On New Pathways

Posted on by Esterina Anderson

I don’t know if it’s because I turned 40 this year. Or because I started yoga teacher training. Or because I started taking Lexapro. Or a combination of those and other things, but I’m a person going through a transition. I’m sort of on a new path.

One of the many new things in my life that I’ve been taking advantage of is the new trail that was recently built between Jarvis and West Main Street in Cheshire. It’s not officially connected to Southington yet, but it’s walkable and no one tells you to get off. It’s not connected to Cornwall Street either, which would make it possible to stay on the trail all the way from Southington to New Haven, but the small road that connects West Main and Cornwall (Willow) is safe and short enough that it’s no problem to do the whole route without getting too far off the path.

It’s a new pathway. I ran on it for the first time about a month and a half ago. It was the same day I put on a Fitbit. Daren got one at a conference in Vancouver. He had it on his dresser for a few weeks until I asked if he was going to use it. He said no and that I could, so I put it on that morning and ran the 1.25 miles up to the new trail.

As soon as I stepped off my usual route, I felt a little scared and excited. I’d never really been off my usual path (A.K.A. rut), and the excitement of being on new territory without a car felt freeing. I turned the corner not really knowing how long it would take me to get to the trail. I knew it by car, but being on foot was so much different. It turned out not to be that far.

When I reached the entrance of the trail, standing there in the bright morning sunlight, it felt a bit magical. I stopped to take a picture of the new sign. I thought I might start walking once I got there, but I wasn’t tired yet and felt a strong desire to keep running.

img_8589

The path is flat compared to the hills in my neighborhood that I’m accustomed to. Sometimes those hills kick my butt and I need to stop and walk; other times I can push through them. The flatness felt novel and good. It felt like I could run forever.

 

img_8590

I ran further into the trail and saw the “Prom?” sign graffitied into the mountain. Where did that come from? Is it the Cheshire prom pose place? Did some romantic high school boy do that for a girl while the trail was being built? Who knows… but it’s kind of nice. It sits right across from a bench.

I stopped again, feeling the warm morning sunlight on my skin, wanting to soak it in. I ran further, breathing slowly—an old trick that sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. That day, it worked. The slow breathing, warm sun, and shadowy trees created the perfect conditions. I continued down this new path without really knowing how far I’d go. I just knew I wanted to keep going.

Running water, green muck, benches, beautiful trees… it was all breathtaking. I felt so alive.

When I started to hear cars in the distance, I knew I was getting close to the end. And almost without warning, there it was—West Main Street. I had to stop and just take it in. I had never seen it from that perspective, out in the open without the protection of a car. Without that barrier, you feel everything more. The air, the smells, the heat. It was beautiful.

I turned around, now having a sense of how far I had gone.

 

img_8597

Again, I thought I’d get tired and walk. To my surprise, I never really did. Even when I got back to the hills, I pushed myself just a little further each time—one mailbox at a time—until I reached the top without stopping.

By the time I got home, I realized I had run farther than I ever had before. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. And it was actually fun.

Over the next few weeks, I went back to the trail as often as I could. I walked it. I ran it. I explored parts that weren’t even officially open yet. I started combining new routes with old ones and found myself going farther and farther.

One Sunday after yoga training, I got on my bike and decided to ride the path alone. I hadn’t done that since I was a teenager. It felt both exciting and a little scary.

I rode faster than I expected and reached the end quickly, so I decided not to turn back right away. Instead, I went off the path to see if I could find my way to another entrance—without using a map. And I did.

That feeling of figuring it out on my own stayed with me. Not just physically, but mentally. I felt independent. Capable.

 

img_8806

 

This new path has opened up my world in so many ways. It helped me realize how strong I am, on foot and on a bike. It’s given me the ability to go places without a car. It’s connected me to different parts of town, to nature, and to myself.

And somewhere along the way, I started to see it as more than just a trail.

It felt like what was happening inside of me.

I began thinking about how we create new neural pathways in our brains—how change happens slowly, through repetition, through small shifts over time. Just like the trail being built piece by piece.

I’ve watched sections of it evolve day by day. And I realized—I’m doing the same thing.

Each day, one small change at a time, I’m creating new routes. Strengthening them. Making them deeper so they can eventually become the default instead of the old patterns and ruts.

As above, so below. Pathways are pretty amazing, whether in our minds or in the physical world.

It made me think about history—about when the Romans built roads and how that opened up the world. It created connection, trade, movement, possibility.

But roads can also wear out. Or lead somewhere you no longer want to go.

It happens in our minds too.

Creating a new path is work. It’s uncomfortable. It’s unknown. The old path is easier—it’s familiar, automatic.

But once you step off that old route and into something new, something shifts.

It’s exciting. A little scary. You’re more alert. More aware. You notice things you wouldn’t normally see because you’re no longer on autopilot.

And when you return to the old path, you see it differently. You start to recognize what still serves you—and what doesn’t.

Maybe it’s not about abandoning the old completely. Maybe it’s about keeping what’s good while creating something new.

That’s where growth happens.

New pathways—both mentally and physically—make life more exciting. They help us grow. They open up possibilities.

That sounds pretty good to me.

Thank you, Cheshire rails-to-trails project. It’s just one of many things changing in my world right now, and I wanted to honor it by sharing its beauty.

Love, Peace & Namaste.

img_8797

Thanks for taking the time to read. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Please feel free to leave a comment or subscribe for future updates.

Abroad in Italy

On a Disjointed Life

Posted on by Esterina Anderson

This blog is mostly in response to one my husband Daren wrote a few weeks back: https://darenamd.wordpress.com/2016/07/23/on-the-value-of-rituals/

We did chat about it that day in a coffee shop, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. One of the reasons rituals are so meaningful is because they trace something back to its roots and honor it in its entirety. But nothing really exists alone in its entirety. Anyone who is Facebook friends with me (and paying attention) has probably seen the quote I’ve had on my profile for years:

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” — John Muir

I love that quote. I’ve used it in conversations and presentations in many forms. We can trace almost everything—including ourselves—back to the stars. We and everything around us are made of star stuff (thank you, Carl Sagan, for that one). If we really sit with that idea, it can feel like either nothing at all or complete chaos. But when we narrow our focus too much—when we isolate one piece—we lose sight of the beauty of how it all ties together. And we feel alone.

Our brains need to draw lines to make sense of things. But those lines also need to stop somewhere manageable so we can understand what we’re looking at. What I think is happening now is that the lines we draw are becoming smaller and smaller.

Take a shoemaker 150 years ago. He had a small shop in the center of town. People came to him for their shoes. He knew his customers. Everyone in that town had a role, and they supported one another through trade, barter, or money. There was a sense of connection—of being part of something whole.

That shoemaker made each pair from start to finish. He knew where the materials came from and how they came together. Every stitch, every sole—his hands touched all of it. When he walked through town, he saw his work on people’s feet. There was pride, connection, and meaning. Making shoes was a ritual. The lines were drawn around the whole process, and that process was tied to community and to people.

Then machines came. Assembly lines broke the process apart—not just for shoes, but for nearly everything. The lines became smaller. Instead of making a shoe, someone made a sole. Or hammered the same piece over and over. The ritual was lost. The connection to the final product faded.

Supply chains expanded. We no longer see what we make or who it serves. Many people leave their towns, commute long distances, and spend their days doing work they feel little connection to. Ironically, as the world becomes more connected, we become more disconnected—from what we do, from where things come from, and from each other.

I love Daren’s example of the record player. Playing music used to be a ritual. There was anticipation in setting it up, in placing the needle, in waiting. That effort made the experience richer. Now, with every song available instantly, I don’t enjoy music the same way.

The same goes for coffee. There was something meaningful in grinding beans and making it by hand. The waiting was part of the enjoyment. Now we grab coffee from a drive-through or a machine, often without even thinking—sometimes multiple times a day. And somehow, it feels like less.

Our on-the-go lifestyle has started to strip the pleasure out of everyday life. We’re less connected to what we do, to what we consume, and to the people around us. We start to see ourselves as separate instead of part of a whole.

Unless you own your own business, many of us feel little connection to the mission of our work. We become parts in a machine, disconnected from the outcome—and sometimes from our own humanness.

I see it in myself. I walk through the VA facility where I work, passing patients in the hallway, and sometimes I experience them as obstacles—something in the way of where I need to go next. Already late. Moving quickly. It’s only when something interrupts my routine—like having to go to another floor—that I notice the waiting rooms, the check-ins, the people. It’s only then that I remember I work in a hospital.

That feels like a symptom of something that’s gone wrong.

I wasn’t around in the days of the shoemaker, but I’ve experienced enough of the “in-between” to feel the shift—record players, cassettes, CDs… even watching my mom grind coffee beans at the store and then make coffee at home. There was more presence in it. More enjoyment.

Now everything is faster, smaller, more efficient. But to what end?

We’re doing more and more, faster and faster. But are we actually enjoying it more? Are we happier?

I’m not.

And maybe I’m not alone.

I don’t think this means rejecting the world we live in—but maybe it means choosing, in small ways, to step out of the rush. To slow down where we can. To reconnect with process, with ritual, with the bigger picture.

I find myself wanting that more and more.

Less speed. More meaning. More connection.

A return—not backwards—but inward.

Thanks for taking the time to read. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Please feel free to leave a comment or subscribe for future updates.

 

On Siblings

Posted on by Esterina Anderson

“To the outside world, we all grow old. But not to brothers and sisters. We know each other as we always were. We know each other’s hearts. We share private family jokes. We remember family feuds and secrets, family griefs and joys. We live outside the touch of time.” – Clara Ortega

Is this true for everyone? I used to think it was, but I’m not so sure. It’s true for me. I’m close with both of my brothers. My brother Mario is only 20 months my junior, but only a calendar year apart; so it put us a year apart in school growing up. My brother Frankie is 4 years and 5 months younger than me. As I said, I’m close with both of my brothers; but my relationship with Mario is something that I don’t even have words for. Mario and Frankie… It’s Franceso really. Francesco Camillo. Mario Anthony, and I’m Esterina Francesca. We are true guineas. My father is straight off the boat from Italy; 1970 at 20 years old. My mother’s entire lineage is Italian. We are 100% Italian and have the insanely authentic names to show for it.

At 20 months old I don’t have any single memories of a time before Mario. My mother used to tell me stories about how I was excited about her big belly and understand kind of, but not quite that I would have a brother or sister. She and my aunt Fran told me about how I wouldn’t speak to my parents once he came home until not long after I observed a diaper change and asked “what’s that?” pointing to the difference I noticed about our bodies at not yet 2 years old. These are memories I don’t have but heard them enough that I feel like I do.

esterinamariocarriagelate1970's

Memories I do remember are of us playing together in our house on 64th street in Brooklyn… or is it E. 64th, 63rd? I don’t know. My aunt Fran would know. Or my dad when he isn’t drinking (which isn’t often). None-the-less I do remember Mario there. I have a few memories of our first home at my grandmother’s famous house where all 3 of her kids lived on different floors on Ocean Avenue. Mario was there, but I seem to remember him asleep or in the background somewhere while my parents, aunt, and grandmother played cards until the wee hours of the morning with gin & tonics about. I hung around tugging at the group and kept myself busy with the joker card and the dog. We were either in my folk’s basement apartment or my grandmother’s first floor jaunt. The 64th St. flat is where I have my earliest memories of Mario being mobile and us talking and playing together. It was a small place, but we had an imagination. I remember waking him up out of his sleep in the mornings to play. My dad will still talk of the time period where Mario hadn’t spoken at some ridiculously late age, but he talked to me. I don’t know if I just interpreted things for him and he signed, or if he was actually speaking; I only remember I knew what he wanted to say and translated it to my parents for him. He’d nod enthusiastically.

