To Sarah, With Love

One of my greatest joys is writing. Whether it's pen to paper, which may sound archaic, or fingers to keyboard, I love writing. When I'm writing for my blog or for a Storycatcher's submission, I can edit, and edit, and edit some more before I find my scribing worthy of posting or submitting. This can be a torturous process.

I'm a perfectionist by nature, although generally not one who reworks and tweaks my writing to the point where I miss a deadline or throw up my hands and say, "Fuck this. It's never going to be good enough." My perfectionism isn't paralyzing. It's more self-critical than anything. When I click "Publish" or "Send" I re-read what I've written and that's when the chorus of inner critics break into song in a minor key. They are very loud and very convincing. 

I'm trying to find a writing/storytelling/poetry group in Green Bay. So far I haven't been very successful. I found the storytelling group Storycatcher's based in Appleton through the website meetup.com. Earlier this evening I tried to find something similar in Green Bay with no success. If anyone reading this is aware of such a group, please message me via Facebook. 

We moved to Green Bay on Labor Day Weekend 2019 for my job. I have a cousin and her family that live in Green Bay, plus an aunt and uncle, two second cousins, one of whom died in the fall of 2021. I performed the smudging at her funeral ceremony which is a sacred honor that goes back multiple generations on the maternal side of our family, Native Americans of the Menominee Tribe. I've been told that our tribe's spirit animal is a bear which represents healing and helping others. The irony of my cousin being a nurse and me being a therapist is not lost on me. It's not really ironic, it's who we were meant to be, predetermined before any of us were born. That comforts me because I explored many different careers and jobs before it became clear to me that I needed to go to graduate school so I could be a counselor, a spiritual healer of sorts.

On the day of her passing, gathered family saw an eagle flying independent and free in the afternoon sky. Perhaps this was her spirit animal, free from illness, treatment and pain letting her family know she too was finally free from physical suffering. Years ago at a spiritual retreat I became aware that my spirit animal was a female eagle, powerful, independent, free, yet nurturing and loving to her young. When the day comes that I pass, I hope someone close to me sees that eagle soaring free, released from the human bonds of pain, hurt and suffering. Isn't that what we all hope for at our end? I think we do.

This is Not a Bucket List or any New Year’s Resolutions

 Despite that this post will look like a “bucket list” or potential list of New Year’s resolutions, it’s really not. I’ve recently been thinking about some things I’d like to do/see/experience; some things I’ve already done/seen/ experienced but would like to do so again. Some experiences are novel for me, or my husband Mark, or for both of us. There isn’t a timetable attached to any of these activities, except for those items I have designated with a timeline. This is after all my list of stuff, which gives me the right to break my own rules.

 In 2022 (see, here I go attaching a timeline and breaking my own rule) I want the pain issues in my lumbar and cervical spine resolved. In 2017 I suddenly experienced consistent stabbing pain in my lower back. In 2021 I re-experienced that lower back pain and the same level of pain in my neck (cervical spine.) An MRI from August 2021, indicates mild to moderate canal narrowing at C5-C6 (neck vertebrae number 5 and 6) due to disc bulge; severe narrowing of the left neural foramen (Google it) at C5-C6 level due to disc bulge and uncovertebral/facet joint arthrosis (Google it.)

 My lumbar spine (lower back) MRI from 2017 findings were confirmed and worsened in the MRI I had of this area in August 2021. 1) Moderate to severe spinal cannel narrowing at L3-L4 level due to disc bulge, ligamentum flavum thickening (Google it) and posterior epidural lipomatosis (Google it.) The residual AP diameter of the spinal canal is 6mm (genetically way narrower than the average spinal canal.) The thecal sac is compressed, and the cauda equina nerve roots are crowded. 2) Moderate spinal canal narrowing at L4-L5 level with residual AP diameter of 7mm. 3) Mild to moderate narrowing of both neural foramina at L4-L5 (Google it.)

 Currently I’m in physical therapy to increase “my pelvic motion.” Trust me, I don’t like the way it sounds anymore than you do, especially since I have to do the exercises twice a day that cause increased pain right now, which I’m told “is a good response” from my physical therapist. On 12/30/21 I had six trigger point injections, which so far, aren’t causing any additional pain or lack of motion.

