Tips for Living a Productive Life During a Crisis

I am not going to say anything new, but it is all worth saying again... It is what worked for me, when I really needed to reset my life..

1. Don't check Facebook more than once or twice a day.  If you are in the midst of an argument, breakup, or divorce; don't look at it at all.  Facebook is the ultimate emotional minefield.  There is no reason to subject yourself to potentially distressing images/posts that will push your imagination into overdrive.

2. Eat well and take yourself for walks.  When you are not feeling your best, you may forget to take care of yourself.  If you make an effort to force a few healthy routines into your daily activities, you will have the energy to start moving in the right direction when your will returns.

3. Don't write "to-do" lists; write "what I did" lists.  Often we start our days full of lists we are eager to complete.  In truth, our to-to lists will outlive all of us.  There is an infinite number of things you could do!  Instead, make a list at the end of your day, of all the things you did do- Even if it was just cleaning the cat litter.  Because let's face it, that is quite an accomplishment!

4. Turn off the TV and read.  Nothing is worse than watching drama, fictional or reality-based, that wraps up in 30-60 minutes when you are living through emotional chaos for weeks on end.  We are an impatient era.  With our microwave meals, cell phones, email; we expect instant gratification.  Reading requires patience.  It helps us slow down.

5. Be gentle with yourself.  If you feel like you need to sleep, sleep.  If you feel like you need to eat, eat.  There is no guilt in healing.  If you are in pain, you need to accept you are in pain... Only then can you relax, listen to your body and heart and mind- and begin to give yourself what you need.

6. Don't rush.  There is a vicious cycle between impatience, stress and tension.  When you worry about these constrictions, they compound.  When you tell yourself, "I don't have time to waste," you are invalidating your pain.  Don't rush it.  Let it run its course, like the flu.  When recovery comes, accept it and begin again slowly.  Your timeline will correct itself at its own pace.

7. Clean.  Your home.  Your body.  Your teeth.  Simple routines are meditations.  Do them slowly.  You show yourself respect by showering and putting on clean clothes each day.  Sweep your floor.  When you recover, you will want these things to be done.  If you start while you are feeling down, you will be ahead when things start to turn around.

8. Don't listen to too much advice.  While it is good to have a support system of friends and family... and it is good to go to therapy, you can become more confused when overloaded with other people's opinions.  Listen to yourself first.  It may take some time before your mind starts to make sense again, but no one has the answers except you.

9. Find outlets to express yourself.  Writing, singing, playing, drawing, painting, sculpting, sewing, cooking, baking, running, taking photographs... the possibilities are endless.  If you do not have a specialty, try something new.  What's calling you?  By allowing yourself to pour your emotions out creatively, you may find answers you did not realize were within you.

10.  Pray.  Even if you do not have a higher power, you can pray.  You can hope.  You can let yourself wish for whatever you want... as long as you realize and accept that events may not unfold as you would like.  Know what you want, then let it go.  Believe that events will unfold in the best way possible, even if it is not immediately noticeable.

New Chapter

I started the month of August with no plan, no job, no hope for a partner in my life... I am starting September with many plans, a job that will start by October, and a wonderful partner.

I have been hesitant to write about current events, almost fearful that I would jinx them.  But this morning I received a reminder- You do have Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Deal with it.  It isn't going away... But I will come back to that in a moment*.

This week I watched the pieces really start to fall together... It has been an ongoing process, but I am finally feeling like there a noticeable results.  I have been volunteering for a nonprofit, NONVIO Philly (https://www.facebook.com/nonviophilly), building partnerships to acquire spaces for events that will incorporate community based organizations, health/well-being education, and live music.  It has felt really good!  Although it is not a paycheck, it feels natural to be doing the work.  It has been a doorway to starting many valuable new friendships and meeting like-minded people who want to benefit Philadelphia, the environment, and individuals in general.  I will be promoting a date for the first event soon!

Given how difficult it has been to get paid as a musician, I took it upon myself to this create this opportunity in which musicians would be offered more than exposure in exchange for their talents and time.  I adore the venues that have nurtured me as an artist.  However, I want to expand outside of environments which depend upon getting people drunk to make a buck- or which charge handsome covers that the local bands never see.  (For the record, all proceeds from my shows pay my band members or create promotional materials.)  So, I hope everyone will come out to enjoy a good time among neighbors, bring an open mind to hear what some good local organizations have to share, and donate a little to help us pay participating performers.

...I also met my dream boss- The details are still being hammered out, but it looks like I found a great speech therapy job!  The small company is owned by a mother and daughter who are both speech therapists.  They provide Early Intervention services in Philadelphia and also support good causes, such as Cradles to Crayons (https://www.cradlestocrayons.org/philadelphia), which helps provide children with the clothes and materials they need to succeed in school.  I am very eager to partner them with the rest of the community of friends that I have been building!

