For those of you who don’t know, my father passed away on Wednesday. And for those who don’t know, my relationship with him was far from a beautiful “daddy’s little girl” type of scenario. I loved and hated him. I was afraid of him, yet I felt protected from the outside world by him.
My father was an alcoholic, mean, misogynistic, childish, and a bully. But he was also full of life, energy, and joy. He was strong—crazy healthy despite himself—and had the strongest work ethic of anyone I’d ever met. Just as strong was his play ethic: he worked hard and he played hard.
He lived a full life of ups and downs. He made money fast and spent it even faster. He loved drinking, gambling, and chasing women. He didn’t believe women should work or that education mattered. He believed you should take care of yourself and your family with food, shelter, and clothing in a basic sense. There was always enough, but always with the constant worry that maybe there wouldn’t be, the weight of bills looming.
From him, I learned a lot—what to do, what not to do, who I wanted to be, and how I wanted to show up in the world. This both served me and hurt me. The two main lessons I took from him were how to be productive and how to live fully at the extremes of emotion.
He hated the word “relaxing,” unless everything else that could possibly be done was already done. Before he came home, my brothers and I would scour the house for anything out of place, dirty, or unfinished. Yes, it was unhealthy—but it taught me to scan my environment, make lists, remember details, prioritize, and execute with whatever time I had.
This shaped me: I don’t know how to rest. I’m constantly doing, doing something, or several things at once. I am incredibly productive, and I think I like it that way. It’s a blessing and a burden, because I often don’t realize when I’ve pushed myself too far or taken on too much. My father, in an unhealthy way, taught me this.
Another word to describe him: loud. When the work was done, it was time to play and let loose. He had no qualms about body image, running around shirtless with his big belly. He sang at the top of his lungs, danced like a giant silly human without a care, and enjoyed food like there was no tomorrow. He loved sports—football mostly, the NY Giants in particular, but also soccer and basketball. Watching games with him was full of antics and superstition. The whole neighborhood knew if the Giants were winning or losing.
But with his intensity—whether excitement or anger—came loss of control. Things broke. People and animals got hurt, physically or emotionally.
Some of you who know me now might not realize that “loud” was once how I lived too. I still like to dance, be silly, and LAUGH—only now without the drinking and the overkill of noise.
Ultimately, I didn’t stick around to live like he lived or under his rule of thumb. I got the #$&* out of dodge and started a path of my own in the world.
I’ve learned over the course of the past 31 years that I struggle with boundaries. I was never taught them. I didn’t even know they existed. Particularly with extremes of work, play, and emotions—at first I had none. Everything was to the extreme. I’m now at a point in my life where I realize I can detach from those automatic reactions I was taught, and instead have healthier boundaries around rest, relaxation, and emotional highs and lows.
I am not perfect (who is?) and often struggle with doing too much without realizing it, or failing to recognize when I’m overwhelmed until it shows up as anxiety or panic. A lot of yogic work, mental health work, and a little medication have helped keep me balanced most of the time.
I sit here on my front porch on an August Sunday morning with my coffee and thinking about my dad.
There isn’t much rhyme or reason to this blog—just a moment to reflect on how my father shaped my life and who I am right now because of it. If I stay healthy, it’s not unreasonable to imagine living another lifetime beyond the years I’ve already lived (49). I can’t change the past, but I can absolutely change the future and how I choose to show up and react in it.
One day, those who are in my life when I pass will likely reflect on how I lived, what I taught them—whether it’s how they want to live, or how they want to avoid living. My hope is that whatever I put into the world, people experience it in a way that makes them pause—whether positively or negatively—and reflect on how their own experiences shape their behaviors and ultimately guide their decisions about who they want to be in the world.
And maybe, just maybe, that is the truest way my father continues to live on—through the ways he shaped me, both in what I carry forward and in what I’ve chosen to do differently. In that way, his life reminds me that even the hardest stories can become soil for growth, and that the future is always wide open for choosing a new way to live.
Nothing feels different, but everything feels different.
Chapter 2 is what I am calling this.
I sit across the breakfast table from my husband, but my personal laptop is in place of my work one. There still feels like there are a million things to do. But honestly, not a single one of them really needs to be done.
Was it always like this? Meaning, did anything really ever need to get done?
My heart is beating and I’m racing against the clock—stuff to do… I have to remind myself that there is nothing to actually really do. Today, there will be no sound of bings and chimes to notify me of new emails, Teams messages, or upcoming meetings.
Each of those bings is accompanied (was accompanied—gosh, this will take getting used to) by a spike in alertness and heart rate. At this time of the morning (6:15—YES, Six Flipping Fifteen), my heart rate and anxiety were probably elevated a handful of times.
Whoa, writing that out sounds so unhealthy. It is unhealthy. But I’ve been doing this for years.
Even when I was physically going into the office, I’d wake up around 5 a.m., and just thinking about the day ahead would spike my anxiety. Sometimes in a productive way, but often in a storm of worry about how to plan the day to squeeze the most out of it—for both home and work.
The drive in would be filled with thoughts, worry, plans, more plans. And once I had two kids—then suddenly four—that planning hit a whole new level: kazillion mode.
Things have been quieter in recent years with the kids out of the house and me working remotely. But the anxious habit stuck around. And so did the bings, dings, and mounting pressure of the average workday.
