Brain Fog and a String of Pearls

For anyone out there currently struggling:

Me, too. Brain fog is a bitch. Mornings are better than afternoons.

Healthline defines brain fog in a kinder way, “a symptom that can be caused by stress, sleep changes, medications, and other factors.” This totally applies. “It can cause confusion, memory issues, and lack of focus.” Check. Check. And check.

Then due to symptoms and medicinal side effects, I swing between anger and sadness. I’m tired of tearing up at school. I’m terrified of unleashing on a student or co-worker or even worse a friend. Lucky for me, the screaming and computer screen punching only happen at home. Something has got to give.

***

After lunch on school days, I find myself staring at my attendance screen not knowing what button to push. Students swarm me to say things of dire importance that I may or may not remember—one hands me a late essay (now to delete the zero from my gradebook until I can grade the work), one asks what she missed when she was absent (which is all online), one needs help with his paper, schedules an appointment, and later no-shows. Twenty-five chat like the teenagers they are in the background. The bell is ringing. Five more walk in late. I try to write things down. I try to decipher my notes. I try to remember to take attendance. I try to teach the Tragedy of Macbeth. Meanwhile, since lunch, here are three e-mails from parents and five e-mails from students and seven e-mails from counselors requesting updated paperwork for students with accommodations. Where are my accommodations? Can’t I get some *%#@-ing accommodations? Then I stare at the stack of 190 research papers. I exaggerate. I’ve graded 33, and 30 essays are late, so it’s a stack of 127, plus the one just turned in 128. How will I find the energy to contact those parents, not to mention the energy to grade the rest? For now, I’m a warm body in the classroom who can still teach Macbeth and throw the rest of my balls in the air.

I’ve been told a person with cancer should stick to a routine. Routine these days means taking a shower and going to school with wet hair unless I feel like lifting the hair dryer above my head. Most mornings I’m sweating my make-up off before I leave the house or I’m nauseous or both. I can tell when my blood pressure is elevated. I’ve spoken to my doctor about all of this and said I need help making it to the ends of my days and to the end of the school year. My medical team has suggested a psychiatrist. They threw around the terms—depression and anxiety—and compiled a list of doctors. I haven’t made an appointment. I’m not opposed. Just tired. If someone would make the appointment, I would show up.

Meanwhile, I’m seeking healthy ways to cope and finding.

Back in February after finishing my radiation, I watched a documentary on Netflix called STUTZ. If you’re struggling with your head space, I say, “You must-see.” Oscar-nominated actor Jonah Hill spotlights his own psychiatrist Dr. Phil Stutz and his approach to self-care. Together they share tools that take a normally unpleasant experience and make an opportunity. Dr. Stutz gives his patients notecards with visuals that “turn big ideas into simple images.” During my second viewing, I took notes:

Dr. Stutz and Jonah Hill discuss the concept of Life Force and how a person can always work on that. It’s the part of yourself “capable of guiding you when you’re lost.”

“If you think of it as a pyramid, there’s three levels of the life force. The bottom level is your relationship with your physical body…The most classic thing is [people are] not exercising. Diet is another one and sleeping.”
Dr. Phil Stutz

“Your relationships are like handholds to let yourself get pulled back into life. The key of it is you have to take the initiative…You could invite somebody out to lunch that you don’t find interesting, it doesn’t matter, it will affect you anyway, in a positive way. That person represents the whole human race, symbolically.”
Dr. Phil Stutz

“The highest tier is your relationship with yourself…get yourself in a relationship with your unconscious because nobody knows what’s in their unconscious unless they activate it. And one trick about this is writing. It’s really a magical thing. You enhance the relationship with yourself by writing. The writing is like a mirror. It reflects what’s going on in your unconscious, and things will come out that you didn’t know you knew.”
Dr. Phil Stutz

Dr. Stutz says if you work on these three things, “Everything else will fall in place.” Quite frankly, my relationships—self, others, body—have suffered in the last six months or so. I don’t feel like going out after work or talking on the phone. I don’t have much brain power for texting or writing. I don’t care to eat or exercise. I know these things have strengthened my Life Force in the past. I know…

Regardless, I talk or text with my daughter almost every day, and she means everything to me. In my passing death fantasies, I focus on my reason for living. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have a plan for ending my life (I’ve discussed this in detail with my medical team), but I’m struggling. So—last Friday after school on Minute One of Spring Break, I hopped in my packed car and drove to Oklahoma City. I broke out of my cocoon to spread my wings for a mother-daughter weekend with Lauren and a perfect storm of culinary experiences and shopping, binging TV and deep talks.

