The Kind Naturopaths prescribed me some herbal and vitamin supplements to help support my adrenal glands, help me recover from depression, and provide a little energy boost. I take all of them in the morning with food, and have the option of taking additional Adrenal Support and Active B-Complex in the afternoon when I feel a dip in my energy. I started taking them this morning and I do feel a little extra charge of energy and clarity. I'd love it if that became the norm. But I really have no idea, today, what the new normal will be. I'll keep you posted!
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Last week, the Kind Naturopaths prescribed some herbal and vitamin supplements as well as a new way for me to eat - Leptin Food Lists. It's a diet of primarily protein and produce, excluding starchy vegetables, grains, and legumes. I did a big grocery shopping for the week on Saturday with my new lists and have started in on the cooking. Roasted and steamed vegetables, baked fish and mini-frittatas, and chopped salad fixings and mixed nuts and tossed each into Mason jars. It's all beautiful. Good for me. And time consuming! What the heck! It's not obvious to me how I'm going to keep this up on the usual 2-day weekend as well as rest, catch up with friends, parent, and do other chores. Good self-care is not self-indulgent. It's another kind of work, like tending a garden, or a baby, but yourself. Curious about the Leptin Food Lists? Check them out here.
I went back to the Kind Naturopaths this morning with my Food/Feelings Diary. After reviewing it, they reasserted that my adrenals are in fatigue. This makes sense to me because it's not the first time I've heard it. When Little N was a newborn, Miss A sent her Medical Intuitive/Naturopath to visit me. In the course of our visit she discerned that my hormones were out of whack (duh, postpartum) and that my adrenals were struggling. I took this information to my GP who blew it off saying that I wouldn't have been able to carry a baby to term if there were issues with my adrenals. I yielded to the GP's assessment and went back to work, struggling, but making it. It's now six years later, years of pushing myself through my job, postpartum and major depression, and ultimately this divorce, to hear the same diagnosis. Adrenal Fatigue. The adrenals are two important little glands that sit just above the kidneys. The image below illustrates the many things that stress the adrenals. Most of these stressors are a regular part of my life, reinforcing my perception that the Kind Naturopaths are correct and that heeding their guidelines for healing will work for me. The next steps include: an overhaul of my diet - supported by a list of good foods as well as recipes for using a crock pot (to make cooking more convenient), herbal supplements to support my adrenals, and methylated B vitamins. Besides helping me to lose the extra weight I'm carrying, this healing plan should also support me in recovering from depression. I go back to the Kind Naturopaths in about a month to check in on how the plan is working, where I'm seeing success, as well as any challenges I'm wrangling. I feel something like hope and relief. Like maybe my adrenals have been calling for attention all this time and we're finally getting to them. Like I have the direction and the team to truly help me heal and feel better in my body. The work is yet to be done, changing my eating is going to be a big challenge, but it's pretty amazing how having support (Kind Naturopaths, Beloved Therapist, Miss A) for this specific work of healing changes my perspective on that work. What once felt too big and impossible, now seems like a task I can start on (baby steps count!). I'm at the Beloved Therapist's office doing a little reading before my appointment. I was encouraged, inspired, and challenged by this passage: Therefore, when a woman changes her life for the better, her entire family (whether or not she has children) generally benefits. She sets the tone. The well-being of the family and of society itself depends upon women becoming and remaining healthy. Part of creating health is understanding the power of female energy and its implication. The health of a woman's loved ones is directly linked to her own personal health. So we owe it to ourselves first to take the time we need to heal. Do I believe that? Do you? Is it truly specific to women's health? Is that sexist or just a fact about women's roles? Does that question matter to me, personally? What are the implications of women's health, globally?
