Category Archives: Advice

Better

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ball of twineBetter is a funny word.

It can designate improvement (“I’m feeling better than I did yesterday.”) or it can say you’re done with what ails you.

“Do you still have the flu?”

“No, I’m better, now.”

I’ve been dealing with depression in some form or other since June of 2010 (When it smacked me upside the head, and that ‘others-have-it’ problem became mine).

The first two years were pretty solidly bad depression. I started with my first counselor within two months of symptoms showing (which I’m given to understand is unusually good. I credit a combination of Becky pushing me, and good insurance coverage).

I went through a couple counselors before finding a good fit (and no longer have the good insurance), but I recognized counseling’s benefit, even when it was uncomfortable.

Side note/pet peeve:

Being able to receive instruction or derive benefit from “less-than-ideal” should not be a life-sentence to be stuck with it and “appreciate what you have.” If anything, the miss-matched individual ought to get extra points for humility and the openness to persist into usefulness. {GRRR}

What I ran into a lot was an attitude my chronic-illness/chronic-pain enduring friends continue to face:

Suffering can be very isolating, because [outsiders] are often afraid of seeing people suffer in ways they can’t fix. Sometimes things aren’t ok, and aren’t likely to be ok any time soon, if ever.

We are surrounded by people who don’t want to see us suffer (this is a good thing) but who may also (not good) end up in their own denial about the situation, and try to bring us with them.

If we refuse to come along for the ride (nope, already worked that stage of grieving), we become the difficult ones, and have to deal with disappointed other-people along with our disappointed selves. But there is a better way.

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January 1, 2014

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Focus is a matter of deciding what things you’re not going to do.

— John Carmack

Image courtesy of Gerla Brakkee via stock.xchng

Image courtesy of Gerla Brakkee via stock.xchng

I am |this| close to making a resolution to not learn anything new this year.

But that would be silly.

I’ve made “not” resolutions before (like NOT buying books). That didn’t really work/happen/exist very long…

And I didn’t feel bad about it, either. HA!

Last night I updated my Writing page, and for the first time actually made a list of what I’m interested in– what I research, pursue and actively learn about. And it wasn’t a mile long!

Though I admit to some deceptively concise labels.

I used to think this complete listing was not possible, since I’ve watched myself latch on to any new idea that enters my line of sight. I’ll chew and taste and explore– and that willingness has sometimes made me feel like and intellectual toddler who needs to be protected from my own curiosity.

That unnamed image actually made me vulnerable to the type of person who was more interested in telling me how to think than strengthening my own ability.

It was my untrained, but still existing, ability to resist this attitude that taught me I wasn’t an intellectual toddler.

Image courtesy of Mihai Tamasila via stock.xchng

Image courtesy of Mihai Tamasila via stock.xchng

I was an explorer– an occupation which requires intense levels of maturity, initiative, adaptability and courage, words that, until last year, never entered my mind as ways to describe myself.

Much of my adult life has alternated between delighted and frantic exploring. I see something I don’t know, and rather than just enjoy it’s existence, I need to understand it– to explain it– to participate in it. Sometimes I feel behind and deficient until I am up to speed with usable information about whatever just hit my radar.

[I should qualify this to say not everything-everything is this way. I always love it when an experience completely “misses” that absorption instinct– fly-tying, bell-choir, crochet, singing alto. It allows me to absorb– and release!– that topic in a completely different way.]

Sometimes, if I cannot deliver an extemporaneous lecture on any topic (no qualifications– any topic) that leaves me feeling deficient.

Today I’m declaring that unrealistic.

I have my brief (deep) list, it encompasses more to study than I can ever use up , and it provides quite enough meat and sugar for my life and brain.

I don’t need to keep looking for new things to know.

~ ~ ~

Image courtesy of Richard McCroskey via stock.xchng

Image courtesy of Richard McCroskey via stock.xchng

For many years I have been in the pursuit of the “right” system– that magical *something* that will make life “work” where it hasn’t before.