On Sunday, we dined on Thai with my two cousins. One had COVID in November, which caused her to wake up dizzy in December. She drove for the third time since her illness just to meet us and hasn’t worked in almost four months. My other cousin said, “Savage women…” our moms are sisters born of Catherine Savage, “have always had a way of sacrificing themselves for others. Be kind to yourself, Crystal. Don’t work if you don’t have to.”

Dr. Stutz says that when adversity comes, we face a judgmental part of ourselves called Part X. I’m happy to have a clinical explanation of this. Part X is an antisocial part of ourselves that wants to hold us back from changing or growing. Part X almost told me to stay home and not attempt a seven-hour, one-way road trip. I’m happy I didn’t listen to that inner voice.

“Part X is the voice of impossibility. Whatever it is you think you need to do, it’s gonna tell you that’s impossible. ‘Give up.’ It creates this primal fear in human beings.”
Dr. Phil Stutz

When my cousin said, “Don’t work,” I remembered Dr. Stutz’s 3 Aspects of Reality:

Pain
Uncertainty
And Constant Work

Clearly, there are more aspects of reality including good things, but these are probably the ones that cause his clients to make appointments. I thought he was talking about coming to an acceptance of pain, uncertainty, and constant work, but he says we have to learn how to LOVE the process of dealing with them.

“What will make you happy is the process. You have to learn how to love the process of dealing with those three things. That’s where the tools come in. Because the highest creative expression for a human being is to be able to create something new right in the face of adversity, and the worse the adversity, the greater the opportunity.”
Dr. Phil Stutz

So while I’m learning to love cancer, symptoms, side effects, uncertainty, and constant work along the way, allow me to share one more memorable visual tool. The String of Pearls. Dr. Stutz says this is “probably the most important thing, motivationally, you could teach yourself.”

Picture this: Line. Circle. Line. Circle. Line. Circle.

Each circle is an action. Each action has the same value. The String of Pearls is about taking action. No one can put a pearl on your strand except you. Last Friday, my pearl included a seven-hour drive to see Lauren and my Grand-Pup. On Saturday, my pearl was a shower, lunch with Lauren’s friend, and arts-district shopping. On Sunday, my pearl included cousin-time, Panang Curry, and the strength of my roots. On Monday, my pearl was making the trip home and brunching with a friend along the way. On Tuesday, I wrote for the first time in a while. On Wednesday, I posted. Creation in the face of adversity. Opportunities around the corner.

Today comments are closed. I must grade.

At the Art Institute of Chicago

Gustave Caillbotte’s Paris Street; Rainy Day, 1877. Artwork captured by iPhone.

*Little Dancer Aged Fourteen* by Edgar Degas, 1881

Georges Seurat’s *A Sunday on La Grande Jatte*, 1884

My date knows the way to my art. July 2017.

*Portrait of Jeanne Wenz* by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1886

*Self Portrait* by Vincent Van Gough, 1887

*Notre Dame de Paris* by Jean-Francois Raffaelli,
1890 – 1895

*At the Moulin Rouge* by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1892 – 1895

*The Girl by the Window* by Edvard Munch, 1893

*The Old Guitarist* by Pablo Picasso, 1903-04

*Fisherman’s Cottage* by Harald Sohlberg, 1906

*Cow’s Skull with Calico Roses* by Georgia O’Keefe, 1931

René Magritte’s *On the Threshold of Liberty*, 1937

*White Crucifixion* by Marc Chagall, 1938

*Nude under a Pine Tree* by Pablo Picasso, 1959

*Ohhh…Alright…* by Roy Lichtenstein, 1964

*Stamford after Brunch* by John Currin, 2000 (or as I like to call it, The Three Sisters)

At The Art Institute of Chicago
	
I gazed at the blue-eyed
Vincent Van Gogh. 
With turbulent stroke, 
deep dejection clear,
hospitalized a whole year 
before the ear incident.
Then death by suicide.

