Cozy like a blanket

I’m buying so many of these things, I’m going to...

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 16:00:29 -0700

I’m buying so many of these things, I’m going to have to start learning how to care for them.

I had really low expectations for this book; I just sort of...

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 15:57:00 -0700

I had really low expectations for this book; I just sort of grabbed it nonchalantly off the shelf at the library last week. The beginning was underwhelming and then out of no where it got really good. I love unexpected surprises (of the good sort).

Pretty happy about this sleeping Christmas elf I mean sweet...

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 15:54:00 -0700

Pretty happy about this sleeping Christmas elf I mean sweet pepper that I got at the farmer’s market today.

"…you must exile yourself from it or you will suffer forever. You must make a world of your..."

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 21:22:00 -0700

““…you must exile yourself from it or you will suffer forever. You must make a world of your own. You can take the first steps now, but the internal weeding out of so much familial dysfunction is going to be a years-long process, no doubt. I strongly encourage you to seek counseling.””

- Sweet validation courtesy of Cheryl Strayed,from “A Glorious Something Else”, in her book Tiny Beautiful Things,page 228

Gratitudes

Sun, 22 Jul 2012 19:52:16 -0700

Izzy has invited me to exchange with her a daily 10 sources of gratitude, for the next 40 days. Day 1:

Gratitudes:

1) That Izzy does not live in Boston anymore! (A place where neither of us were able to be our best selves).
2) Flowers from the farmers’ market, photos below
3) The growth I have accomplished to date
4) Chocolate root beer cake I ate for dessert
5) Emily Griffin’s new novel “Someplace Like Home”. Reading it feels like listening to a good friend
6) Running my first 10K today, and having it be a surprisingly attainable goal to accomplish
7) Familiar comfort of my boyfriend spending his evenings giving the middle finger to the computer screen when he loses a game of online solitaire
8) Our trip to San Francisco yesterday to see Cliff’s brother; enjoying the anonymity and perspective that a big city brings
9) Waking up each day feeling like I am moving forward, slow as movement sometimes feels
10) The opportunity to stop treating myself with disdain and learn how to treat myself with great affection and respect

I feel more comfortable amidst the San Francisco Sutro Bath...

Sun, 22 Jul 2012 19:27:27 -0700

I feel more comfortable amidst the San Francisco Sutro Bath ruins than anywhere else in that city.

Fuschia Dahlias

Sun, 22 Jul 2012 19:16:18 -0700

Fuschia Dahlias

Photo

Sun, 22 Jul 2012 19:15:23 -0700

Cabbage leaves

Sun, 22 Jul 2012 19:14:55 -0700

Cabbage leaves

This is just so cute.

Mon, 16 Jul 2012 18:51:03 -0700

This is just so cute.

"My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I..."

Mon, 16 Jul 2012 07:52:32 -0700

“My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am
going. I do not see the road ahead
of me. I cannot know for certain
where it will end. Nor do I really
know myself, and the fact that I
think that I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually
doing so. But I believe that the desire
to please you does in fact
please you. And I hope I have that
desire in all that I am doing. I hope
that I will never do anything apart
from that desire. And I know that
if I do this you will lead me by the
right road though I may know nothing
about it. Therefore will I trust
you always though I may seem to
be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever
with me, and you will never leave
me to face my perils alone.”

- ~Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude.

"I prefer the remembrance, the painful bitter recall. I know that I need a brother who shares this..."

Sat, 14 Jul 2012 19:06:08 -0700

““I prefer the remembrance, the painful bitter recall. I know that I need a brother who shares this tender, taunting heritage. I desire a sister who is not in denial of our mutual past. Together, we may be able to plan a less painful future. Separate, we can only anticipate further ruptures and deeper loneliness.””

- Maya Angelou, Even the Stars Look Lonesome

A Hierarchy of Groundedness via Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Sun, 08 Jul 2012 17:46:00 -0700

I. Physiological Needs: Literal requirements for human survival, including food, water, shelter, breathing..

When I was a kid, for one week out of every year, my family vacationed to Wells Beach, Maine, and for that whole week, by the time my dad had downed his third mid-morning Budweiser, before he started slurring and belching or having sex with my mom in audible range, I would have slammed the screen door of the cottage and run down to the ocean. All year in our suburban home in Massachusetts I had no place to go when the same events transpired, day after day, but for this one week, out on my boogie board, I was carried by waves, and they washed away the sadness of the day, and made life feel like something I should fight for.

