We have to be weak to be strong.

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We are taught how to be strong, but we aren’t taught how to be human. Weakness is seen as a bad thing. Loss is glossed over.

We are lying to ourselves and to each other.

In our lies we are killing ourselves.

Sometimes the death is dramatic – A school shooting. A suicide.

Sometimes the death is slower – Fifty years stuck in a job, a marriage, a life that doesn’t fit, doesn’t feel real.

In our desperation to conform, to put on a happy face, we lie to ourselves and deny our basic humanity.

One thing I try to tell people when I visit with them in hard circumstances (a death, a divorce, a dismissal from a job) is “It is OK to say ‘This sucks.'” Invariably they take me up on it.

I think this is what we all need – permission to be honest about our feelings, which is at the core, permission to be human. We spend so long putting on a happy face that we stop knowing what our real face is anymore.

I just found out that a friend I knew from high school has killed himself. Things hadn’t been going well but nobody expected him to take his life.

A few months ago a lady told me that her teenaged stepdaughter had committed suicide. She was distraught over being dumped by a boy.

My father attempted taking his own life several times in my childhood. His grandfather was successful, if you can think of killing yourself as something to succeed at.

These losses are all holes. We are lesser because they are not with us.

I wish there was a better answer than calling the police or the shrinks when someone is suicidal. I envision an intervention, an escape, where people are retrained how to take care of themselves. Not medicine and shock therapy, but true healing. I envision a vacation, a spa for the soul.

I committed myself twice. Twice I knew that I wasn’t well and I sought help. Twice I was in a mental hospital. I didn’t learn anything useful in either one. It was only when I got out and started reading about bipolar disorder for myself that I started to get better.

I wasn’t “healed” when I left the hospital. They let you out when the insurance benefits stop.

I started to heal when I started to take care of myself, but I feel that I should have been taught some of these skills in the hospital. It is hard to look out for yourself when it is your mind that is the part that is broken.

The best medicine is self care, and prevention. I’ve learned that there is a fine line for me for how much I can deviate in my routine.

The basics? No caffeine. Limited (or no) processed sugar. Drink lots of water. Avoid all stimulants. Regular exercise. Creating, in one form or another, every day. Making time to be alone, and time to be with friends. Learning to speak my truth, and set boundaries.

Sure I take my medicine. But I need a lot less than many people because I don’t get as off balance.

When I stop doing what I know I need to do to take care of myself I feel that I “have let my flame get low”. All I have to do to build it back up is to start doing those things again.

These are the skills that mental hospitals should teach. These are the skills that all hospitals should teach.

But until they get the clue, it is time for us to teach ourselves.

Mental health is not an accident. It is a lot of work.

Bully in the library.

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I can’t stand bullies, but I often wrestle with what to say or do so that I help but I don’t become a bully in turn.

It is easy to spot a bully when he is hitting someone. It is when he is using non physical forms of aggression that are harder to spot and to deal with.

I was in a library while on vacation and overheard a woman chiding some people. She kept going on and on about how they weren’t working fast enough, that it was almost time for lunch, that they weren’t going to get done in time.

She wasn’t helping. She was actually slowing them down by her constant harangue. She not only wasn’t trying to figure out what was causing the problem, she was becoming part of the problem.

She wasn’t using her library voice either. She was annoying me, a patron.

I looked through the stacks to see what was going on. There were three people at the table, all women. The lady who was doing the talking was about 40 years old and about 250 pounds. She had a binder open in front of her with a lot of charts. The other two ladies looked like they had some developmental disabilities. One was around 60, black, and had a brace on her wrist. The other was around 20, white, and had a beautiful smile.

I took a breath in and walked up to them. I said in a cheery voice “What are you all working on today?” while looking over what was on the table in front of each of them.

I feel I have an advantage with this tactic. While it is considered rude to initiate a conversation with a stranger, I’m physically very non-threatening. I’m short. I’m female. I don’t stick out. In some ways I’m invisible.