Not that long ago in a land not faraway
I remember back in 2002, my boss gave me access to her email because she found it overwhelming—she got up to 50 emails a day. I was floored. Fifty! I was getting maybe 10, mostly forwarded from her.
Now that number sounds almost quaint. If you get only 50 work emails a day in this era, you’re lucky. Managing email has become its own professional skill.
Most of it? Nonsense. But stressful nonetheless.
I felt like I had to walk into each day in full armor, machete in hand, clearing the overgrown weeds before they even had a chance to stop growing. 90% of emails went straight to Trash. Of those, maybe 10% were actually important—but wading through the digital clutter? A waste. So I created workarounds, tasks, and filters.
OK—seriously, I’ve digressed. But wow. It’s all so absurd.
Getting Anyone’s Attention
You can’t count on someone seeing your email. Depending on how someone organizes their inbox (and I’ve seen some truly wild systems), they may never even notice your message.
Urgent? Tag it with an @? Add the exclamation point? All overused. All part of the noise.
So we escalate: Teams. Work phone. Personal phone. Desk phone. And all of it—every single one of those tools—comes with a sound, a vibration, a ding that makes your chest tighten and your focus scatter.
But Now…
I closed the door. I shut the laptop. I walked away.
That’s why I’m sitting here this morning, coffee in hand, at a different computer.
And now I ask myself: How long will this feeling of impending doom last? (Not actual doom, of course—nothing I ever did was life-or-death. But that tight-chested feeling… it’s real.)
How long until I can simply be present?
I Want to Be Present
I want to be present in my life. I only get one. And I’ve spent 49 years rushing through it.
I’m safe now. I don’t need to stress myself out daily. If I live to be 100, I’m only halfway through. How lucky is that?
I feel so grateful. So blessed. And I don’t want to recreate the stressful life I just stepped away from.
It’s funny—I only found out a week ago that yesterday would be my last day of work. I didn’t dare dream about what’s next, out of fear I’d jinx it.
And now? The urge to plan the “what’s next” is already kicking in. But… I don’t have to figure that out right now, do I?
There’s no rush.
I have the rest of my life—whether that’s a few hours or another 50 years.
First – why do you care? Haha, but really… if you care at all, why do you? How does it affect you?
When I was 22 years old, I moved to Cape Cod. I was entering the Active USCG Reserves while transitioning from a military member to a military spouse. My new home was located on a military base. It was not my first home as an adult, but it was the first home I set up alone.
This period was a transitional time in my life. Before then, I went straight from high school into the military. I was married just over a year later and unexpectedly pregnant 6 months after that. My life was busy, and I had not truly actively planned anything until that point.
As I looked around at all the boxes and pictures to hang, the disorder around me was affecting my mind. Or was it the disorder in my mind affecting my outer world?
I quickly went to work setting up home. While I opened boxes and organized the outward disarray, the disorder in my mind started to unravel into digestible thoughts. How do I gather all the college credits I accumulated into applying for a degree? Do I quit smoking? Have another baby? What do I want to be when I grow up?
As I unpacked and moved items—and then moved them again into better places—I made notes: call the education office, look into the local college, schedule that physical, reach out to neighbors, ask about pediatricians, talk to my spouse about a new baby while this little guy was still young so he had a playmate.
The act of outwardly organizing was helpful. I was making progress on something important, but also the monotony—combined with the active thinking of where we would most easily grab a plate—was just enough active and inactive brain power to keep my mind focused on the next phase of my life.
When the house was all set up and arranged just so, I missed the act of taking care of it. So I cleaned it really well. Again, the repetition and combination of active and inactive thought helped organize my inner thoughts, as they were all I had while doing this type of work.
I learned then that I very much enjoyed cleaning. All these years later I would label what I was doing as a sort of meditation, but at the time it only felt like cleaning.
I started to clean every day in various ways. There was everyday picking up—dishes, laundry, diapers, trash, wiping the table—but also things that needed to happen often but not daily: washing floors, laundering sheets, cleaning the bathroom. I put the non-daily essentials into a schedule for myself the way I learned in my years of cooking and meal planning, basically transferring my work skills to my home.
Then I moved these things outside—fix the fence, mow the lawn, ask about the grass seeds that are supposedly free.
I met my neighbors. They were all lovely. The one who was the friendliest lived across the street and worked on the base as a cleaner for the military houses in between family transitions. I don’t remember her name, but I will call her Melanie.
I asked Melanie what she did when she cleaned these empty houses, and she told me all about the floors and the blinds and the walls and corners—all the checkboxes she had to complete. Surprisingly, her house was quite a mess and she didn’t really enjoy cleaning. But she did comment that she saw me cleaning often.
What?
Saw me cleaning? How?
“Through your window,” Melanie replied.
Now I was embarrassed—but intrigued by what she told me. I hadn’t thought about cleaning blinds or paying attention to ceiling or floor corners.
A day or two later, I decided to tackle the blinds. As I was doing so, Melanie waved to me from inside her home across the street. I was slightly embarrassed yet again, but continued to clean the blinds as if it were a normal everyday occurrence.
The next time I saw Melanie, she commented on my cleaning again. That became the standard. It embarrassed me, so I often waited until I didn’t see her mini-van in the carport to clean anywhere near my own windows or outside.
Nonetheless, from there I continued a lifelong habit of cleaning nearly daily and scheduling various cleaning tasks throughout the week.
