Dancing Upside Down

Claiming Hope

I am facing the hard realities of moving back to Washington later this spring.  I had considered staying in Florida to be available to my mother for another year but enough things have happened recently that I am now firm in the decision that I am going home. 

But it is a pretty scary scenario.  I am 55, have all my stuff in storage, have no car, have no job, have no place to live, have no money, and it is the worst unemployment since the 1930's depression, plus I am trying to redefine myself professionally.  There are days when the voices get pretty loud and discouraging.  I am worried.  I am frightened. 

But, I am also me. 

By "I am also me" I mean that I am not destitute in the soul.  I am not someone who has given up hope.

When I wrote that sentence I went looking for this famous photo from the depression. (see my notes in the footnotes for interesting info on the photo)  Next to the photo was this quote:

Millions of unemployed and poor Americans were without basic food and housing, and were suffering the sense of hopelessness that comes with extreme poverty.(emphasis mine)

It is that sense of hopelessness that I have not allowed in.  There have been many a time in the dark days of this journey that I felt like I was in a big wide black vortex getting sucked down but fighting to get out instead.  I am not out yet, but I am closer to the edge now.  I cling to the possibility that I will get all the way out. 

What does getting out of the vortex look like?  Getting all the way out means getting financially on my feet and having a home that is mine; a place where I can finally unpack and stay.  In other words it means a sense of stability on which I can build a solid foundation and then slowly begin the rebuilding process of the rest of my life. 

The thing that scares me is how many people who are truly "down and out" never expected to find themselves there?  I know there are people who were raised into the "down'n'out" mentality.  I know there are many homeless people who are mentally ill.  But I also know there are others who are homeless, jobless, and hopeless who never in their wildest dreams would have imagined they would find themselves there.  Nanci Griffith has the following lyrics in her song "Down'n'outer" that says it all:

I once was a lot like you
We share a dream
I couldn't make come true
I was a child who wrote my name
Across a frosted window pane

...

Can you spare the time?
Can you spare a dime?
Can you look me in the eye?
I'm down'n'out
And I am lonely
Do you ever think of me on Sunday?
No, I don't live across the water
Hey, I live right here on this corner
Just a bank account away from America

....

Now, you call me down'n'outer
If there's a way out
I've not found 'er
I only want to earn my piece of America

Any sense of entitlement, invulnerability, and "happily ever after" have been stripped from me.  I know I am vulnerable.  I know that there is the potential of not succeeding. 

There but for the grace of God go I right now.  I know I am right on the vortex edge.  I am frightened of the vortex.  I am afraid that the vortex will win and I will just get sucked down into hopelessness and endless destitution.  It truly could be a possibility. 

It is not a possibility I am willing to accept.  I will die fighting it!  I want to succeed and I still think I can.  But I have no illusions about anything in life being "for sure" anymore.   

I need to keep working at improving my capability and my faith in myself.  And, I need to surround myself with people who aid me in that.  It is for that reason that I cannot bring myself to move into low income housing even though I do qualify and it would make economic sense.  I feel that I would be around more people who have bought into hopelessness and resignation - which is something I do not want to be around.

How I carry myself and behave matters.  Though I cannot fill in the TBI years with anything stellar in the job area because of being unable to work, I can still carry myself and present myself as a winner, as a person of worth.  

I think that a quote by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow gets to the core of this topic in some ways.

"We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done."

That is the crux of the matter in many ways.  And therefore, I claim hope.

Ps.  To anyone used to reading my Posts - the Footnotes will be in here soon . . . but not tonight.

Writing 10,000 Hours and Counting?

I have decided I am going to do my best to write for 2 hours each morning.  Noble goal but already this am I have found that in order to write for two hours I need to do almost an equal amount of prep time.  Otherwise I spend most of the two hours crawling through the web and gathering information.

I need to get religious about writing daily.  Frequent use of the writing parts of my brain is the only thing that will keep those gears greased.  I recently had an experience that brought that home but it was not regarding writing; instead it was drawing.  I used to be quite good at drawing when I was young.  But as life took over I stopped drawing.  When I tried to return to it later in life I just felt frustrated and repeatedly gave up.  The eye-hand coordination was no longer there. 

When I decided to come to Florida to help my Mom I promised myself I would take a drawing class - which I did.  Wow!  As soon as I started drawing regularly the eye-hand coordination started coming back.  Our assignment was to draw a minimum of 15 minutes a day.  Drawing daily is so key to keeping the skills sharp!  If I missed a few days when I drew again it would take me quite a bit of time to get into the flow again.  Suddenly, the 15 minutes a day rule made sense.  The 15 minutes a day rule is to practice anything you want to get good at for 15 minutes a day no matter what.  