As toddlers we played behind a little desk, pretending the little piece of wood horizontally holding the two ends together was a steering wheel and we were driving. We played board games and “read” books. My dad worked and my mom was home when we were young. Aside from my dancing school lessons and our cousins, before I started school we didn’t play with other children much, and my mom was always busy cleaning or painting ceramics or something. There were no computers and like 1 hour of children’s tv on in the morning. Mario and I were mostly all we had for entertainment.

estmariolate1970's

I do remember when my mother was pregnant with Frankie. I remember understanding that the belly meant a baby. This was a period in life before sonograms and no one knew what they were having before the baby popped out (can one even fathom such a thing???). I do remember really really really hoping for a baby sister. I don’t remember count-downs or anything. I do remember playing in the backroom of my grandmother’s store (Dinettes R Us) on Coney Island Avenue with my brother Mario under a desk when the phone rang and my grandmother answered. I can still hear her famous NY accent as loud as one could possibly talk without screaming “Hallo?!”. I think Mario & I were playing cards. I remember wondering if the call was about the baby and wishing, wishing, wishing it was a girl. My grandmother walked to the backroom and said “Your mother had the baby… it’s a boy!” I was happy, so happy. Mostly because my grandmother was so happy; and I didn’t care anymore that it was not a baby sister. Mario didn’t seem to pick up on this too much. He feigned joy (likely because I was joyous) and just continued to play.

If this were a play, the next act up was Mario & I in our apartment with my aunt Fran waiting for my parents to come home with Frankie. There was some red rocking apple toy I picked out for this new brother somewhere at our apartment on that 64th Street that I knew was a baby toy but I was playing with it anyway. The moment came when Mario and I were called out to the terrace overlooking the street because my parents were home. We ran out to the terrace and saw the car pull up in the front of the house. My dad was driving and my mom was in the front seat holding the new baby.

We were both too young to feel jealous over this new character in our lives. It just seemed very normal. I remember Frankie sitting in a car seat type of item while my mother was busy in the kitchen or something (though we didn’t have car seats back then… it was 1980). Mario and I would try to make Frankie laugh (which he did) then we’d make a “boo” face to scare him and started laughing when he cried; which only made him laugh too. The earliest lessons of lovingly teasing I suppose. Frankie always had a few years behind us and was always either following us around or trying to swindle us in playing a game with him. There were plenty of memories all 3 of us playing; but many more memories I can remember of just Mario and I while Frankie was sleeping or engrossed in something a little too juvenile for us. We played made up games like the “Pink pink coolie”, barbies that went nuts and threw themselves down the stairs in the apartment we ended up at over “Dinettes R Us” on Coney Island Avenue, or just playing in our yard of the building – Uno, the kiddie pool, catching lightening bugs, laughing…. We made up plays and songs for our parents with our cousins and our parent’s friend’s kids. Through elementary school we had the same teachers and laughed about their funny sayings or sang ridiculous songs we both knew. When we realized something annoyed my mom like the abominable song our music teacher made up and taught the kids (“Hello, hello, I like to say hello”) we’d tag team with one another and get a kick out of seeing my mom so aggravated. We fought too. Don’t get me wrong. I remember us blaming each other for stuff (well… me blaming him mostly). We hit each other. We were mad often for all of 5 minutes while we got separated and sent to our rooms until we were laughing about something outside or something one of us pointed out in the house. Mario was my companion. My very first best friend.

christmascousins
With my cousins Anthony & Camille

The first real memories of bonding with Mario were on Coney Island Avenue. We had a very small apartment. My bedroom was the first of three that were adjoined, meaning you had to pass through mine to get to my parent’s room. And then pass through my parent’s room to get to Mario and Frankie’s shared room. We moved to Long Island in 1988 a few days before my 12th birthday. I remember the apartment being torn apart for quite sometime with packing and whatnot before the move. I don’t know how or why, but for some reason Mario and I ended up needing to sleep in my room in a double bed for some time. The first night I remember us talking into the wee hours started with Mario tossing and turning. I was in 5th grade and he was in 4th. I asked him what was the matter and in completely different words he confessed he was stressed because he wasn’t good at anything. I felt so bad that he was upset and tried to think of things he was good at to help him feel better because I knew his worries were ridiculous. I came up with several that he shot down with some excuse. Until I remembered reading his papers that he wrote for Saint Brendan’s Elementary school classes. I told him with complete genuine enthusiasm that I thought he was good at writing… and suddenly he quieted to think this over and completely agreed. “I am pretty good at writing aren’t I?”. “Yes you are”. We talked for a little bit about the things I remembered reading and I could tell he started to feel really good about himself. We talked much longer about his talent of writing . He ended up going to sleep happy. I remember the next day him referencing the conversation. I felt so good about helping him feel confident.

I remember being in up to 6th grade and laughing into the wee hours of the morning in that same apartment with Mario. My mother screaming from the next room “Get to sleep!!!”. We’d quiet for a few minutes until one of us said something so funny that we couldn’t help but bust out. My mother would march in and turn on the lights ranting and raving. God knows this only made us super serious until the lights turned off and we’d giggle quietly again. Not being able to help busting out into serious laughter again a few minutes later.

Mario was always hilariously funny. Even then. In a very Jerry Seinfeld way long before Seinfeld hit the scenes. He has ALWAYS had a knack for pointing out the very mundane and seeing how ridiculous it was. We were just silly kids in elementary school. Being only a year apart in a small school that had only one class per grade, we knew all the same people. “Why do we always have to say Michael so & so?” (I’d actually write the last name if I could remember it)… “Why do we not call him Michael or Mike? No one would know who he is by those names”. Silly stuff, but it was just so stinking TRUE, and he seemed to have an ability to pick up on truisms that no one else noticed and point them out in a comical way.

“We know one another’s faults, virtues, catastrophes, mortifications, triumphs, rivalries, desires, and how long we can each hang by our hands to a bar. We have been banded together under pack codes and tribal laws.” – Rose Macaulay

Our family is nuts. Certifiably nuts. I know everyone says that about their family, but mine really is. The stories we can tell are practically unreal, but the crazy part is that they are not. Crazy people attract crazy circumstances, which makes crazy experiences followed by crazy stories. As they happened in my life and I had to go to school or work and told people, they wouldn’t believe the things that happened. I mean they did, but were shocked. Each story just also happened to be funny. When you step back and don’t take anything too seriously; it’s all just life and life is fun and funny! My brothers and I always made it funny. As things happened we laughed at it. We all ended up picking up that Seinfeld kind of attitude where we took the daily experience and pointed out the insanity of it all. Only we had really insane things happen that were kind of out of the ordinary daily experience that made it all the more funnier. The danger in that though is that you become immune to crazy and fail to realize when lines are crossed and accept things as normal that most people just wouldn’t. My grandmother was funny and always laughing. My aunt Fran was a hilarious cynic without ever trying to be. My dad had a funny work experience on the job as a painter almost every day and would relive it around the table over dinner laughing so hard he could barely breath. He’d start coughing from laughing, and we’d all be laughing too before the punch line even came because well… laughing is contagious. My mother didn’t laugh as much as the rest of us did, but she did have a comical side to her when she let it out. More like my aunt, hilarious cynicalness just randomly thrown out when you least expected it. She’d be annoyed when we laughed about it too, which only made it funnier.

I really remember Mario and I sitting around and bonding many warm summer evenings until literally the sun rose after we moved to Long Island until our later teenage years. At that time I had my own room and Mario and Frankie shared a room. During the summers we’d play Nintendo or Monopoly or Uno all night. It would start out with some friends, Frankie, and our neighbor Andy around sunset. Eventually everyone would go home or turn in; but we played and played long after the gang retired and my folks went to bed because they had work the next day. I remember countless nights sitting on my bed laughing about our family members, mainly my grandmother and the craziness of our dysfunctional parents. We’d point out things we’d notice and hypothesize about why they were like they were and how insane it all seemed.

At least once or twice a month one of us would inevitably knock on the other’s door, usually in the evening during homework and ask if the other wanted to talk. The answer was always yes. The intention never started with a talk that would last for hours, but it always did. We talked when we were upset, or worried, or just wanted to laugh, or reminisce about the past. We certainly shared secrets. We shared a paper route when we were in junior high into high school for a few years. With our money we’d shop and often find a sweatshirt or Z.Cavarricci’s neither of us could afford on our own but both liked and decided to share since we were about the same size at the time.

“Siblings are the people we practice on, the people who teach us about fairness and cooperation and kindness and caring, quite often the hard way.” – Pamela Dugdale

My father tried and miserably failed at teaching us how to speak Italian from the time we were little. He’d try to lure us in with fun games and piggy-back or airplane rides for each word we remembered. It worked a few days back-to-back but then we’d just lose interest. In junior high when it was time to pick a language Mario and I chose Italian and learned some through school. We immediately started calling each other Fratello and Sorella and still do until this day. Sometimes it’s shortened to “fratel” or “sorel”. We would use the little language we knew as a way to talk in front of others who we didn’t want to understand us, like some neighbors that were annoying us, or little Frankie who we likely wanted to get something out of.

mariofrank-grandmastoreFrankie was always a little hustler. He loved his eggs and tuna fish sandwiches. He’d make a delicious lunch and have it all out on the table and offer it to Mario and I. When we’d say yes he’d ask us for a fee. I swear on purpose he would go to TJ’s hero shop (most famous in town, dare I say Long Island) and come back with a beautiful piping hot hero and sit down and talk non-stop about how unbelievably tastey it was. Then he’d try to convince me and Mario that we’d like one too – here… smell it. “I’ll ride my bike to go buy one for an extra fee for the inconvenience”. We’d always cave. He was always willing to jump up for extra cash, but try to get him to do his chores and help us while my mom was working… forget it. We’d fight with him and bother my mom at work. She’d tell us to work it out and hang up the phone in a huff. Work it out meant some kind of fight with no one winning and everyone losing. Early lessons on how that gets you nowhere.

estmarfrankcamille
This picture just cracks me up. We look so Miami vice. This was in 1988 or 1989, in Ocean City, MD I believe

When I started to drive since Mario and I were close in age we had a similar yet not exclusively similar circle of friends. We were even friends with another brother and sister (the Bottegos) that we hung out with on a regular basis. We didn’t hang out all the time together with our companions, but often enough to have a lot of memories. We’d all hop into my car and go out to eat at an all you can eat buffet, or just walk around Port Jefferson or go to the beach, the pool hall, the movies or a long drive to nowhere. I would pick Mario’s girlfriend up in the morning before school. It definitely wasn’t all peaches and roses. I remember a lot of fights too. Often with our friends present rolling their eyes and trying not to take sides. I remember one particular day rowing a boat down Carmen’s river through South Haven park with my boyfriend and Mario’s girlfriend. None of us were particularly good at rowing, especially coordinating 4 people; but somehow Mario & I ended up in a ridiculously loud argument in the middle of nowhere in a place that made it impossible to storm off. So we had to sit in that rowboat fuming. No such thing as silent fuming in my family though! There was the very memorable night after going to the Ponderosa that Mario threw up in the back of my car on the way home. I was so mad at him. We got home and our friends helped us clean up while we laughed about how silly we all were for stuffing ourselves, reliving the experience as if it were some long lost memory. Once we took some friends through Brooklyn to show them where we used to live and even visited “the little old man” [we called him] at the deli my mom always had us walk to on the next block on Coney Island Avenue to buy cigarettes and a loaf of Italian bread. We went to NY city on the train with a mutual moocher friend that brought no money and split paying for him. And there was the infamously still one of the hottest days of my life when we decided in the height of summer to pack as many people in my car as possible and go to Great Adventure (Six Flags) in NJ and stop by the drive through safari on the way in. Windows were required to remain close (there was seriously no choice unless you wanted a safari animal in the car) and I had no air conditioning. Haha! Then fighting of course on the way home when I got lost, looking at the large oversized Rand McNally map and arguing about the right way back home.

