Deborah's Journal

When I received a letter from the Department of Corrections, informing me of the late March parole hearing for the man who raped and murdered my mother, I felt overwhelmed. It had been as much as I could do to maintain emotional equilibrium in the face of the election and then the illness and death of our wonderful German Shepherd Dog, Tajji. I knew the next hearing was schedule for 2017, but I did not expect to begin the year in dread of that ordeal. I know what these hearings have done to me in the past and how hard I have had to work on survival and recovery. Each hearing has not only opened old wounds but created new ones as more was revealed.

Almost immediately, I started noticing worrisome changes in my mental health. In the 30 years since my mother was killed, I’ve come to know the “warning signs” quite well. I no longer ignore them as I once did. I dare not “soldier on” or bury myself in work: that way lies madness. Thank goodness, I have never been tempted to use substances, legal or not, to escape. Instead, I run to anxiety as my drug of choice. This time I decided to take action on my own behalf before I got into serious trouble.

First I enlisted allies. At the top of that list is my family, both my daughters (one at home, one across the country) and husband, and my sister, with whom I’m very close but who lives in a different part of the state. I let them know I was having a hard time and that if I was distracted or irritable (or flaming irrational), to not take it personally because that meant I needed help. No matter what’s going on, extra hugs are always helpful! So it goes without saying that I am asking for – and receiving – more physical affection. I find my whole body relaxing into a hug and I often fall asleep while cuddling with my husband, I feel so safe and loved.

I decided to tackle my broken sleep first. My daughter and I had gotten into the habit of watching videos until it was bed time. We made a pact (and shook on it) to turn off the television early, to not begin a new episode of whatever program we were streaming after 9 pm. I was delighted at her enthusiasm for meditating with me. We got out our cushions and sat on the living room floor, facing one another. The first evening, we lasted only 5 minutes, but that was enough to produce a sound night’s sleep. Since then we’ve missed a night here and there, but have been continuing the practice for progressively longer times. I don’t need an hour; 10 or 15 minutes seem enough right now. Soon we realized that one of the cats was joining us, sitting in between us or on my lap, and purring. I found the purring added to my relaxation and mental calm.

Secondly, I began keeping a journal again with the specific purpose of using this method to sort through the various logistical decisions surrounding the parole hearing. Taking out the old spiral bound notebook was like meeting an old friend again. This practice had the effect of “corralling” stressful thoughts into a specific setting. Knowing I had a time and place to figure things out – and that I was not allowed to do so at other times and places! – is very helpful. I reminded myself that once I decided what order I wanted to do things in, it was necessary to only worry about the one at the top of the list. One thing at a time, breaking what seemed like an insurmountable load into small, manageable steps. Soon I had prioritized the decisions and tackled the first, most time-critical action. At this point, I had to take myself in hand and not go on to the next one but to allow myself a breather in which to regain my emotional balance.

Third, I have been reaching out to other people I trust, most of whom know the whole wretched story. This way, I have people to talk to with whom I don’t have to rehash history. I miss my best friend, who was an incredible source of support through very painful times, but since her passing I have gotten closer to other friends. As has happened before, I have been sometimes surprised and deeply touched by the kindness and wisdom of the people in my life.

Next up is to ask the Quaker meeting (of which my husband is a member, and I an attender) for a Clearness Committee. This is a small group of weighty Friends who sit with you not to offer advice but to support you in your discernment of a path. I’ve done this for the last two parole hearings and the experience of being “held in the Light” with such tenderness has sustained me.

I find myself missing the comfort of a dog, especially one as responsive and emotionally literate as Tajji. The cats have been extra cuddly since Tajji died, and Shakir, the one who meditates with my daughter and me, curls up beside me at night on the other side from my husband. But it’s too soon to get another dog, so I imagine Tajji wagging her tail at me and giving me a big doggie grin.

... it's yoga day!

One of the unexpected benefits of turning 65 and signing up for Medicare and various supplemental policies (I have vision and dental insurance for the first time in way too many years) was a free gym membership. Although I have a choice of gyms, none of them is near enough to make it feasible to work out there; as in, 45 minute drive each way. However, the gym that I chose offers many yummy classes, including yoga. I've practiced yoga since 1999, but took formal classes for only the first 5 or 6 years. I do have an excuse: my favorite teacher left to become a massage therapist, the remaining classes were at a bad time for my writing day, and then the school closed.

Anyway, I have found a teacher I like just as much as my old favorite, so I have been taking classes again. It's hatha yoga with a lot of vinyasa flow. And oh my goodness, am I getting stronger. It usually takes me a bit to get solidly back into my body -- we writers spend far too much time floating around in our imaginations, don't we? -- but then I end up feeling calm and strong, my body humming with the intensity of the exercise.

