Reconstructing Our Lives
Happy New Year!
While I was streaming mass from the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles (my church here in Albuquerque remains closed because of the pandemic) yesterday, Fr. Gallardo was talking about how we are now “reconstructing our lives” as we continue through the pandemic, but there is light at the end of the tunnel with the vaccines.
It’s been almost ten months since our lives were upended and from the beginning I saw that we all had an opportunity to make things better for ourselves. I’m not saying this was easy– it has been a challenging year and it’s been challenging in a different way for each of us because our lives are unique to who we are and how we live– but no challenge to become better is ever easy or a cakewalk. In fact, if we don’t walk through challenges or face them head on, we don’t grow.
Now that we’re at ten months and we see light coming at some point, although we don’t know exactly when, I it’s a good time to reflect both in the rearview mirror and what’s ahead of us. I see it that we have several months before things start to open up again so it’s a good time to finish up any projects or things we’d like to do or change. It’s a good time to make changes at home (mine include painting a bathroom, touching up paint around the house, recovering a chair and ottoman) before we get busy socially and find ourselves bouncing around outside our homes again.
It’s also a chance to make changes for ourselves. This past year we definitely took a step up at eating better at our house. We already ate fairly well, but we’re continuing to find more ways (er, I am continuing to find more ways) to include vegetables and beans in our meals. Since my surgery nearly two years ago, my body hasn’t been the same and it’s much happier if I eat less meat and eat more produce. I’m also swimming more than I was a year ago, knowing that running and swimming– movement– will help me get through the rest of this frustration and irritation.
Finally, what changes do we want in our lives to be permanent? For me, It’s about not just writing each day, but writing better and finally finishing the manuscripts I start. It’s about drawing more (to be covered in another blog soon), and upping my sewing production. While it has probably looked like I’ve accomplished more than most people this past year as I continued to sew, the inspiration is still coming quickly and I want to grab it while I can. But it means the list doesn’t get shorter because for each thing crossed off, there is something always getting added.
Turning the calendar to a new year is always a good time to make changes, but even more so this year as we look toward how we want our lives to be when we are finally free from the virus. Life won’t be exactly the same, it can’t be because we’ve changed in this experience, but it can still be great again. It’s up to us to find those opportunities and run with them.
December and Suicide
In the midst of the traditional December hubbub, I usually spend part of the month educating people on the myth that suicides go up in December. While people believe that suicides go up because of the holidays, it’s not true and there’s data to prove it. It is true that people are often more depressed, but the reality is that, whether we like it or not, in “normal” times, we’re forced to be in close proximity to people. This can be through family holiday events or just in parties and other gatherings we might be attending. Or even the shopping mall.
However, this isn’t a normal year.
While there is a glimmer of hope as the first vaccines have been given around the country, and there is light at the end of the tunnel (if you watched my video last week, you know that the light isn’t always there, but we’re getting glimpses of it), what we don’t know yet is how that will affect suicides this month.
There isn’t data yet to show that suicides are up although anecdotally it’s easy to say they are. But looking at the current situation, it’s also easy to see how more people might be suicidal – and act on it– this month as they face more isolation. For the people who might have been protected by spending time with loved ones (not that they wanted to, but that they had to per mom’s orders!), suddenly find themselves alone.
With their thoughts and with no one to keep them from acting on those thoughts.
Many people feel like this photo– walking alone with no one in sight. No one to distract them from the thoughts that are growing in their heads.
It’s going to be some months before we have enough people vaccinated that life can become to resume openly. In the meantime, especially this holiday season that is devoid of our traditional gatherings as we all try to stay out of hospitals and keep well, check on the people you about.
A little phone call can go a long way to keeping someone here with us until we can gather again.
December Details
Pandemic inspiration, a funky seventies dress, a handbag full of daisies and, oh, those earrings. All in this week's video.
Prickly Pear Hard Candy
Some of the most unique candy ever. And best tasting, too. All because of a cactus I planted in the front yard. Now a holiday tradition at my house.