Mario, Frankie and I had so many famous sayings that caught on with our parents, our aunt Fran and our neighbors and friends. We single handedly started most of them. We were that loud Italian family on the corner with cars on the lawn, some project always going on. Composting right next to the driveway when no one else even knew what that was. The summer would mean the pool was open and late into the evening you’d hear screaming and splashing; fighting and laughing. Tomatoes, basil, parsley, eggplant and zucchini plants perpetually in the garden tucked away in the corner. The ragged pets that ran free through the neighborhood, chickens running around the lawn. The grandmother who would visit with a Mercedes and mow the lawn in her high heels. My mom’s picture plastered all over town as one of the town realtor’s. Us randomly hauling out a refrigerator that may have been tossed over in a fit of anger, carrying out bags of trash in quiet fear or laughing like the serious buffoons that we were. Somehow in some unspoken way we knew just what stories were ok to tell and which were too outlandish. “Your father painted the outside of the wrong HOUSE one bleary eyed morning?” “A grandmother said that?” (one is the legendarily golden ‘p’ story for anyone who knows it). “Your mother indignantly came home from work and buried that cat in two minutes flat before getting back in the car to go back to work?” As my brothers and I randomly remember these experiences and sayings as adults, we text each other to see who else remembers. It often begets a series of hilarious texts and long lost memories. There are too many to write or remember. We also had a series of pets (all who ran away from the nut house). Here are some recent texts between Mario and I just a few weeks ago while I was in Copenhagen:

As crazy, yet scary, and albeit fun my house was growing up, I knew I had to get out to be able to get along in life without being reliant on the lunacy; so I joined the military and left the summer I graduated high school. Not long after Mario sent me a story he needed to write for his 12th grade English class. I don’t remember what the prompt was, but I do remember much of the story. He wrote about how much he missed his sister. Just me barging in to take his clothes, the sound of the “schk, schk, schk” of the pump of my hairspray. How he couldn’t move a thing in my room without me getting up to put it exactly the way it was. He wrote how he didn’t think he would, but he missed all that.

Shortly after I left I got married to my first husband, and just 6 months later got pregnant with Tommy. Then 2 years following Tommy I had Gabby. A year later little Frankie popped on the scene. Mario had Maria 9 years later so she is a little bit behind our 3, but we did good living far apart, keeping in touch and making sure to get to the main events in our kid’s lives. We are not a part of each other’s families like my aunt Fran and grandmother were to us. That makes me sad but we live so much further apart.

I talked to both of my brothers often in our adult years so far. Frankie not as much these days but always Mario. We have bouts of where we’ll connect more regularly than others, but we always know we can pick up the phone to chat. That happens often enough and the conversation is never short or lacking incredible depth. I’ll often call him when I’m fuming about something because not only do I know he’ll understand and express empathy at my utter frustration, but I’m 100% confident I’ll get off the phone laughing and feeling better. We are still shaping each other’s lives. Sharing new experiences, songs, books, and philosophies. We’ll get off the phone and download or Google something the other one told us about, and talk about it next time. I feel like we can open each other’s eyes to new things easier than my eyes are opened to things other people tell me because not only do I trust Mario, I know he is so much like me that if he believes something or likes something, it’s worth the exploration because in all likelihood I would appreciate it as well. We still spend countless hours talking, laughing, and commiserating about politics, the amped up news, family members, the ex’s in our lives, my dad, and the memories of “mommy & grandma”. We have long deep philosophical conversations that leave me in another state of understanding the world and seeing things in lights I would have never glanced at before.

“We are not only our brother’s keeper; in countless large and small ways, we are our brother’s maker.” – Bonaro Overstreet

My siblings shaped my life. I now know I’m lucky to be close with them. Not everyone is this close with their kin, my own children included. Not everyone makes it to adulthood with their siblings or long into life like my own cousin Anthony who passed away at the age of 17 when my cousin Camille and I were only 16. I understand and appreciate that any day anything can happen to anyone of us, so I want to stop and appreciate the relationship I have had with my brothers and honor it in a special way.

I was there for both of my brother’s whole lives and they mostly for mine. They knew me back when as an equal, having similar experiences as I did; learning the same life lessons and teaching one another about life in various ways. Inevitably we shaped one another’s personalities and the way we see the world. It’s a beautiful thing and I’m forever grateful for it.

CIMG1369
Us three crazy DeGrazia kids as adults

 

Thanks for taking the time to read. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Please feel free to leave a comment or subscribe for future updates.

Running 

Posted on by Esterina Anderson

Monday, July 18, 2016 around 8:15pm

Daren and I are on a small little puddle jumper plane to Toronto, en route to Vancouver for the week for a conference of his. We had been rushing all afternoon to make this flight. Once we arrived at the gate, it was delayed. We grabbed a quick bite—some apps and an IPA—only to learn the plane was somehow leaving on time. We rushed back to the gate and jumped on.

I was stressing the whole drive home from work today, realizing how poorly my organization treats its employees. I don’t know if I want to work for an organization like that any longer.

As soon as we sat down in our seats, I was incredibly thirsty and had severe indigestion from scarfing down unhealthy food and rushing around. Then, as soon as the plane took off and my body started to vibrate, it was like a wave of emotions was free to course through me. I started to sob uncontrollably beneath the sound of the loud engines and had my first panic attack in the last five weeks.

Daren held me tight and stroked my hair, asking me to talk to him. I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t sure what was wrong. Finally, he asked if it was those jokers at work, and I realized it was. My job really got to me today. Upon that realization, I broke down even more—now aware of what it was. The release of pent-up emotions was a welcome relief from the burden of stress that had been building over the past week.

Daren encouraged me to think about leaving my job again. Then he pointed out the beautiful sunset we were flying right into. Literally, right now, I am flying off into the sunset.

Is it time for a change?

 

Wednesday, July, 20, 2016 8:33am

Just taking a break after a 3-mile run on a beautiful pedestrian pathway in Vancouver, BC. What a beautiful morning. The temperature is only 62 degrees. I’m sitting on the water in Stanley Park. I’m so lucky to be alive and have this opportunity to explore a new city and travel.

As I was running, I was thinking about the Gwen Stefani song “Running.” It’s playing in my mind now. One day back in April, on the way home from work, I heard this song for the first time in years, and for some reason it made me cry.

I thought about Daren and how, since the moment I met him, we have been literally running. The pace of my life picked up tenfold—and not all for good reason or measure. My stress started to grow then, and it accumulated until I literally crashed after six years.

Blending a family is not easy. We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into, and it has both broken and built us. We are stronger than ever as individuals and as a couple, but the path was ugly and very difficult. I wish someone had told me how hard it was going to be and helped guide us through the changes we were inevitably going to face.

It’s really time to stop running.

What’s next for me?

To even think about exploring that, I need to slow down and enjoy this most amazing journey and gift of life. I’ll continue to run for exercise and keep the old ticker in shape—but no more running through my life.

Thank you, panic attacks, for being my warning signal—showing me what I can handle and helping me stop and literally see the gorgeous sunset I’m flowing into as my life changes in the most beautiful ways.

Slower is better.

Time is really our enemy. Time and money, separation, being on the run… (Thanks, Pink Floyd—Dark Side of the Moon.)

I could write a whole book about the meaning of that album—maybe some other day.

For now, I need to run back 3 miles to the hotel, shower, and enjoy my slow, no-rush day while continuing my journey of contemplating how to be my best self in the world using what I’ve been given by this beautiful and expansive universe.

Namaste.

 

No Doubt lyrics (because they inspired me to stop, sit on a bench and write this morning while on a long jog)

Run, running all the time

Running to the future

With you right by my side

 

Me, I’m the one you chose

Out of all the people

You wanted me the most

And I’m so sorry that I’ve fallen

Help me up, let’s keep on running

Don’t let me fall out of love



Running, running, as fast as we can

Do you think we’ll make it?

(Do you think we’ll make it?)

We’re running, keep holding my hand

So we don’t get separated

 

Be, be the one I need

Be the one I trust most

Don’t stop inspiring me

 

Sometimes it’s hard to keep on running

We work so much to keep it going

Don’t make me want to give up

 

Running, running as fast as we can

I really hope we make it

(Do you think we’ll make it?)

We’re running, keep holding my hand

So we don’t get separated


The view I’m seeing as I write this while sitting on a dedicated bench. Thank you Jean Mary Kendall Eligh and your family. I have enjoyed a piece of your memory today. ☮

 

Thanks for taking the time to read. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Please feel free to leave a comment or subscribe for future updates.

 

On being a girl (just my opinion)

Posted on by Esterina Anderson

Just writing that subject line, the song “I Love Being a Girl” suddenly pops in my head. I have an urge to look up the words, but I am currently on a plane as I type this, without an internet connection. I remember the song from when I was a little girl in dancing school. I danced from the ages of 2–12 at a dance school in Brooklyn called Miss Helen’s. She was an older teacher and we had a real piano player (no pre-made music). Miss Helen was a woman of the 1930s and 1940s—a time when ladies were really ladies, even when they had to go to work. And men sported timeless attire: hats, overcoats, and shiny shoes. All the music we ever performed at Miss Helen’s was from that time period. Inevitably every year, one class did a tap number to “I Love Being a Girl.” It was usually a younger class with sweet little girls, stamping their feet and learning the early lessons of dance—to move on the beat and stay in line with the other girls using peripheral vision.

I have mixed feelings about being a female. A curse and a blessing. From the time I can remember, I was encouraged to embrace my femininity. My mother and grandmother insisted I dance. My grandmother was always buying me frilly dresses and pretty overcoats. “Sit like a lady,” “ladies don’t say that or laugh like that,” “just be careful—you don’t want to get your pretty dress all dirty.” I would look longingly at my brothers, who could hunch over, sit however they pleased, and run off to play without worrying about soiling their clothes. I always felt ridiculous in poofed-up, itchy dresses and ribbons or curls in my hair. My mother was always trying something new with my hair. I had to sleep with curlers many nights, or some kind of Chinese ribbons that my hair never took to. I absolutely HATED my dance recitals and putting on makeup. I felt like a clown. I wanted to be in the audience with shorts, sneakers, and air conditioning like my brothers and cousins who were forced to come sit and watch this yearly grand performance.

When I became a teenager and started buying my own clothes, I put myself in comfortable things that normal teenagers wore. I started wearing makeup in my early teens and poofing my bangs with Aqua Net hairspray like most girls did in the late 80s, early 90s. I paid little mind to jewelry or nails or shoes or anything super girly. I joined the Coast Guard and fit in well, not having to worry about my clothes each day and being able to throw back my hair in a bun under a hat quickly. I loved it.

I guess what got me excited about being a girl was the opposite of being in a uniform. The rare times I was able to get in civilian clothes and literally let down my then fairly long brown hair, I felt so… feminine! The guys I worked with every day did a double take. I felt like a new person. It was kind of cool to literally transform. Over the next few years, once I became a civilian, I discovered all sorts of fun things—hair different ways, different kinds of earrings and bracelets, flat shoes, heels, boots, leggings, colored pantyhose, different shades of makeup and nail polish. Hair up or down, curly or straight. Dresses, skirts, pants, capris, tight shirts, loose flowy ones… Oh, the possibilities were endless. Thanks to my mom in my formative years, I knew how to do my hair in different styles and not be bothered by the discomforts of pinchy shoes, clothes, and tights. My grandmother immediately noticed my transformation. She was a woman of class. She had timeless beauty and style. She had a wardrobe many a woman would envy with years’ worth of clothing, shoes, handbags, belts, scarves, and luggage. She always bought me beautiful things over the years—things me and my parents thought were way too expensive and sexy. Underwear, lingerie, bathing suits, shoes that I couldn’t even walk in. When I started to realize how much fun these things were, my grandmother was so excited for me. We were always close, but we really bonded at this time in my life over the joys of being a woman. She had and shared clothes she outgrew by popular designers before they were even popular. I was finally listening when she talked about fashion and the stitching on our bags. I got a little more into housewares. She loved to set a beautiful table and had given me many china sets, glasses for all occasions, napkins, tablecloths, and cutlery. Gosh, it is fun to be a girl. Poor men with so few options.

I never appreciated these things before then. My mom loved her makeup, manicured nails, perfume, and clothes, but she wasn’t into anything expensive and sort of detested her own mother for insisting on the best of everything. At the time I started to really enjoy fashion, my mother sort of became a hippie. She divorced my father, married, and moved in with a Venezuelan man from a missionary in Florida, and started working in a homeless shelter. She started to wear old comfortable clothes and let her once short, always perfectly hair-dried tresses grow long. She stopped wearing jewelry and makeup and cared less about a perfectly clean house and homemade dinners on the table. My grandmother and I thought her to be crazy. She became quite spiritual and pretty adamant that these “things” just don’t matter.