Talking to the owner, I recalled, "When I graduated from Temple, my dream was to start a program where parents could bring their children; disabled, labeled, or typically developing.  All the kids could go into one area with trained professionals and enjoy an activity together.  Meanwhile, the parents could meet with therapists and counselors; get group therapy, discuss their struggles and strengths, network.  Then, afterwards, the parents could rejoin their children and learn how to incorporate therapy strategies themselves."

She concurred that she had something similar in mind when she started her company.  However, the problem is largely that the people who need this service most can not afford to pay for it... and while Early Intervention is paid for by the government, there is currently no funding available to create a program such as the one we have in mind.  I am glad to know that my new potential boss already has this ball rolling...  I can not wait to be part of her team!

The problem with "therapy" is that most people think it is something that only a professional can do- When the truth is anyone can do it!  My job as a therapist is to train my clients to not need me!  Most therapy techniques are simple common sense habits-  The most basic one for parents: repeat what your child is trying to say.  Ask him or her to repeat the phrase following your model.  Simple.  Repetition.

But even this therapy assignment is often met with great opposition.  Parents say they do not have time.  Parents say, "We did it for a little while... Then we got busy and stopped."  

I know first hand how difficult it is to form a new good habit.  I have been trying to learn how to play a guitar for two years, but I simply do not set aside enough time to practice drills.  I make time for what I want to do- play music I am writing and performing, but meanwhile my performing suffers because I fail to take the time to become a proficient player.  

It is only through routine repetition that a new pattern of behavior is formed.  It takes a duration of several weeks for results to be noticeable.  When we see a positive change, the behavior is reinforced, and we feel compelled to continue... 

I have seen amazing positive changes in my life over August.  I started September with even more positive intentions:  Every September I make a list of things that I resolve to give up for the month.  This year: alcohol, drugs, meat, coffee... Victor was going to be on this list as well.  I told him that he should take the time to consider what he wanted, free of my influence.  We already spent two months estranged.  What was one more?

He decided that he did not need another month to decide... "Either we work out now or never, right?"

It is difficult to avoid old patterns.  This morning* I remembered my insecurities... I caught myself feeling mournful for us, when we are still together.  I started looking around for things to worry about, things to justify with my fears...  I can not start mourning for our future when it has yet to be written.  It is our past that I am longing for- gone, behind us... and it was not good.  It was not good when we could not be honest with one another, when I did not understand that my irrational thoughts and fears are part of a bigger problem.  I have BPD.  It is very real, and it is not an excuse for bad behavior.

I Hate You- Don't Leave Me author, Hal Straus describes BPD as emotional hemophilia.  From my experience this is an accurate description; each time I feel an overwhelming emotion, it is like a fatal wound that won't stop bleeding.  In our past, Victor allowed himself to be sucked into my drama, trying to be my hero.  He has been my hero on several occasions... But this is exactly why so many books are addressed to partners trying to leave individuals with BPD.  If I am not vigilant in learning to moderate my emotions, it can be a never-ending vicious cycle of need that will push him right back out of my life.

They say you should love someone for who they are and not expect them to change... In my case, Victor has to expect change, growth.  He has to hold me accountable for learning from my mistakes, for his sake as well as my own.  -It will not happen overnight.  I have made tremendous progress since I went to the hospital, but it requires practice, reminding myself every day.  Luckily, I am not confronted with anxiety and distress every day.  However, times like this morning, I forget that the world is not ending, the sky is not falling... and I have to start counting my blessings again, remembering how miraculous it is to have a love worth saving and a hero willing to try!

Weeks... Weeks... Weeks... The benefits of the weeks I worked to bring me to this moment were so well worth the effort, the time... I can wait.  I can continue to learn.  I am not loosing myself by changing.  I am finding myself, again and again and again...

Adopted... in an alternate reality

Does everyone play this game as a child... in which you ponder what your life would be like if you were adopted?  What if my parents are not my parents?  -Or what if my parents gave me up for adoption to another family?  ...a family more well-off?  What if my last name was not Heard?

...Airville is a small town in York.  York is a relatively small place as well, given how much of it is farmland and wilderness.  One family in Airville had two children marry into the Heards.  I do not want to mention their family name... Because when one of their daughters became pregnant out of wedlock, they decided she should give it up for adoption.

I was not even conceived at this point in time.  I have heard the story several different ways from several different sources, and I can not claim to offer any clarity on the situation.  I only mention it because it is essential to the story.  This family and my family have been living in Airville for many decades, are of similar socioeconomic status, and I have five cousins who are part of both families by blood.  In my mind, I could just have easily been born one of them as a Heard.