I want to go to Scotland. I briefly spent time there in 1988, which for me is a lifetime ago. I must consider the weather of my vacation destination. I want at least five days off from work for this trip and I’m not sure if I want to spend it in chronic drizzling rain. Other locations under consideration include San Francisco (I’ve never been), Red Woods & Sequoia National Parks (I’ve never been), Zion & Bryce National Parks in southwestern Utah (I’ve never been), Paris, France (I’ve been several times), New York City (I’ve been half a dozen times, but my husband Mark has never been), and Boston (where I lived for several years but Mark has never been.) Part of me wants to see the expression on Mark’s face when we take a cab from La Guardia to the Village or the Upper West Side, where we’d likely stay in NYC. When we drive to Milwaukee, he drives until we reach Germantown, where we pull over and I drive the rest of the way to our urban destination. My mind’s eye can see his jaw drop at the hustle, energy, and hyper-speed motion of “The City”. Although just about every New Yorker would argue the clear differences between NYC and Boston, my hunch is his reaction would be the same. Reminder: He grew up in Park Falls, WI, which had one stop light intersection during his childhood and adolescence. I’ve driven in Manhattan when I was in college in Boston. The gold and black Wisconsin license plate earned me no respect on that trip, which was the same when I drove to the Stop-N-Shop in Quincy, MA for weekly grocery shopping. Of course, any international travel is at the mercy of the Omnicron variant of COVID-19. We have both had the initial two vaccinations and the booster, but until more people understand the necessity and benefit of vaccination, we may be stuck in the continental 48.

 I absolutely must get new glasses.  My work has me staring at two computer monitors for eight hours a day, five days a week. I had an eye exam in October 2020, but after constantly staring at computer screens since February 5, 2021, my close-up vision has significantly declined, as well as my distance vision. My dad wears these special, funky yellow lensed glasses while driving at night. He wears contacts and the glasses aren’t that inconvenient for him. At my October eye exam, the ophthalmologist couldn’t find a combination of contact lenses that allowed me to see distance with a bi-focal. I don’t know if I can wear contact lenses again. I adamantly wish I can wear contact lenses because the night-time glasses would be very helpful and less complicated if they weren’t prescription lenses. My current glasses have a cute, rectangular blue frame, but they are very narrow and essentially “hide” my eyes. I need the wide, circular lenses that Oprah wore when interviewing Harry and Megan in late summer this year. Plus, I totally dig the gray frames she wore. Photos will be posted when I get new frames and (fingers crossed) new contact lenses.

 After the shit-show that 2020 turned out to be, I think many of us were hoping 2021 would be drastically different and help us regain a sense of normalcy. Unfortunately, for several of my close friends and certainly for myself, that was not the case. I recently messaged a friend I don’t nearly spend enough time with online, wishing him and his family a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. His response was something I can totally get behind: “I hope you had amazing holidays and 2022 brings love, success, happiness and prosperity. Cause, you know, fuck you 2021.” My response: “Amen my brother.”

 Right now, the local time is 11:30pm. 2022 starts in 31 minutes. Will it return me and those I care about most, to a sense of normalcy? To where I feel confident about my work and where my career is headed? Where I feel competent to handle the crap life will inevitably throw at me? That I can handle Mark’s and my own health challenges? At this moment I don’t have a lot of confidence in myself to manage any of that. I’ve been struggling with overwhelming anxiety and deep depression since the end of November 2021. But tomorrow is not only a new day, it’s a new year. So I hope for the best, am working toward returning to being my best (which is 70/30 right now), and even if my 2022 sucks, I wish all of you the best new year you can have.

                                                             

 

 

 

 

Always Love Your Father

 I downloaded one of those inspirational posts from Facebook, "Always love your father, understand his effort and sacrifices." 

Father-daughter relationships can be complicated. (As if mother-daughter relationships are not). Around the year 2000 I remember having a brief conversation with my sister about which one of us had the "better" relationship with our dad. She thought I had more in common with him and of course, I thought she had more in common with him. Our examples to justify our opinions were quite thin. It wasn't until Dad retired in 2015-ish, right now I can't remember the exact year, that I really started to slowly, sometimes painfully, sometimes surprisingly, got to know my father better than I had before. I still have many unanswered questions that I recently hinted that I'd like to get answers to, but in typical German, stoic Rog fashion, he passed over the comment in a text to him as if it was never there.

I have my dad's photo album from his time in Vietnam. (See my Facebook page for the photos and notes he wrote on the back of them). On 7/4/21 Mark, Apollo, and I spent the afternoon at my parents' house and my dad mentioned that he drove a truck from Eagle Knit in Shawano to Zwicker Knitting Mill in Appleton and back at some point in his life; I'm not sure if he was in high school or college. His mother, my Grandma Porath, worked at Eagle Knit in Shawano and I wonder if this was one of those situations where the company a parent works for hires their kids for work during summers in high school or college like when I worked for the company Dad worked for starting the summer after my sophomore year in high school. This was a piece of my dad's life timeline I knew nothing about.

