How can you act like you know?

(Flyleaf – Call You Out)

Well…this post is a lot harder to write than it was supposed to be…it was supposed to be a mountaintop share and a little bit of self-promotion…and it became a deep valley.

This was supposed to be a dual review of two things…but y’all sometimes life is just hard.

So yeah…In February I finally got annoyed enough with all of the ads I was being mailed for Hinge Health that I was like maybe if I try to sign up and don’t qualify they’ll finally stop targeting me (because lol, who even knows if it was actually targeted or just sent to like the entire world)…well, as it turns out, I did qualify…and I didn’t think the program would work (it was supposedly an exercise program to eliminate chronic pain) so I figured okay, I guess I give it a week, see it doesn’t work, and then quit. Haha, yeah, I quickly was assigned a coach who wasn’t just a virtual AI generated prompt, but a real person…well bummer, now I can’t just quit because that feels rude. And y’all, that coach was amazing for me. She more than once when I was trying to do an FYI I’m planning on quitting turned it into me continuing on the program. She gave me the autonomy to control my  own information by even if I said I had a question for a PT asking if it was okay for her to share that question with the PT. She advocated for me for what I needed, sometimes even before I knew I needed it. She was able to read my cues to know when I needed help before I was ready to ask for it. She was incredibly patient when I got upset with things within the program that weren’t even her fault and complained/vented to her about it and did what she could to change them…and so in one of my throwaway comments she detected that there was something really becoming a huge barrier I couldn’t see over and felt like it was impossible to get past. She said she thought her manager would have a really good solution for me and asked if it was okay to share my situation with her manager. And I was kinda nervous about that idea, but I trusted my coach and I knew she had my success at heart and I was pretty desperate for some kind of way around this barrier because I knew the most acceptable solutions for everyone were going to involve help from someone within the company…so I said yes.

And then my coach asked me to schedule a call to discuss the ideas she had discussed with her manager. Anyone who knows me knows phone calls are hard for me, but I needed the help and felt like if it was easier for her to discuss verbally than in writing and she’d already gone the extra mile to talk to her manager for me, I ought to let her do that instead of making her type it out in a text or email…and she was kind enough to be okay with calling me knowing there was only a 50% or so chance I would answer and to open up availability in the afternoon when I was more available if that didn’t work, because the next open call time I could be available for was weeks away and too long for me to wait.

But then the call happened. And she started with saying there was something she needed to tell me. It was that it was her last day with Hinge Health. And my world collapsed. It took me 4 months to start to trust her and 9 months before I really felt safe communicating with her, and she was going to leave…and she’d been advocating for me and supporting me and I knew there was no way I’d be where I am without her. Because she pushed me to do things I didn’t want to do I went from almost completely unable to move or straighten my right arm to now having full range of motion and working on gaining strength/endurance. And I didn’t realize it at the time, but to be honest, I don’t have a lot of friends where I currently live, and she’d taken on the role of friend…and now she was completely gone. She left her personal email address with her manager in case I really needed something, except I don’t have any access to her manager, so that wasn’t super helpful. And my original need was left unmet.

And I was devastated…but I also felt like the depth of my pain was an over-reaction which also made it even harder to process the loss. Then a few days later I talked about it at trauma group and oh my, was my pain validated. The other girls in the group felt like I was under-stating how big of a thing this was and how I did have a right to be upset and should really fight a system that allows this to happen…and that was helpful, but also hard to hear because like it kind of vilifies the person who has been so important in my life for 10 months. I don’t know when she realized she was leaving. I don’t know if she was originally intending that to be the conversation, or if between scheduling the call and making the call something happened. I don’t know why she was leaving. I don’t know if it was a choice to do it that way or if she was told it had to be like that. Basically, there is a lot I don’t know. I do know she said as far as she knew I hadn’t yet been re-assigned so she didn’t know anything about my new coach, so clearly even if she had known for a while, there was a definite limit to how much she could ease the transition. I want to believe she either didn’t know a longer transition time would be more beneficial to me, or wasn’t able to provide that rather than intentionally choosing a spring it on me and leave…but in reflection, I realized part of why I took it so hard was the loss itself. I am still in heavy heaving tears at least once a day over this loss. But another part is how it triggered my trauma. Two years ago when I was leaving my job I was called into a meeting that I thought was going to be one thing and became something completely different and then was thrown into  world where I had minimal to no access to the people I’d done life with for the past few months. So am I over-reacting? Am I under-reacting? I have no idea, but what I do know is that it just really hurts.

And on top of that the new coach I was assigned has the name of someone involved in my trauma…specifically the creepy mustache guy I met in court who according to the police report had been hiding in the park near my apartment taking videos of me riding my bike in leggings…which felt incredibly violating, particularly since that was the first time I’d ever even considered wearing leggings as pants and was really only doing it because I expected to be essentially invisible as a random biker minding her own business on a city sidewalk. Yesterday was two years since the police showed up with papers with this name I did not recognize. Two years since I talked on the phone with an investigator who refused to give me any information about WTF was going on while simultaneously working on packing up my U-haul with my friends. Two years since I spent the night with my door barricaded sleeping in a fitted sheet under the kitchen counter with my phone ready to dial 911 in my hand and my glasses in my other hand because I was terrified that if he could do this, what else could he do? But my old coach said to schedule a call with the new coach right away, so I did because the things I didn’t want to do that she encouraged me to do usually led me to where I really needed to be…but, well, this time was different. At first he kinda re-assured me by seeming to have some knowledge of the area I grew up, whereas the creepy mustache guy lived in a different part of the country…but then I realized that all it would have taken to know that stuff was a very basic google search and a look at a map…oops…and the answer to how long he was staying was that he was open to a better offer, so that also made it feel like not worth my effort to connect. Ever since my original coach left I’ve been struggling and now I want to quit, but I can’t because I know how much the program itself is helping me…so I want to go on a communication strike, but that won’t bring my coach back and it’s kinda rude, and it won’t really help me. But I also feel really uncomfortable communicating because as far as I know this is creepy mustache guy and he just shaved off the mustache before getting the profile picture taken.

