If you’ve watched congressional hearings in the U.S., you’ve heard the phrase, “Reclaiming my time.” A congress member has a time limit for their questioning of witnesses. When the witness does not answer the question but instead strategically attempts to fill up time with counter attacks or other irrelevant talk, the congress member will say, “Reclaiming my time” to stop the clock and preserve their opportunity to participate as fully as they can in the hearing. Reportedly, this was a strategy popularized by the democrat congresswoman, Maxine Waters. She used it like the goddess that she is and you can watch it here.
I’ve been thinking a great deal of late about how I use my time. Being a wife, mother, and clinical psychologist, and part-time activist takes up a significant amount of time and energy. Frankly, as I’ve mentioned, being an awake American requires a lot of emotional energy. When I was going through cancer treatment in 2012, I was able to take advantage of the flexibility of my private practice as well as the fact that I am married and have a husband who also brings in income. I was able to cut back my hours to 75-80% of full-time and to take off time for surgery recovery. I was also devoting a great deal of time and energy to my daughter, who from the ages of 11 to 19, was experiencing severe mental health issues. I had my SCAD caused heart attacks at the end of this time, which further called for continued self-care, to the extent that was possible. Consequently, I never returned to full-time work. I still work 75-80% and in recent years, I have increased the time I take off, which is now about 11 weeks per year. It is unpaid because I am self-employed but I am lucky in that even part-time I make a decent amount of money and my husband has even better earnings. Nonetheless, I have been exhausted by Trump, the pandemic, and the re-election of Trump. I am exhausted by the realization that a significant minority of U.S. voters are so steeped in delusion, hatred, and fear, that they have confused immorality with upright living.
I am not an unlimited resource. I do recognize that unlike many, I have easier choices about how I spend my time. My husband and I have reduced parenting responsibilities, own our home, and in the larger scheme of things, are wealthy, living in a beautiful part of the country with a lot of like-minded people. Although one reaction to this may be guilt about complaining about my limited time, instead, I see it as my responsibility to reclaim my time to work for democracy while maintaining my health. I also know that as a 60-year-old, there are things I want to do that are important to my spiritual health such as my meditation practice and making art.
Some of this examination has been painful and has resulted in sadness and anger. Overextending oneself and being generous beyond sustainability is often expected of women, especially wives, mothers, and other caretakers. I am very skilled at organizing, leading, and community building. I am generous by nature. I do not expect generosity in return but I expect fairness and there have been some recent events in my professional life with younger colleagues and my long time commercial landlord, which have been trying and disenchanting. I moved my office to a place where I am not reliant on or responsible for other people in the office. By getting new space, I reclaimed my time. The space happens to be beautiful and is a place of solace and calm.
This is just one example. There are others that I am working through. We often run on the treadmill of life and think that nothing can be different. Perhaps that is true for many of us, but it is not true for all. I often recommend to parents of young children that they go on dates without their children on a regular basis. When they reply, “We don’t have time,” I tell them that that is their brain’s way of telling them that they are past due for time together and that they really need to find a way to do it.
In other words, brains in overdrive get so stuck on real and perceived dangers get stuck and inflexible. They have trouble pausing, shifting, and examining reality. It a life where reactivity takes precedence over living a more intentional life.
Take a pause every day, even to close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. (Make sure it is your belly is that is rising and falling with your breath, not your chest. The two techniques have opposite effects.) Perhaps you will find some clarity and in that clarity an opportunity to make changes.
Please consider reclaiming your time, if you can and don’t automatically assume that you can’t. It is not only more healthy for you, your friends, and your family, but the country needs you.