I'm unable to piece together my dad's life timeline from when he was in high school to when he and Mom bought the house they still live in on Memorial Day weekend 1973. From there I've seen enough pictures and heard enough stories to know that he worked as a full time account at Appleton Memorial Hospital, now Theda Care Appleton, and at night he worked as a cashier at Treasure Island which was on west College Avenue.  On the nights he wasn't working there he was attending grad school at UW-Oshkosh and earned his MBA. I have strived to academically match Dad. I was the first woman in my maternal and paternal families to graduate from college. I was also the first woman on either side of my family to earn a Master's Degree. Rog was the first in our family to do both.

I know he left for Vietnam three weeks after I was born, having already completed basic training in the Army. My mom and Grandma Porath went to his graduation from basic (I think) before my parents were married (01/23/71), but I don't know that for sure. His discharge from the Army and return to Shawano is a nightmare story I've shared before; how he hitch hiked from the train station in Green Bay to Shawano during the night because he was harassed while wearing his uniform during the day.

Dad went on an Old Glory Honor Flight for veterans during EAA 2014. He listed me as his contact person and they reached out to me to connect with family, friends, and coworkers, to send cards or write letters that would be distributed to the veterans during "mail call" on the return flight. I likely contacted most of you reading this to send a card or note to him. His plane landed at EAA after a day spent in Washington, D.C. touring monuments and memorials. I've included one of my favorite pictures ever, taken after he landed by my former boss who was there honoring a veteran in his family. After all the "thank you for your service", "or "welcome home" and when the band had stopped playing, Dad told me he had the largest package for "mail call" on the flight. I was proud that with your help, I could make that happen.

Some day I hope to record my father's story. I want to sit down with him, my phone recording our conversation starting with, "So you were born on August 29, 1947 in Wausau. What happened from there?"

Some day I hope to put the pieces of my dad's life timeline together to really understand what he did to achieve all that he has.

Some day I hope that my dad understands how important and influential he's been in my life.

Some day I hope he'll be there for me forever.

Some day, I just hope.

Letters to Myself

A few years ago I bought a self-reflection activity book titled Letters to My Future Self.  It's one of those reflective, self-progress things that required I write letters to myself in the future about specific topics I was dealing with at the time I wrote the letter to myself. Examples include "These are my roots...", "Where I want to go from where I am right now", and "This is what I live for: work accomplishments".

I haven't completed all the letters. Blank ones include "All the things I'd like to try someday", "It was an extraordinary day", "This is a letter about my love", "I never want to forget this", "Ten item gratitude list and letter of thanks".

My current dilema: I have several entries with past due open and read dates and I'm not sure if I want to open and read them. Those letters include "I promise to myself" sealed on 01/30/2020, to be opened on 01/30/2021. "There's no place like home" sealed on 10/04/19, to be opened on 10/04/2020. "A pep talk for the future me" sealed on 04/30/2018 to be opened on 05/14/2020. "Me from long ago to the more experienced me" sealed on 06/29/19 to be opened on 06/29/2020.

My memory of why I wrote letters on particular days is gone. I have no idea why I wrote "A pep talk for the future me" on 4/30/2018 and why I chose the date to open it on 5/14/2020, other than 5/14/2020 was my 49th birthday.

Part of me feels like opening and reading the letters should be a communal event, surrounded by friends and select family. You know, my tribe. I can't imagine anything lonelier than opening one of these letters and reading it to myself while sitting alone on my bed. That just seems pathetic. 

So here is a new letter to myself dated 03/13/21 to be read today, 03/13/21:

My dear, you think you see the light at the end of this very black tunnel you've lived in since August 1st 2020, but the truth is you're working on a project that doesn't guarantee you a regular, full time job at the projected end date in 6-9 months. You are saving much of the salary you current receive which is a good thing because you've never made more money than you are now and you must remember this is a temporary gig.

Congrats on knowing about, accessing and using all of the safety net programs that you qualified for: Food Share, a tax credit off-set for health insurance through the Marketplace, energy assistance, COVID relief payments, and several tax credits we qualified for when filing our 2020 taxes. It feels weird to use the same social services benefits I've directed numerous clients to, but at least I knew about them and accessed them when my family needed to. There's NO shame in that.

Thank God I have parents who saved enough money to provide their heirs (me, my sister & my brother) access to inheritance money "while they're still alive" a quote from my dad. He keeps a ledger documenting which one of us has received a dollar amount to make sure the other two receive the same dollar amount whether that's for a new car or lakeside property, or a pontoon boat.

