View of the End

I've lived through some large projects.

Like getting my doctorate.

That took 5 years after I got my bachelor's degree.

I knew the classes I needed to take, the number of clinical hours required and the steps to write my dissertation.

It was all mapped out and I could see older students complete the steps I was headed towards.

It was a pretty long time but I could see the end the entire time.

I've lived through an intense physical ordeal.

My pregnancy.

I hate to constantly be bringing that up but it was a very defining event that tested my husband and I to our cores.

That was 9 months.

I knew what to expect for each trimester, knew the approximate stage of development of my baby and knew the tasks we needed to complete before I gave birth to our daughter.

Nine months is a long time to be nauseated and vomiting but it really wasn't all that long.

I could see the end the entire time.

I've met major financial goals.

We went deeply into debt during my pregnancy.

Our choices were to pay off the debt or go bankrupt.

We opted to pay off the debt and it took 4 years.

I knew what our monthly payments were going to be, I knew the things we would have to go without and how much we would have to work.

I could see the end the entire time.

I've even battled major depression, many, many times.

More times than I can remember, actually.

There are many unknowns with mental health treatment you would think I wouldn't have any sense of when I would feel better.

My depressive episodes mostly showed up in winter and were gone by spring.

I always knew if I could make it to my birthday in April, everything would be okay.

Even if I had a depressive episode that didn't fit the pattern, I always knew it would go away.

I always had ways to ease the burden; medication, therapy, and gardening.  

I could even see the end of my major depressive episodes.

But now,  we are in the midst of all this Lyme treatment.

There is no map, there are no people who have had the same treatment plan, and there are no timelines.

Everyone with this disease responds very differently, so the treatment plan and the length of treatment evolve as you go along.

I despise the lack of a definite series of steps or timeline.

I cannot see the end of this.  It is there, somewhere, murky and in the future.

I'd rather know that this was going to take 5 years with a predictable end point, than have a bunch of unknowns for 3 years.

I find security in the known.

Most people do.  Humans don't generally appreciate the unknown.

I've had many clients who would rather stick with an uncomfortable known that try for the possibility of a better life because the unknown is so terrifying.

Only by walking with them into the unknown are they willing to give something new a try.

I've walked the path of healing with many people and can assure another client that I have seen good things happen.

I ask them to have faith in me and in the process that it will be worth it in the end.

And now, here I am walking the path of healing with no end in sight.

Photo taken by S. Clark

I have to have faith that there is an end even if I can't see it.

Faith is not my best skill.

I'm more of a see it, touch it, test it kind of girl.

Life has an amazing way of giving me an opportunity to learn skills that I am lacking.

Which is what I tell myself when I am dealing with something I don't want to do!

That, and I often remind myself of a quote from Elizabeth Kublar Ross,

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”

I am a beautiful person in the making.

Thank you life.

No Longer A Fail

A text popped up on my phone last Monday night.  

At first I thought it was from a client and was worried about a potential crisis.

Then I saw it was Dee, my naturopath, delivering the results of my daughter's most recent lab work.  

I thought of my pregnancy for a moment as I steeled myself for the contents of the text.

I've always felt that my body failed me during my pregnancy.  

Baby daughter about 3 months old

As I have written about in the past, I had Hyperemesis Gravidarum (HG), which is a severe form of nausea and vomiting in pregnancy. It was unrelenting.  I lost 7% of my body weight and became malnourished.

I was severely ill and confined to my bed for 5 months.  When I got on medication I was able to function at about 50% capacity until my daughter was born.  

When I was diagnosed with Lyme Disease, I learned that there was a possibility that my daughter might have gotten the disease causing bacteria from me in utero or via breast milk.  

And it wasn't a slim possibility either.  It was a 50/50 chance.

Those are not gambling odds in my mind.

Have I mentioned I'm not much of a gambler?

I'm really not.  

I've been so afraid that she would have this disease.  

