Friday, October 1, 2021

Facebook is definitely censoring; and other complaints!

 I opted to stop ranting and raving about politics when the tide turned and Biden won. (And he won, he really, really won). But to have come to the precipice of disaster (envision hanging off the cliff with our fingers slipping, slipping, slipping) and to have it averted by hope … it was a huge relief. And I chose to honor it by letting things be and not focusing on the negative aspects.

But for crying out loud, really? We have a majority, but as usual, monumental decisions are left in the hands of the random. Susan Collins has had many of those moments; and now we have Manchin and Cinema. I know that’s not how you spell her last name, but I don’t care. She’s obviously a Republican asset, as is he (how many West Virginians have a huge yacht to live in while in residence in DC?) and yet, we continue to do politics as usual, paring down a bill to its skeleton in order to accommodate these obvious plants.
Hey now, how about that insurrection? WHY THE HELL has nothing come of this? In a leaked memo, Facebook has admitted to hosting many groups who were planning the January 6 shenanigans (https://sfist.com/.../leaked-internal-facebook-memo.../) and of course, that hush announcement (as in not hitting the airwaves like, say, how the unvaxxed are killing the vaxxed) about how a conservative lawyer handed off a detailed description to Trumps legal team on how Pence could throw the election. https://www.businessinsider.com/memo-details-how-pence...
There are two headlines here…one that Pence could have thrown the election; and that he didn’t! But no one wants to chat about that, because now they are trying to take down the already fiscal instability of the country altogether — because of course, an unstable country is much easier to take over. They don’t care how they do it — either through hanging people on the quad or through their DINO squad. THEY ARE HELL BENT.
And Biden, unfortunately, is the typical white man who thinks he can solve everything. Yo, grandpa, time to man up and put your bulletproof vest on and start lobbing some grenades into the cesspool that is minutely less than half in the houses of government, and bolster the serious lawmakers (assuming there are any) up by eliminating the filibuster and enlarging the Supreme Court. These are not drastic measures — they are THE ONLY THING YOU CAN DO TO SAVE DEMOCRACY. What does that mean? It means the majority rules. And the majority of Americans would like to be able to vote, have an abortion, access to healthcare, etc.
And we should do away with fossil votes. What are those? Senators and congresspeople who are so old and feeble they can hardly stay awake, but they vote the way they are told.
I have this perpetual optimism within me that wants to believe that they are doing everything they can, to at the very least, maintain the status quo. But facts don’t matter — until you convene a committee who hashes things over ad nauseum, comes to a decision, and then goes to a vote where it all just gets swept under the rug. The rug in Washington looks like those retired landfills with candy canes sticking up so that it won’t blow up. BABOOM.
So they have kicked the can down the road once again, with Biden signing a bill that keeps the government afloat until December 3.
The kicker in all of this, is it could be worse!

Sunday, August 2, 2015

Stop Complaining and Focus Your Attention on the Blessings in Your Life

I have felt the writer in me swirling around through each individual cell, knocking on the door, so to speak, trying to get my attention, for a few weeks now.  There are always half a dozen excuses on any given day why I don't sit down and do what I was born to do, and I am more than happy to use them.  There are weeds in the garden!  It's a beautiful sunny day and there is no good reason to waste it sitting inside, plenty of time for that when it gets yucky out.  Good day for a hike!  Nail day!  No food in the fridge.  I feel like cooking.

I have a process and it begins with voracious reading.  Just before I am about to launch a very serious writing binge (I can put together a novel from start to finish in a matter of months once I open up the flood gates) I can't read enough.  One novel after another, I read and read and read and read.  I don't know why, for inspiration I suppose.  Then, when I have saturated myself with fictional novels, I move onto non-fiction, philosophical pieces, this is what you are supposed to be doing with your life stuff.  I am there now, and am reading The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself, by Micheal A. Singer, and The Art of Work, by Jeff Goins.

And I also visit my cards. 

Recently a friend said that I was afraid to publish my books, and I said no, I think you're wrong.  And I don't think it is fear of failure, I think it is just plain laziness.  I have no self-promotional skills whatsoever, and while I love the process of writing, the business of books is daunting to me.  So okay, I guess you can translate that into fear, because I do fear that I will throw up a few books on Amazon. com and that will be that.  No one will read them because they have no idea they are there!  Initially I came up with this brilliant plan that I would write three novels and then put one on Amazon for free ... and people would read the free one and say wow, I hope she wrote more books, and then pay for the other two.  (I told you this part wasn't my gig!!!)  And while it's probably not the saddest of plans, I also determined that based on my own experience, the free books usually suck and so I stopped reading them.  Again, do I want to be a free book sitting unread from now until the end of time on someone's device?  I do not.

But I did get the three novels done (which is the part I love!)  I just had no Plan B.

And so I visited the cards.

And I realized two things.  First, that I can't do it alone.  Yes, I am both a writer and an editor, but having my children and close friends read my stuff isn't exactly the way to get the most un-biased opinions.  And the thing that has always stopped me from paying for such services is that well, I can do it myself.  The card I drew, called The Unicorn, said to indulge my creative, imaginative and magical side through some form of artistic expression.  It then went on to say that I should make it a priority in my life and devote time, energy and even some money towards this artistic pursuit.  And I thought, AHA!  That is where the big road block begins and ends.  My refusal to PAY for something that I shouldn't be doing in the first place!