The 15 minute rule is rather fascinating to me because I have run into it in so many contexts.  In fact, just the other day, I started my Mom on a 15 minute a day plan to work her way through her accumulated paper piles.  FlyLady uses the 15 minute rule in her declutter plan against CHAOS (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome):

Your home is filled with clutter of all shapes and sizes. This is why you are unable to keep it clean. You have too much STUFF. All we ask is that you set a timer and spend 15 minutes a day decluttering. That's it. Anyone can do anything for only 15 minutes, even if you have to break it down into 5 minutes segments.¹

Let's see, 10,000 hours is what research has shown is what it takes for someone to become an expert at something.  10,000 hours divided by 15 minutes = a mere 40,000 15 minute segments.  Now divide that by days in a year (assuming you are doing 15 minutes a day) and you get 109.6 years.  Yep!  I guess if you did something for 109 years that even doing it just 15 minutes a day will get a person to expert status.  Even if I just wrote for 2 hours a day - assuming that I was starting from zero in experience - that would be 5,000 days which is still 13.5 years.  Even at 5 hours per day it is still over 5 years to reach the 10,000 hours. 

Now of course, I am not starting from zero now or even when I started this blog.  I have quite a bit of writing experience just from the writing I have done in my daily life and for work.  Still, becoming a skilled author is going to take work.  Luckily, it is work I enjoy.

Who Do I See I Am?

When I started writing here again I thought I would not be writing much related to having had a TBI.  I think I thought I was "through with that", moving on or moved on past adjustments due to the TBI.  I truly didn't think I would have much else to say.

Boy! Was I ever wrong!

It is not that I set out to write blog posts about the TBI.  I am simply writing the thoughts and experiences I am having.  However, those thoughts and experiences do reflect and relate to the changes.  I am still in a period of adjustment to the new me.

I keep expecting myself to be the old me.  I keep feeling like I am brought up short when I am hit again and again with a change (aka a brain hole). 

My TBI is mild.  If you were to meet me you would never know I had had a TBI unless I told you.  I seem very normal. And I am very normal - to a point.  Even as I am "struggling" with things, if you were to observe me you would just think it is how I am and never dream there has ever been a big change. 

The funny thing is, that very "normalness" is what catches me up.  I talk, move, and seem so normal - I mean even to me.  I seem like the me I have always been so it is sort of a surprise when I step into a hole; when things don't work the way they used to.

It is hard to put into words all the things that are different; largely because the changes are subtle.  The obvious ones to me are things like realizing that I have to write everything down.  I call my day planner book "My Pet Brain".  I can laugh about that.  But I do notice how I have to write everything down about my computer clients.  Otherwise I get one client's computer issue confused with the next, or what I have done on one and not the other, etc.  I cannot count on my brain remembering details like those and keeping them straight.  The silver lining of this is that I am more organized than ever.  Organization truly does make life easier!

Other obvious ones are things like needing to do a "complete stop" and rest a couple of times a day.  Then there are the problematic items like going through periods of not being able to sleep or sleeping at odd times.  (Many of these blog posts have late night time stamps due to the insomnia.  I would prefer to write in the morning.)  And related is the extreme exhaustion if I over tax myself and the headaches if I try to think too hard - seriously!

You know, it strikes me that there are two things going on here.  I haven't yet really accepted the new me.  For one thing, I am still finding out who I am.  But the other part is that I don't want the new me!  When I am tired and therefore can't find words or keep my train of thought on a track people assume it is just the way I am.  I want to scream "This is not me!"  Now mind you, people do not seem to be overly concerned about these things when I do them.  And I understand that because those are the types of things everyone does . . . I just do it so much more!  But only I know that.

It is interesting to see what does and does not bother me.  I have a great deal of trouble keeping the days of the week straight - I mean remembering what day it is.  This week I scheduled two clients for Tuesday but in talking with them on Sunday evening I must have said something about seeing them "tomorrow".  I had firmly blocked out my Monday for other work and had no plans of going over to anyone's house.  I realized it late Monday.  One person was fine about it.  The other person was quite miffed and told me she hired someone else.  I just shrugged my shoulders at that one.  I know that days and time are a big hole for me and I am compassionate that I am doing the best that I can with that one.

However then I did a bunch of little goofs on not noticing the time and just some other very small glitches with a couple of clients and that I got upset about!  I can handle the big goofs but these small ones that just keep happening add up.  This is not like me - the me that I was!  And more than that; In my book that sort of behavior, ditziness and sloppiness, is unprofessional.  Its letting details slide.  I am a detail person by nature so that is really hard on me.