The lady said that she was their supervisor, but didn’t tell me what they were working on. I looked and it was an activity to help the library with summer reading. They were hand writing something for each reading log. Why the words hadn’t been printed on the sheet in the first place is beyond me.

It looked a bit like busy work. It looked a bit like their time was being wasted. Everybody needs to have meaningful work to do. Nobody likes busy work.

Since they were in a time crunch, (as evidenced by the constant reminders of the supervisor), I asked her why she wasn’t helping them. She pointed at her binder with its charts and graphs and said she couldn’t.

I said “A boat goes faster if all the oars are in the water.”

The younger lady gave me a huge smile at this. I feel like both she and her companion were frustrated at this lady but couldn’t say anything to her because of the hierarchical relationship they had.

I walked away, and listened. No more harangue. No more bullying. Bullies hate witnesses. Thinking that nobody is watching is what gives them power. I just let her know that she was being observed.

Ideally, she would have been working with these ladies – not necessarily doing the work with them, but finding out ways to get them to do their best.

I have seen quite a bit of this kind of “supervisor” of people with developmental disabilities at my workplace. So many are short tempered with their clients. So many are snappish. For some reason they feel it is ok to show off how smart they are by subtly making fun of people who have cognitive impairments. They treat them like children. They treat them like dummies.

The only dummy is the supervisor.

Getting impatient with how “slow” a person with a mental disability is makes no sense. It is like getting upset at a person who is missing a leg for not being able to keep up with you. They can’t compete.

But they shouldn’t have to.

The caregiver forgets that this person is doing the best she can, and that it is really hard all the time. They forget that their client is a person, first and foremost, and deserves to be treated with respect and kindness.

Mental health isn’t an accident

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Mental health is just like physical health. If you don’t take care of it every day, you’ll get sick.

The bad part is that there isn’t an immediate symptom that something is wrong, with both things. It takes weeks or months of not taking care of yourself to fall ill. By then it is hard to pull yourself back together.

It isn’t like if you touch a hot stove and you get burned. The repercussion is quick in that instance. There is a simple one to one relationship. You learn very fast that if you don’t want that kind of pain, don’t do that kind of action.

But mental illness, like physical illness, is cumulative. It is a slow wearing away of yourself and your strength.

But it isn’t an accident. And it can be prevented.

Poem – Made in the Image

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There is something honest
about babies and old people.

They don’t look like any one
gender. They just look like
themselves.

Perhaps this is what is meant
about
being made in the
Image of God.

Perhaps these beings
that are before or beyond
the need
to be
a specific gender,
before or beyond
sex

have it figured out.

Perhaps being intersexed or unisexed or unsexed is it.

When we are past the need
to be female or male
and we get down to the business
of being human

maybe then is when we start
getting to the good stuff

the God stuff.

It is Spring inside us.

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If you are feeling out of sorts right now, you aren’t alone. We have all gone through a major shift. Some are more attuned to it. Some just feel sick and confused.

The old skin is being shed. Nothing makes sense. Old patterns don’t serve, habits don’t help.

This is a time of new growth. This new birth is not a time of throwing away all your old things and ways but it is a time of seeing them in a new way. It is a time of opening up and questioning and being like a child.

A child learns how to walk in part by watching other people. But also the child learns how to walk by just learning how to walk. The child feels things out step-by-step. She checks her balance and she examines it. She figures out if this step works or if it throws her off-balance and makes her fall. This is the same with us right now. We have to feel everything out.

Everything that we took for granted is no more. It doesn’t help us and it doesn’t serve us. This is a whole new life and a whole new way of being. Take nothing for granted. In fact take nothing at all. Nothing is probably the best thing you can have with you right now.

If you keep on doing things the old way you’re going to get the same old results, and you’ll be left behind.

You’ll be wondering what happened
and why is everybody else going so far ahead
and why am I so lost.

It is just like Abraham in the desert. He had a whole new way of doing things and he couldn’t do them the old way. It is just like the new Christians. They had a whole new way of doing things and they couldn’t do them the old way. The old ways have to be reassessed and things that have been discarded have to be looked at again.