One thing that's new to me is setting an intention or a dedication for each practice. What I want (besides a cure for cancer and world peace) is to release the post-traumatic stuff. It feels, even after all these years, like a steel net coiled around something deep inside. So that's my intention -- to let the yoga flow gently but inexorably uncoil that net, to dissolve it, to let it drain away. I expect this will be a slow process, the next level of recovery.

Blessings to all.

So this is a post about aches and pains. Mine. (Yours, too -- feel free to share.) Last Sunday, I went splat face-down on the sidewalk. My own damned fault, as I was wearing a pair of very, very full-cut pants that had already wrapped themselves around my legs once. I thought I'd fixed the problem by shortening them, silly me. Anyway, it was one of those falls that you just can't roll through. The good news is that I didn't hit my face. I thought I'd gotten away with only some abrasions on my palms and one shin. An hour later, my left wrist was aching. Two hours later, it was swollen and so painful I couldn't even move my fingers.

I was so good. (On the other hand, I really didn't have the option of just ignoring it.) The treatment for sprains is RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation). Plus quantities of naproxen. Plus ranitidine to keep the naproxen from eroding my stomach lining. As a result, the wrist is healing speedily -- I can type, but no piano yet, or putting weight on it. It'll be a while before I can do downward-facing dog again. And oh, my, did it turn pretty colors, no only on my palm (small hematoma) and around the swollen areas, but the entire back of my hand. We've gone from technicolor sunset to sullen undercast. As the wrist becomes more comfortable, I am aware of all the lesser injuries -- a sort muscle here, a slightly swollen joint there -- that were insignificant/unnoticeable compared to the greater injury, but now require TLC.

I think one of the gifts of being older is that I've been through injuries this bad, not so bad, worse, before. I know my own tendencies (ignore it whenever possible; return to normal activities too soon -- I am hardly unusual in either!) and what they cost me in prolonged recovery time if I indulge them. I know that my older body takes longer to heal than it did when I was a sproutling. I know it's okay to ask for help, and to use gadgets and things for comfort measures. Taking anti-inflammatory medicine or medicine for pain is not a sign of weakness.

It also reminds me of how much I use my hands, and how important are the things I do with them.

Normally, I don't do a lot of mirrored posting, but I feel so strongly about this issue that I want to share my perspective with all my friends. So here's my personal essay on healing from a private grief in the midst of national remembrance.

At this time of year, I often feel out of step with the rest of the country, at least as portrayed by the media and demonstrated by election results. This year is different.

Like just about everyone else I know who's old enough to remember the events of 9/11, I have a vivid memory of how I learned about them. I was driving my younger daughter to high school and we were listening to the news on the car radio. We heard the announcer cry, "The second Tower is down!" and the rest of the story tumbled out. The way the events unfolded reminded me poignantly of John F. Kennedy's assassination. I was in high school in 1963, just about the same age my daughter was on September 11. Listening to the news broadcast with her, I experienced a parallel of my own youthful experience. Once again, the world became to be a dangerous and unpredictable place, but for me it was not the first time. I too responded with a feeling that the world has changed forever, but I also had the memory of having walked through this before -- and not just the Presidential assassination.

For me, Septembers will never be solely about 9/11. Twenty-five years ago this month, my mother was raped and beaten to death by a neighbor kid on drugs. It was a spectacularly brutal, headline-banner crime, but only part of a larger tragedy, for his own family had suffered the murder of his older brother by a serial killer some years before. My body knows when the anniversary is approaching, even when my thoughts are distracted. The shift in the quality of the light at summer's end reaches deep into my nervous system. The scar tissue on my heart aches. The ghosts of things that once held the power to drive me crazy stir in the darkness. My sleep becomes fragile, even though I no longer have nightmares. It's a hard time, an intensely personal time.

One thing I have learned over the years is that grief isn't fungible; you can't compare or exchange one person's experience with another's or say, This one's pain is two-thirds the intensity of that one's. Grief is grief; loss is loss. There's no benefit to anyone in comparisons. And no one else can do the hard emotional work of healing for us.

Around me and in the media, I see public displays of remembrance and more often than not, I feel reluctant to share mine. For one thing, I've lived with my story for over two decades and I've had extensive trauma therapy, but the person I tell it to is hearing it for the first time. "My god," they say, "how did you live through that?" At most times of the year, it's a gift to be able to sit with them, give them time to catch up, and to share a little of what I've learned about healing. But not this season. I need to have a time just for my own grief, a time that is just for my mother.