I’m convinced such a system exists– there are so many books about organization and time-management with great (This WORKS!) reviews– but I think now that this system is something as effective as medication for brain-based disorders. That is, about 40% effective at best.

40% is a pretty high number, and nothing to dismiss– That is a LOT of people with improved lives. Unfortunately, if any of those lots-of-people found their peace (or method) without difficulty or pain, their level of understanding and compassion or grace is diminished toward the remaining 60%.

The rest of us must learn to live in ways that schedules and methods may inform, but not master.

In 2013, my future-focused, planning-addicted self began to ask:

What if this life didn’t change? What if this is who I am, what I’ve got, and it’s everyday? Then what? Would I choose this?

I’ve found this way of thinking to be incredibly helpful for me. It actually keeps things from getting too big. As someone who goes meta really quick, it’s about the only thing that’s ever been effective:

One day at a time.

Take food as an example. We all KNOW that we’re not supposed to “diet,” as in change the way we eat, just for a little while, with the plan to return to our old ways.

If we want to be healthier we must find a way (meals, timing) to eat that we are willing to continue forever.

One day at a time.

So this is where I’m beginning the new year:

I write. Every day. Already. I don’t need a resolution to do that.

Sort of like I eat. I don’t have to plan for it to happen.

I do have to have some sort of  plan if I want to reach certain goals, but this plan doesn’t have to look like anybody else’s.

The beauty of a plan, of any plan that’s worked for me, I mean, is how many decisions are already made.

And this loops back in to What you already know.

Decisions that don’t need to be made.

I do have goals, because I know where I want to end up.

But the difference this year is that I’m focusing exclusively on what I already know to do.

I know a whole. heap. of a lot. I have had experiences that worked, and have learned from things that didn’t work.

Image courtesy of Farquois via stock.xchng

Image courtesy of Farquois via stock.xchng

For the month of January, I am doing many things (like pressing on with the writing plan I began in October), but counting the days, I am returning to a few food principles that I know work for me.

  1. I’m writing down what I eat– holding myself accountable for the good decisions I know I should make.
  2. Decide that every every meal (or snack!) I eat has to include protein.
  3. I will still eat deserts (while following #2), but only on the weekends.

These are all things I’ve done and sustained before. This is not an “experiment” I hope will work. These are proven strategies I’ve been too [fill-in-the-blank] to stick with.

So here it is: not a new-year-resolution, but a plan to remind myself

I have enough. already.

It’s Not Me, It’s You: Find a Therapist That Fits (Wyn Magazine)

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In the darker corners of my depression, having to look for Counselor Number Three gave me additional evidence that I was a failure.

From my current perspective, stronger and more healthy, I can look back and understand I met two more people, professionals, but limited as all humans are, who were not the best match for my personality and needs.

In the summer of 2010, our house had been on the market for two months with a realtor who disrespected me, but we were in a six-month contract and that was that. Because of newly diagnosed allergies, my children and I were restricted in our choice of foods, and I had to learn how to feed us all while they were a constant dripping-tap of complaining at the change.

There was more to the overwhelm I felt than those details, but those were the challenges I could see.

A friend frequently had an interesting tidbit or observation she’d gleaned from her time with her counselor, and many times she urged me to find a professional listener of my own. She felt I should nail down what was troubling me, because really, existentially, it couldn’t be a self-centered realtor, whiny kids, and giving up my favorite foods.

Apparently I wasn’t shallow enough for that.

Thank God for encouraging Friends!

Read the rest at wynmag.com

Life & Fiction: Pick a Genre

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Life & Fiction is my monthly column at Wyn Magazine where I apply my experience with Story, reading, and the writing life to the broader goal of mindful, healthy living.

When you go to counseling for the first time, it’s useful—for you and the therapist—to know why.

If you have something specific that drove you to counseling, it can help direct the beginning of your time together. The focus may change, but it’s a starting place.

I think of it as giving yourself a genre to work from.