Ingredients
3 3/4 cups white sugar
1 1/2 cups light corn syrup
1 cup prickly pear puree and 2 tablespoons prickly pear puree (these are used separately)
Grease a raised edge cookie sheet.
In a medium saucepan, stir together the white sugar, corn syrup, and 1 cup of the prickly pear puree. Cook, stirring, over medium heat until the sugar dissolves. Then bring it to a boil.
Without stirring, heat the liquid until 300 degrees using a candy thermometer for measurement. This part can be long and disconcerting because you do not stir it and it will appear the temperature will get “stuck” in several places– around 230 degrees and 270 degrees. Once it passes 270 though, it will go quickly so keep an eye on it from there on out. The entire boiling process takes about 25 minutes.
Remove from heat and stir in the two tablespoons of puree. As the mix will have discolored somewhat in the boiling process, this will help bring back that rich hue that makes prickly pear so unique.
Pour the mix onto the greased cookies seek and let it cool. I usually let it sit overnight to be assured that it is indeed hard and not still pliable.
Store in an airtight container.
December 1 Inspiration
Finding peace and inspiration during the holidays this year...and Florence's vintage dress. All in this week's video. December has arrived.
Lots O' Green
I'm wearing a vintage green dress and I have two fun bags that I made for today's video. And a little breeze to send the floats across the pool behind me.
Grief in Routine Loss...Again
Let me preface this blog with, there is much I am grateful for right now. The list is much longer than what is frustrating me. However, every few weeks my irritation bubbles up from a variety of things that have been affected by the pandemic. I also know that when I might be experiencing some feelings, others are out there might be, too, and so I believe it’s important for me to write about the variety of feelings and emotions I travel through.
When I took Lilly out to run at 4:15 this morning, the darkness felt a little more eerie than usual. We started a two-week shutdown today and one of the major pieces that’s affecting my life is that the gym is closed. Some people will say, “But you run every day! You can’t miss the pool!”
But what most people don’t know is how important swimming is to my mental health. My pool is open, however, there is no way we can heat it (or pay to heat it!) to get it warm enough for me to swim in right now. Just Friday morning when I got in the pool for my swim at the gym, we had an amazing sunrise. I actually thought about getting out to take a photo of the pink and orange colors that were bouncing off the surface of the water, but I thought, No, I’ll get it another day.
I didn’t know that by that afternoon, I’d only get to swim the weekend– when I usually don’t swim– and not until December 1 (hopefully it’s only two weeks!). Today I feel like a piece of my routine is missing.
For nearly two months, Greg and I have been going five days a week (four for him– he teaches live on Mondays so I go without him) to swim and we both were starting to feel the results of our efforts. But I also just need that time of letting my mind wander as I go back and forth. Some days I don’t want to get out of the pool because I feel so much peace there. I told someone recently that it’s like the outside world can’t hurt me when I’m in the pool.
Take it away though and I feel sad because part of my routine has been yanked away from me. Even though it’s hopefully only for a short time, I feel like something has been ripped away and it has left me sad, angry and depressed.
We all know I have plenty to do- the list is long, the piles are high. I will be busy for two weeks. But that doesn’t mean that change has been forced upon me in a way I don’t like. I’ll have to work extra hard this week to be productive to distract my mind from lamenting what I miss.
Life is a continued road of adaption and in the past nine months we’ve had more than we wanted. Yet we have to continue to figure it out because each adaption makes us stronger and gives more purpose and meaning to our lives.
Retro Orange
Two orange Take Everywhere Bags made from vintage curtains and one fun vintage dress.
Finding Peace
This photo says so much to me.
It’s about continuing to keep walking, to keep looking for what I want, what I believe I need, where I want to be.
Last week was a difficult week. While I know for many people, it was about the election, it wasn’t that for me. Two people I know here in New Mexico died from the coronavirus last week. And I two women I know who were recently diagnosed with breast cancer. I felt covered with sadness.
However, I was feeling fairly productive because I had so little on my calendar and I wanted to make sure I made the most of that time. I kept one eye out on the news for election results, but I didn’t feel caught up in it.
