Archive for the ‘trauma’ Category

The worth of a book is to be measured by what you can carry away from it.  by James Bryce

Summertime is great for sun drenched days and lingering by pools with toes dipped in cool waters.  It is an excellent time to give yourself room to breathe and little getaways even when you are staying home for the weekend.  What better time to catch up on some reading.  Especially when, like in the southeast right now, there are days where the winds swirl and the rain pours down outside.  Hurricane Bonnie, to you I say, read and be merry!

Here is a list of my summertime reading list.  A few books that feel timely for the time of year, summer season, and just plain inspiration for people contemplating life amid summer breezes or hurricane winds.  The following books are some good summertime reads.  Some because they are timely with cinematic re-creations coming out (eat, pray, love), some because they discuss the way we eat and our natural world (animal, vegetable, miracle), some because they reflect on how we care for ourselves and how we view our bodies (women, food, and god), and some just because they are fun, insightful, clever, inspirational, empowering, dreamy or invoke the feeling of childhood (anne of green gables).  And some just because they remind me of summer intensives in undergrad as a literature major (ahem, Jane Austen anyone?).

10 SUMMERTIME LITERARY INSPIRATIONS:

1.  Eat, Pray, Love.  by Elizabeth Gilbert 
2.  Women, Food, and God by Geneen Roth
3. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
4.  Words That Matter by Oprah Magazine
5. The Bitch In the House by 26 women
6.  Mansfield Park by Jane Austen  
7. Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery  
8.  Change Your Brain, Change Your Body by Daniel Amen  
9.  Official Book Club Selection by Kathy Griffin  

10.  Broken Open by Elizabeth Lesser

I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for the echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly,  I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.                                              byRichard Wright, American Hunger, 1977

The ex-English Major in me wants to deconstruct this sentence from start to finish.  Every word, every comma, every part of it’s structure is dripping with boldness and defiance.  It makes me want to get out of my chair and take action.  What action?  I don’t know but the potency inspires.  Just me? Ok.  So, I can get a little excited and emphatic about words.  That has always been the case.  Since early readings of LM Montgomery’s prose by my mother before I could utter full sentences I have been incited to action by words and brought more alive and bold in my own life by words I have read on a page.  I have dug in with my fingers to the prose and come out invigorated.  Just me again? Maybe.

But there is something about the creative experience, both imbibing it and creating it, that is profound and brings to life our own lives and living worlds to even greater vibrance than before we explored it through the lens of creativity.  Whether painter, scupltor, woodworker, photographer, writer,  or needlepointer there is osmething about the experience of art (creating or absorbing) that makes us be present, be in the now, and explore our own inner landscapes in new ways and to greater depths.  We mine ourselves and our world and up comes something, as Richard Wright states, that is worth saying.  And, as he describes, with every bit we create, every word that we write, even the tiniest reverberation draws us forward to create more and speak louder onto the page or the canvas or film.

Writing has been in my veins ever since I picked up my first pencil.  I had dreams of writing a novel when I was still scribbling on those giant pads with dotted lines in elementary school.  When I went through my traumas in my late teens and suffered for years with PTSD I stopped writing.   My inner landscape had gone numb and I lost myself.  Without the reflection of the word or the will to pick up a pen and speak I had no way to reflect back to myself who I was.  My voice had always been first in paper and then outloud.  When I came crawling out of PTSD years later I had to rediscover me–both in life and on the page.  Who was I? What was my voice? What did I have to say?  My writing life was so imbedded in my “self” and definition of self that I had to rediscover my voice on the page to know what I wanted to say in my life.

I wrote yesterday about empowerment and for me writing has been my voice, my picket sign, my empowerment far more than anything else.  I can write it before I say it.  Whatever “it” is.  Even my own rauma story came out on paper before it ever came off my lips.

What creative experience gets your blood pumping, your energy blazing, your vision of the world more acute and finite?  What creative experience makes your heart sing?  Maybe it is an actual creative art: writing, painting, photography, film, dance, theatre.  Maybe it is just something that brings you fully alive: swimiing, surfing, motorcycle riding, fishing, parenting.

What makes your heart sing?  What do you wish you had in your life to make it more vibrant and alive?   What do you have in your life that brings you that joy and energy for living that you are grateful for?

I thank writing for many things.  I thank my mother for teaching me the love of words.  Words have been my lifeboat.  What is your lifeboat?

Glamour magazine’s August edition published an article “Endometriosis & Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome: Two Women’s Diseases Doctors Miss Most: Could You Have One?” by Hallie Levine Sklar.  The subheader read “As many as 20 percent of women have one of them, but it can take years to be diagnosed with endometriosis or polycystic ovarian syndrome.  If you or anyone you know is suffering, this piece is required reading.”  I, and many people I know are suffering, and so of course, I read further.  As I did I pondered the people I know with this condition.

All of us had suffered for an average of 10 years with the pain and side effects of our respective conditions {mine, as I have disclosed before, is endometriosis}.  All of us had, had symptoms going back as far as middle school or early high school.  All of us had been told by professionals and trained gynecological and other specialists for years that it was “normal” and “just part of our regular body functions” and had been shuffled off or sent home with pills or heating pads {I personally have burnt out innumerable heating pads, yes, they can burn out}.  All of us had to lobby and be our own advocates when the pain and effects became too great to ignore or just hide in bathrooms on floors crying for nights on end.  All of us only got “diagnosed” after much personal research, seeking out of the proper experts ourselves, and even more lobbying to be tested and checked for more than just a “normal” woman’s bodily function.  All of us were right.  All of us were ignored.