My country, the U.S., is in peril, which impacts the entire world. Our President has gone from the horror show that he was during his first term to a whole new level of malevolent incompetence. The President excels in a few areas 1) breaking things, 2) stealing money, 3) scaring people, groups, and countries, 4) sexual assault, 5) probable child rape, and 6) packaging his evil into some kind of cartoon campy package that makes his followers think they are watching a World Wrestling Federation (WWF) villain instead of a powerful head of state. Speaking of WWF villains, we have one as Secretary of Education, who is breaking our education system, a head of health and human services who is taking away our access to vaccinations as well as recommending that we all eat more red meat, and a snake oil salesman in charge of Medicare, who just like the snake oil salesman in the Wizard of Oz, is actually named, “Oz.” And yes, the reality star presidency has a Fox news host who habitually arrived drunk to work in the MORNINGS as the head of the largest military in the world. We now have our own Gestapo, headed by a woman who actually shot and killed her puppy and the WROTE ABOUT IT in her autobiography. People are being hunted, especially dark-skinned people. I almost forgot to mention that the President invaded Venezuela, took out their head of state as well as the country’s autonomy to select their own government and up until a couple of days ago, he was threatening to take Greenland, by force, with his stated excuse that he needed it because he was not awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. The President is also clearly not in charge. There seems to be a cabal of appointed, non-elected people in his administration who are mostly in charge. Currently, the main leader is Stephen Miller, a truly frightening Neo-Nazi with a fixation on conquering people and nations by force.
This country is exhausting and I say this as a person who is one of the least personally impacted citizens of this huge nation. I am not being hunted and terrorized. However, now that ICE has escalated their attacks of protestors to murder, anyone can be hunted. The state of Minnesota, especially the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, has been targeted and attacked for what seems like months but is a much shorter amount of time. Thousands of ICE agents, masked, unidentified, and heavily armed have been terrorizing immigrants, native tribal members (not the “right” color), protestors, children, people driving home from the grocery stores, and even breaking into homes without warrants.
Minnesota, however, is not backing down. They are increasing their protests and their protection of their neighbors. There are major protests today, thousands of people out in the bitter cold (the high temperature there today was -10 F, which is -23 C), marching through the streets of Minneapolis. About 100 clergy members were arrested for protesting outside of the Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport. They were quietly lined up, kneeling on icy pavement, exercising passive resistance as they were taken into custody. Hundreds of businesses across the state closed today in solidarity with their neighbors and in protest of this cruelty.
Our major media outlets have been corrupted by oligarchs and people who benefit financially from this administration. Consequently, the coverage of the resistance efforts, the ones I’ve described and so many more across the country, have not gotten the coverage that they deserve. But people in this country are catching on and I hope that our fellow humans in other countries are getting more accurate information about what is going on here. Trump should never have earned the admiration of so many, let alone be voted into office, regardless of the voter suppression, our Electoral College (favors less densely populated states), and Russian espionage that helped put him over the top. However, he is a historically unpopular president, losing support by the day, and I hope this continues. He is also clearly hitting a new low in respect to his psychological and medical health. He’s showing obvious dementia and it appears to be accelerating.
As Trump is falling, and I hope this fall continues, the consequence is increased desperation, danger, and aggression. We’ve long past the period of opportunity for a graceful exit from the decades long march toward oligarchy headed by a despot. It’s no time for complacency, as tired as we already are from the first year of this first term. There is also the grief of knowing that a significant and powerful minority of our fellow citizens are consumed by delusion, hatred, and fear.
Timothy Snyder, a well known historian of authoritarianism, makes nearly daily social media videos. He is a serious and sober person committed to resisting the authoritarian takeover of this country. Something he said a week or so ago really stuck with me and has been a well-spring of strength, “You never know when you are about to win.” He was speaking of past non-violent resistance efforts. Dr. Snyder explained that it is important to keep resisting because even the day before success, can feel like losing. For me, his words work a lot better than, “It’s always darkest before the dawn” because this latter saying is absolute and often untrue. “You never know when you are about to win” acknowledges the uncertainty of success. It does not guarantee it and for that reason, for me, it sounds like truth.
I’ve belonged to a small online meditation group for the last two years taught by Donald Rothberg, a psychologist and major teacher on socially engaged Buddhism. He comes from a long line of nonviolent activists and really merits a separate blog post. Donald was very close friends with Joanna Macy, an environmental activist and Buddhist scholar who died last month at age 96. Joanna led the development of a collective grief ritual, for world events, the Truth Mandala.
At our request, Donald led the ritual with our online group of seven people, to deal with the current democracy crisis in the U.S. There are four phases of the ritual. During the first phase, people talk about gratitude. The second phase is opening to the pain of the world. The third is seeing in a different way, and the fourth phase is to “go forth into the world”. We completed the first three phases. Participation was optional at all times.
