How I got my breath back

From the tornado watch on Good Friday, I had been keenly aware that the final hurdle was my friend Maia’s birthday looming ahead.

Alas, awareness, compassion and discernment became became weaknesses as they held me in thrall to events that were about to unfold. My analytical mind and the creative drive of a story teller, did not help me turn the pages quickly or move beyond angst until current events played themselves out.

April 20th’s visit with Dr. S. was a place to check in and for the good doc to express his confidence that I would prevail. By this time in our relationship, he was able to mirror me well, unlike my BPD parent and the narcissistic GW.

Still, anticipation had me wanting to speed things up and get past each landmark that lay ahead. To succeed in the face of challenges known.

The first tangible thing to show up for was my PAB meeting that same night as my appointment with Dr. S. I tried to act like that was no big deal, when I showed up that evening, ostensibly ready to become president with our next meeting in August. But when I heard the news of big budget cuts and the district's plan to let go of some of the lowest paid instructors, I lost my enthusiasm and a big piece of optimism. I stayed up too late coming down from the energy and surprise of the meeting.

I tried to stay positive and keep my commitment to serve, but by next morning, the lack of sleep made my resolve disappear.
Next day’s emails showed me that my job on the board was not going to have its usual end-of-year let down. Our schools were in a state of change and the communities were changing in the fall and we were looking at losing our parapros.

That is when I found myself wanting desperately to resign from the PAB presidency, knowing that I did not know how I was supposed to lead! I had enough presence of mind and enough integrity to know that resigning now would be leave me feeling without strength or merit. I had to wait until I had real perspective so I could resign responsibly and with a clear vision and fewer distractions.

Ahead of us lay hearings for parents and first priority was to promote folks showing up to those hearings the following week.

By this time I was looking even more carefully over the terrain of my life and I saw that this particular time in April, when my husband had been away, had a fracture line all the way back 19 years ago, when I had had that mental health crisis, following our move from Germany to New York state.

I also lost my job in San Diego nineteen years ago. That’s when I first learned the full story of Holy Week, when I showed up for services Good Friday, with a good friend from work and his wife, the week I was fired from a job that my husband and I viewed as security.

Saturday, (the 25th of April)

I get an earlier than expected reminder of my responsibility to my friend F and her place in my mental health. F checked in with a rendezvous plan and I couldn't sort out what the appropriate response to her invitation should be. I decided let her help me (and herself) stay normal, by joining in on her outings with the kids. We met at Chuck-E-Cheeses, but it was just too much for me, that day, when I had shirked the big neighborhood garage sale too!

Earlier that day, Saturday, April 25, the university professor rocked our world, by shooting his wife. But only a select few people even heard about his actions that day. Most of the rest of us heard the following day. For me it was in church, and his name was not mentioned. Only the names of those who lost their lives because of his actions were named.

The day before the shooting we'd heard about the swine flu outbreak. Swine flu, when my husband does research with swine. Swine flu potentially impacting travel. George Zinkhan’s plans to leave the country? My husband’s to go to Philadelphia?

So much uncertainty.

The aftermath of George Zinkhan’s shooting of his wife, was for me was to realize how close this tragedy came our lives. My son was in his daughter’s class at school.

In all this, I was feeling like present life was so big, mostly because of Dr. Zinkhan’s impacting parents at my school and their ability to show up and be optimistic. It was that wrinkle in affairs, that eclipsed my optimism or even the reality of showing up in August for a stint as parent advisory board president. With our school directly affected by the Zinkhan shooting, I also felt that it was not appropriate to push parents to hearings unnecessariy! If I pushed, I was not being sensitive to the emotional climate of my school.

Checking in with two other friends, whose daughters were in a play at Clarke Central, were in drama with the best friend of Zinkhan’s slain wife. I saw the play that Laura and Jeannette performed the week after the slaying, when their teacher had to leave them the final week of the performance, to attend to matters of grief and crisis.

All the weeks of the 27th and the week between the boyscout trip and Mother’s Day I cannot show up to school.

So the week of the 26th was just too full of the unexpected, with too much meaning for me personally. The hearings about budget cuts, that I felt I should show up for, a local parent at large for shooting his wife, swine flu on the move, when my husband’s research is with swine…

I am a person who does best shooting from the hip, but here I just plain didn’t want to make time for action and speaking up to authorities in righteous anger, when I had commitments with baseball (and its erratic schedule), the desire to show up for one last bird walk, and the commitment on the solid waste task force now seemed over the top as well!