This blog is a little over a year old.  I started it a year ago December just as I was getting officially diagnosed with the TBI.  The first couple of months worth of posts were about coming to grips with the reality and all that the correct diagnosis finally explained.  Then there were the intensive months of therapy at CORP-TBI at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.  I wish I had written more during that time but I was semi swallowed by the program, then getting ready to leave Washington for this 6 month stint of living with my mom.  (CORP-TBI is Comprehensive Outpatient Rehabilitation Program for Traumatic Brain Injury.  GREAT program!!)

Now I am in a brand new chapter of "Life After TBI".  I am reentering the work force.  I am away from the CORP support system but I am now in the semi-safety net of having a place to live for a few months while I explore this new me. 

Not sure what else to say so I am going to end this here.  I am not happy with this post but want to have it out there and done with.  However, I am sure this is not the end of the subject.

Regrets of the Middle Aged!

When I was in my twenties I can remember people saying "Oh to be young again!" and I would think "Who in the hell would want to be in their twenties again?!  I sure as heck don't want to have to live through these years twice!" 

Now I get it!

It just dawned on me that when I was young, in my twenties and even my thirties, it never occurred to me that I would have regrets.  I just assumed and believed that life always works out the right way.  I don't know where I got that belief.  And I don't know if every young person has that sort of feeling of invincibility.  Do they?  Is it something that all twenty and thirty somethings believe - at least subconsciously?

It is not as if I had observed everything always going right for people.  But that was "small stuff".  That saying about "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff . . . and its All Small stuff" was popular back then.  It is not "small stuff" that I mourn.  It is the big stuff.  Whoever first said that quote was wrong!  Big stuff exists and it should be "sweated".

I think for me there was a trust and belief in some benevolent force/God in the Universe that guides our lives; that as long as I did the best I could that this force would lead me to a good fulfilling life.  Again, I do not know where I got that belief. 

Maybe the belief was there in the place of any real guidance from the adults around me.  My parents were wonderful in guiding me such that I did not get into any real trouble - like involvement with drugs or other dangers.  And my Mom taught me to eat well.  We did not have much junk food in our lives and that is still true for me today.  But my parents were lacking in the ability to teach me how to run my life; how to set, plan for, and achieve goals. 

I felt rudderless.  I was rudderless!  I longed for some kind of structure.  I had no idea how to set it up for myself so I went looking for it in external forms.  Sadly, I found it in the form of a "spiritual teacher" who actually turned out to be a cult leader.  Cult is probably too strong of a term.  Usually I call it an "Intentional Community".  I was in that community for longer than I would like to admit. 

Being in that community is and was no different than being in a marriage for the wrong reasons.  Leaving it was incredibly similar to getting divorced.  So I did not have children because of the cult just as others did not have children because they were married to a spouse that did not want them.  I know that I am not alone in regretting that I never carried a child in pregnancy, that I have never been a mom. 

The regret about not having children is by far the greatest.  It is an ache that will probably never fully ease.  In fact, the thing that brought up these feelings tonight and thus generated this post was looking through photos on 123rf.com and seeing the photos of pregnant women.  Damn, I wanted to have kids!  Being a mother was the only thing I was sure that I would do.  I would have been a good mother.  I know that.

The potency of regret is strong because there really is no choice at this point.  It is too late.  I am past child bearing years.  Yes, there have been women in their 50's who have done IVF.  I would never do that.  I do not think it is fair to the child.  Imagine being 30 years old and having an 85 year old mother!  Caring for an aging mother is a fine thing for me to be doing at 55 but I would never wish it on a 30 year old!!

My other tremendous regret is that I did not become a doctor.  It is the only thing I ever wanted to do.  Why did I not?  Stupid but true story:  I took the MCAT cold the first time - which is an allowed thing to do.  It is fine to take them twice - at least it was back then in the early 1980's. I did fairly well; well enough that I got an informational interview at the University of Washington Medical School.  They encouraged me to sit the exam and apply again.  So I studied to take the MCAT a second time.  I was working in research at the time and ended up having to do night shifts for a couple of weeks before the test.  Night shifts really throw me so I was not able to do the amount of studying I had planned to do.  Therefore I decided not to take the test that time around and instead wait to take when it was offered again in 6 months. 