And without another moment of hesitation, I sent it off.  Oh, I knew where to send it.  I have folders upon folders of all one needs to know about self-publishing, etc.  Really, for the most part, I am just weird.  In all these minutes since I pushed the button, it just seems ridiculous that I haven't done this earlier!  I instructed them to be ruthless, don't worry about hurting my feelings, tell me like it is.  I have no concerns for me ego (though I think that would have been an untrue statement not too many years ago).  But the other card I drew said "I release the need to determine how things "should" be."

Really, the cards are just there to reinforce what you already know, and I know these cards and myself so well, I know EXACTLY which card is going to come up.  At first that freaked me out.  No, it always freaks me out.  So here is the big reveal.  I am afraid.  But not of what I expected ... I am afraid of all that can be.  When the freaky things start, that is when I retreat.  One of the cards I draw A LOT, and one of the ones I know is going to come up, is this one:

Platypus -- Stop complaining and focus your attention on the blessings in your life."

This one always cracks me up, because it is so spot on.  Some of the stuff we dwell on is such a collossal waste of time.  And I know this, but some times it is just easier to bitch and moan then ignore it and move on.  Is easier the right word?  I don't know, but I do know that this stage of my life is so very much about anger.  Anger that I have clearly sat on, and it didn't please me to see that the last blog post I made was of much the same vein.  It is that fire ... that incredible burning AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH that fuels this ridiculous need to right every wrong!  And how silly is that?  Stop complaining and focus your attention on the blessings in your life.

STOP COMPLAINING AND FOCUS YOUR ATTENTION ON THE BLESSINGS IN YOUR LIFE.

With everything I know, why this needs to be continuously drilled into my head is beyond me.  EVERY single thing that happens to you is caused by you.  You can't even really throw a "more or less" in there, because ultimately, it stands true. 

I am a writer, and when I write my life flows.  It is because it is what I am supposed to be doing with my life, and yet, I go for months and months and months without doing it.  Why?  I have no answer for that, other than the laundry list of excuses I keep handy.  I used to have better, more solid excuses, but they have all left the nest.  Perhaps it is as simple as I am just lazy.  But I don't think I am lazy.  Do lazy people NOT know they are lazy?!!!!

Let's draw another card, for kicks and giggles.  My question is am I being lazy?

Panda -- Create a sacred space for yourself in your home and/or place of work.

A sacred space is an area in your home or workplace where you can have some privacy for contemplation, meditation or simply a bit of quiet time to think.  This is a space that is your territory, whether it's an entire room or a corner of your living room or bedroom.  Place a cozy chair or pillow there, and then set up a simple altar, one that contains a few pieces that are both personal and precious.  Include a candle in your space that you can light when you're abiding there.  Make your sacred space a comfortable place to hang out, with no agenda of compulsion to do anything.  As Buddha said, "don't just do something; sit there."

You may find all sorts of reasons or excuses not to do this, but don't cave in to these internal objections,  Make it important enough for your emotional and mental health and balance to create this kind of private spiritual sanctuary.  Be sure to do nothing in particular for a good period of the time while you're there.  The increasingly rapid pace of life and growing intensities in the world are even greater cause for doing so.  It's a place for solace, one where you can more closely listen to your inner voice and feelings, and tap into the Life Force inside that's expressing itself as you.

**

Huh.  In response to my asking if I am lazy, I am told to get even lazier (more or less!)    Which of course is easily interpreted as you are so not lazy!

Awesome!  I am awesome!


Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Burn baby, burn

My plans for 2013 were to enjoy it to the best of my capabilities -- I was determined that turning 50 was going to be nothing but a huge celebration, all year long. 

I created the enormity of the milestone in my head -- I realize this.  Everyone, if they are lucky, turns 50, so it doesn't make me any more special.  What I was trying to achieve was that to me, it wasn't a horrible thing.  I know plenty of people my age (hahahaha) who suddenly speak with an aura of ageism that I tend to cringe from.  "We are old now," "gosh I am old," "it sucks getting old," and so on.  These are not phrases I permit in my vocabulary because I am not old.  Therefore, I wanted to take the opportunity of this birthday and make a big splash and show a different approach to turning 50.

I traveled, which was my intent, but the first trip to Mexico was shadowed by the death of Peter's father despite everyone's attempts to make it otherwise.  The death of a parent is a milestone as well, and it's not fair to carry on as though it never happened.  I could see a collision of milestones -- a 50th birthday, a death, a wedding -- and realized that this is life.  It seems as though we go through life not really able to completely immerse ourselves in the great events of our lives because we are just too damn busy.  I thought that at this stage of my life maybe I would have more time to process events as they happened, but as I look back over the past year, I realize that's not what happened.

The next trip to New Mexico for another wedding and a fabulous balloon ride with Hallie and Jeff took place only a few weeks after my own father's death.  Or passing, or whatever phrase makes you feel comfortable.  At that point I was pretty messed up, but managed to pull it together and I was thinking that I was doing the "fake it until you make it" thing really well until I realized that I had totally and completely messed up on when our return flight was -- and thankfully discovered it in time enough to jump out of bed, pack, return the rental car and get on the plane, where at last I took a deep breath and wondered how the hell I let that happen.  It was so unlike me.  SO UNLIKE ME.

It was clearly a symptom of repressing what was really going on and just carrying on -- when in fact, I was in no shape to do so.  Last summer Peter and I lived with his mother at the lake, in the small cottage, partly because we love the lake and the cottage, but mostly because we didn't want her to be alone after losing her husband only a few months before.  It was fine in the earlier weeks when she was somewhat disoriented and learning how to be someone she'd never been before, but as her strength grew, so did the apparent colliding of two strong women's ideas of just about everything!  But I repressed my feelings and carried on.  And I do want to point out that our relationship is great -- but we are essentially two generations apart, she could be my mother's mother -- and I grew up entirely different than Peter did and the constant focus on meals has worn my patience down to a very sharp sword.