Through the years I’ve had to explain and defend my cleaning to partners, neighbors, kids, step-kids, and friends who comment—sometimes with annoyance—that my house is clean. I was always trying to hide it, clarify where I saw dirt or oils, negotiate with the kids to just vacuum that room—yes, on this setting. It was exhausting. I loved to clean when no one was home so I didn’t have to explain it.
Which brings me to the point of this blog.
Why did anyone care that I was cleaning in the first place?
I didn’t really ask for help. The kids’ chores—table setting, dishwashing, cleaning their own bathrooms, and scooping the cat litter of the cats they wanted—were not the demands of some Nazi clean-loving freak.
The cleanliness of other people’s homes doesn’t affect how much I enjoy visiting them or their company in any way. I’m not judging those who don’t like to clean. I know I’m unusual in this particular way.
So why does anyone really care what other people do? How they take care of their home, how often they cut their lawn, their hair, their fingernails? How deep into my life do you care about what I do—and why does my lawn count but my fingernails not so much?
At what point does what I do truly affect anyone else? Or does what I am doing make others reflect on what they are doing—and is that really my problem?
I did hide my real self for a long time worrying about what other people thought. That was not healthy.
This question grows from me into a larger scale. Why does anyone care who anyone loves or how they use their body to please a lover? How do the spices someone uses in their cooking matter to you? Why does it matter how other cultures cook, pray, love, dress, and take care of one another?
Yes, there are things that affect other people, but not as many as we think. Maybe the one house on the block with the overgrown lawn can bring down property value. There are things you can influence—like talking to that homeowner and maybe even offering to cut their lawn because they are a single parent short on time—but perhaps also accept how things are if that person doesn’t respond the way you’d like.
You cannot control other people. And just because you don’t like something they do—or don’t do—doesn’t make them wrong or crazy. Why waste mental energy on something you cannot control?
I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m just offering the suggestion to ask yourself why you might care and whether that energy is worth it. There is a locus of what you can control, what you can influence, and what you have no control over.
I clean all the time. I like it. It clears my mind. For me, the house doesn’t need to be very dirty to clean it—most people shower daily even when they aren’t that dirty. It is something in this crazy world that I feel I have control over.
I like the way I feel after moving around and taking care of the animate and inanimate objects that I own—my bed, plants, and pets. I like the way my surroundings look.
The question I asked myself when I was 22—whether the disorder of my environment affects my mind or if it is the other way around—is irrelevant to me today. Both matter. And this is one of my ways to care for both.
But why do I need to explain that?
You have control over your thoughts about why this, or anything, matters. Are you wasting your energy on something you want to waste it on? Do you have control over it? Influence? Neither?
I’m going to clean whether anyone likes it or not. I hope you collect your gnomes or pink socks or do whatever it is that you like—as long as no one is getting hurt. Don’t worry if I like it. I love you for being you and doing what you love.
Make sure you are doing no harm—and then do what you love without shame, question, or worry.
Be the change you want to see. Be what you wish the world to be.
It’s all you can do.
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More often than not, we find scientific “proof” that ancient wisdom passed on through generations—once considered ignorant, hokey-pokey nonsense—turns out to be true. How did they know?
This painting I created is my artistic interpretation of the manifest and unmanifest world. The colors symbolize the manifest world, and the shades of tan, white, black, and gray represent what is on the other side. The colors also represent the chakras.
As humans, we know very little that can be scientifically proven regarding the spiritual world or how conscious life appears and disappears. The energetic body is something that some scientists explore, but again, there is no definitive “proof.”
Eastern philosophies and their ancient texts explain that just as there is a visible physical body, there is also an accompanying invisible energetic body. It is just as complicated and intricate. It has systems, nodes, and channels, as our physical bodies do. Energy can get blocked just as an artery can. Emotions are energetic. They can become stuck and, if not released, go deeper into our being and eventually manifest as physical pain.
Mental health professionals do this type of work and exploration. Yoga is deeply connected to the energetic body and helps energy flow more freely through the practice of physical postures (asana). Hence my interest in the topic. Additionally, my interest in art and color piques my curiosity about how color is combined in various ways.
The chakras are something that has always fascinated me, long before I understood, practiced, or taught yoga. The first time I heard about them, they simply made sense to me—almost as if something deep inside already knew, even though my mind questioned the idea.
For anyone who doesn’t know about the chakras (I was well into my 30s before I ever heard of them!), they are seven main energetic centers in our bodies through which energy flows. They start at the base of the spine, in the tailbone area, and move upward through the body to the crown of the head.
Later, while completing a 500-hour yoga teacher certification, I learned more about the broader energetic system, but the chakras remain the most widely recognized and are depicted in many texts and images throughout history.
The chakras have colors—seven in total—and they coincide with the colors of the rainbow. Their flow is vertical (unlike my art piece). Like the koshas and other systems I’ve learned about through my business education, they remind me very much of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. It also reflects a kind of evolution, beginning with basic physical needs and moving toward higher consciousness and self-actualization. In the chakra system, if something is blocked at a lower level, energy cannot flow upward.
The chakras are energetic. Over time, I’ve noticed that when I am in emotional pain, there is often a physical sensation located at a chakra point. It often points me in the direction of where I may be blocked.
