Tag Archives: mental-health

holy water

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I live in a house in the woods but I can can walk to the bay. I work on an island and can walk to the bay or to the ocean, sometimes just a few steps out a door, from every house I work on, and there it is, the water. This nearness to water and access to it would make one think I am a swimmer, a floater, a rower, a boater, an enjoyer of watery related things, but I am not. I took swimming lessons as a child in our local lake and we had a pool for a time in my teens, but I never became a water person. I have dated surfers & sailors, and men who made their living on the water, but being comfortable with water never happened for me. When my mom was just 13 her little brother drowned in the bay and died. I can’t say that this is the only reason, but my mom is not a water person, and while my dad was indeed a water person when she met him, he became less so with a wife who was not. As a family, when I was a child, we went to the beach once and we went sailing once and we went canoeing once, if we did any of those things more than that, I’ve no memory of it. I had a spectacular childhood at the shore but it did not grow me into a water person. So here I am, a woman growing older in the later chapters of life near the water and I don’t take any of the pleasures the water has to give. I do however love the sound of the waves in the ocean and the ripples in the bay, I have always loved the calming song of moving water.

I read an essay recently by an Irish poet called Pádraig Ó Tuama who wrote about a place he loved to walk as a teen, “The wind, the grey, the drizzle, the salt, the spray, the wet shoes, the inadequate coat, the mediocre life, the far-away-from-everything that I felt…” and his words got me thinking, as words so often do…I am struggling right now as a woman growing older in the later chapters of life. I am deeply dissatisfied with so much and so many, including myself, and I don’t like it. It feels mediocre at best, and that is hardly a goal I think anyone ever aims for…Friends used to joke that I was the most cheerful person they knew, but these last years that person feels like she has shriveled up and died. My STARry-ness feels dulled. Mediocrity is creating melancholy. Circumstances happened to me and I am living with the consequences of those circumstances and don’t feel like myself. Sure, I have lots of happiness and joy and good in my life; I love my job and my yoga and my reading and my crocheting and my house and my girls, but if someone asked me simply if I was happy, the answer right now is not yes. All too often anymore I’m feeling a want to feel the far-away-from-everything, and that feels like a cop-out, trying to forget my troubles and ignore them rather than tackling them. And this too makes me sad because it is not who I want to be, and I don’t think it is who I am, but it’s who I have become and I find it unnerving that I’m seemingly allowing it to shape my life in such an engulfing all encompassing way…like I’ve been buried in mud, layers and layers of mud dried up and packed on month after month and now I am a fossil of my old happy, cheerful, optimistic, or hopeful self…and thinking of myself this way, and the heaviness that it leaves me with made me think of how to wash away all of that muck and mud…water

Water might be the answer. How many dozens of novels have we read where the heroine, in her grief or anger or unease, runs to the edge of the sea and the wind tangles its fingers around her hair and the salt water kisses her lips and she finds the peace or answers she was seeking in the whispers of the waves in her ears??? How many movies have we seen where the lead female character is sporting a fantastic chunky cardigan and her jeans are rolled up, just so at the ankle, and the shot zooms in as the water washes over her toes to the tops of her feet and visually washes away her worries??? She looks up to the horizon line with a bewildered expression as if thinking “wow I feel so much better now” as a John Williams score quietly rises in the background. While I have never used the water that surrounds my life as a healing modality, I’m thinking perhaps it’s time I should.

I am not blaming anyone but myself for my current state. I accept the hard truth that I too often in life did not set proper boundaries when I should have, and when I did set them I was somehow so mesmerized by other mitigating circumstances that I kept erasing the lines I had drawn. The red flags were fiercely waving right in front of me and I just became colorblind. I’ve gotten myself into something of a mess, and my love of a deep clean is such that I (me of all people for goodness sake) ought to be able to get myself out of it…cleaning up messes is what I most enjoy doing…

And so, as it was, contemplating my present tense, I had this essay show up in my email and this Irish writer found his walk to the water helped him to calm the turbulence of his thoughts that was his present tense. At yoga we call it the “monkey-mind.” And so it got me thinking, what if I began to harness to power of the water to help me calm the turbulence of thoughts that is my present tense? I had a very good friend who was a deeply devoted Christian who often told me that she got complete peace of her mind from prayer and let her prayers carry away her worries. Maybe much like old Catholic grandmas who go to church every morning to pray their rosary beads, I’ll go to the edge of the sea and experience my own interpretation of holy water?