In literature, or at least, in submitting a book for publication, you need to get more specific than “Dystopian-Paranormal-Fantasy-Romance with SciFi elements and a Chick Lit feel.” I can already imagine the type of novel that would fit that description, and I think it would be crazy-fun to write, but a bookstore, and therefore a publisher, will have to ask, “Where it would be shelved?”

In the same way, recognizing your issue down to a very finite level will probably give you a great deal of personal relief and even satisfaction, but being too specific will also limit the type of help you may receive.

Read more at wynmag.com

How to Cope with Retriggering Your Breakdown (Wyn Magazine)

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Co-written by me and Kristen Kansiewicz, a Licensed Mental Health Counselor on staff at East Coast International Church outside Boston, this article addressed something all our Wounded Healers at Wyn Magazine experienced as they wrote their stories of falling apart for our inaugural issue in June.

If you are one of the millions of women who have experienced an emotional breakdown at some point in your life, you may find that from time to time you re-experience that low point.

Often in the process of healing and recovery, you work through stressors and emotions and eventually feel whole again. There is a relief and gratitude and maybe even the assumption That’s finally over, now I can get on with my life.

Months or perhaps years later, you may find yourself talking with a friend or writing about your experience of breakdown and that moment of reflection causes all those feeling to return as if the problem never ended.

Read the rest at wynmag.com

Why Work?

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Becky Castle Miller initiated a good conversation at her blog the other day.

small melody I asked my three kids (a set older than Becky’s– her oldest is six-months behind my youngest) and they gave the same answers her kids gave: work is for money/food/good things (Daddy) or to make our lives better/healthier/more-comfortable (Mama).

 {I was delighted that they’ve internalized that I work here at home was both work and a benefit to them.}

Actually, that was the string of answers after Melody spouted the first answer to my question: Why do Mama and Daddy work so hard?

Because we don’t!

I hooted, laughed and banged the wall with my hand. I think that’s my griping lately coming back out her mouth. And it’s true.

But after several minutes and variations on the trios of meaning above, I said there was one more very. important. reason their parents work:

We both choose work that we love.Small grinding

I told them, because this is something I want planted deep and firm in their soft hearts, that what they enjoy doing can be a real path to God’s will for them. I asked them what they love, what makes them excited and energetic and ready to jump into a project.

My throat tightened at the explosion of delight in their bubbling descriptions.

“Keep watching those things,” I said. “Ask questions when you meet someone with that job. Try out play that matches what you enjoy.”

The moment passed and everyone returned to eating (or ignoring) their lunch, but the conversation has begun here.

Delight is an acceptable measure of direction.small Natasha

 

How do I Become a Better Writer?

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Image courtesy of Sias van Schalkwyk via stock.xchng

That wasn’t exactly the question she asked me.

More it was, “He was awesome. How did that happen?!”

I didn’t really have time to research an answer, and part of me felt, Hey, I‘m not a teacher, how do I know?

But thankfully I was stopped by a phrase that popped instantly into my head.

Tonguepolishing.

Or should that be two words?

Tongue Polished.

The designation refers to old, old stories that are elegant in their simplicity, and may even contain absurdities that are so entrenched that that they are simply accepted without any attempt at explanation.

Folktales. My little corner of enjoyment in the esoteric.

Image courtesy of Ove Tøpfer via stock.xchng

In our own, more prosaic, lives, we still experience the tongue-polished story.  These are the stories that make up the Family Lexicon.

A Lexicon is like a dictionary (a collection of words), but more specialized. Linguistically it’s a catalog of a given language’s words. The way I use it here is just to give a name to that collection every family grows as it creates its own culture with specialized language, stories and lessons learned.

The longer a story’s been around, the longer it’s been told and re-told, the more streamlined it gets. Often it loses some of the random, irrelevant facts. Frequently the teller is no longer recalling the event itself, but rather the best words with which to describe it.

But that’s not the case, at first.

Something happens (Baby born before we get to the hospital!) and you talk about it because it’s extraordinary, an adventure. But what do you tell? what part did you play in the story? What words you use are not usually the main thing you’re focused on. In those first days, you’re only remembering.

