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.