How to Build Resilience to Depression

I wrote this piece for the local newspaper!

As we’ve attempted to settle into post-pandemic life, the mental health crisis continues to rage. According to a review by Boston University School of Public Health, rates of depression in the United States have risen from 9 percent, pre-pandemic, to 33 percent in 2021. 

With depression affecting one in three people, odds are you know someone, or you are someone who is suffering with depression. Here are a few principles that have been shown to help build resilience to and aid recovery from depression.

Aliveness instead of happiness. Andrew Solomon wrote, “The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality….” Depression is a sense of internal deadening. Cultivating a sense of aliveness means building our ability to be present with the full spectrum of emotion. You can get started with this practice by thinking of the last time you felt fully alive and engaged in a moment. Maybe it was getting into the wintery ocean, or being in deep conversation with a close friend. Now think about a time when you chose to numb a feeling, maybe with food, alcohol, TV, sex or staying overly busy. For many of us, the numbing behavior is our default and aliveness must practiced.

Pay attention. However one chooses to do this (meditation, prayer, journaling, daily reflection, etc.), the act of noticing and processing the events of our day, leads to an increased sense of well-being. Regularly seeing a talk-therapist is a guided practice in paying attention. Whether you decide to seek a professional guide or start something on your own, paying attention to the experience of your life is key. 

Be curious. Curiosity, as a mindset and skill, might be the most useful tool in mental health recovery. If depression is deadening, curiosity provides an opening through which light can enter. There is a lot of pressure in our current culture to optimize every aspect of our day. But, instead of self-flagellating over missing a day of exercise or numbing with one of our vices, the practice of curiosity allows us to notice our shortcomings with compassion. Curiosity doesn’t condemn. It asks Why?, and How? and looks into our internal life with wonder.

Putting Spark to the Cold Ground

I once spent a night alone in a biologist’s cabin in Garden Valley, Idaho. It was January and the entire valley was padded with a foot of powdery snow.  I was doing a clinical rotation in that small town and the doctor I worked with had an arrangement with the family that owned this cabin, that it could house PA students during their clinical rotations, when it was not otherwise in use. 

My 1998 Saturn SL with bald tires couldn’t even make it through town without getting stuck, much less the one-lane mountain road on which the cabin stood. The doctor drove me to the cabin in his Suburban, handing me a key and pointing me to the porch of the snowy structure before driving off into the dark. There was no cell service.

The cabin felt lived in. The bed sheets carried the scent of the last sleeper. Personal objects were left about in a way that suggested someone would be back soon to resume their use. A layer of cat hair rested over the couch and carpeting, but it was interspersed with downy feathers. The owner was a falconer—at least I knew this much to explain the mice in the freezer. 

There was an electric heater in the wall of the kitchen that ticked and clanged softly as it warmed and then cooled and then warmed again. The thermostat read 50 degrees—certainly warm enough not to freeze, but not warm enough to be comfortable. I worked on that thermostat attempting to adjust the temperature up, but it would not respond. So I cooked my ramen noodles and stood over the counter eating them while dressed in my coat and hat. Standing while eating a meal at the kitchen counter, or over the kitchen sink, is a lonely way to dine but somehow feels less lonely than finding a seat. 

When I finished, I set out exploring the space. I found a wood stove off of the living room in the back of the cabin and there was some wood stacked neatly beside it. I had some experience with wood stoves so I thought I could probably get a fire going and that might keep the space more comfortable until morning. But I couldn’t find an axe or hatchet to hew the quartered logs into kindling. I knelt on concrete, pulling and willing pieces of wood from those logs, praying for the crackle of a fire to break the silence of the alien landscape. I worked and I prayed and I struck matches and watched them burn out. 

There would be no fire that night. I would unroll my sleeping bag in the bedroom nearest the kitchen, and therefore the warmest, the one that smelled most strongly of cats. I would dress against the cold in my heavy sweat pants, jacket and hat before zipping myself in. I would lie awake in the dark smelling the absent cats and listening to to the tick, tick, tick of the electric heater and then the deafening silence, until I wandered into a dream and onto the cold, morning light.

If fire represents spirit (think Moses’ burning bush or offerings consumed by flame), isn’t there a similarity happening this time of year? Each year, as darkness overtakes the land, a stagnation, a silence settles in me, like ice on the pond, and I can’t imagine Spring because I am entombed by the layer crusted overhead.

I guess we have different words to describe this, like “seasonal affective disorder,” “winter depression,” or just “hibernation.” To call it a disorder has always felt a little unfair to me. After all, isn’t there a rhythm to existence that nature consistently bends and sways with, but we, as humans, do our best to ignore? 

When I consider the way humans have lived through most of history, without magical boxes in the walls that produce heating and cooling, it seems obvious we’ve moved away from the natural rhythm of life. Especially in December when all the world is shutting down but we are rushing to buy gifts, make charitable contributions to offset taxes, and fit in last minute medical and dental procedures because we’ve met a deductible.

But what happens to the home fires with all of this rushing around? I have a good friend and a sister with only a wood stove for heating their homes. They must think about the fire before leaving the house if they want to return to warmth. And when the fire goes out, it takes time and energy to heat the space again. Keeping the hearth fire going, or at least having the ability to make a fire when needed, was a critical job throughout most of time.

I remember the cold of that night when I couldn’t start a fire and I wonder now, how do I tend to the fire? Now that darkness has settled in. Now that the chill of night only gives way to a stiff wind and puff of rain. How do I nourish myself and others? How do I generate warmth and light? 