His eyes held mine. 
“I want to touch people 
with my art,” he said.
“I want them to say: 
he feels deeply, 
he feels tenderly.”
I felt it down deep, 
faced him, and cried.		

“You remind me 
of my son,” I said.
“His gift, the cello,
sings. Yet other voices 
reside inside his mind.
Relentless and mean. 
I see you, dear Vincent.
Your help arrived too late. 
My worst nightmare 
is your fate.”

PEW #2

This past week I had a long phone conversation with one of my childhood friends. We caught each other up about our kids and our lives. The details were a little messy. She told me about a concept called purge emotional writing and later sent me a link to an article with more information. My first thought was, “I write about my emotions all of the time.” Then yesterday morning, I read the article.

Normally, I type my words. Yesterday, I tried something new. I wrote on paper, as directed for twelve minutes, fast and furious. And I realized—I was furious. That’s probably why I was so open to this exercise. Next, I burned the page and watched a small fire consume it. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. And then I swept it all from the concrete pavement into the grass. The exercise says to do this for the next five days.

Cue Sunday. PEW Day 2. The sun arose, and so did I. I walked the neighborhood and listened to Black Pumas and Michael Kiwanuka through my earphones. Along the way, I thought about what I might write in twelve minutes. Already, I could feel the difference one day had made. Some of that comes down to circumstances. Some is perspective.

Back at home, I made coffee and grabbed my spiral. I checked the time and started writing. Twelve minutes. Today there were no f-bombs. Today there was more pity than anger. There was some acceptance of things I cannot change. There was some courage to change what I can. I’m still seeking wisdom to know the difference. Part of me wanted to keep today’s words. I walked the page through my front door and burned it anyway. I watched it char black, then to gray ash.

I’m interested to see what happens over the course of the next three days. Already, I’m thinking —

Purge Emotional Writing

“I’m feeling emotionally oversaturated.”

This morning, I sat on the couch with my laptop, and I drank my coffee. These words jumped off my screen. They resonated.

The words were only part of a sentence, part of a bigger thought from the goop article I was reading, an excerpt from Habib Sadeghi’s book The Clarity Cleanse. Dr. Sadeghi believes in the transformative power of writing to heal from the inside out. He says, “Words have tremendous power, and whether their effects are positive or negative depends on how we choose to use them. I can’t express how powerful a tool free-form writing is to expel negative energy from our minds and hearts. I used it daily during my recovery from cancer. I also return to it whenever I’m feeling emotionally oversaturated.”

I was feeling emotionally oversaturated, and so I read on. Dr. Sadeghi suggests an exercise called PEW 12 (Purge Emotional Writing), writing on paper for twelve minutes about whatever is disturbing my peace. At the end of twelve minutes, he says to take the page(s) to a secure, non-flammable area and burn it. “Fire is transformative and healing,” I read. “Your goal is to neutralize the negative energy, and the fire does that by transforming the chemical composition from paper to ash.”

The doctor warns that re-reading my page would only re-infect me with negative energy. He says never to direct the negatively charged words toward myself. I know these things intuitively. Sometimes I need reminders.

And so I found a spiral and noted the time and wrote for twelve minutes. I dropped F-bombs along the way. Then I ripped out the page and found a lighter and walked through my front door. I lit the page, watched it burn, dropped it on the concrete driveway, and stomped on it. I swept the ashes into the grass.

Dr. Sadeghi suggests doing this every day for five days before moving on to the next step. Except I don’t know what the next step is. His book is on my to-read list. I suppose I have four more days to find a copy.

Help in the Time of Schizophrenia

I just found out that someone besides me published me. If you’re interested in a preview of my memoir Help in the Time of Schizophrenia, please click the link below. This is the beginning of my journey with my son for help.

HELP IN THE TIME OF SCHIZOPHRENIA (An Excerpt) – Crystal Byers — The Porch Magazine

Three Minutes with Denise

I love new beginnings—the opportunity to start over—to get my mind right. May March bring you joy, fulfillment, perspective, and hope.

A few weeks ago when I stayed with my daughter in Dallas, my bestie Denise let me do some of Lauren’s laundry at her house, which was awesome. Even better, what comes next. Our conversation started like this. “Blah, blah, blah…I’m angry,” I said.