I’ve studied and read many spiritual and religious texts. I don’t hold a strict belief in any one system, but I have developed a personal understanding of the physical and non-physical worlds—the tangible and intangible. The part where we are alive and moving through this world, and the part that remains unknown. What happens to our consciousness or spirit when the body dies? What is it before we are born? Is it even real?
My artistic expression of the spiritual life cycle is depicted here. Like the Yin-Yang, part of our existence is in the manifest world and part in the unmanifest.
The colored lines represent the manifest world—the world where white light refracts and we perceive color.
The neutral tones represent the unmanifest world. When all colors are combined, they create what we perceive as brown. Adding white lightens it to tan, while black darkens it. White contains all colors, while black represents their absence. Together they create gray—still without distinct color. At dusk, when we are between day and night, color fades, and only form remains.
Our physical life is surrounded by this unknown. Before birth and after death, there is something beyond our current understanding. Perhaps it is not empty, but instead contains everything in a different form—blended, unseen, or beyond our perception.
At least to our current senses. Perhaps with another sense, we would perceive an entirely different world.
The chakras in this painting represent the physical living world we experience. They move from a lower vibration to a higher one—less conscious to more conscious, more connected to the physical world to less so, much like Maslow’s hierarchy.
1st CHAKRA Color: Red Sanskrit name: Muladhara Known as: Root chakra Location: Base of the spine
Symbolizes: safety, survival, grounding
My interpretation: It is our root. It connects us physically to the earth and to others. It represents the earliest stage of life, where we are fully dependent on others for survival. This foundation shapes our perception of the world.
2nd CHAKRA Color: Orange Sanskrit name: Swadhisthana Known as: Emotional chakra Location: Lower abdomen
Symbolizes: emotion, creativity, sexuality
My interpretation: This is where feeling begins. It relates to growth, creativity, and the early development of identity.
3rd CHAKRA Color: Yellow Sanskrit name: Manipura Known as: Solar plexus
Symbolizes: personal power, will, identity
My interpretation: This is where we act in the world—through drive, identity, and personal energy.
4th CHAKRA Color: Green Sanskrit name: Anahata Known as: Heart chakra
Symbolizes: love, compassion
My interpretation: This is the shift from intellect to deeper awareness. It connects us to something beyond ourselves.
5th CHAKRA Color: Blue Sanskrit name: Vishuddha Known as: Throat chakra
Symbolizes: communication, expression
My interpretation: When energy flows freely, we are able to express truth and creativity.
6th CHAKRA Color: Indigo Sanskrit name: Ajna Known as: Third Eye
Symbolizes: intuition, wisdom
My interpretation: This reflects deeper understanding gained through experience.
7th CHAKRA Color: Violet or White Sanskrit name: Sahasrara Known as: Crown chakra
Symbolizes: connection, consciousness
My interpretation: A state of peace and connection beyond material attachment.
The base of the system is wider because it is more grounded in the physical world, where most of us spend our time. As we move upward, fewer people consistently operate in those higher states, and the experience becomes more subtle.
In my artistic expression, these colors exist between the known and unknown. The symbols in the painting represent movement through the chakras toward something beyond—something expansive, light, and difficult to define.
This and six other pieces were inspired by contemporary artist Sean Scully. Two weeks ago, Daren and I visited the Wadsworth in Hartford on the last day of his exhibit. He works primarily in stripes.
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I’m taking deep breaths with my hand over my mouth—a long-established, almost automatic practice. My eyes, temples, and the space between them ache. As I write this, I can feel that same pressure building again. It hasn’t been that long since these small acts were even noticeable to me, and now they provide insight into what is happening. Chakra-wise, it’s the voice and wisdom center that feel in pain.
I thought back to one evening about a year ago on my therapist’s couch. When I described “The Scream,” she said, almost immediately and with empathy, “It’s because you had no voice.” Instantly, tears sprang to my eyes. With that sudden understanding—something unknown becoming obvious—my throat hurt. It made sense. It was clear to her, but new to me. I couldn’t wait to tell my husband, but when I tried to explain it later over the phone, it got lost in translation. It lost its potency, and I lost the motivation to explore it further.
The scream I speak of took place in mid-February 1994, just days before my 18th birthday, outside of the Patchogue courthouse on Long Island. The previous summer, on July 9th, was the first time police were involved in the domestic violence and abuse that had been present in my home since I was born, resulting in that February court date. I wanted justice. I wanted something to happen. But nothing did. Because I was still a minor, the case was moved to family court, and my father walked away without consequence.
I didn’t understand what was happening that day. As we left the courthouse, I asked my mother what was going on. At first, she said nothing. Then finally, she said, “Nothing is happening.” With each step toward the car, it began to sink in. Confusion turned to anger, and anger turned into something I couldn’t contain.
I stood behind the car. I didn’t want to get in. The car felt like the box I had lived in my whole life—hot, enclosed, inescapable. They urged me to get in, but I couldn’t. And then it came. A scream I didn’t know existed inside me—loud, uncontrolled, inhuman. I screamed again, and again, and again. They froze and watched me like I was something wild, and in that moment, I was.
When it stopped, I felt different. Not fixed—but released, even if only slightly. I got in the car, went home, and we never spoke about it again. But I never forgot it.
Years later, that scream came back. At first I didn’t understand it. It would happen in my car, at home, sometimes in the middle of the night. It felt like something building and building until it had no choice but to come out. I thought it was dramatic. I didn’t connect it to anything real. Hindsight is something else.
