Archives for category: Mindfulness

Better mileage

February 4, 2015 //

I knew I was close. I’d been peeking online on Jogtracker.com for my total miles walked. It was taking forever, like trying to find the exact time when the odometer numbers on the old cars would all flip at once.

Then I busied myself with my office move. Today I took a peak. Sometime in the last two weeks, I made my milestone. I hit the 2,000 mile mark on my walking since December 2012.

You may recall that last year, when I was exactly at the 1000 mile mark, I found myself accidentally parading around the neighborhood in my underwear, after experiencing a hot flash, taking off my shirt, and walking a good block or two before discovering that I had not put on a sports bra that day. I was walking around in a regular black bra, purchased at Target. Oops.

This year, I passed 2,000 miles without really thinking of it. This is comforting in a way because things we do that we don’t think about are habits. I was trying to build regular exercise into my routine. And I have, I walk habitually. But this also leaves me every so slightly on guard. Without mindfully and actively engaging in exercise, I run the risk of getting out of the habit. Habits, unless they involve addiction, need a little nudge to keep them going.

So today I take a pause and reflect on 2,000 miles walked in a little over two years. It’s a lot of time that I took for myself to take care of myself over the past two years. I can honestly reflect on how I feel and how I live my life and conclude that this has been time very well spent. Not to mention the fun I’ve had taking photos, the cats I’ve met along the way, the increased time with my husband when e joins my walks, and the most excellent coffees I’ve sipped on my journeys.

Tags healthy habits, mindfulness, physical exercise, walking

Categories Mindfulness

Mona Lisa did not sweat the small stuff

January 19, 2015 //

I am a thinker. You may have noticed. I am also a deep feeler. You may have noticed that, too. I am also a fairly reasonable thinker. This last characteristic was later in coming to my life. I had a friend tell me once that I “hid behind my intellect”. Out of context, that sounds a little mean. It really wasn’t meant that way and it wasn’t the way I took it at the time. But I did think, “Are you kidding me? I have worked hard to use my intellect to help me live a less sloppy, crying, worrying life. This is NOT a negative.” (By the way, those comments were made in my mind, to myself, not to my friend.) Our higher brain functions can help us a great deal, like a lot lot. However, there are aspects of our more primitive selves that can come in handy.

Our bodies communicate with ourselves. The nervous system is amazing. Our Central Nervous System (CNS), which includes our brains, is a marvel. Nonetheless, often the fastest of our communications are less than sophisticated.

Case in point, there are fundamental, often called lower brain functions that try to keep us from dying. They are on the alert, vigilant, but also kind of simple. If you have ever seen prairie dogs constantly dark out of their holes and call to each other, you know what I mean. They are trying hard to avoid being food for an animal higher up on the food chain. Vigilance is a type of assessment, a scanning of environments for danger.

But guess what? Like prairie dogs, our CNS is often alarmed for no damned good reason. It is very sensitive to possible problems but makes a lot of false positives. In other words, the CNS can work like a mammogram; it is sensitive to danger but not specific. False alarm! False alarm! False alarm!

These alarms, are compelling and can trick the more reasonable parts of our brains into freaking out. “My heart is racing, I feel scared, therefore there must be SOMETHING REALLY BAD HAPPENING.”

This can also work with anger and with depression. There are parts of our brain that can go to a bad place really fast and if it is compelling enough, it convinces fancier brain parts to follow. “My life is horrible because people are doing bad things to me in a long-term and fancy way. And yes, this is based on mind-reading but I am fancy and know how to read minds. And by the way, why do you all hate me?”

Cognitive therapy was originally based on getting ourselves to be reasonable with ourselves. What is the evidence for our depression inducing thoughts? We are jumping to conclusions. And no, we cannot mind read. There are a group of higher brain tools that we can use to get ourselves to calm the Hell down. And they are very handy tools.

