Asking for help

In the past year or so a couple events arose in my life that gave me cause to ask for help.   1) My job was downsized and 2) my mom got breast cancer.  To be blunt, those two life events sucked.  But, my life hasn't sucked.  There are many, many reasons my life not only hasn't sucked, but I would say has been overall, good.  But, the one reason I want to talk about is how I learned to ask for help, what I am still learning about asking for help, and what I hope might be helpful to others from my experience.

For a long time I didn't know I ever needed help for anything.  I come from a stubborn, proud Scotch heritage on my mom's side.  My grandmother was often one to say, "Keep your pride."  Asking for help, where I come from, is fine for other people, but not for us.  One time I told my mom (when my kids were very small and my husband was travelling and I was working, etc.) that I thought I was having a nervous breakdown.  "We don't have those," she replied.  Nervous breakdowns, apparently, are not allowed in our genetic makeup.  No one in my family was mean or cruel, but the idea was keep on keeping on.  There's good to that, of course, but like all things, in moderation.

So, at some point, I realized that there were moments in life that I might need help - I might need someone to drive me to the airport, I might like someone to keep me company after a crime was committed in my apartment building, I might want someone to just listen. 

Asking for help takes practice.  It takes practice to identify when you might need it.  It might take practice to overcome what you think of as your pride.  It might be that the people you ask for help are not available physically or emotionally.  That can be discouraging.  Like everything, I've learned to keep practicing and cast a wide net. 
When the tough stuff has come up for me recently, I've cast a wide net by using email. I emailed my personal, trusted extended group of friends.  I pretty much said, 'keep me and my family in your thoughts.'   The support, kindness, commiseration, and love I felt...well, I can't thank those people enough.  Help came in many, many forms - from encouraging emails, to job leads, to articles about breast cancer. 

In having some trouble asking for help, I know I am not alone.  But,  I think I'm doing a little better.  Like most of what has worked for my mental health is - try giving it a try.  Then, keep trying - if you ask the wrong people, try other people.  If you don't get the help you want or need this time, tweak it the next time.  Be specific.  Acknowledge your losses, but be grateful for what you have.

On a slight tangent, I'd like to acknowledge my friend and fellow poet, Kelli Allen who is doing some awesome work with poetry and vets.  If you love poetry and/or music lyrics, you may be especially interested and especially hopeful that this Missouri Warrior Writers Project might be the right help for some people at the right time.  Here's a link to her blog:  http://mowarriorwriters.wordpress.com/blog/

Take care! 

radical acceptance

Here's an article that I found interesting...information about the different types of therapeutic approaches  make us all better consumers of counseling/psychotherapy.  I think this approach has a lot of merit.
 
This is from the NY Times today:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/health/23lives.html . 

I don't have a lot of time to write this week, but I hope you find this thought-provoking.

save the ta tas!

In February this year my mom was diagnosed with Stage 1 breast cancer.  It's a huge relief for me to write that for two reasons: 1) though prose probably isn't my strongest suit, I am a writer; 2) one of the pillars of my own mental health is telling the truth. 

My mom, rightly, asked me not to blog about her diagnosis, treatment, etc, until she felt she had a good handle on the situation herself.  She gave me permission to write about this over the weekend, and I am grateful to her to allow me to share a little of her story and also my story as her daughter.

First the news:  my mom's prognosis is very good - Stage 1 is early and one of her docs said, "your mammogram saved your life."  So, ladies, don't avoid it  - go get your mammogram!  The type of cancer my mom had was an aggressive type, though, so her treatment team is being aggressive - she has had radiation and chemotherapy (she's still undergoing chemo) and a lumpectomy.  In the end, all signs point to long term health for my mom. 

So, I could blog a lot about what I've learned this Spring, the medical system pros and cons, the emotional impact this has had on me, but I think I'll revisit that another time  - what I'd like to write about is my family's participation in Race for the Cure in St. Louis this past Saturday and what that looked like and meant to me. 

