Embody Mental Health

Posts Tagged ‘dogs’

We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults.  Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment.  by George Eliot

My pitbull/lab Guinness loves to lap swim.  Lately, his eager to learn brain has been craving more than just the run of the mill dog swimming laps routine and I have taught him to competitively swim {against me}.  He, the doggie paddle, me, freestyle ala my middle school swim team days.  We both come home at the end of a long, hard, training day sore and limping; the nature of competition pushing each of us to our  max out point.  Sometimes he cheats, and cuts me off, or sticks his bum right in my lane, but I let him get away with it.

Animals can be therapeutic at many levels.  My dog, at present, is teaching me to get back my competitive swimming edge; an unlikely swim team partner, but a companion even in this unique and unorthodox way.  He is a “lap dog” of a different sort and I love him for it.  Meanwhile, in the background, my attention hungry terrier, Gracie, limps from a minor cut on her foot, while jeering with high pitched barks, like a soccer mom on the sidelines of our laps.  Occasionally, she falls in while caught off guard too close to the edge during a boisterous barking fit and daintily swims her way to the steps and shakes off in a huff; how she does hate getting her feet wet.

My beagle/pug Gaia has a slight obsession with my goggles and when I get too close to the edge she will lunge at my face, popping under the water’s chlorinated surface and bouncing back up, eager to get at the plastic encasing my eyes…as if it were some doggie pool toy, taunting her from a distance.

The whole experience is quite comical as I mediate the swimming laps with Guinness, monitoring the sidelines hysteria of Gracie, and the OCD goggle compulsion of Gaia all while trying to get a little bit of Floridian sun and swim in for myself.  I laugh to myself and think, “Is this mess family?” as I can hear my husband in the background grilling up salmon and muttering something about needing the next new Mac product.  I laugh a little bit and think {in response to myself}, “I hope so.”

Just a little tidbit from the pool’s edge on a Wednesday night with the family.  Thinking about the many ways in which animals can be therapeutic in life.  How they can teach us lessons about ourselves and our capacities for caring.  Or even just help us define what “family” might look like.

 

1  …My husband’s move to Florida. 

Dog care and maintainance issues aside, I miss him.  I miss shared dinners after a long day of work, I miss taking the dogs out or exploring something new.  I miss watching a movie side-by-side either inside in the warmth and on a couch or shivering amid chilly theatre air.  I am excited to explore Florida together and create new memories under palms and sun.  I am hoping to find time to take a short trip to Marco Island which sounds like a lovely place and I have been hearing great things about it as a place to take a quick reprieve–from what I’m not sure, we do live in Florida, but I would love to explore.

 

 

 

2  …The NARHA 2009 Conference! 

I am beginning an amazing new adventure involving complimentary therapies and horses and I am so excited.  One of the fantastic new avenues that has opened up due to postponing the yoga teacher training by two months is giving me the time to go to a three-day conference for specialized training in the area of Equine Facilitated Psychotherapy.  I will be beginning my first pilot program in late November and am so excited for where this new path will lead and how I can cross and blend multiple holistic approaches.  I may be incorporating some seated yoga on horseback during programming!  I am very excited about all these prospects.  If only I had a charitable financier to help afford all this here learnin’.  For now I will try to make it work any way I can because I know, somehow and in some deep place, that this new equine arena of study and practice is meant to be part of  a more cohesive therapeutic whole. 

 

 

 

 

3  …My upcoming speaking engagement at the “Let’s Talk” Adoption Conference at Rutgers University in New Jersey on November 7th. 

I will be speaking on Trauma and Yoga for adoptees, their caregivers, and for social service agencies working with adoptees and foster children.  I am so honored and happy to bring this information on mind/body healing to a large audience of people involved in the care of children who may find such great benefit from yoga.  I have purchased, via my good ol’ pal Amazon both of the following books to put out for attendees to flip through:  Babar’s Yoga For Elephants and My Daddy Is A Pretzel: Yoga for Parents and Kids.

 

 

 

4  …Christmas in Florida. 

My lovely sister will be coming to visit and so I cannot wait to show her my new home state and enjoy the Holiday Season sans dirty soot colored snow.  New memories, new visual delights, and a reason to decorate my home thematically and “hang stockings with care”–just for a moment though because I have a feeling in a three dog household they will be dismantled and removed with very little care and much expediency. 

 

5  …My first wedding anniversary this New Year’s Eve. 

 

6  …Beginning my yoga teacher training program.

Hopefully, I will have cultivated some added manner and method of contemplative practice, meditative mind, and calmed spirit before I even walk through the door on the ever-nerve-wracking First Day of School.  I have, in the spirit of that effort, gone my first week without any television whatsoever.  Now this used to be, once upon a twenty-year-old, a very easy endeavor but I fear I have gotten into the “plopper” practices I discussed earlier this week and have to work my way back to enjoying the silence with nothing surrounding me but the tapping rhythm of puppy nails on wood and crisp pages turning in a good book. 

 

7  …Learning how to let go. 

Let go of the illusion of controls.  Let go of the illusion of “knowing”.  And letting go the self that expects so much but explores so little of the internal space of my own inner spaces–a funny irony for a person who, as a therapist, spends my days delving into the psyches of others and encouraging their self exploration.  No more holding on and holding in–I am giving over to letting go.  Tiny step by tiny step. 

 

8  …I am looking forward to seeing where this writing exploration will lead. 