She sat in her chair beside me, listened to my woes, and said, “Do you know where your thoughts are when you’re angry?”

I thought for a moment and said, “The past?”

And she nodded her beautiful face up and down and launched into some sound advice.

I said, “Wait, could I video this?”

Denise coaches golf. And for me, life. She should have her own YouTube channel. Our backstory goes like this—I crashed her birthday party when she turned five. I went uninvited with another friend. That’s how we met. The year was 1975. Later, we shared homerooms—first, second, and third grade. I was always happy to see Denise’s name on the list for my class. Flash forward through twelve years of school, and then I didn’t see her for almost twenty years. We became besties closer to age 40 when we realized we lived within twenty minutes of each other. There’s something about having friends who know exactly where you are from, and I’m just lucky to have a few of those.

Purging and Mental Health

My 31-year-old son has a collection of clutter to the point where one of our rooms is unusable. It’s called being a hoarder. I decided to look up the term. According to the mayoclinic.org, hoarding is a disorder. Signs and symptoms may include:

Excessively acquiring items that are not needed or for which there’s no space
Persistent difficulty throwing out or parting with your things, regardless of actual value
Feeling a need to save these items, and being upset by the thought of discarding them
Building up of clutter to the point where rooms become unusable
Having a tendency toward indecisiveness, perfectionism, avoidance, procrastination, and problems with planning and organizing

Years ago, our garage included a home gym. Now, circular, cast-iron barbells litter the floor on all sides of the weight bench centered below a 7-foot weight rack. I haven’t counted the weights. There are probably close to thirty of them, of various size, from five-and-a-half pounds to forty-five. Some lay haphazardly on the foam mats beneath the bench, some on the concrete amid dead leaves, bits of rope, PVC, a weight bar, a circular saw, timber, a sledgehammer, empty cardboard boxes, and sawdust. A collapsible elliptical machine leans against the wall. A freestanding heavy bag lays on its side on top of a toppled bike. There is a Honda Grom with a large plastic storage container strapped to the back. Something is wrong with the motor. There is another mini-motorbike shipped in pieces from China, put together at one point, now in pieces again. Lots of destroyed and broken things. There is more, much more. Plus, regular garage stuff. Sawdust covers all of it. Our son Drew thinks he is building a house. The clutter is beyond clutter. It’s excessive. We don’t have the space. We would like to park a car in the garage. The mess belongs to Drew, but I take responsibility for allowing it to happen. He lives with us, well, not exactly with us. He sleeps in his car most of the time, by choice. He has schizophrenia, and his thinking suffers.

The hoarding was motivation for the Less Is Now 30-day challenge. Day One—get rid of one thing, Day Two—get rid of two things, and so on. That equals 175 things to sell, donate, recycle, or trash during Week Four. My husband and I usually avoid the garage like the COVID. But during Week Four of the challenge, I turned my focus to the garage. One day I trashed or recycled 45 items. Lots of cardboard boxes and packaging pieces. Another day 72. Add those numbers to some other household items, and I’m currently 22 items short, but today is the last day of my fourth week. I still have time. Plus 29 for tomorrow and 30 for the next for a grand total of 453 items to be purged. I’m almost there. The challenge has been a challenge, made easier by a hoard. Progress is progress.

The Mayo Clinic also claims that many people with hoarding disorder also experience other mental health disorders, such as:

Depression
Anxiety disorders
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)

I think we could add schizophrenia to the list. However, my son also has the OCD label. We’ve gone through ten plus years of a rocky, uphill battle. Do you give up on people who are ill? I’m trying really hard not to. I wouldn’t give up if the illness were physical.