They have both since passed. I now understand my mother a whole lot more.

At some point in the past few years, my feet really started to hurt in shoes. Many a morning when it was freezing cold out and I was in a rush, drying my hair and squeezing into stockings knowing there would be no time for breakfast, I watched my husband turn dashing in about 5 minutes flat, and then make himself some eggs and read the paper over a long cup of coffee. I am no longer sure that the time sacrifice to look nice is worth it and should be encouraged.

There were times during PMS or that time of the month where it took all the energy in the world to get up and get dressed to the nines and get to work—running to the bathroom with feminine hygiene products discreetly in tow between meetings, then being embarrassed to show up late while being wildly uncomfortable and bloated, with pinching clothes… only to sit down and see some man, who I’m sure took 5 minutes to be ready and ate breakfast, gawk at me like a piece of meat. Not cool, dudes out there. I was really doing these things for me because they were fun, not for them. How dare men get to do nothing and then stare at pretty women? I was understanding what people meant when they say it’s a man’s world.

I started to notice the respect that well dressed women get. A female standing at a podium making a speech with an unfitted shirt and wild undried hair just does not command the same attention as the slim suit skirt with lipstick and a Brazilian blowout who would follow before or after her. I have watched audiences, colleagues and even coffee baristas ignore the comfortable, practical woman over the impeccable one who had to put hours into looking that way time and time again. When this realization started to take hold, I began to get bitter about the injustices women in general face.

I understood the bra burning craze and movement toward a hippie life in the late 60’s, early 70’s. There were men at the time who understood these injustices too and went with the flow. What stopped them? Drugs and too free of a life I assume, but they weren’t on a bad track. The jokes about the ladies room lines really started to get to me. Yeah haha funny, but it’s just not really ok. Why are their restrooms even close to the same size as ours? We are heading in with babies, small children and handbags. Changing tables, broken hooks with no where to hang a purse many times except your own teeth. Sweating in a jacket, squeezing in with a little kid, having to actually wash your hands at all, but then doing it while balancing everything else one is holding trying not to touch anything nasty. Why is bringing the kids into the ladies room still even the norm? Even when you don’t have any or they have grown, they are all still in there, underfoot; being lifted to the sinks. Poor mother doing a balancing act and everyone right around her trying not to get in the way or hit with splashed water. Forget it if you have your period and need to take care of business amongst the chaos. Then only to go outside and see the man you are with happily on his iPhone, never understanding what you have just gone through… Or bless his soul never understanding why you are an irritated grump when he asks what took you so long.

That is in my free country. There are women who are actually still oppressed in the world. All over. Then there are THOUSANDS who are made to work fields under hot burkas so we can drink coffee and eat chocolate and meat. There are many more who have to work in hot deplorable falling down factories to make cheap garments… Sadly mostly for women so men can ogle them.

Domestic violence. The sex trade that men actual pay for, treating women like objects. Women are not equal. I don’t know why I believed that when someone told me that when I was young.

A few months ago I watched a free Netflix movie called Miss Representation. I was so moved by it I had all 4 kids watch it. There are SO many unfair and male dominated decisions even in our “free” country right under my nose that I never noticed. Why the sex object in ads, video games, movies? It’s so ingrained that we don’t even notice it and little girls (and big ones too like me) think it’s normal to have to strive to look fake all the time. In politics, tv and movies; women are cheapened and made fun or or talked about provocatively when a man almost never faces the same ridicule. What’s even funnier is that at the end of the day women actually get down to business. Men are often consumed with power and being the alpha male in the room or thinking about what’s under one (or more) of the women’s clothes, that they aren’t even paying attention and things are repeated and beaten to oblivion before a decision is even made. One of my favorite parts of the Miss Representation movie I mentioned is how some political women who are a MAJOR minority in the United States said that they often joke in the bathroom across party lines on breaks that they would have had the decision over and done with in a few minutes opposed to the days they are spending deliberating on our capital’s floor watching egos and the same non-sense being repeated over and over.

I wish my mother and grandmother were still alive to have intelligent chats over coffee (my mom) or a gin & tonic (my grandmother), about how they feel about feminism in this day and age. We are in an interesting time period. My grandmother grew up during the depression when men and women’s roles were a little different. Not too far from the farming generation where no one worked outside the home, and men & women were equal in taking care of two different parts of running a home and raising children. Fashion had no part of practical life. Men were getting their power reduced with voting and equal rights. Both sexes pooled together to do what needed to be done for our country with WW2. Women looked and acted like women, men like men- but it seemed fair. Even when men left the home to work and more money was flowing, women stayed home to keep house and raise the kids. Then the economy started to boom and women now had products (made by men no doubt) that made them look shapely, done up and feel pretty. Advertisement, tv and movies ramped it up and suddenly it was the female norm to be “done up” everyday, stay skinny and keep a perfect home.

Bring in my mom’s generation who had to do all that but then also work outside the home to buy all these life necessities to look and be perfect. Child rearing, keeping house, working like a horse; but doing it with heels, perfume and make up was and still is generally an expectation of females only. Men just have the work like a horse part. Women fought against it at first with the bra burning and high divorce rates of the 70s, but somehow they became oppressed and took on extra roles throughout the years. Many women, myself included, play this part because it’s what we were taught to do. We saw it on tv and magazines and in movies, watch our mothers, aunts and neighbors do it; so we think it’s normal and don’t even question the differences. Men run 95% of the media and politics, everything that shapes out perception of the world. My mom, like most other women, (now myself included) ended up hitting a burn out wall. We feel mostly powerless against the world and against the majority of women who have not yet awoken to this reality, feel there is nothing we can do and kind of quietly rebel against this nonsense.

Gender inequality is everywhere. I saw it so much on the vacation I’m returning from over a vast number of cultures in a few countries. I’m on a plane right now. Everywhere I look men are sitting spread eagle right into the women’s spaces. Women are sitting uncomfortably like ladies. Most men push past women everywhere, doorways, trains, on lines. When I see a woman struggling with a suitcase or trying to get a stroller down stairs, it’s another women helping her and other ladies making sure she is being helped unlike the oblivious men charting off to push the weaker and slower out of the way as soon as possible. Women are still covered in much of the world. They can’t show their faces. They are the ones pushing strollers and lugging the family’s bags. In the crowded and stinky restrooms women are brushing out their hair, applying a fresh coat of lipstick to keep their man’s attention and tending to the children. Why don’t men have to do any of this?

Men may never know what it feels like to be scared to get into a cab late at night or even walk to the car. They never have to change their last name and deal with the legal obnoxiousness of having several identities. Or being paid less for doing the same job! They cannot understand the pressure most young girls start to feel in the preteen years when they see their dad, brother or classmate’s nudie photos for the first time and start to believe they need to look like the altered models for a man to find them attractive. They have eating disorders and serious self confidence issues because of the media. Men will never understand what it feels like to bleed every month, have your hormone levels rise & fall and not have any control over the emotions souring through your body. Or being so tired some days from the loss of iron you can hardly function. We are told we are wimps for not pushing through crowds or dealing with a period, but has any man ever dealt with a menstrual cycle or been called a bitch for elbowing their way through a crowd? Yeah yeah yeah… the way of the world and the curse of being a woman and all that stuff, but by who? It’s the way of the world, but we should be able to see the injustice and unfairness in the differences of the genders. How can women embrace femininity when they are expected to be both sexes at the same time and take on every role every man or woman has had since the dawn of time? So many women before me including my own mother have realized this simple fact but are such a minority that they can hardly do anything about it except maybe hold some rallies where they are mocked by both sexes alike or post blogs, write stories or make low budget movies where they will be called a feminist and very possibly be publicly made fun of.

In some ways my grandmother and Miss Helen had it a little easier. A bit closer to a period where women were gaining domestic and political rights but both sexes had a very separate yet equal role. Men held doors and helped ladies with heavy bags. Both sexes dressed up and women weren’t expected to have twiggy like bodies. I may have loved being a girl then.

I still do enjoy many parts of being a girl, but not at the expense of being expected to do it all. In the past few years I only blow dry my hair once or twice a week. I don’t wear make up many days. I’m certainly wearing more comfortable clothes and shoes. I shop only consignment. I care much less about ultra girly things. I would rather drop money on a charity to help women and children around the world shape the next generation over an expensive bag that plays into the obscene role of the woman who has the perfect job, kids, clothes, house, and husband. It’s fake and exhausting. I’ve been waking up to this reality over the past few years and can feel proud that I talk to my own daughter about the confusing world women live in so she doesn’t fall into the same confused state many of us are or were in.

No more having three-year olds in tight sparkly costumes cut down in a heart shape to their non-existent bust. All dolled up with hairspray and lipstick, looking like a clown singing about enjoying being a girl in a world where there is female oppression, genital mutilation and sex trade. If you are lucky enough to live in a free country, enjoying  being a girl means obsessing over your weight, bearing most of the household duties, watching your sisters be gawked at and spoken of as objects and spending hours a day trying to look like the media says you should to be taken seriously at work or even in the grocery store.

I also know there are a lot of men and single dads out there that do play a big role in parenting and running a house. They get my kudos and I know they are likely helped with that baby stroller on the stairwell by another women rather than a fellow dude. It’s also a woman who sees you outside a public restroom deliberating how you and your daughter can both use the bathroom and offers to take her in.

We are all human, let’s treat each other as such. This just means a little more elbow grease from the “weaker sex” on raising awareness in both world wide and domestic issues; and a little more compassion from men on what half of the population around them feels. Equal rights and equality between sexes is not the same thing.

Love & Peace. Namaste.

Thanks for taking the time to read. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Please feel free to leave a comment or subscribe for future updates.

 

Classes, Bonds & Namaste

Posted on by Esterina Anderson

Yesterday I learned, by way of Facebook, that someone I went to high school with passed away. I didn’t know her well, but I remember her. It saddened me, but it also warmed my heart to see people come together—old classmates consoling one another, sharing memories, reconnecting in a quiet way.

Scrolling through the comments, I recognized so many names and faces. It got me thinking about something I’ve come to think of as “classes.”

“Classes,” for lack of a better word, are the groups we move through in different eras of our lives. Daren once used the term when I was trying to describe a moment at work—two former colleagues crossing paths, exchanging nothing more than eye contact and a subtle nod. No words, just recognition. A shared history. A quiet understanding.

A class.

Like high school. Like the military. Like a job, a training, a season of life.

My graduating class had over 500 students, and even now, decades later, I recognize almost every face. Time has passed, but something about that shared experience remains. It’s a bond that doesn’t disappear, even when life moves on.

I’ve had many of these “classes” in my life—military assignments, work teams, yoga training, even neighborhoods and childhood bus rides. Not all of them carry the same weight, but each holds something.

A few, though, run deeper.

My high school class.
My first ship in the Coast Guard.
My time in Primary Care at the VA.

Those groups feel like family. Not perfect, not always easy—but familiar. Safe. There’s a comfort that doesn’t require explanation.

Even the lighter connections carry something. When I meet someone from the Coast Guard, or from Long Island, there’s an instant recognition. A subtle shift. Like something in me already knows them.

That feeling—that quiet recognition—is why the word Namaste has come to mean more to me over time.

Not just a greeting, but an acknowledgment:
I see something in you that I recognize in myself.

It’s always there, but we don’t always notice it.

Moments like this—watching people come together, remembering someone they shared a piece of life with—remind me that those connections matter. That the threads between us don’t disappear.

And that recognizing them, even quietly, is a gift.

Thanks for taking the time to read. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Please feel free to leave a comment or subscribe for future updates.

Lexapro 100 day journal

Posted on by Esterina Anderson

Wow… 100 days. I went to see my primary care provider this afternoon for a follow-up on my anxiety and refill on my SSRI. I noted to myself that I have not journaled in a long time about my experience with Lexapro and came home to do so. I put the date I started and today’s date into Excel to see how many days it’s been – since I completely lost count; and to my utter surprise it’s 100 days exactly today. I feel like things are under control. I get anxious occasionally and I did have a panic attack last Wednesday at work. But the last time before that I had a panic attack was 5 weeks prior to then, but it was an incredibly stressful morning. As I told my provider this afternoon, I almost need to feel slightly anxious every so often because it’s my body’s trigger to slow down. If I went up any more on my dose I might not feel anxious at all and push myself too far. I’m in a good place.