Bottom line, no excuses, is that I simply don’t want to be leading the parent advisory board in this time of change and when we will have a new superintendent and there is so much to learn about that is likely only to push my buttons.

To top it all off, the next weekend is the Boy Scouts big camp out, and I just want to feel safe and stable and not worry if it will rain, or be around a bunch of strangers. I decide to let the boys go without me. I let my closest friends in on my struggles.
The afternoon M and T leave for the camp out, I am feeling super anxious, when Kathy comes by; she hopes to have enough people turn out for an unexpected PTO meeting on Maia's (and her own) birthday, in which we will vote on whether to become a PTA!

The night the boys leave, I go to the Miracle Worker with my other "Maia Birthday" friend, and I see L. there too. Very meaningful for me. The other part of my weekend at home is that I finally take myself out for another imperfect haircut.

In hindsight, I see it is a downhill stretch for me, once I get through two nights completely alone (I just don’t see it yet).

Sprinting towards Philadelphia

The following week is the precursor to Mother's Day. Is it fitting then that I struggle with my mom? Sometimes it seems so silly and pointless to me to be stuck with her limitations in my head. I am supposed to love and honor my mom when she has treated me like crap? But of course, I send my card. And of course, I can't refrain from the final effort of calling my mom in the days before M.D. I get another dosage of unacceptable crap come my way, when she decides (after years of silence on the topic) to inject her morality into a sexual inventory of my college year. Nice, auspicious prelude to M.D.

I am glad to say that showing up Al-anon meetings leading up to Mother’s Day is what strengthened me, even though I am flailing and mishearing things, thinking I do not belong.

The tipping point is on Mother's Day, when I see myself get mad at the technology changes in our world, and Tycho orchestrating the purchase of an ipod shuffle.

I don’t call my mom on the actual day, but I keep my promise to Aunt T to call my Aunt M. From her and from another good friend in town, I find my prayers are answered; George Zinkhan’s body has been found. Now we have closure.

The next day, I decide to stop putting off my Spring cleaning. I ask Bonnie to help me do spring cleaning of my living room one day and the master bedroom the next. We finish up just the day before M’s trip to Philadelphia.

As Mike readies to leave, I find out the honeysuckle is blooming later than ever before. It is on a bike ride, that I chance to find their scent on the air, in memory of her.

I am glad to think that in a few short days, I will be sharing the out of doors with T's class in our end-of-year birdwalk. I know Maia will be there with me, in spirit, as I keep that commitment.

And so I make it out of the woods and give all the children, even Beth, a package that will help them attract hummingbirds to their backyard.

Wobbling towards Higher Ground

Easter passed. But I stayed stuck, wrestling with shoulds.

Monday morning I had to admit: my voice of objection barely etched the edifice of our public servants on the forum. I was not the voice of authority I had flattered myself to be. I saw myself as the canary in the coal mine and that other's well-being was threatened, if I had the response I did to our disruptive newcomer. However, to our program representatives, my continued emotional response identified ME as having a problem that I needed to see a therapist about! Maybe they were right.

I stepped back from full participation in our group, once I decided that I could not support the forum and it did not adequately care for my concerns. I needed to feel safe, and that responsibility lay with me. I did my best to focus on the good.

Boy, was I looking forward to the prospect of Holy Week’s triggers receding in my rear view mirror! Unfortunately, the structure of my real life did not fall into place immediately after Easter.

That Monday my son needed to stay home sick. Next day, I kept him home again. I did not return to routines, like exercise. Because I not have our forum to fully participate in, I wasn't as connected to my emotions.

Today I see that keeping my son home an additional day, fostered a link between my mental-health day and my son’s cold that did not help me strengthen myself. Wednesday (and T's return to school) came too late to regain my equilibrium. Without exercise and routines, I'd begun spiraling into poor sleep and intrusive night thoughts. I got too close to that place of dissociation and paranoia by Wednesday afternoon. That's when T came home from school, after two days of being “good” and kind to me in my vulnerability, to be a typical ten-year-old, challenging my authority with humor. That afternoon I simply did not "get" humor. I got FEAR (false evidence becoming real). I am just grateful I COULD call my therapist in a panic and begin to walk back towards understanding and away from the tipping point of my illness.

The symptoms of my emotional bottom had recurred to such an extent that it was time to act. My therapist decided for me (much in the way a midwife does when one is at a stalling point in the birth process) what needed to be done. She made clear that this was a time to use medications. I started with a small dose that very night. As a result I slept very well, so well that I had to cancel my attendance of a meeting of a parent advisory subgroup, at our school district’s office. My mental health crisis put this meeting into sharp perspective. It made no sense to show up to look normal and take that meeting seriously, after being so close to relapse.