But somewhere toward the end of the week I began to feel a peace inside myself.
I have found that when I let myself get back to God, to prayer, to reminding myself that God is walking with me, I feel better. I pray daily, that’s not an issue with me. But it’s easy to move on with my day and start to fight with everything– mostly the thoughts in my head that take me down roads I don’t need to see because they are negative and unproductive.
Yesterday the Archbishop of Los Angeles Jose Gomez reminded us in his homily that prayer can “settle the mind.”
It’s been easy to get caught up in what’s going on outside of us, in the world, in places we can’t control. But what we can control is what happens in our minds. I’ve been letting myself be outside of myself too much. The journey within brought me peace I haven’t found in some time.
Patience
When I went to see Fr. Gene at the abbey a few weeks ago, he asked me what Our Lady of Guadalupe has been telling me lately. While I’m not sure I had thought about it beforehand, it didn’t take me long to answer.
Patience, it has been all about patience recently.
I remember when I was working with Fr. Josh in Naperville on my annulment and one day– I don’t remember the conversation around it– he said that he was talking more with Mary because she was a patience person and that he needed help with his patience.
As the pandemic has dragged out (I thought we would long be past it by now– silly me) and my work in many ways continues to hang in the balance (at this point I’m hoping that we can make it back to LA in March, no later than summer for the events that were canceled this year), what could be more harder than having to be patient?
I have plenty to do and each day I keep myself busy with a list of things to do so long that I never complete them. By Friday I wonder where the week went. And yet there is a part of me that has to constantly stay the course and keep myself from being distracted. My self talk is at an all-time high.
There are no other messages right now. It’s all about continuing to make the most of this quirky time. For me, I’m thinking of what I’d like to know I accomplished by the time it’s over. And in that same vein, I want to walk away knowing that this time was not wasted, that I’m a better person.
And being a better person also means I’ve become a more patient person. Guadalupe keeps telling me this and while sometimes I don’t understand what she’s talking about, I do know that somewhere along the line I do realize she was right.
Fall Color and Pumpkins
Meet the Chelle Summer Videos!
We made a little video yesterday of me talking about some of the inspiration behind my items. And be sure to watch until the end so you can hear my flub– what's in my head isn't always what comes out of my mouth! But please don't give it away in the comments! Let everyone hear for themselves!
New Routines
As I write this, it’s not yet 7:00 am on Monday morning. I can see some light through the window as the sun is starting to rise over the Sandia Mountains. I have run, but not swum yet and, therefore, not showered. Normally, I run and then shower and start my day.
But Mondays have a new routine– for three weeks, Greg and I have been swimming at the gym four mornings a week at 6:30 am. However, on Mondays he teaches live remotely (or is that remotely live– or do we even know?!) so I go to the pool a bit later. It seems that 8:00 am is my new time although when it cools down, I’ll shift to more like 10:00 and swim in the warmth of the sun.
A sadness waves over me occasionally for my routines that have been disrupted and changed because of the pandemic. If Greg were at school teaching, I would swim later everyday. There’s a benefit that we get to go together four days a week, but I’m also still adjusting to running and swimming all in one shot rather than dividing them up into separate parts of the day.
The list is long of things that have changed: our favorite Vietnamese restaurant has closed, but she, thankfully, is waiting on her last inspections to open in a new location. I will miss the old location, not a great area of town, but as Greg said, “edgy.” Now she will be in something more like a strip mall of restaraurants, more central for people to find her and her wonderful food. I am happy for her. But I will miss the drive between church and her old location. Now it will be freeway to freeway.
In some ways our lives haven’t changed at Casa Solano mostly because I’ve worked at home the bulk of my career. However, what makes me unhappy are the changes that have been forced on me, like that I’m grounded for now from traveling. We can’t risk exposure for Greg as we await his return to the classroom. With so few hospital beds in the state, we also have to be cognizant of wondering “what if” one of us got sick. The flip side is that I don’t believe we will get sick, but I also don’t want to test that statement. So we aren’t traveling for now and instead focused on making home better and what projects travel sometimes puts a kink in.
