Mental health is just as important as physical fitness. There are two sides to mental health, and both are equally important: what weighs heavily on your mind and what puts wind in your sails.

Many of us share common mental stressors – time, money, work, emotions, and relationships. Ironically it can be too little or too much of each of these that causes stress. While we are never going to eliminate stress, we can address what do we do to manage it and its affect on our health.

As many humans as exist in the world, there exists as many combinations of answers to mental health concerns. For most diagnosis, medication and talk therapy has been proven to be the best practice. I am not trained as a mental health professional in any way. The information provided here is simply to be a resource for conversations about what has worked to help manage the stressors above to bring joy and lightness to my life and to hear what works for other. To make the daily grind something not just palatable, but something we can look forward too. Some of these ideas might be meditation, learning, or hobbies.

Nights in Rodanthe – Nicholas Sparks

Rating: 3 stars

Cliff Notes: Super cheesy, but sometimes you just need an escape. I loved how the story ended.

Full Summary: The copy of this book that I read is the one where it had the movie characters on the front so the whole time I just pictured Richard Gere, which I generally don’t like to do because I want to use my imagination. Because that is pretty much the point of books, right!?

Anyway, so this was super cheesy – I am not sure how you fall in love like this in a weekend. But how the relationship played out was RIGHT UP MY ALLEY!! I do want to watch the movie so watch for the review of that. I see a new hashtag coming – Book to Movie Adaptation. Hint: The books is always better.

Nights in Rodanthe Nicholas Sparks
By |2019-12-12T19:29:31-05:00June 21st, 2019|Mental Well-being|0 Comments

Songs of the Humpback Whale – Jodi Picoult

Rating: 4 stars

Cliff Notes: Accidental unicorn. This was a reread, but I did not realize it until too far in. I figured if I forgot so much I might as well redo it.

Full Summary: I like how this was written backwards. I remember when I read it the first time that I was confused for quite a bit of the first half of the book. Which is probably why I don’t remember so much of it. This barely counts as a reread.

I like how much this book honors young love. Love when you are a teenager is different. It is often dismissed as puppy love or not “real” love. It might not be a love you can base a future on and God help me if I would have married a person who liked who I was when I was 15 or expected me to stay that poor same young woman. But those first loves are big and deep and real. Jodi Picoult does a wonderful job of presenting it in this novel.

Songs of the Humpback Whale Jodi Picoult
By |2019-12-12T19:29:42-05:00June 20th, 2019|Mental Well-being|0 Comments

A Monk Swimming – Malachy McCourt

Rating: DNF around p 60/300

Cliff Notes: Too scattered for me to get traction with the author’s voice

Full Summary: I think part of the problem I was having was I expected Frank McCourt kind of novel. This memoir was more of a series of humorous anecdotes. I would have liked to shoot the shit with Malachy, but could not really engage in his stories. He would have been a great blogger I bet.

A Monk Swimming Malachy McCourt
By |2019-12-12T19:30:27-05:00June 18th, 2019|Mental Well-being|0 Comments

Quilting

A couple years ago I decided to make a T shirt quilt with all of the leftovers from my youth. My sister in law helped me with that project and it was quite an experience for us both. She is so patient and kind. It took a couple years to get over that, but last year I started sewing again.

In January of this year I started Quilters Academy – Freshman Year at Calla Lilly Quilts in Greensboro. The curriculum is based on Harriet Hargrave techniques and it is PRECISE. Normally I love precision, but it was a learning curve for sure! Classes met once a month and were very homework intensive. After the first class I went to the shop EVERY DAY for 3 weeks trying to sort out various issues and learn what I needed. Now those were some patient ladies. I ripped out more seams in those 3 weeks than I had done in my entire life up to that point.

Fabric Quilting

It is nice to have hobbies away from the computer – even if I do seem like an 80-year old woman or like I should live on the banks of Plum Creek. There is something about the feel of the fabric and the visual of all of the colors and patterns that is soothing to the soul – especially after a long day of looking at spreadsheets and such.

What are your soul saving hobbies?

By |2019-06-12T20:40:06-04:00June 15th, 2019|Mental Well-being|0 Comments

The Pull of the Moon – Elizabeth Berg

Rating: 5 stars

Cliff Notes: I could not put it down and read it in one sitting. Then I was sad it was over. I will be keeping this book.

Full Summary: This one really touched a nerve with me as June is my birthday month, and 2019 is a milestone birthday for me – a milestone that rounds up to 50, the age Nan is in this story. The age she is lamenting in this story. Nan is wrestling with lots of the questions I have been turning over this year. What does it mean to get old? Am I supposed to age gracefully or become a truer version of myself as I age and stop putting up with bullshit?

Why is retirement feared – I often hear of employees who don’t want to retire because they don’t know how they will fill their time. What happens when we get still? They don’t know if they can stand to be with their partner all the time – what happens if we have different interests?