My mom told me about studies regarding divorce that show that a child of divorced parents fares well when the mother is strong and well. That's what I'm working for with Little N. So, for my part, I want this quote to be actually, factually true. I want to see evidence, in my life and in Little N's, that my good health brings good health to him. I want to be a healthy, fully engaged, aware, sensing, expressing, good working me, for him. I want to provide him with at least one example of a person thriving in the world. Imperfect, sure. Fumbling plenty of times. Loving him all the time. Whole and wholly me. My addictions are my armor. Feeling low in mood or energy - grab another cup of coffee. Frustrated with my work or sensing the stress of my coworkers - go outside for a smoke. Lonely, sad, generally lacking power - eat a muffin. My addictions are reactions that mask how I feel so that I can push on with the matter at hand or steal a quick break from it. I imagine that they protect me from the world around me - from that thing or person who is messing with me. But with a little pause and thought, I recognize that my addictions are "protecting" me from me. They block, bypass, or stuff my emotions into a form that I can't perceive. My addictions keep my emotions neatly contained. Oh, but I don't want to be a "neatly contained" person. Granted, I can't have my emotions running roughshod over my life either, but there's got to be a middle ground where I can feel what I feel and express it in a way that works with being an engaged human being interacting with other human beings and getting stuff done. And I don't think we get to pick and choose which emotions we lock away; they stick together. I want to be an emotion-full, juicy person. Someone who perceives her feelings and can live in them. I want to recognize and understand other people's feelings and be able to empathize and support folks without taking their emotions on as my own. I want to cultivate my creativity and connections and all that rich, succulent life that emotions sustain. I think I'm on the right path for this. I already have the Beloved Therapist and the Kind Naturopaths eager to help me take on these challenges. The diet diary has opened my eyes to the relationship between my food and my feelings. I plan to continue the log to include when I drink coffee and when I smoke. Initially, it will be a project of awareness - noticing the feelings that lead to each action. Then, I will grow into choosing healthier actions to respond to or even express the feelings. All of this is part of my self care. Shedding my addictions fosters a healthier, happier me, which further equips me to tend a healthier, happier world through my family, my community, and the bigger issues I participate in. The naturopaths gave me a homework assignment at my last appointment. For 2 weeks, I'm keeping a log of what I eat and how I feel. It's become a useful exercise for me in learning to feel my feelings and start to understand why I eat what I eat when I eat it, as well as my "reasons" for smoking. Here are some of my observations, so far:
But the exercise has done more than just help me realize some fairly typical dieting tips. In the act of jotting down how I feel, I've let my symptoms catch up to me a little bit and tell me something about how I'm living. Even if I still skip breakfast, or dive in the candy jar, or reach for a cigarette, I'm noticing when and why these things happen. That noticing provides information that I'm otherwise masking and blasting past in the course of my average, "survivalist", day.
Last year at about this time I compiled a list titled "self care for major depression" on my blog. Seems like I've known what's good for me all along…. Here's where I'm at this year:
I don't imagine a utopian lifestyle for myself where I can nap whenever I'm tired and cry whenever I'm sad (like, not at work). But I do think that the noticing calls me back in touch with my body and emotions so that I can treat myself well as much as possible. The other day, my ex made a crack about someone having a "tiny, tiny Pat Robertson" in their head. I replied that I, too, have him in my head. Pat Robertson brought me to Jesus when I was 3 years old watching the 700 Club. Robertson, and his culture, are still in my head. They're a couple of things I am trying to shed from my formative years. What to keep and what to shed from our growing up years and the people that love us… It's a big topic worthy of a lot more than a single blog post so I won't attempt to cover every facet and nuance here. But I will say that I'm trying to shed my -isms (dualism, racism, classism) and hot topics (sexuality, religion, money) that keep me separate from other people and from myself. There's a great quote from Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior that goes something like, "I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for paradoxes." I first read this book about 20 years ago and this quote stood out to me back then. Today, it continues to inspire and challenge me, especially