So yeah, this was supposed to be a post about how amazing the program was…and realistically there is a lot of good, and I recognize I can’t keep people in a job forever just because I want to keep working with them, but now I’m struggling. It’s like death but she’s still alive, just completely unaccessible…but if you have physical pain and/or dysfunction and want to try it out, here is my referral code for Hinge Health to see if you qualify: https://www.hingehealth.com/share/bcbsil/rcode=KzpQ7z

The other thing I’d like to review is The Her Inc…full disclosure, I am a brand ambassador and if enough people purchase through my referral link here https://www.theherinc.com?sca_ref=4813407.QRkUcBjiIS I will get a small payment for my effort. But there is something in it for you, too…coupon code Vic10 will give you 10% off of your order. The Her’s primary item is period underwear. At the moment there is only one style and it runs BIG so definitely size down…but they are pretty comfy minus riding down on me since mine are too big. They are a little thicker than the other brand I’ve tried which makes me feel like my bum is staying toasty when it’s really cold outside. They have some padding which is nice because as I’ve gotten older my bum also doesn’t appreciate bike seats as much, and this solves that problem without looking like I’m wearing a diaper like the bike shorts I tried once did. They are pretty spendy, but I’m hoping that is mostly a “new business trying to recoup start-up costs” issue rather than an issue with their business model which includes sending hygiene kits and education to girls in need. The owner of the company seems sweet and friendly…and they also are now selling sweatshirts, hats, and most recently, pads.

Lol and this  is the completely unedited end…welcome to the chaos train population me…

It’s always a surprise, there’s nothing better

(Sadie Hawkins Dance in my Khaki Pants – RelientK)

Lol, so I was reading the reviews on a lunchbox. And it was a good reminder that the average person is an idiot and half of the population is dumber than that. So this lunch box has a removeable plastic bucket liner like my own lunchbox has for easy cleaning. It I advertised as “heat welded to prevent leaks” and multiple people complained that if you dump the lunchbox upside down it will leak…like no kidding, it is a bucket. Ever made a sand castle? Same idea…the sand doesn’t stay in the bucket when the bucket is upside down. The lunchbox liner does not leak, but it is required to comply with the laws of physics. No felon lunch boxes allowed lol. And there was at least one person who gave one star because it gets sticky when you put pb&j sandwiches in there so now she’s gonna have to buy bags for her sandwiches…oh my…and these are the people we share a planet with.

99% unrelated…this might be incredibly controversial…but…I’ve heard for so many years how awful lularoe leggings are. From ugly to poor fit to holey to see through and beyond, everyone seems to hate these leggings. But then someone was like hey, I have these leggings I’m gonna get rid of, would you like them? And I’m not sure I even knew they were lularoe. But I’ve come to love leggings over the past few years, so of course I said yes. And most of them are super cute. There is really only one pair that I saw the design and was like yeah, I don’t love that. But then I put that pair on, and they actually do look really good on me. And even if they didn’t, these are somehow just as warm as any other pair of un-lined leggings, but are a lot thinner than most pairs, so they fit even under skin-tight dress pants to get a little extra warmth on cold mornings. They are softer than any other brand, and despite being used (some very well loved based on the appearance of the tags) when I got them, none of them have any pilling or holes, nor are even the lighter colors see through. Honestly, even the tags do not really bother me which is huge, because I will be the first to admit I can have some sensory sensitivities at times. Basically the only thing I could love more is if they were fleece-lined like my very first ever pair of leggings which I got on sale for like $3 at target like 3 years ago that started my love of leggings. But I might not even want that since that would make them thicker. I do agree that any business strategy that relies on people buying your product then begging their friends and family to buy from them at a markup is kinda sketchy, but the product is good even if the selling plan is less good. (Also will just throw in that I don’t consider myself a very large person, but I was really stretching the limits of one size fits all, so I think it would be a valid complaint that they didn’t fit if you were a bit overweight, but proportionally they were great – it’s not like they were tight some places and too loose others.

I almost posted this like two weeks ago but it was late and so I was gonna do it in the morning. And that night was filled with nightmares of the bad people from my old job finding me and therefore very little sleep and a lot of fear prevented me from hitting publish in the morning. I hate that they still have that power over me…but I’m feeling more ready now…and now I have more thoughts…

Since we’re talking reviews…HelloFresh. I had a coupon code for a box for like $13. I got about twice as many meals out of it as they listed it as by adding a bag of rice, a loaf of bread, a couple tomatoes, and of course lots of desserts because HelloFresh only takes care of main dishes. For $13 it was kinda sorta worth it, but not something I would be likely to do again. The recipes were all pretty basic things that could be made without even using a recipe. The proportions of ingredients are just, well, weird. Like I got <1/4 of a cup of rice to make supposedly two servings of rice bowls (nowhere near enough carbs, especially when it is a primary component of the meal), and for another meal two potatoes that were basically gemstone potato sized…but for chili I got over half a pound of turkey and a can of beans for two servings (WAY more than two servings of protein). I mean, I’m glad I did have that since the meal included zero carbs, but long story short, the meals are definitely intended to have something go with them to balance them out. I think the biggest strike against HelloFresh besides the crazy price point is that until you’ve given your money to HelloFresh, you can’t see their menu to find out if there is even anything you’re going to like available. I found a website claiming to know what the choices were going to be and poured over it to confirm I’d be able to find enough things I’d actually eat (hello, I am a picky eater who absolutely will NOT eat fish for example)…then I gave HelloFresh my money and the choices were completely different and it was a struggle to find things I could at least adapt if necessary to make edible. It feels a bit like bait and switch. Finally, as someone who always feels bad wasting food and also someone who hates taking out the trash, HelloFresh has another massive strike against them. The amount of trash generated from a single serving of HelloFresh is about the same as the amount of trash I generate total in at least a week, or possibly even a month. And now I have a PILE of packets of ketchup, mustard, mayo, and possibly other condiments that are just going to be wasted. It seems so dumb to include those things, because if you are someone who uses ketchup you almost certainly have packets left over from your last McDonalds run or you have a bottle of ketchup in your refrigerator that is more convenient than the packets anyway. If you are not a ketchup-user, you aren’t going to suddenly change your mind about how disgusting ketchup is when the packet comes in your box and the packet is just going to be thrown out once it finally goes bad. But then sugar isn’t included which baffles me. People who don’t bake don’t have any reason to have a container of sugar, and now you want me to use tomato paste and sugar to make my own pasta sauce instead of just opening a container of pre-made sauce and doctoring it to my taste? Like I would think we were just planning on super home-made if it weren’t that my other pasta sauce came out of the box ready to pour onto the pasta without even so much as the addition of oregano…lol…so basically my HelloFresh review is meh. It was more money than I would prefer to spend and generated SO MUCH TRASH, but nothing tasted BAD, so if you have the disposable income and don’t mind the trash and the figuring out only a few days in advance how to round out the meals, it isn’t awful, but for me if I’m gonna spend a little more for a trashier meal, I’d rather get a more complete meal at McDonalds that doesn’t require so much prep time. (Oh, and don’t bother with their instructions…why in the world would I chop everything first when the next step is going to be to wait for something else to cook? I am perfectly capable of chopping and waiting at the same time).