Most experience meditation practitioners have a gratitude practice. We all shared during this phase, such as for our health, personal safety, music, and the beauty of nature. Then we opened ourselves to the pain of the world expressing feelings of sorrow, fear, anger, and confusion, the four segments of the Truth Mandala. People spoke when they felt like they had something to share, after which, the group said, “We hear you.” It’s simple but it was also very deep. Since what people say in our group is private, I will only share my own feelings. I expressed sadness and anger at the cruel actions of the government and people in support of it as well as the apparent enjoyment in it, as if it were a game. I shared my sadness that so many were disconnected from activism because it is too painful to act or because anxiety and anger have led them to hopelessness.
Although the second phase was painful, by the third phase, when there were some people able to share a different kind of seeing. For example, I expressed fear and confusion about the outcome of our democracy but clarity about my immediate next steps as an activist. I also shared that I view myself as having resources to draw on for activism given my age, race, economic security, and emotional resilience. Others appeared to be in deep despair and chose not to speak. I could see a lot of pain in their eyes and body language. I have spent a couple of years with these people and they have wisdom and fortitude.
I saw their distress and I felt it. I wondered if I should not have shared about my sadness that more people were not engaged in activism. I know how people are, especially emotionally sensitive people. They often don’t think they are doing enough even when they are doing a lot. I didn’t want to make anyone distressed with my statements. Then I thought, “Well, this is the truth mandala. This is true for me and is not targeted toward anyone in the group.”
Most of us in this country are going through collective grief, which has intensified with the second Trump administration. Many are familiar with the late Swiss American psychiatrist, Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’ work on death and dying, in particular, the stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. An important thing that a lot of people don’t realize is that this stage model was never meant to be a strict progress toward a final end point of acceptance.
I realized that what was making me most distressed was that although my meditation group was in shared grief, we were not all experiencing it in the same way at that moment. We typically share about our perspectives on an individual experience, not on a world event.
I am often distressed by other activist’s distress, the distress that results along the lines of “we’re doomed” or beliefs that there is only one answer to the problems we are facing. People can be so sure that they have the right answer and everyone else is wrong. My right answer is that there is not just one, even when we share guiding principles of non-violence, building an inclusive, “We, the People”, democracy, and respecting the Earth and living things.
A teaching I am taking out of the Truth Mandala is to recognize that some of the disconnect I often feel with others who also want a better world, is a difference in the way we are grieving, in that moment. I can respect that. I can also respect that grief changes.
My friends, however you are grieving, I am working to honor and validate it.
I don’t know a lot right now. The world is on a precipice, most notably, the ongoing administrative coup in the U.S. “Administrative” makes it sound like we are being taken over by binders and checklists. Instead, we’ve had flagrant law breaking by Donald Trump, who told us he was going to be horrible not to mention being horrible in his first term, ending it with a violent coup attempt. Somehow, enough people voted for him, anyway.
One of my psychologist friends who is originally from Ukraine, immigrated to the U.S. as a child, when the then U.S.S.R. allowed some Jews to leave the country. My friend told me that to protect their safety, her parents could not tell her that they were leaving the country until the day they left. She remarked to me that living in the U.S.S.R. was different than the U.S. because there was no sense that laws, police, or other institutions offered any stability or protection.
The U.S. has always offered more safety to some people than others. However, with a strong democracy, there were mechanisms in place to evolve toward a more just and inclusive multi-cultural society. The Trump administration has been attacking our democracy at alarming speed. Federal government workers are being fired en masse, departments are being dismantled, money is being sucked out of our government, and our personal data is being mined by young tech super fans of Elon Musk. Incompetent and malevolent people are being put in charge of cabinet positions. They are the worst people for the job that you could possibly imagine. The President is putting tariffs on foreign products including China and he insists that the lack of ships in major port cities like LA and Seattle is “good” because “it will save us money.” Talk of invading Greenland and making Canada our 51st state are discussed on a daily basis. ICE agents are kidnapping people off of the streets and out of their homes claiming that they are in this country illegally. Even if they were, this would be against the law and our Constitution. All of it is illegal. Everything that I love about the U.S. and humanity, in general, are under attack.
