Wanted: Skilled and Experienced Autumn Leaf Safekeeper

Happy autumn, everyone!

I haven't vanished, but have been attending to all sort of things: writing, seeing clients, Halloween with a spirited 8-year-old, and all the other stuff that usually makes up my blog posts here.

I've also been participating in a very interesting and helpful certificate program in Trauma Informed Therapy through the Trauma Insitute in Northampton (they're doing some excellent work; check them out at www.childtrauma.com), and am excited to share that I will be doing some work for them this month, as well. This feels like both an honor and a joy, as it entails the possibility to help significantly with post-trauma effects in a short period of time. (Read about memory re-consolidation and trauma resolution therapy on the above-mentioned site, if you're interested).

I have also been doing a lot of research recently, especially about the addiction-trauma connection, drug use and recovery among pregnant and parenting women, and Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS). While there is still a lot of very scary stuff in the news all the time about drug addiction, overdose deaths, and NAS, there is also a growing national movement putting the emphasis on treatment, recovery, and non-incarceration solutions to addiction.

Since I know not everyone who reads this blog is especially interested in the topics above, I will be funneling the majority of this writing to a second blog, Having Hope and Helping Better, which is in the planning stages at this time. If you are interested in it, please let me know so I can send it your way when it's launched.

Ah, the holidays-- I am doing some extra thinking this year about what they mean to me and how to potentially gear them more toward my household/family as they currently exist. Would love to hear about any ways in which you have or plan to reinvent the holidays for yourself, too.

Last but not least, I have to say I have been really enjoying the vibrant autumn colors this year. My daughter routinely collects leaves she finds especially beautiful and then gives them to me for "safe keeping". I am not sure I am remotely qualified for the job of autumn leaf-keeping, but I do love to see the ones she finds for us.

Wishing you well,
Susan

Zumba for Depressed People

It's been a while. I have been focused on such mundane things as car repairs and my child's acclimation to second grade, so writing has been on the back burner for the last few weeks. But I'm ready to get back to it.

I got back to something else tonight. I went to a Zumba class. Not too long ago, I was going regularly, but this went by the wayside recently, too.

The class was pretty good (though I felt the missing weeks in my muscles, my lungs, and my coordination). It was a new instructor tonight. I've had a handful of them, and their styles have varied considerably-- one had a kind of ballet-on-steroids presentation, another was very muscular and looked like she was dancing with invisible barbels, and a third had a take on the standard Zumba moves that looked more cheerleading than dance. But those three, along with tonight's teacher, had one thing in common. They were super cheerful.

Maybe this is a requirement for being a good Zumba teacher.

I like Zumba. I'll never be skilled enough to teach it, but there have been times when I've imagined a Zumba class I'd like to teach. It would be Zumba for Depressed People.

I would start the class with the question, "How many found it a Herculean task to get here?"

I would say that they should do what they can, take breaks if they need to. I would say they should not berate themselves if they make a mistake.

I wouldn't coddle them. I wouldn't push them. I would be friendly, but not exuberant. I would let them know that wherever they were physically, emotionally, was okay.

And in my fantasy about this, they would know that I am no stranger to depression and anxiety. That some days are harder than others. But that you don't have to be super-enthusiastic to go to a Zumba class. You just have to take that leap of faith that the music, the moves, the process of doing this one act of self-care can leave you feeling better at the end of the hour. Not ecstatic, mind you. But better.

This society tends to stigmatize depression and anxiety. It's supposed to be our dirty secret, something that keeps us skulking around our homes, away from Zumba classes and well-adjusted people.

Some of the best people I know have survived bouts of depression and/or anxiety. It is not who we are, but it is part of who we are. And we shouldn't hide or be embarrassed and ashamed. Depressed and anxious do not equal weak, flawed, or damaged.

I'd like to have us all in a big room doing Zumba in a very low-key, accepting, courageous way.

Partly cloudy with rain on your parade

     It was in the forecast, so I knew to expect it. Yesterday, it was slated to rain during the annual county fair parade my daughter had her heart set on attending.
     Still, I started from a place of denial. I went about my morning at work thinking, The meteorologists got it wrong. The weather will be fine.
     Meanwhile, gradually, the rural backdrop took on a definitive shade of gray.
     By mid-afternoon, I had changed tactics and was trying to figure out a scenario that included rain but did not include me getting soaked at a parade. Maybe the parade would be cancelled! Concern about soggy floats might prevail, never mind about drenched children.
     I checked the official website for fair-related events, and saw that the parade would not, in fact, be cancelled.
     Hmmm. Maybe my daughter would forget it was on the schedule? (Yeah, right.) Maybe I could fabricate a working-late excuse and ask her to forgive me? (She surely would, but the image of the disappointment in her face was enough to make me cross that one off the list).
     Eventually, 90 minutes before the parade and with rain pummeling the windshield of my car, I thought, "OK. A parade in the rain. There have to be ways to make the best of this."
     And I actually came up with some. The long rain coat for my daughter rather than an umbrella, so she would not get wet sitting on the curb. The plastic bag for her soggy candy, since rain would certainly not detour her from scrambling to get some. An umbrella and comfortable clothes for me.
   
     Relapse prevention work is like this. If you're trying to stay clean and sober, there are avoidable triggers. Stay out of bars. Avoid the high-stress family reunion where others will be drinking and/or drugging. Forgo, at least initially, the leisure activities which are paired so completely with substance use in your mind and experience that you can't imagine doing one without doing the other. In other words, if the goal is recovery, avoid avoidable triggers and high-risk situations. Don't set yourself up.
     Some things, though, you can't avoid. And then the task is to figure out how to navigate them while still accomplishing your main goal. Maybe you bring a long-time sober friend as a support person to a family function where people will be drinking. Maybe you turn down the offer for a ride to that big event and choose to drive yourself, so you can leave immediately if you're feeling tempted to steer off-course.

     In my case, avoiding the parade altogether would have meant a deeply disappointed daughter. But I also didn't want to go and be terrible company for her because of a terrible mood, which seemed like a distinct possibility when I thought about parade-watching in the rain. So I took steps to minimize our discomfort, worked on reframing my negative thoughts, and tried to pay attention to the novelty aspect, as we were surely making a memory of The Year it Rained on Our Parade.

     In the end, we had a pretty good time. We both got pretty wet. Much of her candy was indeed soggy. But I was not cross and negative, and she was in great spirits.

     Sometimes it does rain on our parade! Sometimes it's even in the forecast-- we see it coming.

    And still it can all be okay.

We interrupt our regularly scheduled blog post...

"Summer ends, and we wonder where we are..."  singer-songwriter Dar Williams

Dear friends,

Today I'm taking a detour from my usual blog post to tell you more informally what I've been up to recently, and also about a new direction my blogging will be taking this fall.

The transition from summer to fall is always an interesting time for me. It may be a state of mind, at least in part, left over from childhood, when this time of year meant back to school, autumn leaves crunching underfoot. There is a sense of new-ness, a sense of sadness, and almost always for me, a sense of get-down-to-business-ness.

For the past several months, this blog has been trying to figure out what it wants to be when it grows up. It has been a place to talk about everything from single parenting experiences, to my opinion on what's happening in the news, to comments on the writing life, as well as my work and interests in the mental health and addiction treatment fields. You might say it has been the catch-all drawer sort of blog.

Those of you who know my clinical work are aware that over the years, while I've had different jobs in different settings (hmmm- a catch-all drawer sort of work life, too?),  my primary focus has been around trauma and addiction, together or individually. The past year and this new academic year have found me intensifying my focus in both areas: as Addiction Guide at ESME.com, in private practice, and, most recently, in embarking on a year-long certification program in Trauma Informed Treatment.

As a result of my work in addiction and trauma, I have both been learning things I want to share and coming up with all kinds of questions I want to explore. So, I will soon be a launching a new blog, called Helping Better, which will be home to most or all of my blogging on these topics.

I will continue to blog here, focusing primarily on posts related to parenting, creative writing, and other catch-all drawer stuff.

My hope is that in dividing the two blogs, I can give people a chance to read more of what they like in one place. If you end up wanting to read both, that's fabulous, but I'm aware that people who are interested in, say, how to create a daily writing practice around a busy schedule, are not necessary interesting in reading about PTSD treatment or heroin overdose.

If you have subjects you'd like me to write about, I would be thrilled to hear about them-- since this is a blog and not my diary, I obviously want to write about things that people want to read.

Last but not least, thanks to every single one of you who've read, "liked", commented, or contacted me privately about a blog post. There is not enough room in cyberspace to convey how much I appreciate it.

Warmly,
Susan

On "not resisting actively enough" and other tragic aspects of the Owen Labrie case

So the Owen Labrie prep school rape trial is over, at least for this round (his defense attorney is already promising to appeal). Labrie was found not guilty of felony sexual assault charges, but guilty of having sex with a girl who was below the age of consent. 

For those unfamiliar with the case, Labrie, a student at St. Paul's School, was accused of forcing a younger classmate to have sex with him in the context of what witnesses referred to as "senior salute". Senior salute, according to witnesses, is when soon-to-graduate seniors at the boarding school try to engage younger students in a sort of last-chance sexual encounter. In this instance, the victim was a freshman in high school.