What I now understand is that my body was reacting to something it recognized as danger—something emotional, not physical. The same feelings of being trapped, unheard, and without control would surface in my adult life, especially in situations where I felt I had no voice. My body didn’t see the difference between then and now, so it screamed.
For a long time, I didn’t understand what was happening. I just knew that when it came, I couldn’t stop it. It felt like a complete loss of control, followed by an overwhelming release. Last summer, something shifted. After a particularly intense episode, I began to understand what was happening in my body—how trauma lives there, how it gets triggered, and how the mind and body respond even when the present moment isn’t actually dangerous. That understanding changed everything.
I haven’t screamed in many months now. Not because the past is gone, but because I can recognize what’s happening before it reaches that point. I can get somewhere safe. I can slow things down. I can give myself what I didn’t have then—a voice, space, and awareness.
This post doesn’t wrap up neatly. It doesn’t tie itself into a perfect message. It just is.
I woke up this morning with my hand over my mouth, my temples aching, and a memory resurfacing—reminding me of where that pain comes from. The scream felt inevitable then. Maybe it doesn’t have to be anymore.
Peace.
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Today I woke up feeling good. On 7/11/18, 2 months and 2 days ago, I had just one of the worst evenings of my life. The following few days were even more difficult. These last 2 months have been a journey that I realize is life-long and I’m in no rush to finish. I’m enjoying and embracing every step forward and every obstacle that prohibits steps forward, or that even sets me a few back. Obstacles and setbacks are really necessary learning experiences.
Today I’m in gratitude. I might not be in an hour, but for now I am and I’m incredibly grateful.
I could write for hours about how I got here (I promise I won’t). The biggest contributor was my childhood and the mal-adaptive strategies (albeit very normal) I developed early on to deal with life while my brain was forming. One of my newly favorite psychology writers Van Der Kolk calls it Developmental Traumatic Disorder (DTD). This diagnostic explanation is fairly new in the world of psychology. It didn’t quite make it to the DSM-5, which is the latest edition of the manual by which mental health clinicians diagnose and bill for disorders. For now, the closest diagnosis is PTSD, which DTD is a branch of. Particularly for me, for now it’s Delayed Onset, Complex PTSD. It turns out I’m just another statistic, and if someone were watching closely, everything that happened to me could have been predicted.
I’ve been through a gamut of emotions the past few months. Many before 7/11, but even more, and much more intensely since. Crazily, but also not surprisingly, this episode took place just 2 days and exactly 25 years after what was one of the most transformational days of my life at the time when I was 17. I’d written about it before in My Mom. It’s one of my trigger dates, something I don’t think I fully believed in until this summer. I didn’t consciously recognize the significance of how the date triggered me, but my body did. The Body Keeps the Score. It really does.
What I realized most profoundly this summer is that I have PTSD. I really do. Two and a half years ago I had my first panic attack. I was immediately diagnosed with Anxiety and Panic Disorder. Last summer the PTSD diagnosis was added. While I remember telling people about it, somehow I didn’t realize how important it was to my mental recovery to embrace and work on it. In fact, when the true awareness hit me like a ton of bricks just less than a week after 7/11 this year, I was surprised to realize that I’d been sharing and telling people about it prior to then. A few days ago I re-read something I added to my blog page in May, “About Me,” and it was there too! Why wasn’t I working on it?
I wasn’t working on my trauma and PTSD for many reasons. Because it wasn’t urgent and didn’t seem important. Because no one tells you that it’s important. In fact, no one can; it’s something you have to discover on your own when your body is ready. Also because I didn’t have the time or the lifestyle until now. That is why I’m in gratitude this morning. I’m moving in the slow lane and I love it.
From a young age I moved fast. I always had excessive energy. I never understood how anyone could sit at a meeting or in a class and not fidget. I was just always bursting out of my skin. Driving… I had to be in the fast lane. I was constantly assessing for traffic, changing lanes with the flow. Heart always racing. Breath always erratic. I was always, always, always looking for more efficient ways to do things. From driving to folding laundry to cleaning… to redesigning whole work groups and even departments at my job. I was good at it. It was a great outlet for my energy. I was efficient and I helped others to be as well. A good use of my talents. Or so I thought.
Now I’m living in the slow lane. I still have the habit of moving fast, but I catch myself at least 80% or so of the time when I realize that for no good reason my heart is in a lurch or my breath isn’t steady. I stop it and slow down. I manage my breath. I smell the roses. I ground myself in the present and it’s SO much better. I think about that quote about how nothing or everything is a miracle, and see things as beautiful. Even ugly things. I wish we could teach our children this from a young age. Instead we are programmed to “succeed,” to do more and faster, to have it all, to do it all. We are programmed to think we are a failure if we don’t meet this criteria. On paper, by this methodology, I was a huge success.
Take two driven people like my husband and myself, put them together, and what do you have? It’s debatable. 7 years ago I would have thought a match made in heaven. In fact, at our wedding we incorporated the Japanese term of kaizen (continuous improvement) into our vows. Ugh… how I cringe now.