We don’t always have to start at the top, however. We can work our way up by changing more basic and fundamental communication systems. Most of us are familiar with deep breathing techniques as a way to reduce stress and anxiety, as a way to reduce distress. The way we breathe that is the least stress inducing is the way we breathe when we are asleep, when we don’t even have to think about it. Deep breathing, or relaxation breathing triggers the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the state of our CNS at ease, relaxed, and feeling safe. “Fight or flight”, the sympathetic nervous system is triggered by fast breathing, higher in the chest. Breathing this way raises blood alkaline levels. This is the how, by the way, the main characters killed the blood invading aliens in the movie, The Andromeda Strain. It is the perfect breathing for danger but it causes a lot of trouble when we do it when we are not really in harm’s way.

I am learning some more “bottom up” calm down techniques in my class. The latest is the “half smile”. Our facial expressions not only serve to communicate with the outside world, but they also communicate with the inside world. Feeling irritable? Turn the corners of your mouth up, ever so slightly into a half smile. There’s even research on this. It often helps people calm down.

It sounds a little like a magic trick. However, what’s it going to hurt to wear a Mona Lisa smile from time to time. It might feel awkward but not nearly as awkward as when I lose my temper and not only embarrass myself but find myself filled with regret. Not to mention the relationships that need mending.

So I have been trying the half smile. It’s a perfect time to practice. I’ve been working a lot with the move of our private practice. I am frequently annoyed in these kind of circumstances. Stress, when it involves a lot of logistics, has a way of pissing me off.

I can’t say that I am looking like Mona Lisa all of the time but I have to say that I notice a difference and it works many times when I try it. It’s not a permanent solution but it helps get me in a better frame of mind to use other coping strategies. I have also tried doing a half smile on my walks, hoping that this will help associate the half smile with the ease I feel when I am exercising.

I also can’t say that I haven’t felt stressed or overwhelmed at times, with this move. But it is less so than would be in the past, I think. All of the tools I have been using have been helpful.

Try it out and see what you think! It may work and it may not. But it’s free and easy.

Tags breathing techniques, Central Nervous System, coping, distress tolerance skills, half smile, stress

Categories Mindfulness

Lonely brain

January 13, 2015 //

As a person with “no evidence of disease”, I am grateful. I am also grateful that I continue to heal physically, emotionally, spiritually, and yes, cognitively. I have written of the attention, concentration, working memory, and organizational difficulties I’ve had since being diagnosed with cancer. (Some people call this “chemo brain” though I didn’t have I.V. chemo.) These difficulties have slowly but surely improved over time. A huge boost came after I completed a cognitive behavioral sleep program and then later, when I took gaba pentin for a few months to reduce my nighttime hot flashes. I have also had improvements through working to reduce my anxiety and grief through my mindfulness practice and personal psychotherapy. Last but not least, writing this blog is one of the most therapeutic endeavors I have ever undertaken. It, of course, has side effects like any therapy in that my posts sometimes worry my mother.

Although a good deal of my energy has returned, I still don’t work full time. I find that it is too hard to maintain my emotional and physical health when I do this so although I sometimes schedule a full time or slightly overtime week, my average is about 80%. Prior to my diagnosis and shortly afterwards (I had to cram my schedule in order to take off time for surgeries), my schedule varied from week to week but I worked up to 150% of what is considered full time.

Despite my reduced hours, I am quite busy. Although most of my day is meaningful and productive, a good portion of my day is being busy for the sake of being busy, doing trivial things that do not fill me up. And some of the trivial things would not be trivial if I stuck with them for more than a couple of minutes. But I spent some part of my day alighting from one activity to another in rapid succession.

I do this less than earlier in my cancer treatment. The main reason back then was fatigue, boredom, and the need for fun. Since I was having trouble with sustained attention, I flitted around lot. Although I have never written as much or as frequently in my life, I stopped reading books. There had been no time in my life since about age 10 or 11 when I was not reading on a daily basis, with some breaks for a few weeks during adulthood, when my stress was at its peak.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about accepting the things in my life about which I feel feel, grief, and anger. I know that a common fear for people impacted by cancer is fear of abandonment. My husband worries about losing me. My daughter, although she denies it, worries about it too, I think. She acts very much like other teen girls with whom I’ve worked, who have a mother with a serious disease. I worry about losing my family, through decreased participation in family life if I were to get ill again and through my own transition to death, which may not come any time soon, but will come some day.