No matter what the legal outcome, this is a sad, sad case. 

Sad because of a context where sex-as-conquest is referred to as "slaying", and the names of "slayers" are written on a wall. (And while the details are specific to one school, let's not kid ourselves that there are not countless other places with similar cultures and practices).Sad because a young teenager and her parents had to sit through an excruciatingly detailed and drawn-out trial, the victim having to relive the incident and her parents having to hear details which I'm sure are the stuff of their nightmares now. Sad because of all the collateral damage.

Sad because Labrie's attorney leaned heavily on a popular notion that the victim "did not resist actively enough", and therefore, the incident was not felony rape.

Did not resist actively enough.

During the victim's testimony, she described saying "no" repeatedly to Labrie's sexual advances and trying to physically prevent his removing her underwear, before she finally "froze"-- a very common trauma response.  So, in what universe does freezing equal consent, or does repeatedly saying no constitute insufficient resistance? Why is a victim's responsibility to somehow prevent her victimization more important than a perpetrator's responsibility to hear and honor the word "no"?

As a woman, survivor, and friend or therapist to many rape survivors, I am so disheartened. Not just by this case, but by the way our society victimizes, blames, and shames females of all ages. Including, sadly, underage girls. (Do you remember who and how you were as a young teen? How able you would have been or felt at that age to somehow ward off an assault?)

I am also a mother who is raising a daughter. And I'll be honest, I am scared--  terrified, really-- about the culture and attitude at this boarding school. Which, if we're honest about it, is really only a microcosm and reflection of larger societal culture and attitudes. A mindset in which females are objects, trophies, prey for the "slaying".

"I can't believe you poked her... How'd it go from no to bone?" a friend messaged Labrie.

"Used every trick in the book," Labrie answered in a message exchange shown to the jury.

We who are parents or professionals working with youth have an enormous responsibility to meaningfully address the objectification of and violence against women. In our homes, in our classrooms, in our conversations with one another. Because the "senior salute" attitude which supports the tragic incident at St. Paul's is pervasive and massively destructive. 

As for Owen Labrie, who awaits his sentencing, what exactly would constitute justice? There is certainly significant evidence that he was guilty of rape despite having been exonerated (at least for now) with regard to that charge. We do not know, cannot know, if he has remorse, or the degree to which he poses a further public safety risk. The argument could be made that the culture of the school and its "senior salute" ritual blinded him to the true harmfulness of his actions, to the fact that he was inflicting real and lasting harm on a human being rather than simply scoring a point in a game. It could be argued that he was swept away by a powerful current of misogyny.

In which case, he certainly did not resist actively enough,

The amazing things we almost miss

I had been aware of (read that, intrigued by) the Northampton Poetry Open Mike on Tuesday nights for a while, but it had already been filed under Things I Cannot Do as Single Mom to a Child Not Old Enough to be Left Alone. So, when my sister invited my daughter to her place for a couple of last-remnants-of-summer days, I immediately thought of going to the Open Mike, which was to be held, in fact, very near where I was to be working until 5:00.

And I very nearly talked myself out of it.

Why? There were a thousand practical reasons not to go. It would make for a late night, I was already tired, it was a chance for a rare evening of solitude. 

I think the real reason, though, was I was afraid I might love it. And that if I loved it, I might want to go back. Which was going to be one gigantic logistical problem. So, why go there in the first place?

All day, I went back and forth. I really didn't decide until the last minute that I would go.

And I might not have, would probably not have, if it hadn't been for my fantastic friend Lindsay, who was going to be there, attended regularly, and told me how terrific it was.

OK, OK, I'll go, I finally decided. But I might leave early. And I'm just going to listen.

The venue was technically a bar (I am not so much a bar type of gal), but the event itself was held in a banquet room in the back of the building. As people filed in, I was immediately struck by the warmth, laughter, and camaraderie in the room. 

So, to make a long story short, I listened. In what ended up being an enthralled sort of listening. And I even read (gasp), because, you know, we all walk around with our binders of poetry, just in case. The energy, talent, and enthusiasm was amazing, and the featured poet who read, Scott Beal, had us all captivated. (Hey, anybody who writes octopus divorce poems is okay by me!)

All told, it was an incredible evening that left this non-drinker feel like I was leaving with a buzz. I'm already trying to figure out how I can get back there again.

And I came so, so close to missing it.

Kids don't miss out on the interesting and exciting stuff, not if they have any say in it! My 8-year-old would try to do three activities at one time, just to avoid missing out on anything,

But we grown-ups? (Well. At least this grown-up!)  We talk ourselves out of things. We make and believe all these excuses. And sometimes, amazing things go on without us.

I'm so glad this one didn't get by me.

I dare you to do something you're dying to do, but have made a long list of reasons not to. (Nothing too dangerous or illegal, friends!)  When you're through, please tell me about it. By then, I might need another amazing something to experience vicariously. 

Of course, if you can't reach me, I'm probably out doing the poetry thing...

Kinda Catchy

Language fascinates me. I love the way words can get at something, directly or indirectly, from a thousand angles.

I'm especially interested in words with evolving meanings. Words with usage that changes by generation or by culture.

Take the word "catch". When I was  growing up, you could catch a ball (something good), catch a cold (something bad), or catch someone's attention (which could be good or bad, depending on whose attention it was).

When I started working with clients in corrections settings, I heard lots of familiar words and phrases used in a different way than I was used to hearing or saying them. One: when a client who was on probation or parole would get in trouble again, and the guys would refer to it as "catching a charge". I thought this was an interesting framework because it put all the responsibility outside the individual in trouble, as if he or she were walking down the street one day and got clobbered by a flying legal charge. (Of course, there are indeed some who are targeted by some bad apples in law enforcement for various non-criminal reasons, whose experience is like that. But I digress.)

The other way the guys in corrections settings used the word "catch" applied to social interactions. It was risky to engage in a friends with benefits type situation, they would say when chatting among themselves before or after group, because someone always ended up "catching feelings". What struck me about this use of the term was that 1) it was clearly meant to describe something undesirable, risky, or problematic, and 2) that it also had the feel of something that could be foisted upon a person by external forces-- "catching feelings", like, catching pneumonia, say.

At first I thought about this in terms of what it says about this population of guys, then what it might say about guys in general (sorry, male readers, we stereotype sometimes just like you do!), then what it might say about the times that we are living in. But gradually, I shifted from thinking about the original use of the phrase-- to "catch feelings" as in to "fall for someone" (a similarly dangerous-sounding expression), and started thinking about it in terms of how our society looks at emotions, period.

When I see clients in my private practice, they often come in describing a problem that is actually a feeling. Sometimes, the feeling is embedded in other things which make it rise to the occasion of a mental health disorder (i.e. persistent sadness+ lack of appetite + sleep disturbance + loss of interest in things = major depression episode, or so says the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual). Many times, though, the feeling is a response to a situation which would probably provoke a similar emotion in any number of people.

There are times, though, when a difficult dynamic happens where the client who is in, say, a high-conflict relationship, comes in with what they think is the problem (a feeling) and wants the problem fixed by the "expert" (played by the therapist). They don't realize that their feeling is trying to give them an important message, and that the feeling is not the real problem. That the feeling would diminish or vanish if they could reduce the conflict in their relationship or get out of the relationship.

As someone who is prone to strong feelings (positive and negative), I know to some extent where they are coming from. I know what it's like to have my sleep hijacked and my concentration derailed by distressing feelings or troublesome thoughts. I know, too, about "catching feelings for someone" in circumstances where I might be better off if the feelings had blown past me through the air and landed on some other unsuspecting person.

Yet, feelings have been important avenues for me to connect deeply with other people, understand myself and my needs better, and create stories, poems, essays, and even this blog. So while they might at times be challenging or inconvenient, I think I'll stay in the boat of trying to experience, or sometimes simply tolerate, my feelings rather than eradicate them. Without them, life would be pretty bland, indeed.

Writing inward, writing out

A couple of people have approached me about blogging recently. Aspiring bloggers, they wanted to know what it has been like for me, these early days of starting to blog.

People blog for vastly different reasons, of course. And in truth, I am still finding my way into my blogging identity. I have little to say to those who hope to build business or make money through a blog. But I can talk a bit from the perspective of a writer who never expected to become a blogger.

Writing requires a certain amount of solitude. There is a kind of diving inward, a sense of going deeper into one's self. Maybe not so much some of the more technical parts of the writing process, such as self-editing, but certainly the more creative parts.

I have an ambivalent relationship to this process of going inward. Sometimes it feels delicious, private, extraordinarily free of constraints which make up other parts of life. Sometimes, it feels like being lost in a cave that seems endless, and I don't know whether I should turn back or keep going, and I don't know which way is which anymore.

I have similar mixed feelings about the social part of writing, which to me includes submitting and discussing one's work, being involved in writing communities or groups, and the many ways writers and readers have dialogues with one another. On the one hand, it feels fabulously surreal to get feedback that a poem or essay resonated with someone, or that something I wrote has been accepted for publication. And I often greatly enjoy writing in a workshop or group.

