May is Mental Health Month
Let's Tie-in Self-Care Strategies and Soar
Sometimes our attention goes to a situation we must handle immediately. Everything else in our orbit takes a backseat to this main event focus. We stop seeing the reality of the world around us because we simply don’t have the bandwidth. When I was diagnosed with a rare disease last November, I became engulfed in a world of tests and a 2-year treatment protocol. It was shocking, physically challenging and of course frightening.
My wonderful doctor promised the first four weeks were the most difficult. I understood intellectually but had no context. Now of course as I am close to 100% remission, I have experience, context and perspective. When your body cooperates, the protocol drops from weekly hospital visits to one drug once a month. I can handle that with ease and joy.
And no, it isn’t cancer. It’s a rare disease tossed into the ‘orphan disease’ category. A new world I hadn’t realized existed. Three thousand people in the United States will be diagnosed with my disease this year. Seventy percent will be men, mostly African American. No one knows the cause. I’m lucky it responds to a protocol for another widely researched disease. In fact, I ain’t nothin but lucky and grateful.
Uncover the Mirrors!
About 6 weeks ago my wonderful assistant and I were working in a home and she turned to me and told me I needed to do something about my appearance. How I felt about myself was reflected in my shabby appearance. My hair needed to be cut and colored. My nails looked like I was a gardener or a contractor. Every time I looked into the mirror I saw somebody I didn’t recognize. I was losing Regina. I can’t begin to thank Kathryn for lovingly speaking the truth to me.
She took it a step further. She gave me hair color for my birthday! As I took steps to look better, I did indeed feel better. Ironically, I had said to my doctor at the start: “I don’t want to look like somebody else when the treatments end. I want to be saving Regina’s life for the entire journey.” This had come up when I gained 10 pounds of edema in the first three weeks. No longer was I built like Olive Oil! Suddenly I had tree stumps for legs and a bloated, unrecognizable face and abdomen. Water pills came to my rescue.
The Concept of Self-Care
I hope during the month of May you will regard self-care as a critical component of your mental health & well-being and not some ego driven way to pamper yourself without cause. It’s imperative to stay anchored and feel whole. How else will we have anything to give to others? This is especially true for mothers. We have to remember the rule on airplanes: give yourself oxygen before you help your child.
I have created a list of ways to care for yourself. Some require an expenditure of money while others are free. I hope you try them all, add your own ideas in the comments and at month’s end let me know if you created any new rituals out of these suggestions. Do you feel better about yourself, life, or your situation? Let us know. We can grow strong if we stay in communicative community.
Free Self-Care Ideas:
· Walk. Explore your neighborhood. Drive to a new one in your city. Take a bus or train to the next town and explore.
· Sleep & rest. There’s nothing more powerful than feeling refreshed from a good night’s sleep. If you have difficulties in this arena, you can explore the world of options on the web.
If this is a chronic problem, I would start with a visit with my doctor. Are your hormones changing, for example? There may be an easy solution at hand. And it may be you need a different doctor or a specialist. It took 6 months of testing at Cedars to identify my diagnosis. I was given a possible diagnosis that was not only incorrect but would have cost me my life. Fortunately that specialist cared more about me than his ego. He asked me to see a different specialist in another field to confirm his guess. She did not agree. Testing continued and saved my life.
If your M.D. has no solutions, think outside the healing box to acupuncture, naturopathy, chiropractic, Ayurveda or homeopathy. Don’t give up because one man or woman has limited thinking!
· Read a book
· Journal for pleasure
· Listen to Music
· Take a hot Bath or shower. Use new products.
· Light a candle
· Disconnect from social media
· Dance
· Call family & friends to reconnect. Set up a periodic Zoom to keep the connection strong rather than random.
· Find ways to engage in community with strangers (volunteer) or your loved ones (monthly supper gathering)?
· Eat more fruits & veggies. Incorporate as many organic varieties as possible. Remember that frozen veggies are often more nutrient dense than fresh because they were frozen closer to picking and have not been transported thousands of miles while fresh by truck(s). The only vegetable I only buy fresh is Brussel Sprouts. The frozen always cook up mushy.
· Take up or renew a hobby like knitting, crochet, needlepoint or quilting. Consider making your holiday gifts more personal and do the work this summer sitting under a tree listening to bird song.
Try yoga, floor Pilates or some other from of exercise that you can find on You Tube. No gym membership required.