From Nan, The Pull of the Moon

I am not going to lie – I had a hard time between 35 and now. I thought I would be at a different point in my career. Seven years ago I chucked the career I had worked for since I was in 3rd grade straight out the window. I am not going to say that I have never looked back, but I will say several changes in my life have made room for the smaller inside voice to be heard in the stillness. The “dull nudge” that Nan talks about in this book.

“The thought was not in words, it was in the form of a dull nudge. And it was that nudge that got me to find this journal, and get going on this trip. And now, in my own stillness, I hear something. ‘Where have you been?’ my inside body whispers to my outside one. Its sense of outrage is present but dulled by the grief of abandonment. ‘I had ideas, There were things to do. Where did you go?’

Nan, The Pull of the Moon

I still do not think I have landed exactly where I am supposed to be, but I sure am closer than ever. I have a few circles of friends who help with this discovery – trying to excavate creativity, authenticity, and vulnerability. It is challenging, exciting, exhausting and invigorating all at the same time. I am extraordinarily lucky to have a partner who supports this excavation and is not threatened by it in the least (I attribute this partly to waiting until later in life to marry). However, I have had relationships change their look and feel or fall by the wayside altogether.

While I certainly have mourned these relationship changes and second guessed myself (usually in the middle of the night when I cannot sleep for thinking about it), I don’t want to continue to put everyone else ahead of me. Dulling my creative energy to take care of someone else’s needs is not what I am on the Earth for. I am sure my fellow people pleasers can relate. And where are all the pleased people anyway?

The Pull of the Moon Elizabeth Berg
By |2019-12-12T19:30:51-05:00June 14th, 2019|Mental Well-being|0 Comments

More on Book Abandonment

Friends, you will remember that we have discussed the fact that I am a quitter. I have no shame in quitting a book that is not resonating with me. This is not to say that I want to ride unicorns and poop rainbows about all of the books I read. I may have a visceral reaction to a character or a theme or plot device – I am looking at you, We Need to Talk About Kevin. But sometimes that is the author’s purpose – to have that visceral response. To FEEL something. To REACT to something. Not to just passively read words and move onto the next.

I have recently starting reading a book by SARK, an author with the tag line: Creating a Beacon of Hope in a Chaotic World. And I believe books are that as well! They are our beacon of hope, but they do not all need to be finished. Some need to be beautiful and sit on our shelves and make us happy. Some may need to be finished, but not by us. Some need to be finished by us in another chapter of our lives – the book just got to us too soon.

I want to declare that books do not need to be finished to be of value. You can dip into this book, gobble it up, do all the things it suggests, explore every resource, game, and invention, or just lie quietly, smiling at the cover.

It will smile back.

S.A.R.K.
By |2019-12-12T19:06:02-05:00June 12th, 2019|Mental Well-being|0 Comments

Seed Cemetery

Plant some seeds, they said. It is EASY, they said. Pa made it seem so easy on Little House on the Prairie (well, once they found the professor who bought corn in Mankato in the ditch where he crashed, the planting part was easy)! Friends, it is not. Well, not for me it wasn’t.

I took a seed starting class at Guilford Garden Center in February. I am almost hesitant to put a link to their site in this post because my results are so terrible. But alas, I have some things I will try next year, and Christina at the Garden Center talks a lot about gardening being about learning. Boy did I learn!

In the class, we were given the trays, sterile soil, a few seed packets, and plant markers. We watered the soil and between the 10 of us in the class, we took turns introducing our seeds and teaching our classmates about the seeds. What this means in reality is we poured seeds from the packets Christina gave us onto paper plates for our classmates to share, then read seed packet information out loud for everyone. It was a great way to learn how to read said seed packet and understand how to translate the information into practice. Plus we were able to leave with 17 different kinds of vegetables and flowers planted in rows of our 2 trays! All for only $25.

We watered, covered with the plastic lids and watched. And watered and watched. I got heat mats, watered, and watched. And watered and watched. I added lamps, then watered and watched. And watered and watched.

It was really neat to see the progress, and I started making lists and diagrams about where in the yard I was going to put all the new plants I was growing. Then there was some sort of mass suicide in my trays and everyone shriveled up and died.

seed cemetery
Where my seeds go to die. At least until Lucille thinks she sees her ball under one of the trays.

From what I understand, there is a chance a seed or two is still viable. Joe Lamp’l (aka Joe Gardener) recommends just set the trays out and let Nature take her course. So that is what I have done. Part shade because I don’t know what is where – note the plant tags that have all slid around.

Key learnings for next year:

1 – Take the lid off as soon as first shoots come through. I think the death was more related to dampening off than purple capes and Koolaid.

2 – Get brighter bulbs for lamps. I used regular lamps, not grow lights so I will see what kind of stronger bulb I can find next year. Hanging grow lights are not an option for me at this point.

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