Seriously…I have friends who surf who swear that when they are out in the water they are completely released from all of the monkey-mind, the worries, the bewilderment, they do indeed experience the far-away-from-everything when they are out there. I will be out of town for a few days next week with my sister and my daughter and we will be on and near water…I might as well begin the experiment…What if water IS holy? What if the water IS like a prayer? What if I make a point to go to the water every day I am on the island? What if I don’t let the cold or damp or rain or time of day alter my decision to do this? What if it brings me the far-away-from-everything that will help me come back to myself? What if I commit to going to the water no mater what, every day I am on the island? Maybe it will help me sort out all of the mud and muck of my thoughts and wash my mind clean? Maybe it will be for me like how a cloudy bottle can become a piece of sea glass and shine & sparkle when the light hits it just so? Maybe I need to feel the wind in my tangled hair, maybe I need to feel the spray on my face and taste the salt on my lips? Maybe I need to hear the calming song of moving water, over and over and over, and have my toes curl up from the cold and feel, what?…reborn…restored…reSTARred…maybe…

Scar Tissue

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I was thinking last night as I opened my book at bedtime that reading is part of my self-care/wellness regimen. I could never go to bed without a shower and I could never go to sleep without reading. Some nights I get through a few paragraphs and my eyes start to droop, and other nights I get through several chapters, but my “rule” is that the minute I feel like it is time to sleep, I put down the book and turn off the light…I don’t push through because I am one of those people who really needs her full nine hours! To be clear, I have on a few occasions just kept reading to finish a book, plow through the sleepy sensations to get to the last page, but this is not a regular occurrence and I don’t recommend it unless you are retired can sleep til you want and take naps!

I have come to a conclusion that I have not a minute left to waste…I have been tending to a wound (metaphorical wound, not physical) for almost four years now and it is still not healed and still causing me frequent pain and daily discomfort. It is my own fault that I am in the situation I am in, & I take full responsibility for my poor judgment and deeply regret some of my choices…but none of that matters, because here I am, right here right now. I am tending to scar tissue from a wound that was not my fault but the healing from it is my responsibility…I read a quote like this, four years ago, and I think I wrote the words wrong, but I get the meaning and it has been on my mind ever since. I have put myself in a bad situation and I have to tend to my wellness while I try to get this situation resolved and scar tissue gets thick, and fast, and so tending to this metaphorical wound has a time element…tick, tock, tick, tock…if I don’t get this injury closed up it’s going to leave a dark scar that will never go away, my point is, while I was falling asleep last night, I was thinking about how to heal myself, and I realize that, as a bookworm, what I NEED to do is re-read the books that spoke to my soul and use those words to heal.

I still journal and I write regularly and that is how I vent, it’s like therapy, but reading the ideas and words that other people think of and put together is a different kind of medicine. There are MANY books that I have read over the last 50+ years that touched me so deeply that I feel like they became part of my cells, part of who I am. You might think it silly for a woman who has not yet turned 60 to reference books from her whole reading life, but I kid you not, it started with The Secret Garden at eight years old, then Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret in 6th grade, then The Outsiders in 7th grade…Great Expectations and Jane Eyre in 9th grade, The Diary of Anais Nin at age 15, The Stand in my senior year of high school, The Handmaid’s Tale, Women Who Run With the Wolves and Beloved in college..the list goes on and on and on, but these are the ones that stick out to me when I quick-think about the books of my past that really changed me…in the 90’s Outlander, in the aughts I Know This Much is True and The Secret Life of Bees, Eat Pray Love was the first book I read after I moved into my house in 2009 & The Nightingale in 2017 & Demon Copperhead last summer just to name a few LOL I think a “few” is really supposed to be three or so, but if you are a reader, you get my drift and if you are not a reader, you surely think I am a nut-case!