One completely unrelated thought: sometimes the kindest thing you can do is to set a boundary rather than agreeing. Yesterday, I could have said yes, but I instead chose no. No, I will not modify every order with a comment that Wiggle Worm has evaluated this order…Besides how much of my time that would waste an how confusing it would be as a nurse to know what to do if an order didn’t have that comment and how much nursing time it would waste re-acknowledging the orders after I add that comment, it was kinder to say no, because saying yes would have made me feel bitter every time I had to do it into eternity. Like seriously? The order that made this pharmacist request this was, of all things, a vitamin D order (that was still within the realm of normal vitamin D supplementation). And not only that, but the day it was ordered I had decided to do a great job documenting (because anyone who knows me knows that 99% of my interventions most days are a single word) and I’d actually documented the reason the patient was eligible for vitamin D supplementation, the expected dose, and the long-term plan for the patient’s vitamin D supplementation…and if that weren’t enough, I was also the one who verified the order…obvi I’d evaluated the order if I’d verified it…not to mention, this order had been active for at least a week by this point, and I’d been covering the unit most of the days so it was expressly my job to evaluate that particular medication at least like 4 times since it’d been verified. I don’t love change, but I do recognize that every hospital has their own documentation system…but no one else is expected to document anything like that and I’m not about to let someone convince the new girl that she should be doing things that way…

Recently on InstaGram I saw a short paragraph that at first didn’t make sense. It was describing that people who are abused/experience trauma tend to blame themselves and feel shame about the situation and may even be opposed to the idea that someone else may be to blame. Turning the trauma inward feels safer. At first it seemed odd…and then I thought back to my recent abuse experiences. And I definitely blamed myself at first in each situation. When a lawyer used the term “assault” and when a friend used the word “abuse” and when a coworker expressed that I deserved a more safe workplace, each of those things were kinda shocking. Did I know on some level that what I’d gone through wasn’t right? I’m honestly not fully certain, but over time I came to recognize that it was incredibly true that it wasn’t about me. I wasn’t the problem. LOL, like the text one of my bible study friends sent last night: It’s not about the Iranian yogurt!

And I feel like I’ve now said way too much and no one’s gonna wanna read this…A+ for the day if you’ve made it this far. Hashtag distance highfive 🙂 As much as I hate people sometimes, I also love people so many times, and right now as long as you aren’t reading in order to find new ways to hurt me, I love you for making it through the chaos of my thoughts this long 🙂 have a great day

I Used to Hold Your Hand so Tight There Was No Question…I’ve Never Felt so Alone

(Boys Don’t Cry – Plumb)

One thing becoming very clear is the path through grief is very non-linear. It makes an awesome Instagram or pinterest quote to say that just keep walking forward will get you out of the hard things in life, but reality doesn’t work that way. Sometimes it is more like walking in circles until the circles start to spiral outwards.

At first, if I was alone at home I was a crying mess…or even if I wasn’t alone at home but wasn’t at work…I also cried at church multiple times and on the sidewalk and in the car…but finally I’m getting to the point where I can be at home and not crying if I am appropriately distracted.

But the keyword is sometimes…

And sometimes all the distractions in the world would never be enough.

There are moments I am okay.

And there are moments it feels like the whole world is exploding inside my body.

I can go from engrossed in the video I am watching to the point I am not even playing cards in the background to rocking curled up in whole body crying.

And it s*cks.

And that is (part of) why no matter how much I think I can do in a day I am probably wrong.

Sometimes writing even just as far as Hello (name redacted), in a draft email is the only real success of the day. Step one probably should have been figuring out if I even have any contact information for the person I want to email, but I do things my way I guess…and there’s always facebook (how’s that for professional…okay fine, I won’t send professional correspondence via facebook…probably)…

The book I was listening to on Sunday was about how there are behaviors and reactions that are similar between humans and other animals that were adaptive at least at one point in time for both species but for humans can lead to trauma responses rather than protection like they do for animals. I was listening to it because someone on Instagram said it was one of her favorite books…It is one that is not a re-listen for me…I mostly only got all the way to the end because I don’t want to abandon a book without giving it a fair chance…and after a fair chance I feel committed already…hashtag I’m not just overly loyal to people; I also attach myself to inanimate objects…

Anyway, at like 7:15 am while walking in circles around church on Sunday (because where do you go at 7am when you can’t stand being at home anymore? Church. But you can’t actually go *to* church because it is locked, so you wander in circles around the church because my church is inside a mall…if the mall is also locked I’ll wander the parking lot), my book said that if an animal plays dead for too long, its body starts to believe that it actually is dead and the animal will begin to actually die even though physically nothing is wrong.