I had a epiphany last week. Although I was aware of my own abandonment fears, I realized that I was continuing to give myself busy work to avoid feeling lonely. I have been filling up spaces in my heart and mind with filler. I have too often disengaged from my husband because I associate him with our fear of my cancer as well as the stress we have in parenting.

Since that epiphany, I have made some changes. Trivia is okay but not as a main course. And trivia is much better when enjoyed with a loved one. I also realized that a lot of my life is serious and difficult. I have a serious job as a child/adolescent psychologist. I have personal psychotherapy, our family class on mindfulness and emotion regulation, and couples therapy with my husband. Between my job and my appointments, I spend the majority of my waking hours in a mental health facility. Last Friday in couples therapy, which we have been attending weekly I said, “I want less therapy and more fun. John, I want to spend more time with you having fun.” Our psychologist thought this was a great idea. John agreed, reluctantly, because this scared him. But we’ve been spending more time together. Yesterday, I received a note from a childhood friend. Her husband “out of the blue” told her that he is divorcing her, on the day before their 27th wedding anniversary. This has also reinforced my resolve to continue to work on my relationship with my husband. Too often people live separate, lonely lives, full of activities, suffering in silence.

I am not by nature, a lonely person. Cancer has a way of whittling away at security, even for those of us with “no evidence of disease”. Breast cancer also has a way of striking women at the prime of life in terms of professional and family responsibility. Many of us have full careers, children who are not yet independent, and elderly parents who may need support. It is easy when juggling these balls, to feel fragmented and flittery, to feel engaged with everything but intimately connected with no one, not even with ourselves.

Balance right now means more fun and more depth.

Tags abandonment fears, acceptance, balance, Breast Cancer, intimacy, mindfulness, psychotherapy

Categories Breast cancer, Family, Marriage, Mindfulness, Parenting

Equations

January 10, 2015 //

My Wednesday “learning to keep my shit together” class reconvened this week after a holiday break. The topic for the evening was acceptance, a mindfulness practice. The purpose of mindfulness is to reduce suffering. Acceptance is one process by which suffering is reduced.

I am working very hard to accept some hard truths about my life, some about my present and some potential truths in my future. These are truths about my life as an individual, as a wife, and as a parent. As I was thinking about this, one of the instructors wrote two equations on the white board:

Pain + acceptance = pain

Pain + non-acceptance = suffering

I think of pain and suffering as synonymous. But this is not a dictionary course or a vocabulary test. And I have to admit that “suffering” sounds worse than “pain”. Suffering sounds like pain with a large side dish of something nasty. Perhaps the space between pain and suffering, within this framework, is filled with a roil of self-inflicted things. Another way to say this is that suffering may result from coping with pain in a way that enhances it and perhaps makes it last for a longer time. Everyone does this from time to time.

There are “hot button” issues for me. There are experiences that I have for which I have an immediate, negative response. They push a fear button, an anger button, or a grief button. And as I am having the response, I often know that it is out of scale. I have gotten upset too quickly and too intensely. There are also times when I feel stress in the back of my mind and it wakes me at night or invades my dreams. I think these are examples of suffering.

Acceptance is a process, a continuum. I am trying to work my way. So far I am learning that there is a cognitive part. In order to accept something I need to acknowledge it. I need to name it. I need to reason with it. That is what I have mostly been working on for the past couple of years. The acceptance that takes place in my mind. On Wednesday, our homework was to think about what acceptance would look like for each of us as behaviors. If we accepted the aspect of life with which we were struggling and suffering, how would our behavior be different?

Changing my behavior, making it consistent with acceptance, is really hard. I have been making a concerted effort on this for the past month or so. I have seen changes. I have experienced shifts to a more positive place. My anger and fear are reduced. My pain and sadness are still there but the suffering is getting less.