as I work with the Beloved Therapist to shed some of my limiting beliefs that hold me back from making changes in my life, connecting with other people, and experiencing more joy in living. I am also reminded of the Death card in the Motherpeace Tarot. It refers to transformation and change in our lives, not so much chosen but thrust upon us. The symbols of the skeleton in fetal position, the fallen leaves, and the snake all point to rebirth, new seasons of living, new forms of being. This image resonates deeply for me at this phase of my life. While I chose the divorce, I didn't choose the circumstances that led to it and I'm still making my way through the changes its initiated. But it's kind of exciting. A new life rolls out in front of me as I navigate single motherhood and co-parenting as well as broader ideas like my health, how I do relationships, where I find my worth, and what my good work in the world can be. Shedding the forms that built our identities and drafted our mental maps of the world is a big job. Sometimes painful. Sometimes exhilarating. I guess we start this work in adolescence as we pull away from our parents and maybe revisit it as we enter new phases of change in our lives. I'm still in the throes of transition, itchy, wiggling, pulling free of old skin that gets stuck in places. I can't thoroughly perceive the new me that I will be. And while many emotions accompany this work (delight, anxiety, grief…) I am in awe of the process and of the human ability to be transformed. - this Brought to me by this - Oh, I'd forgotten the freedom and immediacy, the speedy access to things I love, that only a car can provide! Here it is Mother's Day morning, Little N is with his dad, and I am spontaneously slipping into my car (MY CAR) and driving down to the beach for some blessed, beautiful, salty breeze, sandy toes, cold coffee and a cigarette time at the beach, alone. Last summer the beach meant solace from a loveless, downward spiraling, riddled with incompatibilities, the end-is-near marriage. Little N could play freely and safely along the shore. I would finally feel my lungs open wide with deep breaths of ocean air and I'd relax. Life simplified to the rhythm of the waves and the call of the gulls.
This summer I hope for some of that same simplicity, comfort, and joy that only hours at the beach gives me and Little N. While the divorce is still in process, a new beginning is already progressing and it should be baptized with sand and waves and child's play. All this via a sweet little 2000 Toyota Corolla that another family didn't need anymore for their adventures. Now it and its new adventures are ours. Yesterday was my New Patient appt at the naturopath's office. They were supposed to draw my blood but couldn't because I was (am?) dehydrated. I knew I was thirsty and my lips were chapped and my skin was itchy but dehydrated? To the point where they can't siphon a drop of blood out of my (apparently) teeny tiny veins? Well, huh. So instead we talked. A lot. About me. It was similar to therapy but with a little more prompting from the care professionals. I got both naturopaths for this appointment and it was fun and funny to watch their interaction. One with a sheet of paper and pen, the other tapping away on her laptop as I answered their questions about every ding dang thing my body does. Then they'd chime in with what they thought the symptom meant. "Adrenals" "Yup, her adrenals are spent" back and forth they'd ping pong the questions, interpretations, and information. I watched the volley - or was I the ball? - and tried to follow along to what it all meant. It meant that things like waking up at 3 in the morning every night for months has to do with my liver, my grief, and my anger. It meant that diving into the candy jar every day at 3 in the afternoon for months has to do with cortisol, adrenals and stress. It meant that preparing to run from a tiger packs pounds on a 21st century woman's body, when that tiger is figurative and the running never ceases. It meant that symptoms, which my very kind, very informative GP never thought to ask for and so I never thought to mention got seen and heard in the light of day. Symptoms that mean something about my health and happiness. Symptoms that point to challenges in my body, mind, heart, and the way I live. It meant that I've paused, a little, and let these symptoms catch up to me (my figurative tiger? or maybe just his growl and threat) so I actually feel kind of crummy right now. Low energy. Emotional. Sensitive. But I think that's ok, because it also meant that I've found my safe cave where the tiger can't really hurt me. It's still prowling about outside. I hear it. I wonder about it. But with these kind women naturopaths I have hope of letting the tiger go on its way and living a fuller life free of him. |
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Out of the Attic
This blog started in 2006
on Blogger as Out of the Attic. I began posting here in April 2014. Please visit the original site for the rest of the story on topics like: |