That made me wonder if it is possible for a human to play dead and if so if it could lead to actual death like animals. I mean, I have read at one point that even though people say that if you pretend to be happy you’ll trick yourself into being happy but actually trying to play happy for long periods is actually more likely to lead to increased negative feelings because of the internal conflict…so I am not totally convinced playing dead could have a different resolution…I thought about playing dead to try it out…but I don’t know how…and while I was busy imagining that the book kept going and then it had you imagine different scenarios and what your response would be…then said they’re all basically the same, right? And I was like, umm, no. One of them I was like yes please this feels like my ticket out of my pain. One of them I was like hmm, that’s moderately annoying, but doesn’t really matter that much to me. And one of them I was like yep, my brain would be sending out danger signals to *do* something and my body would probably be stuck on freeze.

And so I’m constantly facing decision fatigue because if I have a moment I feel almost okay I have to choose between doing whatever I can to make it last or trying to get something useful done before it fades, and then if I choose the latter I have to figure out what task is most important to do first and if I choose the former I am plagued by thoughts about how far behind I am and this is not good enough…and even if I choose working on something useful I might not actually complete the task before I just can’t do it anymore.

And in the bad moments there isn’t much I can do but wait it out. When it’s really bad the rest of the world basically doesn’t even exist so there are no decisions to be made.

I heard/read someone on the internet say your dad only dies once and even if you had more than one dad, each one will only die once so it’s okay to feel like you’re not sure what you’re doing…like no kidding you feel like you don’t know what you are doing. You are doing something brand new and to get what you need you have to figure out what you need then teach the world what you need…so like yeah, you are exhausted, because you’re doing something new AND trying to teach it to everyone else.

Plus there is what it says in this one advertisement: because grief is work.

You Wouldn’t Care Anyway

(Someday – JJ Heller)

So, no one probably cares, but I’ve read some books lately that I enjoyed (and one that was less good)…and so I thought I’d share.

 

First I did the audiobook “3096 Days in Captivity.” It was super good. I could definitely relate to the I hate you and know this relationship is super wrong but I also need you and am so afraid of you that I don’t think I can safely leave or tell anyone what is happening. I felt like there were a lot of things that could have been addressed in the book that were left out, but there was so much I could connect to that made me really understand myself by seeing things through her words that I didn’t even care that much about the things that were left out.

 

Then I read the paper book “Resenting God.” The introduction and the first chapter were incredible. They talk about how as Christians people push toxic positivity and the happy mask on hurting people and over-spiritualize the pain almost as if we should be content with suffering and never feel angry or frustrated. As the title says, it talks about how sometimes in our pain we might even resent God and that is normal okay. I have to give the author a lot of credit for not adding on to that thought anything like but we won’t be stuck there forever. The rest of the book I felt like was a bunch of random stories that meant nothing to me with a few good sentences thrown in here and there, but the introduction and first chapter made the book more than worth it.

 

Next the audiobook “Girl on a Train.” As you might guess from the title, it is about a girl…who is on a train. The person next to her leaves a locket in her bag and then gets off the train and is subsequently hit by the train and dies. This leads to a story kind of like SVU in book form of the girl on the train trying to figure out the story of the person who owned the locket. It was super good, so I got nothing done for a day because I needed to know what happened next. Over the course of trying to discover the locket owner’s story, the girl also realizes maybe her husband’s suicide isn’t exactly as it seems. Overall I really liked it, and it was incredible how many of the little pieces of story suddenly came back later and you’re like wait cool I didn’t know that was going to happen!

 

Then I read the paper book “Therefore I Have Hope.” I was super duper annoyed when it came in the mail, because it was an advanced reader edition. I didn’t know it was legal to slap a price on one of those. I also did not appreciate not knowing in advance that was what I was getting. Considering the Amazon page I ordered from showed the real book rather than the draft and the book came out almost 11 months ago, it doesn’t make any sense to just spring an advanced reader copy on me. The book had paged that were just randomly blank and very obviously shouldn’t have been and had a lot of typoes – in some places these issues made the idea trying to be conveyed become nearly impossible to decipher. I am glad I made it through the book though, because I did really enjoy the book. The book is about a man who has always worried about the worst thing that could happen to him which he thinks would be losing his son and finding out his faith wasn’t enough and he’d let everyone down. Then his wife calls him and his worst is coming true – his three-year-old son died. The rest of the book explores his story through grief. Despite the title of the book, the author does not try to push hope down your throat or try to hand out the everything happens for a reason cop out. Instead, the man in the story talks about how incredibly painful and difficult grief is and while he does find some hope and joy in the end of the book which is a really beautiful bow at the end of the story, the book is very gentle in acknowledging that not every story will end with a beautiful bow turning the tragedy into a pointer towards something more. Considering how many grief quotes say something about how if it isn’t okay it isn’t the end and stuff it was really refreshing for someone to acknowledge that sometimes it just sucks and won’t really ever be okay. I absolutely loved this book. While it is written by a Christian, I think even a non-Christian going through a hard time could enjoy this story.

 

Then I did the audiobook “Cracked not Broken.” I expected to love it, but I hated it. The book is about a man who refuses help and can’t really decide if he should kill himself but ultimately decides to jump off the golden gate bridge. He accidentally survives. The author is obviously trying to use the rest of the book to talk about how it was some awesome turning point and means that there is always another answer…but in reality there is no turning point in the main characters life. Sure, the author doesn’t *actually* jump again, but he does continue throughout the entire book to return to suicide and becomes a behavioral health unit frequent flyer. He seems to think he is some almighty example to people everywhere of living well with mental illness, but he pretty much does the exact opposite. I’m not sure how this book even ever got anywhere close to press. It was awful. Uggh. I am not a book abandoner, so I was super pumped for the book to be over finally.

 

Finally, I most recently read the audiobook “Boundaries” by Henry Cloud and John Townsend. There were some really interesting ideas. It is a really short book, but I think if I slowed down and read short sections at a time I could get a lot out of it. A couple things that I still remember that were definitely food for thought: We think of mine mine mine as selfish, but without mine there is no self to give to God and nothing to share with those in need. Also, they explore how being compliant can be a form of control by voluntarily giving up power and handing it over.