It’s at this point you may begin to see there’s more to storytelling– and, therefore, writing– than most of us think about at first.

There are four levels of work involved in writing, and this, I believe, is part of what complicates the process of learning how to write. It’s this 4-step process, unidentified, that I think gets people in trouble.

  1. Image courtesy of D. Sharon Pruitt via stock.xchng

    Idea generation. You have to come up with something to write ABOUT.

  2. Translation from idea into language.
  3. Translation from head-language to language-on-the-page (this essentially means holding onto the words you’ve come up with long enough to get them onto the page).
  4. The physical act of recording the words.

Some people get stuck at step-1, and that has almost the easiest solution. Even if you never know what to write about, you might be awesome once you get started.

If this is you, there are all sorts of books for sale and even free options on the internet to get you started: just Google writing prompts.

For step-2 (image into language), assume that time will be involved. Give yourself permission to make a few running jumps.  Throw some words at the idea (like spaghetti at a wall) and see what sticks. If you’re a natural talker, use that facility with language that you already have. Talk to a friend, talk to yourself or your pet. Talk into a recorder of some kind, and see if you like what it sounds like later.

This is what you do in that early stage of storytelling. You say what you remember. Other people remember it differently, or your listener has a question. The next time you tell the story you shape the transmission differently, based on what you learned from your earlier audiences.

You’re half-way through the process, and it’s something you’ve done all your life!

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Making Characters interesting — Before they do anything.

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image courtesy of Sias van Schalkwyk via stock.xchng

Lindorm, Part One, is essentially a Beauty-and-the-Beast story, where the beauty is teenage single mom, and the beast is a dragon.

Short story writer Kurt Vonnegut says that every character needs to want something, “Even if it is only a glass of water.”

In a novel, that wanting, the characters’ goals, usually corresponds to the plot of the book, and those goals are what make the action happen, but in this series of lectures (sorry, I don’t remember which one) the teacher urged pre-existing goals for your characters.

This concept brought a much-needed life into my main characters.

For one thing, pre-existing goals let them be proactive, interesting, believably awesome people before they get yanked into Story-Action. They act instead of (just) reacting.

If the original goals conflict with the (newer, more-compelling/unavoidable) Story-Goals, there’s bonus points in terms of conflict.

My main characters are Linnea (the beauty) and the Lindorm (the beast).

Image courtesy of Lotus Head via stock.xchng

I found this one step– giving them preexisting goals– was huge for giving them depth and dimension.

All of my novels (so far) have been seeded by folk tales, which means I’m starting from archetypes, stereotypes and puppets.  People do things because they DO things. It’s not like they have a motivation all the time.

Now, I am particularly gifted in mind-reading, and I’ve said more than once that my super-power is Instant Extrapolation.

So this starting place really works for me.

I’m not so great at the what-if game out of reality (what if you were investigating a crime and found evidence your daughter might be guilty?), or out of the news (one of James Scott Bell’s suggestions for story mining is taking a headline/newspaper article and milking it 10 different ways). My main problem with this is that they’re all too close to home.

I could really imagine this stuff happening, completely wig myself out, and be useless the next few days till I got over it.

I’m still very tender in the depression department.

I have to be nice to myself, and recognize when to stop pushing or just take another road.

This is where having the solidity of old stories really anchors me.

This is a pattern. This isn’t anything that I could’ve foreseen and prevented, or anything that I made happen with my freakish brain-power.

It’s got magic and crazies and just enough underhanded predictability (GA! I should have known!) that I can just play and enjoy some blatant non-reality.

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Brokenness, Healing and Art

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I just got through The War of Art by Steven Pressfield last week.

My library had it on CD, which meant that my laundry finally got folded.

Pressfield starts out by defining resistance by its action and power, tying it to our main difficulty in writing (okay, he actually is very careful to keep the talk about ART and whatever one’s contribution to the world is. But for me, that’s writing).

