Archives for category: Mindfulness

Like throwing a dart at a moving car

November 16, 2014 //

As I parked my car at my cancer center last Friday, I thought to myself, ‘This is my last “double-stick Friday”!’ Friday is not a day I see patients so it is the day I typically choose to be a patient. The first stick is a blood draw, which marks the beginning of every medical oncology appointment. Two vials of blood are drawn. Most of the phlebotomists are amazingly adept, which is very important when working with cancer patients, who have veins that are no stranger to the needle. My blood is always drawn on my left arm because I had lymph node removal on my right side. Prior to cancer, I’d had one I.V. placement when giving birth to my daughter 16 years ago and blood draws on a very infrequent basis for some of my annual physicals. Since cancer, my left arm and left hand have been poked and prodded many times a year for blood draws and surgeries. I didn’t even have I.V. chemo and I can tell the difference.

My name was called by an unfamiliar phlebotomist. But they have all been good so I didn’t worry. Then I noticed that it was taking her a very long time to find a vein. I have what they call “difficult” veins. This is why I often get the I.V. line placed in the back of my hand, which by the way, which is kind of ouchie. I could also tell that she was getting nervous. I close my eyes during blood draws because it helps me relax and also because I like to give people privacy to do their job without my staring at their work. I kept feeling the tap tap tapping of her index finger on the inside of my arm and some whispered nervousness. She stuck the needle and then the draw was taking a really long time. Usually, the phlebotomist lets me relax my fist once the needle has been placed. But she didn’t. She kept apologizing and then finally gave up. It wasn’t an adequate blood draw. Then she peered at my arm again, anxiously fretting as she did so. I kept saying, “Don’t worry about it. It’s okay.” She found a vein on the outside of my forearm. This was a new sticking spot.

Again, more time passed than usual. I didn’t mind the extra needle sticking as much as her distress and repeated apologies. Finally, the vials were filled. She fretted over the bruise she knew would be left and in attempt to prevent it, wrapped my arm tightly with medical tape.

I walked upstairs for my oncology appointment with two bandages on my left arm. It would be “triple-stick Friday”. The last stick would be a Lupron shot into my left hip. I have been getting Lupron shots every three months for over two years. Their function is to disrupt the signal from my pituitary gland to my ovaries, which respond by producing progesterone and estrogen. This is a non-surgical way of “shutting down the ovaries” and putting a woman into a near instant and possibly reversible menopause.

And yes, over two years ago, I entered menopause. At the time, Lupron was more commonly used to treat prostate cancer. There was a photo of a smiling middle aged man on the package that held the pre-filled syringe. This struck a few of us in the breast cancer community as funny. The man on the package looked far too happy with his cancer status and the fact that his testes were going to be “shut down” by Lupron.

In three months, the Lupron will wear off and I will wait and see what kind of change ensues. I asked my oncologist what I might expect to happen. It was quickly clear to me as she explained the possible factors (my natural menopause time and the fact that both Lupron and tamoxifen, which I am still taking can cause irreversible menopause) that this was a hard outcome to predict. I said, “Ah, there are many factors involved and they are all DYNAMIC.” Then I covered my eyes and pantomimed throwing a dart. Dr. Rinn replied, “You got it, it’s like throwing a dart at a moving car.”

Like throwing a dart at a moving car.

A great deal of life is like this. My health, parenting a teen.

Mindfulness is like throwing a dart at a moving car with my eyes open.

Wide open.

Tags Breast Cancer, Lupron, mindfulness, Parenting, survivorship

Categories Breast cancer, Mindfulness, Parenting

Welcome to Egypt

November 15, 2014 //

In 1990, my husband and I went to Egypt for two weeks as part of our honeymoon. It was an amazing trip and some day, I hope to be able to return. There’s a certain amount of stress that comes from traveling in an unknown place, with a different language, and customs. Everywhere we went in Egypt we were greeted on the street, “Welcome to Egypt!”

“How nice,” you might think. And from certain people, regular folks who were just passing by and being friendly, it was nice, to a point. However, imagine that you are greeted this way several times an hour, every hour, for the entire day. And imagine that some of the people are trying to sell you things and they might even follow you down the street for awhile in an attempt to engage you. You get a 45 minute long break on Mondays through Fridays during the television broadcast of edited repeats of the U.S. evening soap opera, Falcon Crest. During that 45 minutes, Cairo commerce shut down.

You might now think this could get pretty exhausting. It was very exhausting. There was no privacy. We already knew that we stuck out as foreigners from a wealthy country. With every, “Welcome to Egypt” we needed to consider whether someone was just being nice or whether someone was trying to engage us in a business transaction. If you’ve ever experienced a culture that takes bargaining an negotiation seriously, you’ll know what I mean. When we learned to ignore shop merchants, it shortened the interaction, but since pretending to ignore a merchant is actually an initial bargaining strategy, there was still an interaction. It was still not clear that we were not biting.