There is a grief in all that we do when our routine changes, whether by choice or beyond our control. I have tried to embrace all these changes, but there have been many at once which makes it more challenging.
And somewhere deep inside of me, I do believe all will be great again. I hold onto that when the sadness blankets me as I watch things continue to change.
Grieving For What Never Was
My dad died on January 1, 2006, and my mom died in late March 2014. I’ve had plenty of time to not just incorporate their deaths into my life, but to turn around and examine what their lives meant to me.
Because of social media, we have more access to the events of each other’s lives and I it feels like more often than not, someone I know has had a parent die. I don’t often get to do more than tell someone I am sorry for what they’re going through and to let them know that I’m sending them healing energy.
That’s because I often have a different perspective on loss and I’m careful not to step on the toes of people’s pain. But there is something I see that others don’t because long ago someone told this:
When our parents die, we don’t necessarily grieve for what we have lost than we grieve for what we never had.
I believe that our parents have done the best they could. They made the decisions that they believed in that moment were the right ones to make (and, of course, we thought were totally wrong!). No one is perfect (sorry, to burst someone’s bubble today!) and when we look at the lives of others, sometimes we see what we didn’t get (usually emotionally) from our own parents, but someone else is. Maybe we were abused in some way. Or many our parents were simply emotionally distant. There are a list of things I could put here, but that’s not what this is about.
Instead, it’s about the acknowledge that we are grieving for what we never had, what they might not have ben capable of giving us. Just because people become parents doesn’t necessarily mean that’s what they really wanted, rather than what society said they should do. That might have left them resentful of having to raise these little people they didn’t want in the first place.
When people die, we often get caught on the train of how wonderful someone was. Sure, that’s great for the funeral and having something to discuss with all the people who contact us, but at someone point we need to round out that person to who they really were. Good, bad, and otherwise.
Just acknowledging that the challenges in the relationship open the door to making someone into the rounded character they really were in our lives. And it then that we can fully travel the grief journey that allows us to put that grief in its place so we can truly move forward.
Life as a Remote Teacher's Spous
As I write this, I hear Greg speaking fluently in Spanish around the corner. Lilly is laying under the table near him, Ash is lounging somewhere on a bed in the sun. Today is Greg’s live teaching day and later he’ll head up to the school and then the golf course to start (or re-start since the season only got one week into it when the pandemic hit) his role as an assistant coach for the fall season. Soccer, normally nearing the end of district play right now, is slated to start in February.
I hear many stories of what it’s like for kids to do remote teaching. I hear stories of what parents are going through. And I hear stories of what teachers are going through. But no one talks about what it’s like to be the spouse of a remote teacher.
Before I start in, let me say that I know that the district Greg teaches in has done as good of job as possible in this continually changing scenario. Right now, the elementary school kids are back in session and soon the middle school kids will go back. But the way it’s looking, it will be Thanksgiving when the high school kids, of which Greg teaches, will return, so we anticipate him not to return to the classroom to teach until January.
I have worked at home most of my career outside of my own days teaching back, well, we don’t need to discuss how far back that was. But at the time I was teaching, my sister Karen was working at home and I remember how between meetings she was walking her dogs and taking care of laundry. There was always something she could do when she had a few minutes away from her job. I saw the benefit of working from home through her.
My first husband worked in sales and he, too, worked at home when we were married. I quickly fell into a routine that after my run, shower, and breakfast, I would tackle work first thing. There were always phone calls to make and emails to answer. I have loved the flexibility to keep up with the house and other projects (historically for me, that was writing although about five years ago it turned to writing and sewing) and for seven years on a military grief study, I had a boss who left me alone. As long at the job was done, quite honestly, he didn’t care about the rest. That was fine by me.
Greg is a classroom and soccer field guy. He loves the energy of the kids and being in front of them, and possibly throwing their phone in the trash (yes, it has happened). As they are missing the energy of him, the rest of their teachers, and their friends, he, too, is missing their energy.