Last week Rog (my dad) told me Mark & I are due some money based on this pre-inheritance system and I told him to keep it in "our account" to be used for a future vacation once COVID vaccinations increase and travel is less of a hassle. 

I hope to see the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.I hope to see and listen to the Height Ashbury neighborhood that created so much of the music I love.  I hope to walk among the Redwoods and Sequoias and be awestruck by their size. 

I hope....

2020: The Shit-Show That Was

It's fair to say that 2020 was a rough year for most of the people I know. "Rough" is vague enough to describe the continuum of minor impacts of the COVID-19 virus to I know people that died, lost jobs, struggled really hard this year. I am in the latter.

I've gone through my soon to be outdated calendar and can list more crappy events in every month than I can "Oh yay!" happenings. I realize I need to check my gratitude because I'm not taking into account I've had a roof over my head and food in my kitchen all year. I can't manage how to make those things important enough to overcome the monthly feeding of crap this year. My mind is not in that place of gratitude right now, and hasn't been for several months. My apologies to those of you reading this and thinking, "Just shut up about the crap and focus on the gratitude." It's a cognitive thing. I'm a therapist, getting clients to recognize and accept gratitude has been my the bread and butter of my career. Right now I'm in an obstinate, stubborn, very dark place. I'm in the sloppy, muddy pit of depression and I'm comfortable here, thank you, and it seems I may stay awhile.

If I don't find a job soon, Mark & I won't be able to afford rent to keep this particular roof over our heads by February 1st. If it hadn't been for Food Share, I don't know how we would've managed food for ourselves. We've had enough money to feed and care for the dog, and I started Christmas shopping in September, when finances weren't so dour. We're getting energy assistance. I'm not getting unemployment. I've never been in this financial situation. I've never been dependent on social services or public aid.

What has kept us treading water is my parents. They've paid for medical and dental bills, sent home days' worth of leftover meals from when we visit. God knows we appreciate everything they've done for us, but it's humiliating. That's my own ego talking, but there's truth in it. Who hopes to be turning 50 in six months and calling your dad to ask for insurance premium money? (No job means I have health insurance through the Affordable Care Act and pay insane amounts of money each month for sub-par coverage.) Who plans on your only regular income to be checks from your parents? I'm starting to look for cheaper apartments because my parents can't afford my rent. How fucked up is that?? This is not the life I pictured...ever. 

The humiliation I feel, the disappointment I see in my father's eyes, the incompetence I feel as a therapist unemployed for five months with no options in sight...I don't know how much longer I can survive in the depression pit. But I don't know what will help me find the energy or motivation to get out.

 

On This Christmas Eve...

I had to remind myself before I started typing tonight that Christmas Eve is not New Year's Eve and I need to save my end-of-this-absolutely-disastrous-fucking-year rant for another 168 hours. I've been writing down the low-lights, of which there are a plethora, since January when this shit-show of a year began. Ok, ok, focus. Back to Christmas Eve.

Throughout the day I've been remembering past Christmas Eves. My earliest Christmas Eve (I'll shorten that to CE going forward) memories are related to participating in my church's Christmas Pageant which, for my Sunday School years, was held on CE, not the Saturday before or after Christmas like it is now. I remember as a kindergartener and at least through 2nd grade, we dressed as angels. Donned in white sheets with halos fashioned from horribly misshapen wire hangers with silver or gold tinsel lopsidedly taped to them, we sang Away in the Manger for three consecutive years.

I'm not sure what our 4th grade class sang or wore, but I remember getting out of the car in the church parking lot that CE and inhaling the brisk winter air which stunned me slightly. I looked up to a cloudless sky, searching for the Christmas star, the star that led the Wise Men to the baby Jesus. In my nine year old mind, the brightest star I saw, likely the North star, was the Christmas star. 

My church had Sunday School through 8th grade, the end of which culminated in Confirmation. Every CE for four years the brightest star I could see in the night sky from the church parking lot on Marquette Street became the Christmas star. It was shortly after that when pageants were performed on a Saturday afternoon, which included my younger sister and brother. I was in college by the time my brother participated in his last pageant.

I was thinking of the first CE I no longer believed in Santa while reminiscing earlier today. That would be Christmas of 5th grade. 

My mother has always had a mild obsession with Little House on the Prairie. The TV show, the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, touring the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum somewhere in Minnesota, she's done the whole Little House gambit. For some unknown reason she made me and my sister wear cotton bonnets with the brim and long ribbons fashioned into a bow on the side of our chins, certainly not directly under them. I should define "made us wear cotton bonnets". She bought one for each of us and I remember wearing it a few times prior to attending junior high, but why we had them and when exactly we wore them is fuzzy. Anyway, the point is that my sister and I shared a full size bed like Laura and Mary Ingalls until Christmas of 7th grade when we got bunk beds. I've gone Freudian on that until my head spins, so don't go there.