Self-Care with a Price Tag:
· Take a class at the local community college.
· Try a class in painting or ceramics. Make effort not talent the controlling factor. The fun can be doing something you will never be good at. Settle for incremental growth. It’s more empowering than you imagine.
· Get a hair cut
· Color your hair. Beauty schools often offer discounts for new grads to have practice sessions.
· Indulge in a manicure/pedicure. You don’t need the spa pedicure or gel nails just get the basic!
· Try a massage. Again a school may offer discounts so students get to practice.
· Have you neglected your body? Pap smears, dental exams, vision checks and colonoscopies save lives. Be pro-active so you don’t face a costly lesson down the line. And yes, some of these services are offered by schools at a discount. If you live near a large teaching hospital, they may have a low-cost clinic. You probably have to produce financial docs to show you qualify but that’s a small price to save your life and spare your family.
· Go to a day spa. Free day passes are sometimes offered. Check on line before you pop in.
· Plan a weekend away with your partner or best friend in a new location
· Buy a new cookbook and experiment with an unknown cuisine
Get therapy. I did therapy with three different gifted, extraordinary women over 18 years. I would have nothing to teach you had I embraced the wounded inner child I was as my adult self. I don’t judge you. I have walked a mile in your shoes.
And, just as with medical doctors, if you don’t connect with your therapist, change. I fired two over the years. I felt they needed therapy more than I did! and I
From the Inside to the Outside!
· Do a little research about the gut microbiome and start eating foods that feed it. The key word here is ‘fermented.’ Not all sauerkraut for example is equal. It’s got to be fermented not pickled to get the microbiome boost.
· Avocados are full of healthy fat that will nourish your skin from the inside. Beautiful skin is as much an inside job as it is due to the right products on your skin.
· Drink lots of fresh water. Add a spritz of lemon or lime but eschew sodas as much as possible. While we’re at it, omit deep fried, fast food or prepared foods as much as possible.
And now a word about …Communication
I harped on communication in a recent Substack because it’s an art form that few master. If you thought my assistant was harsh, you missed the point. She has known me for decades. Suddenly the woman she was working with was someone she didn’t recognize. She suffers from a chronic disease and knows the link between appearance and how you feel intimately.
I knew from the expression on her face, her tone of voice and our history that she had only good intentions. And, let’s face it, I have eyes! I had noticed the slip in my appearance and accepted it as not important. Dealing with side effects had moved to number one. I lost sight of the fact and the outside and the inside are permeable with one affecting the other at all times. No matter what you know or even teach you may need a loving reminder that you are off course. We’re human beings. We all get course corrected from time to time. Thank God we’re loved!
Let’s look at some ideas to guide your communications with others from Buddhism. I am not a Buddhist but I honor enriching and empowering ideas from all paths and philosophies.
Buddhism advises us to pause before we speak and ask three questions. Is what we are about to say:
· True
· Necessary
· Kind
1. Your truth may be that your teenage daughter’s purple hair will ruin her life chances for a great job and financial advancement. It may simply be an expression of rebellion. We all have to individuate and discover who we are separate from our parents. What is the universal truth in what you wish to communicate separate from your personal truth which may be colored by other factors? Purple hair is just a benign example. Don’t get caught up in a detail.
2. Will what you are about to say save a life? Empower a life? Is it wisdom from your personal experience or is it prejudice from the same source? We don’t learn from being coddled. We learn from experience. It’s often painful but you know what they say: once bitten, twice shy. And who is to say that some experience that seems painful to us won’t set another person on a path to a profession they might not have considered?
3. This is perhaps the most import consideration: is what you are about to say kind? I made dinner for a friend and asked how he liked the meal. By the time he had nit-picked every detail, I wanted to hit him in the head with the frying pan the meal had been prepared in! He's a meat eater with no allergies and I prepared a vegan, gluten-free menu. You would have thought I had an exotic meal trucked in from Mars. Be kind with your communication and above all be grateful.
Your Turn!
I intended this to be brief and it has gone on the length of an epic novel. LOL. I am driven to help you live your most Mindful life in an environment that nurtures and supports you. I am the fountain of ideas but you must pick & choose what is right and useful for your life. I’d love to read your thoughts and ideas in the comments. I bet you have self-care rituals I have never considered. Go ahead. Enrich my life.