He’s not used to sitting most of the day, which he has to do for live teaching day and then for office hours and other assorted meetings. I hate zoom and the precursor I had to use to interview kids for the grief study and for meetings. I hated to sit there and stare at a screen when I could have been folding laundry at the same time. Sitting and staring at a screen all day goes against everything we have been telling people about getting up and moving around (something Greg also lets his students do in the classroom).
Because of this constant sitting and staring, and the fact that he’s had to learn how to do something new (which in itself is not a bad thing), he’s drifted away from me. I tell him things, he will say okay or act as if he heard me, but I find out later when I mention whatever it was, he claims I never told him. No no no, we’re not talking about “spouse selective hearing.” Believe me, I know the difference.
I don’t mind having him at home because we have separate spaces and I’m off in my own world (plus I have my Qatar Airlines ear plugs if I need them to drown out the Spanish). But I miss the separation we had during the day because it made me appreciate him more. I knew about what time he’d be home and I’d make every effort to be done working so that we could spend our short evenings together.
While I worry about the mental health of the students (he has some who “gather” during his office hours as they might in his classroom at lunch, but they are doing it virtually because they can’t be together otherwise), I also worry about the mental health of our teachers who love to teach, who are in the classroom not because it’s the only thing they thought they could do (as I have heard some people say about teachers), but because they truly want to help kids learn.
This has been a struggle for them so it also means it’s a challenge for those of us who care about them as we watch this play out. I hope that at least being outside on the golf course with a small group starting today will make a difference as this situation continues to drag itself out. We know how lucky we are in New Mexico that we can always escape into the sunshine that reminds us that no matter what’s happening around us, all is well.
As National Suicide Prevention Week Comes to a Close
I’m not sure where September went (or the past six months!), but I tried to make the most of National Suicide Prevention Month. I also meant to blog more and post more during the month– about suicide– but I have learned that, in the end, whatever happened is what was supposed to be. I also know that, for me, I’m always hoping to do more and it’s hard not to begrudge myself that maybe I didn’t work harder.
I did get a guest column in the Rio Rancho Observer and a letter to the editor in the Albuquerque Journal. I still believe in the “old fashioned” newspaper to reach people and the people I know I reached are those working in the suicide grief/prevention field locally and I was able to connect with and find out what’s going on here.
I was disappointed not to get any media around the Names of Suicide Tree in Old Town at Old Town Herbal, but I also know that we got the tree up which was a great step forward in itself. I also was disappointed that my social media posts didn’t reach as many people as I had hoped.
Yet when I went to “visit” the tree after the first week it was up, Liz told me that people had been coming in randomly, that it seemed like they had been guided to her store having no clue what was there, and yet having lost someone to suicide. It didn’t occur to me in this entire process that this might happen. I was too caught up in getting the word out in “this world” that I didn’t think about my sister and all the others who have died by suicide leading their loved ones to the tree.
On Saturday when I popped up Chelle Summer in front of Old Town Herbal a woman from about the furthest part of New Mexico from Albuquerque came by to put her son’s name on the tree. She had been told about the tree from the local suicide grief group (that had kindly sent out the information to their mailing list) and it happened that she was going to be up here for a healing conference this weekend.
The loss of her young son to suicide less than six months ago was visibly still painful for her and took me back to my own pain years ago. I say that in the sense that it reminded me to be there with her, to help her know she would find healing in the journey and wouldn’t always feel the way she does now.
She thanked me for the tree and leaving it up for the entire month, something I had suggested to Liz since we can’t gather this year. We’ll leave it up another week and my hope is that people will continue to put their loved ones’ names on it.
It was a reminder to me that it there is only so much I can do and the rest I have to believe will happen just because I put it out there.
Where Hope Lives
I try to only post positive messages, mostly because when I post something negative, I feel worse and what’s the point of that? It’s hard enough right now to be positive without reading other people’s negative comments or even my own. And quite often those negative comments make me angry which is even worse than feeling negative.