I did not explode, but when his sister insisted we vacate the cottage in order to have a "friends weekend," it was kind of the proverbial last straw that smashed the camel's back.  I could go on ad nauseum about the inequity of the cottage world -- where Peter does EVERYTHING and everyone else shows up unannounced most of the time and look for food and fun, but I won't -- because I am letting it all go.  And with that comes the realization that that would be impossible if we moved in for the summer.  And quite frankly, Peter's mother at 92 is in better shape than half the people decades younger than she is.  She doesn't need to be taken care of -- that is her role, she likes to take care of people, and right now I personally need to take care of myself.

Navigating all of this is taking up far too much time, and there is a burning inside of me that is actually literal as well as figurative.  All of the things that I have read about peri-menopause is coming to fruition for me -- I am letting the old go and seeking out the new.  I don't want to be anyone's full time mother, or dutiful daughter-in-law or, or, or, or ... or anything I was I guess!

After my father's death I assisted my mother in cleaning up loose ends, dealing with insurance, all of the things that go along with someone's death, and that was fine, but then I noticed she was actually waiting for me to get things done.  My mother is not old -- she is 72 -- and more than capable of taking care of herself.  She just didn't want to.  Here I am, at 51, looking at a 72-year-old and a 92-year-old and thinking, I will not be either of you.  They are my role models for everything I don't want to be -- and this is not an insult to either of them -- it is just my truth.  I do, however, want to be parts of them.  I want the financial freedom that my mother has to travel and really do anything she wants and I want the physical and mental agility that Peter's mother has -- and having watched her all of these years, I understand fully the impact of regular exercise and the need to have a purpose.

But her purpose really, really, really doesn't fit my needs now.  She wants to feed us, she wants to tie us down and have us commit to meals and while that seems completely reasonable, my burning fire inside roars into life at the thought of it.  I DO NOT WANT TO BE TIED DOWN!  I do not want to do anything I don't want to do -- I am like a two-year-old ... I am egocentric and obstinate and I don't care how my actions affect others! 

And I ask myself, don't I deserve this?  That wonderful, happy-go-lucky year of celebrating 50 really kind of sucked.  The first half was shadowed by Peter's father's death and then turning our world upside down and living at the cottage and not spending or devoting any time to my own house, yard and garden, or Maddie, who will not stay at the cottage, which was frustrating, and then spiraling right into my father's illness and subsequent death.  The only shining beacon in a year of darkness was our amazing and life altering trip to Hawaii -- where we gelled as a family unit in such a way that I realized, they were all I needed!

So this is my year -- this is the year of deep awakening, of spiritual practice, of shedding the weight of years of obligation and empathy and truly thinking that people need help.  I don't think anyone really needs help to the degree that I think that they do -- I don't think in the end it really helps all that much.  That must come from my ego, which has thankfully been taken over by that two-year-old who doesn't care if anyone needs help or won't shut up because they are driving everyone nuts.  It's burning inside me, raw, deep, guttural, flames licking up my throat, lava spewing out of my pores -- I am ready to pitch a fit at any moment -- I am powerfully powerless of my actions, I am openly open to new paradigms -- I don't want to grow old taking care of my family, I want to grow old with them, playing with them, watching them fail and succeed and letting them make the mistakes they choose because that's what living is all about.

So pull up a chair and sit by my fire.  I will keep you warm, but I won't go out for anyone.

Saturday, March 8, 2014

TripAdvisor new gold standard

As for so many things Internet, I have been following Tripadvisor for many,  many, years, well before it became what it is today in terms of seeking out lodging, restaurants and activities in any given location.  When I was planning my Hawaii trip, it was invaluable in terms of trying to get an idea of which side of the island(s) I wanted to be on -- I had no knowledge of Hawaii at all -- and trying to plan a trip in the dark, so to speak, would have been impossible I believe without not only TripAdvisor, but the Internet as a whole.

Years ago when we had booked a hotel in North Conway over New Year's for the kids' ski races, I happened to check Tripadvisor, and their comments were not favorable.  At that time, I just figured it was the rantings of a few unhappy visitors.  Well, they had it spot on!  The pool was dirty and the hot tub disgusting and there were puddles on the floor and kids running up and down hallways (okay, they were ours) but it gave me a new respect for this site.  That was well over a decade ago.

I am a researcher by nature, so while many people might quickly look something up, I take it to the next level and read every single review -- and even review the reviewers themselves to see if we have any common likes.  As a result, I am rarely unhappy with the advice I glean from Tripadvisor.  This last trip to the Florida Keys really brought it home to me how popular it has become in the world, at large!  There wasn't one hotel or restaurant that didn't have a sticker in their window, or a framed copy of their glowing TripAdvisor reviews (and yes, I did take into account that I found all of these places on that site!)  One restaurant even handed out a card asking me to review them on TripAdvisor, along with the name of our waitress.  What a great idea, I thought!  And what a truly amazing tool to have at our disposal -- peer-to-peer reviews with no concerns about money exchanging hands for a glowing review.

My gut thinks that this will change though.  I have a feeling that there is far too much power in this site for something not to evolve to that degree.  Several poor reviews can render an establishment up shit's creek.  I read a series of poor reviews and move on immediately.  In fact, the hotel we stayed in on Key West I had read several complaints about how their shuttle service was undependable.  Lo and behold, what did we have an issue with?  Yep, we were stranded on Duval Street as the bus filled up and they left us with no commentary on whether or not another bus would show up.  We got a cab and went into the desk and asked for a refund (the cab driver actually told us to do this, he said they usually did this).  They were like oh no, we sent another bus, two vans and a suburban, you would have had a ride if you had waited.  Huh?  And their response to my review was so defensive ... they can't get away with what they used to anymore, and they clearly aren't happy about it!  But I even wanted to say, you are going to get a shitty review from me on TripAdvisor!  A power hungry demon I was! 