You’re walking down the street, not as an invitation to constant interpersonal engagement, but as a means of transportation. You are walking to get from one place to another. And each time you do this, you are constantly spoken to, sometimes with sincere friendliness and sometimes because someone wants something from you.

Sound familiar?

Last month, a New York based anti-harassment group made a video, using a hidden camera, of a young woman, dressed plainly and speaking to no one, walking on the sidewalks of New York for 10 hours. Men initiated conversation with her constantly. Some of them used polite words, some did not. Some use polite words, impolitely, ‘I told you that you are beautiful. You should say, “thank you.”‘ One man followed the woman for several minutes.

The video was very popular and had millions of views. It inspired the writing of a number of articles in well regarded news outlets. There were responses and comments made by normal citizens such as you and me.

Some of the comments were along the lines of “What’s the big deal? She should take the attention as a compliment.”

On the other end of the spectrum were opinions that men just should not greet unknown women on the street.

I understand both of those positions, really I do. But I find them to be a sad reflection on our culture.

Although I live in Seattle, a major U.S. city, it is one of the smaller ones. Seattle has a reputation for being polite but not friendly. Some people call this, “the Seattle Freeze”. My neighborhood, in some respects, has the feel of a small city. I’ve never felt “the Seattle Freeze” even though to many people, it is very surprising that I am native to this area. Many assume that I am from the northeastern part of the U.S. despite my characteristic Northwest regional accent. (We say we don’t have accents here because what we speak is pretty close to standard American English, which is an accent in and of itself, by the way.)

In my neighborhood, I walk around and people smile or say, “hello”. I am often, but not always, the person who initiates the greeting. Most of the people I see are people I don’t know. People are friendly in the grocery store. If they see me choose an item they like, I may hear, “Oh, those are so good!” One day, a woman was so excited that we carried the same brand of practical but cute organizer handbag, Baggalini, that she spoke to me about it’s virtues for about 10 minutes. That was, perhaps, a bit much.

Yesterday, I visited a different neighborhood, Capital Hill. It is a beautiful neighborhood with lively hipster culture. I walked through the business district, a residential area, and in a city park. Two people were friendly when I greeted them, an older woman who was walking home from the grocery store and a middle-aged man who I passed on the stairs on the way down from the top of a historic water tower in the park, which has good views of the area. Everyone else I passed either ignored me, returned my greeting anxiously, or purposely averted their gaze.

I experienced the Seattle Freeze! I was a harmless looking middle aged woman wearing work out clothes and carrying a Baggalini, for goodness sakes! Now it is true that Capital Hill has higher population density than my neighborhood and further, that businesses are mixed in with homes, to a greater degree. There is a lot more car traffic. I don’t know if the crime rate is higher there but it feels like it is, perhaps just due to the more hurried pace there.

I would like to live in a world where exchanging a greeting is just that, an acknowledgement that there are others in the world besides me and that those people might appreciate a “hello” and a smile. We are acknowledging that the other person matters and that we belong. There are places where it is so crowded that this is not possible or desired, at least on the street. It is overwhelming and too much.

Maybe “hello”, “nice weather”, “cute dog” and other comments are trivial. But as we know from research on women’s relationships, the function of having regular discussion of less deep matters (in addition to the majorly deep and important topics we discuss), is important. For women, these discussions help maintain connections and friendships. Few will argue that when it comes to maintaining friendships, women tend to be better at this than are men, as a group.

Most of us have daily opportunities for those pleasant connections. And these connections help maintain ties in a community.

Welcome to the world.

Tags bargaining, civility, Community, congeniality, Egypt, sexual harrassment

Categories Mindfulness

Stripped away

November 8, 2014 //

I remember as a little girl looking through my mother’s photos of her family. I looked at her and said, “Mom, I am so sorry that you did not have color when you were growing up.” I assumed that the world was in black and white because that’s what the photos looked like. A world devoid of color other than black, white, and gray was less than. I expended all of my 5 year-old empathy skills in feeling the sadness of a world that really didn’t exist.

My husband and I share many interests, one of them is photography. When I met John, he did his own photo developing, in the bathroom of his apartment. He had taken black and white photos for many years. I was more of a Technicolor type person. I shot my photos with color film. This, my friends, was back in the day when people were enslaved to the choice of black and white vs. color. We took a five week long honeymoon to Italy and to Egypt. We both took about 2500 photos. My honeymoon was in color. John’s was in black and white. Both trips were amazing and beautiful.

With digital photography, things changed. Switching between color and black and white was accomplished in a single key stroke. Nonetheless, I found myself NEVER looking at my photos in black and white.

I don’t dislike black and white photography. My husband, whom I adore, has taken wonderful black and white photography. I love Imogen Cunningham, Alfred Stieiglitz, Ansel Adams, and Man Ray. I love their work. But I never saw the absence of color as being MY best way of showcasing the world.