But there are also times when exposure or social noise feels like something I want to hide from, and I long for private moments, just me and my pen and notebook.

Blogging, it turns out, feels for me like the best of both of these writing worlds. I am alone with writing a post for a finite, usually brief period of time, engaging in some mild self-exploration that feels neither pressured nor deep, and then I am pressing "Publish". I know when I do so that only a small number of people will be reading my words, but it's enough to feel like I'm connecting a little. And every now and then, someone will give me feedback by Comment or through message, and this feels like the most casual, comfortable interaction.

The Writer Susan leaves her manuscript-in-progress and gives a friendly wave to the nice people she sees across the lake, reminding her that she is not, in fact, alone. And now and then, someone friendly on the other side of the lake waves back.

It isn't high-brow. It isn't literary. But it's pretty cool, when it comes right down to it. (So, friends, the answer is yes, by all means, go try your blog!)

Not bad, but not excellent

My 8-year-old daughter has enthusiastically latched onto the phrase, "in other words" recently. Most conversations between us these days are sprinkled with her new-found expression, usually in the form of a question; she wants to to check her understanding of something I've just read to her in a bedtime story, for instance. Or sometimes, she uses the phrase to cut to the chase and clarify that when her request to buy a new trinket is met by my diatribe about other recent trinkets, the frequency of trinket request, the cost of said trinket, and the overcrowded and cluttered nature of her room, that what I'm essentially saying is, "No."

This morning, though, she used the phrase as an opening to a sentence that would change how I looked at my day. We had just climbed into the car for our weekday morning trek to the bus stop for summer camp, and I was admittedly frazzled. It had been a morning of unusually plentiful frustrations and delays (disappearing permission slip, dropped breakfast bowl, morning phone call interruption, to name just a few), and now I was worried that I would not get her to her bus in time, and therefore, not get me to my work on time. So when she asked from her booster seat in back, "Mom, how are we doing this morning?", I gritted my teeth and said, "Well, we'll probably be late."

After a few moments, she piped up again from the back. "So... in other words, not bad, but not excellent."

It probably wasn't an intentional pearl of wisdom. Most likely, she could tell how stressed I was and was trying to placate me.

Yet, her words took root in me. True, it had been a morning of small frustrations. Yes, missing her camp bus would set off a series of unwanted consequences. But she was heading to a camp she loves, excited to be on the Yellow team for Field Day. And I was headed for a day of work that I find interesting and compelling, with potential opportunity to help people, which has always been rewarding for me.

So much of life, situationally and in segments of time, is the juxtaposition of good things and bad things. So much of how I feel at any given time depends on which things I magnify or throw a spotlight upon.

In other words, my happiness today is determined in no small part by the attitiude I approach it with.

Why creative people need to create

People who know me well know that I am not doing anybody any favors when I am not writing creatively on a regular basis. Which is to say, I am not my best self at those times.

There is a certain feeling that comes over a creative person, whatever kind of artist they are, who is not making the time and space in their life for creativity. My artist friends, as well as my artist clients, have described it to me again and again. It may not be an identical feeling,but the idea of loss, lack, and absence is there. Something is missing, and the artist has lost their emotional or mental equilibrium as a result.

For me personally, the experience feels a lot like loneliness.

When I am lonely, I feel separate and apart, disconnected from people. When I'm not creating, I feel, interestingly enough, disconnected from my own self.

Growing up, I saw creative pursuits as leisure activities, or, for a lucky few, a vocation. As an adult, I have learned much about how central creative writing, and to a lesser extent other artistic pursuits, really is to my identity. Now, I know that it is an important part of my self-care. That to abandon or neglect my writing is to abandon and neglect myself.

So here's to everyone who feels not just the desire, but the need, to write, paint, dance, make music. Know that it's alright to make doing that thing a priority. Know that we artists of all kinds are simply our better selves when we do exactly that.

Revision and that slippery thing called memory

Sometimes I think about the writing life with such reverence that I forget how much it parallels the rest of life. Which is to say, sometimes this writer's skills and tools seem adequate for the job of getting through a sentence, a paragraph, a page. Other times, I'm left mucking around on a heavily-marked page, feeling like there isn't a paragraph indent, a change of words, or an ellipses in the world that can help me move forward with a particular work-in-progress.

Yesterday, I received the revision suggestions for a personal experience essay I had written. The editor's feedback was very detailed and constructive, at least in terms of what to change, if not how. The trouble is that she wants me to ground my essay in more specifics about my situation during the time period I had written about, more sensory details. I immediately understood her point and how revising in this way would make for a much stronger piece. And yet.

The truth is, there are many details about that time period which are very fuzzy and sketchy for me, and many, too, that I don't want to remember. There was some pretty awful stuff going on (which are not the focus of the essay) in the background.

Another truth is, a personal experience essay which lacks details does not amount to excellent writing.

The whole dilemma encapsulates questions which have become increasingly important to me as a person, a therapist, and a writer. How important is revisiting and/or clarifying specific memories? To a person? A therapy or recovery process? A piece of writing which is overtly about something else?

A friend told me of the time when he had tried, as a teenager, to tell a trusted adult that he had been sexually abused as a young child, but had only sketchy memories and disturbing nightmares about it at this time. He hoped the adult would connect him with a mental health professional. Instead, he was told, "I think you've seen too many after school specials." The memories sank to the bottom of a well, largely inaccessible to him from then on, apart from bad dreams and a lingering feeling of dread about life, the idea that the world is unsafe, that people cannot be trusted.

What are the costs and benefits of revisiting banished memories? What are the costs and benefits of keeping them away?

Next month, I will begin taking a series of trainings about trauma and recovery. I hope it will answer some of my personal and professional questions about dealing with memories.

As for my writer questions on this subject? I welcome feedback from any of my writer friends about how they've navigated this issue. (Brave Creative Nonfiction Majors, I'm talking especially to you!)

In the meantime, it's just me, some shadowy memories, and some words on the page needing improvement.

Therapists: What it's really like

Each year, I vow I'm going to write a piece of fiction that does not have any therapists in it. after more than 20 years working as a therapist, I suppose I'm a little bored with the whole therapist as character thing. But even when I'm not focusing primarily on my novel-in-progress, in which therapists and clients are my cast of characters, therapists creep into my other work in big and small ways. Therapists fascinate me with their (typically) big hearts, their blind spots into their (our) own psyches, and the magnitude of what they must do each day, not just as people on the front lines trying to help clients with their most serious and personal problems, but as helping professionals working within systems of care which are often dysfunctional and oppressive. And where complex characters meet obstacles and conflicts, therein lies the stuff of great storytelling.

Practicing psychotherapy today is an honor, a privilege, and very often, a pretty bad career choice from a number of practical standpoints.  I continue to do it myself because I love my clients and it has become an inexorable part of who I am; also, because I can now balance it with a writing career, and because I'm at a point in my career where I can do it as a private practice therapist. But before this was 20 years of agency work in a lot of different settings. Agency mental health and/or addictions treatment work is, with very few exceptions, underpaid, undervalued, and structured in ways that neither serve therapists nor clients. As a result, there is frequent turnover and therapist burnout, isolation, and low morale.

If you're a therapist working in an agency setting, you typically have one of two employment scenarios. In the first, you are a low-pay salaried employee who must meet high productivity requirements (how many clients you see per day/week/month). Although you have benefits and are "allowed" sick and vacation days, it's difficult to use them without doubling up on work before and after to make up productivity points.

In the second scenario, you work fee for service, which means you don't have to jump through productivity hoops, but you also get no sick, family sick, or vacation time, and you lose your pay for the hour whenever a client fails to show up.

I have tried both scenarios over the years. Both are difficult in their own way. But when I became a single mother, working this way became impossible.

As I write this, therapists and other human service professionals from a local agency I've never worked with are picketing after months of unsuccessful negotiation efforts regarding terrible pay, unreasonable productivity requirements, and other intolerable working conditions. I feel their pain and frustration and hope they are able to win improved working conditions so they can resume providing services to clients who need them.

We therapists cannot give adequate help if we are not okay ourselves. When a therapist has to face relentless hardship just to do their job every day, that makes for great fiction. But it makes for a less than stellar quality of  life.

Did you hear what you just said?

In Zen Buddhism, the term "monkey mind" is used to describe the mental chatter that goes on in one's head when your brain is over-full, unfocused, and, well, just plain noisy. I identified with the concept instantly, knowing that in my own head, when my thoughts are a tangle of what to pick up at the grocery store, whether I'm saying "yes" to my daughter too often, how I'm going to discuss a particular issue with a colleague, and what I'm going to write about later in the day, I literally can't even hear myself. It is the opposite of mindful.

But while I knew I sometimes failed to hear the important thoughts in my own head amidst too much mental noise, I didn't realize that people (myself included) can manage to actually miss very important things they say, until I witnessed it in my work as a therapist. In the midst of talking a blue streak, a client would make a profound and revelatory statement, only to keep on talking, often about far less significant things, without missing a beat. Later, it seemed like their epiphanies were lost at sea, never to be revisited. After witnessing this a few times with different clients, I began to engage in gentle interrupting. "Excuse me-- hang on a second-- Did you hear what you just said?"