I feel that all my internal archeology both starts and ends with this writing I am doing.  I have always felt like I explored myself most honestly when I wrote.  This is first time I share that journey in an outward way.  This is the first time I take this inner archeological dig into a public forum.  I am hoping it brings a new ripened and raw dimension to the journey that both enriches my own path of discovery and helps another on their internal and external quests.

 

 

 

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things   that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Mark Twain

 

Metaphorically–Singing in the rain, metaphorically.  No one, trust me no one wants to see me sing, not even in the rain.  I save that glorious pleasure for solo car rides and loud showers. 

 

The intent of this post is to talk about, from a very personal perspective, trying to find the silver lining, see the bright side, look at the glass half full, and any other kitschy association to taking our unexpected roadblocks as opportunities to carve out new trails.  I am trying very hard to keep that mindset and, surprisingly, I find the more I search for the better the more “better” appears. 

 

 

 

 

In the 48 plus hours since writing my bright and spirited “The Year of the Dog” post many things have happened and many subsequent decisions have been made–the initiator to all being that my husband and I found out that his guarantee transfer that had lingered in “on hold” for a month had fallen through due to beurocratic blah blah blah.  That left us wondering, “What next?”  This is what we came up with:

 

1)  My husband is going to continue working in New Jersey through November 6th and try to get a few more checks worth of money in before we, potentially, become a house no longer divided in half but one with a household income divided in half.  He will then move to Florida and actively look for whatever job possible, hopefully in his area of passion which is substance abuse counseling, but anything to bring some income in to supplement my salary.  He will also be returning, to my great pleasure, to school to obtain his Masters in Social Work starting next Fall 2010. 

 

2)  I will, to my great displeasure, have to postpone my Yoga Teacher Training by two months and begin the next series of trainings in mid January.  I will be a single doggie mama with three pups at home and cannot in good conscience (without ending up on Animal Planet Cops or feeling like I should) leave them home from dawn till past dusk so I can pursue my holistic dreams. 

 

3)  On a completely different note I have decided it may be necessary to look into Doggie Ritalin.  I am beginning to wonder if there can be a genetic marker in a certain breed for ADHD–if so Jack Russell is that breed.  My little Gracie is an unstoppable, unflappable, unending spring (literally, she bounces straight in the air like a spring) of energy and, possibly, psychosis.  O.k., so I may not be feeding her handfuls of puppy prescriptions anytime soon, but I may have to invest in some kind of doggie treadmill–if there is such a thing.  I think the only thing my Jack Russell birthday puppy has taught me about thirty is that thirty may be too old for a Jack Russell puppy.  But we will forge forward, my family of dysfunctional fur-babies and I:  Guinness the Neurotic, Gaia the Narcissist, and Gracie the Psychotically Hyper. 

 

 

A 48 HOUR RETROSPECTIVE…

Going backwards in time to 48 hours ago I was not sure what to do or what to think about our sudden family perdicament.  Part of me wanted to cry, part wanted to scream, part wanted to just give up.  Fortunately none of those were a dominant enough part of me to reak unproductive havoc although each part of me had its moment in the last couple of days. 

 

I thought about a thirtieth birthday in a real limbo and spent alone 1200 miles away from my husband and in a state of uncertainty about more than the number 30.  I thought about the potential pressures of getting all the bills paid and the scary prospect of not succeeding.  I thought of aspirations of sitting in a dimly lit room, breathing, learning, and meditating daily falling away as were my plans and hopes for all things related to this October. 

 

Money & Meditation: two completely converse distractions.

 

So, I thought, how could I feel so hopeful Monday and in such desperation by Tuesday.  I realized the only piece I could affect between the two was not the money or the postponed meditation but my perspective, perception, and state of mind.  All these strengths I have been building on the past month or so on this blog finally came to an application head–I needed full forces aligned to find the light in the storm, the brighter side, the inspiration to sing even in the rain. 

 

I thought about how my husband’s job falling through had gave him the final push necessary to actively pursue his masters degree–a very good thing.  I thought about how having the next two months to get our lives in order, the household in order, and actually have some time with my husband when he gets down here in a month was perhaps a bit of a blessing.  I thought about how much all of these trials of reality have brought my marital relationship to its strongest place and taught my husband and I an immense amount about ourselves individually, the other partner, and us collectively.  I thought that while I don’t know how I feel about the phrase, “Everything happens for a reason,”  that I do believe more and more, “We can find reason and purpose in everything that happens.” 

 

 

So I find myself 48 hours later in somewhat of the same state of mind as I was originally.  It took me a roller coaster of thoughts and emotions to get here and an immense amount of support, some unexpectedly beautiful, from friends, family, and coworkers, old and new.  And most important, the mutual support of my husband and I, for each other as well look at each other partner’s respective difficulties within this predicament. 

 

And to give a little bit of melodic sound (if not actual singing) to the storm, my husband called last night saying that he was able to find a dirt cheap flight for Thursday, October 15.  So I guess I will not have to resort to party hats for the fur-kids and dogfood cake for my birthday after all–yes, I contemplated it. 

 

But more than that I realized how touched I was by my husband’s gesture towards me, our relationship, and to the importance of a birthday not spent alone.  I found myself, last night, on the other end of the phone crying tears not of self-pity or anger but of gratitude–no one was more surprised than I at how much it meant to me to have him give such a gift to me and to our relationship. 

 

Those tears were like an emotional prize I had won for getting to where I had without the pitying tears. 

 

Tonight I sit, while somewhat emotionally exhausted, quite bright again.  Not Jack Russell psychotically bright, but optimistic.  And looking forward without trepidation…and counting down the days until I have a two parent team for this dog-full household.

 

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The pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; the optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

Winston Churchill