I love color. I love blooming, buzzing, and confusing color. Bright and saturated hues that might scare ordinary mortals. That is what I am drawn to and I would hope that this this reflects my blooming and vibrant personality.

Then it happened. I was CHALLENGED on FACEBOOK to showcase black and white photography by someone with whom I attended high school.

I love a good challenge and this was an interesting one But my first thought was, “No color, oh no.” But again, I love a good challenge s it was not hard to shift from my “oh no” in the space of about 5 seconds.

I love color, I really do. It is seductive. It’s just gloriously beautiful. But without it, there is an upsurge of form, light, shadow, and line. I started looking at my photos stripped of color.

It was like discovering a new universe, a universe comprised of an even smaller collection of essentials.

I am an extroverted person. I love color, I love sound, I love movement. But I am more than that. Life it more than the exclamation points, more than the aspects that are easily noted. My life has structure, line, and light. There is gravitas and a lot of it.

Sometimes I live life too much on the edges, on the flourishes. Then I get the message from life that it is time to strip away, to get back to basics.

I am listening.

I am seeing.

Tags black and white photography, flora and fauna, mindfulness, nature photography

Categories Flora and Fauna, Mindfulness

A dirty slate

November 2, 2014 //

I remember the beginning of my face to face relationship with my daughter. The nurse put her in my arms. “Welcome to the world,” I said as I placed a tender kiss on her forehead. She was an utterly perfect clean slate full of infinite possibility.

As she grew, she changed and so did our relationship. By the time she was a four year old, she was lively, happy, brilliant, confident, independent but connected, and as sweet as could be. “This little girl is going to change the world someday,” I found myself thinking. She was a slate full of infinite happy and healthy positives.

Many parents of challenging teens rhapsodize about their children when they were younger and perhaps even exaggerate. But I can tell you, I was not alone in being in awe of this child and no, I’m not just talking about her loving father, my husband, John.

A major parenting challenge is when the slate of possibilities changes, for some children earlier than others but for most it certainly changes in adolescence. Teens create consequences, short and long-term than they can’t really fully appreciate as they are putting actions in motion. In other words, a common part of growing up is making foolish decisions that could make adulthood much different.

The slate gets dirty. There are still good possibilities but some scary painful possibilities join them. When we love our children and hold their happiness and dreams in our hearts, it can be all too easy to focus on the dirty parts of the slate. Plus, since adolescence is even harder for the teen than the parent, we get the punched in the gut feeling as we watch them struggle through tumultuous times.

I love my girl. She is still brilliant and lively. She is not always happy. She has highs and lows of confidence. She is still super sweet deep down and it is not rare for it to bubble back up to the surface. But to be honest, it is sometimes anxiety-provoking to introduce her to my friends. There is that worry that she will be obnoxious, provocative, anxious, or lacking in manners. She doesn’t really adjust her behavior much based on whether she is with adults or peers. You could be the Queen of England and there would be a chance that she would greet you with a brain rattling belch.

But the truth is that as unpredictable as she can be, adults actually tend to like her. I know that part of the embarrassment on my part, is the common sense that one’s child is the product of parenting. But that’s not all of it. I think that another piece is that she is different than she used to be and as she moves forward, her fate is less and less subject to my influence and protection.

The slate I see when I view my daughter is no longer clean. It is full of known positives, known negatives, and much gray that has not yet been elucidated by time. I look at her and I just don’t know. She is not like the joyful curious 4 year-old for whom my husband and I were the center of the universe. Time can take her away from her wishes and dreams. It can take her away from her own compass of right and wrong. It can take her away from us. It is very scary.

As a breast cancer patient, I have often felt like an adolescent. I have oft written about how the integration of cancer into my identity calls back to the original phase of my identity development during adolescence and early adulthood.

I have been reflecting a lot about my long time relationships and how breast cancer, and how I have changed in response to it, has impacted them. I am not the same person as I was before. And the slate of possibilities for my life has been dirtied by breast cancer. I realize that some have responded to me like a changeable teen. It is not a constant, but there is strain on some of my relationships and it is palpable. With some people I can feel it in my gut, even over two years past diagnosis. I am engendering fear through my association with cancer.

I have made a number of new friends through my breast cancer blogging. Sometimes these friendships seem like a vacation away. There is ease to them at times that is rare in most of my close relationships. I have been very grateful for this but at the same time, it’s seemed a little odd. And I think given how much writing there is in the breast cancer community about the perceived realness of cyber friendships, I believe I am not alone.

One of the reasons that it feels odd is that I feel small but perceptible twinges of disloyalty to my long time friends. Whee! Cyber-friends all the way!! Mostly, I have tried to appreciate and nurture friendships regardless of their origin and focus my efforts on those that are mutually supportive.

It occurred to me today that one of the reasons that new friendships have been so important to me is that none of them knew me before cancer. None of them have had to incorporate this into a pre-existing concept of me. So even though cancer is on my slate, I started with a dirty slate.