Almost invariably, the client hadn't heard him/herself, at least not fully.  In the quiet moments after I interrupted, the previous words seemed somehow amplified. Often, a rush of emotion followed. "Oh my God-- Did I just say that? I didn't even know I felt that way about it." Often, upon being helped to hear their own voice and their own words, a positive shift happened. A decision was made. A resentment was released. A shameful secret loosened its grip.

Knowing how this has played out in my office, it only stood to reason that I could be equally  deaf to my own revelations. So I should not have been surprised when, while I was having coffee in a diner with a friend, she interrupted me and asked, in regards to a statement I'd just made, "Susan, wait-- Did you hear what you just said?"

I hadn't heard it, of course. Not when it was just in my head, part of my daily jumble of noisy, competing thoughts. Not even when I said it out loud and then kept hurtling toward small talk. Only in a space made possible by the deep and caring listening of a friend did my message find its most important audience: myself.

We need one another in more ways than we know.

Overload

When I dropped my daughter off for camp today after a particularly rushed and chaotic morning and before hurtling on to my work day, I saw my friend Sheila. She, too, is a single mom, and when I parked beside her, I could hear the conclusion of a very familiar mother-child debate about sunscreen. She saw me and made a pulling-one's-hair-out gesture and an expression of wide, frantic eyes.

We walked the kids to their camp groups, discovering along the way that Sheila had forgotten a water bottle, I had forgotten a permission slip, and we both had forgotten to prepare our kids for the camp's Crazy Hair Day today. It was a deja vu experience for me, as life lately has felt like an endless parade of details slipping by me, missing items, forgotten tasks.

On the way back to our cars, we talked about the challenge of trying to juggle parenting, work, and household responsibilities. She shared that she was losing and forgetting things recently to such an extent that she worried about having a neurological condition.

I told her how I, too, had been losing and forgetting things left and right lately-- documents, household things, keys. It was happening more the busier and more stressed I became. Then I would get exasperated and start berating myself, which only made everything worse.

But Sheila was still preoccupied with worry about her own recent absent-mindedness. "Last night there was something on TV about Alzheimer's," she whispered.

I felt a wave of fondness and compassion for Sheila, who owns her own business, works very hard, and still took time to bring her high-energy child on a mother-daughter roller skating trip recently. "I don't think you have Alzheimer's, Sheila. I just think you have a ton on your plate, and it gets a little overwhelming sometimes."

She thanked me for the reassurance and said she wished she could talk longer because it felt so good to connect with another single mom, but she needed to get going because she urgently needed to stop at the bank before work.

Heading to begin my own work day, I thought about how important it is to have people in our lives who understand our daily struggles, whatever they are. I also thought about the way Sheila's situation and feelings had elicited my sympathetic understanding, whereas I'd been meeting my own with self-condemnation. What difference might it make for me if I could treat myself with the same compassion I automatically afforded Sheila? To treat forgetfulness and losing things as a symptom of overload rather than a character flaw?

While I was considering this, my phone rang. It was Sheila. At first I worried because it sounded like she was crying, but I realized quickly that the sound was actually her laughter.

"I thought you'd be amused to know," she said, "that I just drove right past the bank."

Thank you, Sheila. Good to know I'm not alone.

Consulting the Magic 8 Ball

I don't know why I said yes when, in the middle of our weekend grocery shopping, my daughter begged for a Magic 8 Ball. Maybe it kicked up a kind of vague nostalgia, long-forgotten images of me wearing pigtails hunching over my own childhood 8 Ball, waiting for the answers to my own most pressing questions to float up from the omniscient, encapsulated blue sea. Maybe I was just distracted with the issue of whether or not to buy English muffins. Either way, I got our groceries, she got her 8 Ball, and we were headed home.

I wasn't prepared for the reaction I'd have when, as she consulted her 8 Ball in the back seat, I heard a small voice question, "Does (insert name of boy of interest) like me?"

It wasn't that I didn't know about her long-standing interest in this particular boy. It wasn't that I didn't approve of her interest. It was that something about her plaintive-sounding question and the fact that it was the first question out of the gate reminded me of the beginning of an era in which someone's liking me or not liking me determined my sense of self-worth. Am I likeable? Am I good enough? Am I acceptable the way I am, or do I need to change into someone different before I can be loved?

I'm not sure whether I consulted an 8 Ball about such matters. I like to think that at an elementary school age, I asked it things like whether I was going to be a writer when I grew up, or whether I was going to like fourth grade. I like to think it wasn't until my adolescent years of reading Teen Magazine and Seventeen and Young Miss that I became so focused on whether or not this or that boy would "like" me.

Truthfully, I'd like to think the younger me paddled far from those perilous waters in the first place. But I didn't, and I want better for her. So when she asked the 8 Ball whether or not a particular boy liked her, I went quiet. Perhaps made a particular face. Did I ever tell you that my daughter is somehow able, from the back of the car, to see my expression right through  the back of my head?

"What, Mom?"

"Nothing, sweetie. I was just wondering if you had questions for the 8 Ball besides, you know, that one?"

She pondered this for a minute, then came up with a new set of questions. Is Birch (our cat) happy? Will the weather be good for camp this week? Will any of my friends be playing outside today?

Then: "But what's wrong with asking about (so-and-so) liking me? The other girls ask the 8 Ball if boys like them!"

(Ah, of course. The Other Girls.)

I did my best to explain that there was nothing wrong with wanting a boy to like you or asking the 8 Ball about it, but that I would  feel concerned if it was the only question or the most important one, since liking yourself is ultimately what matters most.

She seemed to consider this.

"Mom?" she asked as I pulled into our driveway and parked the car. "Do you like yourself?"

I looked out the car window for what felt like I long time.

"Here." She handed me the Magic 8 Ball.

I shook it and waited a little anxiously until an answer floated up: "All signs point to yes."

"See? I told you we needed an 8 Ball," she said with authority, and we held hands on our way in and thought about the things we'd ask next.

To Dad, on Father's Day and Always

This morning I tried multiple times (as in, more than 12) to write a Facebook post which, along with honoring my dad this Father's Day, was to include candid photos of some of his recent fathering and grandfathering moments. I was thwarted by some kind of technical difficulty, and then it occurred to me: With whom could I possibly consult about a computer use glitch on Father's Day when my go to person for glitches of all kinds is my father himself?

If you'd been at my home yesterday, you'd have found him tinkering with a problematic smoke detector for me. And anyone who knows my sense of direction would not be surprised to know that I have called my father from the roadside, completely lost, on more than one occasion when maps have ceased to make any sense to me anymore. Some people talk about a parent who helped them find their way-- in my case, that's been literal.

But it would be a disservice to my dad to say he has only been my Fixer and Problem-solver, my Advice-giver Extraordinaire. He has been so many other things to me over the years-- a role model in what it means to be both a family member and a professional, a teacher of everything music to manners, from chess to word processing to resume-writing. He has also been the person who, during a fateful grocery shopping trip when I was a kid, came up with easily over a hundred food puns, with me answering each with a pun of my own. Were we completely obnoxious to everyone around us? No doubt. But I'll remember it, fondly and happily, forever.

I could go on and on, of course. The time I had trouble with balance as a kindergartener, and my dad built a balance beam for me. The time he covered the basement floor with a smooth surface I could dance on during my teens.

And what's really cool is, if you have a terrific father and then you have children, great fathers become even more fabulous granfathers! They use silly voices and teach you guitar and make elaborate whip cream designs on your desserts.

Which brings me back to the story of yesterday. I'd like to say that Dad's coming to my smoke detector rescue was an aside during a large-scale Father's Day extravaganza he was attending. Instead, he drove an hour to my home, then another 40 minutes to another destination, to contribute to the celebration of my daughter's 8th birthday. My daughter's second cousins (twins who share her birthdate!) were part of the celebration, too. At a very kid-centered lakeside celebration my cousin Carolyn referred to as "like Christmas with life jackets", Father's Day weekend was barely on the radar.

As it started to get dark, my father and mother packed to leave, and I sprinted over with two rapidly-signed Father's Day cards from my daughter and me. Then my dad, who had made this day, like so many other days, about his kids and his grand-kids, drove away.

How do you say Happy Father's Day to someone who has been and done so much for so long? When life is hectic, but time is short for saying even some small part of how much someone matters to you and has made such a difference, for you and the children you love?

Dad, I hope you know, today and always, what's in my heart. And that the words... on Father's Day cards, attempted Facebook posts, and even this blog post-- are not the half of it.

Celebrating YOU today, Dad, and appreciating you always.

Take Two Sexist, Demeaning Remarks and Call Me in the Morning

Today I read an opinion piece from this week's New York Times which reminded me that objectifying women is still alive, well, and sometimes even spun as "therapy". The piece: a blog post by psychiatrist and Columbia University professor David J. Hellerstein, published June 12, 2015, titled The Dowdy Patient. (Yep, the title serves as the Coming Attractions.) What unfolds is a cautionary tale about what can happen when a helping professional objectifies, demeans, and trivializes, through the treatment of one person, an entire group; in this case, women. The sad part is the degree to which Hellerstein is oblivious that this is the story he's actually telling.