Back on the Mayo Clinic website, they say schizophrenia involves a range of problems with thinking (cognition), behavior and emotions. Signs and symptoms may vary, but usually involve delusions, hallucinations or disorganized speech, and reflect an impaired ability to function. Symptoms may include:

Delusions. These are false beliefs that are not based in reality. For example, you think that you’re being harmed or harassed; certain gestures or comments are directed at you; you have exceptional ability or fame; another person is in love with you; or a major catastrophe is about to occur. Delusions occur in most people with schizophrenia.
Hallucinations. These usually involve seeing or hearing things that don’t exist. Yet for the person with schizophrenia, they have the full force and impact of a normal experience. Hallucinations can be in any of the senses, but hearing voices is the most common hallucination.
Disorganized thinking (speech). Disorganized thinking is inferred from disorganized speech. Effective communication can be impaired, and answers to questions may be partially or completely unrelated. Rarely, speech may include putting together meaningless words that can’t be understood, sometimes known as word salad.
Extremely disorganized or abnormal motor behavior. This may show in a number of ways, from childlike silliness to unpredictable agitation. Behavior isn’t focused on a goal, so it’s hard to do tasks. Behavior can include resistance to instructions, inappropriate or bizarre posture, a complete lack of response, or useless and excessive movement.
Negative symptoms. This refers to reduced or lack of ability to function normally. For example, the person may neglect personal hygiene or appear to lack emotion (doesn’t make eye contact, doesn’t change facial expressions or speaks in a monotone). Also, the person may lose interest in everyday activities, socially withdraw or lack the ability to experience pleasure.

All of it applies to my son. The hoarding is sort of down the list of problems we have at our house…or that my son has in his car. What happened to my little boy who made straight A’s and became a cellist with a full ride to college? I’ve learned I can’t reason with schizophrenia. There are people close to me who wish I wouldn’t be so open about Drew’s mental illness. But for me, secrets are heavy, and people keep them when they don’t want others to know the truth. Maybe it’s guilt. Maybe shame. Maybe grief. Secrecy perpetuates the stigma of those seeking help. I’m not ashamed, but I do mourn for the person he was before. Still I cling to hope. Hope for Drew to take responsibility for his symptoms and treatment. Hope for better medicine…a Team Drew…better days…a cure?

Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger on Pexels.com

Hidden Valley Road

The Galvin family, Air Force photo, 1961.

My heart hurts. I just finished Hidden Valley Road. Then again, my adult son has paranoid schizophrenia. Our ten-year journey toward help has been rocky and torturous. My heart often hurts.

Award winning journalist Robert Kolker combines an examination of twentieth century mental health treatment and the components of schizophrenia with the narrative of the Galvin family. Between 1945 and 1965, Don and Mimi Galvin had twelve children, ten boys and two girls. By the mid-1970s, six of the brothers had developed schizophrenia.

The Galvin family became one of the first to contribute to the genetic studies of the National Institute of Mental Health, and for their donation to the body of research, I am grateful. I will continue to keep the remaining family in my thoughts. Part of my sadness lies in the continued wait for a scientific breakthrough.

If you have experience with mental health issues, especially schizophrenia, Hidden Valley Road is a must read. If not and you are interested in knowing more, may you find compassion for those who suffer with severe mental illness and their families who are doing the best they can. There must be better help on the horizon.

Armies, Fighting, and Being Still

The White Stripes released “Seven Nation Army” in 2003. Somewhere in that era at Christmastime, my English teacher friend Erin gave me a mixtape including liner notes in the compact disc jewel case. According to Erin, “Seven Nation Army is a song that makes you feel cooler just for listening.”

I love Haley Reinhart of Postmodern Jukebox since her days on American Idol back in 2011. She just celebrated her 30th birthday, and the comments on this video crack me up. Luke Klein says, “I watched this video and ended up in a gray suit and a fedora, smoking a cigarette in the rain in 1939. Pls help.”

“I’m gonna fight ‘em all / A seven nation army couldn’t hold me back.”
The White Stripes

I’ve heard the White Stripes in my head this past week, and their words convey my attitude. As I leave my house each day for my morning walk, my posture and stride seem to say, “Do not get in my way because I will kick your ass.” And that’s how I’ve been making my way through recent days. I carry this mixture of fury and hope, this “I will spit in your eye” mindset along with “God, please help me and most of all please help Drew.” My friends and prayers keep carrying me like a gondola up the mental health mountain I face.

Drew came by our house yesterday morning. The morning sun backlit his silhouette as he unlocked the front door and stood at the threshold. His long curly hair stood on end. A white boy’s afro. He said he was going to use the restroom.

“Did you sleep at the group home last night?” I said.