My husband has it and he probably got it from me.

Our girl child with her dogs.  

The thought that I might have also given it to my daughter has weighed on me.

Today I found out that my body did not fail my daughter.  

It failed me.  

But my body did not fail my daughter.

My body kept the bacteria from her and gave her only the antibodies needed to fight against the disease.

And now, I can forgive my body for falling apart so horribly.

Until this very moment, I didn't even know I bore a grudge against my body.

I thought that we were square, my body and I.  I was horribly ill but I had a healthy baby.  

What more could I ask for?

Peace.

Evidently, I've been really mad at the physical side of myself for the last 9 1/2 years and lacking a sense of peaceful resolutation.  

Hello tears of gratitude and realization.  

Let me just say I would much rather endure HG than have my daughter endure Lyme Disease and the negative outcomes associated with it.

So, thank you body for managing to protect my daughter from Lyme while also growing a healthy baby when I was malnourished and incapacitated.        

I don't know how I managed to pull that off but I am eternally grateful.  

Photo of my daughter and I
Taken by my cousin April Albright

Grandpa Howard and the Meaning of Family

He leaned toward the center of the table with smiling blue eyes and said "You know you're not really my granddaughter, right?"

We were in the church basement for potluck and I paused eating my Jello salad.

"Yes." I said.

He continued, "We have different last names but no one pays attention to it and it doesn't matter."

My grandpa smiled and I returned my attention to the Jello Salad.  It had mini-marshmallows and Cool Whip; it was the highlight of potluck. As a smallish girl of 5 or 6 years old, mini-marshmallows took the sting out of getting up early and going to church.

Grandpa Howard was my grandpa by marriage.  My grandma's first husband, my dad's biological father, died in a hunting accident when my dad was around 4 years old.  Grandma Lois was alone with two young children.  She also had epilepsy with frequent seizures.  I don't know how she carried on.

Grandma wasn't alone for long, though.  About year after her first husband passed away, she married Grandpa Howard.  Grandpa said that when he was courting my grandma "she was as shy as a bunny rabbit." He brought her a bouquet of carrots.

Her response to any of his stories, including this one, was to declare "Oh, HowARD!" and wave her hand at him, as if she was trying to shoo him away like a fly.

Now that I think about it, when my husband says something outrageous, I say "Oh, honEY!" and wave my hand at him as I were trying to shoo him away like a fly.

Grandpa was strict when he was raising my dad and his older sister but he wasn't with me or my brother.

He let us tag along when he was picking rocks out of the fields before planting.  The fields in Northern Minnesota always have rocks that need to be picked before planting.

Grandpa & my brother on the tractor in 1983

Grandpa had an old Ford tractor and a trailer he made from scraps.

When we got a full load and emptied it, we would go home and have ice cream and mince meat.

Mince meat, in case you didn't know if pulverized meat of some sort, usually venison or beef or both, mixed with ground up candied fruit.

Gross.  I can't believe we ate that.

But Grandpa liked it, so we did too.

Sometimes my grandma would have a freshly baked cake and we would go pick strawberries so that we could have strawberries and ice cream with the cake.

Me, walking by the clothes line at my
grandparent's home.  1991 or so.

There was a strawberry patch growing next to their little house.  Their house was originally intended to be a wood shed and chicken coop.  The Great Depression hit before Grandpa's family could build the house they planned, so they turned the wood shed/chicken coop into a house.  My grandpa lived there his entire life.

Grandpa also had a big garden and he didn't get mad if we ate the snap peas.  My brother and I would help take care of the garden as well.

He taught me the value of hard work.

And the importance of rewarding yourself for hard work.

He taught me the importance of having a garden.

And the importance of sharing the harvest.

He taught me the importance of family.

And the importance of knowing that family is not just blood, it is who you choose to love.

Tardigrade and Resilience

Photo from www.bbc.com 
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150313-the-toughest-animals-on-earth

The tardigrade, or water bear, is a microscopic animal.  It is water dwelling, eight-legged and segmented.