I review and I received this email and thought it was fascinating:
In seven days my reviews received 5,396 readers!  This is a sea change, people.  Like I said, I have been using TripAdvisor for years, but have never seen this kind of popularity up until now.  So as I see it things could go either way -- either they start paying people to write positive reviews, or it stays the same.  I suspect that there is someone seeing this power and trying to figure out how to harness it to their advantage.  What is most interesting is how the establishments themselves are reading Tripadvisor daily.  As soon as I post a review, I receive a response from "the management" almost immediately.  I can envision new jobs sprouting up across the country -- read the Tripadvisor reviews and see how we can fix things! company owners shout.  If we get one more bad review we are SUNK!

There are certainly positives and negatives that go along with this whole phenomena.  I mean, there are wacky people out there, and accusations that establishments pay reviewers (which is why I review the reviewers!)  I have read how Tripadvisor has ruined people's lives by calling them a pedophile (really, one person called you that and your life is ruined?)  and even a website where you can go as an abused company owner and fight back!  I am not in disagreement that the power of this website is a little off the charts, but I think that there are enough people like me who can critically read the reviews and come up with their own opinions, and who also write the reviews, to make it an extremely worthwhile go-to travel tool.

Anyway, I am not here to promote TripAdvisor, I am just commenting on how much its influence in the travel industry has grown so much as of late.  It is, without a doubt, my go-to site for making informed decisions on where I want to stay at any given place.  And I can also see that it is something for company owners to fear.


Saturday, February 15, 2014

The brain of a peri-menopausal woman

I was in the supermarket yesterday, list in hand, going up and down the aisles and checking things off.  When I looked into the cart, I realized that all I was buying was food for dinner that night.  Since I hate and abhor going grocery shopping, I thought to myself, I should really buy some more ingredients for more meals.

I was stumped.

I looked around, I wracked my brain for some ideas, and I realized, I had nothing.  Zip.  Again, I glanced at my list, hoping that it would grow some more entries -- something that I could follow, because damn my brain had gone cold.

I used to zip around a store and make up meals in my head as I went around.  I never wrote a list, ever.  I am a creative cook, and that followed me right into the store -- I would see what type of meats looked good and then go from there.  I would see what was fresh in the produce department ... and go from there.  Even if I went in with a list for a particular dinner, I could still supplement as I went along.  That seems to have disappeared.  Totally.

It's kind of weird.  I mean, it feels weird, it feels as though something is going on in my brain, and because I have all sorts of other things going on (that I won't share, you are welcome) all one hundred percent related to "the change," it only makes sense that the erasure of my mad skills at making meals off the top of my head has to do with that as well.

According to an article "How Menopause Affects your Brain," by More magazine author Kathryn Olney, the chemical shifts of menopause do change how a woman's brain works.  Which if you think about it, is really quite freaky.

**
As excerpted from the article:

Q. I really identified with your patient Sylvia. Like her, I am suddenly irritated by things my husband and three kids have done for years, things that didn’t get to me before. I’m 50. Is this shift is due to changes in my brain?
A. Yes, you are leaving your "mommy brain" behind. Before menopause, the brain is constantly triggered by and reacting to the needs of others, particularly children and husbands. As you go into menopause, the highs and lows of estrogen and progesterone that have been cycling through your brain since puberty come to an end. That means your brain is on a more continuous footing, hormone-wise. Note that I’m not saying "more stable" footing, because that implies that previous to menopause you weren’t stable.

 **

It is one thing to read something like this, but to actually feel it is quite another.  I no longer have a family to feed on a regular basis (forget the fact that I was at the store yesterday because all of the chicks I felt I flung out of the nest seem to flock back every other weekend or so!) but it appears my brain has thoroughly concluded that this aspect of my life is over, and that super skill has been eliminated (clearly to make room for something much more meaningful, though to be honest, I kind of liked having it!)

**
Q. So is that why I feel as if I can draw boundaries better than before?
A. Exactly. Before menopause, a woman’s hormones encourage her to avoid conflict. Our estrogenized brain circuits cause us to respond to stress with nurturing activities that are intended to protect our relationships. From puberty to menopause, a woman walks a fine line between making sure she’s at the center of her relationships and risking pushing those relationships away through anger or aggression. The urge to walk this line doesn’t stop until the hormone supply that fuels it is cut off, which happens in menopause. As the ratio of testosterone to estrogen rises, the anger pathways in a woman’s brain become more like a man’s. Now she gets angry, whereas before she may have just bitten her tongue. At the very least, she’ll stand up for herself and say, "I’m not doing that anymore."

**
(Okay, to be perfectly clear, I kind of always felt that way ... but let's go with the whole nurturing aspect, makes me sound better!)

**
According to the article, less estrogen means less oxytocin, the hormone that promotes feelings of caretaking. Oxytocin is manufactured in the brain, and the cells that make it are stimulated by estrogen. So, before menopause, when Sylvia had higher estrogen levels, her brain would dial up these caretaking hormones and pump out more of them. After menopause, this occurs less often: Women are more interested in others taking care of themselves. The tugs they used to feel at their heartstrings to care for children lessen. One patient was shocked to find herself only half-listening to the minute details of her daughter’s life when she called from college, whereas before she had hung on every word. When her daughter was out of the house, that urge was no longer being fueled. The brain circuits are still there, but in menopause, the fuel for running the highly responsive engine that tracks the emotions of others begins to run dry. That causes a major shift in how a woman perceives her reality.