During most of my adult life, I have introduced myself to others with a smile and a handshake. I may talk about the weather or about casual pleasantries. As a blogger, I introduce myself to others with my illness. “Hi, I am a cancer patient. I write about personal and painful things. To relieve my anxiety about this, I sometimes make boob jokes.” Despite the the fact that I lead with my disease in this way, I have become part of an amazing community of people, which has led to other connections outside of the community. What a wonderful gift indeed.

Tags adapting to change, adolescence, anxiety, Breast Cancer, breast cancer bloggers, cyberfriendships, Friendship, how cancer changes relationships, mindfulness, Parenting teens

Categories Breast cancer, Family, Mindfulness, Parenting

Into the rain

November 1, 2014 //

Summer is the driest season in Seattle. With the long days and rarity of extreme heat, it is absolutely glorious. I love the summers here. It is also the time of year when I take vacation and when my daughter does not have the stress of school.

This year, the summer seemed longer because I took two short vacations in October. One in Seattle where I acted as tour guide for a friend and the second, a trip to North Carolina from which I returned just a few days ago.

While I was gone, the rains returned in a very big way. It was raining before but we had a major wind and rain storm while I was gone. Our power went out and after trying to fix our land line phone, which I assumed was not working because it was off the hook, I have discovered that it has been out of order for the past week and no one noticed! (Note to friends: It is always better to call my cell, anyway. Note to telemarketers: Bwahahahaha!)

The weather in North Carolina was delightful. The company and sights were rejuvenating. I visited many more different people and places than I typically do on a trip. Part of this was because I had a lot of people to see and I needed to work around their availability. (I actually used a scheduling application to get everyone’s availability so that I could more easily determine the best times to see different people.) I was worried that I would tire myself out traveling, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. I had a wonderful time. And then I came back to Seattle to inclement weather, inside of my house.

I am consistently aware that my family life is stressful. I often forget how very stressful it can get, how much energy daily living can take. And after being welcomed with a drizzle in my house, by the next day there was a storm with ebbs and flows. And although I am still mopping up the extra water and wringing out my clothes, we may have narrowly missed a tsunami last night.

One f the lessons I have learned from walking outside year around is that most bad weather is scarier from the inside of the house. It looks threatening. The rain looks grim and relentless. And just like the summer seems likes it will never end, the shortening fall days can be so disheartening.

Yesterday, I relearned the lesson of the weather. It rained constantly for a good portion of the day. I did not want to walk in it. I looked outside and thought, “How depressing. Bleh.” But I have been off of my exercise routine with plane travel and getting caught up at work so I suited up and ventured outside with an umbrella in my rain coat pocket.

I walked outside. Yes, it was raining but I immediately felt better. There was fresh air. I was moving. There were trees, grass, and flowers. The rain actually made some things look better. The leaves were glossy. There were beautiful water droplets creating light effects and textures on the plants.

I typically feel so much less vulnerable when I put myself into the situation that I am trying to avoid because I fear it. By putting myself in the situation, I can be mindful of it because I can experience it fully. I can see, hear, feel, and taste things that I can’t from within my own home, standing still, looking at the window and feeling stuck, like I belong no where.

I have to be honest. It was hard to come back home after a trip of fun and little responsibility. It is tempting to avoid bad weather, real or threatened. Life brings change, some good, some bad. Walking in the rain is not an appealing notion to most, especially when the seasons are bringing us to cold and dark times.

But when I walk into the rain, my family is there. With them is where my life is and where I want to be.

Tags Family, mindfulness

Categories Family, Mindfulness

Mine

October 28, 2014 //

Last Wednesday, I was on a flight from Los Angeles, California to Raleigh, North Carolina. It’s pretty long for a domestic flight, from one coast to another. I boarded the plane and took my aisle seat in the coach section of the plane. Passengers kept walking past me through the aisle and I expected at some point that I would be standing up to let two people sit in the empty seats to my right. And then the announcement that we were about to take off occurred. How lucky! I was going to get an entire row of the airplane to myself.

Within about 5 minutes, a man in the row behind me asks, “Is anyone sitting there?” I replied, “I don’t know” because 1) sometimes the doors are re-opened for someone boarding the plane late and 2) I didn’t want to say, “no” because HE ALREADY HAD A SEAT! WHAT ABOUT MY ROW TO MYSELF?

He let about two seconds go by after my “I don’t know” to say, “I’m sitting there.”

I got up and let him in. He took the window seat.

Meanwhile the thoughts in my head, “WHAT THE HELL, MAN? HOW RUDE! YOU DIDN’T EVEN ASK ME IF IT WAS OKAY!”

But I kept my thoughts in my head. Even though he made me get up while I was trying to write a post on my computer, so that he could use the bathroom. HOW ANNOYING!