The night before the exam my mom called to wish me good luck.  I told her that I had decided to wait for the next exam so I could study more.  For whatever reason, my mom lit into me saying that I always give up on things and that I am just a quitter, etc - none of which was even true but I didn't think about that until later.  She guilt tripped me so badly that I went in and took the MCAT the next day.  Therefore I essentially took it cold the second time too and got almost the same score.  Taking the MCAT three times was not really "allowed"; meaning med schools would not look at you.  I would have had to go back to school and gotten a masters in something then resat the MCAT and applied to medical school.  I had already put myself through undergrad and could not see going though a masters program just to get into medical school so I gave up.  The only good thing I can say about this is that it was the final straw for me with my Mom.  She has never had any hold/control over me since - even to this day.  That is probably one of the reasons that I am able to live with her now when she needs help!

You know, as I write this, the thing that strikes me is that I never asked for any guidance.  What I said above about having to get a masters degree was my own assumption.  I don't know if it was true.  I don't think I really researched it.  Maybe I could have sat the test a third time and just explained the other two in an application.  I don't know. 

I didn't know to ask for guidance.  I didn't even know that guidance and advice was available.  I had attended The Evergreen State College for undergrad.  The school was still quite young and did not have any kind of adviser program for students.  I knew nothing of students at other schools having faculty advisers or student services that were available.

Would I have listened to guidance?  Would I have recognized it as help?  Or would I have rebelled thinking it was someone trying to control me?  I don't know.  The story above illustrates why I had a pretty strong rebellious streak!

But there is even more to it than just a rebellious streak.  When I think back to my younger years I always felt that I had to muscle through; that I was on my own.  Well, I was.  I left high school a year early; put myself through college.  I had begged my parents to let me take a course not offered at our high school which would have made it so I could attend one of the other area high schools but they would not sign the papers.  Nor would they come to bat for me to help make things better at the school I was attending.  I was on my own.  Even in my early years of school when my Mom would talk with a teacher they usually both ended up angry at each other and I was the big loser. 

Back quite a ways in the history of this blog I wrote about the reason for the name Dancing Upside Down.  Yes, in part it is about recovering from a brain injury, but the original impetus for the blog and the name was thinking about how one becomes a "Late Bloomer" if one has missed out on blooming earlier in their adult life. 

I think there are a lot of us out here in the world who did not get to bloom early or in an optimal time period.  Some of us haven't ever bloomed, others only had a very brief flowering before being hit by a frost, etc. 

I named the blog one night when I was out on a long walk.  Part of what was churning around in me on that walk were thoughts and feelings that had arisen from having recently watched the video of Randy Pausch's "Last Lecture", titled Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.  (If you have not watched it . . . do so.  It is worth every minute of its runtime.)  I was very moved and deeply affected by that talk. 

Randy Pausch was an early bloomer and it seems like he has been continually blooming the rest of his life, up until it ended prematurely this past July due to pancreatic cancer. 

In the talk Randy goes through his list of goals that he had as a child and how he achieved them  He talks about the important roles of parents and mentors.  As Randy says in the talk, he "was blessed to be born to two incredible people".  In another talk he called it "winning the parent lottery".  He goes on to tell stories about Coach Graham from high school football and especially about Andries van Dam, PhD; Randy's undergraduate adviser at Brown University. Randy was raised receiving guidance and therefore was also taught how to receive it. It is the cultural legacy that was gifted to him by his family of origin.

What comes to mind here is a whole section from Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.  A large portion of the book is dedicated to presenting a case, in Gladwell's masterful story telling, of why cultural legacy matters and the impact it has on a persons life.  He calls the coaching that Randy Pausch describes in his talk "the strategy of concerted cultivation" which produces a sense of entitlement.  Gladwell goes on to say "When we talk about the advantages of class [the cultural advantage] is in a large part what we mean."  Yes a child is better off because he/she is wealthier and goes to a better school, "but also because - and this perhaps is even more critical - the sense of entitlement that he/she has been taught is an attitude perfectly suited to succeeding in the modern world."

So what can we middle aged folks do?  Drowning in a sea of regret is not productive.  Most of us still probably have a good thirty years left.  I am sure some 80 year olds look at people in their 50's and think "Oh to be young again!"  Now I am older and wiser and KNOW that I have to create my future.  I cannot sit around and wait for things to come to me.

My cousin Amit just started law school this year at the age of 51.  It is something he has always wanted to do.  He is loving it and doing well.  I wonder if medical schools accept people in their 50s?  I wonder if I really want to do that at my age?  Right now I am living in a retirement village surrounded by people playing and loving it!  But reality is that I cannot afford to retire - probably not until I am 80.  So I might as well do something I love for the next 25 years.  I wonder if my brain could handle medical school.  Studying for the MCAT would be good brain exercise no matter what.  Hmmm . . .

Altering the Fabric of Life

This post is from a letter I wrote to a friend a number of years ago. 