“No, no,” he said, shaking his head. He proceeded to the bathroom where I heard the flush and then into the garage where I heard the buzz of a variable speed drill. Alone in the house, I decided to write this post.

If you happened to read my post about prayers and friends carrying me last week, you know my son Drew was in the behavioral health hospital. Hospitalization #6. After ten long years of battling paranoid schizophrenia. Drew still has good days. When he left with HPD for the hospital, I found crystal meth in his room. How long have I been finding meth in his room? Has it been two years? Did I ever find meth three years ago when we lived in the La Quinta after the hurricane? How many times have I thrown meth in the trash? Where does he get his money to buy? Is he selling it? Does he have a medication efficacy issue? Is meth or schizophrenia the larger problem? These questions beat me down. Who knows?

Anyway, Drew spent five good days at the hospital. I have no idea what they did for him because he is thirty years old, and HIPAA laws protect his privacy. Drew reports that nothing happened, which could be true or false. The hospital doctor determined he was good to go. No further treatment necessary. The problem is Drew’s behavior leading up to the hospitalization proved dangerous to himself and/or others. Over the past three years, his delusions have progressively worsened along with his reactions to what he hears and believes. His dad and I are not willing to have him in our home at this time, partly because of a police report filed by our neighbors that in part led to his hospitalization. His psychiatrist is aware and unhelpful. Hospitalization #6 was unhelpful. Drew agreed to stay in a group home following his discharge.

By the way in Texas, group homes are not accredited in any way. If I wanted to open a group home for mentally ill patients and feed them and oversee their medication, I could—TOMORROW. IF. If you want to make some money, or at least have someone else pay your mortgage, move to Texas, open a group home, call psychiatric hospitals, and let them know you are open for business. From what I understand, it doesn’t take much more than that. Also, Texas ranks near the bottom of our fifty states for mental health expenditures per capita. Go figure. Should we move?

A Mr. Taylor drove Drew from the hospital to the God’s People group home where Drew called an Uber and returned home to pick up clothes and his car. His car that he had been using as his personal trash can. The same car I had removed trash from little by little—four full kitchen trash bags of McDonald’s trash, two uneaten apple pies and an empty sardine can, seemingly unending soda bottles and cans, empty American Spirit cigarette packs and cigarette butts everywhere—all kinds of empty cardboard box recycling—from a Ryobi Variable Speed Drill to a floor lamp, a Kobalt Retractable Hose Reel with Hose, a DeWalt Heavy-Duty Electric Wheeled Portable Compressor, and sex toys. Oh, and laundry, lots of dirty laundry. Some of which went straight to the trash. Some of which I’m airing now. Again I ask, where in the world is Drew getting this money? Have I been burying my head in the sand? All I know is that I have done the best I can. There is NO REASONING with mental illness, and NO ONE seems to want to help. Oh, unless, we happened to be millionaires. We MIGHT get some help that way. By the way if you Google God’s People in Houston, you won’t find anything. When I type the address into Google maps, I see the location of this group home in a one-story house in a residential neighborhood, likely three bedrooms and two baths.

So—after being released on Thursday, Drew didn’t spend Thursday or Friday night at the group home. However, he had been in contact with me by phone, and he was okay. He said, “I’m at a friend’s.”

“Are you planning to go back to the home?” I said.

“Yes,” he said. Drew is good at telling me what I want to hear. Like when I say, “Will you take a shower?” or “Will you take a trashbag and clean all of the trash out of your room?” I repeat the same question for his car. His response—always the same. Years and years of yesses. How are we supposed to help? By telling him he can no long live with us? By towing and selling his trashed out, torn up, paid for 2010 Honda Accord? I’m tired, and I’m trying to live my own best life despite challenges. How do you help someone who doesn’t want to help himself?

Mr. Taylor says he will let me know if Drew shows up, and for my own mental health I drive to the beach on Saturday. Drew makes a Saturday group home appearance—forty-eight hours after his hospital release. Mr. Taylor texts me about his arrival, and stupidly we pay a pro-rated fee for September housing. I say stupidly because Drew is at home when I return from the beach. He has eaten the leftover pizza, and I am thankful for his nourishment. We have a peaceful conversation about his aquarium and the fish he has recently purchased for his bedroom, and I am thankful for the calm. Drew says, “Their names are Patches and Duke and Catfishy.”