My mother recalled the story, stating that she was upset to hear of a child being given away when she wanted a third child.  She asked my father if they could take him.  He told her it would have been inappropriate, that they would not want to watch my parents raise him.  So- away he went... never to be seen or heard from again... until he was a teenager.

The first time I met Andy was at a family reunion.  Curious to find his birth parents, he sought out his origin and found us... Unfortunately some years prior, his birth mother had died in a car accident, leaving Andy to never know her.  In their grief, his remaining genetic relations were not eager to welcome him back into the family.  This cut him to the core, but he would remain a sporadic visitor to Heard family events for several years thereafter.

Andy became good friends with our mutual cousin, Fern.  Through her I would learn that Andy had been adopted by an affluent couple in York.  He had been sent to the best private schools, provided with luxuries we had never known... yet all he wanted was the acceptance of his birth family, an identity that traced back to his biological parents... I never got a clear answer about his father, except that he was also unavailable.

I spent many years considering Andy a spoiled, ungrateful brat.  I thought of how different my life would have been.  The opportunities that would have been available to me, the choices I would have made... The places I would have traveled.  The arts I would have studied.  The college I could have chosen...  Who I might have been.

...Years later, when I was dating Rolex, I would learn that he and Andy were best friends.  Suddenly the sort-of-cousin that I barely ever saw was a rather central character in my life.  He lived a few hours away, but we visited each other routinely.  He was married by then with a daughter of his own... He had a beautiful house, nice cars, and he was constantly scheming up new ventures.  He lived a full life.  He went on amazing trips and told incredible stories.  However, he had never given up his quest to better realize his identity, and the way he dealt with it was his major crux- booze.

Almost every drunken evening I spent in his company (and every evening spent with him was a drunken one) inevitably lead to the same line of questions; Had I met his mother?  Did I remember her?  What did I know?  What did his family members say to me?  What had I heard?  What did I think?

I never had any answers.

Rolex would disapprove of my commentary on their friendship... so, I will censor myself.  I will simply say that I told him after each of our visits, "This won't end well.  He's heading to a dead-end... sooner than he should."

When I was with Andy, I could not bear to tell him to quit drinking.  I could not find a way to encourage him to let go of a past that he was never part of, that could not hurt him anymore- in the handsome, generous life that had adopted him.  Even then, I understood that no one could tell him, although many likely tried.  Maybe he knew it, but he was not ready to accept it.

Last year... I received the call that Andy was in the hospital.  Months prior, his wife had left him and taken their daughter to live with another man.  He had made a somewhat successful attempt to start over... But in the end, he succumb to drinking related organ failure.

Poof.  A dream of what might have been... over.

I gave up the illusion that I would have been anymore grateful- had Andy had my parents and upbringing and I his.  The value of my heritage became more apparent.  I learned to love seeing aspects of my parents in myself.  I realized that I had something more valuable than wealth, I had knowledge that Andy would never have.  Rather than worrying about who I was supposed to be, according to my genes, I had gone to great lengths to become who I wanted to be... inevitably resulting in much re-evaluation and revision, but nevertheless, ever closer to who I want to be.

...In my meditations and dreams I was confronted by this situation.  I am a suicidal person.  Maybe I was the one person who should have said something to him most... Why was I so certain my words would fall on deaf ears?  

I have to believe that life happens as it is supposed to... that despite all of its darkness and woe, this must be the best of all possible worlds- because it is the one I am living in.  If I imagine it is a miserable place, I will live in a miserable place.  If I imagine I could have had a better family, I will never be satisfied with the one I have... and in truth, I love my family, myself-

Andy was a great gift in my life.  He lived a full life in the time that he had.  He left a daughter to carry on his legacy.  He was an answer to a childhood question... and for me, my life is the best possible answer.

Backlash

"You treat people like they're minor characters in your story, extras," a friend once accused me... More than once.

I contend quite the opposite.  I believe everyone is the main character of their own stories... That I am very fortunate to have many opportunities to play small roles in the lives of others.  Guest appearances.  I have rarely thought of my own life as anything so important as to deserve publication or acknowledgement... and yet, here I am, posting it on the internet and sharing it with whoever will read.

More than a year ago my great aunt Viola died.  She was 100 year old.  As I prepared myself for an early morning departure for her funeral, I wanted to play at the Lickety Split open mic... The list was long by the time I arrived, and I knew I could not stay late into the night.

Bunny Savage walked in... I rambled the situation to him, "I just want to sing this one new tune, but I don't want to ask to bump ahead in line... I don't like to act like I'm so important."

Bunny smiled, "You might as well ask... You never know, you might be that important."

I did ask, and the host graciously let me play one tune and leave early... Those words, "You might be that important," rang in my ears.  What else had I been too afraid to ask?  What else was possible that I considered impossible?

