Crazy Talk

Lately, I have noticed a lot of exciting information going out in movies, on television and through facebook and blogs that incorporate ideas on depression or mental illness. There seems to me to be a wave of good, honest depictions of what it is like for a person who lives with a disease that can be difficult for the people around him or her as well as for the person who struggles. People seem to be moving toward allowing more compassion for those whose lives are touched by these struggles both as those who are treated medically and those who love them. Makes me very happy. In what I have been reading lately, a lot of the focus has turned toward how much hope exists for people with mental illness to live lives that bring joy and meaning to themselves and those around them despite the struggles that can't be ignored.

I read the interview in Glamour featuring Sarah Silverman and her very honest and funny and thought provoking views on depression and anxiety as well as several other articles written after it was published with a nod back to ideas mentioned in the interview. I have not seen the movie she is starring in about a mother whose bipolar depression sends her through experiences that many of us (me included) would find very difficult to live through. It is called, "I Smile Back." Looking forward to seeing it because of the way that Silverman described it in the interviews that I have read.

At the same time, I have been thinking a lot about something that probably shouldn't take up so much rent in my brain. Sometimes, the way for me to get rid of these nagging thoughts is to completely indulge them and stretch them out and think them over until they stop nagging. So that is where I am going with this post. Just a warning...bloviations ahead. This is where it gets personal.

Last night, I tucked my daughter in to bed and she asked me to sleep next to her for a while. I waited until I thought she was asleep and tried to sneak back to my room. She caught me. I got back into bed by her side but couldn't sleep. So I flipped on the computer and started reading whatever was in my facebook feed.

Among the pictures of people smiling and fall leaves and puppies and babies was a post from "Humans of New York". Usually, these stories are inspiring and uplifting. This one was a real departure from the norm. I saw three parts, I believe of a story about a man who was married and divorced and trying to put his life back together. He described or more aptly, bashed his wife and mother of his son. He talked about how she fired three dentists and had her invisalign braces removed because they weren't invisible. He talked about how she argued with friends. He said he read her journal and discovered she had been through an abusive childhood. He said she was walking down the street and talking to a friend while his mother's friend was walking behind her and listening and that she said she was going to divorce her him. He said he called a divorce lawyer at this point and the lawyer advised him to stay in the home to keep leverage for negotiating. I typed out a response and then deleted it right away. I wanted to know...why was he listening to what his mother said her friend heard without asking his wife what this was about? How did he not know about her childhood if she was his wife? Why did he read her journal? Why didn't he talk to her about what was in the journal? Why run to a divorce lawyer before asking the wife about what was going on between them and what she was feeling? What if he did that instead of running to a lawyer?

I felt this pain in my heart about the whole matter because it feels like the discovery that she had been through an abusive childhood was in itself a condemnation of her. It was proof that she was bad. It felt to me that he was trying to say that this was his real reason for wanting a divorce and that everything after was just him trying to gain evidence that she was bad and he was a good guy who was unwittingly trapped by a bad woman. Worse yet, a mad woman. His lack of insight into his own weird behaviors and the lack of responses to that by the other readers took me by surprise. I had a tough childhood. I wouldn't expect my husband to read any journals I keep unless I asked him to talk with me about them. If his mom came to him and said I was saying unpleasant things to a friend on the street he would dismiss him mom and come talk to me. We would probably laugh together about how much his mom would rather have kept him all to herself forever. (Although, I am weird in that I keep almost nothing to myself. If I was angry enough to be saying I wanted a divorce with my friends, he would have already heard this before they did. I told him about my difficult childhood on our third date and I included everything I could come up with as a reason that he might want to run away because I didn't want him to get hurt. He only seemed to like and later love me more as a result.) The humans of NY writer talked about secretly recording his wife's conversations and how she behaved horribly as a response. His poor son was caught in the middle. It was disgusting. I'll just refer you to the facebook site if you wish to read it yourself, but it was just creepy. I thought it was a missing scene from the movie, "Gone Girl" or that it could have been. I wished I could rescue the little boy.

The bad woman who traps a good man idea just gives me the willies. If you have the strength to overcome or just survive a bad childhood...it feels like an unfair burden to have to shoulder a stigma about it once you are grown and trying to put together a new life for yourself. I realize how lucky and blessed I am that my husband doesn't see me as a bad woman who trapped him in my evil web of mental illness. He sees himself as flawed. His sees me as flawed. He sees us as working our best through life and giving all we have to our children. When I think of the times that my depression has caused pain, I cringe. He knows. He reminds me of all of the times that I have overcome my struggles.

My rages at my mother are probably more ugly than I want to believe even when I am being as honest with myself as I can possibly handle. When I was younger, I didn't know it was my illness fueling the intensity of my feelings. I didn't know that there was anything I could do to stop myself. I stay away from my mom now as much because I feel so weak in her presence as I do from shame. I don't trust myself to be at my best around her. I know my husband and my kids need me to be at my best. I know that when the lid comes off of the box that my mother and I try to stuff all of the resentments and disappointments into...nothing good can result.

When I was in high school, I raged at a friend one night for not being the friend I thought she was supposed to be to me. It was horrible. I am terribly embarrassed even now to think of it. In college, I raged at a roommate whose demands on me to keep our apartment exactly as she wanted it overwhelmed me. I raged at her for drinking too much and for her dating behaviors that felt careless to me and a little dangerous. I didn't realize then that I was doing anything wrong. I really didn't. The awareness came later and it led a to a severe bout with depression. I had to start from a place that I saw as ground zero and build a new set of skills for dealing with emotions. I realized I hadn't learned to cope with life in the ways that other people did and that my responses to anxiety and anger were toxic. I didn't want to be that way. I sought help. I gained strength from there.

Strangely, even then, people always told me that I was excellent with children. People at church who didn't think I was being Christian enough even told me that they would always trust me with their children. I was patient and very slow to anger and enjoyed being with children and caring for them. I was deeply protective of them. I made my way through college by earning money babysitting. I took time off to be a full time nanny. Then I returned and finished school. All the while, I watched how other people behaved and tried to model myself after the people I saw as having trustworthy and admirable behaviors. I love books and majored in English because I love stories and story telling and characters who start from nothing and bloom. I wanted to be Elizabeth Bennet when I found real love. I wanted to be Mary Poppins with children. It's unpopular to admit, but I didn't want anything else. I didn't care about a career because I was pretty sure that being a wife and mother would be the best and most fulfilling jobs I would have in my life. I wanted to serve Christ by creating a loving home.

It wasn't that I didn't read about feminism. I did. I read many books that my older sister suggested. She's an incredibly smart and accomplished scholar. I read, "The Second Sex" by Simone de Bouvior. I read, "The Mad Woman in the Attic". I read and studied some philosophy in school. Still, I wanted nothing more to become a person I could see as healthy and good as a wife and a mother. To me, that meant a Christian woman. I didn't want to be loved for anything but my sincere belief that I could be those things despite my difficult childhood and despite the fact that I had to work to learn how to be those things while others were raised to just be them and more. I wanted someone who would love me because I loved Jesus and trusted Him to make me the best person for the family my husband and I would create.