And slow down I have! I am smelling the roses. I catch myself unnecessarily trying t o beat the clock for no good reason and I stop to consciously appreciate the present moment, no matter how unpleasant (except for traffic… I have NOT mastered feeling ok with the present in traffic). I am on my back deck. I can hear the trees blowing in the wind. I am not taking appreciating life for granted. I hope I always feel this way. I’m going to try to make an effort because life is better slower and in gratitude. I spent the day weeding the garden with my feet in the dirt. I thought about weeds and good and evil & cleaning/purging and how we need to do that with our minds by meditating reguarly. You can’t weed on occasion and expect weeds will not grow. You can’t clean every so often and think your home will not get dirty. As above so below – you cannot meditate every once in a while and expect to walk around with a clear head and zen outlook.

I loved the journey since I started medication. Someone told me to journal about it and I did. I was so afraid to start my medication. I kept the meds a few days before I began and read about it online obsessively. I was afraid of not feeling like myself. A girl wrote about how she had been on Lexapro for a year. She was artsy and creative and had incredible mood swings before she started the drug. She said she drew and painted so much more passionately before she started and now wondered if she should go off and be her real self again. That scared me. But the 5-10% of people or so who had good things to say, and didn’t have a nightmare of an experience said they were glad to actually feel like their old self again. That is what I wanted. I like being passionate & creative and all that jazz, but I did want to feel like myself. What would be the worse thing? It would be a nightmare and I’d go off and be in the same place I was? My biggest fear was losing myself, but actually – I found myself again. And I’m all the better for it.

March 16, 2016; 10:16pm

And here goes 

About to take my first dose of lexapro. I may be miserable the next few days and worse off. I’m officially someone diagnosed with a mental health condition and I need meds. I pray it works because I so desperately want to feel better. This may be the last of the real Esterina. I love myself. I’m sorry I lost it. I will be better. And here goes…

March 18, 2016; 5:44pm 

Lexapro – Day 2

I am a person who is in touch with themselves. Deeply. I can already feel a difference. This morning when I woke up, it was the first time I woke up and didn’t have the sense of impending doom looming over me in a long time. It was amazing! But I know it’s not working yet because after a few minutes of lying in bed I started my normal anxiety. Only this time it felt different. I was short of breath, but somehow it wasn’t causing pain in my head. It was like it was cut off from my head or something. Then I read a text from Daren that he sent last night. I could hardly see it. The words and font looked kind of different, smaller if anything and a little sharper. I went down to the kitchen and prepared a fresh juice. I went back upstairs to reply to Daren’s texts. It wasn’t until he started making rigmarole plans with different pick-ups and hockey bags and complicated collaboration that the anxiety really started. Only it didn’t even come close to a panic attack. 

Today at work I was able to focus. Focus on one thing at a time. Not as well as I’d like but I was SO SO SO productive. It was crazy! I had energy I hadn’t had in years. Is this what drugs really do? No wonder these are prescription drugs. I almost want to up my dose to the 10 I’m not supposed to start until at least Sunday, but I’ll hold off. 

Driving home felt good. Usually I’m numb and kind of miserable. I wouldn’t go as far as saying that I was happy, but I was pretty ‘unmiserable’. 

I laughed like I did when I was younger twice in the past two days. Once about an hour after I took my first pill. I immediately felt a sense of chill about 5-10 minutes later. I did have a few margaritas with Gretchen and Lucy earlier in the evening. I know I’m not supposed to drink and take this, but I didn’t want to say no to hanging with them, especially while Daren was away and I haven’t seen them in so long. And I was suffering SO much with anxiety I didn’t want to wait even another day until I started the journey. So I took it that night. I felt a little chill as I drifted off into bed. I thought back to the day and remembered a funny incident at work. Haha!!! I couldn’t stop laughing. It was like when I was a kid or teenager before I got married and had kids… when I’d laugh all the time. Then yesterday the same thing happened in a meeting. It was a construction meeting and one of the police officers was describing an area that someone requested we do construction in. He was describing the half wall they were asking for and the reason being he said was… he didn’t know the medical term – but it was to give the patients a “shot in the buttocks”. OMG, I started laughing but stopped. I was holding back – I mean this is a professional meeting & all right? I’d heard this shot in the butt story before. Then when someone else was referring to it a few minutes later and he said “to give these shots in the butt” I started laughing again. And like when I was young. I knew it was inappropriate but I was giggling uncontrollably anyway. I couldn’t stop and it was almost embarrassing. Everyone looked at me when I really busted up. With tears streaming down my face. I said “I’m so sorry I’m laughing about this like a 5 year old”. And they all started laughing too. It felt so good. It felt like me raw. What’s funny is that it is me raw. I guess that is what it feels like to have my brain more in balance. 

I NEVER really time off from work. But over the past year or two I’ve probably taken between 6-8 mental health days with some other excuse. I always felt guilty as if I was cheating the system or something. I do it so nicely too. I make sure my work is done, my meetings are covered, I often get online & work throughout the day and answer questions. But overall I felt guilty. Truth is though, I do have a mental health condition and needed those mental health days. My reactions and feelings aren’t normal. I truly am suffering. It took having my first panic attack to realize how unstable I felt. While I don’t treasure them, I do in some way for getting me to realize I really was at a breaking point and needed help. I need help. It feels good to say that. And as long as this medication keeps improving and there are little to no (and fingers crossed for no) side effects then I’m SO happy I’m taking the steps to feel mentally healthy again. I cried coming home from the doctor when the med was prescribed. I felt like a loser. Now I don’t. I read somewhere where someone wrote coming out with a mental health disorder to other people felt worse than coming out of the closet. I felt like I could sympathize. I stared at the bottle. I read the instructions for a medicine the first time ever. I read everything I could get my hands on online about Lexapro. I was scared. When I finally made the decision to start taking it I was kind of excited and not scared anymore. I’m glad I waited the time out because now it feels right. Fingers crossed it’s only on the up & up from here. I want to be me again. 

March 21, 2016; 5:35am 

Lexapro – Day 5

Tired is all I can say. I have no energy. Saturday morning I woke up in full on Fight or Flight mode, only my thoughts were rational and I didn’t try to figure out what was the matter with or try to talk to Daren about all that is wrong in our lives & the world. It was just obvious that my body was reacting to absolutely nothing and I had to let it ride out. My mind didn’t follow it. It was nice, but unsettling. I can’t believe the medication would work so quickly. Saturday late afternoon when I went to take a shower, about 2 minutes into it I was hit a giant wave of exhaustion. Crazy exhausted. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to make it out of the shower safely. I did though. Daren came up and made sure I was able to get dressed. Then I went downstairs to the couch and kind of didn’t move most of the night. I got up for about 15 min to eat dinner, but had to lay back down. I slept for about 2 hours before dinner. Then again through most of the movie we watched. Sat night I know I looked at the clock before I fell into a deep sleep in bed, and it was 10:50. I woke up at 7:50, a full 9 hours later! But I was still tired. Saturday evening I switched from 5mg to 10mg. I was expecting to wake up with some wooziness and nausea, but didn’t. I was just super lethargic.

I forced myself out of bed and downstairs for some green tea. Stupidly Daren and I started our quarterly detox too. Probably a bad idea to be detoxing and starting a new medication. I started to gain some energy around noon. I made all the dinners for the week and cleaned up the kitchen & house a bit. Then I took Koji on a very mild 2 mile walk. But when I came home I was exhausted again. I went to take a shower (a very quick one because no one was home and I was afraid I’d fall asleep in there). Then I went to the couch. I couldn’t really fall asleep and I had no motivation to do anything. I had a mini panic attack. I’m not even sure why. I was incredibly depressed and crying on the couch. I was thinking about putting real clothes on today to go to work (no yoga pants) and it just made me so sad. I felt like I couldn’t deal with life. At that time I felt pangs of anxiety, but nothing fight or flight like within me. It was more like depression to be honest. No beating heart or doom & gloom thoughts. I got up to eat and right back to the couch. Until bed. I slept like a log. I had a hard time getting up for work today, but here I am.

 I feel drugged up. I really do. My motor skills are slower than usual. I’m SO tired. I can’t say enough about how little energy I have. And I’m really hungry. Don’t know if it’s the meds or the detox, but just hungry. I hope this wears away. I’m having a hard time caring about anything, especially work. I hope this balances out. Good vibes & lots of love.

March 25, 2016; 5:40am

Lexapro – Day 9

I’ve been SO depressed. I had no energy the past few days. I have been FORCING myself to walk. I drank pink wine & had chocolate last night. I had such forceful cravings. I should be getting my period so that might be it too. Plus I have heard Lex can make your anxiety and depression a little worse. I’ve felt my body in fight or flight a LOT, but my mind has not always taken me there. It has a few times. It’s been a rough few days since I’ve last written. 

Today I’m feeling great so far. I’ve only been up a for a little bit though. I got up & stretched and I put on a mask and gave myself a mani & pedi. I feel good. I feel solid. I still feel anxiousness in my head, but I just feel happy. I want to stay here (as I know everyone does). I NEED to work peace and meditation into my day everyday. It helps. I feel good. Namaste.

March 28, 2016; 12:24pm

Lexapro – Day 12

I had an absolutely terrible weekend at first. I mean terrible. I felt great on Friday. Like my old self. I was productive at work as I was the Friday before. I had a beer Friday night at the Wolfpack game and felt ok for a while. I started feeling a little depressed and by the time we got home I wanted to kill someone. I was so anxious about our ridiculous lives. None of the kids were supposed to be with us, but 3 of them suddenly were. I fell asleep right away but woke up to Kieran taking a shower at 12:15 in the morning. His mother left his belongings behind my car earlier that evening, and then Gabby ran them over while we weren’t home when she borrowed my car. She had to have the neighbors come over and help bail the crap out from under the car. Once I woke up and couldn’t fall back to sleep my blood started to boil and my anxiety kicked in. I lost it. I had a panic attack. The next morning on the couch I had another. Overall I’m not really feeling better yet. Today at work I haven’t really done a thing this morning. I’m so completely unmotivated. I know that doctors sometimes prescribe Xanax or something for breakthrough panic until the SSRI starts to kick in. I’m in a weird place. I have my fingers crossed this works. Every passing day I hope I’m one day closer. I did have the energy to get up & do some yoga stretching this morning.

 I know I sound a little rambly. I can’t wait to have motivation again. I did have it on Friday. Today I’m moving in slow motion. I was better this morning. I even did my 5 minutes of meditation that I always intend to do. I did it on Friday too. I really did give me a good sense of peace and inner stillness. Just now I’m SO tired. I’m tired. I’m not doing anything useful for the world. I don’t know what to say. I want to feel better. I just want to feel better. I really do.

March 30, 2016; 5:32am

Lexapro – Day 14

One thing I have been forgetting to mention is the very realistic dreams. People seem to use the word vivid but to me they just seem real. Like it’s real life and I wake up confused about whether or not something actually happened.

One of the things that recently happened to me last Tuesday is that several of my pills went down the sink. I ordered a pill box so that wouldn’t happen. It had 4.5 stars on Amazon so I chose it. It came on Friday (I think… maybe Saturday?) and I’ve been using it ever since. I’m not completely impressed with it. I just thought it would be easier than twisting off that terrible cap every time. Then last night I dreamt of this pill box. The days of the week wouldn’t close. The pills were falling out all in my make-up bag. I thought to myself that I needed to write a bad review and in my mind I thought as a consolidation the company would be mailing me a new one. I wasn’t going to get another one, I was just going to put the pills in a plastic bag instead. Vivid dreams. Realistic really.

April 1, 2016; 5:21am

Lexapro – Day 16

Yesterday was the first day I felt good all day. I think waking up & doing yoga first thing had something to do with it. I’ve also been meditating every morning at work for 5 minutes before starting the day. I’ve been opening the the window and looking out. Hearing the sounds of West Haven waking up. Feeling the cool morning air. Even the day it was raining. It was nice. Today I am in Newington. There is no window. I will try to meditate anyway at 8:15 when morning report starts and I know no one will bother me. 