Dear Sarah,

Try not to be so hard on yourself. I still have the feeling that you are trying to muscle your way through.

You and I (and many others) were not given an easy path. We didn't get a soft and cuddly life. We have to keep working on what we were given because it is our only way through to something different.

The way I look at life is like each of us is a woven fabric.

We are constantly in a process of unraveling places to pull out the unhealthy or useless strings and threads (baling twine, barbed wire, duct tape, etc.) and weave in new strong ones.

You are a fabric of many wonderful fibers - You have strong gold threads of courage and love, broad deep hued bands of faith laced with waves of trust. There is so much good there yet there are still old damaged fibers which contaminate the whole. Your work is to get the old poison threads out. They are woven in tightly.

Working on ourselves is a process of looking at those threads, exploring how they are interlocked in there and working to loosen them till eventually they fall away.  If you keep with it you can unravel the beliefs that are holding you down and keeping you trapped in the same behavior pattern. Its like following a thread back and saying "Oh, I see! It goes underneath this one and then comes out and ties in here." Then you can tease at it; see if you can loosen it or even pull it out. And while you are doing that, you will be threading in a new strong healthy fiber into your fabric that you can pull against and it will hold firm.

Affirmations and statements of enlightenment or goals and plans are all great - but they seem like sort of like an icing layer. Unless the fabric has been changed, there will be conflict between the affirmation and reality.  The heat of the conflict will melt all those bold words  and they will saturate the fabric making it sticky and harder to work on. 

The fabric needs care and steady, methodical work. Though we long to whack it with a magic wand and change it into what we want, it seems to not be capable of changing that instantaneously - or maybe God has put a charm on it to make it impervious to a quick fix.  Maybe the unraveling and the weaving are His gift to us to give us the wisdom we need to be fully who we can become.

I don't understand the ways of God, but I have to trust - if just to maintain my own sanity - that he has given me this path because what I will learn by working the weave is what He wants for me to learn this time around and if I just stay with it - it will let me become the person and soul I am supposed to become in God's plan.

Footnotes:

1. The artwork in this post is by Gregory Euclide.  His work is amazing.  You can see a whole collection of related work here http://www.gregoryeuclide.com/Euclide_RELIEF.html
2. The first piece above is entitled: Struggling swept canyon's focus toward tangents
3. The piece directly above is entitled: Held on history's material desire

Connecting to God through the Smog of Sarcasm

I feel like I have lost connection to "the cosmos" or to God or the "Sage" as Carol Anthony calls the higher power in her phenomenal book A Guide to the I Ching.

Why?  As I have mentioned elsewhere in this blog, I am living in Florida for the winter with my 84 year old mother.  I am not around people who live the spirit here.  Most of the people in this "Village" where my Mom lives are practical midwesterners.  Most of them attend christian churches in the area and would consider themselves connected to God, I expect.  But that is different from the "Spiritual, but not religious" option that Match.com lists. 

My mom claims to believe in something but I can't figure out what that belief is.  Today she couldn't find some papers she wanted to take to a meeting.  I suggested she pray to St. Anthony.  She said she hadn't tried that yet so would, then she says,  "St. Anthony, I need to find these papers."  That's a prayer?  No, it is a demand or a statement.  However, maybe that doesn't matter to St. Anthony.  I would like to think that God/St. Anthony is compassionate enough that he/she/it can hear and respond to people if they are doing the best they can do.  I sincerely doubt my Mom is able to do much better than a demand or a statement.  To pray is to show vulnerability.  It is to ask for help.  My Mom has a dreadfully hard time doing that.  She is pretty well armored.

Living with my Mom is going well but on this level it is challenging.  Though I have grown and matured and am not as affected by most of her stuff, I am getting to look at what I was raised with.  It is striking to me this difference in our faith and connectedness.  On a certain level I have always been connected, even as a small child.  As I have matured - especially in the years out away from my family (about 2500 miles away!) - I have been able to live my connectedness.  It just is.  It is a main part of the fabric of my life.  Now, living back with my Mom I feel like I have lost the connection.  It is hard to keep that vulnerability near the surface in the face of my Mom's constant disparaging remarks about faith and God. 

Is that what is going on here or is it that I armor myself in order to protect myself from her sarcasm?  She is painfully sarcastic.  She learned sarcasm on the knee of her father.  He was the most sarcastic and critical person I have ever known.  Brilliant yes.  But so very angry at the world.  I know it was his defense against all the hardness of his childhood, just as it is my mother's defense against the hardness in her own life.  (Her father was extremely abusive in addition to being sarcastic, and critical.) 