Love can hold hands through it

(Slow Down – Nichole Nordemann)

I recently finished listening to a book about vulnerability…I wasn’t really sure if it would be good at all, but I have come pretty close to running out of audiobooks about fostering kids and wanted something different than my standard set of four books that I listen to a lot…so yes, as it turns out, there were definitely good points in the book. There were also things I didn’t necessarily agree with, but guess what, as an adult you have to realize that you don’t have to agree with absolutely everything anyone else says. It is okay to have and express your own opinions.

 

So yeah, here are some interesting points that I may or may not completely agree with but that I thought were umm, well, interesting…

 

“We live in a culture where we believe there is just not enough, that we are hyper-aware of lack…the first thing we do in the morning is we think to ourselves, I didn’t get enough sleep, and the very last thought in our mind as our heads hit the pillow is I didn’t get enough done, and everything in between those two moments is a litany of scarcity.”

 

Those are not necessarily the thoughts I have morning and night, but it definitely is an interesting perspective and I think it is definitely true that it is a lot easier to look at my life and see all the places of scarcity in my life and miss the places where I do not lack.

 

“I’m an expert fitter-inner. I mean, I study vulnerability for a living; I have to know you for 20 minutes to know exactly how to fit in with you and how to bring you to your knees and while it is kind of a super power for me, most of us have this ability, especially mental health professionals.”

 

As someone who felt on the outside looking in, I became a studier or real-world relationships…but the thing is, watching a conversation happen, even for 20 minutes, wasn’t nearly long enough for me to feel like I ever found the key to unlock the secrets that it seemed like everyone else knew about how to fit in. I tried so hard, but I never felt like I ever quite got it right. On that second part, I guess I didn’t focus on that part of it, but I guess it is probably true that though she clearly missed the memo on the professional and health part of her mental health professional status, that in the course of her training, M probably did pick up some ability to identify how to hurt people, and that maybe is how she was so good at figuring out how to hurt me so deeply and how to keep doing it even after the relationship was over and do it without getting caught doing anything bad enough to get herself in trouble. But you know, as I heal, I kinda feel sorry for her. Maybe this is just the fight the bullies talks they give all the time in school coming back to haunt me, but in those talks they always said that bullies hurt people because they feel inadequate about themselves. She wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box. I sense that if she’d used her personality for good she could have been a great person, but her feelings of inadequacy got in the way and made her feel like she had to hurt people to show herself to be dominant and on top. I really do admire her perseverance to pass her exams even though she kept failing. Failing never feels good even if you know in advance you are prolly gonna fail. And yeah, I was using a phone that year that could download apps really easily and proceeded to download every practice test app that I could find and the lowest score I got was 87%…and this was after only a singular intro psych class, so clearly the exam is just a minimum competency exam, but I am not saying this to make fun or point fingers at stupidity. I understand that everyone has subjects that they really struggle with. For me that struggle topic is history. I could take the same history class every year and 10 years from now I would probably still be working my butt off to get an A and would very likely be just barely passing if I tried to half-butt-cheek it like some of my peers can probably do. Let’s just say that the majority of the history I remember from APUSH is if you give Hitler a cookie…lots of stuff happens which ultimately ends in a war.

 

“Gremlins died when they got exposed to the light, and I think that is exactly how shame works…or dementors from Harry Potter – they basically suck every ounce of lightness out of you until you’re left feeling hopeless and like nothing is good in your life, and that’s what shame does.”

 

I feel like when I was listening to this on my way home from work there was like a super long paragraph in my head about how insightful this comment was…yeah, no memory now of what I was thinking then, but I still definitely like the way it sounds. It kind of reminds me, too, of about a month ago when I was thinking about how grief feels, so I’ll write about that instead…In everyone’s life, sometimes the lights dim or even go out, but they usually come back on in a relatively short time frame even though it might feel like a long time and the coming back on might be nearly imperceptible brightening until one day you wake up and realize the lights are back on all the way. In grief it is like the lights have gone completely out and sometimes you start to wonder if light is even real or if it was just something you dreamed up late one night. Everything is pitch black and you can’t understand why when you look out at the world around you everyone seems to still be living as if the lights are on. You wonder what is wrong with you that it is pitch black for you. You are afraid of letting other people in. Will they not understand your darkness? Will it plunge them into the darkness you experience all the time? Imagine if you were living in complete darkness and didn’t even believe light existed, that anything existed outside of the darkness – how hard that would be. Once you can acknowledge that light is a for real thing, just knowing it exists makes it easier sometimes but other times makes it more frustrating that something exists that would help but that is out of reach…anyway, people don’t always seem to understand that as you heal once in a while the lights briefly flicker on before going out again. It doesn’t mean everything is okay. It doesn’t mean you are totally happy. It is momentary and seems over before it even started, the memory quickly overtaken by the heavy darkness…yeah…thoughts along those lines occupied my entire walk home one day…maybe more than one walk…

 

“Men and women with high levels of shame resilience know when they’re in shame and here’s why: when we’re in shame we are not fit for human consumption. We normally, when we are around another person, will engage in a behavior that exacerbates shame, so what are your physical symptoms of shame…trauma symptoms. It’s the exact same if you were in Afghanistan right now and something traumatic happened. We experience shame as trauma. Shame is traumatic…shame is the threat of being unlovable. The definition of shame is the extremely painful belief or experience of thinking that we are unlovable, that we are unworthy of connection and belonging.”

 

Shame being like trauma I think gave me another understanding of my experience. At the beginning of third year, I had no shame in being in counseling. To me it was just something I was doing to help me and was something I would be happy to let anyone know about. I was perfectly willing to share my experience and what it was like. In fact, when Psych Central was looking for people to describe what therapy was like from a client perspective, I was all in. They said they were considering offering compensation if your work was published and I never received compensation, but they did publish my submission. Anyway, my lack of shame was a risk for M, particularly considering the few people I did talk to at least once in a while were staff members and that I had started blogging which gave me a platform where it was at least a little easier for me to use my words. Therefore, in order to better ensure that what was happening behind closed doors would stay behind closed doors, she had to teach me to be ashamed as an extra security policy. So I had the cumulative trauma of both the abuse and the shame. No wonder I was really struggling. Looking back, I am so proud of myself. I have no idea how I survived that, but I know that since I did, I must be super strong. I am so proud of myself. It isn’t something I can obviously share in an interview situation about my biggest success, but looking back, that probably is one of the biggest things I’ve ever done in my life to make it through that situation. I was not defeated. I am a survivor and no one can take that away.