My husband and kids and I drove downtown on Saturday morning at 7:30 to join the almost 70,000 people to 'race' for the cure (as you can imagine, with that many people within the 3 mile route in downtown St. Louis, there's little 'racing.') You know, in life it's easy to become cynical about and disappointed in human nature.  I often think of the movie, The "Princess Bride", when Wesley says to Buttercup, "Life is not fair, Highness, and anyone who tells you differently is selling you something."   It's for sure that cancer is not fair.  But, to see nearly 70,000 women, men, children, black people, while people, survivors, every type of person, really, getting together and essentially celebrating women they love  (some they have loved and lost), peacably, amicably, and with great good humor - oh my gosh - it was amazing!  It touched me and made me hopeful not just about curing cancer, but about fighting the cancer of cynicism, prejudice, ignorance, and hate.

I'd blogged previously about some of the ways it concerns me that women's bodies are not as valued as they should be.  This was the absolute counter to that.  There couldn't be a more wholesome, sweet celebration of boobs!   Again, I feel hopeful.

I think it is the Dalai Lama who suggests that hope is not very useful because it indicates that we are attached to an outcome.  I try to learn all I can from every smart and holy person who is available to me, so I try to really feel what he says.   But, for better or worse, I still attach to some outcomes; I am attached to my hope right now!  Hoping for good health for my mom, and all people.  Hoping for our doctors and researchers to find good treatments and cures for cancers.  Hoping for more opportunities to celebrate in my community.  Less fear, more love!  I hope for that.

Thelma & Louise: a couple of good women

I grew up in the midwest United States with fairly liberal, but traditional values about gender roles, manners, and the way good people (women, in particular) present themselves publicly.  These values were reinforced by my schooling at a southern university.  At Vanderbilt, for example, at the time I attended, the 'norm' was for women to be invited on dates to the football games.  If you went on a football date, you wore a church dress and pantyhose and lipstick.  In general, like all of us, I soaked in many messages from my infancy through age 19 or so about how/what 'good girls' are and do.

The first message:  It's good to be good.  Now, I'm not talking about being morally/ethically/spiritually 'good' when I say this.  I'm talking more about good appearances.  So, it goes on from there:  Good girls are polite.  Good girls don't cause problems.  Good girls aren't cynical about people.  Good girls maintain an outward naivete about sex and gender relations. 

I read on Yahoo last week that it's the 20th anniversary of the movie, Thelma & Louise.  Hurray, Thelma & Louise!  Seeing that movie was formative for me, because it expanded some questions and ideas I was beginning to explore about the merits of being a "good girl." 

First, what does it mean for any of us to be 'good' - whether you're a woman or a man?  Whose definition of good is it?

To me, being good, even in outward appearance, is being a three-dimensional person and being insistent that you treat yourself this way and are treated by those around you this way.  It's about valuing yourself and others for their complexity.  An easy example of this (and one demonstrated in Thelma & Louise) is the harm to all women when some women are seen as body parts. ("He called us beavers on his CB radio!")  Objectification isn't just strippers and porn stars - it can also be the 'object' of a 'good girl' who isn't allowed or doesn't allow herself to express anything and everything from dislike to anger to sexuality.  This can cross gender lines the opposite way too - women who see men as a means to financial gain/lifestyle/status.  It does not serve a deeper version of goodness when we see and treat one another this way. 

Being 'good', in a deeper version of goodness is also, to me, not being afraid of your own power.  We are all stronger than we know and are worthy of interacting with the world in a confident way. 

Being 'good' in a three-dimensional way does not exclude courtesy, but values truth as much as courtesy.  I believe we can say anything, but we have a responsibility in how we say it.

I love Thelma & Louise because, through the art of movies, I got to see a different way of being a woman. I'm not talking about the end - I'm talking about the way a character in a book or movie, or even the 'voice' of a song or poem, can free you.  If we want, we can throw our pantyhose away!  We don't have to like everyone we meet.   We can know certain things are unfair and speak up about it.  

We can define being good in our own way - in fact, we have the responsibility to do so.

some things I've learned

Now, for something a little different.  Some things I've learned about life and people so far (and subject to change, I might add...):

1) Don't make decisions out of fear.  I've never made a good decision primarily motivated by fear and I haven't observed this to work for others, either. 