It would tear me apart to be married to someone who saw me like the man in the "Humans of New York" posts saw his wife. Marked. Damaged goods. Disposable. I don't know how people go on when they feel that alone and impossibly boxed in by stigma. I feel like the whole world might tell me I'm all of those things and that's fine. My husband and my children know how much I love them and how good I am for them. I don't know how life would be for me if this weren't true. I don't know how I would live if I hadn't struggled so hard to find ways to live with people that were different from the ways I knew to live when I was in my teens and twenties. I'm not boxed in anymore. Even when I sense the weight of the stigma of having a mental illness is there--I'm strong.

It isn't that I ever found a place in church that fit me. It isn't that I somehow won over my mother or siblings and proved to them how much I wanted to have a beautiful extended family life with them being huge figures in my children's lives as they developed. It isn't that I have achieved great things and can say, "Success has brought me past my failures." I'm not beautiful or rich or smarter than people. I don't have street cred. I am just loved. That's all I need. This may seem like a small goal to have reached. The mean girl in my head is singing the song from the "Popeye" movie where Olive Oil is telling her friends, "He's large. He's mine." and they are singing back to her..."And you can have him." That's fine. The mean girl is asking me if I remember the line from "When Harry Met Sally" at the wedding when the couple says to Harry and Sally..."If either of us had found either of you even remotely attractive we wouldn't be here today." and "It's like two wrongs make a right." Maybe my husband and I are two wrongs making a right. What's so bad about that? I honestly believe the idea that you can only improve if you are measuring yourself against yourself. I don't have to be good enough to fit in anywhere but with my own expectations of myself. I see how I'm growing. I have made a lot of mistakes. I take those mistakes to heart. I try to see them as clearly as I can without blaming others. I go on. That's all I'd ask of anyone else. Somehow, that works for me.

I wouldn't want to go through this life without having been loved by my husband. Everything good in my life started when he believed that I wanted to make a better life for myself, for him and for the kids we would have together. He has given me the greatest gifts available on Earth. He loves me like Jesus loves the Church. I love him right back. I think he was attracted to me because I was pretty, but he loved me because I am me. I was attracted to him because he was so smart, but I love him because he has a beautiful soul. I can respect him. Neither of us are all that pretty now and some days I'd swear we have no smarts between us at all. Still, things work. I can see an even better future ahead. We are doing the small things each day to get there.

So while mental illness stigma rises with movies like "Gone Girl"...it wanes with ideas brought out in interviews like the ones Sarah Silverman has been giving. My hubris comes out in thinking that maybe if I share what I have been through...maybe I'll get to add one drop to the river of good ideas that flow and bring hope to people that dream of bigger futures and healthier lives than those pictured for them by people who saw them experience difficult childhoods. I don't expect it, I don't feel I've earned or deserve any such thing...but I'd be very happy if somehow this were the path I started to travel toward with my degree in English, experience writing and most of all in raising my daughters. Maybe they will grow to have a sense that there is no border set in stone between good people and bad people. Maybe they will have a lot of compassion for the mentally ill because they saw their mother work so hard to be her best with them and for them. They have a dad who works at criminal and family law. He believes in people even when nobody else does. In fact, the people nobody else believes in seem to be the ones he most often clicks with somehow. He doesn't let the bad in people bring out the bad in him. He helps them see the good in themselves by drawing attention to it and nurturing it with them. He has a lot of flaws. He picks himself up and keeps going nonetheless.

Ok. So, now I feel like that nagging is gone. If you have come this far and read this--I wish I could give you a hug. Thank you. That's all I've got. I hope there is something good in there that was worth the trouble.

Grief

Not sure if everyone thinks of butterflies when they think of grief. I can't remember when I began to associate the two.

A little over a month ago, my husband's father passed away.

Grief seems to me to float in almost imperceptibly at first. It lands quietly. It waits for you to notice and then drifts off as quietly as it arrived.

My kids, my husband and I have felt it there when we talk about doing things we know he would have loved. I felt it when I saw his shoes sitting near the door. I feel it when I do math homework with my kids and they tell me, "Grandpa taught us how to do this all but in an easy way. We aren't allowed to do math Grandpa's way in school." At my daughter's parent-teacher conference, the teacher said that my daughter likes to do the math assignments her way and the teacher can't give her credit unless she learns the processes as they are taught. I felt grief quietly pass from my eyes to my daughter's and to my husband's. We didn't have to talk about what we felt. We all knew.

I know in time that I will see the beauty of the grief like I see the beauty in butterflies, but for now it feels like a frozen pond that I'm skating over. The cold keeps me from seeing. Just have to keep moving to stay warm.

Short Story--First Draft

Bud was a thoughtful person. He was aware that he was dying. The doctors told him that he should take the opportunity to settle his affairs before his cancer progressed to the point that he could not. He did many things to this end. One of them was to stand in his walk-in closet with a brown leather pouch he normally used to deposit cash from his car detailing business. He waited with his hand over the full pouch and stared at his clothing. He knew it would be sent to charity when he died and wanted most of the clothing to go before he did. His hands were dry when he went into the closet to look at his clothes. He didn't notice as they began to leave imprints on the pouch from sweat and couldn't decide what to do next.

The idea came to him quietly, like cancer did. He followed it as if he had no choice. He tucked five dollar and ten dollar and even hundred dollar bills into the pockets of his blue jeans and shirts and after an hour or so he had finished. He was very tired. He laid down on his bed that his wife had made up for him every day since they were married forty three years before and he settled into sleep. His heart failed him and he died.

Weeks later, his wife Lorna gathered his clothing and folded each piece into plastic bins. She gathered the bins into the garage and stacked them and they looked to her for a moment like the Tetris blocks from the video gadget her son used to carry around with him over twenty, maybe even thirty years ago. She shut out the light to the garage and went to sleep.

That night, Lorna slept on her husband's side of the bed. Her house was still and quiet. She wished she could have one more chance to tell him that she loved him. She wished that she could tell him to roll over and stop snoring. She thought of the dozens of meals she prepared for him over the years that may have contributed to his developing cancer but that he loved. She felt she would never eat steak or ribs or barbequed chicken with potatoes covered in butter and cheese ever again. Rather than keep her awake, these thoughts lulled her to sleep.

In the morning, she took the baby seats out of the minivan she drove when she babysat her grandchildren. She folded down the seats and packed the minivan full of the plastic boxes. She took the boxes to the local United Way. Driving from the facility, she stopped and watched the workers gather her husband's belongings and sort them. She felt like she was waving from the shore as an ocean liner departed for an unknown destination. Her hands left prints of perspiration on the steering wheel so she turned up the air conditioner and drove off.