Joseph Campbell wrote, “Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again. You really don’t have a sacred space, a rescue land, until you find somewhere to be that’s not a wasteland, some field of action where there is a spring of ambrosia—a joy that comes from inside, not something external that puts joy into you—a place that lets you experience your own will and your own intention and your own wish so that, in small, the Kingdom is there. I think everybody, whether they know it or not, is in need of such a place.”

We all need a place, a designated time and space, where we can tend to the hearth of our creative spirit. We need conversation with our gods, whether they be personal values, ethical codes or actual deity that influence life here on earth. After all, our relationship with the spiritual is a reflection of our relationships with each other.

But, as that cold night reminded me, fires built without ignition must be built with the tiniest pieces first. Lying bits of wood and paper, gently blowing and then feeding, blowing and then feeding, laying a foundation from which to coax the flames into a roaring inferno. The creative life is no different. There is something very beautiful about putting a spark to the cold ground, protecting it, feeding it, as it grows slowly to the point where you have an actual fire in your life—an understanding of your purpose here, your inspiration, your selfhood, your meaning. 

There is nothing more fulfilling or more important than building such a roaring flame, if for no other reason than when it goes out, you know how to bring it back.

The Artist's Way: A Summer of Creativity!

R is going to be with his dad a lot this summer. It's okay. It's in our parenting plan. But, whenever I have to go a long stretch without him I go through the five stages of grief (sometimes I can do this in a whole weekend!). So for my own sanity and because I so love this book, I'm inviting you to do something with me.

Let's read The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron!

If you are creative but feel your creativity lagging, if you used to be creative but haven't used that part of yourself for some time, if you think you might be creative but never really tried--this book is medicine.

And let me be clear, when I say creative, I mean the most broad and inclusive definition. Anything from visual art and writing, to homemaking to computer programming, to just living a creative life. Actually, that last one is the most important to me. And let me define it: living a creative life means living in the way that is most uniquely you, peeling back the layers of culture and socialization to reveal the truest version of yourself.

If that sounds good to you, or even mildly interesting. Grab a copy of this book and follow along with me for the next 12 weeks. I'm envisioning this as a kind of Julie and Julia experience, but instead of mastering the art of French cooking, I'll be going through the creativity exercises each week and posting about my experience.

So here are the ground rules:

1. Be kind to yourself. This exercise does require a little discipline but if I've learned anything from my work in drug and alcohol recovery, it's this--you can't hate yourself anything. You can't hate yourself into being sober, creative, productive, or kind, at least not with any lasting effect.
2. If you fall behind, just pick up where you can, or, if you intentionally set a slower pace for yourself, just come back to the posts when you get time.

That's it. Two rules.

I would LOVE to interact with you on social. Links are below, if you aren't already connected to me in that way. I'm gonna do my best to create Reels and TikToks to accompany the posts each week. And each week will run from Wednesday to Wednesday, so you can look for new content on Wednesday by end of day.

So grab a copy of this book! It's old so check a used bookstore if you like to be thrifty. This is the link on Amazon if you are convenience-motivated! I do recommend you get a paper copy of the book because you will need to refer back to the exercises and practices recommended each week. There is also a journal available--I've done this twice through and never used the journal but it might be nice--lemme know if you like it! And it is available on Audible or audio format, but like I said, the paper book will be nice to refer back to so maybe get both if you are dedicated to listening.

I'm writing this from my bathtub again! That's one of the things I figured out going through her book the last time - water helps things flow for me. So, I'll be here all summer, soaking and writing, and eager to hear about your experience!

We start next Wednesday, June 8 <3

Love (from the tub),

Michelle

A few things I know.

Sometimes when I get quiet here it’s because I feel like I don’t know anything. Nothing. And that’s not completely true. So here’s a list of a few things I do know. 

• I know if you are looking for sea glass on the beach, the best place to find it is in the patches of little pebbles. 
• I know that butter and flour and baking powder and salt, mixed together and baked at 400 degrees for 10-15 minutes produces crispy, little pillows of heaven (aka biscuits).
• I know that as I get older, my body gets less forgiving and sometimes that means that little aches and pains will never be cured, they will only be managed. 
• I know rainbow painted toenails will make approximately 60% of the general public smile.
• I know that lasting change comes from compassion. 
• I know that compassion for others, only comes after compassion for self.
• I know despite everything, this hunk of flesh in my chest keeps moving and keeps showing me that it is amazingly capable of love.

How To Attend Your 20-Year High School Reunion:

(In 38 EASY steps…because that's about how old you will be when you need this guide!)