Tags acceptance, Family, Marriage, mindfulness, pain, Parenting, suffering

Categories Breast cancer, Marriage, Mindfulness, Parenting

Two words too many

January 5, 2015 //

There have been a number of “three words” posts. I think this is an excellent exercise for each of us to really think about what is most important right now to have a better now and a better future. As you may have read previously, I have my own three words that came to me years ago at a time I was at an all time low and needing to get myself off of the ground to rally for my own health and happiness. The words that popped into my mind were, “patience, persistence, and peace.” The first two words are means and peace was the goal. Peace, I suspect, will always be a goal of mine, on all possible levels.

After reading a couple of the three word essays, I find that there is only one word that comes to mind for my life at this present moment. The word is “balance”. I know, this is not a new concept for women. We’ve read all kinds of writings about the difficulty in achieving balance between work and family, for example. I’m talking about emotional balance. I’m talking about intellectual balance. I am talking about using my emotional depth and my reasoning in concert.

It is so easy to use fear to avoid doing what I need to do. It is easy to let fear lead me to not set reasonable boundaries with people and to end up helping too much. Fear can also lead to my too often seeking reassurance by being clingy or naggy. Fear can lead me to set too hard boundaries, to avoid people and to lose my temper.

One might think that reason and intellect are the answer. But reason can be invalidating. “I shouldn’t feel this way.” Or it can be deluding when I rationalize decisions that are not in keeping with my own values of kindness and compassion. “I can act this way because so and so did such and such to me and deserves this!”

One of the mindfulness concepts I am learning in my six month class is “wise mind”. Wise mind accepts and validates emotion. Wise mind uses reason. Wise mind uses emotion and reason in tandem, in a way that promotes health and reduces suffering. When emotion mind meets reasonable mind, it is like the Wonder Twins! They are no longer the sum of their parts. They are wise mind. With wise mind, comes balance and calm. So I would like to increase the balance in my life through increasing my use of wise mind.

Balance. Wise. Mind.

I guess I had three words after all.

Tags mindfulness, three words for 2015

Categories Mindfulness

Nose to nose

December 29, 2014 //

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I grew up in a semi-rural area, which was really the suburbs. But my parents had acreage and our neighbors had horses, goats, cows, and of course there was Louie who had 200 pigeons. Ourselves, we had a lot of animals, too. I remember when we got our first kittens, Tom, George, and Fred. Tom was an orange tabby who grew up to be a true alpha tom cat. He got into fights and was often bruised. Bumping into one of Tom’s sores was the shortest way to getting assaulted by his razor sharp claws. I’m not exaggerating, either. He once drew blood when he scratched my arm while I was wearing a winter coat. George was a cute gray cat and that’s all I remember.

Fred, as I recall was a black and white cat. One of the early discoveries about Fred was that she was female. Kitties, even litter mates, live a soap opera existence. And our cats were not spayed or neutered. To make a long story short, before long our tribe of three cats expanded to a family tree with may inbred branches. My mom may deny this in the comments’ section but at the highest number, we had 21 cats. You might ask how this could happen but these were outdoor cats and we lived in the woods. Cats go back to being feral really fast.

I remember one of our feral females who had litters and litters of kittens. We called her appropriately enough, “Mama Cat”. Mama Cat would have her kittens in the woods or behind the wood pile. If she had them behind the wood pile, we had a chance. A kitten behind the wood pile might be tamed. We used yarn hanging from the end of a stick. We would throw the yarn to the back of the pile and then pull it out gently as the kitten snagged it with his/her claws. Repeat 150 times and we had ourselves a pet! If not tamed while a kitten, the cat would just be a feral creature who could only be lured into close proximity with the sound of a bag of Little Friskies cat food being hauled from the front door to the feeding trough (a metal baking pan) next to our barn. But even so, those cats would eat but would not socialize with us. They were truly wild animals.