When she arrived home, she saw the mail carriers little truck up the street. She walked to her mailbox and it felt to her like the walk was longer than it had been before or that she hadn't thought about how long the walk was to the mailbox once in all of the years she lived in her home with Bud until that moment. She tried to think of how many times she may have gone to the mailbox before and how it was never an activity that caused her to reflect on it in any way but how it now was one of the many  generic activities in her life that felt odd and slightly more difficult. The box was full of the usual fliers and bills and announcements. She went inside and opened them at her kitchen table. One piece of mail was in a Hallmark envelope.
        "Another sympathy card," she told herself and walked away from the table and to her bedroom where she laid down and took a nap on her side of the bed.

At the United Way, Casey Perkins, a young girl of maybe seventeen stared at Bud's clothes. They were separated from the bins that they arrived in and the bins were stacked on the floor beside them with the lids stacked next to those. It was Casey's first day working for the United Way. Her training hadn't officially begun. Her boss, Ella, a woman of considerable age in Casey's eyes told her to go through the pockets and then fold all of the clothes into stacks on the green laminate table to her left. Casey put her hand into the first pocket and found a five dollar bill. She smiled. She looked up and saw that nobody was watching her. She put the bill into the side pocket of her denim skirt.

Bud stirred. He was dead, he knew that. He tried to make a sound but could not. He tried to look at his hands but they were not there. Still, he was able to see the girl in her denim skirt and the smile on her face. He watched.

Casey left work that day with $872.00 from the clothing that Bud owned when he was alive. Her pockets were fat. She was in a very good mood.

Lorna woke from her nap with a feeling that Bud was there. She walked to the closet and saw that his side was empty. She wondered why the closet never seemed large to her before or why she never told him that she loved their house and that she was grateful that he worked so hard to give them everything they needed. She thought of the many times she told him that they wouldn't have their house if not for the money she earned before they married and that she saved for the down payment and he didn't and so it was every bit as much hers as his. She thought of how he always turned his head like a puppy when she talked this way and how he seemed to laugh off her indignant refusal to think of him as the financial provider of the family.
       
"I am here. Look at the nightstand," Bud thought. He didn't hear a sound. He remembered that he left a letter for her on the nightstand next to the last novel that Lorna was reading before he passed. Lorna didn't see. He couldn't reach her and she didn't see that he was there.    

Early the next morning, Casey walked to church. She knelt in the pew before the statue of the Blessed Virgin. She lit a candle. She folded one of Bud's dollars into the bronze collection box. She thought that in years past, perhaps nuns used to shine the metal in the church. There were no nuns left in her parish. She felt like one was kneeling beside her.

Sister Frances Mary, who was born Katherine Gallagher felt herself present before Casey. She laid her nonexistent hands on Casey's.

Casey began to pray and asked God if the money was for the abortion she had considered or if it was to keep the baby no one but her yet knew was with her. She asked God to help guide her. She asked for peace and comfort in making her decision.

Bud stirred and saw Casey. He knelt beside her and if he could have cried, he would have had tears on his cheek. He remembered tears. He saw Casey's tears and remembered verses from his Catholic upbringing that told him God saved every one of our tears. He tried to communicate this to Casey.

Casey walked out of the church feeling less pleased than she did when she was at work. The money she took from the pockets of the clothing might not have been intended for her. She might have been more honest about finding it the way she did. She couldn't decide whether she should tell her boss about it now or stay quiet. Her legs felt heavy and every thought hurt her head except thoughts of going home to rest and to make her decision later.

Lorna woke that morning from a dream that there was a child who needed her and whom she had agreed to care for but didn't. She dreamt that she was walking in a field and there were fireflies all around and she was young and her hair was blonde again and long. She could feel it on her shoulders. The baby was in a tent nearby and waiting for her. She was listening to music near a band shell like the one called Petrillo Band Shell that her father used to bring her to when they had family picnics before she knew Bud and before she was old enough to stop enjoying family picnics in the park. The baby was there and she could see her. She had beautiful dark eyes and dark hair. Her babies were much lighter. In the dream, she knew this. When she returned to the tent, the baby had passed but was able to put the thought in her head that everything was okay. It wasn't her time. She was not in pain. She was at peace.

Lorna remembered that she hadn't taken her anti-depressant that day. She walked to the bathroom feeling each footstep was heavy and looked at the plastic container with each day of the week's pills separated into little boxes. She took her medication with a sip of water she collected in her hand under the bathroom sink. She knew that if she didn't eat food with her medication that it would not dissolve in her stomach and she would see it floating in the toilet later. She didn't have the energy to cook.

She went to the garage and saw both vehicles. She decided to drive Bud's car to the corner diner and order some eggs. Nothing seemed appetizing to her. The bouncy waitress and the modern music and plastic chairs almost annoyed her. She felt her stomach contents churn.

Casey walked past the diner on her way from church to her home. Lorna saw her and Bud tried to tell her that Casey needed her, but Lorna couldn't hear. Lorna ate her eggs in silence. For the first time in many years, she considered going to mass and lighting a candle.

Hope

“Unless you have suffered and wept, you really don’t understand what compassion is, nor can you give comfort to someone who is suffering. If you haven’t cried, you can’t dry another’s eyes. Unless you’ve walked in darkness, you can’t help wanderers find the way. Unless you’ve looked into the eyes of menacing death and felt its hot breath, you can’t help another rise from the dead and taste anew the joy of being alive.”
—Takashi Nagai. Quoted from the book, “A Song for Nagasaki”.

If I could go back and talk to my younger self, at about age 19 or 20...I'd tell her to stop worrying so much. I'd ask her to look ahead to the future without fear. I'd tell her that all of the things that happened up to that point were what made her ready for the future. I'd tell her that she really didn't need to fight the battle against the priest who took over her family because in time, he was going to self destruct and show those able to see that he was much like the wizard in the wizard of Oz...not actually capable of more than blowing smoke and hiding in a castle. Every time he told me, "I'll break you. You're nothing." I could have had a vision in my head of what was to come for him. I don't mean that I hope he is in hell, but if he is...I wouldn't doubt that God knew what he was doing when he let him go there.

My hope for the next many years of my life is to leave all of that behind. It has been my hope since all of it happened. I find myself running in circles away from as far as I can go, only to find it in front of me again. I want a life free of the shame of being raised in a family where a priest was allowed to hurt me and others. I wish to be free of the shame I feel when I think of the money he diverted from the church to keep my mom in the golden handcuffs she felt made her powerless and that I felt made her blind. It wasn't our money. I had no right to live off of it. I resented so much the part-time jobs and babysitting money I earned while sacrificing any time I might have had for after-school clubs or activities. Looking back, I feel like that was the only honest money that I could actually feel good about having spent. So it was a blessing.

