Change Starts with Me

Long time, no write, I know...I know; so I thought I'd pop on for a quick update. 

Reno, Nevada, January 2020

2020 has indeed been an unusual year thus far. As tumultuous as it has been though, I think I'm actually hopeful that, as my former boss put it, "2020 will be the year of perfect vision!" 

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and social justice demonstrations around the country and world, my family has been in a huge state of transition as well. We just sold the house in which we've lived and raised our children for the past 21 years, and are now preparing to move all the way across the country in a week and a half. 

This upcoming relocation, coupled with spending the past few months hunkered down in quarantine, avidly following the Black Lives Matter movement, has been the catalyst for self-reflection on a very profound level.

Lake Tahoe Nevada State Park, Jan. 2020

Launched from my own recovery, Pink Hi-Top Adventures has been my ongoing tool for healing which I hoped might also help (or at least entertain) others along the way. But deeply reflecting on social justice and how I may have at times complacently accepted "the unfortunate way things are", has been energizing. I want my life, my actions, and my words to reflect that which I claim to espouse. So, as one chapter closes and another begins, I think it is a good time to revisit Pink Hi-Top Adventures. What precisely that means, I don't know yet, but I do know that I want to focus more on the "Adventures" part of wellness, living my values, social justice in mental health, and lifting others up with me along the way. 

Oh, also, I've been working on putting Pink Hi-Top Adventures on a site of its own; but this, dear friends, is a slow process, I'm afraid. I find it much easier to write than to set up a website, but stay tuned!!

Quarantine Tip #1: Vent!

Hey folks - I was just looking over my blogs from the past, and I found a post that struck me as being relevant especially right now - a tip for maintaining mental wellness in very trying times. So, I'm re-posting here a blog entry from when my brother was losing his battle with a rare brain cancer and I was desperately trying to keep it all together emotionally: 

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11/17/16 - The Vortex Vent

"Shadows of Us", by Karen Clarke
[My brother and I.]

So I am NOT doing a very good job of staying out of the Vortex. I am not handling this very well at all. Who would?, I suppose.

Quite often, I am a two-year old in the body of a 50-year old. Occasionally, though, I am a little bit strong. I am typically at my best when I am with my brother actively doing something to help him, talking to him, and/or just sitting next to him. On the other hand, I am at my worst - as today - when I am back at my own house. I feel empty, helpless, and hopeless.

I really, really, really wanted to share with you tips on protecting one's mental health when dealing with serious illness, dying, death, and grief, but I've got nothing. Absolutely nothing. Nothing to share from my own journey through this experience to inspire you and set a good example of self-care that helps you help others. I totally know it's wrong to say, but I don't really give a damn about my own mental or physical health at the moment.

I know what I should be doing, but I am simply unable [unwilling] to do it. I know well the metaphor of the importance of taking care of oneself in order to best help others - like a parent putting on their own oxygen mask before putting one on their child in an airplane emergency. I have loved tossing that one around at friends and family coping with caring for others, but now it feels trite.

Wait...Actually, now that I think about it, this blog post is a part of self care. Venting one's emotions, as painful as they are, is therapeutic. The other day, I was thinking about the myriad feelings and emotions I cycle through daily, and I wrote the poem below**. Writing that too was therapeutic. 

So I guess I do have a tip for you after all: write (or draw, etc.) your feelings and emotions - painful and dark as they may well be. Share them or not, just get them out of your head and onto a medium. It is a pressure release to prevent full throttle explosion as emotional pain and suffering continues to layer your heart.

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**SAID POEM...


Like a sculptor working stone, pain carves me from the inside out –

rough-edged, 

broken,

torn.

I am angry. I rage 

                        and lash out like a fork-tongued serpent, fangs bared at the world.

I cry torrents of tears,

and thrash about like a wounded shark. 

I weep and wail til my heart’s squeezed dry. 

I am hollow.

I am full.

I am strong.

I am weak.

I am pain.

I am numb.

I am loss.

I am love.

I am grief.