Sharing Gratitude: The Antidote to Despair

This morning I woke up with a terrible headache. My throat was raw. When I looked outside, the sky looked gray. Naively hoping for some rain I peeked my head out to see if the pavement was wet. But the sun was a bright orange orb so I knew that it wasn’t a cloudy sky I was looking at. It was smoke from fires burning from our Canadian neighbors north of us.

Shit. We’re back here. The temperature is record-breaking high in the Pacific Northwest and we smoke season has returned. After a month of respite from the pandemic, the Delta variant of COVID has reared its head and I can feel myself and those around me sneaking back into hiding.

Where do we go when it feels like there is danger all around us — literally. In my house with no air conditioning, we have to close all of the windows so no smoke gets in. We can’t go outside to escape the heat. We can’t go to a friend’s home to retreat because indoor socializing is again unsafe. 

The truth is we are materially fine. We have a cool basement, plenty of water, food, technology, and reading material. Psychically though, I worry. I feel like Princess Lea in the trash compactor scene in Star Wars. The walls are closing in and I don’t have the strength to push them back out. All of these things — the temperature, the smoke, and COVID are out of my control.

After closing the windows and setting up fans to cool the house for the day I called my aunt.

“Hi!!!,” she said enthusiastically when she answered. “Laura, it was so great to have you visit last month. I really loved it!”

My daughter, her friend, and I visited my aunt and cousins a few weeks earlier, a time that felt much further away. 

“That trip felt like the last hurrah,” my aunt said, “things feel dangerous, and I’m so glad we got to have that time together.”

My aunt is also in heat and smoke territory and also affected by COVID, but today she was happy. And grateful. We caught up for ten minutes and then said goodbye.

When I hung up I felt better. The world is a mess. I am fighting off despair for all of the things I cannot control on a daily basis. But there are also moments, lots of them, to be grateful for. 

That’s the antidote. It seems so simple, but it works. Gratitude. Just the short exchange with my aunt where she shared her gratitude and invited me to feel my own gave me a pause, a chance to reflect on what is good in the midst of all of this bad.

I keep a gratitude journal and write three things I am grateful for every night. It helps, but in these times where there is bad news all over, maybe I, maybe we, need more. Talking to my aunt this morning helped me realize that we can help each other and ourselves at the same time. 

There are things to be grateful for every day. Instead of storing these gratitudes up until bedtime and writing them in a book that no one will ever see, I am going to make phone calls and send texts to people to share my gratitude throughout the day. It can’t hurt. I’ll report back and tell you all if it helps. I think it will. 

The Earth is on Hospice

This morning when I woke up the first conversation of the day was about the pandemic. My partner Nancy was wondering if she should take back her downtown office or stay virtual. With the Delta variant of COVID so much is unknown. 

At the end of our conversation, I said, “If we didn’t have the pandemic happening right now what do you think we’d be talking about?”

“Climate change,” she said. 

Duh. Of course that’s what we’d be talking about. Through all of this mayhem that’s afflicting humanity on our planet —  the sickness, the death, the polarizing vax-anti-vax strife ripping apart families and communities — the very planet we are living on is dying.

We are back to a place of deep worry and fear about COVID. Our focus is there again — masking, distancing, getting vaccinated, or getting a booster. But while all of this is happening, in the background, the earth is on a respirator. I fear that we are beyond a cure for our beloved planet. The damage has been done and we continue to do it. 

During the first wave of the pandemic, I was among the group of people who believed that the grounding of humanity was a good thing for the earth. Our carbon emissions dropped. Pollution to our waterways decreased. Tourism dwindled, helping ecosystems recover. 

I wondered if the pandemic was our planet’s way of yelling at us humans, metaphorically and literally punishing us by sending us to our rooms and keeping us there until we shaped up. I hoped that maybe this virus was an indirect message to us all that would help us change the course of climate change. But has it?

In the last several years my family has gotten solar power, water cisterns, and an electric car. We’ve subscribed to an additional service that recycles items our local utilities cannot. We’ve stopped buying red meat. We’re trying everything we can to do our part. And I know so many other people are doing the same thing. I know there is good energy and focus going towards curbing the environmental devastation of the earth, but still, it’s not enough. 

The earth is on hospice. All the signs are there — the weather patterns, the fires and floods, and hurricanes and tornadoes, the extinction of animals. Our planet is sick and crying for help and more and more the research is saying that it may be too late. The earth is on hospice, in its final years.

I have a lot of experience with hospice. My father was on hospice many years ago and my stepfather is currently on hospice. When my dad was on hospice it was only for a few months. He had cancer and had tried everything — countless surgeries, multiple chemotherapies, radiation. And then it was clear. There was nothing else to do but accept that he would die. So we called hospice and waited.

We sat around Dad’s bed. We visited. We sang songs, told stories, held his hand, gave him ice cubes and sips of Hawaiian Punch. And we watched him die. Eventually, his breath slowed down. His eyes stopped opening. His body became eerily still. And then one morning he was gone. He was fifty-six. I wish we’d had a little bit more time. 

Currently, my ninety-three-year-old stepfather Al is on hospice. He has COPD and a blood disorder but is otherwise healthy. He is on hospice because he’s very old and because he’s very old, he’s dying. But he has no outstanding illnesses that plague him on a daily basis. There is no cancer in his body eating away until there is nothing left. He is simply old, coming to the end of his life. 

Al has been on hospice for a few years and then suddenly, a few months ago, he was removed from their care. The administrative team deemed him unqualified. They said there was really nothing wrong with him so they took him off of hospice. My mom felt abandoned — she had felt supported and understood by the hospice team. The nurse and the social worker helped her navigate Al’s care. His quality of life improved with hospice at his side and Mom depended on their expertise.

After two months of being off of hospice, they put my Al back on. I guess the administrative team realized that he was still dying and that he could still benefit from their care. 

When I think about our planet and read the depressing reports on the state of the environment, I sink into a state of paralyzing hopelessness. If our dear planet only has thirty years left where will that leave my daughter? What will happen to her and all of her peers? It’s too much to bear. Once my dad died, he was gone. There was no more Dad, just his memory and the feeling of missing him. I don’t want to accept that fate for the earth, not yet.

To get out of my despair paralysis, I have to have faith that we can make some change to the earth, that we nasty humans can be a force for good, that we can see beyond ourselves to care about something greater. The earth is on hospice. Like all planets, it will eventually die. But I hope the earth’s hospice experience is more like Al’s than Dad’s. I hope we have more time. I know we can’t turn the environmental destruction we’ve created completely around, but we have to try. 

We’re in another wave of COVID and that sucks. After a few months of freedom and ease, we’re back to being grounded. And maybe that’s what we need. The earth is on hospice and it’s the humans who are making our planet sicker. So maybe we should be sent to our rooms again, spend some time thinking about how we can do our part, all of us, to give the earth, and ourselves, a little bit more time. 

Quarantined Daughter

 

Last week my sixteen-year-old daughter Lucia went to an academic summer program in Psychology in Boston for a week. It was her first time doing something like this — flying on her own, going to a program with no one she knows, studying psychology, living in a dorm.

When Lucia got home she was exhausted and sniffly. She and her new friends from all over the country had bonded. She told us how the night before she got home she and her friends had stayed up all night watching the second season of Outer Banks and ordering pizza at 4 am. I wasn’t surprised that she felt under the weather.

But that evening Lucia’s best friend from camp, a young woman from Texas, called to tell her that she’d tested positive for COVID. Though vaccinated, she was indeed positive and had similar symptoms to my daughter-- fatigue, sore throat, runny nose. Then it was revealed that Lucia’s roommate, a sixteen-year-old from Florida, who was unvaccinated, was also feeling ill.

Our household went on high alert. Lucia went to her basement bedroom away from us and, in between irate emails and phone calls to the camp, I served her food and drink masked from the doorway until we could get her tested. Her symptoms got worse and my worry grew. Of our family members, I had been the most exposed to Lucia. I drove in the car from the airport and spent time hanging out with her when she got home. My partner Nancy had only seen her for a few minutes so she had minimal risk. Our household was a germ zone-- we were all isolating from each other, sleeping in separate rooms and masking all the time.

The day after Lucia got home was a Sunday and we couldn’t find anywhere to get a test for under $200 so we just rode it out in our masked fortress until Monday morning. We ate dinner outside on those nights before we could all get tested, each of us sitting in an Adirondack chair balancing a plate of food on our knees in a six-foot-sided isosceles triangle.

Besides that, I didn’t see Lucia very much. We’d FaceTime once or twice a day but she was isolated and untouchable. After a week away I wanted to ply her with questions, ask her what she’d learned, hug and kiss her, but I couldn’t. I checked in with Lucia several times a day to see what she needed. I brought her fruit plates and crudite. I delivered popsicles and orange juice. I made her trays of peppermint tea with a side of ibuprofen and a thermometer. I was worried about Lucia being sick but a part of me loved the opportunity to take care of her. 

On the second night of isolation during our outside dinner, Lucia was really chatty. She’d been alone in her room for hours on end and seemed desperate to chat. Though she was still feeling very tired and congested, she opened up about some of her deep thoughts. I imagined her during the day, lying in her bed, bored of TV and social media, all of these ideas, wonders, questions emerging with no one to talk to. 

The sky grew dark. It got cool out and Lucia went in to get us sweatshirts. We talked for almost two hours about topics ranging from her Meyers Briggs profile to her disdain for teenagers self-diagnosing on TikTok. She asked me questions about how I knew when to change careers and why I had made the life choices I had.

As we sat there talking I saw her differently. “You look different,” I said. 

“Mom, I look different because I’m sick,” she replied as she opened her phone and looked at her image. Her eyes were puffy and her cheeks a little bit more sunken than normal. She looked older. But she felt older too.

I had been back in caretaking mode for the past few days — meeting my daughter’s every need like I did when she was a toddler. But as we sat here together, her explaining her thoughts on personality disorders, I saw her as an adult and I felt a pang of so much loss and so much gain at the same time. It was a Freaky Friday moment — I wanted it all — baby Lucia and grown Lucia.

This morning Lucia’s COVID test came back negative. When I opened the scan and saw the results I felt awash in relief. She has one more to go to make sure, but if all goes well she only has one more day of quarantine. Today I will bring her plates of healthy food and check in on her regularly. Tonight we’ll eat dinner outside again. And I’m assuming her second test will be negative too. Then we’ll be back to normal life.

This has been an incredibly stressful time. I haven’t enjoyed the worry or anxiety, but I’ve learned a few things about myself. I love being a mother and I realize through this experience that I miss being needed like I used to be. It feels so easy, so concrete — bring the fruit, clear the dishes, straighten the pillows. 

The sharp contrast to that — Lucia more adult than child during our dinner conversations — makes me realize how excited I am for more of that part of motherhood too. I loved being a mother to a little girl and I love being a mother to a young woman. They are vastly different roles, and both are incredibly fulfilling. During these last few days, I have had the good fortune to experience both of them at the same time. That is a gift. The COVID scare sucked, but I appreciate the experiences that came from it. I am so grateful that Lucia is going to be okay because I really do love being her mother.

Our Bodies are Changing

Today at Gather, the consignment shop where I work, a woman came in and spent a half-hour perusing the racks. She was very thorough, filing through all of the racks-- small, medium, and large. She diligently sorted through the sale rack. In the end, she took only one dress into the dressing room. It's a dress I've been eyeing for months-- a long silk multi-patterned v-neck with bell sleeves. It's a dress that would not suit my body, but I was excited for it to belong to someone.

The woman went into the dressing room and came out to where I was standing. She stood in the entryway to the dressing rooms shyly. "Does this work?" She asked me. She looked stunning. The fitted patchwork of patterns hung perfectly on her body.

"I can't tell," she said, "because my body is changing with...." Here she hesitated. "My body is changing as I get older," she said. Then she pointed to her belly, the part of her body that many women in midlife struggle with. It struck me that she didn't say menopause, though we both knew that this was what she was referring to.

"I get it," I said, "My body is changing too and you really look wonderful in that dress."

Another customer in the dressing room next to the woman's echoed my praises and the decision was made. We chatted as I rang up her purchase and she told me that she was buying this dress to wear to her son's wedding. The original wedding has been during COVID and she had not been able to go-- just the bride and groom did the ceremony in a national park on top of a mountain. Her daughter-in-law's dress had the same colors as the dress she was purchasing and she was excited about that.

We talked a bit more about how shopping for her has changed because her body is so different now. I get it. Most women my age get it. No matter what we do, how we eat, or exercise, changes happen. 

The problem is not that our bodies are changing, it is that the changes are unwelcome. Being young, maintaining that young body status quo is what is expected of us, regardless of our age. But that's crazy. We're done with our reproductive years. Our bodies are getting more comfortable, more relaxed, parallelling the path many of us are on in other areas of our lives. At this stage in life, we deserve a little relaxation and comfort.

Seeing this beautiful woman doubt herself so much made me angry. She was beautiful. The shape of her belly was beautiful. The texture of the skin on her neck was beautiful. All of it. She looked great in that dress she chose for her son's wedding. But what she saw was the subtle change in her body, a change that she probably has no control over, that she's watched happen over the last several years,  a change that she's probably tried to manage with no success.

Menopause happens. Women live twenty, thirty, sometimes forty or fifty years beyond their reproductive years. Our hormones change because we no longer have that biological function. And with these hormonal changes our bodies morph into something different. What I would love to see is a focus on how productive, innovative and dynamic women are during those twenty to fifty years of menopausal life.

Besides humans, Orcas are one of the only other species to experience menopause. Their function in their pods is to help support their families, to gather enough food to support the baby whales. Elephants, don't technically go through menopause but the elder females are an important part of the herd. Where grandmother elephants are present, the babies live longer than when there is no female elder.

I'm starting menopause now. I feel liberated from so much-- the pressure to be as accomplished as I once was, the expectation that I will play the same social roles that I once did. I spend my time doing things I enjoy and seeing people I love. And my stomach isn't flat. 

Our roles change through the course of our lives. The focus of our strengths, energies, capacities changes. And so do our bodies. That's just a small part of menopause. It would be great if we could focus more on the wholeness of menopause instead of just that tiny part. Yes, our bodies change during menopause, but we can still find the perfect dress.

"I Have No Memory of That."

Last night I got together with four of my best friends. We gathered to celebrate one of our birthdays. We’re all in our fifties now — some of us more solidly than others. We’re tamer than we once were, choosing mocktails over bottomless bottles of wine. Post-pandemic it’s enough to simply get together. We don’t need a weekend trip or a restaurant for it to feel special.

Last night we talked about memory — about dementia in particular. Several of us are noticing it in our parents. We’re at a place right now where we’re noticing it a little bit in ourselves too. Not necessarily dementia, but the loss of memory.

I remember some things so clearly, yet other experiences are completely gone. The other night our houseguests reminded me that we’d had a whole pig at our wedding. “Really?,” I’d exclaimed, “I have no memory of that.” I think I didn’t remember because of all the things on that momentous day the food was the least important.

But I say that phrase all the time, “I have no memory of that.” My daughter worries that I have early Alzheimers. She wants me to get checked out. But there are no other signs other than the fact that I simply don’t remember certain things. 

I wonder if, over time, we simply adapt. The storage lockers of the mind get full and we have to purge some memories. I’ve started to do this in my home with memorabilia. I recently got rid of all of my old dolls. My grandfather used to bring me a doll from every county he visited. 

I had dolls from all over the world and used to love lining them up and looking at them. As I gave them one last lookover before putting them in the Goodwill pile, I had a flush of excitement, a feeling of happiness and contentment to see these dolls from my childhood. But I gave them away. There’s just no room for them anymore. 

In place of the storage room where I kept the dolls and other mostly unnecessary stuff, we created a new room, an office for me. It’s a beautiful clean space free of clutter, a fresh new space where I can create new memories. 

Last night at dinner with my friends I was impressed with how one of my friends recalled all the details from certain movies and television shows from our youth. “I have no memory of that,” I said over and over. I don’t remember details anymore — the restaurants I ate at, the parties I attended, even some friendships. But I do remember the feelings I’ve had at different stages of my life.

Last year one of my college roommates reminded me that we’d lived with another woman during our senior year. “I have no memory of that,” I said to her. I was convinced that she was wrong. But then, a few months later I saw a pile of albums at a garage sale and I remembered the two apartments across the hall that my friends and I shared in college. The front doors were just six feet apart and we often left them open so we could enjoy the stereo in both spaces.

I remember how one of my friends, a musician, played records- Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell, Sly and the Family Stone. I remember the feeling of living there — the sunny St. Louis mornings, the lazy weekend days. The feeling of independence. 

Sometimes when a friend or family member is sharing a memory in detail I wish I could go there with them, conjure the details and replay the experience like watching a movie for the second time. But for whatever reason much of this stuff is no longer available to me. 

I wonder if this is why I write — to capture the experiences, especially the feelings in my life. A few days ago my friend Kate and I were swimming in the lake. Our goal was to swim pier to pier, about half a mile. “Can you believe we used to do this a couple of times a week?” she said to me as we breaststroked our way north. “We did?” I said, “I have no memory of that.” 

But the next day we swam again. She reminded me how we trained in the lake for a triathlon with three other friends for two summers in a row. I couldn’t remember the details of the lake swimming but a smattering of other memories were sparked and I remembered the feelings from that time — how we laughed and cheered each other on, how grateful we were to finish the race. 

Right now the memory of gathering with my friends last night it fresh and clear — the delicious garbanzo bean chard dish our host made, the wonderful mocktails with funny names another made, the adorable gifts we shared with the birthday girl. I remember the things we talked about and the wallpaper patterns we looked at on the front porch. I probably won’t remember those details next year at this time, but I’ll remember the feeling I had — the joy of coming together to celebrate another passing year, the sense of ease we shared after so many years of friendship.

Sometimes I get frustrated that I can’t remember specific memories. It makes me feel like I’m aging too quickly; like I am losing something that I should retain. But I feel better now that I have a theory for what I think is happening. Like getting rid of my old dolls, I’m clearing out details that I don’t need anymore, making space for the present and the future. 

I am older now, but still relatively young, and I’ll need this space. I am making new memories every day and there’s simply no room in the limited space of my brain for all of the old and all of the new. “I have no memory of that,” is really no different from, “I ran out of space to store all that old stuff." I've had to purge the details, but I've retained the essence of the experiences, the feeling of the memories.

And I think this is all I really need — the memory of the feeling. Out with the old and in with the new. I have no memory of a lot of things, but I remember the important stuff and that’s good enough for me.

My Daughter Has Secrets and That's a Good Thing

When my daughter was little she didn’t keep secrets. She told me everything. Once when she was four, she told me that she and her friend snuck candy. She told me even though she knew she’d get in trouble for it. As she got older she began to sensor what she told me. She didn’t want to get in trouble and she didn’t want to hear my perspective on what she or a friend did, even if it wasn’t bad. 

Over the years my daughter has shared past-kept secrets with me. When she was fourteen she shared with me the true extent of the bullying she experienced a few years earlier. Sometimes she’ll share a memory from when she was really little — like how she thought her imaginary friends were actually real, just microscopic and only she could see them. She told me she kept this secret because she didn’t want anyone else to know they were actually real and try to see them.

My daughter is sixteen now and she has lots of secrets — big ones and little ones. She has a vibrant, active social life. She has a car and a driver’s license. She is independent and on her own most of the time. When she comes home I want her to tell me everything. But she rarely does. If the mood is right she might share a few details about a party or some other activity she did, but I know the big stuff, the important stuff she mostly keeps inside.

I’ve noticed that eventually, my daughter will share things about her life with me. She shares her secrets once enough time has passed that I will no longer have a strong reaction — negative or positive. I get it. She wants to preserve her secrets, to keep them precious, like sterling silver pieces wrapped in thin felt, in the dark, away from the ozone and hydrogen that will tarnish them. She is still processing the experience herself, figuring out what it means to her, how it feels in her own body. 

It’s smart. She knows that if she tells me I will have a feeling about it. It might just be the subtle reaction on my face. Or I might have a lecture to give or a personal experience of my own to share. Her secrets stay inside until she is ready to make them public, to hear the outside critique, the oohs and ahhs, the possible judgment and disappointment.

Recently my daughter shared a secret with me that surprised and shocked me. When she told me, I saw her from an angle I had not yet seen. In hearing her secret I felt like I knew her a little bit more but simultaneously realized that there is so much more that I do not know. There must be so many more secrets. 

In the moment after my daughter shared her secret, I felt closer to her. I felt happy and grateful that she had shared it with me. But I also felt the sense that I knew her a little bit less. With every secret my daughter holds onto, mulls over, churns around inside, with her friends, in her own mind, she is coming to know herself a little bit more. 

As my daughter’s sense of knowing herself grows, so too does my sense of unknowing her. I think this is the point. In the old days when my daughter told me everything, I was in charge of her life. I made all the decisions. I planned all the activities. I was always there to moderate playdates and meltdowns. 

But that’s not my role anymore. My daughter has to figure out most of that stuff on her own. She has to build her own interiority of wisdom that she can draw from to navigate her life. This begins with her secrets, the life experiences she holds, processes, deciphers on her own before she lets them out for review from me or anyone else.

When my daughter shares a secret it is like she is making a little crack in the armor — I can see inside just a tiny bit, a glimmer of light shining from inside out. I want to get a knife and wedge my way in, to make the crack bigger so I can see more, know more. 

This longing is familiar. It comes with being a parent of a teenager. Standing outside trying to look in, there is so much more I want to know. But I know that this is part of the process — my unknowing of my daughter becomes her knowing of herself. I know she will share her secrets when she is ready, but for now, they are all hers.

Evolution vs. Devolution

Yesterday my partner and I had a fight. We’d just come off of eleven days of family houseguests and we were both live wires — frayed and ready to spark. We had a fight, a small explosion, recovered, and went on to have a lovely night taking our teenage daughter and her cousin out to dinner. 

As we drove to the restaurant I reflected on how much my relationship with my partner has evolved. We’ve grown into a more functional, resilient team. We are more complex. We are better than we once were. I’ve been in relationships where this hasn’t been the case, where we’ve devolved. The combination of energies and personalities created a reverse system of movement into something worse, something destructive and unsustainable. And the relationship died; it had to end. 

At dinner, the four of us sat outside and enjoyed a long, lazy dinner together. We talked about college, relationships, dreams, fears, possibilities, and obstacles. We laughed, tasted each other’s meals, and asked each other questions. I was keenly aware of how special this experience was. It’s not easy to tie two wildly social sixteen-year-olds down in the heat of the summer, much less engage in two hours of engaged, focused conversation. 

Later in the evening when the girls had gone off to do their own thing, my partner and I reflected on how much these two sixteen-year-olds have evolved in the last few years. They live on opposite sides of the country so only see each other once or twice a year but they hold each other up, they support each other and each makes the other better.

The root of evolution is “volv” which means “roll” or “turn around.” Being involved in a relationship — whether it is romantic, professional, friendship, or other — means you are rolling somewhere. You are moving in some direction.

In relationships that are evolving, you are rolling out or forth — expanding, growing, moving into a better state of being. In relationships that are devolving, you are unrolling or coming undone, falling apart, ready to break up. 

I’ve been in devolving relationships — both friendship and romantic — and they’ve had to end. In those relationships, I was involved — rolling into — a connection with someone with whom I was not able to grow or expand; I was unable to roll out or towards something more expansive and enriching. 

As I’ve aged more of my relationships feel like they are evolving. I have more life experience, a better sense of discernment. I am more in touch with the micro emotions that signify a need for change, a shift in the direction I am rolling. 

Relationships are the hardest thing in the world. We all know, we can feel, when our relationships are rolling in the wrong direction. We feel less buoyant, less resilient. We feel decreased energy, a weaker constitution. And we can feel when our relationships are rolling in the right direction. The air feels lighter. The sun shines brighter. There are possibilities in the present moment and a sense of excitement for what will come next. 

The beauty of relationships is that they are always in motion, always changing, going in one direction or another. What’s important is that we check in from time to time and make sure we’re rolling in the right direction.