Then it happened. A woman walked up to the aisle, looked at the middle seat and said, “That’s my husband.” Apparently, this was her manner of communicating her claim to the seat beside him. I said, “You mean, you want to switch seats with me?” She said, “No, you don’t want my seat. It’s a middle seat.” She must not have been seated in the same row as her husband. It was a little confusing. In any event, I climbed out of my seat so that she could take the seat between her husband and me.

Meanwhile the thoughts in my head, “WHAT THE HELL, LADY? HOW RUDE! JUST LIKE YOUR HUSBAND, YOU DIDN’T ASK ME IF IT WAS OKAY TO SIT IN MY ROW!”

My row. My seats. Mine. You people are inconsiderate and have bad boundaries.

I observed my annoyance. I paid for one seat and since I used frequent flier miles, I think the total cost of this leg of the trip was about $5. I had fully expected to sit next to two other passengers when I initially sat down. But once it was announced that the plane was fully boarded, it took me all of five minutes to lay claim to an entire row on an airplane that didn’t belong to me. In fact, I was really just renting the seat that I was in.

In those few minutes, I had constructed a small web of expectation and entitlement, which gave way to irritation. The truth is, most people would think that the way this married couple spoke to me was a bit lacking in the finer shades of communication that translate as politeness. “I’m sorry, but I was wondering, would you mind my sitting in that empty seat?”

We might even think that it really would not have been so hard for either the wife or the husband to use a few extra words to acknowledge the inconvenience they were causing. What I am wondering though is why it wasn’t easier for me to initially think to myself, “It’s fair for people to move to another seat and it’s nice that this middle aged married couple wants to sit together on a long flight.”

Instead, my initial thoughts were that something that was mine was being taken from me. And this thought made me curious. I don’t think of myself as being someone who has difficulty with entitlement. I also think of myself as being helpful and generous. But like a preschool aged child who says, “mine!” when she sees someone else’s fingers grabbing for a marker, which she is not using, but is in a favorite color, I had taken ownership of seats I wasn’t using.

Children tend to say, “not fair!” when something they don’t like happens. Even if they’ve had more of their fair share of something and are asked to even things out. “Mine! Not fair!”

We don’t often notice when we have more than our fair share of something and when we do, it is usually not distressing.

I am not a little kid. I know how to take turns on the slide and share my markers. Sometimes I intentionally give myself less than my fair share of something. This has me thinking, though. It has me thinking about some of my pet peaves at home. Those tiny irritations that can accumulate into significant masses of stress. I was very excited to see my family last night after being away for five days. As soon as I walked through the door, I saw chores that needed to be done, just a few, but nonetheless things that had not gotten done while I was gone. My automatic thought was, “not fair”. But then I started commenting on the positives. My husband had gotten to the airport early because he was excited to see me. “John, thank you so much for picking me up.” “John, thank you for taking care of our daughter so I could have time away on my own.”

I started to feel calmer. I still got annoyed with some other things but I was able to get myself back on a positive plane more quickly than in the past.

Appreciation, the buffer against “mine!”, “not fair!”, and “gimme!”.

Tags appreciation, communication, entitlement, Family, manners, mindfulness, positive thinking

Categories Family, Marriage, Mindfulness

In my mind

October 27, 2014 //

As you know, I arrived in North Carolina last Wednesday for some much appreciated vacation as well as to attend the first ever reunion of all classes from my clinical psychology Ph.D. program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This is the first time I’ve traveled to NC on my own since my dissertation defense in 1997, which was a very short trip since I was still a psychology intern and needed to get back to work.

A five night trip with near total freedom in deciding my itinerary. A trip to a place I love. You know how James Taylor sings, “In my mind I’m going to Carolina”? He’s singing about Chapel Hill. His father was on faculty with the medical school. Chapel Hill is beautiful and song worthy. It is a relatively small city, dominated by a university, which is the oldest public institution of higher learning in the United States.

The first thing I noticed as I was driving from the airport to my friends’ house in Raleigh, was the countryside. The beautiful trees along the highway in their early stages of autumn color change. I noticed a glorious blue sky.

And then I saw them, the telltale V shape birds that pitch and rock when they glide. The turkey vultures were flying over the tree canopy. They are really interesting birds. They don’t live an elegant life. They are not smooth fliers and they scavenge for food instead of heroically gliding and catching fish that glint silver in the sun over the water.. I am not an ecologist but my guess is that despite their bad reputation, they are good for the ecosystem. In any event, with the exception of that apple tree attack in the Wizard of Oz, we don’t fear trees because they grow on decaying matter, some of it from animals, do we?

So one of my goals for this trip was to be mindful of places, people, and experiences. When I do this, I can find myself driving on one of the countless highways in the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area and waxing romantically about an ugly bird that eats dead animals. This is the power of mindfulness. I say this half-jokingly but it is true. Mindfulness can transform something ugly into something else.