 

“When we reach out and share our story we need to make sure, and this is so important, that we choose people who have earned the right to hear our story…We need to share with people who have earned the right to hear our story; We need to share with people with whom we have a relationship that can bear the weight of the story…we either own our story or we stand outside or our story and hustle for our worthiness, here’s the magic about owning our story. When you own your story, here’s the power of that: you get to write the ending.”

 

I do agree that it can be super powerful to share your story with someone who will listen and seek to understand…but I love the “secret” at the end of the quote. I’d never thought about defining the story as not over yet and that giving me permission to write the ending. M wanted the abuse story to end with and I never really escaped the grasp throughout my time in school. Instead I can end it with and I have learned how powerful and strong I really can be. My story could easily end and I completely failed at getting a residency despite trying over and over and no one wanted me. Instead I am working on writing my story mentioning finding my place as many of the tech’s favorite pharmacist in a small community hospital in the middle of nowhere while still looking for ways to keep my dream alive.

 

“Our work product is pretty crappy because we developed most of it while we were exhausted…And you don’t get to say ‘and my life will start when I’m done. Here’s my project and I’ll be worthy of love and acceptance when I’m done.’ …One of the reasons we don’t play and rest is that we’re waiting.”

 

K yeah, it is super easy to think of this as just a place of waiting until someday hopefully when I will finally be in a job where I can really find joy seeking my passions…but if I am going to be here at least most of another year, wishing and yearning for the someday ain’t gonna help me. That would be a lousy way to live. Instead, I am going to do what I can to make the most of where I am right now. And someday I hope I won’t be here anymore, but if I am, I certainly don’t want to have spent the entire time thinking about how much I wish I were somewhere else. I don’t need to be in a rush to make it where I want to go. I have my whole life and career ahead of me. If it takes 10 more years to get where I want to be, that would still give me probably at least 30 years in that dream position, which is a pretty long time, particularly once you consider that I am not yet even 30 years old!

 

And then there was one more quote that I didn’t bookmark and do not want to hear again…there was a section that said something along the lines of if you talk too much or share about yourself too much people won’t want to be friends with you and it will push them away. That is not a message that is good for me to hear as someone who had selective mutism on her differential for a while. I am not necessarily the star of the show or the light of the party or anything, but compared to how I used to be, I am super loud and out there now. People who meet me now can’t imagine me how I used to be and think I am exaggerating if I try to explain…but the anxiety that stole my voice so completely for so many years is not always just a memory. I can and do speak a lot more and more easily now, but there are definitely times it is very clear I am a communication avoider. I try really hard, but some days the words still get stuck. To be honest, a lot of days the words still get stuck…so a mention that sharing could lead to a decrease in potential friend is not a message that is very safe for me to hear.

He filled the sea, with his tears and watched his dreams, disappear…send me someone to Lava

(Lava–Disney/Pixar)

I watched Inside Out today at the theater with my daddy. It wasn’t exactly what I expected, but it was pretty good. I did feel like it was trying to teach me something though, and I couldn’t figure out what that something was…but the movie was so good…

It was hilarious. I loved it so much…watching movies in a theater is hard because I cannot sit still that long, and I definitely am not going to play on the floor or lay upside down in a movie theater, but it helped that there were a lot of families with little kids there, and that helped keep me on task…it was so worth it for this movie.

There were also parts with which I could identify…being torn from my happy place, my old church…the world really does feel like it is completely falling apart and nothing can save the situation…even going back home just isn’t the same…everything changes because I no longer fall into the same position…and my reaction at the time was to lock up my emotion so I was numb…so basically my reaction was not identical to Riley’s in the movie, but there were definitely parallels that kept me engaged.

…and I do understand that sometimes memories or experiences that should be happy seem to be tainted by sadness, but sometimes wallowing in the sadness is the only way out of it…

It was an awesomesauce movie! Disney is great 🙂

From Atheism to Eternal Life…an ever so slightly more conventional book review

So this is a review of From Atheism to Eternal Life: Proof that You Can Live Forever by Mark Taylor. As far as I know he doesn’t have a blog and if he does I definitely have never read it…

TBH I am really only writing this because I told myself I’d review each book I read. I did not really connect at all with this book. It is intended to be a proof of Christianity, and while I do agree that Christianity is truth, I did not feel that this book proved it.

This book seemed to do a beautiful job showing that there are problems with atheism, but it really just used the fact that there are issues to say that therefore Christianity is completely correct…which obviously from the perspective of logical thinking there are also issues with Christianity…I could totally see going from there are issues with both theories to saying that if Christians are right then atheists are missing the chance for eternal life whereas if atheists are right the Christians aren’t really missing out on anything…but to go from there are issues with atheism to therefore Christianity is right just doesn’t really compute in my opinion.

Perhaps I am jaded from a couple years of AWANA memorizing “the Bible is true because it says it is true” “The Bible is true because God says it is true” and other statements that just really aren’t proof because…well…anyone can make something up and write that it is true, but that doesn’t necessarily make it so, so the fact that it is written in the Bible that the Bible is true just doesn’t really prove that it is true…I’m not sayin’ I’m just sayin’…

All in all, it wasn’t a bad book, and it was a pretty quick and easy read. I would say if someone were on the fence about Christianity but were interested then it might be a useful read, and it may be interesting to someone who studies history or something, but it wasn’t really my cup of tea…and that is okay…I don’t need to like everything that I read, and I do not need to agree with everything presented to me…

But if anyone is interested in reading, I’d be happy to hook you up!

Dad, Here’s What I Really Need From You (An Unconventional Book Review)

This one is a review of Michelle Watson‘s book Dad, Here’s What I Really Need From You.