I feel so much shame about the ways that my anger and sadness changed me. I lost the ability to focus on anything that didn't bring me immediate pleasure. Being with friends was fun and so I put everything in to spending as much time as I could with them. I liked being admired by boys and so if one showed me the slightest interest...I gave everything. It never occurred to me to hold back long enough to find out whether I liked him. Doing homework didn't feel fun and so I let my grades slide. I enjoyed feeling thin and so savored the feeling of hunger rather than eating. I liked pushing myself to great lengths to avoid food. I burned myself out and experienced clinical depression which could not have been helped by my refusal to eat. Even though I enjoyed hearing people say that they wished they could be so thin, I didn't like the way I looked. I felt ugly, terrible and out of place all through my teenage and young adult years. The worst of it was that I felt helpless to change these feelings.

I have spent most of my years since trying to be the opposite of what I was growing up. I have been through years of deep devotion to religion and not always in a healthy way. I went through dozens and dozens of self-help books. I went through years and years of therapy. I have been hospitalized for depression and stayed while knowing that the circles of friends I once had dwindled each time I allowed the shame of my condition to be known. I knew that while getting this help I was becoming less employable. The weight of stigma is heavy. I didn't ask for an abusive home to grow up in or ptsd or a priest to be in my life. Still, my inability to live through those things without making a fool of myself at times earned me a lot of rejection and even more shame. I'm not saying I didn't make a fool of myself many times...I did. I just don't know that other people who didn't go through the same experiences would have known how to do better. I also don't know that the things I did were so greatly different from the things others do. I never got arrested. I never ran through the streets naked claiming that I was Jesus or anything. I wasn't violent or destructive. I just let myself become very sad and lost control of the sadness to the point that I saw no way out. I clung to hard to people who didn't care the way I did for them. Sometimes I got angry and yelled. Sometimes I wrote long emails asking why things were so fucked up. I must have looked exceedingly desperate for affirmation and friendship and love. I was all of those things. I behaved like a person who had no core of feeling that she mattered.

Now that I am a mother whose children are soon going to be entering the middle school and then high school years, I want to know that my past won't bury their futures. I am looking for hope. I want to find a way to feel that everything I have learned will in some way be of benefit to them and not a noose around their necks. I don't want them to feel the kind of pressure I did to be pretty, to be accepted. I will be happy if they are those things...but I don't want them to feel I wouldn't love them unless they were those things. They are smart, kind and loving. I couldn't ask for more from them.

My hope is that whatever my struggles were growing up...they will help me attend to the needs of my daughters as they grow. My hope is that the crazy in my family will be able to skip over their generation. If I had kept everything inside, I don't know that this would have been possible even this long in their lives. I didn't have others telling me that there is no reason to blame yourself for your genetics, but there are ways to deal with mental illness effectively if you face it head on. I had people in my life who told me to not embarrass them by showing signs of being defective and to keep secrets hidden no matter how they poisoned my life. My hope is that even if my daughters inherit from me the worst of the demons my family seems to be afflicted with, my husband's acceptance and love and my own will be enough to help them go further in life than I have been able to go. I don't think that would be possible if I kept all of this a secret. I wouldn't be helping anyone if I did that. All of this has always been bigger than me in my mind. My only weapon for getting out from under the shame of it has been to accept that it is real and go on building the other parts of my life. Yes, I am crazy. However, I also really like to read. Yes, I can go through bouts of deep depression. However, I have created a loving home for my family. Yes, I have been what my mom calls a terrible daughter. My sisters say I am a terrible sister. That's true. At the same time, I am also a faithful, loving wife. My children say I am a good mom. Those relationships that I failed in as a daughter, sister or others...they would have been so wonderful to keep forever. Still, they never would have meant more to me than being a good wife and mother. So I have hope.

Public Shame versus Private Shame

Recently I began reading an autobiographical novel by Mary Karr called, "Lit". I won't go in to the details of the book, although I will say I have been enjoying reading it very much. I will say that the great effort she puts in to telling the reader that her perspective is simply her own and that every one of us who goes through life experiences things in their own way made reading her work palatable. If she had not made this effort to expressly tell the reader that she was speaking of things relating to others but in a way that was personal and unique to her--it may not have been a book I could continue to read.


When I began to write this blog, I came to it with the same idea. My experiences of family are what interest me and plague my thoughts more than anything else in life. I can't help but write about relationships because they are all I think about and I realize that I think about them in ways that maybe other people wouldn't. Sometimes this works out well. Other times, it causes others and me some embarrassment and even pain. That's not my goal. My goal is to find ways to work out the kinks that make the relationships that mean the world to me feel difficult.


I don't like secrets. I don't like living like there is an elephant in the room that nobody will talk about. When I have found myself in the kind of environment where the unspoken rule among many seems to be to not talk about one thing or another--I tend to be completely unable to stay quiet. I'm almost compulsive about talking about the things nobody wants to mention.


While others find ways to tell themselves that a situation is none of their business or that it will work itself out if given time, I tend to demand that the elephant be given a spotlight and a bath and some food and water before we send it back to the safari where it belongs. Usually I find that the reason people don't want to do this is that they are afraid of the elephant. It might raise itself up on its hind legs and bring itself down upon all of us or thrash around the room. My feeling is that if we don't, we will end up knee deep in elephant dung. Not acknowledging a thing does not make the thing go away.


My interest in exposing and dealing with secrets is not to hurt people. It's not to embarrass anyone. It's to find a way toward living without the secrets and the shame. I don't find that the private shame is tolerable but temporary public shame fades. Shame can be replaced by the feeling of pride that comes from dealing with a problem and putting it in the past, where it belongs.

I'd rather have a Hug of War

 

Sister challenges. I announced that I would be coming to town. I told everyone in advance that my family was going to town to see relatives who were flying in from overseas to spend time with my family and that anyone who wanted to go was invited to be with people who were gathering to spend time with my father in law, who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and has been fighting it for over a year. My mom said she didn't like to be in the city but would like to have her grandkids stay overnight with her. I agreed. She then made arrangements to invite people I don't know and my sisters, (one of whom never speaks to me except with contempt). She didn't reveal her plans until we were almost at her door. When I realized the situation had been taken from what I had agreed to and been turned into something that scared me--I backed out. My family seems to rage whenever I have the nerve to set boundaries.

I have lived away from my hometown for six years. During that time, I have always told my family when I was coming to town. I have always left them the option to visit me. Two of my brothers have come to visit and one met us half-way in another town. My sister, however has argued with me since I left that since I am married and have kids and do not work outside the home--we should put her first and make all other plans after she has decided what we can do while we are in town. If I make other plans, she rages.

I then feel a wave of rejection from other people who take up her cause and see her as being picked on. Anything I might have to say in my defense seems ignored. I am cut off mid-sentence and told that I am supposed to try harder. I do try harder--but it isn't enough. It's never enough.

If this is the only way I can get my words out...I'm okay with that.

