Life after Trauma

Breathing Space: taking time for myself

And I, infinitesimal being, drunk with the great starry void . . . 

I wheeled with the stars

my heart broke loose with the wind.

Pablo Neruda

 

 Wind chimes (D. Sharon Pruitt, flickr)

 

As I mentioned in a previous posting, I've been staying at my parent's house for almost a month now. My mother is in a rehab center with an unset fracture in her right hip. I am staying with my dad at my parent's house, which has its moments. For one thing, I've never been a Daddy's girl. Quite the contrary. Dad and I can clash if I'm not careful  - especially when he's anxious, like he is now. So, the past month has been trying in many ways. For one thing, I am rarely in charge of my own time. Mom expects me to spent large amounts of time at the rehab center. On Monday, of this week, she was at the ER again because she wasn't able to swallow. By the time they took an x-ray, however, whatever was lodged in her swallowing tube, had dislodged. Based on her description of what she ate for lunch, the ER doctor thought it was probably a carrot. I call it the "evil carrot."  Anyway, between time spent at the hospital, in doctor's appointments, etc. I am plenty busy with my mom.  At "home", I am the chief cook, laundry doer, medical liaison, and dish washer. What it comes down to is that I have scant time available for myself. I need that time, the way plants need water. 

Some people refer to this space as self-care. Self-care is essential for trauma survivors, people grieving, and people with PTSD; it is certainly essential for me. I have to have quiet "processing" time or I start to feel anxious or -given the small space in my mom's room at rehab - as though I am suffocating. One of my favorite ways to enjoy quiet time, is to lie in the guest room, which is furnished with much of the furniture that was in my grandparents bedroom in Kentucky - and listen to my dad's wind chimes. He has about a dozen of them hanging from trees in the wooded backyard and on windy days or nights I can hear their peaceful chimes up in my room. I love the sound of the wind, the wind chimes, and the whistle of the train that passes several times during the night. 

 

 

Other ways I practice self-care

• Going barefoot 
• Eating fresh fruit
• Listening to music
• Reading poetry
• Talking to friends and family via email or phone
• Writing family and friends
• Walking

All of these ways are good ones. Little things, like going barefoot in the house, help ground me, while "big" things like going for walks and reading poetry give me comfort and recharge my batteries. Yesterday, I went for a walk and saw, among other things, snow drops blooming, a disappearing snow man embedded with leaves, and heard birds calling high up in the trees. The sun was out and for 25 minutes, all I needed to think about was breathing in the fresh air, enjoying the wind, and moving my feet one after the other. Most days, I take time to read poetry and most days I discover a new poem to love, like the one by Neruda above.

I'm also reading three books that are rich sources for ideas on self-care and self-compassion.

Saved by a Poem

Healing Walks for Hard Times

The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion

And, at night, listening to music feeds my soul. Here's one of my favorite "comfort" songs.

 

 

Simple, uncomplicated Christmases

To perceive Christmas through its wrapping becomes more difficult every year.

E.B. White 

         Yukon winter (flickr)
          
Good or bad, we've all survived another Christmas. To be honest, this Christmas was pretty good for me. Parts of it were even wonderful.  Other parts, like the hectic last minute preparations and the sadness about not hearing from my daughter, weren't so good. However, as lovely as Christmas in Vancouver can be, it can't compare to Christmas in the Yukon. In the Yukon, you don't have to fight to keep your Christmas simpler and less commercial because, unless you live in Whitehorse, it just is simpler. Outside of Whitehorse, there are few places to go shopping, no traffic jams, no noisy shopping malls. Well, you get the picture. For those of us who delight in the simpler side of Christmas, the Yukon is Christmas paradise and, for me, bring to mind the words of one of my favourite Christmas carols, In the Bleak Midwinter. "In the bleak midwinter . . . Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone/Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow/In the bleak midwinter, long ago."

 

In 1990, I spent a wonderful Christmas in Ross River - a tiny community in the Central Yukon. It was just me and my husband and our two cats and our wood stove. We cut a Christmas tree ourselves, as we always did and put up it in the dining room so that it wasn't too close to the wood stove in the living room and decorated it with the small selection of ornaments we owned in those days. We went to the school's Christmas concert, which everyone in Ross attends, and on Christmas Eve we went to Midnight Mass at the log church nestled amongst trees not far from the river. The priest had a small organ that he played for the hymns and a voice that would have made the sled dogs he kept staked out near his house howl, if they could have heard it. As I remember it, there was something about the out-of-tune enthusiasm of his singing that was truly endearing. 

              Wood stove, Gord McKenna, flickr

Mostly, though, we cocooned at home by our huge old cast iron wood stove. When this stove was stoked, it cranked out heat that penetrated clear to your bones.  We cuddled up to the stove and played game after game of Scrabble. We also took "bedroom" breaks and afterwards lay in bed listening to the the sounds of ravens calling, if it was daytime, or a truck passing far away on one of the village's few roads, if it was night. In my memories, it is just us, the wood stove, Scrabble, and love. It was perfect.

 

                Quebec City, Helene Villeneuve, flickr

Meanwhile, about a decade before my perfect Yukon Christmas, a friend was spending her perfect Christmas in Quebec City where she lived in an adorable little apartment with narrow windows that overlooked the garden of a convent. Sometime before Christmas, she had discovered money in a bank account that she had forgotten about and bought a splendid red wool coat that was both stylish and warm. On Christmas Eve, she and several friends gathered at her apartment where they enjoyed homemade eggnog. Then they put on their coats and walked through the convent's garden in softly falling snow to go to a concert of Christmas music. "Every part of that evening was pure and simple," she told me recently. "It was filled with humble, shared pleasures and the joy of high-spirited youth."  She also told me that, try as she might, she's never been able to duplicate the simple beauty of that Quebec City Christmas. We both agreed that part of the secret was that both Christmases took place when we were younger. Also, because both Christmases were spent far away from our families of origin, there were few expectations. We were free to do what we wanted to do: no one cared what clothes we wore, what we said to our "sibling, mother, father, aunt" (feel free to fill in the blank here) or judged the presents we gave.

I'm not suggesting that Christmases without family are the best. In fact, one of my other favourite Christmas memories is of the first Christmas my son spent at my parents. There was a small "herd" of similarly-aged cousins to run around with and everyone was there: my parents, my three siblings, their significant others and children and my aunt. My childless sister gave noisy presents to the children and my mother wailed in dismay, "And what I want to know is who gave these children kazoos."  Our son - then 18 months old - almost choked on grapes when he snuck back into the dining room and began cramming grapes into his mouth one after the other without chewing them. Thankfully, my husband discovered him in time and made him spit the grapes out. Even though that was a joyful Christmas, it can be healing and wonderful to also have those quiet, low expectation Christmases that many people remember so fondly. 

What is your favourite Christmas?  Why? What was special about it?