Throughout my mindful trip, I noticed that mindfulness is on the mind of a good number of my North Carolina friends. Doris Ann Price, a lively, artsy, bright and fun woman was the first person I met with on my first full day in NC. Doris Ann and I met in 3-D for the first time last Thursday. She was diagnosed with breast cancer some time ago and made the awful transition to metastatic cancer several years ago. Doris Ann is famous in social media for wearing a button that says, “Cancer Sucks”, a pair of artsy/intellectual glass, her smart black and red wardrobe, and her bright red “Lady Danger” lipstick. (I learned that this is her nickname, something that a friend told M.A.C. Cosmetics about, which resulted in Doris Ann receiving a lifetime supply of their “Lady Danger” lipstick.)

I enjoyed interacting with Doris Ann on Facebook but I didn’t really know her. Contrary to somewhat popular opinion, extroversion is not a super power (nor is introversion an illness, for that matter.). I typically feel at least slightly awkward when meeting new people even when I am very much looking forward to it. Doris Ann and I hit it off right away and had a lovely time together filled with fun and meaningful conversation.

Doris Ann’s cancer has spread to her brain. This is something I knew about her. What I didn’t know it that her voice right now, is a few notches above a whisper because a tumor is pressing against her vocal cords. Her throat is also narrowed, making eating a lot process with very small bites.

Doris Ann was very genuine with me about the challenges that cancer has brought to her life. Despite this, she is a very lively woman who has found a way to keep joy in her life. She told me that she “moves forward” in life until she sees a stop sign. And then at that point, she stops, reflects, problem solves, and regroups. Doris Ann’s health is monitored quite closely by her oncologists and other healthcare providers. She is an upbeat person but certainly not a Pollyanna. Doris Ann is mindful of the seriousness of her health as well as the positives in her life. I admire her emotional strength very much. Plus she was fun and brought me very delicious gluten-free pastries as a gift!

A couple of days later, I found myself at my reunion. I immediately saw someone I knew, Don Baucom, a faculty member who had been the director of clinical training when I was a student. He was greeting people as they arrived. Don is a gracious and kind man with keen intellect and a wonderful sense of humor. He greeted me with a big hug and I felt a little less awkward about going to a party with people I had not seen for a very long time.

I loved graduate school but there was part of it that was like the longest adolescence a person can have that is actually healthy and not just living in your parents’ basement playing videogames, until age 30. The program was supportive but very rigorous and difficult. These were very smart and successful students. We had never had to work so hard to do well in school. So there was insecurity and competition on top of the competition that is part of any academic environment at a major university.

There were only two other people at the reunion from my class and very few from other classes whom I knew all that well. And only two of my professors were there. At one point, I thought, “maybe I’ll leave early.” Then I got my mind out of the past and into the present and proceeded to have a very good time reconnecting with and meeting people.

A couple of particularly lovely things happened. I heard a voice behind me say excitedly, “Elizabeth!” It was April Harris-Britt, who had worked in my dissertation lab, while she was an undergraduate student (I did not work on a professor’s project. I did an independent project, developing and evaluating a parent education program.) April was a wonderful student and I encouraged her to continue in psychology at the graduate level. She did and she entered the Clinical Psychology Ph.D. program after I left. She now has a private practice in Durham, NC.

“I was so excited to see your name on the guest list,” she said as she held my hand. “When I think about why I became a psychologist, I always think of you.” I gave her a hug, a kiss on the cheek, got a little teary and told her how awesome she was and is. Then we caught up on our lives. I saw a photo of her beautiful 4 year old grand-daughter.

This was a very moving encounter. I have found that since I started practicing mindfulness, I don’t feel as awkward showing affection that I genuinely feel. Now, I’m not going around kissing everyone’s cheek. Another part of my mindfulness is trusting that my own guesses as to whether someone would be comfortable with this, are pretty good. After all, knowing people pretty well is part of my job.

There was live bluegrass music at the reunion. They were very good. There was space for dancing but no one was out there dancing. I was sitting next to Sandra Zinn, a lively, brilliant, free spirited woman who graduated a couple of years after me. She said, “No one is dancing!” You know that I love to dance and I’m learning to get past my fears of being bad at partner dancing and just not care that I am bad at it. So I put out my hand and said, “Let’s go!” As I anticipated, Sandra accepted. We made up for lack of skill with enthusiasm, smiles, and giggling. About two minutes into the song, I started feeling self-conscious and told her, “I’m running out of moves.” She said, “It doesn’t matter as long as you keep moving.”

I have done a lot of things this month that would have been hard for me to do in the past. I have had 3 D encounters with three friends whom I met on the internet, one of whom is one of my very closest friends. (The third is the lovely, talented, and interesting Frieda Rosenburg, a retired UNC librarian. We had a marvelous time at the NC Botanical Garden and shopping at A Southern Season.) I have partner danced with two different people on two different occasions.