So as you can see on the cover, one thing I really love is that the bigger print creates a second title: Dad, I Really Need You. I think that sums it up really well…what I need from you is not just material things but is you. It is connection…

So umm, clearly this book was not exactly written with me in mind…but I got the book from a women’s blog and there is a pretty girl on the cover and it is red so…yeah…but I figured even if it wasn’t directed so much at me that learning how to connect with people better would never be a bad thing.

This book was kind of a harder read for me…I think most of my problem was that the pages are really busy so instead of just straight text down a page there are little designs and accents all over the place. Perhaps for the audience it is intended for, men, that makes it an easier read, but for me it was really distracting so I had trouble focusing on what I was reading.

I love the idea that some people are Martians and others Venusians and to connect with each other you have to learn the other’s language, but if you know one Venusians language you know one Venusians language, because each Venusian has her own dialect…That sums up pretty well why learning to interact by rote memorization without any background understanding of the backbone of the conversational model is not ultimately a successful learning tool…Just because I can parrot back the words I’ve learned doesn’t mean I have any idea why I am saying them…

I feel like there were a lot of little things in the book that I loved, but don’t really remember anymore…but one thing I do remember is the concept of type A trauma and type B trauma. Type B trauma is bad things happening. That is things like sexual abuse or other tangible wounding. Type A trauma is the absence of good things. It is a little less obvious and harder to describe beyond that it is voids, broken promises, lack of investment. I think looking in on someone’s life it is much easier to point out Type B trauma and acknowledge that life has been hard, but it is much easier to brush off Type A trauma as just an overreaction and not really a big deal…so I love that it is still labeled trauma, because I feel like that validates the pain from that kind of hurt.

The very first thing I picked out of this book as something to make sure that I remembered was to add “I was wondering” in front of questions…then I realized that I kind of already do that a lot and had been trying to stop doing it because I thought it sounded immature…but I guess it is okay to keep saying that 🙂 …

One thing that made me mad as I was reading was finding out what a particular name meant. It meant “who is like God” or “Godly woman.” I was upset because one of the people I know with that name is someone who definitely does not meet that definition and I didn’t *want* it to mean that…luckily later that same day I met someone by that name who was an amazing person…and within a day or so that person might have been wishing she hadn’t been so friendly because I attached myself to her and constantly asked questions…the “perk” to being someone that I feel really good with is that I might start asking an excessive number of questions…I trained myself in downstairs pharmacy, so clearly I am perfectly capable of figuring things out through trial and error myself, but sometimes it is easier to just let someone else do things for me…

I am pretty sure as I was reading there were a lot more things that I thought I definitely was going to write about here, but I can’t remember what they might have been anymore…so you’ll just have to read the book if you want to find out…like with my other book review, let me know if you’d like the book…but just a warning that this book is not exactly in like-new condition anymore…but I’d still be happy to share.

Let’s All Be Brave: Living Life With Everything You Have (An Unconventional Book Review)

…so hopefully this post will have a lot fewer typos than the last one…I was trying to pack my lunch and possibly dinner and eat snacks and finish the post and eat snacks and get my shoes on and my butt in the car and therefore did not edit it very adequately and did not notice how messy it was until hours later at which point I decided ppl could figure out what I meant so whatevs…

This time I am reviewing Annie‘s book Let’s All be Brave.

I love Annie. She blogs over at the aptly titled blog Annie Blogs (Although she re-named it recently…but I am slow to adapt to re-naming sometimes…) I think I might have originally found her through Lynse Leanne (who seems to have deleted all her old posts and started writing posts that just don’t really connect with me anymore…) or Anne Jackson/Miller formerly of Flowerdust then Anne Jackson Writes and now AnneMarieMiller.com…and I think it was through Annie that I discovered (in)courage which I love and SheSeeks which I loved for a while and then they made changes and I no longer enjoyed it…but anyway, Annie is hilarious, honest, and relatable…

Let’s all be brave is about…drumroll please…being brave. Yep, no surprises there…but it isn’t about blind maybe stupid courage. It isn’t about telling everyone to go skydiving or to sell everything and move to another continent…It doesn’t even describe exactly what your brave should look like. What it does do is show what brave looks like everyday. It helps the reader recognize what bravery really is. It is pretty awesome…

I am pretty sure this book had a lower reading level than Atlas Girl which was super helpful for me…(Thank you Annie)…but it is not childish…It is Annie’s first adult book. She also is the author of From Head to Foot: All of You Living for All of Him. That book was also incredible when I read it a few years ago (if you are looking for it, it has been re-branded as Perfectly Unique. I like the cover better of From Head to Foot and know that the book can be checked out from the libraries in my home state)…

An awesome thing: sometimes love looks like sacrifice and feels like loss.

Also, Annie writes about singleness…

Also, this has very little to what Annie was writing about, but when I was reading the chapter called “the rhythm” I thought of a new perspective on OCD…obviously since this is something I came up with this morning, it is not at all scientifically backed…the older research says OCD is about doubt and impulsive repetitive behavior to make the thoughts stop…newer research says OCD is a product of the habit system going into overdrive…both of those make sense, but the way I saw it reading that chapter was OCD as a problem of inadequate trust and self-confidence. I don’t trust my body not to get sick so I NEED to help it by avoiding germs as much as possible and sanitizing anything sanitizable (and a few things that really aren’t like notebooks which do NOT appreciate hand sanitizer foam being poured on them, and do not really stay put in the sun very well…)…or I don’t trust myself to lock the door so I need to check over and over and over (that one I didn’t have, although a bit more concern may have been indicated the first week and a half of school this year…I don’t even want to think about how many times I came to my car and realized I had left the door unlocked or the window open or…umm…well…the door open…yeah…that happened…eventually I learned that even if it takes a couple extra seconds that it is definitely always a good idea to check the door/window before walking away…