They are my second favorite animal.

Giraffe at the Oregon Zoo
photo by S. Clark 

Giraffes are my first favorite animal and they are unlikely to ever be removed from their first place position.

They came to me in a dream during a very stressful period of my life. The feeling in the dream was peace and contentment, which is something I definitely didn't have at the time.

I vowed to find that peace and contentment in my real life and used Giraffes as visual reminders of that goal. I now have giraffe stuffed animals, pictures, blankets, figurines and assorted ephemera.  I even have a 5 foot tall stuff giraffe that hangs out in my living room, next to the chinchilla cage.    

But tardigrade just bumped Okapi's from second place.  Okapi's are giraffes' only living relative. They look like a horse zebra hybrid with velvety ears and a long tongue.  I think they are much cuter than a tardigrade.

Photo from https://www.africananimalday.org/animals/okapi

But...

Tardigrade are such survivors!

They can survive in space, on their own.  Scientists sent a bunch of them into space, sans little space suits and many of them came back alive.  Some of the females even laid eggs, which hatched and resulted in healthy babies. Did I mention this happened in outer space with no oxygen or anything that is supposed to support life?

They can live through temperatures ranging from −458 °F (close to absolute zero) to about 300 °F.   

If a tardigrade finds itself in an environment without water, it sorta dehydrates and it waits until better conditions return.  Or sometimes the wind blows the dried up little husk to a better environment.

Then it re-hydrates.

They exemplify resilience.  

Their capacity for recovery is unparalleled.  

Interestingly, recent research suggests that this is because they have absorbed DNA from other species.  I didn't know this was actually possible but evidently even humans have some DNA that have been absorbed from bacteria or viruses.  

Science is weird.

Tardigrades are my second favorite animal because of this amazing resiliency. Tardigrades now serve as a reminder that I can be resilient.  

I've been thinking about resilience a lot lately.

My husband was just diagnosed with Lyme Disease.

My daughter might have Lyme Disease.  We won't know for a couple more weeks when the test results come back.

We are going to need to be resilient AF.

For those of you not in the know, "AF" stands for "as f*ck."  AF is something the hip, young people on the internet use.

I'm not hip or young but AF seems appropriate.

This illness creates limitations and we cannot possibly carry on with our usual lives.

I wish I could just absorb some DNA that would up my resiliency but as a human I have to make an effort.

So, we are going to have to identify what factors we can control, those we can't and use our resources accordingly.

We are going to take tardigrade as our mascot and survive the extremes that life hands us.

Because that mofo is resilient AF.

Moving Forward

Remember my badger dog, Bella, who obsessively licks our other dog or parts of herself or parts of the furniture?

Remember how I said that my house had enough intensity with me in it, although I didn't obsessively lick things?

Yes?

What I didn't mention is what I am actually obsessed with.

I'm currently obsessed with reading trail books, as I mentioned in the post called Trail Magic.  Trail books are memoirs of people who have completed thru hikes, which are long distance hikes on trails that are around 2,000 miles long.

My total is nearing 20.

Most of which I read this summer.

Kindle Unlimited can be a beautiful thing.  Or a dangerous thing.  Either way, really.

I'm not 100% sure what the draw is but I'm guessing it is because I find little gems like this:

"The simple act of moving forward,

 not matter what the pace, 

was enough to set me smiling."

If Trees Could Talk by Woody Woodill

He, of course, was referring to moving forward on a trail.  More specifically, he was referring to moving forward after having encountered a very trying day.  

Trying days on the trail involve things such as not finding water, getting caught in a hail storm, nearly falling down a cliff or running out of food.

None of those are likely happenings in my daily life.

Well, except for the cliff.

I actually have an 80 foot cliff in my backyard, believe it or not.  We live in a hilly area and they put houses in the strangest places.

We have a fence, though, so I'd have to be doing something really stupid to fall off the cliff.  