I do believe in continuous improvement, but not in the way it was taught to me (faster, better, do more, etc.). I believe in the slow movement. That less is more. That slowing down and even stillness is where the magic of life lies. Take a look at the pets in our lives. They are content with doing less, watching the world outside the window for hours just as it is. Accepting us for who we are. Not caring about how we are dressed or what fancy letters come after our name. They are, in a sense, more human from a place of connection than we are. I have four pets. I didn’t even have time to pet them before. I would shoo them away when they came to climb on me when I collapsed on the couch after 16 hours of non-stop movement. We had to have our dog in daycare just to get exercise and go out because no one was home long enough to play with him or take him out. Picking him up and dropping him off was another burdened activity on the checklist. Why have pets, kids, a house (2 in our case), a garden, etc., when there was no time to put any love or life into any of it? It’s been a slow realization for me that none of this makes sense. That I was living by a clock and not a compass. It took even longer to do anything meaningful about it. I’m still on that journey and in no rush to any finish line. The unfolding is a beautiful experience that I’m embracing wildly.
I wrote a few paragraphs back that I could write for hours about how I got here. Everyone has their own journey, their own stories, their own level of awareness, and their own (hopefully) point in their life—more often than not in the second half of it—in which they proverbially “wake up.”
My own story started on March 1, 2012. At work I enrolled in a Franklin Covey industry-based class for The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It was a 2-day seminar that set the path of a new life for me. At the time I was recently remarried and my husband and I were just finishing up the renovations we worked on non-stop for 2 months in our new home. I felt SO alive during those renovations. I loved working on the house. We often stayed up until 1 or 2am in the morning on work nights and didn’t feel the least bit exhausted in the morning.
Once the renovations were finishing up, I started to feel trapped, bored, and useless—something I wasn’t accustomed to feeling. Since my husband and I moved in together with our kids the year before, I felt like I was mentally unraveling. The renovations were a pleasant distraction. I began going to a Bible study at the hospital where I work, which one of my vanpool mates hosted. I hung onto many of the teachings and words, learning new language to explain what I was feeling. The Covey class used similar language but explained it in a different way that opened me up in a special fashion. Three things I really connected with were the concept of a paradigm that we see the world through, that I make my own independent choices constantly, and that to feel in line with who you are, we should be living by a compass and not a clock. Wow. This was mind-blowing and life-changing for me.
Shortly after, I explored the Bible much more. Then I ran into a Bishop Spong book quite by accident (I honestly cannot remember which one). I was never religious, but grew up Catholic and felt like it was a sin to question anything that didn’t make sense. As soon as my mind took me to those questioning places, guilt kicked in and I pushed it away. The John Shelby Spong book provided the freedom to question what made no sense and shift the focus to something that did in a more mystical, metaphysical way where it all made sense. From there I found podcasts on the Centers for Spiritual Living to help time pass while having to drive to Bedford, MA quite often for work—2½ hours each direction. Those podcasts prompted me to read the ghastly large book by Ernest Holmes called The Science of Mind. The world was opening and unfolding in ways I could have never dreamed. From there, for some unknown reason, I started taking yoga classes, which spoke the same type of language. Then I would listen to Alan Watts during my lunch walks and long commutes. All different words, but the same beautiful, timeless messages that make sense.
Years later, in January 2016, I loved yoga and this way of thinking so much that I started yoga teacher training. My regular life with work, the kids, pets, blended family, commute, and constant rush was becoming unsustainable. Why was I adding a full weekend a month commitment to this training? I don’t know, but I just felt compelled.
For some reason I thought in yoga teacher training I would learn more about the poses, teaching, and the actual class. Instead, like the Franklin Covey class years before, it became a personal journey. I quickly decided that it was a necessity to meditate regularly. Once I started quieting my mind and relaxing regularly, I realized that is how a body should feel, and how I lived for the previous 40 years was anything but calm. It started to become unbearable to not feel calm. Combine that with what I now realize is a few PTSD triggers from work at the time, it’s absolutely no surprise that I had my first panic attack exactly when I did, and they escalated from there—completely out of control. My body was releasing 40 years’ worth of emotion that was bubbling just under the surface. The same energy that kept me moving, grooving, and successful was the same energy that was keeping me stressed and mentally unaware that I was damaging myself by not dealing with the trauma that has plagued my mind, body, and spirit.
The past two and a half years since have been transformational. A lot of bad and negative things arose, but more positive learning experiences than anything bad. You have to go through it to move through it. It sounds simple, but it’s much harder than it sounds. It wasn’t until now that I’ve given myself the time and opportunity to heal. But you have to make the time. Your life has to allow it. You have to slow down.
This past summer was rough. I spent hours upon hours writing and allowing myself to remember and experience the anguish of old memories. Many were the same memories that came up during what I now know as PTSD episodes, but I’d felt too ashamed, embarrassed, or dramatic to explore. In writing, crying, thinking, gardening, exercising, waking up in the middle of the night, reading, etc., I started to explore my triggers and where they came from. It made sense. I learned more about how the brain is wired and why I seemed to lose control at times. I logged and shared trigger dates with my family. I allowed myself to feel all that I’ve always pushed away and thought I moved past years ago. It was always there waiting for me to deal with it. I just didn’t slow down enough to hear it.