The post begins with Hellerstein fielding a question from a colleague about "that dowdy person who comes in at lunchtime". Hellerstein knows immediately to whom the colleague is referring, since the patient in question, he writes, is notable for her "homely dresses and unstylish hairdo". (Nice to know, if you're a female patient or prospective patient, that if you go to Hellerstein's practice, your appearance will not only be critically appraised, but might be the subject of light-hearted, patient-insulting banter among colleagues).

It gets worse. Hellerstein goes on to present the case, with details reportedly disguised to protect confidentiality, of his ten-year treatment of the "dowdy patient", who came seeking help for panic attacks. She apparently has many strengths, as Hellerstein mentions the patient having "Ivy league degrees" and "a Wall Street career", as well as having worked through a childhood reportedly marked by loss and family stress. To Hellerstein, however, these strengths and accomplishments were mere backdrop to a serious problem: despite her deep longing for a husband and family, the patient, year after year, remained single. The reason, in Hellerstein's professional assessment? His patient "refused to be attractive".

He went on to describe his various efforts to "help" her with the problem, including two fairly direct verbal interventions, one in which he raises the possibility of a "makeover", the other in which, after he directly raised the issue of her appearance a second time, she reportedly "began to find him creepy" (Go figure.)

In reflecting on their decade of sessions, Hellerstein framed their work together as a treatment failure, since he never found the right words to convince her of the therapeutic value she might find in giving up her  "Good Housekeeping hair", "frumpy skirt", and "too-sensible shoes". His post, which tries to make sense of the treatment failure, suggests various factors might have been to blame, including a medical training which, while preparing psychiatrists to deal with "seductive patients" (whose attire, rather than being "frumpy", was geared toward "luring you away from therapeutic neutrality"), did little to prepare him for the challenges of working with the chronically "dowdy".

I was offended by the post as both a therapist and a woman. As a therapist, I wonder how many current and prospective therapy clients, upon reading the article, were was alarmed as I was by the idea that a psychiatrist was not only judging a patient so cruelly and superficially, but was sharing judgments of this nature with the readership of the New York Times. It seemed like a piece that could certainly deter someone from seeking needed treatment, and that by itself is harmful and sad.

I was also dismayed by Hellerstein's lack of understanding of sexism as a social problem, its obvious presence in the therapeutic interactions he described, and the harmful impact his words almost certainly had on his client as well as any number of female readers. That he could not see in his own writing the depiction of women in the two most common and trivializing stereotypes: the seductress and the insufficiently appealing woman, both of whom are defined by only their appearance and their interactions and relationships with men.

To me, it simply read like another chapter in a long, sad story of a patriarchal, misogynistic society: A woman seeks helps from a professional who happens to be a man, and the focus immediately becomes what he thinks of her appearance; then, later, her failure to conform to his ideas of how she could make herself more appealing to prospective partners. It is her fault for being single, he's sure, and what is a well-meaning doctor to do when a patient simply will not change her hair or clothes when a male in authority suggests that she should?

I do wonder if, despite her identifying information being "disguised", the patient might have recognized herself in his published account of their discussions about appearance. Certainly it seems to me that she could, and that, for that matter, so could a number of other female patients of his. (We can only guess at how common Hellerstein's appearance-focused interventions might be!)  And in this case, looking at the decision to write and publish this piece, what about the long-standing doctor mandate about "doing no harm"?

Having read Hellerstein's post, I feel the strange wish to connect with this former patient of Hellerstein's, if only to say something to her about her obvious strengths (as if that could possibly undo the cumulative effect of ten years of treatment with someone whose opinions and interventions must have deflated and demoralized her, if those he described in writing are any indication of the therapy norm). I'd love to know if she's happy, and would want her to know that she should really take Hellerstein's offensive comments with a grain of salt.

It isn't as if, in ten years of being her doctor, he ever truly saw her in the first place.

Moms, it's OK to trust yourselves a little. Honest.

This morning I was driving when I came upon this equine mom and baby, a sight I found so riveting that I pulled my car off the road to get closer and take a picture. I have no idea how old the baby is, but everything about it, from its wobbly-leggedness to its frequent attempts to nurse, made me think "young".

The mom alternated between focusing on the business of grazing and pausing to nuzzle or guide her little one. In her demeanor, I saw the combination of maternal devotion and absolute confidence. She was lovingly attached and in charge, and that was that.

In our society, the ideas of motherhood as 1) inherently appealing to all women, and 2) maternal instinct being hard-wired and universal have come under fire, and for good reason. The institution of motherhood in the U.S. has historically been embedded in the larger context of the oppression of women: it was simultaneously expected and devalued, and in that sense became part of the big picture of keeping women down.

What followed, in my opinion, was a backlash in which the proverbial baby was thrown out with the bathwater, and a new set of ideas became a new way for some women to feel bad about themselves. Now, women who chose motherhood could be seen as electing to limit themselves (as if the problem is mothering rather than the societal devaluing of it).

But there's another problem with this which, to me, is even more destructive. In an effort to make the case that women should be and feel free to opt out of mothering (an idea which I 100% believe and support), a great deal of rhetoric arose to say that maternal instinct is a myth.

For the record, here's what I believe about the maternal instinct:

1) It is not universal, and it's OK not to have it, and/or to decide parenting
is not for you.

2) Where maternal instinct exists, it is not static. Meaning, you can have it in varying degrees at various points, so that having mixed feelings about an unintended pregnancy doesn't mean you won't bond readily with your baby, and feeling like a natural as a mother to your infant or toddler does not mean you won't feel out of your depths in parenting a teenager.

3) If you are a mother, you probably have some degree of maternal instinct,  BUT, you will not be able to access it well if you subscribe to the rhetoric that motherhood is a) a leap into the dark for which you are probably not equipped, b) a self-limiting pursuit which is bound to make you resent your kids, and c) a vast, complicated job for which the only preparation is "expertise", meaning, you'd better stay current on all the latest theories and research because you can't possibly know what to do without books, expert consultants, podcasts, and seminars.

To be clear: I agree that aspects of parenting can be complex. I believe, too, that knowledge is important, and so is getting an outside opinion at times, in this as with other areas of life.

But here's the thing. Instinct and intuition are also powerful allies in the parenting process. They require, though, that we believe in something more internal than external, that we see ourselves as having something inherently applicable and useful, something which does not require depending on anyone or anything outside of who and what we already are. In a society that teaches women to doubt themselves, that is not easy. It can feel, much of the time, like a high-stakes exam we cannot possibly prepare ourselves for.

This morning, I watched the mom and baby horses for several minutes, awed by both the power and the simplicity of their interactions and relationship. The baby was a bundle of wobbly, frenetic, affectionate energy, while the mom exuded a quiet confidence that seemed to say: "I've got this."

So, for all the moms I know who are agonizing over difficult parenting decisions, endlessly rehashing old decisions you're sure have irrevocably damaged your child, or just plain feeling lost in the quagmire of trying to raise kids as analytical human being within a society that often downplays, devalues, and discounts mothering, I say to you today:

"You've got this."  It's OK to trust yourself and even relax a little. It really is.

Dear Survivor, Still Struggling: Some Reasons to Stay Hopeful

Dear Survivor,

Yes, you. The one who's been through something terrible, has weathered the PTSD diagnosis with determined strategizing. You have been "working on yourself", with the diligence of someone trying to repair a malfunctioning car. You who've researched the effects of trauma and gone to lots of therapy and participated in self-hep groups and worked to improve your overall health. 

In the beginning, it was, if not easy, at least hopeful, right? You had a name now for the thing that was wrecking your sleep and flooding you with anxiety and making you feel defective and isolated. A diagnosis meant there were steps you could take, things you could try, specialists to consult.

But now you're wearing out. You feel like the many strategies you've tried have produced limited and temporary results. The nightmares are back, or you can't seem to function well in one or more important areas of your life. You may even be struggling with a brand new problem, like addiction. You consider that maybe in your initial optimism, you set the bar too high for yourself. You feel like a treatment or recovery failure. You wonder if maybe it's time to accept a different quality of life than the one were hoping for.

First, there's this: You are not alone.

Does this sound like a platitude?

I am not making a case here that you have a substantial support system, or that you don't feel alienated or adrift right now. What I'm saying is that you are part of a large number of people who've been at this same thing for a while, many of whom have felt what you are feeling about the difficulty and uncertainty of it all. The importance of that is, we can borrow one another's hope when our own starts to flicker. We can spell one another as we go.

So, dear hope-challenged and battle-weary person, I offer these few thoughts on why you should stay hopeful and keep striving for that quality of life that you deserve.

1) Treatment may still help, even if you feel like it hasn't before or you've hit a treatment plateau. Here's why: New research in areas such as neurplasticity and PTSD-specific treatments are showing that adverse functional and emotional changes caused by trauma can be reduced, reversed, and even eliminated. For instance, a new cognitive behavioral therapy called Image Rehearsal Therapy, or IRT, is proving effective in decreasing or even eliminating post-trauma nightmares, a serious and often highly treatment-resistant problem for many trauma survivors.

