Boston …

April 16, 2013 By

IMG_0677Yesterday was once again a day of terror and violence.  I took in the scenes on CNN of the attack on Boston and could only shrug my shoulders in disbelief. Today is the 6th anniversary of the massacre at Virginia Tech, and every day it only seems to get worse. Will every day become the anniversary of a shooting or a bombing?

What has surprised me most is my own reaction.  Breaking news of the sort we received yesterday doesn’t seem to be news any more. I didn’t cry as I usually do for the victims of the other attacks. I thought, “It’s just what happens in our world.”  That scares me. It is not how I want to be.

I’ve lived seventy long years and was living a good life, the day JFK was assassinated … also when his brother, Bobby, was killed and let’s not forget Martin Luther King, Jr.

I cried for those who died at Kent State … young people simply protesting the actions of a President, who the day before launched a campaign on Cambodia, during a war that few supported.

There was Rodney King, in 1991 who asked, “Can’t we all just get along,”  after a horribly cruel beating by police officers who acted out of prejudice.

9/11 took us all by surprise. We never believed we’d see an attack of that magnitude on our homeland … home of free and land of the brave. But there have been other shootings, bombings, and wars all around the world, in places where people fear for their lives if they leave their homes, or go about their lives without noticing what is happening around them.  It’s just the way it is.  And I’m afraid there will be much more to come.

For me, the straw that finally broke my spirit altogether was the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Connecticut.  It was a complete shock to my nervous system that even innocent children are not spared.  Now, I simply have no more tears. But I have the hope that the parents and spouses of those who were murdered that day, can lead this confused nation back to the reality before us and bring a stop to much of the violence. But they cannot do it alone.

All of us, who believe in peace at home and abroad must stand up to stop the violence. That includes our lawmakers, many of who are afraid of not being re-elected if they back the gun control laws they are now considering. The events in Newtown could bring us to a New Country, and maybe even a New World, where all people can live free without fear of going out in public.

If we do nothing, I fear we will become a complacent society barely noticing what is happening around us. We can’t let that happen. Please make your feeling known to those who can make new laws, and stand tall for peace.

Please note that I will be taking a blog break until April 27th, so that I can deal with the mess on my desk, write a few letters, and plant flowers in my garden. I wish you all a glorious spring through which we can hopefully bring our country back to a life without fear. 

Filed Under: Compassion, Fear, Life, love, Matters of the Spirit, Navigating Through Life, Trauma Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf?

March 2, 2013 By
Brody is afraid of big, bad strangers!

Brody is afraid of big, bad strangers.

Fear can be a good thing. It keeps us safe and on our toes when we dodge an out of control car. Or when we walk down an unlit street in middle of the night hoping the dog will pee so we can go home and back to bed. When we’re afraid, our senses do double time. We hear the snap of a twig off in the distance, the crunch of gravel underfoot … things that we may not notice during daylight hours when we’re not on guard.

As children, fear makes us behave when we know that we’ll be beaten if we don’t. We fear hurricanes, tornados, and earthquakes. It allows us to make decisions more quickly, as a jolt of adrenalin wakes up our response system. We then choose between fight and flight in a heartbeat.

But fear can also be a bad thing. If you spend your life being so afraid that you dare not leave your home, you are missing out on a whole lot of good living. To a certain extent, everyone is afraid … of losing a loved one, being abandoned, and dying.  We’re afraid of the boogeyman that haunts the hollow tree down the street and the bedraggled old woman who walks by every day carrying all of her possessions in two worn shopping bags.  Sometimes she stops and stares and all we want to do us run in the opposite direction.

I have spent a good portion of my own life living in fear.  I was afraid of my father because he was mean, hateful, and abused me. I was afraid of my mother because she didn’t protect me from him. For a good long portion of my life I’ve been afraid of being useless, unloved, and being alone. I’ve lived on adrenalin, ready to run like hell or fight to the end.

The most important question I was ever been asked was, “What are you so afraid of?”  At the time, I was unable to come up with an answer for the psychologist who sat across his desk from me. I was twenty-five years old and a new mother. I’ve spent the years since trying to find the answer to that question. It’s been a long, difficult journey of digging down so deep it’s made my heart bleed at times. I’ve got a handle on it now and continue to work at bringing up the rest of the remains of my somewhat fractured life.

Over the last few weeks I’ve had the pleasure of becoming a mom to one of the cutest, funniest, little balls of fuzz I’ve ever been acquainted with. Brody is a bundle of joy … happy, respectful of his big brother Sam, and ready to wash your face if you smile at him. He often streaks through the house with odd bits of laundry I’ve neglected to pick up from the floor, like my bra or underpants.  He loves toys and at the end of the day the whole basket of dog toys that Sam is usually bored with, are spread from one end of the house to the other.

But the joy ends when someone he doesn’t know walks through the door.  We know very little about him, except that he’s four year old and was given up by his owners because they could no longer care for him. He supposedly lived in a barn for a good long while, so most recently hasn’t had what I would call a real home.  All we can do is guess at the rest.

The problem is that Brody is afraid of losing his space and this place he now calls home.  When my brother arrived a few weeks ago for a four-day visit, Brody was not comfortable.  It took him the four days to get to the point where he trusted Zed enough to allow him to pick him up and hold him.

He snapped and bit a young man I was trying to hire as a dog walker for a time when we would be away for a whole day. Brody broke the skin, but there was no blood.  Needless to say that didn’t work out very well.