I say, “I named them Tom, Dick, and Harry.”

“Those are terrible names,” he says, and I am thankful for the laughs. Then, he leaves for the night.

Do you remember where this started?

Drew came by yesterday morning. The morning sun backlit his silhouette as he unlocked the front door and stood at the threshold. His long curly hair stood on end. A white boy’s afro. He said he was going to use the restroom.

“Did you sleep at the group home last night?” I said.

“No, no,” he said, shaking his head. He proceeded to the bathroom where I heard the flush and then into the garage where I heard the buzz of a variable speed drill. I would’ve thought the noise a buzz saw if I hadn’t found the cardboard box for the drill in his car. Alone in the house, husband out of town, I decided to write this post. Drew was gone within the hour.

Drew probably slept in his car last night. Possibly for the last four nights. If he’s lucky, he has a friend. Officially this means Drew is homeless. AND THIS IS THE PROBLEM WITH MENTAL HEALTH IN THE GREAT UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (and exactly why I want to kick somebody’s ass).

Mid-rage, I stumbled onto Perth Girl’s Saturday post. It begins, “The Lord will fight for you, you need only to be still” (Exodus 14:14).

Perth Girl wraps it up by saying, “Be still, my friend, be still. Let the Lord be your shield and your sword. Let Him be your rock and your shelter. Be still and surrender to Him, leave room for God to work, let Him fight for you.”

Then I went to church at Chase Oaks online, and the service ended with this song. Do I hear God’s voice?

“Even when my eyes can’t see, I will trust the voice that speaks peace over me.”

And so, as I attempt to re-make my own Monday, to re-make my own week, my own life, today, I choose to let the Lord fight my battles, to be still and surrender, to let go and let God. Oh, and I do have one phone call to make—to a church that can potentially help me. That might not happen today. 🙏🏻

R is for Ripples Colliding

I’ll never forget the first blog post I ever read: “When Ripples Collide” by Baron Batch, March 29, 2011. Baron Batch was a football player at Texas Tech, and the Midland Reporter-Telegram published him as well. If you have some extra time, click the link. I have a feeling you will love Baron Batch’s blog more than mine today. As a matter of fact, I’m going to borrow his introduction and riff from there:

“Have you ever watched rain fall on a lake? Each raindrop creates its own ripple.When you combine the millions of raindrops and the millions of ripples that each singularly creates, you have a countless number of overlapping ripples that all have an effect on one another. The cool thing about this is that each raindrop ripple has an effect on the other ripples in the lake, even if it’s just in a small way. This is how people operate on a daily basis. We are individual raindrops in a huge lake.“Of course each of us has our own ripple, but our lives are primarily made up of other people’s ripples crashing into our own. Many people like to think that our ripples crash randomly into each other without purpose or reason. Maybe that’s true, but then again maybe it’s not true at all. Perhaps I can help you decide. Maybe this story is the result of many ripples just coincidentally crashing into each other. Or maybe each ripple was ordered, measured, weighed, named, and timed perfectly to synchronize with the others to save a life. “The story I am about to tell shows what happens when ripples collide perfectly.”
Baron Batch

(To read the rest of Baron’s story click here. It might be fun to compare his story to mine.)

Ripple 1)

More and more often I hear from a person who tells me something along the lines of, “I love reading your posts when I need a little pick me up.” I’m always humbled because it’s just me publishing myself, and I never know who might be reading. Like Baron, somehow my writing became “a huge part of who I am.”“Maybe,” like Baron says, “it’s all a coincidence. Maybe everything is just random…Maybe someone, somewhere, at some time, needed to read something that I would at some point write.”

Ripple 2)

In July of 2016, Kody’s employer transferred us from Dallas to Houston. While Kody continued to do his same job in a new location. I lost a job that was pretty damn perfect. I worked with true friends, and the kids were amazing. I taught advanced English classes and Creative Writing, and I made time to write. In short, I had an amazing circle of support from friends made over the course of twenty-two years.

