BALANCING ON A KNIFE EDGE

    I don't need to tell you that we are living in dangerous, chaotic times. Despite the fact that we have a TACO president, he and his cohorts have done immense damage to our country internally and in foreign relations in only 8 months! We are all suffering from a multitude of head-snaps in this political environment. David Brooks of the NY Times may have put it best when he spoke about being "in mourning" for the country he thought he lived in and knew. I feel the same.

 

   And, of course, just opening one's Ipad and reading clips of news on FB, not to mention The Guardian and the NY Times (who need to be WAY better in covering Trump), is enough to make one down in the dumps. It is so much information to absorb; it is too much cruelty to manage; and it is just not good for our mental health. We want to be engaged with the news and have a fairly solid sense of what is happening, but how to do this without crashing our brains?

  Y'all know I love to make lists in my blogs. But before I do that, I want to share something I have posted before from a friend who is a brilliant therapist, done with her permission. When lock-down 

happened in Spring of 2020, she told her clients to do 4 things every day.

1/ Exercise.

2/ Learn something new.

3/ Do something creative.

4/ Reach out to someone through a phone call, a text, or an email.

I would like to add another to this grand list:

5/ Do something for someone else. Bake cookies for your church, the Food Pantry, or donate money to a survival center. Gather up gently-used clothes and take to The Cancer Connection or another thrift store. Pray for someone you know who is suffering, either ill-health, mental health, poverty, or other conditions. I joined the Prayer Partners from my local church and make it a plan to always hold certain folks in prayer, usually when I wake up in the morning before putting my feet out of bed. It makes me feel I am doing something worthwhile to help somebody else in need of support.  

  How do I follow these great suggestions?

--I try and walk at least 45 min. per day usually on our flat deck as I have balance issues from chemo and do best on this deck. When I can, I try and walk the dog up our hilly road. 

 

--I am knitting Reiki scarves for dear friends as a way of doing something creative. I try and do some embroidery but my fingers on my dominant hand are a tad wonky due to fracturing my right wrist a year back.

 

--I have a new friend whom I text every single morning. We share health news (we both have chronic illnesses), gardening triumphs or failures, family and doggy news, and more. I have a number of friends I email regularly to keep in touch, as it is SO damn easy to lose touch with our beloveds. I text my younger son a few times weekly just to see how he is doing, and texts my older son and his wife usually on weekends. Someone recently posted on FB that he felt the last time the world felt normal to him was in 2019. I second that.

--Oddly enough, I follow a number of cool sites on FB which help me to learn something new daily. I follow Neil deGrasse Tyson who always posts interesting scientific information. I follow Ancient History, the World of Washing (! pictures of washing blowing on lines all over the world), The View From My Window (again, connecting me to people worldwide), Home Front History, World War II Rationing, Old London Photos, and others. There is a lot of interesting new information coming out about immuno-cancer vaccines, one developed in Britain and apparently also in Russia. 

 

  And if worst comes to worst and the news is totally overwhelming--which it so often is--I scoot over to Pinterest and look at fun recipes I can make, mostly in the Low-FODMAP sites. Too bad I have such a damn sweet tooth!