2) No matter what people say, they usually DO what they want.  If you're confused by someone, pay attention to their actions, not their words.

3) You can't make someone else change.  You can change your reaction to that person.

4) Most people are doing their best most of the time.

5) It's not about me.  In both good and bad, we tend to take overly much credit or overly much guilt/shame.  We benefit from putting ourselves in a more realistic perspective. 

6)  It is important to be careful with our words.  We probably heard this from someone when we were kids - think before you speak.

7) Try to find a vocation you like.  We spend a lot of time working, so it's better to like what you do.  Encourage your kids to study what they enjoy and find a way to make a vocation of it.

8)  Shame and secrets are destructive forces.  Keep pushing for honesty with yourself and judicious honesty with others.  When we are open, we find that much of what we were ashamed of isn't nearly as powerful as we thought.

9) Listen and pay attention to older people.  In our culture, which so values youth, we are missing out on much more interesting people.

10) In the scope of creation, we are little and there is much that is mysterious.   There is almost always a choice- choose love and compassion. 

That's it for the week.  I hope you have a good one. 

can justice ever look like forgiveness?

Last month was National Poetry Month, and my mind was preoccupied with a talk I gave on April 30 for the Greater St. Louis Hospice Organization's Volunteer Symposium on the Poetry of Hospice. I tried to blog about the process of putting this talk together, but instead of focusing me on what I wanted to say, I felt overwhelmed.  So, that's one of the main reasons I wasn't keeping up with the blog.   If you'd like more information on volunteering with any hospice, you could check out http://www.gslho.org/ or any local hospice group. 

Now.  Thinking about Osama bin Laden's death.  I wrote the beginning of what I think is a poem last night:  I stumbled on forgiveness like a gift I didn't want.  Here is what confuses me:  is it important to delineate between small scale hate, like bullying and large scale hate, like what has been perpetrated by Osama bin Laden?  I can forgive on the small scale.  In fact, in my own life, I have forgiven a number of transgressions.  Sometimes I've talked to the person who I felt wronged me, sometimes, the forgiveness was something internal.  Sometimes, I didn't even want to forgive - I even enjoyed holding onto my anger like a little souvenir from being wronged and it gave me a 'superiority' to know that I had been wronged.  But.  Over time, holding onto that anger was a waste of my energy.  The anger dissipated.  I realized that most people in our own little lives are not trying to, are not purposefully hurting us.  They are just living their lives.  Most people hurt us in ignorance, or out of the inability to get out of their own point of view, but they are not usually hurting us out of maliciousness.  What's the point in holding onto that anger or rage? 

But hate, evil, transgressions on a large scale...can that be forgiven?  Should it be forgiven?  If it is forgiven where is the justice?  I had several hospice patients who were Holocaust survivors.  Certainly, all their lives were shaped by that unimaginable experience.  But they each had a unique attitude toward it:  one man told me he "didn't go in for all this forgiveness business."   One woman said there was nothing special about her survival, only pure luck.  One woman espoused New Age philosphy/spirituality.  I think about Elie Wiesel and the great good he brings to the world through his memory and testament to the Jewish people, persecuted people everywhere and any person in despair.  Reading him, I am struck not by his damning of those who caused his suffering, but his commitment to and love of his fellow man. 

I don't know the answers here. I am challenged.  I know that forgiveness has been a good, freeing part of my own little life.  I think I am able to see  more objectively how others interact w/ me and my influence on others.  I feel a greater compassion and my own world is a  less threatening place.

On the global scale, it seems clear that some do have malicious intent toward us.  What is the ethically/morally correct response to this?  It is my gut feeling that more death and killing is not the best response, but if not that, then what?

It's very unsatisfying, but I don't have a way to wrap this up.  I would just like to raise the question(s) and continue to be a voice that is not afraid of not knowing.  A voice, that I hope without naivete or ignorance, can ponder words, ideas and feelings like Love and Forgiveness.

where am I/Happy Easter

Hi everyone - as you may have noticed, I'm taking a few weeks off.  Little time to write right now, but I'll be back in May.

Thanks for hanging in there with me.  Happy Easter!