Nor did I make my solid waste task force facility tour that same Saturday. I could not act as if I were a normal person, showing up to act committed, caring and interested in garbage. I acted as if I were a flake, instead.

Instead, I put the pressure on myself to show up later on Saturday for a lunch send-off for my friend’s husband. The following week he would be leaving Athens for pre-deployment training in the Midwest. (He would be serving in Afghanistan for 10 months, beginning in June.) What kind of friend draws attention to her vulnerabilities and doesn’t show up for a “real” test of support and faith?

On the other hand, I see how insistent I was "shoulding" on myself, goading myself into showing up for others at a time when I was decompensating. Afraid to isolate, I chose to put my mental health concerns aside to support a friend. I hoped this would push me back into normalizing. Yet, I also knew that I would not be able to share my struggles with my friend or lean too much on her. My friend would not be able to support me in my moment of need. NOT because of any shortcoming on her part. Rather because she must show up as a parent to her kids, and not sacrifice their well-being for mine. My friend, a single mom when her husband is away in the military, cannot be expected to be my support, especially as she lives across town and has two children not yet of school age.

It is also the very nature of emotional vulnerabilities: I have to handle mine in my own way and without dragging in too many different opinions.

Further, I would find my stress level going up, when she told me of her big plans for me to help her AND her husband in their respective writing projects. My gut told me that to help them would have to take its pound of flesh from my own writing focus. Would I be willing to sacrifice at some future date? (My stomach said "NO!")

As I looked ahead, I knew I had to regain trust of myself and stabilize before my husband went out of town again the last week of school in mid-May. Mid–May looked was a major leap away from where I was wobbling.

It felt then that "showing up" in support clearly was no a place for me to stand and rest, but had put me in queue to take on more work. To argue with friends, and set a boundary, during in their time of stability-seeking would help none of us. THIS was not the time to say “no” to the new expectations they had voiced.

I was looking for indications that I could have a time of peace, alone. I needed a step to sit on and gain perspective. Fortunately my scheduled appointment with Dr. S. was two days away.

Ghosts of Easters Past...and Present

Triggers.

I like to think AWARENESS helps me handle them. But if there is no time to relax after them, or more triggers are spawned before I get perspective... my emotional cup overflows.. in a bad way.

The first present-day trigger was simply my husband being away in New York state during Holy Week. His spring trips are good for his work profile—a specialized presentation to graduate students at an illustrious university. This year, the trip was extended by several days, so that he would have an opportunity to work on a grant proposal with the colleague who invites him for these talks.

It is only now that I can admit, with each of these trips I tend to take my responsibilities too seriously.

If only I could just let myself be a good enough mom and take care of family meals from breakfast to dinner. But no. I turn the experience into a trip to the land of "What If?" I imagine myself during these weeks morphing forever into a single mom, navigating the landmine I am sure will turn me into a BPD without my husband’s balancing presence. In short I become vigilant, making it my permanent job to refrain from becoming my mom! Worse, I tell myself I might fail. Take it to the hilt, imaging what life would life would be like if was unable to bring home the bacon, should my husband lose his job or even die. In short I use the precious time I have to myself to create a horror show, in which I compare myself to my mom, my husband and moms that do have to work to support their families, instead of being grateful that I have time to myself and the chance to see myself as a strong and independent woman.

The week M was away, I stayed focused on enduring his absence. I was proud I asked for help from my sponsor, even though I only know her online. I also I placed some of my emotional burden gently on the whole online group that I’ve been a part of for a number of years.

But because I was still looking for support outside of myself, I’d planted an almost imperceptible seed of doubt in my psyche, that unwittingly set me up for a fall. I was both grateful and ashamed (in the end) that my support team put me first, ahead of a troublesome newcomer to that forum. Guilt would come later, for the feeling of inappropriateness I would have in witnessing the group that I sometimes help oversee, come to my aid in my time of need. My need for the loop to function in my favor while my husband was out of town, ALSO kept me from finding peace in a more traditional spirituality that week , in keeping with the spiritual story of my forbears, whose tipping point is Good Friday. Guilt would come from that lapse in focus.

Early that week my husband was away, I encountered that newcomer to our recovery group online, a man from Australia who at the very least was a case of narcissism. He came in like a blast of brash wind, all ready to be the center of our recovery group’s attention. At first I welcomed him the same way I had learned to welcome any newcomer, and was concerned that HE could be vulnerable. This very newcomer would sabotage ME by week’s end.