Trying days off the trail are more likely to include a dog vomiting on the newly shampooed carpet, not having enough time to finish all my paperwork and phone calls or not enough time to get all the school shopping done. 

Or this week, I've been juggling a client in crisis, a friend's crisis, moving all my old files into storage, re-arranging my office to make room for another therapist, getting the back to school shopping done, and buying new furniture for my office all while trying to minimize time on my feet to limit pain caused by Lyme disease.

And, let me just say, trying to find pants that fit my 9 year old daughter seems like it should be an easy task but it is not!    

By the way, I get that these are good problems to have.  Not so much the people in crisis problem but the other things.  I'm lucky that these are the kinds of things that are trying.  

He wasn't speaking to any of those every day hassles.  

Nonetheless, that phrase really buoyed me this week. 

At any given moment, all I had to was go forward. 

Not sure what to do? 

Just pick something and do it.

So, I went to buy pants.

Or I composed a text to give comfort for a crisis.

Or I sorted through things and bagged up what I no longer needed.  

When things really got tough, I pulled out some paint brushes, turned on loud music and got out of my head for a little bit.

Moving forward.

All you gotta do is pick something and do it.

The details sort out as you go along, be it getting out of a hail storm or dealing with a crisis.

Life gives us many trying days.

We only need to keep putting one foot in front of the other and follow the trail.

Even when the destination is unknown.  

  

Badger Dog

I was minding my own business, soaking in the tub with a good book when my husband walked in to the bathroom.

Him:  "Gbeflkdgoh fegledabadf dying."

Me: "What?"

The fan was on and it was hard to hear him.

Him:  "I think Kona is dying."

Me:  "What?! Why?"

Kona Bear

I'm feeling alarmed. It is not everyday that my husband announces one of our animals is dying.

Him: "She is not eating."

Now I am really feeling concerned.  Kona is an eating machine.  She is a 120 pound St. Bernard and in the 3 1/2 years that we've had her she has never, not one time been not hungry.

She ate an entire roasted chicken once and it did not disrupt her digestion in the least.  She ate an entire roast in one gulp.  Appetite entirely intact.  She eats garbage and rarely has a problem.

Occasionally she will eat something that disagrees with her but she barfs it out and carries on merrily waiting for the next opportunity to counter surf or dumpster dive.

Lack of appetite is a concern.

Me:  "She did get in the garbage yesterday but that doesn't usually bother her."

Him: "I dunno.  I'll go look at her."

A few minutes passed and my husband returned.

Him:  "Never mind.  Bella is the reason why she is not eating."

Me: "Oh."

Bella is our 20 pound Dachshund mix.

Bella Bean

In case you didn't know Dachshund means "Badger Dog" in German.  They were bred to hunt down and kill badgers.

We're pretty short of badgers around these parts so Bella makes do with other activities such as chasing Kona away from her food dish, barking maniacally at the squirrels or leaves or birds, and attempting to kill herself by dashing into the road.

For relaxation she obsessively licks Kona's ears and eyes. If I am so cruel as to stop her from doing that, she then obsessively licks her paws or her butt or the upholstery or my comforter.

She's really intense.

I don't know what I was thinking.  I'm a mixed breed of German descent myself and that is really enough intensity for one house.

I don't obsessively lick things but I definitely have strong ideas about how things should work.  We frequently disagree.

I, for instance, think it is a stunningly poor idea to run into the road.  She would make this her primary hobby if we let her.  I've managed to convince her that when I tell her to sit and stay that running out the door is not the thing to do but, if the door is opened and she hasn't been issued prior instructions, out she goes!

For added fun, Kona has recently figured out that if she bonks the screen door with her nose with enough force she can open it.

Kona has a blood feud with the next door neighbor's dogs, so she immediately runs over to the fence to start hurling obscenities.  Her co-conspirator immediately runs into the road.