The power of sarcasm cannot be underrated.  John Gottman PhD., a researcher at the University of Washington, labels sarcasm "Contempt".  He calls it the most "corrosive" of the four factors he has found that can predict divorce.  Gottman has made a career of studying marital interactions. He claims to be able to predict with 95% accuracy which couples will eventually divorce.  He calls the four factors that can predict divorce the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse for marriage.¹ They are:  

1) criticism (telling the other person his or her faults)

2) defensiveness (reacting to certain subjects by denying responsibility, or refusing to discuss an issue the spouse regards as important)

3) contempt (making sarcastic or cutting remarks)

4) withdrawal (also called "stonewalling": showing no reaction, having a blank look, or ceasing to care)

"You would think that criticism would be the worst," Gottman says, "because criticism is a global condemnation of a person's character. Yet contempt is qualitatively different from criticism. With criticism I might say to my wife, 'You never listen, you are really selfish and insensitive.' Well, she's going to respond defensively to that. That's not very good for our problem solving and interaction. But if I speak from a superior plane, that's far more damaging, and contempt is any statement made from a higher level. A lot of the time it's an insult: 'You are a bitch. You're scum.' It's trying to put that person on a lower plane than you. It's hierarchical."

Gottman has found, in fact, that the presence of contempt in a marriage can even predict such things as how many colds a husband or a wife gets; in other words, having someone you love express contempt toward you is so stressful that it begins to affect the functioning of your immune system. "Contempt is closely related to disgust, and what disgust and contempt are about is completely rejecting and excluding someone from the community.³

I think the part about the "how many colds" a person gets is especially interesting and telling.  I definitely catch more flu/colds when I am around my Mom.  She is fairly boastful about how she doesn't get sick.  Yes, but her sarcasm may be making others around her sick. 

If sarcasm / contempt can contribute to the number of colds a person gets, it definitely can have an effect on how connected a person feels to the source.  Just as sarcasm eats away at a persons immune system it also eats away at a persons heart connection to a higher power. 

Now to be fair to my Mom, I truly do not think she knows how to talk in an un-sarcastic way.  I was fortunate enough to live in a community of friends who understood that I did not know how to say things differently so they worked with me on it.  They would say, "Jane, a better way to have said that would be . . . "  I can remember the shocks I felt when I started realizing that people were not out to get me and started seeing how twisted my thinking/feelings were. 

I have begun to work with Mom on the sarcasm issue in the same way that friends worked with me.  For instance, a while back we were sitting at the kitchen table and she said "I know you can see without any light but I can't."  I responded with, "Mom, a better way to have said that is "Could you please turn on the light?" " and then I reached back and turned on the light.  Every time since then she has nicely asked me to turn on the light.  (The switch is behind my chair.)  And, in turn, I am remembering to turn it on more frequently.  What a difference it makes to have someone ask nicely!  It, in turn, makes me want to remember to turn on the light to help her out.  When she says it sarcastically, as above, it feels like I would be buying into her accusation to turn it on for her.  So I block out any thought of the light because the light & light switch have bad connotations attached to it.

So, back to the beginning of this post . . . how does that sort of negativity affect me such that I close off to my connectedness?  I think it is defense, just as it is above.  For me to be connected I need to be open and vulnerable.  That is hard to do if I am also feeling the need to protect myself from something/someone at the same time.

There is more going on here too.  I think I am also protecting myself from feeling I have about the bigger picture of why I am here.  Yes, I am here to help out my Mom and she needs me here.  But this also was a life bouy for me.  I needed to come here as a transition between the TBI and reentering the working world.  Whether I will be able to handle full time work is a subject for a different post.  In fact, all the feelings and thoughts about living here in a retirement community in SW Florida is fodder for a future blog post.  Instead, here I will keep it in relation to my Mom and me, and to the feeling that I have gotten distant from my connection to God and to God's help. 

There is tension around me being here.  There is my own tension around my self esteem, further adjustment to the remaining effects of the TBI, and to my financial situation (which is another blog post waiting to happen).  Then there is tension from my Mom around her own difficulty with the reality of her aging and being at the point that she needs someone here. 

An interesting quote from Carol Anthony's guide to the I Ching is  "A great part of the work of self-development is to . . . regain our lost self-esteem, and to re-establish our Cosmic credibility."⁴  I threw the Ching that contains that quote in regards to staying here in Florida with Mom. 

There is more to say on the topic, but this post has gotten long enough!