Ripple 3)

In August of 2017, I started a brand-new job in the suburbs of Houston, and not long after that, Hurricane Harvey flooded our home. Post evacuation, my family and I walked to a pet-friendly La Quinta where my blog was born and where we would live for the next ten months as we rebuilt our home. I found a formula for peace and hope through a combination of faith and gratitude, and I stuck to that theme in my writing. Did this move and a hurricane provide me an opportunity to encourage others?My job that year was a struggle, I was short on patience, especially amid the upheaval at home, and this job required patience. I resigned believing I had another job in the bag, but I was wrong. I later realized that Rejection Is God’s Protection.

Ripple 4)

In August of 2018, I started my second brand-new job in two years. I taught AP Literature and AP Language. My kids were great, and we had some moments of hilarity in the classroom. Outside of the classroom, I worked my ass off.At the end of the spring semester, I said to my students, “See you next fall.” Do you ever have a story that you start to tell and then you change your mind? I hate when people do that. Let’s suffice it to say, I met a personal challenge last summer that led to my second resignation in two years. At the same time, I wanted to go back to school, and I had applied to Houston Baptist University for a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. The way I had been working would not have been conducive to school, so maybe the resignation was the right move all along. A ripple “ordered, measured, weighed, named, and timed perfectly to synchronize with others” who would change my life.

Ripple 5)

In January of 2020, I started my Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Houston Baptist University. Classes began with a week-long retreat at a Galveston beach house with guest professor Bret Lott. Bret read my writing and mentored me one-on-one. He cooked dinner for me and my classmates. He is the nicest guy. Oh, and he’s the author of many novels, New York Times best-sellers, and the Oprah pick Jewel. Did that first ripple of my move to Houston lead me my meeting with Bret Lott?

Ripple 6)

I’ve read quite a bit this semester, and we study author’s style. Short stories by Flannery O’Connor and Isak Dinesen, Mavis Gant and Denis Johnson and Raymond Carver, Chekhov and Hemingway. Memoirs and novels, most of it assigned, some of it not:

How Fiction Works by James Wood
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Beauty in the Broken Places: A Memoir of Love, Faith, and Resilience by Alison Pataki
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
Even the Stars Look Lonesome by Maya Angelou
Jewel by Bret Lott
All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy, #1) by Cormac McCarthy
Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger

I’m finishing Glennon Doyle’s Untamed now, and by my Maymester I will need to finish Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient and The Collected Works of Billy the Kid.

The texts chosen by my professors serve as mentors and models of how to write. Practice and discussions help, too. I see my style and revision efforts evolving. Each of those books set in motion by authors sending out their ripples and transforming me in some small way.

Ripple 7)

My class this semester is all online. I submit all written assignments to an on-line forum, where my classmates and I respond to each other’s assignments in writing. We write in response to our assigned readings and each of us is working on own personal writing projects.

I’m writing a memoir of a mom advocating for her mentally ill son on the continued quest for help. Ironically, my son had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and had just been released from his second hospitalization when I read Baron Batch’s blog in March of 2011. Here is where my ripples collide.

I have seven classmates in my program, and they’re honest. Add in my professor, and I receive excellent constructive criticism. They show me where my stories have holes and question me in places where I can develop scenes and clarify ideas. On top of that, they support and inspire and encourage me with responses like these:

“You have a real talent for making everyday life compelling…There’s something about the raw realism of this story that makes it hard to stop reading.”

“I’ve gone through a range of emotions in one reading: laughter, crying, frustration, anger, disbelief. I’m all over the place, and I know I’ll be thinking of this for days.”

“Every time I read your stories, I always envision you sitting in a chair on a patio telling this story to me like an old friend. You make the reader feel so welcome in your world.”

“You write about your life with humility and honesty, and you never shy away from telling us how you feel about something.”

“Best and thank you for sharing your story—not just because it is difficult, although I admire you sharing for that reason—but because it is written so well, and I cannot wait to see what you do with it and its final incarnation.”

“Holy cats! This is compelling. I was disappointed to stop reading. That is about as good of a compliment that I know to give.”

And what if we had never moved? Would I even be a student again? Would I ever have met these awesome people who are literally cheering me to the finish line of completing the book I feel compelled to write? A memoir of a mom advocating for her mentally ill son on the continued quest for help.

“Maybe it’s all luck and chance…maybe nothing we do matters at all…but…what if everything does?” (Baron Batch).