I am still not good at partner dancing. But it’s much more important to know how to live well than how to dance well. I still get nervous meeting new people or feel awkward in a crowd. But I am learning the difference between real stop signs and fabricated ones like the ones caused by social anxiety, perfectionism, and borrowing trouble from a future I can’t know until it gets here.

The fabricated stop signs are exhausting and when I make them, I miss out on a lot in my life. I don’t know how long my life will be or how many stop signs are coming up. In the meantime, I will live a life as mindful, meaningful, and as genuine as I can.

Doris Ann at Weaver Street Market in Carrboro, NC.

With Frieda Rosenberg at the NC Botanical Garden. Photo by Frieda Rosenberg, 2014.

My dissertation adviser, Joe Lowman with alumna Sandra Zinn. This photo captures each of them perfectly! And do you blame me for asking Sandra to dance?

April and me. Did I mention that I am so very proud of April?

Tags clinical psychology, dancing, Friendship, mentorship, mindfulness, perfectionism, social anxiety, unrelenting standards

Categories Breast cancer, Mindfulness

Fall Back

October 20, 2014 //

I live in the far northern reaches of the lower 48, you know the U.S. states that don’t include Hawaii or pertinent to this discussion, Alaska. During the summers in Seattle, we cannot believe our good fortune! The days that seem to last forever! The temperatures that rarely go above comfortably warm. It is true that the area in which I live is virtual Eden of during the months that are burning hot in the rest of the country. And then fall comes, in particular, “Fall back”, the adjustment from Pacific Daylight Time to Pacific Standard Time. Hello, darkness my old friend.

If I am honest with you, there has been a general trend that tells me that my adjustment to the Fall has not been good in recent years. When I was younger, Autumn was my favorite season. Summer, bleh, too hot. However, this was many years before I lived in North Carolina and learned that 75 degrees Fahrenheit is not hot. Also, 80 degrees is not so bad. When hubby and I moved to the South for graduate school, we opened the Pandora’s Box for warm weather acclimation.

For the last three Octobers, I have felt the pull toward low energy. I do not have Seasonal Affective Disorder, the depression caused by the low light conditions of winter. But I do get very tired in low light conditions. I am struggling with this, as we speak. It is ridiculously weather related. I spent last Saturday on my ass with cotton brain. The sun came out instantly and I immediately felt happier and more energetic. How predictable.

Last year, one of my doctors told me that it just might be a good idea for me to schedule fewer patients during the fall and winter, due t the fact that I had low energy during this time. Meanwhile, she gave me acupuncture treatments in hopes of raising my energy level.

I have learned to make some accommodations. I take extra vitamin D during these months. I continue to walk outside. It is particularly important for me to connect with nature and the reduced sunlight. I use light therapy for about 15 minutes in the afternoon. This summer and during the early fall, I changed the lighting in my living room. I added stronger lighting to buffer against the darkness in my beautiful part of the world. This year, I am also trying out a wake up light, an alarm clock that simulates the light of dawn at the time that I appoint rather than that dictated by Mother Nature, who is a little withholding up here during the short day light months. Since cancer treatment, my former status as a morning person has been questionable.

I may just have to accept a “new normal” that these are low energy and low mood months for me. But I enjoy being energetic and happy too much not to try a few things out.

Stay tuned.

Tags Daylight and energy, mindfulness, seasonal affective disorder

Categories Mindfulness

Front and Center

October 14, 2014 //

A common recommendation that I make on behalf of the students I diagnose with ADHD is to seat them in front of the teacher.

I mean, who wouldn’t think of that? A kid who has attention problems? Where else would you put him or her?

Although most teachers figure this out on their own, the number of times it doesn’t happen is surprising.

“Next to the fish tank”, “In the back”, “Next to the open door” are the seat locations that I hear about with alarming frequency.

Today I thought to myself, “Why would a teacher do that?” I’ve had this thought before but this time I really thought about the answer.

“Hmm, if I sat a kid next to the fish tank, he might just zone out on the fist right next to him rather than repeatedly getting out of his seat to walk to the fish tank.”

“Hmm, if I sat a kid with ADHD right in front of me, I might be distracted when I am trying to teach.”

Sometimes we move problems away from “front and center” because it is more convenient, at least in the short term. In the case of these students, the short term solution may leave them better entertained and thus less disrupted. But in the long term, they are also less well educated.

A major challenge to a happy life is to know when to move challenges to front and center and to know when they are best left in the periphery.

Last Friday, I hosted a lovely dinner party for friends, most of them new. One was a new “3 D” friend, someone with whom I have been friends via cyberspace but not in close proximity. (Read about it here.) At a certain point of the evening, we noticed that one of our six month old kittens, Basie, was missing. Since our house has been “Party City” since early September, the kittens have had lots of experience with visitors to the house. And they have taken strangers in stride, not hiding away like some cats are prone to do. So I was very worried. Our kittens have never been outside but I suspected that Basie had gotten outside. We live near a busy street. We also live in a neighborhood with many raccoons, who have been known to hurt or kill cats and small dogs. Not to mention the occasional coyote that sometimes graces our urban landscape.