**
But that is only one article and really, what I have found is that the majority of discussions about the changing patterns of women's brains during peri-menopause and after (menopause itself, or the stopping of the menses) tends to be more about the woman throwing the leg of lamb out the window.  There is this tendency to humorize the situation, and well, it's not always funny.  It's not funny to start crying when you accidentally pour half of the coffee grounds on the floor.  There is no way to underscore how devastating this can be ... it means having to get out the vacuum, it means that your actual cup of coffee and the enjoyment thereof, has been hijacked by the NEED to clean something up; something that didn't need cleaning up before it was spilled.  THIS is the shit going on, the really not so amusing minutia of a day hijacked by fluctuating hormones.  It's not funny, it's hard.

So is laying awake at night, in a hotel room in Boston, with this feeling of doom.  Waking up from a dream about a fire and being sure that your house is burning down while you lay there.  And then trying to look at it, not from an emotional view point, but intellectually ... I am fucked up in the head because of this shit going on inside of me, and none of this is real and nothing is burning ... and feeling more stressed because you've gone from really cool sex dreams to this crap.  It's not funny, it's hard.

One of my favorite people/authors is Dr. Christiane Northrup -- I have been reading her books for years and gleaning so much wisdom from them. According to her,

**
Our Brains Catch Fire at Menopause

Our brains actually begin to change at perimenopause. Like the rising heat in our bodies, our brains also become fired up! Sparked by the hormonal changes that are typical during the menopausal transition, a switch goes on that signals changes in our temporal lobes, the brain region associated with enhanced intuition. How this ultimately affects us depends to a large degree on how willing we are to make the changes in our lives that our hormones are urging us to make over the ten years or so of perimenopause.

There is ample scientific evidence of the brain changes that begin to take place at perimenopause. Differences in relative levels of estrogen and progesterone affect the temporal lobe and limbic areas of our brains, and we may find ourselves becoming irritable, anxious, emotionally volatile.
Though our culture leads us to believe that our mood swings are simply the result of raging hormones and do not have anything to do with our lives, there is solid evidence that repeated episodes of stress (due to relationship, children, and job situations you feel angry about or powerless over, for example) are behind many of the hormonal changes in the brain and body.

This means that if your life situation--whether at work or with children, your husband, your parents, or whatever--doesn't change, then unresolved emotional stress can exacerbate a perimenopausal hormone imbalance. In a normal premenopausal hormonal state it's much easier to overlook those aspects of your life that don't really work, just as you can overlook them more easily in the first half of your menstrual cycle--the time when you're more apt to feel upbeat and happy and able to shove difficult material under the rug. But that doesn't mean the problems aren't there.

**
Northrup goes on to explain that during our younger years, if we are not addressing this unresolved emotional stress, then it will manifest with a good case of PMS.  I personally did not have PMS except for seasonal, and that was understandable to me because I have always found the changing of the seasons stressful (except for spring into summer, and so I didn't have the issue then.)  She explains that PMS is one way a woman's body reminds her every month of the growing backlog of unresolved issues accumulating within her.

Next is postpartum depression, and she says that it is well documented that women who have significant PMS are also more apt to suffer from this.  She says that it is often a sign from a mother's inner wisdom that she isn't getting the support and help she needs at this time.  This is interesting because I suffered from an incredible bout of postpartum depression after I had Hallie.  I would sit on the couch and look up at the huge pine trees on the hill across the street and wish for them to fall down and crush me.  At this particular time, Peter took the week off after Hallie was born as his company was progressive and offered "paternity leave," which he took as a most obvious time to build the front porch on to our house, with his father.  As I sat amidst the sounds of compressors and hammering, meals were brought over by my mother-in-law, who would say that the men must be starved after all the work that they had done.  There is a deep rooted anger within me just writing this -- my inability to not stand up and scream STOP DOING ALL OF THIS NOW and let me heal -- just squashed down, probably because I liked the idea of a porch?  Who the hell knows, but these were the people in my life -- who couldn't see that this entire thing might not be helpful.   I remember the look of horror on my midwife's face when she came several days after the birth to do a follow up home visit, and she had to walk in amongst the bedlam of a construction project, only to find me inches away from it all, on the other side of the wall, clearly distraught and unable to communicate that.  Well, alrighty then ... going to let that go now!!!  Because I was much older when I had the next batch of kids, and because I was clearly scarred from this, I made huge demands before I would even agree to getting pregnant.  The good news is that I learned from this, and did not suffer from depression on the two subsequent pregnancies.

So if you ignored your PMS symptoms, then Northrup says your body would send a louder wake-up call on a yearly basis in the form of seasonal affective disorder, otherwise known as SAD, which she says is a profound example of how women's wisdom is simultaneously encoded into both our monthly cycles and the annual cycle of the seasons.

She calls perimenopause the mother of all wake-up calls, and it can often be experienced as PMS times ten, which she says is particularly the case for those who hit the snooze button instead of heeding their monthly and seasonal wake-up calls.

**
This is not to discount the direct physical effects of changing hormone levels. However, it is a safe bet that any uncomfortable symptoms that reveal themselves during times of hormonal shift will be magnified and prolonged if a woman is carrying a heavy load of emotional baggage. Throughout a woman's childbearing years, a kind of "debt account" is established where existing and future issues accumulate, compounding interest with each passing month that the debt goes unpaid.