He seems to be mostly afraid of men and especially my son. As long as Mark sits still on the couch, Brody will be calm. But as soon as Mark gets ready to leave there is hell to pay, with Brody behind him, barking, growling and lunging trying to get hold of a pant leg. Should Mark turn around and face him, Brody backs way off with his tail between his legs. It’s a serious and scary situation. I don’t want him to bite anyone, yet I want my family and friends to feel welcome in my home, especially by this little guardian of mine.  And I have no intention of giving him up.

Because I know and understand fear so well myself, I feel nothing but love and compassion for this sweet, little being.  He is always on alert. Even when I think he is sound asleep in my lap, he’ll rise to the challenge of the slightest sound that may mean an acorn has just fallen from a tree outside or that we are being invaded by aliens. They are things that I can’t hear or smell myself. Things that lie hidden in his past that I will never know of.

But I am bound and determined to help this little guy through his fear so that he can live a peaceful life. And while I’m helping him, he is helping me discover more things about fear and myself that I was not yet aware of. Every day I ask both myself and Brody what we’re so afraid of. With the help of a dog trainer friend, I know I can help him have a chance at a happy life and my own healing will continue.

What do you fear?  What do you do to keep your head on straight when you’re afraid?  Do you whistle a happy tune or hide?

Filed Under: Animals I Love, Compassion, Dogs, Fear, Healing, Memoir, Navigating Through Life, Trauma Tagged With: , , , , , ,

On Burning My Journals

February 22, 2013 By
A Journal collage and some writing.

A Journal collage and some writing.

When we decided to move from our house on the banks of the South Fork Rivanna River Reservoir almost three years ago, I was in a hurry to get out and move into a smaller place in town, rather than out in the country. We were in the midst of a cold season that was very much like a Vermont winter, with two major snowstorms and lots of cold. The first storm brought three feet of snow and the second delivered two more.  We lived on a private road and had to hire somebody to plow our road and the driveway.  I was stuck at home a lot that winter and had a serious case of Cabin Fever, which usually means depression, anxiety, and a nasty temper. Being cooped up in the house where my mother had lived with us for six and a half years, brought back the many sad and unspeakable memories I’d gathered during her time with us. All I wanted was out.

Once March came and we found the house in town that we now live in, we put the river house on the market. I began the hard work of packing up what we wanted to keep and finding homes for the rest of the stuff we would have no room for in the new house … one half the size of the one we were leaving. Hard decisions had to be made. We still had many of Mom’s belongings … things I hid in closets so that I couldn’t see them … things that reminded me of the trauma of watching her as she slowly died of lung cancer and old age.

I hadn’t yet been able to deal with all that, but clearly if I was going to move I’d finally have to put on my big girl panties and make some grownup decisions. It was much easier than I thought it would be, but then there was my studio and all of the paintings, photographs and the artist materials that I had easily stored in the river house but now had no room for in the new one.  I couldn’t decide what to do with it all.  Of course I would keep my finished work, but I was in a rush, not thinking clearly, and thought I’d just give the rest away and start over again.

The final straw that broke the camel’s back were the number of large boxes already filled with the journals I’d been keeping since I began writing them in the 80’s. I threw up my hands and felt I had to get rid of them. It was all stuff I didn’t remember writing and considered most of it, if not all of it, to be the worst writing in the world. Not only were the journals terrible to read because of my poor grammar, misspelling and the boredom rating I gave them, there were things I’d written about that I didn’t want anyone else to read, ever. I decided I’d burn them all, along with the past in the old wood stove we kept in the basement.

The day before I planned to do the deed, I was swinging back and forth between “should I or shouldn’t I burn my work.”  There were a number of paintings as well that I’d thought I’d include in the blaze, but I kept hearing a little voice in the background repeating constantly: “You’ll be sorry.”

The next morning I called my daughter to ask her opinion of what I was planning. She roared over the phone that I must not do it.  And when I finally told Bill what I had in mind, he too was of the opinion that I shouldn’t burn anything. He promised that we would rent a storage room where I could keep my artwork, boxes of journals, artist supplies and anything else I wasn’t yet sure I wanted to part with, for as long as I needed to.

A box of my journals.

A box of my journals.

Over the past few months I’ve been rereading through many of those journals as I sit and put my memoir together. They come in very handy for filling in the blanks that show up in my memory.  And I’m finding them surprisingly fun to read, despite my grammar usage and spelling mistakes. I’m so very grateful that my conscience, my daughter, and my husband, encouraged me to keep them instead of burning them, flushing them down the toilet, or any of the other juvenile things I thought of doing at the time.

Have you ever considered destroying your writings or your artwork? If you do it, know that one day you might be very angry with yourself!

Filed Under: Books, family, Gratefulness, Memoir, Navigating Through Life, Perfectionism, stories, Trauma, Writing Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Writing And Trauma

February 20, 2013 By

IMG_0070“Through writing, we change our relationship to trauma, for we gain confidence in ourselves and in our ability to handle life’s difficulties.  We come to feel that our lives are coherent rather than chaotic.  We see ourselves as able to solve problems rather than as beset by problems.  We enjoy a heightened sense of self.  We become more optimistic.  We recast our recovery from trauma as something we can accomplish rather than seeing our ordeal as something to be passively borne.  Writing supplants our feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, and victimization about a traumatic event.”

Louise DeSalvo, Writing As A Way of Healing

Filed Under: Healing, Life, Memoir, Mental Health, Navigating Through Life, Quotes, Trauma, Writing Tagged With: , ,
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