Remember, too, that therapy is a relationship, and the client-therapist fit is important. If you are feeling stuck in therapy and discussions with your therapist don't solve it, you may benefit from seeing a different therapist. Expertise is important, but personality and approach are, too.

2) Psychotherapy is not the be all and end all. Strategies which have proven enormously helpful to survivors I've known include exercise, meditation, engagement in creative/expressive arts, and connecting with supportive people. But the list of possibilities goes well beyond that. Experimenting with new, non-destructive outlets and avenues can pleasantly surprise you. If you have one or more children, they can help generate ideas. 

If PTSD is a condition, in part, of involuntarily and unhappily revisiting the past, new or novel experiences can build in other, more positive stuff. Kite flying therapy, anyone?

3) As the oft-quoted therapy adage goes, "feelings are not facts".  Feeling stuck doesn't mean that you are stuck, and ditto for feeling like you and/or your life are hopeless. This is true in many things, but for survivors, that perception vs. reality line can be especially blurry. 

For many survivors, the sense of profound discouragement about one's self, the world, and one's life can feel like trying to speed-walk through quicksand. Therefore, choosing not to accept these ideas as facts, but rather as ugly parts of the landscape which disappear when you look elsewhere, can be empowering and freeing.

Resolve to live the best life you can live, regardless of what you are thinking about at any given time. Behaving as if you know you deserve this will pave the way for that time when you actually do know.

Hey, you're still reading this-- that means you're still hanging in there with all this, still fighting the good fight. I'm glad, because I want that better, happier life to come true for you. And also because I know I'll need you the next time my own hope starts to waver.

We are not alone.

S.

Writing your way to hope

I am not sure people completely believe me when I say that creative writing (along with its twin, the reading of other people's creative writing) has saved my life on more than one occasion. Certainly it has been the thing to sustain me during some incredibly bleak times, to help me metabolize tough experiences and feel both my individuality and my humanity, my connection to others. Yet, I never really understood or articulated the reasons and ways it can do both of those things-- can be both a healing art and a connecting art-- until I came across some words by other people recently which helped me to fill in the blanks.

Michael Henry wrote, "Those who've endured difficult circumstances often feel that their world is hopelessly fractured, yet by writing-- stories, poems, memoirs-- they find a way to regain control over their experiences. Writing helps reconnect the shards, and the writer reaches a deeper understanding of self and the world around them."

This quote struck a chord with me as I reflected on difficult experiences that I once felt unable to recover from or "get over".  Various strategies and supports were of some assistance, but none so much as penning the deep truths of what I had experienced, either straightforwardly in journal entries of poetry, or dressed up as story. It was this writing process through which I came to feel that my memories belonged to me rather than that they were controlling me, so they could begin to take their rightful place in my past.

But while I have known for years that writing has enormous value to me personally, I saw it as primarily a private affair, something between me and a notebook and pen or me and a book full of another writer's words. It has only been recently, as I have spent time with women writers who were also using their writing not just as an artistic pursuit, but as a way of processing and communicating the challenges and complexities in their own lives, that I came to a new conclusion. I need the writing and the reading, yes. But I also need to interact with other writers who are working at this in a similarly personal, transformative way. I need to hear their stories, and I need them to hear mine.

Addiction recovery expert Bill White refers to relationships like these as "hope-engendering". He says that these kinds of relationships offer a kind of "kindling", as he put it, for hope.

In writing alone, as well as writing and reading in the company of people who value and practice writing as a type of self-care, a healing art as much as a creative art, I find hope. Sometimes, hope finds me. In community with writers like me, hope is contagious. I want both to catch it and to spread it around.

I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, and I'm not so sure I ever was...

"There's no place like home," Dorothy famously said.

But what if you are someone for whom 'home'-- that presumed universal sense of right place and belonging-- has been elusive? Is that a problem of setting, to be addressed geographically? A problem of self-definition or vocation to be discussed with a therapist? A social issue to be understood from the vantage point of fitting in (or not) with a particular group?

Someone recently said this to me:

"I have stopped looking for that situation where I belong, since belonging seems a non-option for me. I focus nowadays on other things. It's mostly ok, except for those times when I'm unrelentingly lonely..."

I understood that the type of loneliness they were referring to had nothing to do with the presence or proximity of other people.

Last week, I went to a weekend writing retreat, where I spent time with a fabulous group of people who were 1) also women, 2) also writers, and 3) also people who value emotional truth and meaningful communication. Leaving that context was like the Wizard of Oz film in reverse, with vibrant-colored scenery replaced by black and white.

Some of this, of course, can be attributed to general post-positive experience letdown. There is an inherent sense of loss when you switch from a weekend devoted to a favorite activity to a work week juxtaposed with permission slips, car maintenance issues, and laundry.

But there's another part. The longing to fit in, and the sense that I don't.

Do we unconsciously replicate our early experiences? Growing up, school was a disaster of wrong fit for me, while my sister inhabited that world just fine. In adulthood, I have gravitated to work settings and contexts where I have been an outsider. A hearing staff member among Deaf staff working with Deaf clients. A social worker among primarily forensic psychologists. The lone clinician working among Probation and Parole Officers. On some level, do I set myself up to feel different and apart?

On the other hand, could there be a location or context that is more "me" than the one I'm in currently? I have tended to land in one particular place or another for practical, logistical reasons. This town has affordable housing or a decent school system. This address puts me closer to family or a particular job. The idea of choosing a place for the place itself is new and holds some intrigue for me.

Whatever the solution is-- a relocation or some soul-searching, a change of scene or a change of self-- a keen observer might notice me clicking my heels together while I try to figure the whole thing out. You don't have to have visited Kansas before to believe it exists, out there or somewhere within.

And of course, a little magic never hurts.

Do not go gently into that good night (or out of your writing retreat weekend)

It is probably dramatic, perhaps a little grandiose, to compare leaving a weekend writing retreat to the experience of dying, or, more specifically, of fighting for one's life. But the other women who were with me at the Wellspring House in Ashfield last weekend would understand how leaving has felt, if not like a little death, at least like a threatened one.

"I'm not sure I'll be able to talk about all this back home," I told one of the women as we packed our belongings. "I'm afraid I'll cheapen it somehow if I try."

It wasn't until later that the irony of my statement hit me. So much of the weekend was about the illuminating quality of translating experience into words. The power of language to chisel into something until the gem of what is truest about it has been found, excavated, polished, and fully appreciated.

I had arrived for the weekend in considerable disarray, having rushed around, neglected some tasks I wanted to have completed before the weekend, and even taken a rather humiliating tumble down some cellar stairs on the morning of my arrival. I arrived on the verge of being late, with scabbed and swollen knuckles and chin. (Read this, I arrived a hot mess). The women, half of whom I had never even met, took me in and gave me a homeopathic remedy I had never heard of called Arnica, and asked me not about the facts of what had happened to injure me, but the story. What went through my mind? How did I feel, then and now? What did I notice about the situation and myself? The combination of their concern for my physical well-being and their genuine interest in my experience of an event made me feel quickly safe and seen and at home in a way that is not typical for me, but was precisely the welcoming in that I needed to do work that was both creative and personal. It was the crucible within which the weekend's magic could happen.

While telling about the different aspects of the weekend does little to describe or explain the whole, I want to comment on some of the key ingredients in what for me was a rich and deeply meaningful experience.

The women. (And it had to have been all women!) There were seven of us (nine, if you include our facilitator and her wife), representing two different states of residence, a wide variety of ages, writing backgrounds, personal histories, and current circumstances. The common denominators were a shared love of writing and reading and a commitment to creating and maintaining a safe space to both create and share new work.

In the past, if I had been asked to choose a writing group of all women vs. a writing group of people interested in the same kinds of writing, I'd have chosen the latter. Certainly my experience of writing amidst both men and women in grad school was rewarding and valuable. But. During this retreat, we wrote and shared about many things that could only really be described as women's issues. From the first hour of my arrival, I both recognized and felt the importance to me of spending the weekend with just women.

The facilitator. Well, I've only recently started working with Chivas, but must say that her commitment to craft, to the creative process, and to the importance of a safe and supportive space for women writers set and held the tone for our weekend. Whether she was presenting a cohesive craft lecture or passing around the designated roll of toilet paper for tears-catching or giving us writing prompts or guiding our sharing and discussion of our writing, her gentle, supportive, wise, and compassionate leadership was felt. (Do not think for a moment that she is not equally skilled at invoking the sense of fun. But, what happens at the dance party, stays at the dance party).

The place. The Wellspring House in Ashfield, intentionally geared toward the inspiration and quirks of writers and other artists, is a book-filled, art-filled residence atop a mountain in Ashfield. There was a meditation room, a rock garden, and an abundance of lilacs. There was also no cell phone reception. After the panicky feeling of i-phone withdrawl left me (breathe, Susan, breathe), that, too, turned out to be something I needed.