Thus the average woman, blessed with approximately 480 menstrual periods and 40 seasonal cycles to bring her to the threshold of menopause, gets about 500 progress reports. How is her physical health and nutrition? How are her emotions? What's happening in her relationships and her career? There have been approximately 500 opportunities to resolve those issues or sweep them under the rug.

At perimenopause the process escalates. The earnest, straightforward inner self, which has tried for years to get our attention, makes one final hormonally mediated attempt to get us to deal with our accumulated needs, wants, and desires. This is likely to turn into a period of great emotional turmoil, as each woman struggles to make a new life, one that can accommodate her emerging self. Externally and internally, this period is a mirror image of adolescence, a time when our bodies and brains were also going through major hormonal shifts that gave us the energy to attempt to individuate and become the person we were meant to be. At menopause we pick up where we left off in adolescence. It is now time to finish the job.


It should be no surprise, then, that research has documented that those women who experience uncomfortable--even severe--symptoms of PMS are often the same women who have a tumultuous perimenopause, with physical and emotional symptoms that become increasingly impossible to ignore.

**
I copied the above not because I feel this reflects my own experience, but because I think it reflects the situation of many people I know, and those people are less likely than I am to actually find this information, and yet it is very illuminating.  With that said, of course, like the tidbit I shared above, I have my stories, my unaddressed traumas, but I did not experience PMS or SAD and feel that I constantly questioned the situations in my life that I wasn't happy with.  (Yes, I am perfect, I know!  But let's get back to the brain drain issue.)

According to Northrup, what has been well documented is that the brains of women who suffer the most from PMS-like symptoms are more susceptible to the effects of fluctuating hormone levels. In other words, it is not the hormone levels per se that are the problem; it is the particular combination of a woman's hormone levels and her pre-existing brain chemistry, along with her life situation, that results in her symptoms. It is estimated that 27 percent of all women who become depressed premenstrually will be very sensitive to the hormonal changes that occur at menopause.

She goes on to say that though we tend to blame perimenopausal symptoms on hormonal shifts in the body, their origins are far more complex.  Changes in reproductive hormones alone do not account for these symptoms. They are signals from our mind and body that we have reached a new developmental stage--an opportunity for healing and growth.


Until midlife, it is characteristic for a woman's energies to be focused on caring for others. She is encouraged to do so, in part, by the hormones that drive her menstrual cycles--the hormones that foster her instincts for nurturing. But for two or three days each month, just before or during our periods, there is a hormonal interlude when the veil between our conscious and unconscious selves is thinner and the voice of our souls beckons to us, subtly reminding us of our own passions, our own needs, which cannot and should not always be subsumed to the needs of those we love.

I like to think of the first half of our cycles as the time when we are both biologically and psychologically preparing to give birth to someone or something outside of ourselves. In the second half of our cycles, we prepare to give birth to ourselves. It is at this time that the more intuitive parts of our brain become activated, giving us feedback and guidance about the state of our inner lives.

At midlife, the hormonal milieu that was present for only a few days each month during most of your reproductive years, the milieu that was designed to spur you on to reexamine your life just a little at a time, now gets stuck in the on position for weeks or months at a time. We go from an alternating current of inner wisdom to a direct current that remains on all the time after menopause is complete. During perimenopause, our brains make the change from one way of being to the other.

Biologically, at this stage of life you are programmed to withdraw from the outside world for a period of time and revisit your past. You need to be free of the distractions that come when you are focusing your mothering efforts solely on others. Perimenopause is a time when you are meant to mother yourself.


It may be no accident that the word "menopause" invites the association "pause from men." In truth, you are being urged, biologically, to pause from everyone in order to do important work on yourself. Perhaps as a result of this, one of the most common threads running through women's descriptions of how they feel during the menopausal transition is the longing for time alone, for a refuge that provides peace, quiet, and freedom from distractions and demands.

It's a wistful dream, seemingly out of reach in this busy age if multidirectional tugs-of-war. But those who have the yearning often believe that their uncomfortable menopausal symptoms would simply dissolve if only they had the luxury of shutting out the world so they could tune into the growth process occurring within themselves. This wistful dream is real. It comes from your soul. I've come to realize that you can trust it and believe in it--and that you must do its bidding.


Even if this dream seems out of reach, the simple truth is that every woman
can find refuge within her existing environment. Even if you can't charter a plane to a deserted island, odds are that if you acknowledge and validate your need for solitude, you can clear some time and find a private corner to which to retreat daily. You can insulate yourself from noise, telephones, and interaction with others. I encourage every woman to find a way to do this on whatever level is possible. When we commit to taking this first step, we have the chance to develop a newfound sense of ourselves and our life's purpose, which gives us an exhilarating sense of what is possible for us during the second half of our lives.
**
So this is where it truly resonates.  My cravings to be alone now are huge, and I really like the concept of mothering yourself, and giving birth to yourself.  I strongly feel that our lives are comprised of acts, and each act is a chunk of time devoted to a certain aspect.  My first act as an adult was a combination of working and mothering -- an experience that solidified in my mind that it is a brutal and probably worthless struggle because you can NOT do both full time.  Then the pursuit to balance and do each halftime is yet another parody of our society, because the truth of the matter is, you CAN do both, but you will be failing one or the other, or both, nearly all of the time.  The rest of the time you are just kidding yourself.  And that is fine -- staying at home with children is not for everyone and we all have our paths.  I am not criticizing, I am just commenting on how it feels to me after having done it.  If I had it to do over again, I can't possibly see what I would have done differently, but you have to be a certain type of person to let your career future go in order to half-time it and watch it stagnate for years.  Now it is all easier because telecommuting is the norm, whereas back then it didn't even exist.  But I've worked from home with the kids there, and again, I won't change my opinion.  Ignored kids at home are probably not better off than kids at daycare with constant activity.  But that part of my act one morphed into my stopping the work thing and concentrating on them, and that was the right thing to do.  I believe that our young adults/teenagers need probably more of our time and wisdom than smaller children, based on my own experience.