When our daughter was three, we found a sweet little stray adolescent tabby kitten. We tried but were unable to find the owner. Given that he was a stray in eastern Washington, he was probably abandoned there. Ollie became part of our family. And then when he was three years old, he went kind of nutty and paranoid. For whatever reason, his whole world view changed. He was like a cat returning from a tour of duty in the middle east who had PTSD. Ollie was aggressive to visitors and responded to the many cats who roamed our neighborhood by marking our house. And he did this for years, despite the behavioral interventions and his medication. (He took fluoxetine, the generic form of Prozac, for the record. I joked at home that I was going to write an autobiography, And Even the Cat Took Prozac.)

Ollie got really nervous at times and he was unpredictable. The only thing we knew is that if anyone outside of the immediate family was visiting, he might have one of his paranoid anxiety attacks with hissing, biting, and scratching. He could be scary. Ollie was also an alpha tom, or would have been, had we let him be an outdoor cat. He was enormous. There were a couple of folks who fancied themselves “cat whisperers” and tried to get in his face, despite our warnings not to do so. They got hissed at and scratched. When Ollie was panicked like this, even we couldn’t touch him.

After he had settled down a little, I could help him calm down more by placing my nose on his. This is a calming behavior for cats as long as they are not freaking out. They can be soothed by this very close contact if they are just a bit on edge. It is important to know the signs of cat anxiety and arousal before going nose to nose with a cat, especially an unfortunately mentally ill one like our Ollie. (And by the way, the veterinarians still talk about him, even the ones who never saw him as a patient. His legend lives on at the Lien Animal Clinic.)

It occurred to me the other day that dealing with negative emotions the ones that roil and churn in our guts and our hearts is a tricky business. Sometimes we can’t go nose to nose with then until we calm the Hell down a little. Focusing on them can become a rumination, a hopeless, helpless funk, or a tirade. At those times, we need a little distance. But if we distance ourselves from our painful emotions for too long, they take on a life of their own. They become feral and seemingly impossible to tame. And they are truly painful, especially at first, to confront after a long absence of distraction and denial.

Cats give signals when they need space. Their tails twitch. They climb onto high surfaces to make themselves bigger. If you miss those cues, they will up the volume by sending a low hiss and standing their fur on end. And they will flatten their ears. Do not go nose to nose with a cat with these signals! Give them some time.

We all have our own signals and as for myself, I have used life experience and more recently, mindfulness to identify times when I am too raw to go nose to nose with my thoughts and feelings and need to do something to get myself back into control like deep breathing, walking, or getting myself into the woods. Then I can start going nose to nose with myself. And I can stand myself and my feelings at these times.

I may never be a cat whisperer but I have gone many years without getting scratched going nose to nose with a kitty. Maybe I can keep learning how to do the same getting up close and personal with myself.

Ollie, sunning himself on the deck. He was pretty sick and weak by this time, but still finding enjoyment. He died a few weeks after this photo was taken. He was a beautiful boy and we loved him.

Tags anxiety, Cats, emotion regulation, fight or flight, mindfulness, panic

Categories Feelings, Mindfulness

Silver linings

December 26, 2014 //

You may have heard that it rains a lot in Seattle. It does rain more than average, there’s no getting around it. But there are a lot of much rainier cities. We don’t even make the top 10 rainiest U.S. cities, by a long shot. The entire eastern seaboard of the U.S. gets more annual rainfall than Seattle. Here’s the deal, though. We get primarily light rain. And it’s spread over many many days. While a significant portion of the nation has the rainiest time of the year in the summer, we have our rainiest time in the winter. Here, up north, it’s really dark, too. Seattle knows how to pile on the dreary during winter.

But even in winter, there are beautiful days. Yesterday, Christmas Day, was one of them. My husband and I walked down to the beach. The wind was gentle and the sky was blue. I spent a good bit of the walk stripped down to a short sleeved t-shirt. Granted, I had a Lupron shot last month and the furnace usually kicks in about this time but still, I was walking on a Seattle beach during winter in a t-shirt. What a glorious day.

I happen to think that the contrast between how our city looks on a sunny day versus a cloudy or rainy day is one of the reasons that we have a reputation for being a wetter city than we actually are. It’s disappointing to visit Seattle after seeing all of the glorious photos of the mountains and the sea only to be drizzled upon. But I don’t visit here. I live here. I know that the sun will come out again and that I will see it.