Today I feel good. Over coffee this morning I saw my husband petting one of the cats who was purring where he shouldn’t be (on a counter). When my husband moved his hand away to finish getting ready for work, our cat Gilmore bipped him on the hand—asking for more petting, which Daren provided. We are in a place where we have time to pet our cats. I am thankful I am in a job where if I woke up in the middle of the night and didn’t sleep for hours, the pressure of getting dressed and driving to the office with a smile is not there because I can telework and I’m part-time. I’m thankful for the mental health breakdown this summer. I spent so much time on the days I wasn’t working living like my pets. I napped in the middle of the day if I needed to. I only ate when I was hungry. If I felt like the sun was calling me, I read and wrote outside. If I felt the urge to move, I went for a walk, run, or bike ride. Listening to my body helped me to attune to what it’s telling me in other ways too. Our bodies are a walking, living, physical communication device. It’s a compass of that path we should be on.
This summer I also listened to The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People CDs that I was provided with from that class back in March of 2012. Listening to the late Stephen Covey’s voice felt like listening to an old friend with sound, sage, timeless advice. I also spent quite a bit of time doing those old exercises again. I created a mission statement, thought about my values and principles, my “rocks,” how I communicate with people, how I think, and how I live. I thought about the life that I want to program. My own talents. Not the talents the world has barked at me—like designing things bigger, better, and faster—but what I wanted to be when I was a kid with no restrictions and what that meant. The imprint I want to leave on the world.
These aren’t overnight answers. If I thought for a New York second that I know them right now, I’d be fooling myself. I’ll be working on them for the rest of my life. I’m trying diligently to listen to the compass. If we quiet ourselves enough, and ask our inner selves for advice, the most profound wisdom is all there, right within us. Our bodies know what we need. They keep the score.
My dog Koji who teaches me all sorts of invaluable lessons without saying a word
Bored at home after carpal tunnel surgery of my right hand this past Monday (9/10), I decided to try to open my right brain by painting with my left hand
My left handed drawing depicting what is supposed to be a sunset
Thanks for taking the time to read. I’d love to hear your thoughts!
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I almost don’t know how to start this. Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S., affecting millions of adults every year.
I am one of those people who suffer. When I’m in panic, it’s almost as if a doppelgänger took over my body. So many people do not understand what happens and that the person has no control over how they feel. Stress and cortisol flood the body.
Last night I had a panic attack. I actually had several in the past week, and 4 or 5 just yesterday alone. What made my last two particularly long and painful is that other people were home and weren’t reacting compassionately. They live with me and don’t quite understand what I go through, how painful it is, and how little to no control I have over how I feel or can possibly react. I can empathize and understand that it can be scary to someone else—really I can. I don’t want to be in full-blown panic either, believe me—way more so than the people around me don’t want to see it.
A key driver is understanding. Panic disorder with panic attacks is not something that can be helped in the moment or have a lid put on it. What makes it all so much worse is when those around you judge you and believe mental health issues are something that can simply be controlled. I’m writing this because if my own household doesn’t quite understand what this is about, how can anyone else? I need to do my part in spreading awareness.
I didn’t know much about true anxiety either. Why should I? We throw the word around a lot. Many of us live with low-level anxiety constantly. As a society, we are mostly all anxious. Anxiety and panic disorder are a little different. Nervousness and anxiety can both cause similar symptoms, but normal nervousness—like before a big presentation or applying for a job—is tied to a real situation and passes. Panic disorder is not like that.
I’ve read a lot about anxiety in the past two years since I’ve been diagnosed. Stress is prevalent in our culture. A large part is due to technology and the constant bombardment of information. Also, the ability for others to reach into our lives at any moment—through social media, texting, email—creates a constant sense of urgency. When I was younger and we had a house phone attached to a wall, leaving work meant the day was done. No one was creating new demands through texts and emails late into the evening.
Now, something as simple as a phone notification at 9pm can cause our heart rate to increase and create a false sense of urgency. Whether it’s from a loved one or your boss, the body reacts as if something is wrong. For most people, that feeling fades quickly. For those of us with an anxiety disorder, it doesn’t go away—it escalates.
A panic attack can feel like your body suddenly believes it is in danger, even when nothing is actually happening. Your heart races, your breathing changes, your chest feels tight, and your body prepares to fight or run. Rational thinking goes offline. It is not the time to reason through it or try to explain it away.
With panic disorder, the body goes into full fight-or-flight mode without a real, present threat. It differs for everyone, but for me, I am often triggered by something external that was threatening in the past. Many times I cannot initially identify the trigger. It is almost impossible to do so when the brain is flooded and executive functioning shuts down.
I want to feel normal and not panic more than anything. Riding it out, medicine, and therapy are helpful, but it took years for my body to become this dysregulated. It likely will not go away overnight.
I can tell you what makes it worse for me:
Being with someone during a panic attack who doesn’t understand and becomes annoyed or frustrated. I can’t be helped in that moment. Someone in my face trying to rationalize it feels condescending. Being ignored feels humiliating and similar to abandonment. I’m already overwhelmed—those reactions only intensify it.
Another difficult experience is trying to hide it so as not to scare others. That creates another layer of pressure. I’ve had panic attacks on airplanes, in restaurants, at work, while driving, while getting ready for bed, and even when waking up. When people pretend nothing is happening, it makes me feel like something is wrong with me—like I need to be hidden.
And then there is the shame. The feeling that you need to hide such a significant part of your experience from others. Our society does not always respond kindly to mental health struggles. Before experiencing this myself, I also believed it was something that could be controlled. Last summer I spent a full month in an Intensive Outpatient Program, but I was afraid to tell people why I was on leave. If I felt that way, I’m sure others do too.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month. If you don’t struggle with mental health (and that’s wonderful), it’s very likely you know someone who does—you just may not realize it. Let’s do our part to bring awareness and approach one another with compassion instead of judgment.