Footnotes:

1. John Gottman Phd, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, (New York, New York, U.S.A. Three Rivers Press 2000)
2. Dilbert is drawn and written by Scott Adams.  Scott has a great blog - which I just discovered upon researching the information for this footnote.
3. Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, (Back Bay Books, April 3, 2007)
4. Carol Anthony, A Guide to the I Ching, (Anthony Publishing Company; 3 Revised edition (December 31, 1988)

In my Face . . . and my Heart

One of the remaining effects from the TBI is that I have "no filter". I cry at commercials.  I tear up when any strong emotion is felt.  If anyone else around me is feeling a strong emotion or crying, I cry too.  I can't hold it back. 

When there is discord and tension in a TV show it is so unbearable that I leave the room.  I feel it as if I was there - as if I were the characters or as if I was an invisible person standing between them and absorbing the tension from each side. 

Some filtering mechanism is broken and not yet repaired or rerouted.  I don't know if I will get that back.  I may not. 

There are some beneficial results from the lack of filter.  I am sure that it is what helps me to be more vulnerable, more real, more present.  I used to try to "keep it together" at all times.  Now I can't.

But on the negative side it puts everything in my face . . . and in my heart. 

With the horrors of the Haitian earthquake that is not a small thing.  I have been feeling very down for the past few days and I truly think it is because of what has happened and is happening in Haiti.

How do I separate from that?  I don't know.  The filter is broken.  I can try to "think my way out" but that has no effect because what is happening is on the feeling level.

This is no small thing.  I have been showing some of the signs of depression again.  I cannot slide into depression every time there is a catastrophe in the world.  I suppose I could go out and take a walk when Mom watches the news but that feels like I am burying my head in the sand.

I wish there was something I could do to help the situation in Haiti.  But I do not possess a magic wand . . . and a magic wand is about the only thing that could change that huge of a disaster. 

So what can I do?  For Haiti - not much other than donate some money  which I have already done. 

I think the Haitian earthquake was just a final straw to a lot of downward feelings I have been having.  Hmmm . . . as I write this I realize that most of the things I am feeling down about are "current affairs" from the news.  Maybe I really do need to stop watching it.  But the items that I am feeling down about are also real and a part of this country and this world I live in.

I started to write about some of the things:  The economic downturn, the greed of upper management of the major banks, the willingness to make money off of people - which is very different from making money by being of service to people, how broken this whole economic system is, how broken our government is, how much power the conservatives have (that is frightening), all the lying that is going on in the political arena, etc.  But I decided not to write about them.  I feel all the big stuff is truly hopelessly screwed up.  Writing about it only upsets me and makes me feel even more hopeless.

There is a similarity here.  In all of the above the issues are way beyond me, way beyond anything that I can fix or even impact.  Maybe that is part of the filtering that is broken.  The ability to put things in their proper place, proper distance is missing so all of it feels close; right on top of me.

I know that I am not alone in feeling impacted by the Haiti disaster.  I just have no measuring stick for how what I am experiencing compares to others. 

Interestingly, just now when I checked my Inbox there was an email from a Biznik member George Haung.  This Saturday, January 15th, from 9:30-10:15 am PST, he will be hosting a discussion group (which people call into) that will participate in a brainstorming session about what we can as group of "generous entrepreneurs" might be able to do to help turn this situation into something that elevates the economy and confidence of Haitians and creates a ripple effect across the globe for collaboration and connection at a heart-centered level.

George is encouraging people to pass the word on to other like-minded entrepreneurs.  The call is free, but you'll need to register to receive the dial-in information: www.freedompreneur.com/consciousleaderpreneurship

I am going to call in and give a listen. Maybe it will help me deal with the feelings a little more.  I think writing in here has helped some.  At least I am clearer on how this lack of filter is affecting me.

The thing is, not everything is bad in MY life at all.  In fact things are quite good.  A little scary at times, but over all things are going well.  I have started doing some paid work.  I am enjoying being in Florida a great deal.  My Mom and I are getting along amazingly well.  (I am living with her this winter season since she had a fairly rough year in relation to her health.) 

I don't understand why this lack of filter can cause such an imbalance.  The sadness was really taking me over. 

One of the reasons I wanted to write here tonight was to see if I could turn things around.  I am going out to coffee with a Match.com guy tomorrow.  I would like to be more upbeat than I was feeling earlier tonight. 

You know, the thing is, I have gotten out of touch with my connection to a higher power.  I guess in some ways that is hard to square with the suffering going on in Haiti.  But that is not mine to judge.  I firmly believe there is some force that helps me out in my life.  I need to look to that to keep me more in balance.  The thing that is difficult for me is that I feel guilty having a good life when others are suffering so.  But again, that is not mine to judge.  If I was supposed to suffer like that I would be there I guess. 

So, on that note I think I am going to say some prayers of thanksgiving and go to sleep.