The writing and the sharing of writing. Having been swept in a whirlwind of anxious activity before my retreat weekend, I was skeptical about my ability to relax enough for any substantial amount of writing. Boy, was I wrong! During the course of the weekend, a new novel chapter, several poems, and a couple of loose-form essays tumbled out of me.

After writing sessions, which we went off to pursue alone under trees, in the rock garden, on the porch, in our beds, we reconvened to sit in a circle in the living room and read aloud to the group whatever portion we wanted to share. I don't really know how to explain it, the sense of my writing being deeply heard, considered, felt. The poignancy of listening to other women's beautifully penned and deeply personal writing.

Often, the feedback we gave one another took the form of just repeating a sentence or phrase from the person's writing what was especially meaningful or impacting to a listener. I don't know how to explain it adequately, the gift of such deep listening. The act of going inward to find and write one's truth, and then have it heard, appreciated, and reflected back by the same writers whose own words just wowed you. The extent to which we women "got real" about our feelings, our demons, our lives, our concerns.

The laughter. Lest I have made it sound like the retreat was an extended group therapy session, it's important to note that we laughed. Uproariously. A lot. Enough to make various face and stomach laugh muscles hurt a little, in a very good way.

The dancing. Oops, I said I wasn't going to go into detail about the dancing. Let me just say that after a lot of intense, hard writing and sharing work on Saturday, many of us engaged in the freest, most un-self-conscious dancing that I have ever personally experienced. Motown, anyone? What a release, what a bonding experience, and what a blast!

The Goddess (aka The Sappho). She was the faceless, full-bodied, broken and repaired, just-weighty-enough and substantial sculpture we passed around when we were about to read from our own work. Before long, she was as much a personality among us as any of us were. Also, it became fun to hold her in one hand like a newly-announced Academy Award recipient, so we dubbed her "The Sappho" (as opposed to The Oscar).

Now, my weekend is behind me. Now, I return to the hectic and mundane, to work tasks and laundry and parenting, to people, for the most part, who do not hold dear the things that meant so much to me this weekend.

This morning, light bulbs burned out in both my kitchen and my headlight, a passerby waving me down to alert me of the latter as I dropped off my daughter before work. Is it because of the weekend, its vibrancy and energy and reverence to detail, that this feels so symbolic?

Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.

My mission now is to stay alive, to keep the weekend alive in me. And if that all sounds a little dramatic, well, so be it. I am a person with strong feelings who yearns to live my life authentically and fully. There are several women who get this about me. And it's all ok.

That was the gift of the weekend.

How to get back on the horse when it matters most

We've all heard the old adage about the importance of getting back on the horse after a fall. We know it, we get it-- perhaps we even tell it to our kids. But sometimes the fall is particularly hard, and let's face it, when you're badly bruised, that horse can look especially  tall, your horse's movements can seem particularly spastic and untrustworthy, and the ground can seem like something better to keep your feet planted upon than to view from what is perhaps an unreasonable height.

The truth is, getting back on the horse can be incredibly difficult. Here's why, and how to improve your odds

1) Our brains are wired to tell us there's a danger, but not so much to tell us that the danger's over. We survive, at least in part, by etching the details of a dangerous situation into our brain, so that the close call we had one time won't cause our demise the next. This means that our level of fear should not automatically be considered a measure of actual risk. If we know this, we can use self-talk to remind ourselves that the fact that we're scared doesn't mean we'll get hurt again.

2) We may need to re-assess, rather than avoid, the horse and our riding, in terms of what we really value and want? Is getting back on the horse truly necessary and important to us? Maybe horseback riding gives us an incomparable thrill that is worth whatever it takes to try to get back in the saddle. On the other hand, maybe the horse is unpredictable, and there's a safer horse to be riding. Or maybe you want to deepen your bond with a particular horse, and it isn't about the riding at all-- in which case, getting "back in the saddle" is now a metaphor for maintaining and improving your relationship with an animal. The more you understand about the particulars of your own motivation, the more you can feel confident in your decision-making despite a certain level of fear.

3) In order to face a particularly intense fear, it's in our interest both to seek out our support system, and to be our own best, kindest, most enthusiastic friend. It is easiest, of course, to just avoid what we are scared to deal with. At least in the short run. But if the thing we are avoiding will bring us something we truly value, then what's at stake from our avoidance is boredom, dissatisfaction, and unrealized goals and dreams. So, when we face something hard, we should do it with all the support, compassion, and good will that's available to us. And then some. So don't be afraid to throw yourself a party (actually or metaphorically) to cheer yourself on. Positive feedback is motivating. Cultivate it in large quantities to face that one thing which seems scariest to you.

Happy Imperfect Mother's Day

There are mothers scattered around the world who woke up today feeling blessed, proud, and secure in both their parenting and their place. In addition to having surely had a certain amount of that thing we call the luck of the draw, they have likely worked hard, on their parenting and on themselves, to be where they are today.

This post is not for them.

Nor is it for the scores of others who don't recognize or celebrate Mother's Day, because it doesn't apply or it doesn't resonate or they think the holiday is frivolous, exclusive, or painful. Many have no connection to the occasion and/or have excellent reasons to opt out.

Instead, today's post is for you. You know who you are. The mom who will get the lump in your throat when you receive your child's school-assigned, handmade Mother's Day gift, and you'll hug your child or children close and mean it, and all the while you'll feel like an imposter or a fraud because on somewhere deep down, you're thinking, I know I'm not cut out for this. I know I'm not doing a good enough job.

I could detour here to writing about societal underpinnings. How we simultaneously say that mothering is all-important and that it is unimportant. How we expect mothers to know how to do this most complex of jobs, since "maternal instinct" clearly comes with an internal blueprint for what to do when your child hates school, or can't sleep, or gets anxious or depressed, or has some strange but mysterious symptom that specialists can't figure out. This is all true and real, but it is not where I'm going with this blog post today.

Instead, I'm speaking directly to you, oh self-doubting and self-critical mom who probably has a whole range of complicated feelings about this day. I'm speaking to you directly, with three important messages about today.

1) If, before you became a mother, you struggled with low self-esteem, with questions about your place and your worth, motherhood can amplify the hell out of that. It's like handing your negative self-talk a megaphone. Your insecurities will hold large, unruly parties without your permission. This might leave you feeling quite terrible at times, in general and on various special occasions, including Mother's Day.

2) Feeling like a bad, insufficient, or unsuccessful mother on Mother's Day does not mean the feeling is a fact. It does not "prove" anything about your parenting.

3) Feeling bad about yourself is one thing. Failing to address it is another matter altogether.      There is no one path to healing from depression or low self-esteem or post-trauma symptoms, but a sustained effort to do so (which may or may not involve counseling, self-help measures, lifestyle changes, soul-searching, and so on) is of vital importance. 

And what if you are, in fact, "failing" at some aspect of parenting in some fundamental way? Maybe you fly off the handle sometimes and say terrible things to your child that truly harm him or her emotionally. Maybe you are physically present but emotionally absent as a parent, and your child feels alone. I'm not making the case that we shouldn't assess our own parenting, regardless of self-esteem, and seriously address any ways in which we could be harming or failing our children.

But I truly believe that when you want to change something, whether it's how you feel about yourself as a parent or how you parent, being harsh toward yourself will only hamper your progress. We do not grow or change optimally in a hostile climate.

So try to celebrate you today. You're not perfect, no, but you care, and you're trying, and that's half the battle. It's a challenging job, but you're probably not as bad at it as you think.

Happy imperfect mother's day to you, and to us all.

On the matter of mattering

"A painter facing a blank canvas, a writer facing a blank computer screen, an actor facing a cattle call audition, a researcher facing a mass of data all face this postmodern question: 'Do I or my efforts matter?' "  - Eric Maisel

Practically everyone I talk to recently seems to be struggling with questions about who they really are and whether they are doing what they "should" be doing with their life. Maybe I just have a particular radar for it right now, because I have been grappling with questions myself about what I want and need in the short and long run, and which of my pursuits, (when it seems clear lately that something has to give) are worthwhile.

But it's more than just a question of, "What do I want to do when I grow up?" (or as I Grow old!) Over and over I hear the theme that resonates so strongly with me: People who, like me, don't just want to be and do. They want to mean and matter.

One friend told me recently: "Everyone I know has someone who is the most important person to them. But I am not that someone for anyone."

Another said, about their long career in an unsatisfying but well-compensating line of work: "I could do this until the point I'm physically unable to work. Everyone expects me to. But all these hours of mindless existence, all that tuning out to get through the workday-- I'll never get those hours back, you know?"

With whom am I really close and connected? What actions, what accomplishments will give my life meaning, in my own view, as I look back?

Of course, plenty of people don't grapple with such questions. They do a job because it fell in their lap or it's a career they chose decades ago and now they know it well, so why bother to ask one's self if the fit is still right. They stay in a situation because it's familiar, or they leave someone on a whim. There are times and ways in which I even envy those people. How freeing it must be not to assess and reassess, to dig deep and soul search as an extension of being who you are.