The humans channel Usain Bolt and sprint up the driveway into the road.  I've never been able to catch Bella easily.  I pretty much have to run her down and corner her.

My husband discovered that if he acts like the guy in Jurassic Park does when he is confronting the pack of velociraptors, Bella will roll onto her back.

I don't know what that's about.

There's never a dull moment around here.

I've got to go though, Bella is pawing at my arm and whining urgently.  There is something highly distressing to her that I must address immediately.  

The Struggle Before the Flight

from http://bohemianwornest.tumblr.com/search/butterfly

Imagine a chrysalis, you know, the cocoon thing that butterflies come out of?  

You're in a garden and you notice that one is is partly open and you see a butterfly struggling to get out. 

You watch for a while and it seems to be making very little progress.  

You are worried about the little guy, what if it never makes it out?  

What if it dies?  

So, you carefully peel back the chrysalis and the butterfly is finally free.  You expect now it will fly away.  

You leave, happily assuming that you have helped nature along a little bit.

Unfortunately, you haven't.  

Instead, you have eliminated an experience that the butterfly needs in order to be whole and functional.  The butterfly's struggle is a necessary part of its development.  Without fighting its way out of the chrysalis, it loses its opportunity to gain the strength necessary to fly.

So it is with people.  

It is not uncommon for me to meet with a new client who is seeking treatment because they are experiencing high levels of stress or anxiety or depression.

Further investigation reveals that this person, most often a women, but sometimes a man, are stressed, overwhelmed and in a chronic state of panic because they are constantly bailing someone, or several someones, out of trouble. 

Not the kind of trouble that happens because life is hard and stuff happens.  

The kind of trouble that happens when someone is constantly making bad choices.  The kind of trouble that happens with a drug, alcohol or gambling habit.  Or the kind of trouble that comes from being consistently irresponsible. 

Consequently, the helper is overwhelmed and their emotional, physical and financial resources are depleted. What little they do have gets quickly used up by those they are helping.  The help they provide others means they have few resources to help themselves.  

Why? Why would someone consistently bail their loved one out of such irresponsible behavior over and over again?  Especially as such a cost to themselves?  

Codependency.  

Codependency is a state of being or a set of behaviors found in the partner or family members of people with addiction, mental illness or other extremely dysfunctional behaviors.  

Wikipedia actually has a good definition:

"Codependent relationships are a type of dysfunctional helping relationship where one person supports or enables another person's addiction, poor mental health, immaturity, irresponsibility, or under-achievement. Among the core characteristics of codependency, the most common theme is an excessive reliance on other people for approval and identity."

A codependent person will, time and time again, bail their loved one out of dealing with the consequences of his or her choices.  They do this because they are caring people who want the best for their loved one.  They genuinely don't want their family member to suffer.

BUT...a codependent person also does it because they are anxious. 

The thought of their child or sibling or whoever out on the streets or hungry creates so much anxiety that they fix the situation.  

I get that.  

There is very little that is more distressing than having a loved one suffer. It is harder than our own, personal suffering.  

Despite the anxiety inherent in not fixing the situation, it is important for the growth of the other individual to not be bailed out.  They need the opportunity to grow.  

Yes, opportunity to grow.  

I realize that this might be counter-intuitive but there is a segment of the population that won't learn to make good decisions until they have had to suffer the consequences of the bad decisions.

Now, I am not talking about turning away your daughter who got laid off after 5 years of employment.  Nor am I saying that you shouldn't buy groceries for the struggling single parent who is really doing the best they can.  

What I am saying is that if there is someone who consistently makes poor decisions, you are not doing them any favors by fixing the situation. Because they never face the consequences of their choices, they continue down the same path protected from learning that those choices cause problems.  

If you are working harder than the person you are "helping" it is not actually help at all.

Like helping the butterfly, codependency appears as help but removes the opportunity others need to learn and grow.  

Give your loved ones an opportunity to grow.  It is worth it in the long run.