It may be time to do an old thing in a new way.
It may be time to do a new thing in an old way.

It may be time
to Be
the Way.

It is a time of feeling things out and trusting the process. It is a time of holding on loosely. It is also a time of not letting go.

You may feel like doing something new and unexpected. Go with that feeling. Don’t worry about doing it wrong, or looking up how to do it. Feel it out, and you’ll know what to do.

We are the ones we have been waiting for. Now is a beautiful time to be alive.

Jesus is my map

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Jesus is my map.

He’s my goal and my guide.

He’s what I use to measure myself and the message of others. How do I and they line up with the message? If they say they are preaching correctly, he is how I know. But I have to be immersed in the Word to recognize the Word.

I separate the wheat from the chaff this way. It is how I know who is true and who is false. Sadly, I’ve even had to use this with ministers. Sadly, the people that I was supposed to be able to trust were the ones who were leading me astray.

I am for every Christian reading the Gospels for themselves, so that they can discern for themselves whether their minister is leading them correctly. To be even more honest, I’m for every Christian becoming a minister themselves. I’m for everyone waking up to the fact that God made them with a mind to be used.

We are not sheep. Jesus has redeemed us, has freed us. And he now guides us home, together.

Spouse

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I’m proposing a new practice. I’m going to try to remember to start referring to the person I’m married to as my spouse, rather than my husband.

The only thing that separates heterosexual marriage from homosexual marriage is the terminology.

If you have a man married to a woman, she is his wife. But if you have a woman married to a woman, she is also her wife. This marks the woman saying that as “other”. It marks her marriage as different.

You know she is married by the fact that she is wearing a wedding ring. But you don’t know that she is gay until she talks about her wife.

I’m for removing that barrier and that difference.

I propose using gender-neutral terms to indicate the person you are married too. “Spouse” and “partner” both work.

This is my way of indicating solidarity with homosexual couples. We are the same, after all.

Marriage is hard enough without social stigma.

Just a pinch.

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What is it about doctors who say that “This is just going to be a little pinch”? It never is a pinch. Sometimes it is more like a punch.

Perhaps they think that if they warn you, you’ll tense up and it will hurt more. Perhaps they don’t know what that procedure feels like for themselves. Perhaps they just aren’t thinking at all.

I remember when my father in law went for a bone marrow test. My Mom had been through the same procedure many years earlier and I remembered how it was for her. I asked him if he wanted to know and he said yes. I told him that it was not going to be “a little pinch”. It was going to feel like a mule had kicked him in the hip.

A bone marrow test is like a core sample of your hip. They put a huge needle straight into your hip bone with only topical anesthesia. It is an in-office procedure. It is done if they think cancer has spread to your bone marrow.

He sat with that knowledge for a bit. He didn’t quite believe me, but he trusted that I would have no reason to exaggerate or lie to him. After the procedure he said that he was grateful that I had told him. Otherwise he said he might have punched the doctor because the pain was so surprising.

I had an experience recently that wasn’t as physically painful but it was still upsetting. I’d gone to the dentist because my night guard had broken. I wear it because I have TMJ. They had changed the way that they make them and the assistant had to make an impression of my teeth.

The only problem was that it has been a long time since I’ve had an impression done and I’d forgotten. The last time was at least 30 years ago when I got braces.

She made the mold, asked me to open my mouth, and then put it in. She asked me to move my tongue and then she put her fingers on the mold to hold it in place. And then she stood there, like that, with her fingers in my mouth, for probably five minutes.

I couldn’t ask how long it would be. I couldn’t ask anything. I was a little freaked out.

It is very intimate to have someone’s fingers in your mouth, especially a stranger. It is very overwhelming if you have sensory processing disorder. I don’t have a strong case of it, but it is still there.

Now when I normally go to the dentist, I know what to expect. I know how to prepare myself mentally. I kind of go away in my head. It works. But this was new to me, and I didn’t know what to expect. Nor did she think to tell me. It was routine for her. It wasn’t routine for me at all.