1. Graduate high school.
2. Go to college and learn that you might have been too big for your britches. Let the bitches get you down. Aim sights a little lower. 
3. Get married before you age out of the college dating pool. (Yikes! Mormon women become old maids at 21?!?)
4. Learn you’ve got five tumors and five years to live. (How did that Tim McGraw song go again? Sky diving, bull riding?!? No thanks!…and what’s a Fu Manchu?)
5. Keep living. Get confused. 
   • (You: I’m not dead!
   • Cart-master: 'Ere!  'E says 'e's not dead!
   • Man: Yes he is.
   • You:     I'm not!
   • Cart-master: 'E isn't?
   • Man: Well... he will be soon-- he's very ill...
   • You:     I'm getting better!
   • Man: No you're not, you'll be stone dead in a moment…
   • You: I feel happy!)
6. Go to grad school to have health insurance to pay for the tumors that aren’t showing up to kill you. 
7. Work. Wash dishes. Grocery shop. Cook. Exercise to burn off the calories. Repeat for three or four years. 
8. Run a half marathon. (Because that’s what medical professionals do when life isn’t complicated enough—duh!) 
9. Have a baby. (Because that’s what married people do when life isn’t complicated enough.)
10. One hundred tiny steps make you realize that your marriage is leaching your essence. Look into your baby’s eyes and know that you must end it, for him.  
11. Realize YOU can actually live YOUR life for YOU. Start doing it. 
12. Start a journal. (Start being honest with yourself.) 
13. Start a blog. (Start being honest with others.)
14. Spend a few years posting the most literal and vibrant and wounding parts of your life. 
15. Enjoy kind or thoughtful comments from your parents, sisters and a few other people. 
16. Wonder if anyone else thinks it’s any good. Wonder if you’re any good. Play whack-a-mole with ego…for years? ...Forever?
17. Make mistakes. Write about those. 
18. Win victories. Write about those.
19. Get to know yourself. Write about her. 
20. Discover that it’s been t-w-e-n-t-y years since you graduated high school. 
21. Decide that you can attend your reunion because now, unlike 10 years ago, you can show up as your ACTUAL self.
22. Get really nervous that you’ve made a huge mistake. Go down the rabbit hole of past failures and insecurities. No one will like you because they know you walked out on them 20 years ago and didn’t look back. They will know you are ridiculous because they read that blog, or because they saw you do mediocre cheerleading or that strange scholarship pageant or they remember when you sang that bizarre choir solo that was more of a wail than song…There are so many you cannot list them all. And some of them are more memories of feelings that actual events. That gripping in the abdomen--I’ve made a huge mistake.
23. Be saved by the fact that Oprah is constantly talking about intention. 
24. Realize that all the fear and anxiety is based on THIS intention: You want people to be impressed with you. You want to be liked. (You’re basically screaming, Love me! Fear me! It’s NOT a good look for you.) 
25. Remember some people will like you and some people won’t because you’re not for everyone and everyone’s not for you.
26. Set a new intention: To show love for the people who grew along with you. 
27. Put on eyeshadow per the directions of the instruction card that came with the palate because this is the most makeup instruction you’ve had since you were 17. (Choose the one called Disco Nights because, you know…you’ve gotta look gooooood.)
28. Walk into the reunion mixer. Hug the first person at the door, your best friend from elementary school. 
29. Get lost in each interaction, one after another, after another. 
30. Choose the people who also choose you.
31. Hug all of them.
32. Boldly call people the wrong name and watch them forgive you.
33. Soak up their goodness.
34. Soak up their giddiness, honesty, laughter, dance moves, serious faces, wide eyes, clever remarks, humble brags, shrouds, curiosity, and acceptance. 
35. Realize that, Yes! Love is patient and love is kind. But love also disrupts. It flips tables. Love is angry. Love is uncomfortable. Love holds opposites. Love is patient—yes, but it moves! Love has no boxes. Love forgives because love sees the whole. Love defends. Love disrupts again. Love holds. 
36. Notice how you all bruised each other because you loved each other. 
37. Feel held. Feel free. Remember you ARE love. All of you are love.  
38. Wake up. Raise three glasses of water, a cup of coffee, and a couple of Advil to the class of 2001. To you. To all of you. Reunited. 

My most helpful thought

Last week I found myself rolling back and forth on the ground with a bunch of giggling asian women.  I was in my kundalini yoga class at the YMCA.  We were doing an exercise where we put our hands out in front of us, superman-style, while lying on our stomachs, then we turned to the right until we were on our backs, then back to center/stomach, then to the left.  As I rolled back and forth on the floor with these giddy women, I thought, I live such a rich life! 

One year ago I was entrapped in the agony of my thoughts.  I was just beginning to question whether my thoughts were really true.  But I still had so many to sort through.  It felt like every waking moment was thought-thought-thought-thought, one after another.  I was starting to question them but I still had so many.  There were the thoughts, and then there were the thoughts that were judgments of the thoughts, and then there were some judgment thoughts of those thoughts.  My brain and my ego were really running wild.  And it became untenable.  So I started some intense work on watching and then dismantling my thoughts. 

This brought me into the most disorienting season of my life to date.  I spent almost all of October separated from my son.  He was traveling with his dad for two weeks.  Then, the week I was supposed to have him was interrupted when I got a stomach flu that was so severe I couldn’t care for him.  I had to ask his dad to come pick him up.  I entertained him with TV for much of the day, while I laid in bed without any energy.  I remember at dinnertime he asked me for something to eat.  It took me about five minutes to raise myself from the bed and into the kitchen to pull something out of the fridge for him.  I have experienced this kind of decimation before, but never as a mother and never alone.  

After the stomach flu, I went to NIH for my ten days of testing.  The writing saved me.  I set a goal to blog every day and it pulled me through those days of isolation.  For the first time I allowed myself some introspection on the NIH experience.  I challenged myself to stay open and to find connection there.  And I shared it on my blog which helped me feel slightly less alone during the cold October days.  

The days between NIH and February run together in my memory.  I remember early mornings, where I would wake before the sun, unable to remain in bed.  I walked a lot.  On the days I didn’t have R, I would put on my headphones and room my neighborhood early in the morning listening to Brandi Carlile and Oprah Super Soul podcasts.  I lost weight.  I felt excoriated.  I heard Mark Nepo describe it that way and it felt precise to my condition.  My physique and my spirit were polished away to the essential elements.  And as Cheryl Strayed put it so eloquently, I floated like a rabid ghost through those days and weeks.  