As for me, I will continue, I'm sure, to grapple with questions of meaning and mattering. But I will also try to see examples of them in the things I am already doing, the cast of characters I am currently sharing the stage with. Surely even as I try to figure out, say, my work life or the creative writing project I'm working on, there is meaning in the way my daughter squeezes my hand as I walk her upstairs to put her to bed. Surely I am helpful to some clients some of the time, which matters hugely to me. And maybe even this blog post matters somehow, the writing of it and perhaps even to somebody reading it.

Sometimes I think we are all fireflies, scattered apart and only blinking faintly, intermittently. Nevertheless, our paths do cross, and our light does shine. We might not always know for sure that our faded blinking matters for anything. But we don't know for sure that it doesn't matter, either.

When choosing your focus, kind-hearted kids and azaleas are a good start

Someone made an unkind remark about me recently, unaware that I was in earshot.  Luckily, having just given my 7-year-old a speech about the importance of a thick skin and using her "ignoring skills" when people say mean things, I knew exactly how to handle it. I decided swiftly that the world is full of mean people, took the comment completely to heart, and proceeded to plan my relocation to another part of the world, perhaps a small, uninhabited island someplace. On account of being a grown-up and everything.

In truth, nowadays I am capable, at least some of the time, of letting something like that roll right off my back. On days when things are going reasonably well and I'm feeling ok, I know not to dwell on something so minor in the scheme of things. Still, on this day, the words made their mark and brought me back to times in my life when I didn't fit in and knew it, when I felt inferior. Surprising and unsettling, how fast and how deep something can get under our skin.

Yesterday, I ran a therapy group in a corrections setting, and we were talking about risk factors for substance abuse. As sometimes happens during these discussions, we would start out talking in generalities (such as, "experiencing or witnessing domestic violence might be a risk factor for substance abuse"), and then someone will cite a specific instance from their own life, as in, "I remember I told my mother that my stepfather was abusing us, and she didn't believe me and beat me up for 'causing trouble'. Could that be related to substance abuse?" Yesterday, in one of those kinds of stunned moments, I found myself thinking, Whoa. The world really sucks.

Sometimes life's cruelties and atrocities seem mammoth. Sometimes the uglier aspects of life that I hear in my work as a therapist blends with my remembering or processing of some of my own ugly experiences. Sometimes I am paying so much attention to those things that I see the world as a mine field I have to traverse whether I want to or not.

But if I really look, there's so much of the good stuff around us, too. Just last weekend, I had the pleasure of watching my 7-year-old throw candy in a parade-- twice, I watched her run from our parade group to personally hand candy to the one child in a small group who didn't scramble fast enough to collect any. Her kind-heartedness often stuns me as she navigates her young life.

A recent Facebook posting sought to locate a cat's owner to say the cat had been hit but was rushed to the vet by the passerby who posted. The person wanted the owner to know that everything possible was being done to save the cat.

Walking  toward my office today, I stopped to study and smell a gorgeous azalea bush overflowing with enormous purple blossoms which were hidden within tightly-closed  buds the last time I passed by.

And so today's blog, with what must be the oldest message on earth. In this life, there are many good things and many bad things. We magnify whichever part we focus on. It feels infinitely better to appreciate azaleas and smile when your 7-year-old is on a candy mission.

As for the rest of it all, I release it from my preoccupations, if not from my awareness, in the moment I finish this sentence. In the instant I press "Post"...

Freely and recklessly make new mistakes

I recently blogged about the stuck place I landed in recently while working on a creative writing project. In writing, as with life in general, it's troubling to find that you are suddenly spinning your wheels or have become lost in a dense fog.

When I found myself unable to forge ahead, I went into logic mode. Surely the problem must be some kind of technical error-- a wrong turn, a writing craft error or deficiency-- now I needed only to diagnose it properly, apply a cure, and I could be on my merry way. I started reading reference books about story construction, scene vs summary, creating and rendering characters. I armed myself with tools and knowledge, and guess what? My anxiety about the project worsened. My spinning tires sank deeper into the mud.

I realized that whatever technical problems may be responsible for slowing my progress, my anxiety itself-- that feeling of urgency that I was messing it up, doing it wrong, would not be able to figure out how to get it on track again-- had become the biggest problem of all. I came across this quote by Brenda Ueland this morning, which drove the point home for me:

"...you must freely and recklessly make new mistakes-- in writing or in life-- and do not fret about them but pass on and write more."

Freely and recklessly make new mistakes. I want to write this phrase in calligraphy and send it to everyone in my literary and artist coaching world.

We can't write freely if we're trying too hard, analyzing too much, setting the bar too high. Yes, writing is work, but it is play, too, and the play aspect is important, not just for keeping it enjoyable, but for breathing life into what goes on the page.

My goal today is to dive into my writing-in-progress with curiosity, spontaneity, and abandon.

Wait, so-- what are my "hot spots"?

     It was bound to happen sooner or later. After some consecutive days of working on my novel-in-progress, something got stuck in the gears and I found myself at a creative impasse, not knowing what to write next.
     Sometimes when this happens, I turn to reading. I might read literature for enjoyment or inspiration, for a reminder of what I am trying to accomplish. Or I might read about the craft of writing, where I sometimes find ideas or tools to propel me forward again.
     Today, I was reading Deepening Fiction: A Practical Guide for Intermediate and Advanced Writers, by Sarah Stone and Ron Nyren, and I found this about writers discovering their true material during the revision process:

"The hot spots--the areas where the story comes alive and is full of energy and interest--are likely to be those that fascinate us, that scare us, or that we don't want to explore. They may show characters behaving strangely or badly, trying to behave well and failing, or succeeding at something in a way that costs them or those around them more than it should."

    Hmmm. I wonder if sometimes a writer's impasse when constructing a story is connected to hot spots. Perhaps we become stuck when we are nearing a plot point or characterization that moves us where we're afraid to go. Or, conversely, if an impasse means we are moving away from our story's true north, and our apparent writer's block is actually our muse whispering, "You're getting colder..."
     So I've decided to go back to my novel-in-progress and look for signs of life in what's already on the page. In the meantime, as I figure out my next steps, I'd love to hear from my writer-readers about how you've understood and gotten over impasses in your own writing, as well as whether or not the "hot spots" concept resonates with you.
     Thoughts?    

Addiction: the elephant in our living room has become the tsunami in our communities

     I was running a group for court-mandated clients with substance abuse problems, and we were talking about triggers, the things that make them feel the urge to use their drug of choice. One person mentioned holidays. Another person mentioned anger. A third person referenced beer commercials. And then a fourth person said: "Turners Falls."
     I stopped a minute, stunned. Turners Falls, which was not in the same county or even the same state where this group was being held, is a sleepy New England village with a population of less than 5,000. It is also my hometown. I looked at the person who'd said it, wondering if a) he was serious, and b) he somehow knew where I'd grown up.
     Before I could read much in his eyes, though, a couple of other guys chimed in, talking about their drug-related ventures to Turners Falls or its neighboring towns and how they, too, now consider these places to be triggers,  associating the places themselves with the use of drugs.
      I'm not sure why I felt so surprised. Addiction is a life-threatening, tragic, and exorbinately expensive public health problem which has reached epidemic proportions. Recent figures from the Centers on Disease Control show a staggering increase of heroin overdose fatalities, for instance: in 2012, it was the reported cause of death for 5,927 people in the U.S., but a year later, it was the reported cause of death for 8,260, a 39% increase in a one-year period.
     And heroin addiction is by no means the only national substance abuse emergency. Prescription medication overdose fatalities have also sharply increased, especially among women, and excessive drinking is the fourth leading preventable cause of death in the U.S., causing an estimated 1 in 10 deaths among "working age" adults. (I have my qualms about the CDC category "working age", but that's for another blog at another time).
     Addiction is a multi-faceted problem which is destructive in many more ways than can be captured in cause of death statistics. It is a direct and indirect cause of violence and other crime, damages and sometimes destroys families, costs us billions in incarcerations and emergency medical treatment, and interferes with workplace productivity and relationships. It causes chronic and acute health conditions. It can lead to suicide and homicide. Often, it becomes a source of despair and self-loathing.
     The problem is worsening, and there is not enough help available. In 2014, Vermont governor Peter Shumlin devoted his entire State of the State address to a discussion of Vermont's opiate addiction problem. People paid attention, and the states's budget for addiction treatment was more than doubled. Treatment resources were expanded, as promised. But a year later, treatment facilities there still have waiting lists of hundreds. Even with expanded resources, demand is still exceeding supply.
     We need to understand that addiction is everyone's problem, and that it requires a sustained and committed response.
     When I was a teenager growing up in the inocuous little mill town which is now a perceived trigger to some people recovering from addiction, I heard for the first time the analogy that addiction is like the elephant in the living room. It was described as a problem affecting certain families that was both so huge and so shame-inducing that families would tiptoe around the "elephant" without acknowledging to one another that it was even there. At the time, I thought it was a powerful analogy, and felt grateful it applied to other families, was not a factor in my home.
     Today, addiction is not an elephant in the living room. It is a tsunami bearing down on our communities. If we underestimate its magnitude and ignore its size, it will drown us before we can say "home town". It will demolish us while we stand pointing our fingers . at those other, troubled communities where addiction supposedly lives.