For the past many years, I feel that the only thing my sister has to say to me is that she doesn't like me. She feels that I have allowed my husband to carry me through life since we got married. She and my mom tell me I have gotten fat and I need to wear makeup. They tell me I don't know how to buy a bra. They tell me I don't know how hard life can be because I am married. I can't reason with my sister. She resents that I set any boundaries around my family. Even when I was pregnant and went to see her in her apartment (she would never come to mine) and she invited a lot of people over who were smoking and I left to avoid the smoke, she escorted me to the door by saying to me and everyone in the room that I probably wouldn't feel comfortable socializing because I have so many anxiety issues instead of honoring the fact that I just wanted to be away from the smoke.

For years, she blamed me for her not being able to go to my wedding because I sent out 'save the date' cards (only) a year in advance telling people we were going to England because my husband (who paid for the wedding) wanted to go there and she expected us to pay for her to go. We had just spent a lot of money traveling to my older sister's wedding which was announced two weeks before it happened. I didn't have the money to send anyone to England. Therefore, my sisters told me they felt I shouldn't have had a wedding that I couldn't pay for them to attend. They stayed home and said terrible things about me and I chose not to think about them.

When my sisters were at the hospital and I was giving birth, (I didn't invite them because I wanted the situation to remain calm for me) my older sister forced my mom to leave the hospital because my baby went into fetal distress. She told my mom (according to my younger sister who told me later) that she was worried that my mom would bond with my baby more than hers if there was anything wrong. During the next few days, my older sister arrived uninvited to the hospital and sat next to me while I tried to pump and laughed that I looked like a cow hooked up a milking machine. I did, but her looking at me like she thought I was disgusting didn't help the milk to flow. She hadn't been in my life for years. She used to ask my mom to keep me home from family vacations because I made it less fun for her. My mom used to oblige her. Suddenly, when she was pregnant with a baby she deliberately conceived as soon as she heard I was pregnant--she wanted to be at my side as much as possible. She wanted to be at the baby shower, where she announced her pregnancy. She wanted to be in charge of what was happening during a very chaotic and difficult time when my daughter was fighting congenital heart disease. I didn't want her near me. I wanted to bond with my husband and my baby. She was making that impossible. I told her to give me space--but I wasn't cruel about it. I simply told her I would let her know when I was ready to see her. I heard a lot of feedback from others about how awful I am in response--people who chose to take up their cause despite not really knowing what was going on. I chose to ignore them.

Now that my sister has asked me again if I would like a war, I have to say, "no". I'd rather hug it out...but if she needs her space that's fine. My feeling is that war is on regardless. I am getting a lot of painful feedback from people who believe they know who I am and what my motivations are when I really don't believe they do know or that they could possibly know since everything they believe is coming from my mom and sisters. I'm not as strong as some of the people who come to me with their opinions about how I deal with my family seem to think that I am and I have to ask for them to please, stop coming to me with judgmental, snide comments about the situation. I am dealing as best I can with the life I have now. I can't fix what was broken years ago. I have tried and it takes both sides wanting to behave without contempt for the other and genuine willingness to give the other side the room to be the person he or she wants to be now. I can't conjure that up from their hearts. Only they can provide that. This situation is not my fault. I can't carry the blame anymore.

If people want to be in my children's lives and they show that they have goodwill and good intentions toward me and my husband--then I let them right in. If they show that they have contempt for me--I don't. I don't know how they could expect I would leave my children with them when I don't have to and when I wouldn't be able to stand not knowing what would happen. Bad things happened under my mom's watch when I was growing up. She has never shown remorse about that. She doesn't believe me when I tell her about how I was hurt. How can anyone expect me to trust her now? I don't have to give her the opportunity to repeat history with my kids. It isn't my job to protect her. It's my job to protect my kids. I love her, but I love them more. Same with my siblings.

I hope that the people who have come to me with painful arguments about what they see in me will change their minds. I realize that's not likely. I do think it is fair to ask for them to turn their attention away from me now that they have voiced their opinions. I am trying to carry a heavy enough load and while I love them, I can't bear the weight of more of this family pain.

Breakfast Quiche

We have some out of town guests here to stay and so I prepared a little breakfast ahead today. It's a quiche (or two of them, actually) made from left overs from last night's dinner. My husband made a sausage, shrimp and lobster boil last night. There was a huge pot of it left over. So I did what I do pretty often when we have a lot left over and tried to put some of the ingredients together in a different dish.

I think it's pretty easy. I buy a frozen pie crust at our local natural food store. Then I follow the Mollie Katzen recipe below, substituting whatever ingredients I think might taste good in a pie shell with cheese and surrounded by a baked egg-cream custard. http://www.fabulousfoods.com/recipes/mollie-katzen-s-gruyere-quiche

I hope my guests will enjoy this tomorrow morning or even as a late night snack.

Anticipatory Grief

Over a year ago, my husband's father was diagnosed with cancer. It was shortly after my husband and kids and I went with him and my mother in-law to South Dakota to visit the tourist sights there. My children were on Spring Break from school. I had planned to take them to Springfield, IL alone since my husband would be working. I called my in-laws to ask if they would like to meet up along the way since they live in Chicago and generally enjoy taking road trips. Instead, my father in-law became very excited about taking us all to South Dakota. He didn't want to take "no" for an answer and despite having a lot of work to do, my husband finally agreed to put everything aside and make a go of a long road trip together.

It was a lot of fun. My in-laws have a lot of love for South Dakota's Badlands and Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Monument. We were there before the summer crowds and so we got to enjoy the sights without waiting in long lines or pushing past a lot of other tourists. We stopped along the road and watched buffalos roam and prairie dogs pop their heads up from holes in the ground. We climbed up rocks and hiked on paths. It was exciting for my kids. My father in-law loves to teach them about geology and my mother in-law loves to tell stories about adventures that she has been on in her life. None of us knew that only a week or so after our trip we would be given such frightening news.

Since then, most of the focus of our time with my in-laws has been on making the time for my father in-law memorable for my kids and my husband and comfortable for him. There have been some arguments and tears about putting together plans for what will happen after he is gone. The large majority of what we have experienced, however is a greater appreciation for the role he has played in my husband's life and for the love that he has been able to give so freely to my children.

The first couple of months were confusing since I wanted to so much to support and help my mother in-law and she seemed to be very strongly against allowing me to help in any way. I had thoughts of bringing food over and stocking her freezer with meals that I would prepare for them so that when the chemo treatments came, at least she wouldn't have to cook. I thought of helping her clean to give her more time to be with him doing things they would both enjoy. I had to step back and allow her to tell me what she was comfortable with allowing me to do to help. Since that is nothing--I have had a pretty easy go of things.

My father in-law has done much better with chemotherapy and radiation than anyone expected. He and my mother in-law rented a place in the town we live in so that they can come here and stay together without being in our home. We used to have them come to stay for long stretches of time and found that it was not easy to get along after a few days. I don't think it was what they liked hearing, but I thought it was better that they stay in their own place. I'm not a morning person and they like big cooked breakfasts that go on and on with lots of talking in the morning. I like my routine of spending time with my husband alone at night after the kids go to bed and they tended to like to share that time with us every night. We eat more when they stay with us. We eat less healthy foods when they stay with us. We argue over who is in charge and who should be disciplining the kids and so forth. There is a lot more cleaning for me to do. All of the rules the kids expect to live by when it is just us in the home become relaxed and after a while, I feel really removed from what is going on with my husband and kids who naturally focus on the people who are happy and lively and talking. I find myself staying in the background and trying to keep order in the home and growing resentful when I would rather not. When they stay in their own place, they visit and go home and we all have a much better time.