In my early 20’s, struggling to find my way, I watched surf movies over a bowl of cereal in the morning, to make bearable the daily drudgery of shoveling snow off my car, and enduring a crowded commute to an uninspiring temp job in a cubicle. At age 23, I followed the well-worn grooves of a neurological pathway in my brain that equates the ocean to freedom and peace, and relocated to Santa Cruz, California with a dream of becoming a surfer.

II. Security Needs: Safety from physical and economic harm.

I don’t really know exactly when the PTSD began. It was all so gradual, and then so immediate. Those who grow up inside constant trauma, whose identities evolved and fragmented in response to trauma, experience a form of PTSD that is multi-layered and complex. There was no “before the trauma”; chaos and fear was my primary developmental state.

During my early surfing years in Santa Cruz, I sat in the lineup in a state of semi-paralysis, surrounded in the ocean by men my father’s age, petrified by the possibility that by dropping into a wave I would hit one of them with my board and instigate a tirade of screaming that had been a hallmark of my youth. Head-high waves equated to me a risk of breaking my neck. Large swells induced fear that I wouldn’t be able to ever paddle back into the beach. I spent hours every day seeking solace from my ever-present childhood memories through yoga, and meditating, and reading spiritual books that claimed that the reality I saw before me was all just an illusion. I ignored as much of the world as I could and “spiritualized” myself into a near catatonic state where by the end of the day, I felt nothing. I felt no pain, and I felt no joy. I admire now my judgment in seeking resources to desensitize my past. I could have just as easily turned to drugs.

III. Social Needs: Include the need for love, companionship and friendship; the desire for acceptance by others.

I often pearl on my first wave of the day. This means, the nose of the board goes under when I try to catch a wave, and I fall off. I am comforted in knowing now that I am exhibiting behavior that my therapist calls “normal range”: she says that studies have been done that show when a person is not confident in her ability to perform a task, and people are watching, she will underperform. After pearling, I hang my head in shame, so other surfers will know that I know what I did, that I’m not some kind of kook. I am working on being okay with being a human who makes mistakes. I am glad for myself, for this willingness to learn in public how to do something that is hard.

During my year of therapy for the PTSD, I seem to have shed all my friends. Maybe I pulled away from them because I wanted to spare them the intensity of what it is, to reconstruct a self, after 29 years of living one’s life as a constant reaction to the addictions of other people. Or maybe they pulled away from me, because I am changing, and our friendship no longer makes sense. There is a void, but then I go down to the ocean, and I talk to surfers and we have predictable and important exchanges where we ask, what time is low tide? And what is the swell direction? And is it fun?

IV. Esteem Needs: Involve self-respect, and respect from others. The need to feel that you can do something better than anyone else.

Yesterday at the farmer’s market I overheard a conversation between a customer and a farmer while I bought sunflower greens: the nuclear radiation coming from Japan is worse than the news is telling us; they say, it’s going to be worse than Chernobyl! I pause and wait for the anxiety, because a variation of this very same dialogue in March 2011 sent me into a flashback bender that lasted a weekend, and I needed six yoga classes to numb me. I wait one second, two seconds. But today, no flashback comes.

I spend the weekend instead in a state of stunned, cautiously optimistic elation. My work is paying off; I am going to have a life.

By my second or third wave of the day, I’m adjusting to the gaze of whoever is watching, and I’m finding that confident quiet part inside me. I’m dropping in and finding the fast part of the wave, and these days I’m even taking steps on the board: a step or two back to get back in the curl, then a few steps forward to speed up and race down the line! Somebody says, “Nice wave”, and I feel proud.

V. Self-Actualization Needs: The need to be the best one can be.

I visualize and dream about the day I will walk to the nose. I will perch myself at the front of my board, my toes curling around the edges, and I will arch my back and maybe even raise my arms over my head and look at the sky and bask in the satisfaction of having done it. To the little girl inside, who spent so many years fleeing for freedom, I will say, as the water carries us, “Hello, little one, we made it; welcome to your home.”

Goaty and Vanilla

Sun, 01 Jul 2012 16:48:08 -0700

Until I received this handmade thank you card last month from my niece Ella and my sister Manda, I forgot all about Goaty and Vanilla, who are goats that Ella, who is six, named at Wilder Ranch in Santa Cruz during her March visit from Massachusetts:

(considerable art direction might be attributable to Ella’s mom, Manda)

Ella was born five months before I packed a suitcase, bought a one way plane ticket to California, and started my life over on the other side of the country in September of 2006.