Our bedroom was at the end of the hallway of your typical three bedroom, single level ranch house: the hallway starts in the dining area, first door on the left: bathroom, second door on the left: master bedroom, first (and only) door on the right: small bedroom, and the hallway empties like a river into a delta which was our bedroom. From our doorway we had a straight shot to see someone walking from the basement, through the kitchen and dining area into the living room, walking right to left.

By CE of 5th grade I was questioning this whole Santa thing. Our house didn't have a fireplace and chimney until 1978-ish. How did he get into our house before that? Was Santa committing B&E at every house in the world that didn't have a fireplace??

My 2nd grade sister and I agreed to stay up and monitor the view from our bedroom door opened just a crack, that CE. She was asleep by 8:30pm. I managed to stay up until 10:30pm when the show began. From bed I could hear repeated footsteps cross the kitchen and dining area. I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter! (LOL!) I peaked through the 2" opening between the door and the frame and watched my dad make the trip past me at least a dozen times, his arms loaded with wrapped packages. I shook my sister to show her who Santa really was. She groaned for a moment then continued her slumber. Dad starting shutting off lights and I jumped back in bed. My parents' room was to the right of ours, we shared a common wall with an air vent which is the cause of many nightmares I'll save for another story. So I had proven there was no Santa. 

I kept this nugget of information to myself through adulthood. As I write this I'm not entirely sure if I ever shared this discovery with anyone in my family. The lapse of memory could be due to age. That happens more often at a scary rate. It surprises me that I didn't tell my family because I was kind of a loud-mouthed kid and when I knew something my sister or brother didn't know, I liked to climb up the pedestal I created and look down on the world from Judgement Land. 

Today it's Christmas Eve 2020. I've spent time in quiet contemplation of Luke's telling of Jesus' birth from the New Testament. I've spent time outside and found my Christmas star. 

Merry Christmas everyone. May you find your own Christmas star.

Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho, It's Off to Work I Go

I start a new job tomorrow, Wednesday, September 16, 2020, ending 45 days of unemployment.

I didn’t shout from the roof tops that I was fired on July 31, 2020. Although it came as a shock, after a few hours I realized that this was one of those situations when the Universe, God, Karma, a Higher Power, whatever you choose to call “it”, intervened and made a decision for me my deep, inner-self knew I should make, but I didn’t have the courage to do so. I even said that in the message I left for my shrink. Although I loved the clients I worked with, the brass tacks of the “job” was becoming a shit-show I didn’t want any part of or responsibility for. My parting words there are: Good luck at the upcoming annual Federal review. You’re fucked.

I’m not naming my new employer so don’t even ask me. I’ve removed my profile from Linked In. I removed the previous agency where I worked from my employment history on Facebook and I no longer “follow” them. You won’t find the name of my new employer associated with me in any way on social media. I’ve been fucked too many times by employers trampling all over my First Amendment rights while I’ve never disclosed any PHI (Protected Health Information) or violated anyone’s HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) rights. Yet somehow, I managed to get myself in trouble with previous employers, particularly by what I write about in this blog.   

I am a storyteller. If you’ve ever had a conversation with me, you’ve encountered me “setting the background” of whatever it is I’m finally going to tell you or engage in conversation with you about. My case notes can be horrendously long if I’m not mindful of keeping it to the “Description, Affect, Plan”. I am well aware of the ethical boundaries of my profession regarding confidentiality. No one has ever accused me of violating anything related to inappropriate disclosure of PHI because I never have. Simple enough from my point of view.

I’ve documented something every day of the last 45. It could be whom I spoke with regarding Food Share or comparing insurance plans on the healthcare.gov marketplace. It could be how useless and disappointed in myself I felt because I could no longer provide my husband’s Part B for Medicare by having employer sponsored health insurance. It’s there and sometime in the future I’ll re-read all of it; just not when doing so feels like walking across a sea of grit.

Tomorrow I’ll get up, shower, do my make-up (minus lipstick because thank heaven we’re all still wearing masks at work), and try to do something with my hair that doesn’t look like it’s 1986 and hanging over my eyes. I choose my work clothes the night before which prevents me from standing in front of my closet and drooling in the morning while I attempt to make a shirt and a pair of pants not look like I’m walking off a golf course in 1974.

As you get up and go to wherever it is you work, remember that I’m with you. Starting something new.