People in my city, especially natives, such as myself, often remark that our part of the world would not be so beautiful without the rain. This is true. We have some of the most beautiful summer weather I have ever experienced. And there is so much sunlight with very long days. Without the rainy, dreary days, though we would not have the abundant greens, the trees, bushes, mosses, and lichens. Winter is a time when plants focus their energy below the ground. The rain is essential for root growth, the foundation of plant life. Without precipitation, there is no snow on the mountains. We are so lucky to live in a city bound by two snow-capped mountain ranges. The winter snow on our mountains is also our water supply for the dry months of the year.

We need the wet and dreary days for life. It’s not just that the bad weather makes us appreciate the sunny days more because of the contrast. We actually require it. I’ve been thinking of this a lot in terms of how it relates to life, in general. Are sadness, disappointment, grief, and other painful emotions and experiences necessary for life? More so, do they enhance our lives?

I don’t know. I am pretty sure that seeking out suffering is a bad idea. Let’s not look for trouble. And denying suffering in oneself or others is invalidating. I am working a lot on acceptance of the things in my life that weigh on me heavily on a daily basis and are sometimes terrifying. Okay, it’s not “things”, it’s a thing. The thing is parenting my 16 year-old brilliant fireball. A few weeks ago, I had an epiphany followed by some meaningful adjustments in my behavior.

I realized on a deep and visceral level that I can’t protect her from the world or from the consequences of poor judgements that she makes. I didn’t abdicate responsibility but I relinquished the fantasy of control. I am still as busy parenting as I’ve ever been but my efforts are less frenzied and whirling. This acceptance was also accompanied by deep sadness. But the sadness was grounding instead of frenetic and anxious. I’m not going to kid myself and announce that acceptance is my new permanent state of being. My state of being, especially as a parent, will continue fluctuate. But this is an important shift.

I don’t know the future so I really don’t know how to end this post. What I do know is that every sunny time is to be celebrated and that the dreariest times cannot be wished away. I am learning more and more not to manufacture suffering; why would I want more of that? I am learning more and more to accept this as how life should be simply because that’s the way life is.

Christmas at the beach.

Tags acceptance, mindfulness, Parenting, parenting adolescents, rain, Seattle

Categories Family, Flora and Fauna, Mindfulness, Parenting

Effective effectiveness

December 8, 2014 //

I am taking a six month class in skills designed, basically, to help me keep my emotional shit together. Unsurprisingly, the first unit is on mindfulness. I got into the class thinking, “Mindfulness, I’ve been doing this for over two years. This will be easy peasy lemon squeezy.”

I am here to tell you that week two has not lived up to it lemon squeezy potential. I have a lot of practice in observing without judgment. I also have a lot of experience describing my feeling states and being somewhat non judgmental about that.

Apparently, there’s other stuff. One of those things is doing things effectively. This has to do with thinking about my goals, at least that’s what I understand so far.

The instructor explained the whole thing. Meanwhile, I can tell you using my describing skills that I felt confused followed by elucidated followed by the realization that I was elucidated and not just confused, but in a different way. Then I think I got it but we will see on Wednesday when I check in about my homework.

And you know that I practiced on hubby. I can go through an interaction with my husband thinking, “Hm, that hurt my feelings and I don’t think John meant to do that. But wow, I am hurt and angry.”

That sounds good, doesn’t it?

Except that often what comes out of my mouth is, “Why did you say that?”

I am here to tell you that asking someone “Why did you say that” or “Why did you do that” when you are hurt, angry, or scared, will get you no where good, fast.

And yet I find myself saying this over and over. It is utterly not in keeping with my goals to be a peaceful loving wife who communicates well with John, whom I love dearly.

Another thing I might do is say nothing and think to myself, “This is not a big deal. Don’t start a fight.”

But in that case I did not accomplish my goal of communicating a hurt that was important to me and I risk getting resentful about it.