I don’t know how this will play out. How long will it take for “We, the People”, to reclaim this democracy. Will it take months, years, or decades? What I do know is that a lot of regular U.S. citizens are rising to the ideal of “We, the People”. The resistance is stronger this time and thank goodness, has been non-violent so far. We are using a wider variety of resistance strategies, not just marches. We are calling our representatives, boycotting companies, and there are unions who have begun general work strikes. In terms of company boycotts, Tesla has been internationally boycotted and it is working! I also see our historically allied countries banding together and standing up. I am cheering them on.
I have been spending the last several years identifying my democracy priorities as well as identifying the resources I have that are best suited to them. A huge asset that I have in terms of civil resistance is my anonymity, level of education, age, race, and relative financial security. I am not a high profile person. I am smart and can learn about the best people and institutions to follow for effective leadership in resistance. Although I work, I am an empty nester and I have more time and less family responsibility than I had in the past.
Finally, I know that in all of this ongoing and impending disaster, there is something beautiful to see or experience every day.
The global rise of fascism continues its assault on the U.S. and Donald Trump is the President-Elect. The fire hose of misinformation is real. Racism is real. Sexism is real. All of the isms and phobias are real. Identification with the aggressor is real. Male White Christian Nationalism and oligarchy are well nourished in this country. They benefit no one, not even billionaires. The U.S. is a powerful country and our choices, as a country, have global implications. Up is down and down is up.
My heartbreak is real as is my disillusionment and anger. But other things are real, too.
The grassroots efforts in the last 8 years have been outstanding, especially leading up to this election. Millions and millions of people voted for democracy and a path forward. Despite the losses, there is still a path forward. I knew that it was going to be long, but it is longer.
Love is powerful and always right. No one can take that away. No one can take away our action.
Today may seem hopeless. That is a natural reaction but we don’t know the future, we never do. Do what you need to take care of yourself and honor your grief. Our work is cut out for us and I know that action, persistence, and more patience than we think we have, but really do have, is needed.
At times like this, I look to my mother, who is 90 years old and has lived through just about everything. I also look to the resilience and organization of oppressed people in our nation, for example, African Americans, who have worked so hard over centuries despite unbelievable hardship and multi-generational trauma.
We can do this. We can love each other and treat each other kindly. We can put one foot in front of the other and make good decisions every day.
Tomorrow is an extremely important election in these “unprecedented times”. It seems that since 2016, the U.S. has been living in an unprecedented era and since the U.S. is so powerful, we have pulled the rest of the world along with us.
I am tired of the brand of “unprecedented times” that we have endured. The country has been threatened by greed, hatred, and delusion. If Trump is elected again, all of the gains of the last 4 years, not to mention the U.S. progress of the last 100+ years, will go backwards. In contrast, we have a great democratic candidate, one that is emphasizing freedom, inclusion, and working for the People. VP Harris will build on the gains of the Biden administration, which have frankly, been unappreciated. Her campaign is supported by so many people, including prominent Republicans. If Kamala Harris wins, we will live in a different kind of “unprecedented times”. She will be the first female President and the first President with Southeast Asian heritage.
I’ve sent out my 1000 get-out-the-vote letters, made months of contributions, voted, and spread the word as have many democrat volunteers. The grass roots efforts have been strong. Let’s do this.
My 40th High School Reunion is this year. Somehow, I was asked to be on the reunion committee 10 years ago for the 30th reunion. I agreed to be the administrator for our reunion Facebook group. One of the things I did besides helping people reminisce was to acknowledge birthdays. People liked it, a lot of us had fun at the 30th reunion, and I kept celebrating birthdays. I was surprised at how appreciated it was by people, these small acts of kindness. Consequently, I have kept posting about my classmates’ birthdays for the last 10 years.
I was contacted by one of the heads of the reunion committee to ask if I would continue my role as reunion promoter for our 40th reunion. Given my health risks, the fact that I have no one who can cover for me at work if I get sick, and the fact that I work with kids who are also at high risk for severe or long Covid, I avoid crowded indoor gatherings. And knowing that there are Trump supporters who are likely to attend the reunion, I don’t want to get harassed for wearing a mask.
I told the reunion committee member that I was happy to help, regardless, but that my attendance was going to depend on the venue, basically, whether it was indoors or outdoors. Her response was, “You have to come! You’re our girl! You deserve to be there!”
I had breast cancer in 2012 and two heart attacks in the space of 8 days caused by Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection (SCAD) in 2017. I didn’t expect these diseases at the ages I was, 46 and 51 years, respectively. Treatment, recovery, and facing my mortality was painful and scary. I try to live my life with the awareness that time is precious.
What I don’t think about is whether I deserved the illnesses or whether doing ten years of birthday greetings on FB somehow protects me from disease exposure because I deserve to be there.
I stopped believing in divine intervention decades ago. People get sick and die, people who don’t deserve it. Babies, children, families, refugees, living in all kinds of harrowing internal and external environments of famine, disease, violence, and war.
Everyone gets sick. Everyone dies. It is true that some suffer more than others but none of this is about deserving, except for people who’s basic rights to live without violence, with good food, clean water, access to medicine, are violated.
For the rest of us, it is just about the body, its capacity for life and healing as well as its capacity for sickness and death. Loss is painful and at times devastating. But there are many types of losses that are the normal.
In cancer recovery, we often speak of the “new normal”. It is a useful concept for many. When I got cancer, I worked with an psychologist who had a lot of experience with people facing physical illness. I told her that I not only wanted support through my cancer assessment and treatment but that I wanted to work hard to prevent depression or experiencing traumatic stress. Her main recommendation was to integrate my cancer experience into the rest of my life and to not compartmentalize it. She noted that people who try to shut off potentially traumatic experience from the rest of their lives, are more likely to get depressed or traumatized.
I can only speak for myself, but I found that accepting cancer as part of my life, writing nearly daily about my experiences with cancer assessment, cancer treatment, and my day-to-day life to be very healing. I don’t mean that it wasn’t painful. I experienced all of the grief emotions. I mean that my grief process was one that brought forth acceptance and healing. I drew on this when I got sick again.
Death and illness, life and healing, anger and happiness, joy and sadness, growth and decline, anxiety and equanimity, all of these things are part of the oldest normal.
Be well, friends.
P.S. The reunion has outdoor opportunities, so don’t worry about whether I can attend or not.
As you can see in the photo, Basie, our 9-year-old cat is beautiful. He is also snuggly and purrs a lot. Basie has asthma, which has gotten worse. He’s been a “good eater” for many years but during the pandemic, with someone at home all of the time, we did not do a good job monitoring his food intake. Basie would eat all of the time, if he could. Consequently, he is on a diet to lose 7 pounds. He has lost about 1/10th of a pound. 7 pounds is a third of his total body weight since he was weighed at his last veterinarian appointment. His vet has prescribed special food. I’ve been measuring it carefully. Basie complains loudly but he is getting used to it.
Having to lose a 1/3 of one’s weight is A LOT. As a comparison, if I had to lose a 1/3 of my weight to get into the “healthy weight” category for my height, I would have to lose nearly 60 pounds. Basie’s current weight makes his asthma worse and puts him at risk for diabetes. When I tell people that Basie is on a diet for his health, they don’t bat an eye. It makes sense that he needs to lose weight. When people see photos of Basie, they recognize what a beautiful creature he is.
Now, let’s talk about weight and people, specifically female people. How many of us have had our worth judged by our weight? How many times have we had our worth judged by our weight? I’d say that it would not be unreasonable to think a typical number is in the thousands.
How many of us have been judged for trying to lose weight or not trying to lose weight? Or trying and not being successful? How many of us have prioritized how losing weight can make us look more attractive versus physical or emotional health benefits?
There’s a lot of policing of women’s bodies and there’s a lot of reactivity about that. People can be repulsed by the sight of an overweight person and say something negative. When called on it, the response is often, “I just care about their health”. This response is bull shit most of the time. It’s just fat shaming. I’ve also seen reactivity when women tell someone that they are exercising and watching their diet, “BMI doesn’t really mean anything. It’s biased and a form of fat-shaming. You should never follow a restrictive diet. You need to love your body.”
I had a lot of shame with my body and being overweight from the time I was a kid to about age 48-ish. I had shame about my body and my weight even when I was not overweight. I had an audio-tape in my head that told me everyday that I was fat. By the time I was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 46, the tape only played when I was overweight. Having breast cancer provided me with a natural opportunity to re-visit my relationship with my body. I decided to make a concerted effort to try to stop the tape and over time, I learned to love my body and to appreciate what it allows me to do in my life. The daily tape stopped and although I still have to work on it, the shame is nearly completely gone.
Even when I had a negative body image, I was careful around my daughter to not talk about my weight, her weight, or the times when I was engaged in a campaign to lose weight. Once she became an adult, like 21 or so, I commented once that I was trying to eat less. (This was after my SCAD heart attacks in 2017, while I was completing cardiac rehab.) She said, “But Mom, you’re not fat.” I replied, “I like my body and I think I look good but my doctor thinks it would be better for my heart to weigh less.”
Like a lot of people, I put on weight in the first few years of the pandemic. I’ve tracked my meals with apps for years and although I did not follow plans perfectly (I tend to do a fair bit of late night snacking after a day of healthy eating), I was not really eating more than I did when I was younger, and weighed less. I am active and walk 3-4 miles almost every day in addition to hiking during the summer. I’ve done this for 12 years. Nonetheless, my attempts to lose weight in the last few years, have been difficult.
In the meantime, I’ve injured the ball of my right foot. I have Morton’s Neuroma, which is caused by a thickening of the nerve under the metatarsal bones. The nerve thickens like a callous in response to repeated pressure on the ball of the foot and then the bones hit the nerve. It causes extremely painful shooting pains in addition to soreness. The injury was caused by my stair training last spring and summer in preparation for our camping trip to Alaska (which ended up being postponed). So my right foot was getting pounded by walking up and down all of those steps. My first response was to change my shoes from hiking shoes to HOKA’s, which are thickly padded and made for foot rehab. That helped and then it didn’t. I stopped doing the steps. For hiking, I bought a second pair of HOKA’S, a different model, and then I switched shoes halfway through the hike. That helped put the pressure in a different place but I was not able to do some of the hiking, especially when it was rocky or there were lots of tree roots.
By December of this year, I was in pain my often than not and by last month, I could barely walk around the house. So I went to my internist, thinking that I could get a referral for physical therapy (I thought I just needed to stretch my calves and Achilles tendon). Instead, she diagnosed Morton’s Neuroma, which is not treated with PT, and referred me to a podiatrist. I was able to get into the podiatrist the next day and I am now getting treated with accompanying improvement.
The main goals of the treatment is to 1) reduce inflammation of the nerve and 2) reduce pressure on the ball of my foot. I’m taking a series of steroid shots to reduce inflammation of the nerve quickly. I’ve started wearing orthodics that shift my weight to my arches from the ball of my foot. I have selected shoes that all better for my particular foot problem. I met with a different podiatrist (a well-known evidence-based podiatrist) earlier in the week. He told me that for the short-term, my bare foot should never hit the floor, even in the shower. So now, I have shower shoes and house shoes.
What does this have to do with weight? Not surprisingly, carrying more weight puts more pressure on the ball of my foot when I walk or run. Carrying more weight also makes my heart work harder and I have a chronic heart disease. Yes, there is a bias against women and weight in our society and that affects the medical field. And yes, programs like Noom and Weight Watchers contain harmful elements. And yes, restrictive eating is a bad idea for some people. This is my body. Losing weight is a good goal for me, and I know that tracking what I eat, being selective about what I eat, and reducing what I eat can be a helpful combination for me.
Losing weight is not easy, especially after menopause. Research on weight loss suggests that diet is more important than exercise in dropping pounds. (Exercise has so many emotional and physical health benefits. I am not discouraging people from exercising.) I’ve long suspected that in following a weight loss plan like Noom or Weight Watchers (I’ve lost weight on both in the past), I’d have to eat less than the plans suggested. I’d been on both Noom and WW during the pandemic and even when I followed them, I didn’t lose weight. I’d never really considered weight loss drugs before but I thought it was worth exploring. I take a statin drug now for my cholesterol. Losing weight is really hard. Why do we think we’re “cheating” if we consider other options?