The morning I left for California I remember crying as I held baby Ella in my parents’ house in Massachusetts. I remember crying more at the Manchester, New Hampshire airport later that day as I ate chocolate munchkins from Dunkin’ Donuts with my mom until it was time for me to go through the security checkpoint. I remember the frustration of my certainty that I had to leave.

I remember fourteen months before that, when my sister told me she was pregnant. I was attempting a u-turn over the subway tracks on Comm Ave. in Boston, and I felt like a bowling ball got thrown against my stomach, and I thought I was going to get into an accident. I remember a few days later that my family threw a good-bye-good-luck party in a Kiwanis Club Hall for my little brother Joey, who was about to leave for boot camp to join the Marines. I remember that when I saw the altar of photos of Joey that my Catholic grandmother had constructed at the door to the party, I quietly walked across the street and made an SOS telephone call to my best friend. I remember that two weeks later, my grandmother had a stroke. I remember that in those days, I was eating about 2000 calories of bread products before lunch as a daily coping mechanism. I remember that in those days, I really had no coping mechanisms that didn’t also have detrimental side effects.

While Manda was pregnant I did not speak to her much. In retrospect I know I cannot be angry at myself for my negligence to support my sister; if I’d had anything to give her, I would have. When Ella was born on April 4, 2006 I did not call out of work at my $12 per hour temporary customer relations assistant position so that I could go meet her in the hospital. I wish I could go back and do it differently.

When Ella was about five days old I rounded the corner to my grandmother’s house and heard a song from Matt Costa’s song “Sunshine”, in which he sings, “Su—uu—nnn—shine, you will get the best of me” and I began to cry deeply as I realized that Ella was in fact alive, and that no degree of denial on my part would make my sister’s single-mother future go away. I remember the location because at that corner there is a convenience store where when we were kids in the summer time, our dad would stop and get us Richie’s Slush, and I always liked that they had the Blue Vanilla slush there, and I would like to have more of these sweet, simple memories.

My first morning in Santa Cruz in September of 2006, I remember I stood on the wharf, which was enshrouded in fog, and I cried because I missed Ella. But I cried more because I did not want her to grow up like I had, with abuse and negligence all around, but I also knew that I was too broken to be useful to her back East.

When Ella came to visit this past spring, it was her first trip to California and we went to Wilder State Park and we met some goats. We went to the Seymour Marine Center and learned about whales. I gave her a coloring book for her birthday with a theme of “self esteem for kids” that I found off some yoga-affiliated website. I got her a princess birthday cake, and gave her compliments about her intelligences and creativeness. When Ella was around, I tried not to talk about difficult subjects with my sister, like why did Ella’s dad move to Los Angeles and not stay near his daughter, or why I refuse to go to my cousin’s wedding back East this summer, where I’d have to slap a smile on my face and pretend that my family’s unacknowledged alcoholism had not broken my spirit, and nearly killed me too. And then I wondered if it were better if I had been more honest around Ella, because I remember how horrible I felt when I was a kid and could sense the tension of all the unacknowledged stresses around me, and not understand what was happening, or if it was my fault.

I don’t know if I did a good job for Ella. I don’t know if I am a good mentor for this niece of mine, who I hardly ever see, who lives 3,000 miles from me and who is babysat regularly and influenced significantly by the same people whose behavior drove me to leave.

But for one week last March, we got to visit goats and whale skeletons, and enjoy the presence of each other, and accumulate sweet, simple memories. I did everything I could think of to be helpful. I must trust that the best I can do is enough.

Running

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 19:00:00 -0700

I heard last year of a study showing that for people with PTSD, running had a higher efficacy than therapy and meds combined. Ever since that day I have run three miles around my Capitola neighborhood, at least three times a week.

My route takes me from my neighborhood down into the Capitola river valley,

then down the Capitola wharf,

then down a river walk,

and then down a neighborhood street that runs along the river. Then I make a u-turn onto Monterey Ave, which takes me by Gayle’s Bakery where I like to imagine myself relaxing with a magazine and a croissant. Imagining eating baked goods always seems more wonderful than actually eating them and then feeling bloated afterwards.

Eventually I come down a hill that drops me off at Capitola Village and the beach. I run by the Capitola Beach Company to see if there are any cute shirts in the window that I should come back and try on later, and then I go down to the jetty to check out if there are waves I should come back and surf.