So I tried something new. John did something I didn’t like. And I said, “Honey, I am not trying to punish you or fight with you. But I am feeling anxious and angry about x and wondering if we might talk about it?”

It was not the easiest conversation but it was much easier and it was not a fight. But then I got very hurt and angry about something else. In time, he apologized for what he said and sincerely, but I found that I was still hurt and angry. I couldn’t let it drop. But it took me awhile to understand why I couldn’t let it drop. He had said something that might not upset someone else but because of who I am and what is important to me, it hurt. I was still upset because what he’d said had surprised me and I wanted to know that he understood why it was upsetting. I wanted reassurance that he still knew me and what is important to me. I said, “I’m sorry, I am still really hurt about this. I am sorry that I can’t let it drop. I need you to say, x, y, and z.” And then he said those things and he said them sincerely. We had been stuck in one of the arguments that go around and around. And then I felt so much better. We had a very nice evening after what had been a tense couple of days.

The best thing about this class? I got confused because I encountered some new ideas and skills. That means there are more tools out there for me to learn. This is very reassuring to me.

Tags communication, goals, Marriage, mindfulness

Categories Marriage, Mindfulness

The last 30 minutes of crazy

November 28, 2014 //

One of my sister-in-law’s hosts Easter each year. She is a competent cook. She is also able to have people in her kitchen while she cooks. I could say that one reason for this is that she has a large kitchen with places for people to sit at a table, out of the way. I could also note that most of the things she makes are not hot and can be made ahead of time and taken out of the refrigerator. I could also point to the fact that she does not make something that requires the making of gravy. But the fact of the matter is that she is able to concentrate on entertaining people and making food all at the same time.

I am not like this. I can talk to people up until about the last 30 min before Thanksgiving dinner is done. Thanksgiving is the holiday that I host. I have done it for all years except one for the past 10 years. Before the last 30 minutes, I feel relaxed and confident. My apron is typically still clean. I am able to avoid burning myself on the oven’s heating element.

And then half of the food is ready and the other half of the food needs to be finished. The turkey is cooked and needs to be lifted out of the pan to rest on a carving plate. Meanwhile, I place the roasting pan on two burners, pour in alcohol to deglaze it, scraping the fond from the bottom of the pan. I add flour (now a gluten-free blend) and turkey fat and stir constantly. It always gums up immediately and the first worry is that the gravy will turn out clumpy. And it will if I don’t keep my head in the game. I add poultry stock, bit by bit, until I start to see a beautiful brown glistening sauce develop. Then I keep adding stock while I am plating vegetables, side dishes, and heating things up at the last minute. I have to work quickly so that the turkey does not rest too long and become cold. When the time comes, I call my husband to the kitchen to carve the turkey while I finish the last 500 details.

If you are a guest and you ask me what you can do to help, I will ask you to please sit down and enjoy yourself. If you ask me during the last 30 minutes, I insist that you sit down and enjoy yourself. My husband and my mom have both gotten into the habit of running interference for me and helping shoo people out of the kitchen. Even if I am not in the last push of frenzy, my kitchen is small and not a good place for people to hang out to visit with one another. My mother knows this because people congregate in her kitchen when she is cooking, standing in front of the stove or the sink, not realizing that they are setting off her rhythm. My husband shoos people out because he has empathy for me and knows how my brain works.

I love to cook but I am a person who cooks in deep thought. I have a hard time socializing and cooking at the same time. Both socializing and cooking are high interest for me and I have a hard time focusing on anything else when I am deeply engaged in one of these activities. So doing both of them is really really hard. As for those that want to come in to help, unless they know exactly what to do and how to do it, delegating is a chore for me. A chef is a boss of a kitchen and has training to do this. I don’t. I am a home cook with a small kitchen. I have a schedule and a list in my head. I am working at full capacity and the wheels are already in motion. This is also why, if you come to my house with a dish that needs tending to or oven space, I will use my powers of reasoning to tell myself that you have probably not considered that all of the burners and all of the oven space have already been accounted for. I will smile tightly and problem-solve. I may think of the time that friends had a potluck and a mutual friend showed up with a grocery bag full of unwashed vegetables and raw tofu and exclaimed, “Look, I brought stir fry!” That story always makes me smile.