He first fell in love with our group, only later to rear up at me when gently challenged to use our 12-step principles. I immediately found myself objecting to his need to take more time than anyone I had ever encountered. My unsaid reaction was, “I don’t have time for this. I need this group for mutual support. I want to interact with newcomers who at least start out being humble. ” He left the recovery forum even as I refrained from feeding his ego. Later, I had a change of heart and sent him a copy of my public share, in an attempt to befriend him and show him I too had vulnerabilities. That is when he blasted me in the most strident way possible.

He went on to over-empathize my situation., pathologizing me as a temporary single mom, trying to win me over in a way that felt phony. I was told by my sponsor NOT to correspond further with this man. I had to choose to literally sit on my hands as he advanced his efforts in befriending several of the people closest to me on loop, including my sponsor. He felt so much like a person with my mom's disorder, that I could no longer afford to share anything personal, for fear it would be used against me, by this virtual stranger.

Sure enough, he did end up misreading something I’d written in a public share. The last straw for me, was his offhanded comment that HE was the “opposite” of a BPD, and could understand our “clash” was due to the fact that I had the diagnosis. At the same time, I could not get the powers that be on loop to make a ruling that the man from Oz not be allowed back on loop. This was a transformative moment in my program, where I had a difficulty with the traditions.

It is my belief that the newcomer is only the most important person, IF they do not jeopardize the unity of the group. Unity is not represented by my opinion, no matter how good my intuition is. Further, and more importantly, I think I found out that an online forum can never function as a face-to-face group.

I kept sight of my strengths, even as I faced my fear that this person might not be in Oz after all, but might stalk me. This took me close to paranoia, but again, I successfully side-stepped that.

Still, I decided mid-week to feel like a part of my family back west and gave my mom a call. Acting as if she were the kind of mom I COULD call while my husband was away? Or thinking I was ready to move ahead in boundary setting with her. Instead I was zapped by her too. As soon as she realized it was me on the phone she said, “Oh have you called to get some gossip?” I was so insulted, allowing her words, to join the Oz's in my head. Perhaps two “BPD-types” were too much for me NOT to take personally. Still, the coincidence of being so deeply affected by cracked pots, has made me wonder just why I give up my power and discernment to folks like this, with their unique and fractured mirrors.

My husband came home the night after I talked to my mom. I can still see myself relaxed at our dining room table, drinking a glass of red wine at dinner. In my usual optimistic way, I was looking ahead to address the next trigger. Trying to minimize it already. Good Friday was the day our television was hit by lightning when I was eight years old. Only this year, putting memories of childhood in final perspective, did I imagine how an eight-year-old would take such a judgment from their mom. I was glad to find laughter, when I saw how absurd it was to blame a young child for not unplugging the television. Especially when lightning was so rare for the Pacific Northwest.

That was the night before the man from OZ was permitted back on our forum. (I’d already told the powers that be that he was a clear threat to our group and the work we do on loop as individuals.)

Sure enough, when he popped back in on Good Friday afternoon, the man from Oz looked just like a predator to me, sharing with us publicly that he had fallen in love with someone online. When he mentioned the name of a "new" friend who lived in my same hometown, I hit my wall of tolerance. I spoke up about my fears to my online friends, inadvertently sending my private comments directly to Oz. He blasted me so hard, I couldn’t read his words. My husband did instead. It was no relief really that my husband corroborated my feelings, that this man, even in an email, felt like a snake in the grass.

Whatever optimism I had coming into Holy Week, was like smoke as we waited for the tornado watch to end that Friday night. I was in my guilt now and fear was in my core.

Stepping Away from the Cliff of Relapse

Every twelve step Program is about acceptance. It starts with accepting what is uncomfortable about our situation, and growing to accept and love ourselves.

The irony of my life is that after all these years in program, each year I struggle to accept that school ends in mid-May. You’d think I’d have that down by now. But acceptance happens in stages. Or in layers, like an onion.

My excuse is this: each year, spring has a different set of challenges.

This year there was Little League baseball with two evening games a week, Boy Scouts and piano recitals. Those alone would have been enough for me.

If only my husband had not also not been called out of town three separate times this spring. Radical acceptance was needed.

One of my character strengths proved to weaken me this year, when my husband was away. I'd already found a great deal of insight (and even pleasure) this winter in revisiting my story with folks I knew and loved in my young womanhood. Normally I find it my sense of purpose is enhanced by awareness of meaningful coincidences.