But I’ve found over the past six months in particular that as I’ve tried to be positive and helpful, it's seemingly falling on deaf ears. Fewer people are seeing my blogs than before the pandemic. I don’t know if it’s because Facebook (one of the main places where I get my readership) has changed its algorithms or because people simply don’t want to hear positive messages.
We’ve done such a terrible job teaching people how to cope that it’s easier to sit in that bucket of negativity rather than think about how to get out of it and move over to the positive one (which, I might add, looks a whole lot better- not so brown and ugly, but filled with colorful flowers and life).
I know there are people would counter what I just wrote with, “Well, the world is so negative.”
It is, ultimately though, hope lives inside of you. You might not always find hope around which is why you should be focused on where it is inside you and how you can make that grow rather than where it is outside of you. We all have a choice of how we see the world and the events that continue to unfold. And the sooner people can see that there is opportunity in all this loss and change, the sooner we can move forward to a much brighter bucket of hope and kick that brown negative one to the curb.
All is Well
As I’m finding I’m tired and cranky from the pandemic, from the inability to truly move forward (it feels like maybe one small step forward and then two back), I’m also finding that I’m reaching into my tool chest of sorts (although some might say my sewing basket or perhaps my Chelle Summer tote bag) for the tools I’ve used to help me cope with past challenges.
Somewhere during the end of my first marriage, I picked up the idea of using a mantra and rosary beads for the reciting of that mantra. Praying the rosary in a traditional way wasn’t something that ever worked for me and, suddenly, I realized that using the beads for my mantra gave me the peace I was looking for.
The mantra I chose is, “All is well.”
When I feel anxiety ridden, irritation, whatever negative emotion it might be– or just general worry that I can’t shake– I touch a beach and repeat to myself, “All is well.” I do this for each bead until I start to feel relief. I’ve never had to go very far, just a few beads and somehow peace rolls over me like a wave.
It’s easy to get caught up in negative emotions, especially as this uncertainty we’re all enduring drags on. But, somehow, somewhere, we can find peace. And sometimes that place might be easier than we realized.
Spiritual Endurance
I met with Fr. Gene Friday at the Norbertine Monastery in the South Valley my ongoing spiritual direction and one of the things he told me was that I have “spiritual endurance.”
Things have not be easy– I realize it’s like that for all of us although our situations vary because our lives vary– but recently it has become harder. After talking to several people, I believe it’s because we all thought by now things would be much more back to routine than they are. I don’t want to say normal because while a lot of things will return to what they were, we all have in some way been changed.
Personally, I’ve suffered loss after loss from just before the pandemic started (when my job ended) and then throughout it– my dog dying, plans getting canceled, events to sell Chelle Summer getting postponed and then canceled, the Jesuits leaving my church, a few deaths of people I know– I’ve been trying to hold on tight for the roller coaster ride, but at the same time let go of what I can’t have back.
But as things seem to be dragging out, it’s like my glass is half full, yet someone keeps coming along and knocking it over. Then I have to refill it again. Some days the trek to the faucet is longer and harder than others.
Still, I do believe that somewhere all will be well, even better than it is now. As I look at the situations that surround me in our bigger, larger world, I see growing pains as not just individuals seek their own answers and change, but as groups do, too. It’s hard, but we all know that growth is never easy.
Yesterday while I did a little housecleaning, I streamed the Sunday mass from Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral in Los Angeles. The priest is newly ordained and celebrated his first mass. In his homily, he said, “Trust in God especially in the places we don’t see him.”
It’s very easy now when everything seems so dark and uncertain to not believe God is with us. I, however, have been through so much personal loss in my life that I do believe he is with us and all is well. Even on my bad days when my anger bubbles up, I find a way to let it go and my hope comes back.
As Fr. Gene and I sat outside, some distance from each other, in the shade of the mid-morning, this dove sat on the corner of the building almost the entire time we were chatting.
God was with us, listening, giving us hope. And spiritual endurance for the continued bumpy road ahead.