Act two is there, she dances, a wispy figment of my imagination at times, a solid old woman sitting crosslegged and staring at me, waiting for me to act, at others.  Sometimes it feels tangible, other times it feels impossible.  But after reading the above wisdom, it all makes sense.  The fact that the kids keep coming back means the cords have not been cut as fully as I had thought they had been -- another message to ruminate about ... that we don't just become other people overnight -- it is a process, a journey, and no matter how hard we want our babies to join us when we are pregnant, they can't come out and do so until they are fully formed.  So next time I am standing in the supermarket wondering why I can't do what I used to do so well before, I will just remember that giving birth is a slow and painful process, and thank god this time it's more metaphorical!




Sunday, February 2, 2014

WOULD SOMEBODY PLEASE PASS THE BREAD

I did it again -- ordered another "diet" book.  I swore I would never, ever, ever, never buy another one -- I have been buying and reading them since the beginning of time -- and in the end, nothing really makes any difference.  Yes, I feel soooooo good when eating raw, and yet, it's not sustainable when you love food -- cooked food; food that just doesn't crunch or run down your gullet via a glass.  Juices absolutely buzz through your body and make you feel alive -- but it is outrageously time consuming to have a refrigerator full of fresh, organic greens in stock and the work it takes to create a small glass of green juice is a little over the top.  And the truth of the matter is, I just don't feel bad enough to want to keep that up on a daily basis.  I don't really feel bad at all, except that I am flummoxed at the weight thing.  And yet, am I?  I have enough knowledge at this point in my life to understand exactly what it is all about -- what I haven't yet HAD to do is change my ways due to a life threatening illness or overall feeling lousy, which prompts many people to make dietary changes.

I know that the moment I remove bread from my life, my "wheat belly" begins to decrease.  Almost the very first day.  And yet ... I love bread, I love it more than I seem to hate my wheat belly!  What does that come from?  How can you KNOW something and yet, not care?  I hate to use the word addiction; because it is so abused in this culture.  (As Dr. Phil said on some show the other day, he doesn't believe in sex addiction because people don't usually have it until they get caught having sex with someone they shouldn't!)  True enough.

It is suspected that all of the auto-immune diseases so prevalent today are caused by inflammation, which is caused by what we eat.  Can it really be all that simple?  And yet, the hope that a pill will cure something is so tantalizing, so much EASIER, that many of us tend to go down that road in the hopes of a cure, or at the very least relief from pain.  And obviously changing your diet won't reverse damage that has lodged itself in a body over decades.  I can feel the effects of wheat (or gluten or whatever) in my joints.  Stop eating bread, and it goes away.  Completely.  And yet ...

So the latest thing is paleo (and my heavens, I have eaten potatoes for breakfast when carbs were the way to lose weight, I have eaten my blood type foods, packaging up all my meals where ever I went and religiously following the plan, I have eaten raw exclusively.) But I am somewhat jaded as I have watched over time the icons of the raw food world turn to cooked foods (and the more meat the better) to heal their ruined guts.  So paleo smaleo, whatever, I have paid no attention, but what I do pay attention to is when someone I respect in the blogosphere recommends reading something by someone that has changed their life.  Life changing books are pretty cool, even if the regiments don't last.  We do keep trying, we foolish humans.  So maybe I read these diet books as a form of pleasure?

I don't know, I really don't.  I am about as adamant at following my own dictates with diet books as I am when presented with a basket of bread and a plate of olive oil and garlic at a restaurant.  I think, oh whatever, that is just too delicious to pass up.  Another thing I read is that when you apply stress during a meal (thinking, oh dear, I really shouldn't eat that, it's going to be payback tomorrow) then you raise your cortisol levels and your metabolism shuts down.  Geesh.  If you enjoy your meal, laugh and feel happy, then your metabolism will kick in and  you won't hold all those molecules in your fat cells until the end of time.  It's an interesting theory, anyway.  But damn, I am pretty sure that I don't feel all that guilty when I eat the bread ... I just enjoy it thoroughly.  I really do.  And when my joints ache I just shake my head and know it came from something I consciously did.  Which then causes me to question my own integrity and write about it in a blog!

The other thing I have a tendency to do is eat something that is delicious (and more or less good for me) over and over and over until I never want to eat it again!  Kind of dumb, I know, but ultimately I would skip eating altogether if I could these days -- I just feel as though I have so many things to do in the course of a day, and having to take time to consider something nourishing, non-fattening, non-gluten and easy as hell is a pain in the ass.  Someone I know posted their Salad in a Jar experiment on Facebook this week.  I have had that in my Pinterest for a long time; I have loads of those jars, and salad fixings galore.  But I've never tried it -- and if you read the sentence above, it would kind of take care of the issue.  But salad does not fill me -- it does not really even stay with me -- and I have no desire for it.  Ever.  Well, occasionally, but never in the winter, and like I said, unless it has a fattening dressing on it and some major protein, it won't even qualify as a meal in my brain.