We are all human. Let’s treat one another as such.
Have you ever sat at work at your desk, in front of your computer, and felt completely immobilized? Perhaps staring at the screen, not being excited about a single thing you should be working on? Conceivably, like me, you’ve procrastinated with just one more thing before you delve in—one last bathroom trip, one more cup of coffee, one last check of your personal phone sitting off to the side… for the 15th time… in the past 5 minutes.
Maybe you’ve been so unmotivated while sitting at your desk that you’ve taken to Google “motivation,” “new jobs,” “career changes,” “inspiration”… and alas, you become desperate because nothing is lighting a spark. So you Google “depression” or “what’s wrong with me?”
I used to be motivated when I was younger. I was the most motivated, happy person I knew—if I was honest with myself and took a break from being so focused to notice that others around me didn’t exactly have the same spark in their eyes about the silliness and mundane work we were doing. At some point, I started to feel my energy and motivation drain. It was depressing because that didn’t feel like me.
After Googling any and all possible search terms to unearth whatever could possibly be wrong with me, I slowly started to tap into a new reality. I began to wake up and realize what a cog in the wheel I’d been—just a small part of a big, giant system churning out widgets at a rapid pace, more rapid than anyone could want them. When people were sick of their widgets and had one too many, advertising was invented to convince people that they should want and need more than they are satisfied with, or they will not be happy or “successful.” So people kept working harder to churn out more widgets, only to buy more—only needing to work harder and longer to do so… only to be constantly chasing their own happiness and wondering what was wrong with them.
A quick Google search on my smartphone this afternoon revealed to me that butter was invented anywhere between 10,000 and a few hundred years ago. Just a small range, right? Nonetheless, sometime, somewhere, at some distant point in time, a human being not too different from you or me sat churning butter at home thinking, “I can’t wait to finish this churning—it’s so monotonous.” The cream likely came from a cow just yards away on the farm, not but a few hours before. It’s likely the butter-maker fantasized about a device that could do this for them, so they could spend more time enjoying life.
Perhaps the butter-maker didn’t overeat butter because he or she knew how much work went into it. Perhaps they didn’t overeat anything at all because they understood how much effort went into getting the food before them, period. If they didn’t hunt and gather it themselves, they knew the individual who had and likely exchanged their butter for it.
At some point in the past few hundred (or thousand) years, humanity’s inventions surpassed our common sense. We made machines to do just about everything we used to do, including butter churning. As a race, we literally left our homesteads and went to work in factories to make things that people needed. The machines churned widgets out so fast that we made what we needed fairly quickly. It should have stopped there—taking only what we needed.
But we kept on churning it all out.
It was monotonous—perhaps even as monotonous as churning butter manually. The only way to get out of this precarious situation and move on to bigger and better things was to churn out widgets with more speed and adeptness than your co-workers around you, so you could instead supervise the line from the catwalk above. It was probably around that point in history that we stopped working together as a human race and started to compete in ways that were harmful to us as a species.
The shiny new line supervisor watching from above might have realized that it could feel quite lonely at the top. Perhaps he looked down at the line and missed the camaraderie and teamwork. However, with that increase in pay and social status, he wasn’t about to say anything. He “made it,” after all. He should feel happy. But he doesn’t. What’s wrong with him?
Just a mere few hundred years later, we live in a world where we want for nothing, yet face ridiculous, cutthroat competition. So much so that our young children in elementary schools are on medications because the stress of having to “succeed” is too much to handle; and there is so much stimulation coming at them from every angle that they have difficulty focusing.
We are sitting at desks, churning out reports no one reads, crunching numbers that can be manipulated so many ways they’ve become useless, and feeling superior for going through more emails than the person next to us. We are pressured to keep up the sales numbers—sell, sell, sell—beat the competition, beat your neighbor, and keep improving upon all of this before your next performance review.
To what end?
At least back in the manual butter-churning days, we felt connected—to our food source, the earth that fed us, the animals that provided for us, our families and friends that we worked collaboratively with on a regular basis in exchange for life’s simplicities. There was a sense of purpose and belonging. One could see the fruit of their labor. Rarely did anyone take more than they needed.
There was no need for speed and churning out widgets at a rapid pace to meet an invisible, unnecessary sales quota that felt completely empty to you after the pat on the back in front of your team… when you went back to your desk to stare at your computer and wonder why you aren’t happy.
There is nothing wrong with you. There is something wrong with society.
We are so far removed from our food sources, our connection to nature, and simplicity that we have lost our connection and relevance to the earth—and to ourselves. We have little meaning and purpose. We feel bored and lonely. We receive all the wrong messages from society to do more, be more, and compete more. We are too tired at the end of the day to spend quality time with family or friends, to volunteer in our communities, to go to a town meeting, or to fight for anything we care about.
We need to take our lives back.
The butter-churning days may have been monotonous, but at least they had purpose. At least the butter-maker directly benefited from what they were doing. At least society was working together for a common purpose and felt part of something bigger than themselves.
What is the purpose of what we are churning out now?
Machines were invented so we could spend more time enjoying life. Why didn’t that happen?