I learned that R would be going on vacation with his dad in February.  With the ghost of the previous October breathing down my neck, I booked a trip to Hawaii to occupy most of R’s vacation days.  I had been studying Mary Oliver’s work prior to the trip and I spent that my time in Hawaii focusing on the present moment.  Nature has a way of pulling me into the present, and I let that heal me.  I returned feeling revitalized.  I vowed to reinvest in regular exercise.  I was also eating a banana with Nutella every day to help with my stress calorie deficit.  

After Hawaii, life kind of crashed back onto me.  I clung fiercely to my commitment to stay open to the good that was available to me.  I walked, I lifted weights, I played with R.  I was trying to stay open at work, which made work increasingly heavy.  I was losing patients to drug addiction and strange accidents.  I was attempting to shepherd heroin addicts toward feeling their feelings.  I was open to all of the pain and it almost swallowed me.  Then I wandered into a kundalini yoga class by accident. 

I had begun to seek out a more spiritual yoga practice.  So when I saw the instructor with her colorful mandala scarf laid out on the floor and the battery-powered candles, I was open.  In the first class I met the true version of myself.  My therapist asked me to name her but all I could come up with was Michelle because she seemed like the purest version of me.  I envisioned her as I went through the exercises, this open, playful, loving, interesting creature.  I kept coming back to kundalini because I wanted to see her again.  I wanted to know her better, this person who had been buried inside of me. 

In kundalini, I saw metaphors for joy and pain and trial and play and boundaries and kindness.  The practice opened me further but it also taught me to protect myself.  I heard my voice in the chanting and singing.  I felt myself in the movements.  I finally located the sacred place inside of me, the part that god put there long ago, the part that is uniquely wise and kind.

My practice helped me understand my role at work.  I wasn’t supposed be a repository for all of the pain my patients carry.  My job was to identify those who were open and to shine some light their way.  For the rest, medication management would be enough.

My yoga practice helped me find stillness.  My mind became quieter.  I began to watch my thoughts with curiosity.  I got better at identifying the useful ones and noticing the useless ones.  That’s how my original thought was born.  I live such a rich life!  

This thought has carried me through my faith transition, a divorce that is still incomplete, raising a little boy through the terrible two and threenager years, worries about tumors, and opening the part of me that is capable of loving deeply.  

And I think rich is the word for it, because there is so much depth in my life.  So many colors.  So much vibrancy.  Some of it has been penetrating darkness. But I am equally opening to joy. I am a rich woman, indeed.

I made this list of things that have changed in the past year and I’m sharing it with you, with the simple hope that you might reflect on your life in a similar way. Namaste and sat nam. 

• I’m better aquatinted with myself.
• I have more trust in myself.  
• I’ve started dating. 
• I am getting my first glimpses of how to forgive.
• I started a spiritual yoga practice.
• My brain is so much quieter.
• I opened myself up emotionally to my patients and then had to figure out how to shut that down somewhat. 
• Eight of my patients passed away. 
• I started to solo travel.
• I was more honest with myself and the people around me than ever before. 
• I kept a toddler alive and relatively happy through the terrible two and threenager years.
• I started painting and drawing again.
• I picked up knitting again.
• I started playing the piano and singing again.
• I began to understand humility.
• I began to see the part of god that lives in me.
• I published 114 blog posts (that’s 112,505 words) and some of you have read every one! 

Engage in small c creation

“We do seem to be living in a universe that is in a constant and unending state of creation.  It’s never stopping.  It’s never stopping here either.  We are not witnessing that.  We are PART of that.  We come from that.  We work into that.  

So if the energy of the universe is in constant creation, when you are in creation, yourself, you’re in alignment with it.  And that’s why it feels so good, because you’re in the river of the thing that is happening from here to the outer extent of the universe, always.  And when you’re not in creativity and when you’re not in creation you’re against that flow and that’s why it feels like depression, and that’s why it feels like despair, and that’s why it feels so heavy.  

So for me, the best way that I can feel healthy, which means a sense of belonging, not just belonging to other people, but belonging to this whole weird story that’s happening that we’re in, is if I do creativity “small c" on a small scale.  So if I make something, then I’m also creating just the way that the universe is always making something and for some reason that feels deeply good at the soul level.  And when I’m not doing that I’m stagnating against a power that wants me to create with it.  

So for me it’s profoundly spiritual because there is no greater way to connect with capital C Creation than to engage in small c creation.  And that c can be as small as you want.  There’s something about making something with your hands that just makes you healthy and I think it’s what we are supposed to be doing so we don’t despair.”

Gwyneth x Elizabeth Gilbert: Can Creating Something Small Heal Something Big?

This is taken from an interview Gweneth Paltrow did with Elizabeth Gilbert on the Goop Podcast.  I heard it several weeks ago and I have become enamored with the idea of “small c” creativity.  There is so much power in it. 

A few months ago I felt inspired to put some of R’s artwork on my kitchen wall.  He was in a phase where he loved drawing and I felt inspired by his art.  Then I started to add my own art to the wall and the art of some of my friends (some of it made while they were watching R for me).  It’s become my visual memorial to small c creativity.  Each morning while I’m making breakfast and packing lunches I have several examples of small c energy reminding me that this is where the power lives.  

small c art wall

Starting with the small c has helped me to move onto some middle-sized c creative work.  I finished this oil pastel drawing while I was Santa Cruz.  I just got started with watercolor this weekend (something I have zero experience with).  I’ve been knitting too, which feels pretty chill but still adds and element of small c connection to my life.  

• 

• 

• 

The piano and my voice continue to be sources of small c.  I think of singing along with my car stereo in that context now.  Learning to play piano by chords has really freed up the piano to become a small c-type exercise.  I can play almost any song and process the emotion of it through the keys and my voice.  It’s powerful.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhVQdrbCUMQu0026feature=youtu.be

So what’s the benefit of small c?  What can you really get out of it besides mediocre art?

The main benefit I see is that I have developed a comfort level with myself.  I have come to know myself through small c.  I’ve started to hear my inner voice through the writing I do here and in my journal.  The inner voice has grown more recognizable as I assuaged the inner critic with a reminder that this doesn’t have to be good.  My inner critic told me the leaves of the watercolor plant should be green but my inner voice thought rainbow might be nice.  

When I do small c creativity, I start to hear the difference between the two—the inner voice and inner critic.  But small c dials back the intensity so a risk becomes less scary.  

I use small c in the way I live my life, as I’ve left behind the manual for living that I used to follow.  Small c invites curiosity, What if I told the truth? What if I said the hard thing? 

What kind of small c are you doing?

Be bad at ANYTHING

I’m a big advocate of journaling.  The habit of indulging myself on the page has become a life-changing, enriching, emboldening, expansive endeavor.  I write about stupid things.  I joke that if my posterity ever read my journal they’ll be like, “Who is [fill in the blank] for whoever is causing drama in my psyche?”

“It’s not important!” I’ll reply. 

“Yeah, but that name is mentioned like 7000 times in here!” And because it's in a word document they can ctrl+F and actually get an accurate count. *Sigh.*

Then I’ll reply with some sage wisdom about how what is going on in life is always more about you and less about the other people that step in to fill certain roles.

Because it’s been such a helpful tool for me, I have trouble not advising everyone to journal all the time.   But this isn’t fair—because some of us aren’t writers!  What if someone told me, Michelle, I really need you to sculpt this life experience—like pour it all into a sculpture.  Make me know what you are feeling and doing and being in this moment with clay…or worse—marble.

I would respond with a lot of fear and drama in my head because I know nothing about sculpture.  I could do it.  I’m confident of that.  If I applied myself, I could produce some piece of sculpture that would represent a piece of me.  It might take me 30 years but I could do it.  But WRITING is so much EASIER--for me!

So there is something to are said for picking a medium of expression that feels somewhat natural.  Maybe you have some skill with drawing or photography or singing or welding metal fragments.  There are so many ways to express oneself--the point is to pick one!

What holds us back from picking one is the inner critic.  It’s the voice that develops at some point between the time we are first introduced to crayons and the seventh grade.  It’s the voice that says, You aren’t any good at this.  This is stupid.  No one wants to read this.  That drawing doesn't even look like a person.  That critic becomes somewhat helpful as we navigate school, friends, college and career selection.  That voice can push us into areas where we have natural ability.  But eventually it becomes a crippling companion.  It’s the Tanya Harding brute force that takes us out at the knees.  It’s ugly.

So the first step is in identifying the voice of that critic.  When it pipes up, just take note, hear what it says.  Then realize that you are not bound to it.  You are free to be BAD at anything you put your mind to!  

There it is.

You can do anything as long as you’re willing to be bad at it.

You are hereby liberated!

So the choice in medium becomes less important—do what fills you in this moment!  I’ll admit, writing was a natural choice for me.  I chose it because I felt I was already a little good at it.  That’s okay!  And some days I draw and I’m really VERY mediocre at drawing but, when I’m most successful is when I’m willing to be bad at it!  I like drawing and maybe some day I’ll take some classes and figure out how to be better at it, but why should that stop me from expressing myself that way now!?!

There’s an unspoken rule, once you reach real adulthood (I’m not talking age 18—I mean the time in life when you can really do you) that you should only do things you are good at.  That rule is silly.  And it sucks.  Literally it sucks all the fun out of life.

Recently, I’ve been reacquainting myself with the piano.  I took lessons from age 8-15.  I *should* be quite proficient with that amount of lessons under my belt, but I’m just okay.  That just-okayness held me back from playing for years and years!  And I LOVE playing the piano.  Finally I decided that was silly.  When I got a piano in my home, I considered taking lessons to get myself up to a proficient state, but then I chucked that idea right out.  NO!  I’m going to allow myself to be bad at it. Taking lessons so I feel worthy to grace an instrument I love with my music was so silly.  I’m worthy right now.

I’m taking opportunities to challenge myself in this way.  I selected some challenging songs that I love.  One of them is from A Star Is Born and performed by Lady Gaga.  I do my best to play and sing like Lady Gaga, which is hilarious!  But I tell you what!  I get a lot closer to sounding like Gaga by shamelessly TRYING than I ever did by playing small.  You won’t see me on America’s Got Talent EVER, but if you want a private, amateur performance in my living room—then I’m your gal!  And all that’s changed is my willingness to be bad at it.

The same thing applies to surfing.  Every time I paddle out, I face some of the same old insecurity demons.  Then I just decide I’m totally fine being the worst surfer in the water and sometimes I am, and sometimes that mentality allows me to immerse myself so fully into surfing I completely forget about the ranking system and just surf!

I love how Mark Nepo describes this.  He says that when we are gifted with something, it’s tradition to be told that we should become that thing.  If I’m decent at writing, people will say, “You should be a writer.”

“But the power is in the DOING, not the in the BEING,” Mark says.  The power is in the verb, not the noun.  So forget about being a writer, and write!  Forget about being a singer, and sing!  Forget about being a surfer, and surf!  Focus on the verb!  Do the thing!  Pick the medium!  Be the YOU doing the things that bring you to life!

This is my commitment to myself—to continue to allow me to be bad at things—because that’s where all the power and all the life is!  Here’s your permission slip to do the same!  Namaste.

Kids are the best examples of immersion. R just spent 90 minutes outside tonight relocating muddy water in cupfuls to different locations in the yard...mud might be his preferred medium...

You can make anything!

Ruby and Don

There are two places in the world where you can find evidence of my great-grandmother, Ruby Evelyn Hines.  One is a stretch of farmland situated on Marsh Creek in Southern Idaho.  I grew up visiting my grandparents on the farm every summer and every Christmas.  From the beginning of my remembering life, Great-grandma Ruby stayed in a little yellow trailer house, next to the original farmhouse where my grandparents lived.  When we arrived for a visit, we would often pass Ruby, out for a walk on the narrow lane.  My sisters and I would venture over to her trailer house after greeting my grandparents.  I remember her answering the door with a generous smile, asking, “Now, who are you?”  Ruby had Alzheimer’s and didn’t remember our names but she always invited us in to examine her trinkets and treasures and feed us a snack.

Ruby married my great-grandfather, Vivian (yes, you read that name correctly), when she was only sixteen.  Ruby didn’t seem to shy away from work.  She frequently worked along side V (as she affectionally refers to him in her journal) in the fields, kept a garden, kept bees, sewed, knitted, crocheted, and cooked for her family and the farm help.  

Four years after their marriage, my grandfather, Don, was born.  He was their only child and she was a powerful mother.  She traveled once a year with my grandpa on the train to Oregon to visit her family.  I like thinking of them as a brave, little duo, working hard and loving hard.  My grandpa speaks of his mother with such affection that I know this must be true.  With a twinkle of admiration in his eyes, my grandpa recalls that his mother had BIG arms.  “I could never milk a cow as fast as she could!”

The other place you can find Ruby is a little quarter-acre lot in Southwestern Arizona.  When my grandpa was experienced enough to take over the farming operation, V and Ruby retired to the desert in a travel trailer for the winter months.  I didn’t visit this place until several years after her passing so I don’t know, first hand, what it meant to her, but her spirit is alive and well there.     

Flowering cactus surrounded by quartz

When I visited a few weeks ago, I found a journal of hers from 1960.  Ruby recorded, in a few sentences, what she did each day of that year.  Most days there was a report of the weather, including high and low temperatures.  I imagine that spending the winter months in the mild climate of the Southwest felt like a luxury worth recording.  The weather report was usually followed by some tasks she completed, like knitting, baking bread, letter writing, cutting V’s hair or sewing.  There were days they spent on the road, days V spent fishing, evenings Ruby spent rock hunting, trips to Mexico, trips to beaches of the Baja peninsula, and evenings spent playing cards with friends.  The theme of the journal was her constant creativity.  Even in retirement, her days were spent creating.

There is a shed on the quarter-acre lot that houses a hodgepodge of artifacts, evidence of her creative life beyond the typical domestic arts.  Ruby collected hundreds of shells on the beaches of Mexico.  She drilled them and strung them on wire to make decorative baskets.  There are snuff containers of tiny colored shells that I imagine she purchased for a project that either never came to being or has since been lost.  I wonder if she collected the shells, simply for the pleasure of holding and having them, the same way I enjoy colored paperclips.   I find a tiny lizard skeleton in a lidless canning jar.  The desert holds onto him in the same way it retains these pieces of Ruby and V.  

Ruby's collection

Ruby moved around a lot as a girl.  Her father was one of those people that hated to stay in one place. During her childhood they made their way from Kansas to Colorado, back to Kansas, to Oregon, then back to Kansas, back to Oregon, then Idaho.  They moved three times while in Idaho before Ruby married V at age 16.  I imagine it felt good to stay in one place! But I also think all of this moving may have taught Ruby from a young age, to love the place that’s in front of your face.  For a woman who spent much of her life trying to make green things grow, and visiting her extended family in forested Oregon, she clearly loved the desert.  She must have been an avid rockhound because the barren ground is covered in unique mineral specimen, deliberately placed at the foot of decades old cacti.  This is the bit of Arizona that I remember from traveling there as a kid.

What Ruby created on the desert floor around her 1950s Spartan park model trailer, is completely worthy of designation as American folk art.  Mosaics constructed from naturally colored stone stretch out in each direction.  And what I love most about it, besides the fact that it still exists today, disturbed only by the spring weeds and some years of desert dust, is that she did it for the pure love of making it.  Why else?!?     

Elizabeth Gilbert wrote this:

“Creativity is sacred, and it is not sacred. What we make matters enormously, and it doesn’t matter at all. We toil alone, and we are accompanied by spirits. We are terrified, and we are brave. Art is a crushing chore and a wonderful privilege. Only when we are at our most playful can divinity finally get serious with us. Make space for all these paradoxes to be equally true inside your soul, and I promise—you can make anything.”

Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

Sometimes creativity feels like a crushing chore, but when I think about Ruby it feels more an attitude.  An irrepressible impulse that played out in the bread she baked, the cows she milked, the clothing she sewed, the baskets she constructed, the beets she hoed, and the rocks she laid.  Her mosaics matter enormously and not at all, in the same way that each life matters enormously and not at all.

Ruby Jr.

I have a niece who shares her great-great-grandmother’s name.  Along with the name, she bears a physical resemblance and the same penchant for artistic expression.  My 93-year-old grandfather cannot look at Ruby without tearing up, overwhelmed with memories of his mother.  I’m reminded that maybe that’s the greatest creative legacy we leave behind—the people.  I see her strong arms on my sister.  I see her precision and artistry in my father.  I see her quiet, enormous heart in my grandfather.  And I see her ability to make any place feel like home in me. To carry Ruby forward in the world in our spiritual DNA--what a sacred privilege!

There is beauty in the wobble.

Saul was one of the first patients in San Diego to scream at me.  I remember the first time seeing him.  I went into the field with my nurse to see patients in their homes.  We came to his independent living facility (ILF), which was house in a poorer neighborhood in San Diego.  I followed my nurse, Annie, into the house, into the kitchen, down the hallway.  She was calling out the patient’s name.  He appeared from one of the bedrooms.  There were other residents of the house watching us, not bothered by what is a very routine intrusion.  

My patient, I’ll call him Saul, was angry about not having Artane, one of his medications.  He spoke quickly, his eyes pried wide open; he was visibly dirty, his hair short but pushed up in strange directions.  He was wearing an oversized camo jacket, a t-shirt and cargo pants.  The conversation about medication changed course erratically.  I tried to introduce myself but he looked at me with disdain and rambled on.  Soon he was mumbling out threats about bombs, becoming more animated and difficult to understand.  I followed Annie’s lead as we walked out of the house and Saul followed us.  We got back into her car and Saul stood by Annie’s window gesturing wildly, now screaming about Artane and bombs.  She offered him a bottle of water through her cracked window but he refused.  She pulled forward carefully and we left Saul there standing in the street shouting.  This was one version of Saul.

There was another version that appeared months later.  I drove to a different ILF to see Saul.  By this time I had begun seeing patients on my own in their homes.  Saul emerged from a quiet house where I was not invited in.  We sat in some lawn chairs on the driveway.  He was silent, eerily so.  I asked him all of my usual questions about sleep and mood and appetite and medication.  His gesticulated quiet, one-word responses. He was losing weight. He complained of being hungry frequently.  Since he appeared to have stopped using meth, I wondered if he was on too much antipsychotic medication and being dulled by that.  I offered to reduce his medication and he agreed to this.  I suggested supplementing with food from food banks but he quietly and hopelessly said the others in the house would eat it.  

There was another version of Saul that was in my office only a few weeks ago.  His hair was dyed jet black.  He was wearing an ill-fitting sport jacket and a button down shirt.  He was happy and relatively at ease.  We went through the regular questions.  His thoughts were linear and easy to follow.  He wasn’t what anyone would describe as “normal” but he was good.  Saul looked good and he felt well.  A few days later he was dead from methamphetamine overdose.

I have other stories about my psychiatric patients that sound more like successes.  I like telling those stories better.  But what I’m really learning to appreciate is the wobble.  The wobble is the the fluctuation between the ups and the downs, the victories and defeats, the moments when I feel my capability and the ones when I feel my weakness.  I used to spend so much time focusing on those high points that I forgot about the beauty of the lower half of the curve.  And there is beauty there.  

Maybe we miss it because the cycle happens too quickly.  A couple of days ago I got an upsetting text from my ex-husband.  I responded reasonably, initially, but then I devolved.  I felt justified.  I probably was.  That night was a bit of a tailspin.  I chose to numb out the fear and pain rather than let it pass through me.  I went to sleep early.  

The next morning I woke to my alarm at 7am.  There were broken rain clouds visible through my bedroom window. I could see the wind was blowing so there was a thought that I should stay in bed—a compelling, logical thought.  I had another thought too: “You have R this weekend so this is the last morning for the next four days when you have the luxury of being able to walk to a coffee shop and sit and write.”  This was enough to get me out from beneath the covers and on my way.  

The morning air was crisp and the big clouds were more majestic than threatening.  The little neighborhood coffee shop was buzzing with caffeine and good mornings.  I sat down with my laptop to write and I pulled out what I had been reading the night before: 

“Only birth can conquer death—the birth, not of the old thing again, but of something new. Within the soul, within the body social, there must be—if we are to experience long survival—a continuous “recurrence of birth” (palengenesia) to nullify the unremitting recurrences of death.  For it is by means of our own victories, if we are not regenerated, that the work of Nemesis is wrought: doom breaks from the shell of our very virtue.  Peace then is a snare; war is a snare; change is a snare; permanence is a snare.  When our day is come for the victory of death, death closes in; there is nothing we can do, except be crucified—and resurrected; dismembered totally, and then reborn.”

A Hero With A Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell

I realized that I had been reborn in the morning.  I shook off the night before and rose again.  Maybe that is all we are asked to to. Rise again.  Rise again.  Rise again.  The happy ending we dream of, we wait for, we anticipate with bated breath, maybe it’s just the transcendence of the rise.  It’s the moment when I pop my head above the cloud cover and feel the warm sun on my face.  Even as I know I will sink down under the gray layer again.  It’s inevitable!

So the other night I was dismembered and the next morning I am reborn.  The acceptance of this cycle/process feels free.  It means that I don’t have to mire myself in shame, I can simply wake in the morning, wonder at my dismemberment for a moment, then shake it off and be born new.  As I walked home from the coffee shop, I thought about the ways nature teaches this: the daily sunrise and sunset, the seasons, the lifecycles of plants, insects, animals.  It’s like God was thinking, “I’ll just repeat this symbol absolutely everywhere I can so maybe they can get it.”  There is beauty in the wobble.  I see it, even in the life of my patient, Saul, who never freed himself from the numbing agents.  I see it because I witnessed some of the occasions when he poked his head above the clouds and felt the sunshine on his face.  And surly a God that teaches us to rise again in every iteration of nature, legend, scripture, folklore and fairytale, has made a way for us to rise again.   

Evictions and invitations

After I wrote my last post I have been using, “I’m just going to dance,” as a mantra.  It’s been quite useful, but because life is what it is, it’s been a struggle to keep dancing. Just wanted to reality check that.  I’m still repeating, still working to do it.  I do feel like I’ve risen to a new level in this process I’m working in but, as I keep learning, progress does not equal comfort. 

I’ve been through a meaningful clean-out this week.  I passed on most of River’s baby items to people who could use them.  As someone who waited a long time to have a child (“long time” qualified as such by nothing but my own expectations) and is now facing the possibility that I might not have any more children, this was emotional.  I also sold my longtime companion car (read here if you missed the tribute).  It was time for the car to go and I felt ready, but the experience of selling a car on Craigslist was a little harrowing.  Nothing bad happened but I felt extremely vulnerable, standing under a streetlight in the otherwise dark, holding River, while three grown men examined my car and then haggled with me over the price.  It’s an experience I never anticipated having and I hope to not repeat.

All of this moving-on business has prompted me to think about evictions. 

When I was about 11 years old, a big shift happened in my family.  Around this time my grandpa was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  His prognosis was poor.  I was young so I don’t understand everything that played into this, but I know it broke something open in mom. She began spending long periods of time in her room, in bed, with the door closed.  When I came home from school, I was met with a serious expression and relative silence.  Before this time there had always been pleasant chatter and busy flow of housework, homework, errands and dinner prep. 

Glennon Doyle described this kind of experience as an eviction from your life.  It’s a point in time in which something changes in a way that makes it impossible to return to your previous existence.  Effectively you cannot go home.  You cannot return to your previous way of living because something fundamental inside or outside of you has changed.

I think my mom would identify this time period as one of her life evictions.  It was my first.  It was the first time I remember understanding that life was bigger than my childhood problems.  That the adults in my life were facing things that were bigger and more complex than I could understand.  I searched for a way to make sense of it and my role within it.  This is when I started to worry about getting good grades.  I started thinking about college.  I started to TRY to get along with my sisters.  I started to believe that if I could be and do enough good, I could control my life and, to some degree, the lives of those around me.

Eviction #2 happened about ten years later.  I was 20 years old when I got married.  Five months after the wedding, I had a septoplasty and turbinate reduction surgery. This was to help me breathe better but was mostly in response to recurrent, severe headaches that had been going on for years.  It was an outpatient procedure but I spent the entire day in the recovery room.  My blood pressure became very elevated during surgery and it took hours to bring it down.  The surgeon advised me get this checked out by my primary care doctor.  I was a BYU student at the time so I went to student health and told the doctor what had happened.  Thankfully she took it seriously.  She began ordering tests to evaluate my cardiovascular and endocrine function.  After a bunch of tests and a misread CT scan that was thankfully given a second look, a tumor was found in the back of my abdominal cavity behind my pancreas. 

I had an incredibly invasive surgery to remove the tumor, followed by another incredibly invasive surgery four months later.  This was my second eviction.  I dealt with this in a similar way to my first.  I put my head down and went to work.  I looked for things I could control to take care of the things I couldn’t.  I went on like this for 11 years. 

I was 31 when I became pregnant with R.  I waited a long time to have a child and I was so excited to be pregnant and bring this little human into existence.  I don’t think it matters what you circumstances are, having a child is an eviction from your life!  It’s something you can’t adequately prepare for, no matter what.  Having R was the best kind of eviction.  Holding my sweet boy, feeling the incredible love I felt for him and believing that God’s love for him was even more perfect than mine—that was the impetus for me.  That’s when I started to believe that God loved me and he wanted something more for me than my self-mandated, contrived existence. 

This is when I realized I couldn’t continue—I couldn’t fulfill the measure of my creation, within my marriage.  This marked the most meaningful eviction to that point.  That’s the thing about evictions.  They are uncomfortable.  They are supposed to be.  During the past two years, there have been several times when I have longed to go home.  To return to some feeling of normalcy in life.  But whenever I think about this, I try to picture what that would look like and where it would be.  And I realize, it doesn’t exist anymore.  I cannot go home.  Like those whose homes were destroyed in the terrible fires in California this past week, I could return to the lot and I would find a field of charred and scattered debris.  What was there before, only exists in my memory.

This is where the invitation comes in.  An eviction always comes with an invitation.  An invitation to rebuild, to grow, to expand, to understand, to let go, to reach.  These are invitations that I would ignore without the preceding abrupt eviction.  Life in the status quo, however comfortable or uncomfortable, is familiar and it is so hard to let go of the familiar.  I don’t think God provides these evictions.  The world and life and biology are chaotic and complicated enough to ensure that we will find our necessary breaking points.  But God is always the inviter.  God is the one that invites us to turn shit into gold.  It is up to us to accept the invitation—to “trust the inviter,” as Glennon suggests.

When have you felt this eviction/invitation?   

Today my invitation is, not to wait for the downhill stretch, but to get comfortable in the climb.  To stay open.  To love.  Namaste.