(some surf from last winter; summer is usually flat)

Then I run along the esplanade and look at all the people drinking coffees and walking dogs (if it’s a morning run) or all dressed up and going into the bars (if it’s the evening).

When I am running up the steep hill, back up my side of the river valley, I like to think about the force of the water that first shaped the river valley so many thousands of years ago. When compared to the mighty surge of rivers carving contours into the earth, my stresses seem inconsequential.

(Capitola flooded last year)

The last leg takes me through my neighborhood. A vital part of my spiritual sustenance is comprised of tracking the constant and seasonal changes in my neighbors’ wild California gardens.

(something beautiful, in full bloom)

I love my route; I really never change it.

Beyond being a way to keep fit and generate endorphins, my runs also allow me essential alone time to nurture some of my most important non-human relationships: the ones I have with the ocean, the river, the flowers.

My only goal is to just keep going for the whole loop. I don’t care how fast I go, or even how I look to other people. I just stay with it, and give myself the space to think.

When you have PTSD, it’s like your brain is constipated: some traumatic information is stuck on one side of your brain, because it’s too overwhelming to be processed normally to the other side. The old information stays active, like it’s still happening to you. That’s what a flashback really is: activation of that old information causing you to experience the traumatic past again, in the present, and not being able to tell the difference between what was then, and what is now. Flashbacks are the worst part of being alive.

Something about the left, right, left, right bi-lateral movement of running seems to encourage the stuck information to move from the left to the right side of the brain. When I am in a flashback, running seems to help resolve it faster than anything. After my weekly eye movement desensitization therapy (EMDR), I always go for a run. I work through a lot of trauma in those sessions, and if I don’t run, I can’t sleep. If I do run, I sleep really well.

(sleeping really well)

To cool down after my run, I walk from my apartment over to a bench that overlooks the whole valley, and maybe I stretch or do some jump roping. I look at the ocean, and I enjoy the clearer, simpler thoughts afforded to me in my post-run state, and I am grateful for the resources to amass a positive experience.

(a post-run visitor, who chose not to partake in jump roping)

tylerknott: Typewriter Series #89 by Tyler Knott Gregson

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 14:45:35 -0700

tylerknott:

Typewriter Series #89 by Tyler Knott Gregson

Photo

Sun, 17 Jun 2012 19:31:15 -0700

beingblog: “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things...

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 19:12:00 -0700

beingblog:

“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”

—Henry David Thoreau from Walden, or Life in the Woods.

Photo by Alan English. (Taken with instagram)

Hopeful Inspiration

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 19:52:18 -0700

I was captivated by the feminist essay by Ashley Judd that went viral about a month ago. When I was browsing the book store recently, I saw that she’d written a memoir as well: All That is Bitter and Sweet. I bought it, read it, was mesmerized by it.

She interviews a lot of prostitutes in the book. I was surprised at the empathy I felt toward them, for the despair of entrapment in which they lived. Make no mistake, I fully realize that my standard of living is exponentially luxurious compared to that of an Indian sex slave. But the feeling of being trapped by one’s one mind, by a thought that says, “things will never improve, there is no hope”, I understand that despair. I felt it throughout my treatment for PTSD, and it is heavy. Only recently has it given way to still-developing images of hopeful options toward which to direct my life. Having no example around you that things could be different, nothing on which to hook and develop imaginings of a transformed future, that’s rock bottom.

I am pained by the accounts of the prostitutes, yet comforted that I recognize some of the emotions they feel. Trauma is so isolating; it isolated me from myself, it isolated me from life, and it isolated me from other people. Seeing my own thoughts coming from someone else makes me feel like part of humanity again. My mind works the same as that prostitute’s mind. Fellowship can occur in the most unlikely of places.

I have been looking for a mentor: somebody who grew up like I did, who was shaped by abandonment, abuse and neglect, who then in her early adulthood fell apart completely due to her codependency and lack of preparedness for living in society, but then worked really hard at recovery and then began to THRIVE. Ashley Judd seems to be the person I want to become: an empowered person of healthy self-esteem and boundaries, of deep compassion that includes herself, a person who is able to alchemize personal pain and transform it into healing for others, in a way that makes a big impact to the world. I am grateful for the real-life example.

I would like for someday to be able to stand like Ashley Judd with people whose souls are broken, and be strong enough in my own self that I can be a light to them.

It starts with the self.

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 10:37:39 -0700

It starts with the self.