Yesterday I felt kind of normal or what I imagine other people feel as normal. I caught myself catching my breath a few times and taking deep sighs, but I didn’t try to follow my body to why I felt stressed and just kept saying to myself that I shouldn’t water the weeds (of thoughts). It helped yesterday. It doesn’t always. Hopefully it’s the lex and then hopefully I can remap my brain to do that all the time.

This morning was the first time in 2 weeks that I woke up and didn’t have stress coursing through my veins with my heart beating. I’m trying not to think too much about it because it can go any second, AND thinking about it causes more stress usually. Please God/Universe/Almighty…. I need a clear mind. Peace. Tranquility.

April 4, 2016; 5:40pm

Lexapro – Day 19

Today I feel really good. Saturday I felt overall nothing. Not depressed. Not happy. Just nothing. Unmotivated too. I kind of did almost nothing. I did change out my summer and winter clothes though. Not having the feeling of being too attached to doing anything else or the outcome helped me to just concentrate on what I was doing and do it well. Time flew by. It was kind of nice and it felt nice to look back and see the progress I made with the clothes change. Something simple and it made me feel accomplished. Then for some reason on the way down to Shannon’s wine party later that afternoon, listening to music I perked up. I perked up so much I was singing to the music. It felt nice. After that I went out with Mirta and Elizabeth. We went to J. Timothy’s. I was kind of mellow. I feel like I’m losing my mind sometimes. I feel duller somehow.

Yesterday I woke up pretty motivated. We slept in until after 9 I think. A good night’s sleep felt really nice. I didn’t do much of anything yesterday at all. I made a few foods in the morning to prep for the week. I took my time. Again not being attached to an outcome feels nice. Then I touched up all the white trim around the house. Sometime in the morning while cooking, most of us were at home but all split up doing various things around the house. I was suddenly incredibly motivated to talk to Kieran and Devin about odd blended family situation. What I’m forgetting to write is that on Friday right after I wrote in here Daren copied me on an email to his ex. She was vague about Keiran’s plans so I asked to clarify something. Well…. she went nuts and spouted back that I’m the step-parent and there is no reason I should communicate about her kids plans. I just wrote back again and said I’d like to know what is going on in my own house.

One of the main things I’m learning about myself is that a situation doesn’t bother me as it’s happening; it’s usually down the road hours or a few days later that I’m affected. I think it was because it was how I coped with domestic violence as I was growing up. At the time of an unpleasant experience I am strong and normal. Only later do I allow myself to process. So, as I was happily cooking Sunday morning, I started to process what felt like an unnecessary attack on Friday. I was in a good mood and just felt like I could talk to the kids. Daren was supposed to come home sooner than I thought with Devin so I was kind of waiting for them. But a lot of time passed and I didn’t have the opportunity when I was ready to talk it so I missed it. I really wanted to air things out though, so I thought I would write down everything I wanted to talk to them about and chat together after dinner. Then I thought the kids might get upset and misconstrue my words, so I thought I’d send an email ahead of time so there were no misinterpretations. I thought about what I might write for hours while I cooked and painted. I finally sat down and the thoughts were just pouring out of me. I imagined their mom one day reading it in case they got upset and forwarded it to her, so I was very PC.

 When I was finished, I felt spent. I sent it to Daren first for his advice. I had no idea how he would react. I asked him to read it and disappeared to take a shower. I felt a huge release and a little panicky. I think a few weeks ago before the lexapro I might have had a panic attack. But I didn’t. I did feel shaky though. Daren came upstairs after my shower to tell me that it was beautiful and that I should sent it right away. I did. Then he told the boys to read it. Kieran did, Devin had some kind of mishap with receiving it. We kind of openly talked about a few things after dinner after Gabby left the table. Then I left Daren and Kieran to talk while I took Koji out for a walk. I know I left the door open for them to talk about some stuff more openly than likely they ever have since I’ve known them at least.

 After that I was kind of numbish again. It’s nice to be numb. I thought I would be upset not feeling so hard, but it’s kind of peaceful. This morning I woke up with more energy than I’ve had in long time. I did about 15 minutes of yoga, no meditation. Had coffee. Actually listened to music again & sang! And I’ve been moderately motivated at work. Not as much as I normally am, but much more than last week. That’s how I am! Thanks for listening.

April 7, 2016; 5:56pm

Lexapro – Day 22

I’m so so so tired of not feeling like myself. I’m tired of feeling blah and uninspired. I’ve been escaping with reading. I don’t want to deal with my bullshit life. I don’t know what to do anymore.

I’m not doing well. I can’t say this medication is working. I had no control over my mind today or my emotions. What can I say?

April 22, 2016; 5:21am

Lexapro – Day 37

Let today be the start of something new. It’s earth day. We had a beautiful full moon last night & now one this morning. I’ve felt good the past few days. I want to somehow get out of working at the VA, at least full time. I know it doesn’t work for me anymore and I’m just not that interested in the politics of it anymore. Not sure what to do. Wish me luck in discovering whatever it is.

April 27, 2016; 12:49pm

Lexapro – Day 42

What inspired me to write is the walk I just took. I’m walking much faster and with much more gusto. I have been walking since 2003 at lunch nearly every day in rain, snow or shine. I have been walking with gusto for years. I never stopped walking, but I did stop walking with gusto. I still took the stairs, but never with conscious thought anymore. Walking the stairs made me pant. I’m not panting anymore 🙂 I don’t even know when that happened :-). I can’t smile enough about this.

 Everything else in my life stayed the same. It’s my body that is different and calmer. I am enjoying the little things more. Things that used to stress me out matter a bit less, but excitingly enough I’m more excited and engaged with them if that makes any sense.

 What likely stopped me from completely falling to pieces are the good habits that I had already. Like taking the stairs, walking daily. Getting up early to stretch and having a quiet cup of coffee. Eating fairly well. I had lost any and all motivation. I hated doing all those things. But the act of doing them out of habit helped me not to delve into a downward spiral. I’m proud of myself for not giving up and just going through the motions even though I wasn’t there and couldn’t care less about it. It still helped even though I couldn’t feel it at the time.

 All else is ok. I am not loving my job like I never had before. Not since the early days in the Coast Guard as a non-rate have I stared at the clock and mentally counted the hours and minutes until I would get to leave. It’s been a while. It kind of stinks. I liked being engaged more, but I feel a call to do something more. I wrote about my experience with stress in my blog esterinaanderson.com. It was cathartic. I had it posted to facebook. I’m not sure if I already journaled this or not, so I may be repeating myself – lol. Just wanted to catch up. 6 weeks. Feeling good.

May 12, 2016; 12:37pm

Lexapro – Day 57

Happy happy lunch break. It’s been a while since I’ve written about my lex experience regularly these days. I’ve been feeling better. My physical anxiety has not gotten better – only mental. I can think so much more clearly. The biggest thing I did yesterday was actually write to my acting boss & the director to ask to work part-time and if that’s not possible I understand that they will have to replace me. I basically said in a very nice way it’s part-time or I just can’t. I told them about my stress. I told them it sounds like I’m sharing something personal but I’ve shared it publicly. I haven’t heard back yet, but I do have an appointment (requested by the director himself) for today at 2pm. It has to be about my email I imagine.

The strange thing is that I’m not worried about this meeting at all. What is the worst thing that can happen? They fire me and I stay home & relax and garden, take care of Koji, read, cook dinners for the family, pick up kids who need rides. Shop for our food and not have it delivered? Clean my own house & not have a service come?  Like normal people… 

I can think about opening a yoga studio and start an hour bank in my town. I’m still fairly young, I have skills that are worthy, and I have motivation to do good for the world. If I can’t do it at my job where I’d like to, I’ll do it somewhere else. That I know for sure.

In some weird way, I’m really oddly not tied to the outcome as much as I may have once been. Is it the lexapro? The yoga?  My intentions I’m a bit better about setting? I don’t know… but I’m happy and I threw something out there that I can’t take back, and whatever happens it won’t be what I’m doing now… and that makes me SO happy. Hugs & lots of love to all beings.

June 24, 2016; 7:51pm

And as I read back through all of this and previously journaled day 100; I’m in an awesome place. I still don’t know what’s going on with my job! I’m working 3 days a week for now, but don’t know if it will be in my current position or any myriad of possibilities. Who knows? I’m ready for anything! It’s been a while since 3/16 when I journaled “here goes”. No regrets! For anyone ever wondering if it’s worth its, for me… it was.

Thanks for taking the time to read. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Please feel free to leave a comment or subscribe for future updates.

 

 

Or if you like my style -consider visiting my Online Shop @

https://www.etsy.com/shop/esterinayb

The connection and beauty of two negative recent events in my life 

Posted on by Esterina Anderson

I have a deeper appreciation for life and moving through my day than I’ve ever had before. Two things happened in the past few months that helped me come to this realization: I started taking an SSRI, and I had outpatient knee surgery. Two very different things for completely different reasons—but in all honesty, both were the result of moving through life too quickly and absentmindedly. Both have completely slowed me down (and fattened me up just a little!), and it’s not all a bad thing.

Back in March, I quite literally lost my marbles and, thankfully, became fully aware that fooling myself into sleeping more, doing more yoga, or meditating more often was not going to be my cure. Truthfully, I was no longer able to do any of those things in a way that felt meaningful. Yoga still felt good physically, but it didn’t slow my thoughts or help me “just be” like it used to. Meditation was a joke. I sat there diligently, but I couldn’t stop the racing in my head.

I did everything I could to keep up with my life. I was (and still am) one of the most organized people I know. Everything was as efficient as possible. No time management tip was going to help—I would read them and think I could write a better article myself. I was stretched thin. There was no room for error. One small miscommunication between family members and the entire chain of well-planned events and pickups would fall apart. No way to live.

A few days before the marble-losing, I went to a routine Thursday morning report-out for senior leadership. As usual, I prepared at the last minute—rushed, but still pulled together something polished and well-coordinated. I walked into the conference room, my employee pulled up the presentation, and I slid my chair under the large dark wooden table.

SLAM.

I hit my right knee hard on one of the table legs.

There were the usual reactions—“Oof,” “I heard that,” “You didn’t need that knee anyway!”—and I shrugged it off and kept going. About 24 hours later, during a meeting with my small team, I noticed my knee hurt. I wondered why as I pushed through the agenda, then remembered hitting it the day before and briefly questioned why it took so long to register. That night at dinner with friends, it hurt more.

The next day, Daren and I went into the city. We were so busy and stressed that I didn’t think about my knee at all. The following morning, seemingly out of nowhere, I had my first long-overdue panic attack. I cried the entire way home. I noticed my knee hurt, but it wasn’t until late the next night—around 9 p.m.—that I realized how swollen and red it had become.

Daren was at hockey practice. I wanted him to look at it, but I fell asleep before he got home.

Long story short, the next few weeks were filled with panic attacks and knee aspirations. The panic worsened quickly. I realized I had to start medication—I had nowhere left to cut back. And have you ever tried to “relax” while in a nonstop adrenaline rush? It doesn’t work.

Once I started the SSRI, I began to notice how often my body was in fight-or-flight, even as my mind started to calm. It was eye-opening. I had been living like this all the time.

I first went to urgent care five days after the injury and was told to rest and monitor it. It stopped hurting—but it didn’t stop swelling. So I ignored the advice. I ran on it, did yoga on it, and didn’t call an orthopedist for three weeks. Who has time for this?

Eventually, I was getting it drained every couple of weeks… then every week… then it started swelling again almost immediately after each visit. At one point, the doctor tried to drain it and nothing came out. A wall had formed. Surgery or live with it.

It’s funny—my knee felt like a physical version of what had been happening mentally for years. Rushing. Ignoring warning signs. Doing the bare minimum to manage something that was clearly deteriorating. Until I hit a wall—mentally first, then physically.

It wasn’t until I had no choice but to deal with it that I realized how much my lifestyle was harming me. My body is all I have—why wasn’t I taking care of it?

After medication adjustments and a few rough weeks, the panic attacks lessened. And then I had surgery.

I’m not claiming I’m a changed woman, but I’ve had some of the most relaxing weeks of my life.