I live my life at a certain pace. I try to live a lifestyle that is not only manageable, but healthy. Sometimes I even think I know what I am doing. I feel relaxed and can coordinate the different spheres of my life. And then there are the times when everything happens at once. I need to be in multiple places to do multiple things, all at once. And the consequences for failure are far worse than lumpy gravy.

I am working my best to be the kind of parent my child needs. So is my husband and so is my child. It seems that we get to the frenzy frequently and often without notice. This is the way our lives have been for the past 4 years. Cancer happened in those years, too. The normal real life bumps and reorganizations have occurred, as well. Last week, I learned that my colleagues and I need to find new professional office space. We’ve been in the same place for 10 years. I don’t like moving. It’s a lot of work. We are working to find the least disruptive and expensive solution to the problem.

During these times when I am racing in my life, I find it harder to talk about the details of my life. Not so much because it is emotionally hard but because my brain is working at capacity. I am finding myself in that mode lately. It is easier for me to organize my thoughts in writing than in conversation but even writing has been hard to organize in the past couple of weeks.

I recently wrote that I was looking forward to this week because I would be able to concentrate on cooking an spending time with my family. And I have done just that. Although I awoke this morning fairly pooped out from entertaining, I think it says something that I am finding writing to be easy again.

Simply live.

I am trying.

Tags Breast Cancer, family life, mindfulness, Parenting, stress, Thanksgiving

Categories Breast cancer, Family, Mindfulness, Parenting

My birthday wish

November 18, 2014 //

Next Monday is my 49th birthday. My husband asked me what I wanted. I told him, “I don’t want anything. I just want to have dinner with you or something.”

I didn’t really have the emotional energy to think about what I wanted. It’s been a stressful few weeks with lots of worries on top of my normal worries. Sometimes, I worry that I think too much. I think about cancer every day. I think about my husband and daughter every day. I think about the obligations I have to my family, my friends, my job, and to myself. When I am really stressed, as I am at this moment, I worry that I am burdening my friends and family by asking for support, even the support of knowing what I am going through so I don’t have to do it by myself. I am worrying about this right now by sharing this with you. But I also know that when I feel most alone and burdened is the time I need to call on my resources and this means friends.

My friend, Nancy, sent me an email with a parenting resource. Actually, the email was to a bunch of people. Nancy is a dear and she always prefaces any email with, “I hope you are well.” I replied just to her. “I am hanging in there. Things are not going well but I hope you and your family are well.”

I’d never done that before. I got a phone call from her within the hour. I felt a great deal better after we talked. I am very lucky to have such wonderful support in my life.

I’ve been wishing very much to go on a vacation. Then I realize that I’ve just had two vacations, which were wonderful. What I really want is to be away from the stress of the current complications of my life.

Yesterday, I thought to myself, “For my birthday, I want a simple life.”

Immediately, I reflected that this was a fantasy. There are people who have simpler lives than mine, but their lives are complicated. More importantly, I can’t be anyone else, anyway. My life is complicated.

I also started thinking about the fact that I am ending another decade of my life, my forties. I thought, “Wow, a lot has gone on during my 40’s.” But then I started thinking about all of the other decades in my life. Just thinking about all of the changes that occurred for me just as a natural part of growing up during the first two decades made my head spin. A lot happens between the time we are born and the time we hit 20 years old. Holy Cow!

But I still want a vacation and I want a simple life.

And then it dawned on me. Although I am working on Monday, my birthday, I will not go into the office for the rest of the week. I host Thanksgiving every year and to do so, I need cooking time. So I’ve made a habit of only seeing patients on the Monday of Thanksgiving week.

My job after Monday will be to cook and spend time with my family. My husband is taking off the entire week.

I think I will get my birthday wish for a few days and this makes me very happy.

Tags anxiety, Breast Cancer, cooking, holidays, stress

Categories Breast cancer, Mindfulness