Category Archives: mental illness

Synagogue of the Virgin Mary

This is a series of posts about Italy, Malta, and Spain that starts here.

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Have you ever been in the London Eye? If not, it’s a super sized ferris wheel on the south bank of the Thames with a bird’s eye view of Westminster Bridge and the Houses of Parliament and much more.

Imagine, being in the Eye, watching yesterday’s terrorist attack unfold. The confusion, the fear, maybe some twisted excitement, the plain-old inconvenience of being stuck up there until thd police gave the all clear.

Will this attack hurt London’s tourist economy? I doubt it. No matter how many of these incidents happen, most of us have the capacity to believe it won’t happen to us. And statistically, it won’t, so keep on traveling.

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Day Two in Toledo. Today we would visit the Synagogue of the Virgin Mary and the Mosque of Christ the Light.

“I can just hear the Christians saying, ‘There, we showed ‘em!’ as they nailed up the new signs,” I said.

The so-called synagogue which hadn’t been a synagogue in hundreds of years was just steps from our hotel. The website, which I won’t link to here, makes it look like you could spend days there. It was lovely, but there wasn’t much to it:

There was a nun in the back of the now-church, and she sort of floated through the place and out a side door. We followed her, since there was nothing else to see in the main building, and she went into a small out building which we entered to our regret.

You know how you walk into a place and immediately wish you hadn’t? The nun was there, seated behind a table piled with books and pamphlets and art prints. The walls were hung with drawings. The nun was ecstatic, in the original sense of the word, “involving an experience of mystic self-transcendence.”

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know I was raised in a Catholic family but never felt Catholic. I explored various religions and somehow knew I was Jewish immediately upon beginning to study Judaism. So I’ve been Jewish since I was 18, which is a long time ago. I’m also an atheist, which, conveniently, isn’t incompatible with being Jewish.

All this is background to saying that—having been schooled by nuns for 14 years— when I saw this nun I knew her type. In fact, she was a dead ringer for Sister Mara, my 8^th grade teacher. I recognized the glassy-eyes, the never failing smile, and most of all, the enthusiasm to share what she had discovered with others, whether they were interested or not.

Fervently religious, or mentally ill? They are often intertwined, regardless of the faith. None of this was triggering Lynn, who has neither Catholic or Jewish baggage.

The art, pamphlets, and books were all by and about some guy—possibly still alive and living in a monastery or cave in the mountains—who had converted from Judaism to Catholicism after having a vision. He was an artist, a poet, and (naturally) a visionary, the nun told me breathlessly in Español muy rapido.

The art reminded me of Peter Max (image removed due to copyright), which made me wonder if her visionary also took drugs, but it was executed like my three-year-old nephew’s drawings, which feature people with pumpkin heads and tooth-pick legs.

It was better than I am making it sound. I wish I had taken a photo to show you but I didn’t want to demonstrate too much enthusiasm. The nun had moved on to how Israel was wrapped up in the vision, so it was time to break in and say, “Thank you very much, it’s been fascinating.”

Even the tiniest tourist attraction in Spain has a gift shop, and the ex-synagogue one had this on display:

As usual, the non-Jewish author had used a photo of an Orthodox Jew at the Western Wall, instead of a picture of me, a much more typical Jew.

Calling All Cons

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Before I return to writing about my upcoming travel in Italy, Malta, and Spain, I’ll write a couple more posts about my other favorite topic: prison.

I was involved in two criminal justice reform evening events this week. Normally I hate having commitments like these at night but these were commitments I chose to make.

The first was a phone bank event organized by the Restore the Vote Coalition. It’s run by Take Action Minnesota and includes Jewish Community Action, a group I’ve written about being involved with.

Here’s why we were there: 47,000 ex prisoners in Minnesota cannot vote. They’ve done their time but they’re still “on paper”—slang for probation or parole—and they can’t vote until they’re off paper. Even though Vince has served his time, has been out for a year, has been sober for over two years, is working and paying taxes and rent, and taking his grandma to the grocery and doing all manner of other positive things, he’s not allowed to vote until 2018.

Our job was to call around 7,000 ex offenders who were probably off paper. Since no sane person enjoys calling strangers—much less ex cons—the coalition tried to make it a fun by calling it a Restore the Vote Block Party. They had blocked off their parking lot and had booths with a DJ and food, but it rained so we all huddled inside in their basement offices.

There were five or six speakers, including a rabbi and a young woman from Chicago whose father and uncles had been in prison as long as she’s been alive. It was a very racially diverse group. A couple guys lead a call and response to get us fired up, then we all dispersed to make calls or knock on doors.

All three of the African-American speakers said something along the lines of, “This is a problem that mostly affects black people.” While it’s true that African Americans are disproportionately represented in prison compared to their percentage of the overall population, 56% of adult prisoners in Minnesota are white. As of September 30, that’s 5,228 men and women, not counting juveniles or people in county jails. I don’t think we do the cause any favors by making it all about race. Race is a factor for sure, but so are class, poverty, abuse, education level, disabilities, chemical dependency, and many other issues.

There was an elaborate script probably written by a graduate student who’d never been near a prison, which went out the window the moment we started dialing. We used a really cool online system. I logged in and immediately a guy’s name came up with his age and phone number and the names of other people in his household. I said to the leader, “I’d be really creeped out if stranger called me who knew I’d been in prison.” I was assured that this was public information and that ex cons knew it.

I dialed 72 numbers in an hour and a half and spoke to exactly two ex cons. About 80% of the numbers were disconnected, busy, wrong numbers, or no one answered. The two guys I spoke with were opposites. The first one, who was 28, had researched whether he was eligible to vote, was registered, and was committed to showing up at the polls. The other guy, who was 56, said, “I ain’t never voted in my life and I ain’t gonna start now.”

I noted their names as I scrolled through the data base—Frank, Damarius, Jason, Katherine, Moua, John, Orville, Krystal, Matt, Jose, Abdi—all typical Minnesota names, all over the state, all ages, all races. I reached quite a few mothers, which tugged at my heart strings. They sounded care worn. A couple said, “I don’t know where he is.” Ugh. I’ve been there. One father told me, “He’s not here,” then, sadly, “He’s in the ground.” What do you say to that?

“I’m so sorry,” I muttered. “I’m sorry to have bothered you. Have a nice night.”

I only reached two guys, but as our group of 80 volunteer callers got pledges to vote from 122 ex offenders.

It may not sound like much, but we did something.

Creole, Cajun, Casserole

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This continues a series of posts about a road trip to New Orleans that starts here.

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We had the same conversation every morning:

“What do you want to do today?”

“I dunno. What do you want to do?”

“I don’t care. I’m up for anything.”

“Okay then, let’s go!”

I had been to the city before. One of the most memorable things I had done was a tour of a Creole plantation called Laura. It was about what you’d expect: a wide lawn, big house, antiques, and vignettes of how people lived 150 years ago. The house was a different style from Tara, the plantation you might recall from Gone with the Wind:

This is actually a photo of Oak Alley, another plantation near New Orleans on which Tara was based. I think. