Lucidity

September 13, 2015 //

It is amazing to me how the terror of a nightmare can be quashed when it switches to a lucid dream. This doesn’t happen often but when it does, I think, “This is a dream.” That typically ends the dream pretty quickly. Sometimes, I am not fully lucid but I start thinking during the dream, “This can’t really happen. This is not a real threat.” At these times, rational thought enters the dream and it becomes much less scary. In both of these instances, it is as if I am observing the dream while also experiencing it.

It occurred to me this morning that when the most stressful and scary parts of my life seem most bearable, it is a similar experience to a lucid nightmare. I am able to observe the situation, mindfully, while still being connected with the experience. This is the main way, in my view, that mindfulness is different from coping strategies such as rationalizing, intellectualizing, or denial. There is still a connection to emotion, thought, and experience.

A most important advantage of this lucidity has been that it helps me step back from an all consuming chasm of pain and suffering to a larger view of reality, one that includes joy, happiness, and hope.

Categories Uncategorized

The Cartwheel

September 7, 2015 //

During the summer between the 7th and 8th grade, I remember spending a substantial amount of time in the front yard trying to teach myself how to do a cartwheel. My palms hit the grass time and time again but I was having trouble making myself turnover. I was an athletic teen but gymnastics was not my thing. Gymnastics was like making your body into an amusement park ride, going topsy turvy. That was just not my thing. It made me afraid. I avoided amusement park rides.

I was bound and determined that summer to learn how to do a 360 degree revolution with my body ON PURPOSE during MY free time. Why would I do this?

I did it out of fear of failure. My older brother, John had told me that I would be tested on my ability to do a cartwheel in 8th grade P.E. I was a major achiever. I had straight A’s. I took all of the advanced courses. There was no way that I was going to fail something as simple as a cartwheel!

I don’t know how long it took me but eventually, I was able to get my legs above my head and back down on the ground. It was not a proper cartwheel because I landed on both feet instead of one at a time. And no, it did not look like a round-off, a variation of the cartwheel that ends in a two footed landing. It looked like a slightly defective cartwheel. I was never able to achieve the one-at-a-time footed landing but I figured that I’d perfected a C- cartwheel and had not completely failed.

I went on to 8th grade. Ms. Boone was our teacher. It was unusual for a teacher to go by “Ms.” back then in the 70’s. She was also the only African American teacher I would ever have in my suburban school district. Ms. Boone had played professional basketball in Italy. Ms. Boone was cool.

She had us do a disco dancing unit instead of tried and true square dancing. I learned the Hustle.

We did a softball unit. I demonstrated my slide into home. I loved doing that. I was one of the only girls who slid and the catcher, almost always a boy, looked so surprised as I plowed right into his shins, forcing him to drop the ball.

Then it happened. She had us do a gymnastics unit with a balance beam, uneven bars, a vault, and everything. Boy, I was terrible. But I tried and I even practiced what I could at home.

I have no memory of how I was graded on that unit. But what I do remember is that I was never asked to do a cartwheel. A headstand, yes. A handstand, yes. Forward and backward rolls, yes. Cartwheels, not a one.

As I said, I was a high achiever. By the end of the 8th grade, I had received awards for science, music, writing, and yes, even P.E. I had achieved my end goals, excellent grades, evidence of my competence, and the approval of adults.

Yesterday, I was stopped at a traffic light by a city park. I saw a girl who looked 5 or 6 years old do a cartwheel in the grass with a two footed landing. It took a few seconds. But even in those few seconds, I could see the pleasant look on her face, the buoyancy of her movement, and the way she moved on from her cartwheel to another activity without a plan in place.

She was turning her body 360 degrees ON PURPOSE and for fun.

Just because she could.

Tags academic achievement. goal-driven behavior, joy, mindfulness, perfectionism

Categories Mindfulness

Have you re-started yet?

September 6, 2015 //

Today, a “feminine hygiene product” fell out of my purse onto the passenger seat of my car. I looked at it like it was a space alien of sorts.

Why, do you ask? My last menstrual cycle was in 2012. I must be in menopause; I mean, it’s been over a year. Actually, it’s been over three years.

However, my menopause was chemically induced with Lupron injections as part of my breast cancer treatment. I had one cycle after the first injection and then no more. Lupron, incidentally, was not yet part of standard breast cancer treatment when I first started receiving my quarterly injections. It was, however, a part of standard treatment for prostate cancer. You see, Lupron disrupts the signal between the pituitary gland and whatever reproductive organ you might have. In the early days of the shots, there was always a photo of a man, “smiling Lupron man” on the box in which the Lupron syringe was contained. And yes, Lupron was also used with women to treat conditions associated with infertility but maybe the dose was different. I didn’t see women on those boxes in the early days. In time, it became more of a standard practice of treatment for hormone positive breast cancer.

Although I experienced intense and frequent hot flashes and night sweats as a result of jumping into menopause thanks to Lupron, I actually tolerated the treatment pretty well. Tolerating a treatment is pretty subjective. I experienced significant side effects, including up to 50 hot flashes a day, at one point, and disrupted, poor quality sleep. To me, it was a pain in the ass but a tolerable pain in the ass. And in time, the intensity and frequency of these side effects lessened somewhat.

I took my last Lupron shot in November of 2014. Each shot is effective for three months. And you know what? The effects of Lupron are not always permanent. I will turn 50 in November. I was experiencing peri-menopause when I was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 46. I was making my way to menopause. However, the path to menopause is quite variable. Peri-menopause can take years and years and years. During my last oncology appointment,

One of my colleagues has a book in her office called, Have You Started Yet? It’s a book for girls about puberty and periods. Remember that time? Not knowing when your cycles would start and hoping that you were neither the first nor the last?

For the record, I was 12. I was relieved. My body worked. I was not going to be left behind by my peers and be left out of the club of maturity. After about a year, began the monthly decent into menstruation Hell. Cramps worse than any labor pains I experienced in childbirth. (Knowing that labor pains were supposed to be 100 times worse than menstrual cramps, I asked for an epidural early and often until I got it. It kicked butt on pain.) The bleeding was horribly heavy, going on for 7-10 days, just like my mom. However, unlike my mom, my cycles were of irregular length, anywhere from 28-42 days. And then there was the nausea and vomiting.

This all improved enormously after pregnancy and childbirth. However, that was 20 years later! So losing my periods with Lupron was far and away the best cancer treatment side effect that I could hope for. Hurray! Yay! Yes, this change was also accompanied by facial hair and it becoming EVEN harder to maintain healthy weight. It still seemed like an awfully good deal to me!

I had my final Lupron shot in November. They last three months. During my last oncology appointment in the spring, Dr. Rinn said, “It could start back any time or not at all.”

So, just like a premenstrual 11 year-old girl, I keep supplies on hand, just in case.

Tags Breast Cancer, Lupron, treatment side effects

Categories Breast cancer

Not just coffee

August 31, 2015 //

During one of my recent walks, I was thinking about a conversation I’d had with a friend a few months ago. The friend had broken off a relationship with someone he’d previously known through the community for almost 20 years. He was surprised by how complicated her life was beneath the surface and a number of very unhealthy choices that she’d made, those that people make who have an extraordinary amount of pain and suffering, with which they are not dealing well. I told him, “I see lots of families in my practice who I imagine appear very different to people who have known them for years. You just don’t know what is going on in people’s lives.”

I was thinking about this, about the lives we lead on the inside that don’t match our outsides. We just don’t know what people are going through. Sure, some people wear their pain on the outside because they cannot contain it; some wear it like a badge of honor. But many of us go along with our daily lives carrying heavy burdens. I thought about the interactions I have with people everyday and my own natural tendency to assume that people are similar to me. Given that I am an empathetic person and a trained mental healthcare provider, I can quickly shift this set point but there are many interactions we have in our own lives that are so short that it is difficult to do this. And even still, sometimes we just don’t know.

In my musings, I reminded myself of how important it is to be kind and to give people the benefit of the doubt. I am also mindful that to do so is also better for my health. Maybe the driver who cut me off really is an asshole? Is it really good for me to hold onto that thought and the anger that accompanies it?

By then I had arrived at my neighborhood coffee shop, Bird on a Wire. Elton John’s, Rocket Man, was playing. Angel, who was making my latte, looked up at me and said quietly, “This song reminds me of my dad.” Angel is a young man, still in his twenties. Nonetheless, I asked, “Is your dad still living?” “No”, he responded, still quietly. I asked a couple of questions and learned that Angel’s father died 6 months ago within a week of being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Angel is a kind and gentle person with a spritely sense of humor. He is one of those people who exudes kindness. He loves community and will go out of his way to not only learn the names of the customers, but to introduce them to one another. Angel has made many lattes for me in the past six months. I had no idea.

He said, “I’m sorry.” “Angel, there’s no need to be sorry. That is something I would want to know.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

I grabbed his hand and squeezed it.

“Angel, people care for one another. That’s a very good thing.”

Tags compassion, kindness, mindfulness, suffering

Categories Mindfulness

Faith, hope, and clarity

August 26, 2015 //

Sometimes I walk into the chaos of my life and I think, “Who is in charge here?”

I look to my left and to my right. Nothing. Nobody. Silence. Just me.

But in the stillness there is clarity.

I can handle loneliness because truly, I am never alone.

I can handle responsibility because truly, I am very competent.

But confusion gives me no direction at all except to spin in a circle.

So today, I am grateful for clarity. I believe that with it, I can move mountains, or at the very least keep my feet solidly beneath me and traveling forward.

Tags gratitude, mindfulness, Parenting, stress

Categories Mindfulness, Parenting

A friend in need

August 19, 2015 //

I am more comfortable giving than receiving emotional support. Nonetheless, I have found my self being “a friend in need” more than not recently. I have also been working a lot, trying to keep my head down, and keeping myself busy. It worked to a certain extent then it didn’t.

I had also planned a busy summer with lots of fun activities, spending time with friends, spending time with family, and spending time in nature. I was very much looking forward to spending three days with friends from out of town. I knew that it would be fun, they would have fun, and there would be some light and easy times.

And then it happened. I lost track of myself, my fatigue, and my anxiety. The beginning of the visit was marked by my anxiety and the bags under my eyes. I wasn’t fooling anyone. I was tired. I have slept solidly through the night once in the last two months and sometimes I am awake for a number of hours. Not sleeping well takes a major toll on me. I took on more than I could handle comfortably and then life gave me much much more. And I didn’t ask for enough help and when I didn’t do it in the way that solicits a whole lot of empathy.

Lo and behold, after a brief but intense temper tantrum, I got my shit together and focused on having a break from my daily grind, spending time with dear friends and with my husband. I had a wonderful three days. I went to mountains and islands. We talked and laughed. The tight worry in my chest and the cotton in my brain eased. I remembered what it is like to have relaxed joy.

Then I came back to my regularly scheduled program of life. I immediately picked up on the stress and anxiety in my household. Initially, I felt disappointment that I was getting wound up again so quickly. Then I remembered that I have skills. I have things to try. I started using paced breathing, a technique to strong emotions quickly. It worked. Today, I am feeling the anxiety again. And now I am writing, another strategy that helps. My heart is slowing and I am finding myself more and more in the present moment as I type these words.

I am a friend in need and I got the support I needed from both other people and from my own internal resources.

Today, I am grateful for my family.

Today, I am grateful for my friends.

Today, I am grateful for nature.

Today, I am grateful for my tenacity.

Tags Family, Friendship, hard times, mindfulness, Mt. Rainier National Park, nature photography, paced breathing, San Juan Islands, stress

Categories Family, Feelings, Flora and Fauna, Marriage, Mindfulness

Into the Blaze

August 5, 2015 //

We have experienced an incredibly dry summer here in the Northwest. I have been reading with great concern about the fires in the Olympic National Park. The fires are burning in the rainforest. This is an area where fire is rare. But it hasn’t been rainy or snowy. I was in a section of the park a few days ago. The meadows were alarmingly brown and bare in many spots.

Fighting fires is a difficult job in any circumstances. Fighting forest fires can be quite dangerous. My husband read a book about a forest fire fighting tragedy in 1949, Young Men and Fire. The forest fighters parachuted into the Montana forest, loaded with their fire fighting equipment, which consisted of hand tools like shovels and axes. They had no water. Their job was to contain the fire by changing the landscape. The wind shifted suddenly. They were trapped. Mos of the men died.

One of the men was able to save himself by what must have required resisting every survival instinct he had. He knew the blaze was headed for him. He quickly doused the high grass around him with fuel and lit it on fire, to remove it, creating a circle of non-burnable material around him. He laid down in the center and held on tightly to roots on the ground as the blaze came to him. The convection currents lifted him off of the ground despite wearing full fire fighting gear. All the while he held fast to the roots as well as his breath to avoid fueling the fire. The fire passed because there was nothing to burn. By standing his ground instead of running away, he saved his life.

The most painful times in my mindfulness practice have been allowing myself to observe my most painful, heartbroken, angry, scary, helpless feelings and thoughts while minimizing judgment. It is still painful. But by doing my best to observe and withhold judgment, I am able to reduce the heat enough in order to withstand it. In doing so, I have not only found emotional survival but reduced suffering and at times, I even find myself to be in a place of peace.

In many ways, I am a careful person. I take pains to prevent fires. I don’t like crises. But I have learned to be more courageous and hold tightly to my roots, because there is no other way to stay whole.

Tags fire fighting, mindfulness, radical acceptance

Categories Mindfulness

Big Game

August 1, 2015 //

A beautiful lion was killed in Zimbabwe by a rich American, who paid $55,000 to do so. There has been a great deal of outrage about this. There has been a great deal of compassion expressed toward a rare and beautiful animal who was killed just so that a human being could use his power to kill and dominate.

There have also been people upset by how much compassion and outrage have been spent on this one lion in contrast to relatively less so about violence and racism in our own country especially toward African Americans.

I was upset by all of these events, quite frankly. I actually saw them as being part of the same problem, the problem of using might to make right, the corrupting power of excessive power, and domination for domination sake as it happens at all levels of culture.

I understand why people are angry that violence against oppressed groups of humans is not creating similar outrage. I do wonder, however, if in giving people negative feedback for expressing righteous indignation and compassion is somehow discouraging compassionate action in general.

If I were in a crowd of people and saw a small child in front of me fall down, I would express sympathy and try to help, if needed. I would not scan the crowd to see if there were a person or situation more deserving of kindness and compassion. And I don’t think that by exercising a small act of compassion on perhaps a lesser problem, that I would somehow run out of compassion. I also wonder if these small gestures, to address small problems right in front of our eyes, right now, and with swift action, may buffer in some way against the passivity and inaction that can result with being overwhelmed by the enormity of the BIG PROBLEMS.

I find that acts compassion, offered in the moment, can add a bit of fuel to my emotional gas tank rather than depleting me. There are a lot of messages out there that treat compassion as a rare, easily depleted commodity. Even in the breast cancer community, there is a sense of having to have the worst case situation in order to exercise compassion toward oneself. Meanwhile, we invalidate ourselves and others over and over, like there is no limit.

Compassion doesn’t have to be a big game.

Tags Black Lives Matter, Cecil the Lion, compassion, domination, mindfulness, oppression, racism

Categories Breast cancer, Mindfulness

The Should-in-nator

July 28, 2015 //

“Get out of my kitchen!”

That is the characterization of many of us home cooks who make meals for a crowd.

It is also the way my mother is characterized by one of my in-law’s. My response? “My mother doesn’t say it LIKE THAT! It takes a lot of concentration to cook for a crowd.”

The person to whom I am speaking has never cooked for a crowd though she claims membership in the “I cooked for a crowd group.”

She has not earned that membership, I’m afraid. Yes, I know this sounds presumptuous. Just know that I know this not to be the case.

In contrast, my sister-in-law, who hosts Easter each year, has earned that membership. She never tries to get people out of her kitchen. She is laid back. She is able to cook while talking to a house full of people. I think that despite the chaos, she is not really impacted by it the way the rest of us are. Not to say that she never gets uptight or angry about anything. But those things are not things in her kitchen.

I don’t like people in my kitchen when I am trying to make a meal for a crowd. Actually, that is not entirely true. If you know how to help without being instructed or getting in the way, that’s cool with me. I have a small kitchen and a little brain when it is focused on dinner making. My mom, my brother, James and my friend, Nancy know how to slip in and so things, as if I had psychically willed them to do it. Also, if you are wanting to keep me company and don’t ask a lot of questions that require deep thinking, you are also welcome in my kitchen. Sometimes, it gets lonely in there.

Other people, they get in my way. They don’t offer to help. They are just vagrants in my kitchen. This is typically the role of some of my brothers. I tell them, “Out of my kitchen!” They scoot. They are used to our mother. Others ask to help out of politeness rather than skill. Or they have skill but are too polite to just start doing stuff.

I often think to myself, “I should do a better job at asking for and accepting help.”

“I should.”

“I really should.”

“Should” does not lead to a switch that we can turn off and on. “Oh, I should do that? Ah, here I go, I am doing it!”

Some very kind friends asked to help me cook for an upcoming dinner party. I did not say, “Get out of my kitchen!” I actually didn’t even think it. But I did think, “What is wrong with me that I can’t accept their help easily?”

I usually think, “It’s because my kitchen in small.” “It’s because I would rather do my prep ahead of time so I can visit.” These things are true, especially the latter point. I thought about it more. Really hard.

When I am driving in a car, I have a very hard time carrying on a conversation with the person who is in the passenger seat even if I like him/her very much and would like to socialize. I also don’t put the radio on when I’m driving, even when there is no one else in the car. I find both scenarios distracting. I don’t feel guilty about either situation. I accept myself for more own strengths and limitations.

I also take a lot of photos. That is, I take a lot of photos when I am alone. If I am in a social situation, I have an incredibly hard time remembering to take photos because I am distracted by visiting with people. I don’t feel guilty about this situation even when I had planned to take photos of the event. I wish I were better at doing both things but I don’t feel as thought I “should” be better or that I am letting people down.

I am a damned good home cook. But I am not an executive chef. Perhaps in time, I could train my brain to work that way, but right now and for the last few decades, it has not been that way. Most days of the year, I get no help at all. I do everything myself. I love to socialize with people. I love to cook. Both activities require a great deal of concentration on my part. I mean, yes, there are times in cooking when I am just standing around and welcome time to chat with people. But then there are the other times. And what is particularly difficult is giving other people directions when I am in the thick of things.

It is not that I am a control freak or not open to help.

I am just not that skilled. Sometimes I even write a list of things that people can do to help so that people don’t get mad at me when I can’t think of something they can do to help, when asked. This list, by the way, usually ends up being more work for me but helps assuage other people’s feelings.

As I said, I am a damned good home cook. Why should I feel less than because I have a hard time accepting help due to my difficulties with multi-tasking? Why should I feel that by taking on a lot of responsibility, I am somehow lacking in politeness or depriving others of their right to help?

Today, I am reminding myself of something. I am who I am, pluses and minuses. I may change over time but today, I know what I am able to do.

In the meantime, stay out of my kitchen unless I say, “Hey, keep me company” or “It’s time to eat. Can you help carry things out to the table?”

It’s not about you. It’s about me, doing the best I have with what I’ve got. Unless of course, you bring a bag of groceries to my house and expect to make something in my kitchen, from scratch. If you do that, you will get if not an “evil” eye, an “irritated” eye. Seriously? People, don’t do that. And if you need the oven or microwave to heat something up, it is very considerate to ask about this well ahead of time. It is even more considerate to make something that does not require use of my kitchen because people, two weeks before the event, I have already mapped out the real estate on my stove, oven, roasting oven, crock pot, microwave, and grill.

And guess what? Despite my potentially shooing you from my kitchen, we will all get a good meal out of it. It will be a win win win win win win win win win win win…

Tags accepting help, get out of my kitchen, judgment, mindfulness, perfectionism, women in the kitchen

Categories Uncategorized

How to avoid getting a “like” on Facebook

July 26, 2015 //

No, it’s not by posting too many cute cat videos or even by sharing political articles. Find a comfortable chair and take out a notebook. I will tell you how to post something to your breast cancer blog FB account and manage to get not a single, solitary “like”. The post got 8 clicks and no shares, either.

A couple of weeks ago, I shared a medical story about a new treatment for vaginal atrophy, a painful side effect of breast cancer treatment. As one of my girlfriends responded upon hearing about the condition, “That sounds like bad sex.”

Indeed.

Personally, I don’t want to have bad sex. Fortunately, vaginal atrophy has not been an impediment to this.

Not everyone has or wants to have sex. But really, aren’t there more of us who want to have good sex? Isn’t this a healthy part of life for many of us?

Now, perhaps you think that vaginal atrophy is not worth writing about because it is easily treatable. My understanding is that it is not. In fact, the only reason I know about it is because one of my girlfriends had it as a consequence of treating her genetic breast cancer in her 30’s. She was not shy about asking for help. She told me that none of her western physicians were able to help her with it. Then she asked her doctor who was trained in China from whom she was receiving acupuncture. Her doctor thought about it and said, “I’m not sure this work but I try.”

Things changed a lot so much so that when my friend saw her gynecologist there was amazement accompanied by a request for the Chinese doctor’s contact information.

Women, we deserve a chance at health, including sexual health.

Read the article here. Share the article.

Tags breast cancer and sexual health, breast cancer and sexuality, vaginal atrophy

Categories Breast cancer