...I have exposed myself a great deal so far on this blog... a friend who is literature professor advised me, helping me to find the gall to publish these posts, "You have to write as though your parents are dead."

I told her, "Parts of my story aren't mine to share." I still find myself questioning whether I should remove certain posts or details... In the end I made this resolution- I'm going to write like I'm dead.  Maybe this sounds ridiculous, but as an individual who has wasted a great deal of time thinking suicidal thoughts, the idea that these words may be my lasting legacy makes the risk worth taking.  I may offend some people, particularly those friends and family members mentioned...

I have spoken to my mother about disclosing her secret.  She was not terribly surprised, albeit disappointed.  "You're going to do whatever you want to do-  Now there's no taking it back," she sighed.

So far she has refused to read it.  I wish she would- I wish I could help her gain a new perspective on the situation, one in which she bares no blame... But "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink".  How to convince her that she does not need to hide the bad things that happened to her, that they are not her fault... To set her free from her memories.

A couple of my cousins have expressed concerns as well... they invalidate my experiences, telling me that I need to stop being so negative.  Although we grew up with the same last name, they do not accept that my perspective has been a very different one from theirs.  I am not trying to shed a negative light on my family or hometown, I am simply processing my memories through my writing... and this is a gift that I will not take for granted.  I know that as I continue to expand the stories, the more the positive will surface.  It takes time.

Sharing the process is what this blog is about... I know so many artists, musicians, and writers who are practicing, waiting to feel adequate to perform and make their work public.  I am confident that within months I will look back at some of what I have created, blushing with embarrassment... But I will recognize that work for what it is- part of a process.  

"Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the rest of the staircase," Martin Luther King, Jr.

...My eldest brother is gay.  This has not been a secret for nearly ten years.  I was living in New York, struggling, when he sent me, my parents, and our other brother letters.  It did not come as a surprise to any of us... except my mother, who promptly bought a plane ticket and lived off the grid for a month in a small town in Mexico with missionary friends.

"It's my fault.  I was never around babies.  I didn't know what I was doing," my mother cried.

My brothers are eleven months apart in age.  I doubt there is any data, even in the most homophobic of beliefs that would assert that my mother could have done anything to influence his sexuality within his first year of life.  Nevertheless, she wanted to take credit somehow.  In her house, I was horrified to find books given to her by the church entitled things like So Your Child Thinks He is Gay.  I often think to myself I should write her a self-help book to handle who I am was well; So Your Child Thinks She's a Musician... an Artist... a Writer... Unmarried at 30 and not giving you grandchildren... At least my brother and his partner both have stable careers and two beautiful adopted daughters.

...It has been many years since my brother and his partner made their union legally binding, and they have a good relationship with all of my family, including my mother.  She underwent a lot of humbling and accepted that she did not have that much influence over who her children grew up to be.  She has become a better listener.  She pays more attention to the words that she uses to talk to us rather than expecting us to read her mind.  She has really blossomed as a mother, in a way that I never expected she would...

Someday I will have children, and when I do, I will be grateful that I waited until after I learned these lessons through her.  She did most of the hard work, and someday it will be up to me to remember and act accordingly...

Tomorrow I will not be who I am today, and yet I am always the same little girl I was in my youth...

Today I simply have to trust myself... The people who have been in my life many years are surprised to see who I have become.  I needed a great deal of distance away from them before I could begin to emerge from my shell and reveal the person I am now.  I can not return to that shell.  I can not regress into that person who was so afraid to be noticed.

I am apologetic that certain details may not flatter certain friends... But they are true, and they are integral to my state of mind and story.  There is so much more information that I have avoided publishing- because it is not essential.  Stories that are not my own to share- and I hope that fact can give some consolation to anyone offended.

...I am extremely grateful to Victor for allowing me to publish recent events.  In retrospect, a few of my last posts were really testing his sincerity in giving me permission.  But it is such experience that will help me learn to not act manipulatively in the future.

When I gave speech therapy to babies under three years old, I would watch them struggle to express their needs and wants.  In the process, they would often throw enough of a tantrum to receive some sort of reinforcing reward; food, toys, attention... As this process repeated, again and again, the child would learn the fastest way to receive something good was to throw a fit.  I never realized it until recently... But that is how my behavior had become manipulative.  I knew I was rigid and irritable.  I did not know I was manipulative.  I simply got my way a lot, and I assumed things should be my way- a lot.  While I can not undo what I did in the past, unknowingly, I can not go on making those mistakes again in the future, knowing what I do now.

There is so much more than the words I say/write.  I want my thoughts, actions, feelings, and words to be congruent.  I want my intentions to be purely stated... but sometimes my mind plays tricks on me, and I do not know its ulterior motives until later.  I am trying to believe I am important but not any more important than anyone else.  So, please, be patient with me, as I learn... I do learn.