With all of this happening, it is easy to forget that our time together is short. Last night, my daughter couldn't sleep and asked me for a bedtime story at midnight. She really couldn't sleep. I told her a story that in my mind was a little like what I could remember of the book, "Heidi". It may actually be nothing like the book. I read it so long ago that I really only remember a few of the details. I pictured a man with a gray beard who could be grumpy and was determined to do things on his own. So that's how I started the story. I told her that he lived far above the village away from the rest of the people and only grunted 'hello' when he had to because someone in the village was determined to be friendly to him. He let his beard grow long and he wore his clothes the way he liked them instead of worrying about what others wore. Often times, they weren't very clean by the time he got to the village to sell his goat's milk because he did a lot of his work along the way. I said that this little girl kept wandering around the meadow where his goats would eat flowers and she would drink from the spring of water that ran from the mountain where he lived. He wanted to tell her to go away but he didn't. Instead, he taught her how to take care of the goats. He showed her the garden where he grew his vegetables and made stew for her to share with him while they read stories by the fire. He didn't tell her that he liked to be around her. He just told her that the stew was her reward for helping him with his chores. He listened to her sing and didn't tell her that it made him happy. Before long, they were friends. Once they were friends, he told her she meant the world to him. She kissed his forehead and said she knew that. When he grew ill, she came to his cottage to talk to him, but he sent her away. She returned again and again anyway and delivered flowers, milk from the goats and cheese and bread. She sang to him. She brought her parents to help him when he got very sick and while he didn't like accepting their help, he finally allowed them to be his friends, too. Before he died, he held her hand and told her she was the best friend he ever had and she never forgot how happy she felt to have been able to make a difference in his life or the lessons he taught her about how to care for the animals or the plants near his home in the mountains. When she grew up, she raised her children in the mountains and she would tell them stories about her friend who was so grumpy and stayed away from the villagers but really wasn't grumpy and really liked people a lot after all.

My daughter loved the story. I hope my daughters will both remember how happy they have made their Grandpa over the last eleven years. I think they will. I worry about the grief ahead, but I am grateful for the time we have now.

Scattered Thoughts on Parenting

My children asked me to tell them a bedtime story the other night. I told them that there was a little puppy who was out in the yard watching his owner pull weeds from the garden. It was Springtime. The grass was wet under his feet. The air smelled of bunny rabbits who were hiding in the shrubs nearby. He followed and tracked a bumble bee. He was pretty sure that he would be able to get those rabbits later.

The owner of the puppy saw him and warned him that he might not like what happened if he kept following that bee. He couldn't imagine why and her words didn't draw him in like the joy of getting right next to the bee and watching it move from blade of grass to flower and back into the air. He could get as close to it as the whiskers on his face were close to his nose. That made him think he could catch it and swallow it up. The owner warned him again to be careful.

Within seconds of the owner's warning of danger ahead, the puppy was jumping in the air and his tongue touched the bumble bee. The bee was even quicker, though. He stung the puppy right on his tongue. The puppy cried and whimpered in disbelief and pain. The owner hugged him and brought him inside and gave him a bowl of ice. She had to hold him down while he squirmed and her kids brought her a tweezers that they usually used to remove ticks he often picked up when he rolled in deer droppings and they cleaned it for her. She pulled the translucent stinger out of his tongue. He cried more. She comforted him, but he didn't seem to understand. He hid under the bed and tried to figure out what happened. The owner and her kids imagined that he would fall asleep and dream of catching more bees and maybe even bunny rabbits, too.

My kids liked that story. They gave me hugs and kisses and went to sleep. I hoped they would take the idea from the story that I tried to bury inside...one of a Mom who loves her kids and would warn them to stay away from danger and help them when they forgot or didn't listen and who would comfort them if they made mistakes. I want them to see me as being nearby but giving them the freedom to make their own choices. I hope I do that well. My tendency seems to be more on the helicopter Mom side than the free range Mom one.

It made me think of my recent attempts to reconcile with my Mom. Seems like a big stretch. I will have to explain why. I have always wanted to be close to my Mom. I have always admired her for being strong in ways that I am not. She has been through more tragedies and traumas than ten average people, but she never admits to feeling depressed or sad. She has a large number of women friends who travel with her and keep her company and enjoy her humor and style and ability to entertain. She stays fit. She looks well put together and prepared for every social occasion. She had seven kids and maintains the figure of a woman in her twenties. I love watching her with people when we are together because she always knows how to act and doesn't seem to say the wrong thing unless she means to and on those occasions, she seems pleased with herself for doing so. She is excellent at keeping secrets.

I, on the other hand have few women friends. I have a couple of amazing friends from childhood and several acquaintances from later life. I once had style and seemed able to put myself together. I don't know how I lost that. I struggle to keep my hair groomed and forget to put on make up almost every day of the year. I put on weight after my kids were born instead of losing the baby weight. When I buy new clothes or make up, I leave them in my closet or on the bathroom shelf hoping that one day I will have a reason to wear them. Usually that reason is that my Mom is coming to town. Since that has happened twice in the last five years...they don't get much attention. When I say the wrong thing to people, it is usually because the filter that I used to have has disappeared. I have been through half the traumas that my Mom has experienced, but they seemed to have hit me much harder and taken a greater toll on me. I haven't recovered like she has recovered. I feel sadness and experience deep depressions and I don't have a sense of ease with people even when I want very much to be able to enjoy their company. Making plans with me can be like negotiating a treaty. I can put up a lot of obstacles to its success. It isn't that I don't care about the people who are kind enough to want to spend time with me. It is more that I am afraid to let myself care about whether or not they will really be willing to show up. When I hurt people, I apologize. I make a lot of mistakes, but I don't feel like I deserve to make them. I keep no secrets. I find that being around people who appear to me to be keeping secrets makes me anxious to the point that I feel physical reactions like stomach aches and headaches and shaking hands.

I think of how my Grandma, who took care of me when my Mom went to work and my Dad passed away used to be so doting on my Mom that it made my Mom a little annoyed. I would wake up for school, often late and come downstairs for breakfast and see that my Grandma had prepared poached eggs on English muffins and grapefruit halves for herself and my Mom and for me when I asked. She would make breakfast for whichever of us kids would wake up in time to eat it but if we put her to the trouble of making it and lingered in bed--she would get really angry. I tended to make her angry. I didn't want to--but I did that a lot. When I think of her and miss her, which is oddly almost every day, I think of things she did for me like making those breakfasts and how I didn't appreciate her. I only noticed at the time that she was angry with me so often. I see how my Mom cares for my sister's son now and realize that she has taken on a lot of the roles she resented my Grandma for taking on when she was a single mother. The same issues are argued over with different characters. The same behaviors and misunderstandings continue. I'm not part of any of that. My kids aren't part of it, either.