Since March, I’ve rediscovered the library. I’ve been reading a book a week—fiction. Nothing intellectual. Nothing self-improvement related. Just stories.

I’ve started getting bi-weekly massages. Daren and I have been spending more time at home—making the outside of our house beautiful, sipping cocktails, watching fun TV (not documentaries—actual fun TV). I’ve been coloring mandalas. Visiting local shops. Sitting in coffee shops with a matcha latte and a book. Writing for fun.

I’ve even started going back to sleep in the mornings when I don’t have to rush.

That, in itself, feels like a revolution.

My whole life, I woke up ready to go. Even when I was exhausted. There was always something to do. Something waiting. Something urgent. My dad used to bang on our doors and tell us we were “sleeping our lives off.”

Now… I listen to my body. And sometimes it tells me to rest. And I do.

After surgery, I slowed down even more. I slept. I sat outside with my leg up and a book. I noticed things. I wasn’t rushing anywhere.

One morning, I walked slowly down my own street and realized I barely knew it. The houses, the details, the quiet beauty of it all. It had always been there—I just hadn’t.

Later, on the ferry, I looked at my legs—one swollen, one not—and felt grateful just to have them. In the shower, I noticed their strength, their design, how they carry me through life.

I ate breakfast and actually tasted it. I thought about how each raspberry grew—slowly, over time—until it was ready.

I want that.

Slow growth. Presence. Awareness.

We spent the day outside. I modified yoga to meet my body where it was. The trees were alive with spring. Food tasted better. Life felt softer.

Healing—mentally and physically—is happening in small increments. Just like those raspberries.

This morning, I woke up early when Daren left to drive Kieran to work. I started writing this… then stopped.

I opened the blinds. Listened to the birds. Laid back down. Let myself rest.

I want to live like this more.

I’ve already asked to cut back hours at work—and thankfully, the answer was yes.

I don’t want to need medication or injury to slow down. I want to choose it.

We all need to live a little more and “do” a little less. Be present more and absent less.

Every single moment matters.

And I’m finally ready to live in them.

Namaste.

Thanks for taking the time to read. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Please feel free to leave a comment or subscribe for future updates.

My Mom

Posted on by Esterina Anderson

I wrote this story in October 2006 for my mother’s old boss Sean who was publishing some stories about my mom in the Homeless Voice in Hollywood, FL where she worked.

 

My Mom

By Esterina Messeder

 

Earliest Memory of My Mom

            The earliest memory I have of my mother dates back to when I was three or four years old. I could not have been any older because the memory I have is in a home that we moved out of when I was four. I remember waking up one early morning, and from my bedroom I heard my parents fighting in the kitchen. I heard a plate crack, more screaming, and then my father slamming the door on his way out to where I assume was work. Then I heard the sobs. I waited until I was sure that my father was not coming back in the house, and made my way to the kitchen. Evidence of the argument was left behind by glass on the floor, eggs splattered on the wall, and the kitchen sink running. My mother was sitting on the floor against the left leg of the table with her head in her lap, crying loudly. She did not hear me come in. While I can not recall the exact words that were exchanged, I remember the gist of the conversation. I asked her what was wrong, and she told me she couldn’t stand my father. I asked her why she did not leave him (I had no concept of marriage or divorce), and she said that she never finished school and would not be able to take care of us kids on her own. I remember from that moment on I made a vow to myself to finish school and have the ability to take care of myself so I would not have to depend on a man.

 

Growing Years with Her

            Over the next 15 years or so if I had to sum up my perception of my mother in one word it would be depressed. The image of her standing in the kitchen washing dishes, hunched over, with a cigarette hanging loosely from her lips, barefooted in a knee-length house dress is what comes to mind when I think of my childhood. I cannot say that there weren’t any happy times; I can distinctly remember a few. But only a few. She seemed so helpless against my father, so un-empowered, and so lonely. I could not help but NOT want to be like her when I grew up. I would fantasize about getting a job, getting her an apartment, and taking care of her so she would not have to depend on my father.

 

The Turning Point

            But on July 9, 1993 when I was 17 years old everything changed. It was my brother Frankie’s 13th birthday and he wanted McDonalds for dinner. My parents, Frankie, and I were outside eating dinner in the backyard as a family in the early evening. My father started an argument with me about how if my current boyfriend didn’t give me a ring by the end of the year; I would have to break up with him. I argued that I didn’t want to get married young and that I wanted to go to school and have a job first. Well it seemed like whenever I talked what I thought was sense, my father would get mad because I didn’t agree with him. Sometimes it was just yelling, but more often than not there was violence involved and I would get hit. This particular evening it was the latter. As usual the next few minutes would be a blur of trying to shield myself from blows, my mother yelling in the background, and my brother(s) pulling my father off of me. But this time it was different. Only my brother Frankie was there and he didn’t pull my father off of me… he disappeared into the house. My mother tried unsuccessfully to pull him away while I cowered on the floor and was being beaten with a chair. My father just threw my mother to the ground. Then we heard Frankie’s faint voice from in the house telling us calmly that he had just called the police.

This was a monumental moment. No one had ever called the police before. A male and female officer came to the house, and my mother and I were required to go down to the police station to write a report. As a female officer was asking what happened, my mom was being her usual self by defending my father. It was at this time that I think my mother’s perception of the world changed. This woman looked my mother straight in the eye and said “I don’t want to hear any bullshit, look at your daughter, he toked her”. My mother was silent and I could actually see in her the realization that she had been living with a monster. On the way home that night she said told me that she can’t believe she never realized until now that she is not in control, and she promised me that things would change.

 

The Aftermath

            After that night things did change. I had a restraining order against my father so he was afraid of coming near me. That silly piece of paper really helped me to feel a bit more secure. But still, I could not wait to leave my house. The fighting continued, but I could tell that my mother was stronger and not quite so naïve anymore. As the weeks went by and turned into months, it came closer and closer to the time that I would be graduating high school and having to make a decision about my future. One evening in April 1994, I was in the car with my parents on the way home from seeing an accountant who did our taxes. My father was arguing with me about something or another, and I asked to get out of the car. I was only a mile or two from my house when I walked home alone that night thinking about my future. There was no money for college, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and there was no way I could live home any longer. The logical solution was to join the military. When the thought first came to mind I pushed it away because I could not imagine leaving my mother alone with my father and with no other women in the house. But if I wanted my life to be different, if I wanted money to go to college some day and be able to get a decent job and experience so I could take care of myself and not depend on a man like my mother had to, I would need to take this risk and do something that no one in my family has done before… leave.

 

My Adult Years

            Every day that passed since Frankie’s 13th birthday I watched my mother grow stronger and stronger. She started to have confidence; she was standing up straighter, and smiling more.  When it came time for me to go to boot camp I knew she was sad, but she was so much stronger and happier than she had been just one year earlier. Over the next few years she really made some changes that I was so proud of. She lost some weight, she got dentures because she was so self conscious of her teeth, and most importantly she went back to school. She realized that even she could be happy and it became her mission in life to help others be happy.

But her real happiness did not come until just a few years ago when she picked up her life in the end of 2000 and spontaneously moved to Florida. I was sad to see her go, but I could hear such a difference in her voice. She was a new person. My mother got a job at a homeless shelter down in Florida. Though I never really understood what she was doing, I knew she was happy. She was no longer Cathy the mother, or Cathy the wife, she was Cathy – the person who is making a difference in the lives of people that could not otherwise help themselves. She had a reason to get up in the morning. She had confidence. And I can’t say it enough, but I know that she was a lot happier than she had ever been when she lived back home in New York.

Last summer in 2005 she came up to NY and CT where I live now to visit. While I was driving down to LaGuardia airport to pick her up, I was SO excited to see her. I was imagining her getting on the plane and being just as excited to see me. My husband was calling me every 15 minutes or so from home tracking her plane to let me know where it was in the sky. With every passing minute my anticipation grew. I was so nervous and excited. When her flight let off I watched all the passengers coming toward the baggage claim area. I was enthusiastically looking for her when a lady walked up to me and said “Esterina it’s so good to see you”… it was her! And she looked so different! So different. She was older, calmer, wiser, and far more beautiful than I ever remembered her. I almost didn’t believe this person in front of me was actually my mother. As we walked toward the baggage claim area and she was talking, her voice sounded the same and I realized how much she changed. I was in a complete daze. It took about 10 minutes or so for me to calm down from the excitement. I couldn’t wait to spend the weekend with her, and after she grabbed her suitcase we made our way out to the parking lot to my car. We were only walking a few minutes when she asked me to slow down. She was holding her side and told me that her shoulder hurt. At that moment my excitement disappeared. I had an uneasy feeling in my stomach, but I could not put my finger on it.

Over the next few days my family and I had a wonderful visit with her. First she came back to CT with me, and then we drove her down to New York where we visited with my brothers. She told us stories about all that she was doing in Florida and Venezuela, and all the plans she had, and people she was helping. I didn’t understand most of it, but I was proud of her and the life that she made for herself. But her shoulder hurt, and she had a nasty smoker’s cough, despite the fact that she’d quit smoking a few years earlier. I pushed the thoughts of these odd health things out of my mind, and I made a vow to myself that we should have her come up to visit every year.

 

The Cancer

            It was the weekend when hurricane Wilma whipped into Florida last October. My husband, kids, and I were spending the weekend at my brother Frankie’s house carving pumpkins with our kids, and celebrating my brother Mario’s birthday a few days early. We ate, drank, and played the music loud. We never heard a phone ringing that evening. Mario went home on Saturday night and we all went to bed. Sunday morning Mario called really early to say that our grandmother had been calling us all night. I checked my messages, and sure enough she had. He said that my grandmother said something is wrong, and to please call my mother just to tell her we love her. Well, Mario called the homeless shelter where my mom was staying and talked to her boss Sean. Sean told him that the day before my mother went to the hospital and there was a mass on her lung. She got nervous, checked herself out of the hospital, and then got on the next flight out of Florida to Venezuela. After Mario called me to tell me the conversation he had with Sean, I hung up the phone and stood speechless in Frankie’s kitchen. The kids were running around, and my husband, Frankie, and Frankie’s girlfriend were all happily chatting away while making breakfast. When they realized that I had hung up the phone and was just standing there, all activity in the house seemed to come to a halt. They were all looking at me… waiting for me to say something, and I blurted out “Mom is dying of lung cancer”.

It was a stupid thing to say at the time because we had no idea what it was. There was just a mass on the lung. It could have been pneumonia. It could have been something else. It could have been a much more mild stage of cancer. But within the next few weeks after all different types of tests in the U.S. and Venezuela we learned that she did indeed have lung cancer. It was stage IV, small-cell lung cancer. These words meant nothing to me until I looked them up on the Internet and learned that the average life expectancy of someone with this type of cancer was only a few months. I was beside myself. I cried that whole first night, and made plans within in the next day or two to visit her by week’s end.

When I went down to Florida I got to see the life my mom had been living. I met all her friends, co-workers, and Sean. She was happy and surrounded by people who loved her. Though I would have liked her to be closer to the family at this crucial time, I saw that she was happy in Florida and thought there might be too many bad memories associated with staying in the New York area. The second day I was there we took a nap in the afternoon. My grandmother was also visiting and was ironing in the next room. My mother told me right after she woke up that she had a dream that my daughter was there with us, and there were 4 generations of women together in the same room.

I visited her quite a bit over the next few months and each time I learned a little bit more about her life. I learned about her experiences as a child growing up. I learned about her father (my grandfather) that I never knew. I learned about what she had been doing in Florida and the close relationship she developed with God. I got much closer to her with every visit, but each time I went down she looked more and more sick. The last time I visited in May, I took the kids down there with me on Mother’s Day weekend. I knew my grandmother and aunt were going to be there and I wanted to make her dream actually come true where there were four generations of women in the same room. I got to her apartment with the kids while she was out at the doctor. When she walked in she was so surprised! And so was I, but not in a good way. She had lost so much weight since the last time I’d seen her, and she had a cane. I acted normal, but inside I knew she wasn’t really getting better. Her right leg was in excruciating pain. The night before Mother’s Day we all went shopping and cooked a fabulous dinner. Everyone contributed a food item to the dinner. We pushed the dining room table to the middle of the room and sat around it for what would be our last big meal like this together (though we didn’t know it at the time). It was such a wonderful, relaxing evening. The next morning on Mother’s Day my mom had a hard time getting out of the bed. I took her to the emergency room where she was checked into the hospital. I didn’t know that when she walked into the ER that day with my kids and me, that it would be the last time she ever walked on her own again.