So I was originally going to write a post called “I love I love I love I love I love…my job” (Hold Me–Jamie Grace)…I have always loved my job. It is pretty awesome. It is not what I want to be doing as a pharmacist, but as an intern I couldn’t ask for much else…I am now able to eat (as long as it is VERY quiet) and can excuse myself to go to the bathroom even if I is not an emergency and can even occasionally ASK for a lunch break instead of hoping I won’t be forgotten…and I have a pretty awesome manager who wanted to give me a raise last year and was foiled when they found out that I was actually registered as an intern rather than a tech (I didn’t think I needed the tech license/registration anymore…) but still fought for my pay to at least not go down too much (see, the intern pay scale starts significantly lower than the tech scale, and is supposed to start over every year rather than allowing for raises, so while I otherwise would have been moving up the tech scale, following the protocol would have sent me back to the bottom of the intern scale…)…so yeah, basically I love my job…and I really don’t do it for the pay…I was doing it pretty much full time for free (except for occasional lunches) for my month-ish long winter break first year, and had been there at least weekly since partway through high school…and they wanted so much to be able to pay me that a few weeks into the summer after first year I took a cut in responsibilities in order to be hired (I went from 97% of my time being tech-ing to 95% of my time being working the store…which was amazing, but it was even more amazing when they got the approval to get me into tech-ing for pay…although I still probably would do it for free…(I am not economically savvy)…

Bringing it back to being brave, I have a confession to make of a lack of bravery yesterday. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be working until 4 or until 8ish…so I decided I didn’t want to just show up if I wasn’t supposed o be there so I decided I would call and check before doing it…which would have been a reasonable plan, but then it came time to make the decision and I decided I didn’t want to be a nuisance and interrupt my manager’s Sunday afternoon…umm, I have her cell phone number and I also could have just checked in and seen if I was needed…but I didn’t…I was not brave. I am not proud of this, but it is also not a failure. Like my beautiful online friend Kati Morton from Healthy Mind Healthy Body often says, “it is a process not perfection.” It is okay if some of my choices are not brave…I don’t want to slip back into social anxiety, but it is okay if sometimes I leave parts of my communication skills at home (as long as it is not paralyzing and doesn’t happen frequently…I am quite content, but do not want to slide backwards…Now that I have glimpsed the bigger world I will no longer be content with the status quo that I accepted as totally normal for so long…if you want to find Kati she is on pretty much every social media site there is and runs her own social media site with forums and chatting and stuff at Katimorton.com …(except I don’t think she’s on spring.me, but I’m not sure and might be wrong)…

So anyway, as with Atlas Girl, if anyone would like to be the proud new owner of Let’s All Be Brave or would like to borrow it or knows someone who’d like it, please let me know!!

Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look (An Unconventional Book Review)

…so I came home with a pile of books that I wanted to either finish reading or both start and finish reading…but who am I kidding, my reading comprehension level is low enough that even if I’d started I needed to start over and read straight through faster to give myself at least half a chance of following the storyline…

but I thought it might be kind of fun to try to write a book review…first up: Emily Wierenga‘s Atlas Girl.

Emily Wierenga is a pretty awesome person and talented writer. She blogs on (in)courage, on her own personal blog, and guest posts all over the place…

Atlas Girl was a really good book. To be honest, I struggled to understand what was going on, because I rocked at reading comprehension when that just meant being able to find the part of the story where they said what color boots the character was wearing, but when it started meaning more than that around middle school or so my reading comprehension level tanked and I don’t think I ever really caught up with my peers…it probably doesn’t really help that I used to read books a lot but then later in high school I transitioned to a combination of both books and the internet, and then I went to college where the only books I was reading for the most part were for school…but anyway, all that to say if I was struggling to understand but stuck with it and loved the book then it must be an incredible book. The book is written in that way where it goes back and forth from childhood to adulthood and back again over and over which I am not usually a fan of, but it worked pretty well.

The book is about choosing love, choosing healing, choosing restoration. It is about choosing to let go of your lifeline to reach out for something even more important and wonderful. It is about finding home, finding community, loving and letting others in to love you. It is about seeing the church as God meant it to be.

A repeating theme in the second-ish half of the book that was really awesome was SHMILY (not a typo). It stands for “See How Much I Love You.” The concept was basically write a note to someone that just says shmily and leave it for them so they see it and smile…because you love them enough to think of the and leave the note…that was kind of a cool idea…IDK if I’ll implement it seeing as how I am not sure I have anywhere to leave notes for most of the people who mean the world to me, but it is definitely one of those things that will be catalogued in my mind for someday…

This book touches on anorexia, cancer, and international missions…oh, and babies get born!! Speaking of babies, last week someone asked me if I was a preschool teacher and when I said no they said I should be…I thought about it, and while I think I would love it and be good at it, I don’t think that is for me. For one thing, that would leave me always missing out on my favorite part of child development (early infancy), and also it would be hard for me to let go, because I know not everyone’s kindergarten experience is like mine was (I came home one day and stated that I thought there’d be more kids in my class–as it turned out, unbeknownst to my parents, my teacher had been having me tested because she didn’t know what to do with me…the results were falsified by the person testing me because there was no reason I shouldn’t stay in my kindergarten class…and then one day I got really upset at home because my mom kept having me donate really cool things to the classroom for playtime and I never got to use it because my teacher took away my playtime for me to read books and write reports…which was awful, because I didn’t know how to pick books (and didn’t know about commas separating the sections of numbers) so I remember reading a book about Australia because I thought it was about kangaroos and it was so dumb because not only was it not about kangaroos, but they didn’t even know if the population was 0 (000) or 903…and I read a book of chemistry experiments and had to write about my favorite part, least favorite part, and about one of the characters–umm except are there even characters in this book??)…and while I can sort of maybe see myself possibly as a preschool teacher on the side, I think I would feel empty if that was all I did full time, because I am pretty sure I am intended to be a pharmacist…

So anyway, I got this book for free online, so I would definitely love to give it away or loan it to anyone who would like to read it or who knows anyone who would enjoy reading it…and if you know me in real life, you know that the book is pretty much in like new condition still 🙂 …and anyone who has seen my room at home knows I don’t need any more books on my shelf, and anyone who has seen my room at school knows it is sort of overflowing with all of my treasures, so don’t be shy if you would like to own this book or would like to give it to someone else to enjoy…