I had my annual physical last December with my new internist. (My long time internist, Dr. Hyde, is enjoying a well-deserved retirement). I brought up my weight. She mentioned her weight loss success by reducing late night snacking. (She is not overweight and looks no older than 40.) In other words, she made weight loss sound easier than it is for many people. I told her that I’d tracked so many consecutive meals on Noom, thousands, that the counter went back to 1. I’d exceeded the counting capacity of the program. I told her that I’d been keeping within my points on Weight Watchers. I said, “I’m giving this one more effort to be incredibly scrupulous and to make sure that I am tracking portion sizes correctly. I’ve lost a couple of pounds since Thanksgiving. But it is so difficult to lose weight since menopause and if there were weight loss drugs that I could take that didn’t have bad side effects, I would do it.”
She told me that I qualified for weight loss drugs. We discussed options. I expressed interest in the oral medication, Contrave, which is a combination of two drugs that have been around for a long time. The combination is associated with modest weight loss for about 45% of people and it is not contra-indicated for me in light of my cardiac issues. She told me to do research and to message her if I wanted a consultation with the pharmacist. This is a new process at my medical clinic. You meet with their pharmacist for a new prescription. So I set up a telehealth visit with the pharmacist after one of my healthcare team informed me that my insurance does not cover Contrave (it’s $500/month) so I could not get a prescription. I replied, “Can’t the pharmacist prescribe the generic forms of the two medications that make up Contrave?” The health coordinator replied that this was possible. I am perpetually stunned by the amount of medical knowledge that’s required to advocated for my needs.
To make a long story short, I got the prescriptions ($15/month) and completed my first week yesterday. Even on the starting dose, it seems to be making a difference. I’d been losing an average of 1 pound a week since Thanksgiving and lost 2 pounds last week. My portion sizes and snacking have decreased a lot. I have lost a total of 10 pounds and I am starting to feel the difference. I am hoping that all of my efforts to heal my foot injury will translate to wonderful hikes in Alaska this summer.
Like Basie, I am beautiful. My body is a marvel. I hope to lose more weight so that I can do more of the things that I like to do, like ceramics, cooking, walking, and hiking, all things that require my being on my feet.
I hope sharing this will help reduce some of the baggage around women and their bodies. Our bodies are beautiful. They keep us alive. This is my body. I do with my body what I believe is best for me. You have your body and you make your decisions for yourself. This is body autonomy and it’s a beautiful thing to support in one another.
Today is the U.S. Thanksgiving, a day filled with good memories of family get-togethers and a focus on gratitude. (There are also the difficult family dynamics, too, and grief for family members and friends who have been lost.) The holiday, however, is built on colonialism and genocide of what were sovereign nations prior to the arrival of Europeans.
The good parts of this holiday don’t erase the bad parts. The bad parts do not erase the good parts, but the bad parts are really horrible.
I aspire to be a peace maker. This has been a long time goal, probably since I was a small child. I was probably uncomfortable with people being unhappy and wanting to please. That temperamental trait grew and I’ve worked hard to respect the rights and value of people, including myself. It has been a long road.
There’s a strong pull for human brains to “take sides” and it is particularly strong right now. I have been participating in a meditation group, focused on reactive judgments (Transforming the Judgmental Mind), for the past 7 months. We now meet every month via Zoom. The last meeting was right after the Hamas attack on Israel. Everyone felt grief for many reasons and since many of the members are Jewish, they held grief for the people of Israel and Gaza within the context of multi-generational trauma.
Today I am grateful for the opportunity to hold space for grief, for gratitude, and the intention to take the side for peace.
Be well,
Elizabeth
We are staying in LaConner, WA for the Thanksgiving holidays. This is a haven for migratory snow geese and other birds. It is also located in the Swinomish Reservation.
Dear friend, a sincere apology I know that my words are often rather repetitive please believe me it is not intentional but to be honest with you I only ever really say one thing and it’s getting more difficult to find new ways to say that we should take care of each other.
This is one of the many “plague poems” documenting the Covid-19 pandemic. Mr. Loeb writes about 4 poems a day and has done so since March 2020. He is a Ph.D. student at Penn State who studies technology, disasters, and more.