Problem #1: Getting Started

He has a whole series of specific examples of delays to beginning the work, but especially because of my experience with depression, and the upcoming launch of Wyn Magazine, I was intrigued by Pressfield’s comments about (and waiting for) healing as a tool of Resistance, to prevent the beginning of a Great Work.

Image courtesy of Mihai Tamasila via stock.xchng

According to Pressfield there are whole communities of people investing such effort and resources into getting well that they aren’t doing much else.

In his book he says some people feel they need to be healthy before they can do, or make their art.

I have felt this way in a vague sense, thinking that what I wanted to say would have more legitimacy or authority if I’d passed some point of competency, but the idea of doing nothing until that point is a straightjacket of terror.

Why ‘terror’? (That is a rather melodramatic word, but it’s the best I have just now.)

Because without my art I am locked in the long white corridors or darkened rooms of myself. There is no escape. And that is terrifying.

Writing is the walking.

One foot in front of the other to travel these endless hallways, and slow familiarity teaches what direction could be more useful, and I eventually see a door, and my momentum feeds itself until I slam into that crashbar and break into the open air.

Image courtesy of Jenny Rollo via stock.xchng

I’ve had encounters with others, or their words, who feel that they cannot produce art without the brokenness inside them.  Elyn Saks, in her Ted Talk quoted poet Rainer Maria Rilke who said, “Don’t chase my devils away, because my angels may flee too.”

I have wobbled on both sides of that line, and the perspective I find most-comforting is what Pressfield expresses in his book. He insists that healing is not a prerequisite, because the part that needs healing is completely separate from the part that is creating.

The experience of brokenness can make the creating part of you more useful, but somehow, in this one-way economy, that brokenness can only add depth to what already is.

I like this model, this container of words, because it suggests that the reasoning of second quote—about needing to keep the demons around—is misplaced.

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Response to “A Letter to Teenagers”

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I understand why this letter has gone viral and been so popular, but when I saw it on Facebook this morning (before I read the above article) These were my thoughts.

~ ~ ~

This letter is a good start (in the sense that we all need to be reminded to do what we can, and quit expecting others to do it for us) but these words don’t provide what I needed as a teen, and that was personalized direction.

I was a KID. I was even one who didn’t claim to know everything. And I didn’t know on my own which way to go other than to “be good.” And that is WAY to vague for most kids.

I was a good kid by most standards, and this letter being given to me would have made me feel simultaneously furious and helpless.

He’s just told me to get out of his way and quit being vocal about the fact that I have needs I don’t know how to meet.

All my life I had a drive to “make a difference” and “be involved,” but I did not have the skill/know-how/authority to make much of anything happen on my own.

Weekly visits to the nursing home (at 13) were with an adult, who eased me into being unafraid. Joining worship team (at 17 or 18) and before that forming a youth version (when I was 15) required an adult sponsor to give us access to the stage and sound equipment.

Even now, in my 30s, I know the fastest, most efficient way to know how best to apply my talents comes from outside help.

Why do you think “life coaching” even exists as a profession? We want solid, reliable input. Wise people don’t want to be limited to their own experience.

It always feels good to tell off people who are making your life more complicated, and the writer was described as “a judge who regularly deals with youth.”

I guess most of the readers/repeaters are parents, and AMEN! because they feel similarly pressed.

These parents have been dealing with and giving, like the judge says, and yes it’s perfect for the youth to “accept some of the responsibility your parents have carried for years.”

But I for one was never the kid who could look at a mess, see what needs to be done, and “just do it.”

I am BARELY that kind of adult.

If there’s anything I’ve learned from becoming a grown-up, it’s that the growing. never. ends.

And parenting (best as I can tell) is a lot of inconvenience.

We’re allowed to gripe, and call it hard, like it is, but eventually we have to swallow the frog; reenter the inconvenience of life-as-parent ’cause, really, nothing gets done until we do.

We have to change that diaper, find a bandaid, teach a concept and (Lord-Willing) cultivate a sense of self that will allow that child to develop a personal vision and motivation that will equip him or her to finally accept everything in his letter as a reasonable expectation.