So, as I read further in this article in a popular women’s magazine I sighed that sigh of relief you get when you can put down your picket sign and let someone else talk about the issue for a moment.  And I thank you Hallie Levine Sklar for doing just that.  This article was full of all these truths that so many women I know and myself have suffered through.  It talked about the average decade from onset to diagnosis that went unheard for many, I would say most, women with these conditions.  I know all the women I can think of diagnosed with this condition are in their 30′s or older and all have received their diagnosis in the last 1-5 years at most.

Empowerment.  Advocacy.  Strong words with strong images conjured up of picketing, signs, and a lot of riot grrl roaring.  We often forget in the mix of it all to lobby for ourselves as much as anyone else.  Even if it means being our own champions against the “experts” and saying how we feel and not backing down when we aren’t being heard.  Even and ESPECIALLY when it comes to our own health.  I learned this the slow and painful hard way.  I spent years in certitude that the professionals in the medical community that I went to time and again when the pains increased, the ruptured cysts persisted, and the nights spent on the bathroom floors crying multiplied, all told me that it was “normal” and to go home and use my heating pad.

Finally, three years ago, and after a month spent more out of work than in the office, I began to research, and research, and research because I realized no one was going to listen to me until I had something specific I wanted to say besides, “It really doesn’t feel normal, isn’t there anything else you can check for?”  I self-diagnosed in one afternoon between the wonderful forums and information rich sites of EndoResolved ,  Endometriosis.org , The Endometriosis Association , and The Endo Research Center.  By the end of one day I had assessed that all my symptoms from gastrointestinal to bladder to ovarian all linked up and all the questions about what was wrong with me was answered…with one day of google searching.  After I got through my stages of grief..skipping denial {everyone else had done that fairly well for me} and straight into anger and zipping through into acceptance.  Acceptance of the way I had been ignored about my own body for so many years.  Acceptance of the fact that my anger, while justified, would not change the past or the responses I had faced.  Acceptance of the knowledge that if anything proactive was going to be done on my behalf, on behalf of my wounded body, I would have to do it and not take “normal” as a response to my issues any longer.

I advocated and was forced into a role of empowerment in a medical system I did not understand all the way to the surgery table.  One of the major issues with endo is the fact that no MRI or scan will show it.  You have to do a simple laproscopy to look for it and assess if it exists or not.  I was never one ready for invasive medical procedures but 10 years of pain made me want to know, and all my research made me need to know if I was right, my body was right, and the medical professionals all along my journey were wrong.  They were.  Once I finally had the procedure they found a pretty severe case of Stage 3 (out of 4) endometriosis which had, in 10 years of growth and damage while statements of  ”normal” were leaving it alone to do its dirty endo business, eaten away at parts of my fallopian tube on one side, and adhered itself to my bladder, ovaries, and bowels.  ”Told you so,” just didn’t seem to bring satisfaction.  But getting all that garbage out of my body definitely did.

Reading Ms. Levine Sklar’s article and hearing the statistics yet again, the stories of many other unheard women’s voices, and many oblivious professionals, stirred up some of my old picket sign grumbles.  I felt a need to highlight the well written article and this issue which is pervasive in the female population.  Both with my condition {endometriosis} and that of many friends of mine {PCOS; polycystic ovarian syndrome}.  Both which, left untreated, can lead to issues with fertility as well as a variety of organ damage and a gamut of painful symptoms not only for the female organs but many other parts of the body including bowel, bladder, appendix and others.  Just scour the forums on EndoResolved for a day and you will begin to see the number of illnesses linked to endometriosis and the ways it can exacerbate a number of medical issues.

I am finishing up a series on SELF CARE as an E-COURSE over at www.wishstudio.com this week and last week’s course material was about EMPOWERMENT {I will be offering this course in full and in pieces in my new products page shortly}.  Reading this article reminded me how important empowerment can be not only for our feelings of self-worth and confidence but ultimately and in extreme cases, can be vital for our health, longevity and quality of our lives and bodies.  We can be the one voice for ourselves {as well as others} when no one else, even professionals, will listen.  There are, I will say, a number of very well-educated and well-versed endometriosis and PCOS medical professionals out there whom I respect greatly and, when I finally found them, were very helpful in my further understanding of and treatment of my endometriosis {a chronic illness that will be with me at least until I have  hysterectomy one day, possibly, based on some data, even after that}.  I will also say that I had to find them myself after years on a medical journey that others were steering off course.  I had to take the reins of my life and take the steering of my own ship before anything was done.

Know that your voice does matter.  Your instincts and those pangs in your gut are telling you something important.  Don’t discount yourself just because someone else does, even if they have letters after their name {I say this being someone with letters after my name and knowing I am human, not perfect, and although I am not a doctor I would not say I was the authority on your life even if I were your therapist}.  Listen to yourself.  Be the voice for your own causes.  Know that sometimes the battles for self are the most important and need a champion.  You are not wrong just because someone, and sometimes many someones, tell you you are.  Believe in you.  I finally did in the case of my own long battle with chronic illness and although I am not “healed” in the biological respect from that ailment I am stronger for having fought and my body thanks me.  Now I have the information to move forward informed on what is best for my condition.  My thoughts go out to all the women battling endometriosis, PCOS, or any other painful condition or issue in silence.