Where I live the property taxes are outrageous but the only two things that don’t make me mad about them are the library tax, because I have used the library every week of my life since I got my library card at nine years old, and the school tax because my daughter and granddaughters went to public school here and my daughter teaches here…otherwise every quarter I am fuming made when I write my check, but I digress, my point is that I love LOVE L-O-V-E the library and only buy books occasionally. They allow you to have 20 books “on order” at a time and so on any given day I have about four on my nightstand and 20 in my queue. I keep them organized to come in every ten-12 days or so because it usually takes me a week to read a book. Sometimes I make an error with my request dates and I end up with three books arriving on the same day and then I put post-it-notes on the covers with the due date and I reshuffle the order in which I will read them. This is all a lot of jibber-jabber silliness if you are not a reader or don’t use your library.

I am going to read the books that I have on order through November and then starting in December I am going to begin a re-reading regimen. I am going to heal my sadness and anger and disappointment (and to be clear, it is not just the election that makes me sad and angry and disappointed, that just exacerbated the sadness and anger and disappointment I was already carrying) by reading again the stories that shaped me. The stories that I read from age 8 to now that I feel like were part of what has shaped me into who I am…I don’t like the “me” that I am now, these last years have been rough…I don’t like the thoughts that I think and I don’t like how and what I feel about the current state of my affairs. It’s not at all who I thought I would grow up to become, or how I thought these chapters of my life would be…so I am feeling deeply scarred and feel like I need healing and am going to start the process with books. I know some people heal with booze, and some heal with benzodiazepines, but I am going to try to heal with books…smooth out that scar tissue…one page at a time…

Debbie Downer vs. Josie Joyful

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I am sad. I am mad. I am unnerved. I am eating too much sugar and using carbs as a coping mechanism. I feel like right now I am not in a good place mentally. I have been soul-crushingly sad since my birthday, November 6th, when I felt what might be the biggest disappointment of my life. I live in a neighborhood and area of New Jersey where lots of people do not think as I do about most things, and I began to shrink into a sadness that I am feeling such heaviness from I am kind of scared that it is not ever going to leave me. All of this is true…BUT…What is also true is that I live in a house that I designed myself and I love every inch of it and even now, 15 years after I moved in, I still get a little spine tingle when I go up the driveway. What is also true is that my granddaughters and my daughter live next door to me and I can see them and talk to them and hug them anytime I want. What is also true is that I live ten minutes from the ocean and can walk up over the dunes any day of any week and see the whole rest of the world in front of me. What is also true is that I love my job and I get to work on and in beautiful homes every day. What is also true is that I have good friends, so many friends; at the yoga studios, at the fitness center, in real life, and in cyber space. What is also true is that I joined an art therapy group filled with educated and like minded women and once a week we chat about current events and talk about what we can do about them while we create something new,and we discuss where and how we can make changes in our own lives to try to navigate the horribleness that we see unfolding before our eyes and hear the words that make our ears bleed. We talk about things that matter. My point is that while I am still feeling very low and somewhat powerless I am also loving and know I can make a difference, ever so small, to make the world a kinder and more compassionate place. I can do things that make my life better by focusing on the good. I can remind myself, every hour if need be, that when the history books write about this, I was on the good side. I am going to work very hard to not let the ugliness around me make my life ugly. In a world that seems increasingly like one that wants to kill my cheerful vibe, I plan to kick that gruesome energy to the curb. I am going to fight this fever of despair and try with all my strength to quell the debbie downer energy and to rejuvenate and share the joyful josie spirit that I know is within me…

Who Dis?