Where do I jump in?

Nothing like starting a blog post when I have an article that is due tomorrow and I have not even started it. But that is also why I am writing right now.  Maybe writing in here will get me started.  Plus, I dearly want to start contributing to this blog again.  I have missed it.

Yes, it all the sudden occured to me that the two are quite similar so the title above just jumped up and named itself.  Now I wish the words would answer the question!

I am living in Florida for the winter, in a very wonderful community called The Village of Holiday Lakes.  I offered to write two articles for the upcoming issue of the community newsletter.  One article on Senior Fraud, and one related to computers.  The problem is threefold.  First, I do not know what people want and need to hear regarding computers.  Secondly, and probably most key, is that I have not written since August.  I have gotten "rusty" however the actual feeling is more like stopped up.  The words won't flow.

The problem with this blog is similar; the flow, the conversation, the feeling were interrupted.  It is hard to get everything going again.  

When I began the blog - over a year ago - there were many false starts.  And I also blogged about blogging quite a bit just to find my footing.  I do not want to have to blog about blogging again!  A lot of those entries were about boundaries and what I felt comfortable writing about.  I am past that stage.

The shift with the blog has to do with, as the title says, "Where do I jump in?" 

When I started this blog I was very much in the throes of dealing with the brain injury.  Now, I am in a whole new chapter.  I received great help from the CORP-TBI team at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.  Now I am in the section of my life where I just live with the remaining vestiges of the TBI.  It is old news.  Yes, I will probably post about things related to the brain injury from time to time, but it is (thankfully) no longer the main focus of my life.  I am not knocking that it was the main focus for the last year - it was very important that it was and it accomplished a lot.  But I have completed that chapter and moved on.

What is interesting about the comparison between these two writing conundrums is that this next chapter is about reinventing myself professionally and I am trying to do it as a computer wizard.  So, here I am feeling stuck about what to write about being a computer wizard on two different levels: what to write for an article in the community newsletter and to also what to write in here about my thoughts, feelings, and experiences with stepping out into this new profession.

It just occurred to me that how I usually write is that I immerse myself in a subject.  I research and read . . . a whole lot.  Finally it is as if I reach a saturation point and then and only then does the writing begin.  I have not given myself that time.  I have not made the time to give myself. 

Time is one of the challenges I face due to the brain injury.  Things do take longer, plus I still have to rest twice a day - its sort of like a reboot.  So, setting aside the time to do all the research and reading, and the time to write is challenging.  But it is important!

Well, I don't know if I have unblocked the writing muse but it sure feels good to be writing here.  I'm back!  And I am going to try to write a lot more.

Dendrite Trails

This blog is almost a year old!  I have personally traveled a great distance during that time.  I started blogging soon after I had been told that I had Traumatic Brain Injury and long before I finally got concrete help.  The earlier posts especially chronicle my journey as I was finally diagnosed correctly and the early struggles I had to understand it and start healing.  I think any person dealing with a TBI will identify with many of the feelings and thoughts I had. 

I encourage anyone new to this blog to skim through the category on Brain Injury and Recovery.  Those posts are the foundation for many of the posts I will soon be writing.  I couldn't be where I am now were it not for the where I was back then! (And yes, I meant to write the sentence that way!!)

Back Again!!

Oh my Gosh!  People are actually reading this blog!  Hi there!

I can see that people have been here on the site from the stats.  My apologies to you all that there has not been a new post for a long time!  I have not been to the site since late August.  Life just got way too crazy (aka busy). 

In short, on August 29th I was offered a job out of the blue.  Sounded too good to be true so I jumped at the opportunity to try it out.  You know the saying "If it sounds to good to be true then it probably isn't true"?  Right!  It turned out to be quite a ride!  And it only lasted for 4 weeks. 

Still, no regrets.  I learned a lot about myself and I made a little money.  Sadly one of the things I learned is that I am not ready to go back to work yet.  No surprise really since everyone at the rehab center had just told me that the week before I took the job!  But the good news is that I got a sense of what I am still able to do well.  I also have a better sense of where the potholes are!

Then, on the heels of the above job, I started into the final sprint of packing up my Washington life and heading to Ohio to help my mom post surgery then drive her down to Florida and spend the winter with her.  We are on the road heading down to Florida as I write this.  Tonight I am sitting in a Hampton Inn near Bluffton, SC. . . . just thought I'd add that so it did not sound like I was sitting in the middle of a road somewhere . . . okay, I am tired so a little goofy.

Anyway, I will be back to blogging here once I am settled in down in Florida.  Until then, Thanks for reading and know that I will have good content coming soon.  Thanks for being patient.