I also feel that my words are rather repetitive during the pandemic, which is one of the reasons I don’t write much anymore. Actually, I have no problem repeating myself but it is discouraging that “we’re all in this together” has turned to a message of individual responsibility.
I feel gaslighted by leadership, even the administration I help vote into office and fervently hope will be re-elected. The CDC (Centers for Disease Control, a federal agency) posted a photo on social media earlier this week showing a line up of cars, carrying staff members, to the offices with a caption commenting on how many CDC employees had returned to in-person work. The CDC houses administrative staff and researchers. In other words, they are perfectly set up for distance work. Meanwhile Covid-19 rates are climbing again. Why not wait until we better understand how to prevent and treat Covid, especially long Covid? Why not talk about how the CDC is reducing risk for employees with increased ventilation, filtration, and masking?
It’s not just the U.S. I see this pattern all over. Yes, the acute death rate from Covid-19 is down. It’s no longer in the top 3 causes of death in the U.S., for example, but it is still in the top 10 and may remain there. It is also a common cause of long-term disability. I’d give you the stats but you have probably already read them so I will tell you a true story about a real person.
My brother, Joe, is 66-years-old and just retired as a high school special education math teacher. In early 2020, he was working at a middle school, down the street from the Life Care Center, a nursing home in Kirkland, WA. You may remember that this was the place originally designated the North American epicenter for the Covid-19 pandemic. The teacher’s aide in the classroom is married to a first responder. She got Covid from her husband and gave it to my brother in January/February 2020. It was mild and he just thought he had a cold. Fortunately, his wife was away at the time and was not exposed to him. My brother’s physician told him to assume that he’d had Covid (there were no tests then, remember?) and he got vaccinated as soon as possible. Joe followed recommendations carefully. In August 2022, he attended a family wedding in Montana. He contracted Covid again, this time long Covid.
Joe told me, “I don’t remember between August and November”. He took a leave-of-absence from work because it was too difficult to teach mathematics and write I.E.P.’s (individualized educational plans) for his students. Fortunately, he was able to get a good neuropsychological assessment, which established his need for workplace accommodations, including a workload reduction. He made it through the year but said it was really hard. Thank goodness that he had already planned to retire and did not have to do so earlier in his career.
Nonetheless, it is feeling like an increasing struggle to get my extended family to take precautions even given that our brother has had long Covid, our mother is nearly 89 years-old, and their sister has a rare heart disease. There are others in the family with significant risk factors but they don’t see themselves at being at higher risk. There are also a lot of teachers in my family and a couple of them teach little kids, who at this point have been found to be more likely to carry and transmit the disease. During the summer, it is no big deal because we can visit outside. But in the colder months, it is getting increasingly difficult. I nearly opted out of Christmas last year and I am strongly considering skipping it later this year. Everyone can just leave me alone to live my semi-hermit life in peace. Bah, humbug!
My mother-in-law, Nancy, is currently going through cancer treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I won’t go into detail but it was serious enough that we cancelled our planned three week camping trip in Alaska. About 1/3 of the people in the cancer center wear a mask, including front office staff. In fact, one women at the front desk makes it a point to tell people wearing masks that they don’t have to. THIS IS IN A CANCER CENTER! WHAT THE HELL? People were so careful about it before, now even healthcare settings with highly health compromised patients are leaving it up to individual responsibility.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not depressed and I am still having fun in my life, going on local hikes and making pottery. I am lucky in my job to have a lot of control over my office environment. But I am discouraged about our species. On the one hand, it seems like little sacrifice to wear a mask or put a HEPA filter in place to make public spaces more accessible to people at risk. Don’t people with liberal politics believe in inclusion and accessibility? On the other hand, these are most challenging times. I get it. There is a lack of clear guidance. I do spend a significant amount of time keeping up with research advances from a few sources that I trust. But until we have better prevention and treatment options, I will continue to use the tools at my disposal to reduce my risk of contracting or spreading a serious disease. That means I get to do a lot but I also miss out on things.
With every new wave the message is the same: “we have the tools” do not worry do not panic for we have the tools and since you are part of the we you ostensibly have them as well, though it has been a long time since an appeal to you as part of a we was itself one of the tools.
George Lakoff has retired as Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. His newest book "The Neural Mind" is now available.
My Eyes Are Up Here 