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Who is this person? This person sitting at her desk on a very cold morning in November is not the same person who was sitting at this same desk weeks ago, months ago, years ago…This person who always joked that she was a “silver lining seeker” is feeling disappointed, disenchanted, disengaged, distressed, disheartened…and is finding it harder and harder, day by day, to see any silver lining whatsoever…who dis??

Usually at the week of Thanksgiving I am just bubbling over with gratitude and overwhelmingly emotional about all that is good and beautiful in my life, and all of that is still true this year too, but there is an ugliness inside of me that is darkening and inking out the light of who I think I am. There are people I love very much to whom I am related and people I work for who I cherish and am deeply thankful for, but the way that these people think is anathema to me, and it pains me. I can’t end my relationships with my loving and generous family and I can’t end my relationships with my trusting and generous clients but it feels like there is a wedge between me and them now and it makes me sad.

They certainly have every right to think what they think and say what they say, but I continually come back to the fact of the matter that is this; I have watched in real time this person talk, this new incoming president, and have heard in real time what this person said, this person who did not even get more than 50% of the votes and yet still wins, and cannot believe that any thoughtful person would also hear and watch this man and think, “yes this is the best choice for myself and my family and my country” and these people did, and it has made me feel bad every day since.

I can only wonder if this is the same feeling old people had in the sixties when their college students were hippies, and these old people wondered how on earth their kids could think like they did about civil rights and war?? I can only wonder if this is the same feeling as picky eaters at fine restaurants where they sit and eat buttered rolls while the other guests around them eat beef Carpaccio with Beluga caviar, and wonder how these foodies could enjoy these things??? Or is it more like when someone picks the ugliest wallpaper, or itchiest sweater, or most uncomfortable shoes? I don’t know what it is but I do know that I don’t like how I feel about it.

I don’t have any answers. I did all that I could and read all that I could and acted accordingly. I simply have a really hard time believing that the people who voted for him actually did read any of project 2025, and read the part about how the incoming administration would aim to cut more than 96% of the budget for social security and think that was great and would somehow make their lives better. I simply have a really hard time believing that that people who voted for him realize how many billions of dollars immigrants bring into our country every year, and what the loss of those tax dollars will do to our economy, or how the loss of laborers will hit farming, hospitality, and construction. If you were mad about the price of lettuce or berries over the summer when they were picked by mostly brown low paid non-American workers, imagine how mad you will be when farmers have to pay white college students off for summer break a living wage to pick them. It’s certainly not that simple and it’s certainly not anything easily conveyed in a blog, but it does make me wonder when the buyer’s remorse might set in?? Will it be when your daughter’s insurance that she buys through the marketplace gets canceled and then months later she finds out she has breast cancer and loses her house because she can’t afford the treatment?? Will it be when your granddaughter has an accidental pregnancy and can’t get an abortion and neither wants nor can afford a baby?? Will it be when you get the notice next year that direct deposits for any social security numbers that end in an odd number will now be cut in half and every social security number that ends in an even number will now be cut by one third, is that when you will wish you had read more of the fine print? Maybe it will be when all of these tariffs are put in place that are supposed to make America great but will perhaps make consumer costs higher, unemployment higher, and plunge the stock market into decline, and nobody but the very wealthy will be able to afford to buy a new washing machine or television?

If I am wrong I have no qualms about accepting my errors or ways of thinking. If I am wrong I will admit fully that 49.6% of the voters saw something in this person that I clearly did not. If I am wrong I will be so happy to have cheaper vegetables and fruit and chicken next year. I’m just an angry woman who reads, I’m like Ruth Langmore from Ozark, “I don’t know shit about fuck,” but what I do know now, at least for me in this moment, is that nothing feels good and nothing feels like joy and nothing feels like a silver lining and that disturbs me and disrupts my brightness, and that kind of Dis does not suit me at all at the time of year that I am normally abundant with thanks and kindness.