But what usually brings me pleasure and insight, was too much for me once April hit. Co-incidences I'd left alone and ignored, decided they would have their way with me. Was I to be a victim and not a victor, for allowing them to make their power known to me? Could they lead anywhere, but to self-doubt?

The coincidence that I did care to recall was May 20th, the first anniversary of my friend Maia’s death. Radical acceptance was what I wanted, in order to honor her place in my life.

Turned out that there were repercussions from three other anniversaries of events usually too distant for me to want to empower. This year, they acted as triggers that rocked my confidence in the strength of my recovery. Being aware of my history was like looking over a cliff even as I took it one-day-at-a-time through my husband’s first trip out of town during Holy Week and the anticipated let-down the week after his return.

My first deep synchronicity is that it was also mid-April when I had my first bout with the emotional/spiritual illness I continue to respect today. In April of 1991, we were settling into New York state, after a move abroad, when I suffered a breakdown and ended up in a psychiatric hospital. That illness befell at the end of a life-changing year that had begun with losing my job during Holy Week. My job loss had accelerated a move to Germany, and cut off options for my husband’s easy return to California.

The third co-incidence came from a childhood memory that demonstrated the unsettling of my psyche, living with a person with undiagnosed borderline personality disorder. I'd been blamed for something that was an act of God. Radical acceptance of that experience was necessary for me to heal it.

Before my husband's first out-of-town trip, I was happily outgrowing my need for my psychiatrist, Dr. S.. I'd gotten so much into my recovery, that I had only the occasional need of a pharmaceutical for short-lived anxiety. Now, I had to accept, radically, my need for consultation with him.

Fortunately, I had one good coincidence working on my behalf. An April 20th appointment with Dr. S had been scheduled months ahead of time.

I brought my husband along for that visit, to help mirror my strengths, even as I admitted my need for Dr. S’s perspective and pharmaceutical guidance. In the two weeks prior to that appointment, I had already experienced several trigger events that challenged my ability to stay comfortably in the present. One brought me closer to my “edge” than I even cared to admit to the good doc.

I had hard-won perspective to share with my psychiatrist; thank God he demonstrated radical acceptance. He used our fifteen minute appointment to reassure all of us that I was resilient enough to get through the next five weeks.

Other big coincidences lay ahead. Our fifteen minutes was up.

I would be the one looking back to understand the triggers that lay behind me. I would share every detail when I came to my appointment alone (scheduled again without conscious planning-- for the next time M was out of town).

listing all the problems without getting tar all over my hands!

There have been times in the past where it helped to list all of my problems. And I could ask, is there anything more and know the list would end.


I will trust today that when I start this list of negative coincidences (that conspire to knock me off balance) that I will find an end to it!


Alas, because I was so ready to be involved in my community (as a writer who writes on more than one theme of interest, as a parent advisory board member, as a friend and volunteer at school, as well as a person on a committee that is looking at solid waste issues in a series of spring meetings, myy fingers in too many pies. Hard to know where to focus.

Ah then Mother's Day and the fact this is baseball season for my son. Should be fun, but I am just too preoccupied. Then there my son's piano recital, school ending in less than two weeks, And the games add to the chaos in scheduling that always takes place this time of year.



First there was my mom accusing me of gossip last month (early April) , when my husband was away. I personalize her attacks on me, far too much. Accusing me of being a gossip was so out of line!

Then, that same week there was a person new to my support system (of which I have been a part for some years, through thick and thin) who felt so much like a person with borderline personality disorder that I freaked out and wanted him gone. (He may have "only" been a narcissist. Bad enough!)

To top it off, that week there was the synchronicity of a threatened tornado on Good Friday, a very meaningful time in our family where a damaging event occurred in my childhood, for which I was blame.

The following Monday, my son was home sick two days as the spring weather of the Southeast gave us a blast of summer weather that always takes us by surprise. Complete with pollen, so that even when he was getting better he could not go outside. And I could not open windows to let in the 80 degree sunshine. Crazy making!

Interestingly, I lost my routine and my sleep, not the week my dear husband was away but the let-down week. So frustrating! Sleep is very big for me in maintaining sanity. I had a flare-up one of those afternoons that was inhospitable to be outside. My therapist encouraged me to wave the white flag of surrender and go back to taking my medicines, so that I would get the sleep needed for perspective on my life. Especially my life as a mom.