 

Last Trip back Home

            Well to make what could be a long story short, she’d spent a lot of time in the hospital over the next few months. Sometime in mid-July her oncologist told my aunt that there was nothing more that he could do. He expected her to last only a few more weeks without treatment. I think all of our hearts broke that day. I was afraid to call my mother. I didn’t know what to say, or how to act. I was secretly relieved every time I called and no one picked up the phone. My mother called my grandmother the next day and asked her if she could “come home”. It was what we all wanted. Sean worked really hard to make her wish come true (God Bless him). I had no idea how bad off she was. When I heard she was too weak to travel on a commercial flight, and that it was dangerous to move her, I have to say that I was shocked that she deteriorated so quickly. After a LOT of cajoling, an air ambulance flight for her to come up to New Jersey was finally scheduled. I was SO happy. But I was nervous for her. It was only a year after the last time she came up this way to us. I was just as happy, but for completely different reasons. Again I imagined her getting on the plane and being just as excited to see us. This was going to be the last time I would be this excited to see my mother.

There were a few good days before her body started to shut down. She had a few good meals and had a few good laughs with us. She got here not a moment too soon. In the last few days we kept vigil by her bedside in my grandmother’s apartment. There was a lot of time to think about her and her life. I feel sad that such a large portion of it was spent miserable, but I am proud of her for turning it around and helping other people. With hospice’s encouragement I talked to her a lot even when she couldn’t talk back. I was surprised with my children’s ease around her. My 9-year old son was holding her hand, talking to her and kissing her. In her last few days and hours I told her how proud I was of her. I told her how she’d shaped my life and taught me through her life that being able to take care of yourself and not depend on anyone else is important. I wondered what she was thinking, what she was remembering. Did she remember the bad times? The day I saw her crying in the kitchen when I was three or four years old? Was she remembering the people she’d helped? I wanted her to know that I learned so much from her. Even when she was lying there on her last day she was teaching me that life is too short to not enjoy it, to hold grudges, or spend too much time over thinking things. I only hope that she is as proud of me right now as I am of her.
FullSizeRender.jpg

This picture resembles mostly how I remember my mom looking from my childhood.

IMG_7906.JPGFullSizeRender-4.jpgFullSizeRender-5.jpg

These 3 pictures were taken fourth of July weekend in the summer of 2005 before we found out she was sick. She did have cancer at this time. We just didn’t know it. It was the last carefree time we spent with her.

 

FullSizeRender-2.jpgFullSizeRender-3.jpg

She passed away right before midnight on August 6th 2006, but hospice didn’t arrive until after mid-night so the official date is listed as 8/7/06. We spread her ashes on what would have been her 50th birthday on October 25th that same year. We went to Steeplechase Pier in Brooklyn where she grew up and raised us kids until I was almost a teenager.

 

Thanks for taking the time to read. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Please feel free to leave a comment or subscribe for future updates.

My struggle with stress

Posted on by Esterina Anderson

The familiar heart pounding experience sets in. My whole body tenses. I have a slight shake, and I feel like I’m rocking back and forth in the upper part of my body. My temples tense and kind of pulsate. Fear grips me. A slight bit of heat overcomes me. My body is in full on fight or flight mode. One would think I see a tiger that is about to eat me and I need to make a quick life saving decision. But the truth of the matter is all that I’m doing is checking my work email right now.

I feel like I’m doing too many things. In general. I feel stressed. Like all the time. Today is Wednesday, April 20th. I just came back from a most awesome yet very demanding week of visiting colleges with my husband and daughter. I was pretty relaxed all week. It is an unusual feeling for me. The noise in my head was shut down a few times. Totally quiet. Usually there is a myriad of several demanding things competing for my attention. And even on the rare occasions when there isn’t such as when I’m driving, getting ready to go to bed or uncommonly watching TV, there is still a background static of things I should be doing, forgot about, am worried about, want to look up… the list goes on.

This week it was mostly quiet in my head. It felt great. Maybe what normal non-stressed, anxiety ridden people feel like. Perhaps I’m changing I foolishly think to myself. That thought was shattered yesterday when my flight was delayed in Dallas. It was just me and Gabby coming home with many things to do as soon as we got home. First the connection was tight. I started to tense up when I realized this only after the plane landed and I looked down at the next boarding pass. I mentally started to plot the route out of the deplaning process to the next gate. I watch with increasing frustration as people move out ever so slowly, stopping as they are pulling down their overhead luggage and talking to another passenger as if they cannot do two things at once, and suddenly this very trivial conversation about the weather is more important. People with wheelchairs and strollers seem to just jump in our way, getting in as if they have all the time in the world. Stopping to laugh and admire the child who is running off and not getting in the stroller while blocking a plane full of people behind them. Gabby and I finally make it into the terminal only to realize we are in terminal A and need to be in terminal C. We are both starving. We stop at Starbucks knowing we will be a few minutes late to the start of boarding time, but agree it’s more important to grab food since we didn’t have time for breakfast and it was almost noon. Starbucks is painstakingly slow too. The girl making my smoothie is moving at a molasses pace and keeps stopping to flirt with an American Airlines employee who is leaning over the counter to talk to her. She doesn’t even look at me when she hands me the drink and says “have a nice day.” My blood starts completely racing. We book it out of there and rush to the gate only to see there is a 10-minute delay. My mind starts mentally calculating what a 10-minute delay will do when we get home. I find that we can still be 45 minutes late and will have plenty of time to pick up the dog from where he is being boarded. Gabby and I find a seat quite far from the gate and take a moment to breathe. I return a phone call to the dentist, write a thank you to the friends we just stayed with, and write a restaurant review. Fifteen minutes pass. Then twenty. Radio silence from the airline. Only 10 minutes more. Then 10 more. Then it’s unknown. The stress really sets in. I call Koji’s boarding place to add another night. I go through all my work email. I start to mentally plot how to best carry in the bags, go through the mail, scrape cat litter, get the laundry rolling, and shower before work tomorrow. I have a grocery delivery coming that will likely also get delayed if this plane doesn’t take off soon. My mind is racing. I can’t read or meditate or do any of the things that one would do to chill. Suddenly I get the idea to calculate whether or not I want to “waste” another vacation day tomorrow. As I weigh the options, I notice my muscles and jaw relax at the thought. I text my boss and start to unwind just a bit. I will be ok. I’m still stressed but at a lower level. Gabby is stressed and has all her homework pulled out in the terminal and is balancing it on her legs. She later tells me she was on the verge of tears. My real life starts to set back into my thoughts. The quiet is gone. I’m back to my normal stressed baseline.

Life, right? Most people have similar experiences or far worse. First world problems. They are so silly in comparison to disease and starvation. I struggle to realize this. Telling myself this doesn’t quiet the noise in my head. My husband and I are both outside of the home for work at least 11+ hours per day. We have 4 kids between the two of us. One is at college now and is a huge help when home. Another drives, which made life so much easier. The 3 living at home are in 3 different schools. Two of the schools are 30 minutes away in opposite directions from each other and without transportation services for the two younger kids that don’t drive. One of the kids is in hockey at least 4 days a week, and anyone familiar with the sport knows it’s actually a lifestyle. The other two play sports and one still needs rides quite often. We have 3 cats, a dog, and 3 fish. We have ex-spouses with complicated schedules and arguments over legal issues. My husband’s ex travels quite often and doesn’t communicate well. She lives ½ hour away and the kids often forget things they absolutely need in either house. My ex recently moved over an hour away out of state and insists my 16-year-old daughter drive herself up there every other weekend as if he still lived down the road. It makes me nervous for her to drive so far and on highways with a new license. She stresses about her homework and not being able to see friends when she goes up there. Weekends are filled with trips to these schools, sports, and friends all in towns quite far from our home; prepping food, taking care of the lawn and garden, trying to squeeze in some personal exercise, getting the dog out of the house to burn out some of his high energy, maintaining the home and fixing whatever needs fixing. If we use a weekend to get away or visit the older one in college, we need to squeeze this other stuff in elsewhere during the week between concerts, sports practice, dinner meetings, after-work medical, dental, and veterinary appointments. Not to mention during the week there is getting dinner on the table, laundry, homework, lunch prepping, mail, phone messages, some crisis to avert or bill to straighten out or package to pack up and squeeze in sending out or returning. Every new thing elevates my stress just a little more. I mostly capitalize on it to plot the next course of action in the most effective, streamlined way possible. Work is the same. As new emails pop in, calendar items are added, thoughts to explore from my well-meaning co-workers and superiors are piled on; my heart pounds, I tense, and I breathe erratically. I try to avoid people in the halls or in my suite who want to chat or connect over something mutual because I don’t have the time. I’m thinking 20 steps ahead at how I’m going to accomplish it all, and stopping to smell the roses and have human interaction wasn’t part of the plan. I feel like I must look like a walking lunatic; however, I’m always surprised to hear that people think I’m friendly and outgoing, seem to have all the time in the world, and pull it all together so seamlessly.

I am so ingrained in this system that when I have a few minutes to read at night before bed or a moment to catch my breath and enjoy an afternoon out on the weekend or time with friends, I feel like I must be crazy to think I have a hectic life because look—I have time now and I’m not stressed. All in all, that is probably like 5% of my life. It’s so enjoyable that it keeps me going the other crazy 95%. Ninety-five percent of the time I’m in fight or flight mode.

Thanks to my decision to take today off to unwind and catch up, this morning I woke up softly and did not have to rush. I felt relaxed and well rested. I had coffee, checked Facebook, and responded to my texts with time, attention, and enjoyment. When I left to pick up the dog, I had the most lovely 9-minute ride. I felt the sun on my skin, the air coming through the window. I looked at the trees and bushes. I heard other people’s music. I was SO in the moment. I was not rushed, sort of like the people getting off the plane yesterday. While I waited for the dog and saw people dropping off their pets for daycare in a rush and in tights, heels, and neck-hugging ties, all stressed out that it was taking so long, I felt thankful that wasn’t me today. Koji and I drove home in peace. We had nowhere to be. He oscillated between having his head out the window and coming over to me to give doggie love. We got home. I fed him and enjoyed watching him enjoying being home. We went upstairs to keep the laundry moving. He sat at my feet while I folded the big, messy, unruly pile into nice, neat, beautifully folded laundry. My bedroom windows were open. The sun was shining in. I folded the laundry with love. Looking at my clothes, the stitching, the lace… I never noticed these things before. My husband’s shirt he wore on Friday, his running clothes. I thought about him in them and how much I love him. When I went to put the towels away in the bathroom, I noticed the pictures on the wall. I hardly see them. I remember the day Daren and I bought them in Marshalls a few years ago. They are pictures of tranquil beach scenes from a porch front. They match the blue and white walls and trim. My bathroom looked picturesque itself this morning with the sun shining in the windows. The plants on the window sills were sitting there alongside the candles. I hardly ever notice them. We rush to water them every week as we cross off a chore on the list. We don’t light those candles, but gosh, they are pretty. We don’t have time. I want that time. I put away the laundry and feel inspired to write about this. I feel good, calm, peaceful, happy.

I walk downstairs and pull out my computer. I look at my to-do list I made for today. I took the day off to catch up, so there is quite a bit to do. The list starts to make my heart pound. I pull up my work email to put on my out-of-office and decide to go through all the new emails that arrived since the airport yesterday since it will make my job of going back to work easier tomorrow. I look at my calendar too for tomorrow. I have back-to-back meetings ALL day except for 2 hours. There were things to prep for that I should be doing. There is an email string with some friends of mine from work about a happy hour that keeps interrupting me in a good way, but an interruption nonetheless. I start to stress. And then I stop. I stop and start writing. It’s what my heart wants to do.

Thanks for taking the time to read. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Please feel free to leave a comment or subscribe for future updates.