I can't bring myself to let my daughters get swept in to all of that. I have to deal with a lot of backlash for my choices from people who love and admire my Mom for good reasons. I don't get to enjoy close relationships with any of my other siblings because they also believe I am wrong or simply don't want to engage with anyone in my family very much. I feel judged a lot of the time. Somehow, she makes me believe at times that I deserve to have missed out on her being there when I struggled or when big events happened in my life like graduations and engagements and pregnancy and my children's birthdays and so on. She tells me I didn't deserve better than a priest who was abusive toward me because he was nothing compared to my monster of a real father. I sink down low when she says those things. Even now, she says that she believes those things and when she says them to me, I believe her. My only defense is to hide from her. I feel like the puppy in my story who hides under the bed. I may only understand part of the story, but the part of the story that I understand makes me very frightened. I know there are all of the good sides to her, but I don't know when they will appear or when I will see the part that hurts me.

I don't blame my Mom the way I did for years for the bad things that she was unable to stop in my family or even the things she intentionally participated in that were harmful to me. I see her anger toward my Dad who has been dead since 1980 for what it is now. I used to try to see it from my own understanding. I saw a man whose brain was damaged by a rough childhood and difficult relationships with his siblings and Dad and then a terrible brain tumor that caused him great pain. I didn't want to hear what my siblings said about him or what my Mom said or what her boyfriend, a Catholic priest who called my Dad a monster had to say about my Dad. I lost him when I was almost nine years old. I see how my girls who are around that age see their Dad. I see how I have been stuck in time with the kind of picture a young girl has of her Dad at that age. My Mom had to deal with me watching her transform from being the center of my life to being at the sidelines. She never felt that was fair. I can see why she would feel that way.

I feel like all of this is like the puppy in the garden because if I can manage to remain aware of my role in my children's lives--that of a guide and not a puppet master--maybe they will have better futures and more confidence when they strike out on their own. I am a big believer in letting them make mistakes that will teach them early rather than cleaning up their messes for them and not allowing them to experience consequences. I hope and pray always that I am making the best decisions for them. I want them to listen to me, but I never approach them with statements like, "If you don't listen to me--I'm going to make you suffer." I struggled in work situations for years with bosses who took those approaches. I never seemed to last in any work situation unless I had a boss who took an approach like, "I support your successes. I'll promote you when you work hard. I can't support your lack of effort." In the rare cases when I found such an exceptional boss, I stayed. Maybe with a better foundation at home, my kids will do better in the world when their time comes. Maybe they won't see their bosses' strengths or weaknesses as being so important but will be able to focus on their own work more. They won't feel as afraid as I did of having the rug pulled out from under them by uncertainty because they will be able to recognize in themselves the strengths they will need to go from one place to another with ease. I hope so, anyway.

My Mom's birthday is coming up and since she has a group of friends she likes to play cards with--I ordered a set of playing cards for her with my children's pictures on them. I don't know if things will ever get better than this between her and me. I know that they can't get much worse if I continue to keep boundaries. I just wish that she believed me when I tell her that I would love to be closer and I would love for my kids to be closer. I simply have to put them and myself before her. If her desires are to create situations that I don't feel are good for any of us--I have to let myself be the bad guy and accept that this is as good as it may get for all of us. My Mom doesn't send me birthday gifts and hasn't for years. She doesn't celebrate things in my life. All of that stopped somewhere in my high school years. When she does say she will do something, I steel myself against believing her. I still try to celebrate her. I know that she is in the later stage of her life. I have to admit that I send things more as an example to my children of how to behave even when someone doesn't know how to behave toward you but deserves your respect if only for the position they hold in your life. I'll never have another mother. At times, I feel like she has swallowed my entire life with her unreasonable anger toward me, my husband, my in-laws and other people she feels are unfairly kind to me and not as agreeable toward her. Other times, I feel a deep sadness for her because she sees nothing wrong in measuring her happiness against mine and hoping that hers is greater. Then I see how I look at my kids and always hope for more for them and realize she never gets to feel the pride of seeing that the future will be better or has already begun to get better. She never gets to look at me and feel joy instead of seeing how she feels life robbed her and unfairly rewarded me. For years, I only saw how that hurt me. As a mother, I see how that would hurt her. I wouldn't want to be near my children, either if I felt those things. I am sad that this is all that she can allow herself to see.

I don't know if I will ever stop feeling unworthy of the good things that do happen in my life. I try very hard. I don't know if I'll ever stop feeling panic that whatever I hold dear will disappear, but I try. It's on me now. I have to do better for my kids who are watching me and learning.

Occasional Hikikomori Behavior

I'm not one to write about how to live or what I do that proves I know better. I am much more likely to write about what I'm hoping to learn or what I want to change. I'm hoping that makes my blog a little different. I'm finding my niche.

Do you have a close to perfect marriage? Not me. Do you love your house completely and have great tips for others on how to run your home like a well oiled machine? Wow. I'll be reading your posts. I won't be writing about anything like that. Have your kids already been accepted to Harvard while in diapers? Do they set fashion trends? Do you marvel at their spiritual loftiness? Well, again...I'll be following you. Don't follow me. What am I saying? You probably don't even have time to follow me with all of the people you are influencing and leading already. Let's nod our hellos as we pass each other going in different directions in life. I don't want to lead you astray.

I'm discovering new ways of describing what is wrong with me and the world around me. I'm not interested in being negative. I know that doesn't sound right, but it's true. Sounding negative is just a by-product of noticing that things in this world might not be what we hope. I can't help it. I see things.

I don't believe most people when they write blogs about how God led them toward nearly perfect lives and so I won't write anything of the kind. I don't want to lay any of that on your plate. I wouldn't serve you what I won't eat. I believe my relationship with God is completely different than anyone else's. I don't know why I have faith. I really don't. I want to quit having faith pretty often, but it doesn't work. I have had it for too long. I'm sometimes very convinced by the arguments that my atheist friends make. They tend to be more moral, have deeper empathy, care more about the environment, play better music and have more fun. I can't blame them for wondering why anyone would want to be a Christian. So many Christians truly are idiots. I see that.

This is the time of year when I find it more difficult to get outside and see people. I like to stay warm and drink tea. I read a lot of books. When I read about the hikikomori behavior of young Japanese men and how it has become a cultural phenomenon that has spread to America, I think to myself, "Hey, I've been doing this for years. I didn't know it had a name. Maybe I should get out more and talk to people. I wonder if they would have named that behavior after me if I had made more of a name for myself when I started acting that way."

Blogging is simply my way out of my head. I am hoping people will like to read what I write, but I don't expect that people will. I am okay with this, even. I'm interested in talking with anyone who wants to exchange thoughts with me. Most of the people I know live in books. They are either truly fictional characters from books or they also like to read a lot of books. I'd love to get out more. I want to break away from the isolation. I'm taking baby steps. This blog is my one foot in front of the other.