So the thing I am eating now for breakfast is Acai bowls -- a discovery in Hawaii that is sooooo delicious.  You take frozen Acai (am I even spelling that right!?) and throw that in the high speed blender with some frozen fruit (blueberries from 2012 which must have been a banner blueberry year because wow, I still have a ton) a little coconut water, whir that up until it takes on the consistency of soft serve ice cream, then throw some granola (in my case, it is Tropical Anahola Granola straight from the island of Paradise) gluten free and chock full of macadamia nuts, cut up some fruit on top (banana for me) and wa la, it is sooooooooooooooo good.  And it will hold me for hours, but then what?  Damn mid-day hunger, I don't really WANT anything, but oh, if something presents itself in the form of a bad carb, I can't control myself.  (Where do those come from?  Husband (public food enemy number 1).  He buys bread and sometimes it calls me from the pantry ... evil, evil bread.  And yesterday he brought home CHEESE ITS.  I love all of that orange food -- the things I call corn curls (orange and airy and they collapse in your mouth in a brilliance of flavor, causing you to need to experience that same feeling over and over and over, until the bag is gone.)  I have a trick, where I put a few of the bad items into a teeny tiny bowl, and that is all I allow myself.  It doesn't work, I have no trouble getting up and refilling the bowl over and over and over.  Mind games.  I always lose I guess!

So in conclusion, would somebody please pass the bread?  Yes, I know it will pass my lips and remain forever on my hips, yes I know my joints will ache, but more importantly, slathered with that soft, sweet butter, for one moment I will close my eyes and chew and swallow and revel in its glory.

I blame it all on Eve.




Monday, January 27, 2014

The case of the wooden pants

When we first got our new fireplace -- a fieldstone beauty that is two-sided and can be enjoyed both from the living room and the dining room -- we had a hard time figuring out how to enjoy a fire without filling the house with smoke.  We actually installed heat upstairs (thank heavens, what were we thinking that we could live without it, especially with this nutty weather we are having) because we read that the cold air messed things up.  That didn't work.

Then we would crack a window, but that didn't do the trick either.  Someone mentioned that we needed a fan to blow somewhere, and Peter put one in the woodbox and I have no idea where it blew, but every time you wanted a fire you had to make sure the heat was on upstairs, a window was cracked and the fan was on.  None of this actually kept smoke from pouring out into the house, but it is the act of DOING something to correct a problem that keeps you going.  I guess.


Eventually the amount of smoke that poured into the room abated ... or maybe we got used to it ... I don't know, but I don't remember when we stopped all the shenanigans that preceded a fire, but now we just light fires, end of process.  (And very often it gets smokey, or smells smokey.  I guess we are truly used to it.)

Okay, that was a tangent -- I began this with the intent of discussing the log pants.  When we first got our fireplace ... Peter was putting logs on the fire when he held one up and said, "hey, doesn't this look like a pair of pants?"  Indeed it did, and we commented that we should have our friend Liz paint a zipper on it, maybe some other features, and so he leaned it against the stones, and that is where it has been ... well, no less than forever!  We never adorned it with telltale hints to make it look more like pants, because to us they just were a pair of log pants.  Never to be burned.  Apparently.

This past week Maddie was obsessed with fires, and kept one burning continuously until she used up the piles of wood in the garage.  Peter and I consider fire events -- we have them frequently, but we pull up chairs in front of the hearth, very often pop a bottle of champagne or other spirits -- but if we light one, it is our focus.  Having one so continuously was nice, but like I said, it used up a lot of wood!  So the other day Maddie eyed the pants, even took it in her grasp, and I said in horror, what are you doing?  You can't burn the pants!  They are older than you are!  They have been there forever!

And last night, Peter lit a fire, and we were sitting there, when he jumped up and announced that he was going to burn the pants.  Huh?  What was the sudden urge to burn up an iconic part of our family?  Was it because I did away with Christmas?  Now the pants?  What next!

This morning, while chatting with the kids (text, gmail chat, facebook chat) Maddie asked whether we had a fire last night, and I said yes, and told her that dad wanted to burn the pants.  Charlie's immediate response was YOU CAN'T BURN THE PANTS!  But Maddie understood, she is aware of the wood shortage!  But it got me to thinking, why not burn the pants?

In truth, they aren't that attractive, but what is more amazing to me is how long they have maintained permanent residence on a rather focal point of the living room!  They almost perished years and years ago when my sister's brother-in-law just assumed it was there to be burned, but we all shouted noooooo, and he looked at us all as though we were crazy, but he found another less treasured piece of wood to burn instead!  Why do we hold on to things so long?  But what strikes me even more is we never had a conversation beyond "hey, doesn't this look like a pair of pants?" as to whether we would invite the inanimate object to share our lives.  It just happened.

I think the pants should go -- not because they aren't kind of cool (I just love how they look as though they are sashaying ... swing the hips baby) but because the universe seems to be speaking.  A piece of wood that has gone untouched for 12, 15 years (maybe longer) that suddenly is being targeted as firewood in two consecutive days speaks to me that it is time.  It's time to let go of all of the things we hold on to without even knowing it.  That piece of wood hasn't been in my consciousness for years, and now suddenly it's all I see when I gaze into the flickering fire.  It is now trespassing in my cluttered brain.  One toss into the hot coals and it will be no longer.

And yet ... Charlie doesn't want the pants to be burned.  Should we have a family pants burning party?  Should they go with much pomp and circumstance, or should they fall quietly into the smoke and disappear?  Maybe the time to rid the world of the wooden pants isn't now -- when they have been brought back into focus -- when suddenly the thought of no longer having the pants adorn the hearth seems wrong, some how.

I don't know -- the pants do not HAVE to go -- but they have made me think about all of those things that just sneak into your life and take up residence and don't make a peep so you won't notice ... but when you do, you ask yourself, do I really need you?