If someone says they lost a loved one in 9/11, or they had to pass the rubble every day on the way to work, or they were involved in some other way, they have no need to recite the circumstances. Because those events are known to the greater community, there is a sense of shared experience or at least an appreciation of the horror and grief of those directly affected. Individual losses occur in much smaller communities. I have come to believe that none of us can truly understand what another's loss is like. We are all individuals with our own histories, our own resources, our own lurking insanity. But we can say, "Even though I don't know what you're going through, my heart goes out to you." In my own life, I have found this deeply supportive.

I don't want to minimize or take away from the feelings of anyone affected by 9/11. We should be allies, for surely there is enough compassion, enough tears, enough fury, enough mending of hearts, to go around. Sorrows shared are divided, or so it is said. Until now, I have not found a way to both acknowledge the collective grief around me and to maintain the separate integrity of my own. What we share, in many variations, is the darkness and the long slow journey to the light. We share the craving for justice, the moments of irrational fury, the struggle against a world that seems capricious in its viciousness. We share the desperation to hold someone accountable, to inflict blame, to punish that person to the utmost in the hope that somehow it will make us stop hurting. That desire to lash out and make the perpetrator suffer is a universal human impulse, but I believe it is only one part of the initial reaction to a horrific tragedy. It is something we pass through on our way back to wholeness. Anger and adrenalin, with their energizing power, help us to get through the early stages. However, both are anesthetizing, numbing to both emotion and spirit. If we remain there, frozen, we cannot wrestle with the deeper issues of healing from trauma.

What has changed for me this year is that I have begun to work for the abolition of the death penalty. Speaking only for myself, I see strong parallels between a murder victim family seeking this form of revenge and the vilification of the Muslim community concurrent with the invasion of Iraq. Of course, justice is desirable. Criminal acts call for appropriate consequences. I would never say that it's okay for my mother's killer to walk the streets or that those responsible for the 9/11 attacks should not be prosecuted according to law. Setting aside the politics of that invasion and the problems with the application of capital punishment, however, my concern is with whether retaliative actions help or hinder the recovery of the survivors.

My own experience is that revenge does not. I want to emphasize that I do not speak for anyone else. We all have different experiences. For me, focusing on wishing harm to the one who had harmed my mother might well have kept me locked -- incarcerated -- in a state of bitterness and hatred. While I was in no way to blame for what happened, I still bear the responsibility for what I do with it. It's like the adult child of an alcoholic getting herself into therapy instead of whining helplessly, attributing all her problems to her upbringing.

I have to ask myself, What do I need? What do I want? One of my inspirations was a woman of astonishing kindness and grace, whose daughter and son-in-law were murdered and whose bodies she discovered. She told me that she faced a choice of whether or not to let herself be driven crazy by what she experienced. I think we all have that choice -- to succumb to the darkness of our anguish and righteous fury, or to walk through it, to move beyond it.

I remember the scene in The Princess Bride where Inigo Montoya finally tracks down Count Rugen, who begs for his life and offers anything. Inigo says, "I want my father back!" (and then kills him). I want my mother back, too. All those who lost loved ones and colleagues want them back. We know that's impossible, but what is possible is to get our own lives back. Our own selves. Our best selves.

My experience of healing is that I get myself back when I focus on re-engaging with life, on fully experiencing my feelings, on understanding what I have lost and what can never be replaced, but what can be restored. The more I stop looking to an external event (the execution of the murderer) to somehow make me feel better or "achieve closure," and instead focus on taking care of my insides -- my heart, my spirit, my body -- the better I fare.

So I've been talking about my own healing process and what I've learned. I've been meeting with other family members and with people who've been sentenced to death and then exonerated. I've been looking for ways to build bridges, to nourish tolerance and reconciliation, to create understanding. I make an ongoing conscious decision to not harbor hatred in my heart, but to fill it instead with what I want in my life.

Love. Compassion. Gratitude. Joy. Wonder. Peace.

I can think of no more fitting memorial for my mother . . . or for those who died on 9/11.

it's good for you. A study done at Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles reports:

Volunteers who received Swedish massage experienced significant decreases in levels of the stress hormone cortisol in blood and saliva, and in arginine vasopressin, a hormone that can lead to increases in cortisol. They also had increases in the number of lymphocytes, white blood cells that are part of the immune system.

Volunteers who had the light massage experienced greater increases in oxytocin, a hormone associated with contentment, than the Swedish massage group, and bigger decreases in adrenal corticotropin hormone, which stimulates the adrenal glands to release cortisol.

This is a big deal if you're under stress or recovering from trauma/PTSD. Could it be that one of the reasons massage feels so good is that your body knows what it needs?

The study was published online in The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine.