The End of the Season of Giving (and Not Giving)

Thank you for following my blog! 
Please keep an eye out for my TEDx talk that will be posted online in January 2020 - fingers crossed!

This is my latest blog - about giving and not giving, and real generosity. 
The End of the Season of Giving (and Not Giving)

Longing for Home at the Holidays

Thank you for reading my blog!  This essay is feature on Medium's publication Human Parts and is very meaningful to me at a look at loss of a sense of "home" after a great change such as divorce or death.
Longing for Home at the Holidays

Confessions of a Reluctant Assistant Volleyball Coach

Here's my latest essay - this one is kind of funny, but also from the heart.  Some surprising lessons from something stupid I agreed to do.

Confessions of a Reluctant Assistant Volleyball Coach

Sugar and Spice and What's Better Than Nice

Hello!  Thank you for taking the time to read my blog.  This one is about the pitfalls of being 'nice' - especially as a woman.

Sugar and Spice and What's Better Than Nice

Gen X in Middle Age - We Can Do Better

Thank you for reading my blog!  The link can be found below

https://medium.com/@katyfriedmanmil/genx-in-middle-age-we-can-get-old-better-64ec108733d9?source=friends_link&sk=95a90143009340e8e155ff482978bdd4

Searching for Blue Skies Before and After September 11

Hi All-
Thanks for reading this essay - it's a long one...looking at human cruelty and perhaps evil; how we make choices, and how do we cultivate the best in ourselves. 

https://humanparts.medium.com/searching-for-blue-skies-before-and-after-september-11-4d3c3919dda

Funeral Planning With My Family

Here is my latest on Medium.  Thanks for reading!
Funeral Planning with my Family

Summer, It Turns Me Upside Down

Thank you for reading my blog!  The link to Medium may be accessed here.

Summer, It Turns Me Upside Down

Saturday: Dreaming Big - My 'Wild and Precious Life'

Thank you for reading.  I think I've figured out how to make these links work from here, but if you ever have difficulty, please feel free to message me through Blogger. 

Dreaming Big - My 'Wild and Precious Life'

Thursday: Don't Judge My Grief

A Week of Little Thoughts About Life

I’ve worked with people who are grieving husbands, wives, adult children, miscarriages, stillborns, brothers, mothers, fathers, sisters, abortions, friends, and dogs.

When you read that sentence, you may have found yourself judging something about one of the losses I listed. You may have found yourself thinking, well, a dog isn’t the same as a father. Or, if she didn’t want to grieve an abortion, she shouldn’t have had one.

Or, you may have been on the receiving end of a judgement or assumption about your own grief, “Your mother died over a year ago…you should be moving on by now.” Or, “You never really knew your baby, that’s not the same as someone who has had a child for years and gotten to know them.” Or even, “You must miss your mom so much,” even though you and your mom were not close for years.

The problem with judging grief is that we never know the whole story. The grief someone experiences is in the context of their whole life –

· All the other relationships they have,

· Losses and trauma that have come before,

· Who and how they experience trust,

· What was the nature of that particular relationship,

· What were the griever’s hopes and expectations in life, and

· What is the general personality and coping of the griever

Some of the toughest grief I’ve ever witnessed is the loss of a spouse — especially when that marriage happened when people were young. I’ve worked with a number of wives, who married a high school sweetheart at around the time they were 18 or 20 years old. They moved from their parents’ home in with their husband. The marriages worked in part because the ‘kids’ who got married, grew up together. They formed everything about one another. I’ve found the wives to be strong and interesting women, who loved strong and interesting men. Their identities were individual, yet also bound together. When the husband dies after 30, 40 or more years, the wife is left to rebuild from the very core of her being.

Before I worked in grief, I would have had a bias — something like, “Listen — you get married. Someone’s got to die first and it’s usually the man. On some level, a person has to be prepared for this, right?” Do you read my judgement in that? One gift of working in the field of death, dying and grief is that my pre-conceived notions are challenged.

And I’ve found that I have to let them go.

A man I know lost his dad to suicide. The ‘story’ so often reflected from friends and extended family is that his dad ‘finally lost his battle with depression.’ This is an assumption about his dad and his grief, that he finds enraging. His dad did not suffer from lifelong depression and the circumstances that came together that opened the door to suicide remain mysterious and distressing.

If you are experiencing judgement around your grief you may also be experiencing rage, isolation, irritability, despair or confusion. You may be wondering, “Am I supposed to be feeling different than I am?”

You are the expert on your own grief and you are the expert on the person you love who died and the nature of that relationship.

The most grieved I’ve ever felt was when my marriage ended. Many people know about the end of my marriage and loved and supported me through that. My own aunt, whose husband (my uncle), died unexpectedly at the age of 65 said, “What you are going through is worse than what I went through. You don’t really get closure.” That felt incredibly supportive, but it also points to our human want to measure the weight of grief. This or that grief is worse or easier than another grief. Or we make assumptions that we know or can guess what that grief feels like for that person.

Human connection and support is essential — really the foundation of moving through the pain of grief. If you are grieving, life is asking something heroic of you — you must seek and accept what love and care others have to offer you, at the same time you accept that there is a part of grief you will walk alone. We are understood, but we may not be fully understood. Our loss is shared with those who love us, but it is exquisitely individual as well.

Be gentle with grievers. Be gentle with yourself.

Below is a pretty comprehensive list of grief resources. I would also add Compassionate Friends for child loss.

https://www.mastersincounseling.org/guide/loss-grief-bereavement/

Friday: No, I Don't Watch This Is Us

A Week of Little Thoughts About Life

One of the biggest mistakes I’ve ever made is letting my daughter read and watch the Twilight series the summer before 6th grade. Since then, she’s been a romance maniac. She loves to read and watch anything about romance and I can only hope that I’ve broadened her taste from Twilight and Titanic by adding in Mystic Pizza and Moonstruck. (Oh my God, I had no idea I loved Italians in love until I just wrote that sentence.)

So, it was in the vein of movies about love that she’s been jonesing to see the Bradley Cooper/Lady Gaga remake of A Star Is Born. Which we watched the other night. She loved it — the exquisite tragedy of their romance. I hated it.

It felt like going to work.

Depression, addiction, suicide. For a therapist, this is not what I would call entertainment, this is what I call sad.

I am a big advocate of stories. Stories, movies, song lyrics, fiction and poetry help us understand other people’s point of view and put ourselves in their shoes. It expands our understanding of the human experience and ignites our imagination — what would it have felt like to be second class on the Titanic? What would it feel like to get up on stage and sing a song for the first time in front of a stadium of people?

I spend many hours a week deeply imagining what it would be like to lose a father to suicide or cope with a child’s diagnosis with autism or live with a husband who seemed not to care that I’d been diagnosed with Parkinson’s.

I love my work. My work has made me who I am in so many ways. But in my free time, I don’t want to imagine what it’s like to hurt.

Sometimes, I like to watch very frivolous things like The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills (Camille is the WORST!). I like to be funny and silly as much as possible. I don’t like to borrow tragedy.

Mostly, the stories I find myself drawn to seem to draw out both the comic and the tragic. One of my very favorite movies is Little Miss Sunshine. One reason for this is that I can identify with each member of the family, but mostly the teenage boy.

I have an inner teenage persona who often shows up around the holidays. This angsty version of me is strikingly like the teenage boy in the movie The stress of the holidays, the time commitments, the rushing current from one family gathering to the next, the heightened feelings of family members — I draw on that teenager to be my pal — “Welcome to Hell” he writes on a sign that he holds up to show his uncle when his uncle comes to stay at their house after a failed love affair and suicide attempt. It never fails to both crack me up and comfort me. Do we all feel like this about our family sometimes? I am sure my son feels the same way when I am driving he and his friends to a movie.

But the glory of that movie is that each one of them is pursuing their dreams, showing up totally flawed, and in the end — through failure, death, tears, and laughter, they come together to love and support one another. They embrace their own chaos and foibles… and they dance.

In the 1700s, a philosopher named Horace Walpole wrote, “Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.” I get what he is saying — certainly a defense against becoming overwhelmed with suffering is a sense of humor.

So no, I didn’t see Manchester by the Sea. And I didn’t read Room. There are a lot of stories about bad and sad that I will not choose for entertainment.

I don’t see life as a comedy. That is simply insensitive. But I don’t see it as wholly tragic either.

What I see, is that we people are a mess.

We have immense potentials for good and for bad.

We don’t have as much control as we think we have.

There are forces at work far beyond our knowing.

There will always be horror; there will always be light.

I try to laugh, love and dance when I can.

Spoiler Alert: This is the end of Little Miss Sunshine — you have to watch to the end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkjhhNtW8JY

Wednesday: Questioning the Voice in your Head (Especially the Mean One)

Here's the blog o' the day.  Thank you for taking the time to follow the link and read my work! 

Ways to Question the Mean Voice In Your Head (Especially the Mean One)

Tuesday: Guilt, Anxiety and Breast Pumps - what's up with Parenting?

Hi!  I forgot to post this yesterday, but here it is.  Thank you for reading!

Tuesday: Guilt, Anxiety and Breast Pumps: What's Up with Parenting?

Monday: What I Practice

Thanks again for taking a look and sticking with me through my writing projects.  Here is my latest blog on Medium.  About Practice and Habits.  Monday: What I Practice

Sunday: Is It Time to Adjust?

Hello!  Thanks for visiting my blog - I'm attaching the link to Medium.  This week is a little writing experiment for me.  My blogs are usually about an 8 minute read - I am trying for a week to write little pieces that will be 'thoughts for the day' - about a 2-3 minute read.  Thank you for reading and supporting my writing!

Sunday: Is It Time to Adjust

Me, Alone in the World and Not Terrified

Hi! Thank you for taking the time to read my blog. I have a new publication on Medium and would be honored if you follow the link!

https://link.medium.com/u7eALRRYvXMe, Alone in the World and Not Terrified

Holier Than Thou

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog. I have posted it on Medium.   I would be honored if you chose to follow my writing on Medium and if you have any questions about that, please feel free to email me at katy.katymillertherapy@gmail.com. The link is below.

https://link.medium.com/xQ6kZdlaSW

Grief: You Won't Get An A

Hello!  I've written a piece and posted it to Medium.  I hope you'll follow this link there.  As always, I appreciate your reading my work!

https://medium.com/@katyfriedmanmil/grieving-you-wont-get-an-a-and-you-probably-wouldn-t-want-to-4ec7157715f?source=friends_link&sk=a46558e20afe7663165bcbccd27bd38f

I’ve posted a new blog to Medium. Thanks for checking it out.  I appreciate your reading my  work. https://link.medium.com/8TN0WpsqdW

Just Because Someone is Dead, Doesn't Mean You Have to Like Them

Hi everyone!  I've posted a new blog to Medium.  Please check it out and feel free to comment.  I appreciate that you read my work - I think this is a particularly interesting one. 

Just Because Someone is Dead, Doesn't Mean You Have to Like Them

The Fine Print and the Golden Rule: Where Codepence Meets Common Sense

I’ve posted a new blog to Medium.  Please check it out at

https://link.medium.com/SJEAwNvesV

When the River Meets the Sea: On Being Not One Place Or The Other Or Both Places at Once

I've written a new blog and hope you will check it out on Medium!  Thanks for reading!

Bouncing Into Graceland on Medium

Learning to Cook After Divorce. This is Not a Euphemism

I've written a new blogpost and you can find it at Medium on the link below.  Thanks for reading!

Learning to Cook After Divorcehttps://medium.com/@katyfriedmanmil/learning-to-cook-after-divorce-this-is-not-a-euphemism-8de830102fe7

Dear MAGA-hat wearing student,

I've written a new blog- please check it out at the link below

Dear MAGA hat wearing student,

Wine, Weed, and Dry January: A Therapist's Eye View

First, I know I am supposed to be cool with weed.  Is seems like so many people - from 16 years old to 70 smoke or take edibles these days.  And like you, I often hear, "it's better than alcohol."

Yes, I know I'm supposed to 'be cool' with weed.  But something isn't sitting right with me.

I don't think it has to do with weed itself.  As I observe it, weed is probably no worse or better than alcohol (though illegal where I live).  I think it's the messaging increasingly being sold to us about substances - how to be social, how to have fun, and the 'harmlessness' of numbing out. 

I am no teetotaler, but, since it's 'dry January', a lot of us are looking at substances in our lives - what are our habits?  What are our problems?  What is too much?  Is there a right amount?


**********************************
Writing about substance use is difficult because it can sound so preachy and self-righteous.  So before I go any further, I will share a time when I did not use alcohol with mindfulness:

When my son was 13 months old, my sister got married in New York City.  My husband, my son and I flew on an airplane, which was REALLY something I was dreading.  I can't describe adequately my anxiety and dread because he was prone to ear infections (my son, not my then-husband), and had been a pretty terrible sleeper for the first year of his life.  I was a worrying, first time mom, with a baby who didn't yet walk, screamed louder than I've ever heard a baby scream before or since, and who was not going to like flying.

And yes, he got an ear infection on the plane ride to my sister's wedding.

It was with both increased anxiety and also relief that we left him with a babysitter to attend the rehearsal dinner.  I was pretty skinny because I never slept.  I hadn't had much alcohol in almost two years.  And I was sort of ready to cut loose.  I needed to relax.

Externally, I knew this weekend was about my sister and her marriage and husband.  Internally, I was on the edge of something, but didn't know what and didn't talk with anyone enough to have any perspective about.

At the rehearsal dinner, the waiters refilled our wine glasses every time we took a sip.  By 9pm, I was sloppy drunk and making crazy affirmations after every toast.  "Mmmmm-hmmmm!" I agreed with loud gusto, as if I were at a gospel service.  My sister looked at my husband and mouthed, "Get her out of here."

I rode in the back of a cab through Manhattan - a thirty one year old woman - with my mom and husband.  I barfed all night and basically blacked out.  I was painfully hung over for my sister's wedding.  It was horrible.  And I will never get that day back.  I will never get the chance to be a great, supportive, cheerleading, caregiving maid of honor for my sister again.  That sucks. 


********************************

I don't specialize in addiction recovery, but I've had the privilege of working with several people over the years who have been in recovery (sober) for some time and are working on other issues.  One of the many things I like so much about these clients, is that when you take alcohol or weed or other drugs off the table entirely, you often get a really fresh perspective on parts of life that many of us don't even question.

I remember a few years ago when a client who has been sober for a number of years was not yet married, but dating around.  She wondered how she would feel going out with a particular guy, since he was not in a recovery program.  He'd asked her out and she wondered if she'd feel uncomfortable with his friends and how she would be able to recognize if he were a problem drinker or a social drinker or how to distinguish these two things.  Ultimately, she decided to give the date a try - they were going to a sports event and meeting up with friends afterward.

When she walked into our next appointment, her eyes were wide.  "Did you know that most people drink alcoholically???" she asked me.  She went on to tell me that she'd socialized with other sober people for so long that she had no idea how pervasive it is to drink until buzzed or drunk, to drink and keep on drinking all night.  She'd imagined that most adults outgrew drinking excessively and that it was just alcoholics who didn't stop.

*************

When I'm working with people who suspect they might have a substance problem, none of them are stumbling, homeless, losing their jobs, or otherwise in a category you might outwardly look at and say, "Jeez, they need to get sober."  They are moms and students and business men.  They are 50, they are 21, they are 30, they are 75.  Mostly, they want to control their substance use, but are pretty hopeful that they won't have to quit altogether.  I don't think they are different from many, many people I know.

There are a few themes that people primarily talk about with me when concerned about their substance use:

• Will I be fun or have fun without it?
• Not drinking does not fit in with my social circles.  How will I explain this to others, including my family, who are all hefty drinkers. (Annie Grace says, in her interesting book, "This Naked Mind", that alcohol is the only drug that you have to explain to others why you are NOT indulging in.
• Drinking/smoking/taking pills has become a habit.  I don't think I'm addicted, but I find stopping the habit very difficult.
• I am so anxious and alcohol or weed helps me deal with my anxiety, but it also seems to make me more anxious eventually
• I know if I weren't buzzed after work, I'd be more engaged with my family or fight less with my family, but I also enjoy the feeling of the buzz

****************

I asked one of my colleagues, a 68 year old woman,  a number of years back, about what drinking was like when she was in college.  "Oh yeah," she said.  "People drank in college.  I think the difference is that no one wanted to look drunk, Especially if you were a woman.  You wanted to look cool and sophisticated and like you had it under control.  Now, kids take pictures of each other puking and post it on social media.  Or passed out.  That's very different."

I can't help but think of other ways the norms have changed around drinking (not to mention smoking pot) in the past couple of decades.  Like parenting.  My kids are teenagers now - I think I was an the early cusp of the 'mom so hard' thinking/drinking.  Like, "Being a mom is so tough, we need some wine for the 3pm playdate."  And it continues and it's not just moms.  I noticed this Halloween that many parents carried a to-go cup or sat at the firepit with beer and wine while their kids trick or treated.  I don't remember the parenting drinking being that pervasive in the 1970s, 80s, or even the 90s.   Is it harmless?  Is it communal and fun?  Is it avoidance?  Is it numbing?

And I wonder if this is a 'white person' phenomena.  Is it an upper middle class thing?  What are the economics on a big scale (Marketing?  Reality TV?).  What are the drivers on an individual scale?  (Stress?  Pace of life?  iPhones?)

*****************

Like I said,  I'm not an addictions counselor, but I get to talk with a lot of people on a very deep level for my job, and for that I am so grateful.  I am grateful because I think I get to understand people and I can see patterns and universalities in our experiences.

My number one concern about people and alcohol, weed, or pills is the allure of numbing out.  The way it creates for us and in us, a virtual reality.

I know lots of people with lots of understandable reasons to want to numb out.  That's exactly how I felt as a new mom (the one with the redheaded, highly verbal, army-crawling, ear-ache-y baby.  I wanted to numb out so much, I didn't even know how much. And, I certainly wasn't aware of all the reasons why.

And other people -  people who've lost brothers in terrible accidents. Mothers who've lost babies. Caregivers who give 110% of themselves every day to others.  People who come from families with addiction and mental illness.  I know Type A personalities who DO IT ALL.  I know people who have generalized anxiety and their brains don't seem to rest.  I know regular folks with regular problems who are just trying to get by in this life.

The problem with low grade drugs like alcohol or marijuana is the self-perpetuating ease with which you can maintain a normal life, but remain functional at a lower level.  You still tuck your kids in to bed, but you just don't precisely remember what you talked about.  You still drive home from the trivia night, but you wonder if maybe you shouldn't have.  You still get up for work in the morning, but you definitely need a couple advil for that headache.  Your sister reminds you that you already talked about mom's doctor's appointment, but you realize it was after the work happy hour, so it just didn't stay with you.  You wonder if you and your wife wouldn't bicker at night so often if you didn't split that bottle of wine.

Numbing out is quiet and insidious and in the end, it steals your life from you.

********************

My work in death and dying shapes everything about the way I look at life.  So knowing what the end of life is like, I ponder much of the time about what makes the living of our lives optimally satisfying.

Interestingly, I also see potential for drug use at the end of life (supervised by a doctor).  There are good results for people in hospice who have fear and anxiety around death, who take medically supervised hallucinogenics.  Most things are not all or nothing.

But in general, I don't think numbing out is good for us.   I don't think we are fully having fun, most of the time, when we are numb.  I don't mean it's never ok to cut loose, or even have such a bad day that you have a couple of beers or glasses of wine.  But, I observe that making a habit of numbing will undermine everything about our lives over time  - our relationships, the quality of our thinking, our own sense of vitality and gratitude.  Numbing will dumb us.  If not today, next week, or next month, next year.

*******************
Many times I will say to clients, "I have a bias.  I have worked with people at the end of life for so long, that I often look at everything from the perspective of, 'When I am 95 years old and on my death bed, will I be happy with the choices I made.  Will I feel satisfied?  Will I have lived the life I wanted and be proud of what I have to show?'"

When I say this, my client will look back at me with a shine in their eyes.  They want this for themselves and they know one type of death or another is out their in their future...the answer to those questions is up to the choices we all make now.

So whether this is a Dry January for you or not, it is my hope that every day you will be awake and alive to life, in all it's imperfection.  If you are fully awake, your life is truly yours.


 **********************

Resources:

If you are looking at the place of substance in your life, an interesting new book that was recently recommended to me is This Naked Mind by Annie Grace.

Google Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon.

National Institute on Drug Abuse