The feeling of the mold in my mouth was a little much. It took up a lot of space in my mouth. Fortunately the smell of the material was a bit like Fruit Loops. That helped a lot. But still, I had a stranger’s fingers in my mouth for a lot longer than I’d expected, which was not at all.

I don’t know why she didn’t tell me what was going to happen. It seems logical to prepare people.

My chiropractor told me exactly what to expect when he was going to adjust my hips for the first time, and again when he was going to adjust my neck. I’m grateful for it. He told me that he does that because he remembers when he was adjusted for the first time when he was eight. He said that the first time his neck was adjusted he cried, and he doesn’t want anyone to have to go through that trauma. He’s very considerate, and that is part of why I continue to go to him.

I have a dream that all doctors will understand what life is like from the perspective of the patient, and stop seeing us as products, but people.

Feeling lonely can be helpful.

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“The first to help you up are the ones who know how it feels to fall down” – from the website “Soul Gazing”.

I often feel alone. I often feel as if I am by myself. Sometimes I really am by myself.

Sometimes I’m in a group of people and when we choose places to sit it turns out that there are three to a table and end I’m one to a table. It hurts. I didn’t choose to sit alone, but I am. It is like I lost at “musical chairs”.

Sometimes I overshare, and I’m a little hard to deal with. Sometimes being my full expression of myself is a bit too much for people. Sometimes that means I get excluded.

I’m starting to understand I’ve been made this way, this being different, this being separate. Because I’m different and separate, I can understand others who are different and separate.

It’s empathy, not sympathy.

Because I understand their exclusion I can include them.

I’ve come to realize that what I have to bring to the world requires that feeling, that sense of alone-ness, of alienation. That way I can “see” others who are also alone, and make a bridge.

It doesn’t make it easier, really. It is still hard. I’d love to feel like I was understood, that people “got” me.

I’m starting to feel that we all have that feeling every now and then. I’m starting to feel that many of us who are “in” are just faking it.

I’m tired of faking it. I’m tired of hiding who I am. I’m tired of conforming. The more I try to fit into someone else’s box, the more I stunt my own growth.

I think that when I’m honestly myself, my true self, I give other people the permission to be themselves too. It is my experiences of alienation and exclusion that have taught me this.

I could have felt forced to comply, to submit, to blend in. Instead, I’m going the other direction – and calling others to join me.

Burial chamber

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I was looking at the “Lakeland Cam” website today and came across this picture.

14051318carn_llidi (1)

The author describes it as “burial chamber”. He is in Pembrokeshire, Wales. On the picture’s metadata, it is labeled as Carn Llidi.

I know, in my heart, that it isn’t a burial chamber, in the sense that we mean it. Sure, there are burials there. But not in a physical sense. There are no bodies there.

It is a place for shedding off skin, like a snake. It is a place of building a cocoon if you are a caterpillar. But the snakes and the caterpillars are human, in this case.

These are deaths, sure. These are most certainly deaths, but also rebirths. These are transformations from one state to another. This is a place where people go to become human, to evolve.

It is a place to let go of old selves. It is a place to smooth off the rough bits.

It is a shelter and yet a danger. Look how it is a lean-to. If you sit under it, you’ll be protected from the sun and the rain, but you can still see and hear. You aren’t sheltered like you are if you go into a cave. But it is also a danger. Look at the size of that top rock, and how small that supporting rock is. There is a risk of death there. The rocks could shift and it is all over.

The same is true with transformation. It isn’t always easy, and it isn’t always good. Sometimes bad things happen when we go from one thing to another. Sometimes it isn’t how we planned it would be.

We transform all the time. We transform when we graduate from high school or college. We transform when we marry, have children, get that promotion. We transform when we publish a book or start a band or a business. We transform when we retire. We transform when we die.

There are often ceremonies and rituals for these transformations, these gateways. There are often special places we go to mark them.

This is one of those places.

So sure, it is a burial chamber. But it is also a nursery. It is a place to lay down the old self and pick up the new self. And there is just enough room in there for you. You bury yourself, and midwife yourself here too.