 

Chia's in Menomonie

 

Chia's in Menomonie

 

The market has items you might have trouble finding any place else in town.

 

Service is pretty good.

 Food is consistently very good. No MSG.

 Spring rolls.

 Chicken fingers.

 Fried rice.

 Chicken and broccoli stir fry.

Chicken Laab

 Sticky rice.

Prices are reasonable. There is always a lot left over to take home for later.

Response to Comment

Hi Heidi! Thank you for being a follower of my blog and for leaving me a comment. I have tried to respond to your comment by email and replying but I haven't figured out how to do that successfully. I don't see the responses coming through somehow, so I'm just writing a response by way of a new post. I think you may be one of the only people who reads this...so that will probably work out ok, right? hee hee.

I really agree with what you had to say. No argument.

I do think, though that with mental health issues things are different for people in church. I think that those who come out and say that they seek treatment for these issues are sidelined from the rest of the people who keep these things to themselves.

I don't know how we can make anyone see that a person is not defined by an illness if we hide that we have an illness. I'd rather not try to stay in the shadows about anything in my life. I don't think God intended for us to be that way. I think our gifts and our difficulties in life were meant to be shared.

I don't know, that's just my thought. It's fine to disagree.

I would love to take you up on the offer to stay accountable to each other on exercise. I really need to get out more. I feel myself slipping some.

I watched a great movie on the topic of mental health called, "Shadow Voices". I watched it through Amazon Prime. If you want to come by and watch it with me, I have it ordered all week. The website is: http://www.shadowvoices.com/default.asp

I have watched a lot of these kinds of things and this may be one of the best I have seen.

Thank you again for reading my blog!!

K.

I'm going to blogspot my way out of all of my troubles...

My brother tweeted something like this a few months ago and I smirked. It's a good joke. Giving him credit. Although, to be fair, my other brother says that the first one mentioned takes all of the material he has from their personal conversations and that all of his best material is really his. So...to whomever this joke deserves credit...please consider yourself fully acknowledged and praised.

If it were possible to BlogSpot your way around your problems, I'd be there. Maybe it is only possible to BlogSpot your way through them. You don't get to leave them behind, but you can share what you are learning along the way. Kind of a travel log.

Here is where I am...

I have learned that despite all efforts to cure my problems with prayer, prayer can only help and not fully heal my emotional or spiritual wounds. It is not a replacement for therapy or medication.

Church communities of every kind are full of people who will use your vulnerability against you. Church communities are generally NOT the place to find people who are aware of what to do to help anyone with true mental health issues. They often are the worst place to go for help. Stick to your meds no matter what people tell you. In church communities: do not tell people what your real struggles are if you struggle with anything beyond pedestrian, first world problems. Don't admit that you get hives when your mother calls. Just say that sometimes you wish you could be closer to your mother. Or maybe, just say nothing. It seems to me like the people who are most admired in church settings never say a thing about themselves. They just listen. They don't engage the crazy in themselves or others. Sure, there is a case to be made that this is the opposite of creating authenticity in your church relationships...but I have found that truthfully...people don't want authentic relationships in church. They want people to admire.

The only exception to this rule, as one person told me off handedly is when you have overcome a problem. You can admit a problem that was once there when everyone sees that it is no longer a problem. Then it becomes something others can admire in you. I used to drink too much when I drank. I wasn't a regular drinker, but I was kind of problem drinker when I did drink and so I quit completely many years ago. That's fine to admit, kind of...just don't tell it to a person who is sensitive about her own drinking. She will think you are a bitch. It won't matter to her what you intended by sharing that. She will only think of what it felt like to her to hear you say that.

Therapists can be extremely good at their jobs. If you find one who is--you're very lucky. There are many, many who are not. I have been in session when I thought the person was drunk. I have been there when someone fell asleep. I was recently talked in to stopping medication by a therapist who charged me $200/hour for alternative treatment methods that are unproven. I feel like a sucker. In the last few years, I stopped going to therapy alone. I wanted my lawyer husband there with me so that the therapists would feel a little less prone to falling asleep or showing up drunk. I wasn't looking out for being hoodwinked. Again, I have learned to stick to the meds no matter what anyone says.

Back to blogging. Blogging can help you put your thoughts in order but it can open up wounds, too. For those around you, it can feel like you are exposing what they want very much to stay hidden. I have different thoughts on that. First, what I say isn't what you say. So how can you be embarrassed by what I say? Think of the Phillips family: one sister, Mackenzie says her father had a sexual relationship with her when she was growing up. The other, Chyna says that she should never reveal that because it is her family as well and she didn't agree to let their problems be public knowledge. I kind of feel like the second sister is callous. The first is trying to heal. The first is trying to come forward to help others. She had to go through the abuse. How does the second sister come to the conclusion that it is not the abused sister's right to heal in whatever way she chooses? She doesn't seem interested in the first sister's pain. She tried to deny it until other people who knew the family during that time came forward and corroborated the story. Just seems extremely selfish to me for the second sister to add injury and insult to her sister's recovery. I suppose there are many reasons why I might feel this way, but that's where I am. I'm wondering why people would take it on themselves to keep an injured person down and to keep their secrets hidden. In the case of the Phillips sisters, the one who was injured battled for years with addictions and tried earnestly to keep it all inside. I don't know how her sister could deny her any attempt to live a more authentic and whole life. Their father is dead. He can't be injured by the truth. He didn't live long enough to see the full extent of the damage he did to his daughter. If he were alive, would her sister be saying, "He's an old man, now. That was the past. What can he do to make up for his mistakes now? Why not just keep them to yourself?" I'm asking in this way to avoid talking directly about how this relates to me.

New topic: Exercise. I am putting a lot of hope in this strategy. I have heard great things. I've never been sporty. Exercise makes me connect to my body and to acknowledge it and for the most part, I hate doing that. Still, if it will help...I'm all for it. I signed up for blech...exercise classes. I am a member of a gym. I go once in a while. Once, I went in and saw a guy who creeps me out and so I stayed in the sauna in the women's locker room the whole time instead of making my way in to the room with the exercise equipment. Then I read the magazines in the front and waited for my husband to finish because he had the car keys and it was too cold to walk home. That's the kind of gym goer that I am...

So that's that...please wish me luck. I am heading in to 2015 in a whole new way on purpose and hoping things go better than they did in 2014. I had a fairly decent 2014, but there were some low spots that might have been avoided if I knew more about what I was getting into with therapy. It was a great year with my kids. It was a great year with my husband. It was a pretty good year in terms of reconnecting to some extended family members. I'm very happy about that. Every day is a genuine struggle for me and winters are the worst. I haven't found my 'tribe' in the place where I live. I have looked in several places that were in hindsight, not good places for me to look. I'll be happy to cheer you on as you seek a better life in 2015, too.