In the back of my mind, as the hours ticked by, I was fairly convinced that there was a very good chance that Basie was dead. And his sister and litter mate, Leeloo was acting distressed without him. It was already dark out. How does one find a black kitten in the dark? It’s not easy, let me tell you. I could tell that during the dinner party, John was going outside with a flashlight from time to time. And when he returned, I did a couple of outside rounds of “Here, kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty!” No response.

So I returned to my dinner party and did my best to keep my worry in the background. The party came to a close and I went to bed, with only one of our awesome kittens in bed with us. But again, I knew that worrying about it wouldn’t help. I just needed to do my best to sleep.

At 1 am: “Meow meow meow meow meow” we hear on our deck. Basie had come back! What a relief! Oh Basie, please no more adventures!

But I was so glad that I did not put my worry front and center when I had a dinner party and very little I could do about a jet black kitten lost in the night.

It is so difficult to know, at times, what thoughts, feelings, or experiences need to be at the “front and center”. Sometimes it is now, sometimes it is the past, and sometimes it is the future that needs to be there. And then it can change again in a second.

It’s a wonder we don’t all have psychological whiplash.

Tags mindfulness

Categories Mindfulness, Uncategorized

The Numbness

October 6, 2014 //

As many of you know, breast surgery often results in a lost of sensation. I had a right side mastectomy. I would make sense that in removing all of that tissue that nerves would also be removed. Now my grasp of physiology is better than the average person, but by no means expert. What I can tell you, though is for nearly two years, I have had no sensation at all in the area where my right breast used to be.

This means feeling no pressure, no heat or cold, and although it is delicate to say, no sexual response. Actually, if I want to be really clear, there is no response at all. No affectionate response. No, ”ow, you just accidentally elbowed me in the boob” response. My husband could hold a hot coal to this breast and I would not feel it. No one warned me of this side effect but I had read about it myself. So prior to my second lumpectomy when my husband asked about whether a bilateral mastectomy was indicated, I responded by spelling out the implications for our love life. I had already completed a literature review on my risk of contra-lateral breast cancer, learned about the Gail Index and so forth. I knew that my estimated risk of cancer in my left breast was at a level low enough that I found personally acceptable.

In the last few months, I’ve noticed something. The numbness in my tissues has subsided to some point. I am starting to regain sensation, at least around the edges of my mastectomy site. But what I am feeling is the occasional itch. Sometimes it is deep down and unreachable. Most times it is on the surface of my skin. I am allergic to wheat and when I do eat it I get a flare of eczema within two days and it takes about two months to clear. If I cook all of my own food, this does not happen. But over vacation last August, I ate out, had a salad, and there must have been some wheat in the dressing because I am still waiting for my skin to clear. At one point, I could see that I had an eczema flare over my breasts. We also had family photos taken at the time. It looked like I had acne. Oh well. In any event, I could feel the itch of the eczema. However, when I scratched it, I felt no relief. As my internist told me when I described it to her, “That’s just not fair!” My rash, however, got worse.

In addition to itch, I have also had the return in a sensation that can only be called, “uncomfortable”. It is the mildest of pain, though still noticeable. And it is, again, felt around the edges of my mastectomy, which was performed in August of 2012. It would not be until March of 2013 that the major part of my breast reconstruction would be completed. I am no surgeon but in my own logic, it seems likely that more digging around and transplanting that occurs, the longer tissues take to heal or as my plastic surgeon describes it, “settle”.

I have numb parts. They are starting to awaken. To what extent they will awaken is unknown. But what I do know is that the awakening is uncomfortable and at times, a bit painful. This has called to mind the numbness that can happen to each of us emotionally and cognitively. I consider myself to be above average in self-awareness. However, I have neglected parts of myself, the parts that are numb. And numb parts get that way through damage, through loss of trust, emotional baggage, past trauma. Our mind protects us from many scary and lonely thoughts and feelings. The problem is, however, that it can do too good of a job.

Sometimes the parts of us that are most important, most in need of attention, are the parts that we just don’t think about or feel. The parts that are tired, afraid, and numb.

As you know, I have been digging deep and trying to feel what I need to feel and process it all through. It is a painful but productive process. In keeping with my mindfulness practices, I have tried to keep with my thoughts and feelings throughout. This has guided my decisions. At times, I move forward, full steam ahead. At other times, I take breaks. At these times, I catch my breath, assimilate new learning, and observe a new way of looking at my life.

There are parts of me that are coming alive. At this point, there is discomfort but I believe that in time there will be continued healing and awakening.

Tags Breast Cancer, healing, minfulness

Categories Breast cancer, Feelings, Marriage, Mindfulness