok%3Fsi%3DZHB1fQEGYXNpy52p

“In my defenselessness my safety lies.” – ACIM

Jan15

Be Human Only

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The longer I live the more I realize that we each have an important story to share. We are far more human collectively. Let me tell you one of many personal healing stories: unable to walk with sciatica, I called the chiropractor whose Birmingham office was across from the salon. He agreed to fit me into his schedule before work at 7 a.m. Little did I know sitting in his waiting room that morning would change my life forever. A magazine lay on the table there: The Sun, a small literary magazine published in North Carolina. I have now subscribed for decades, but that 1988 issue had an interview with Helen Palmer about her new book, The Enneagram.

Another article featured feminist poet Deena Metzger. When she lost her breast to cancer she had the Tree of Life tattooed across her chest. These two women would influence the rest of my life. Meanwhile, so would the brief treatment with Dr. Radke, my first chiropractic visit ever. He asked me to sit on the table and he faced me at eye level: “Tell me about the nightmare you had this morning.” I’d never met the man; how the hell did he know I’d woken from a nightmare only minutes ago?!

A traveling circus had come to town, but during the night a fire had broken out. All of the animals had escaped and were wandering the city streets and alleys. Unaware of any danger, I walked the alleyway still sleepy and soon realized that a polar bear was stalking me. Faced with a dead end, I was terrified as it caught up to me, reared back it’s giant head and raged in protest at this unfamiliar territory. And I woke, crippled in pain.

Dr. Radke never did adjust me. Instead he guided me through a meditation where I stood my ground with the bear and allowed it close enough to smell me. I wrapped my arms around the bear and buried my face in it’s neck, smelling it back. The majesty of the beast overrode my fear. “Repeat this visualization at bed time, and if you still have pain in the morning I will adjust you.” I would never experience another day of sciatica in my life.

Like Omi here, I am still in this journey of allowing myself to be soft. Listen here as she describes her healing and let the majesty of our humanity override your fear:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=pLdyrJ8_SNg%3Fsi%3D78uXyHZ-j1crsjlF

“When I came to understand that there are mythic patterns in all our lives, I knew that all of us – often unbeknownst to ourselves – are engaged in a drama of souls we were told was reserved for gods, heroes, and saints.” – Deena Metzger, Miracle at Canyon de Chelly

https://youtube.com/watch?v=b6PUFXdoWv8%3Fsi%3Du5IBun4Fh2Lnq_kd
Jan12

A conversation with what you don’t know you don’t know…

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“…on the page you’re exploring a part of yourself that you wouldn’t really let out, and things start happening on the page which you can never get to in your logical brain.” You are my witness, here, but I still write “morning pages.” Morning pages are three pages of stream-of-consciousness journaling as recommended by Julia Cameron is her series The Artist’s Way. It is no exaggeration that this practice has saved my life. More than once.

There are websites dedicated to this practice. Two I use are Write Honey (free) and 750 Words (nominal fee) but Cameron suggests we write longhand in a notebook if possible. I use them all. I purchase composition books in bulk and a box of inexpensive pens that I like, and I’m set, internet service or not. Small price to pay for sanity. I paint sometimes, less consistently than I care to admit. If I run out of tubes of artists colors I use leftover house paint. If I run out of canvas I use cardboard or walls. Don’t stand still around me too long lest I decorate you.

Over the decades I’ve had to learn to let go of the finished outcome. It truly is the process that does the healing. “And then you have a conversation with what you don’t know you don’t know about your own anxiety,” she reports. So find yourself old magazines to tear apart and glue together differently, bake, sew, knit, SING, dance, rhyme your sentences for a day, follow a bird through the woods, skip rocks on water…laugh.

“Do something, Susan, even if it’s wrong,” my Mother said. It’s never wrong coming from your true heart. Trust yourself.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Hp0KoXh6Rnc%3Fsi%3DgTn5_XhJjMN6xtu3

“…in time you will move mountains, and it will come through your hands.” – John Hiatt