But another piece while I was suffering from fear of my illness recurring, and managing sleep, I had made a commitment to a friend to show up and have lunch the last weekend her husband was in town. A. goes to serve in Afghanistan in June, and will be gone a year. He is going through training in the midwest now. I was afraid of not being able to show up and be "upbeat" for him! I was not sure what was expected of me and my family. To show up for this friend meant that we did not show up for our school's annual spring fling. I am never sure of my priorities. Or that I am doing the right thing. To show up for this friend was a big feeling of obligation for me. Our lives really don't have a lot in common, but for the fact that we have mental health issues in our family and children. But she lives across town, is not a continuous part of my network of friends, because our boys are five years apart in age!

I did meet up with my lady friend and her family in a public place, and was glad I did. But it was not an easy thing for me to do. I was confused and I was not sure whose need I was meeting.

Monday, I met up with the doctor, reviewed the medicines, and he gave me great perspective on the gossip issue my mother had brought up.

(My hands are shaking right now, because my mom just called me to start to tell me her rotten perspective on the time when I was eighteen, and vulnerable! At times like this, I have to stop answering the phone! Writing this, for clarity is a lot more important!)

But Monday was also my parent advisory board meeting, and I am supposed to become an officer next year. A leader. Problem is I don't know what I am leading, and whether parents really have any real input into our school district's decision.

I came away cautiously optimistic about taking the helm in August when the new school year starts, and I stayed up too late that Monday night.

This set me up for another crisis, as I realized I might need to step away from this responsibility. And the uncertainties ahead, with our children being shifted now to their neighborhood schools (to reduce the transportation budget), and personnel layoffs
due to budget cuts.

Now, the following weekend, (the 24th) I am dealing with the fact that my friend whose husband is going to Iraq, asks me if I am interested in meeting up at Chuck-E-Cheeses (hate the place, ought to have said no) so that HER boy can have something to look forward to! Should have said no, but was afraid this was help being offered from my HP. Well, maybe it was, but I didn't accept it graciously. And my son really didn't want to go to Chuck E Cheeses, though he went willingly enough. Whose need was being met? After all these outings, my husband asks if we can go out to eat. Almost said yes, and then realized I'd had too much stimulation already. All this coping was driving me nuts. The boys go to pick a movie, and what do they pick? The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Yikes, for someone who is already overstimulated. I tried to watch it after dinner, but then had to escape. Almost like passive-aggressive, but I knew the boys couldn't take care of me, or understand. So I comforted myself and zoned out on the bed.

Next day, we find out in church, that several people in our community died. We don't learn details until my husband fills me in on a phone call he'd received the day before about a professor who was "at large" "involved in a shooting." Turns out, by later the same day the news has gone national, CNN. The professor killed his wife, and two others involved in our community theater. By Monday I finally know that one of the surviving children was in class at school with my son. Sat next to her, in fact.

Two good friends of mine, have daughters in high school drama class. Their teacher is best friends with the slain wife. The ripple has grown and I am trying not to rock too hard in its wake. I attend The Miracle Worker performance, last Friday night. The high school students' performance is absolutely real in its execution of the Helen Keller story. I am moved, because these students came through for their teacher in a time of crisis.

It felt over the top already and all around and through this time the swine flu issue is also airing on the radio.
Well, my husband's research has touched on the pathogens in swine manure. He does research in this area.

Gee are those enough coincidences?

Mother's Day. And the first anniversary of my friend Maia's death on May 20th.

And the fact that my husband will miss the last week of school (the same week of Maia's anniversary) and scheduling that week is up to me.

Meanwhile I am living life one day at a time, and wondering when I can have a larger perspective ever again!

using all the tools in the box

This is for me a time of year that is already full of change, so I have lost the thread on my blog that was able to look at past story and begin to make sense of it.

Let's just say that the Zena that has perspective is taking a temporary break from being able to make sense of her life and the exact things she SHOULD be doing. Program has something to say, even indirectly about "shoulds"!

I am using all my support tools right now.

After the week my husband took his trip, I took a slip and lost most of my routines. When I lost sleep and had too many midnight thoughts that were not taking me anywhere good, I decided it was time to talk to the good doctors and be willing to go back on medications, for as long as it takes to be able to see the good in my life, without so much wavering in my heart and solar plexus and of course, my overactive brain.

I was programmed for self-doubt by my mom. But I will get past this.

Other tools besides medicines are my program (emotions anonymous). And my appointments with my therapist, as needed.

Exercise. Attention to good thinking and looking for the good.

And being willing to ask for help.

Zena will return in a new form after she gets through this intense time of change.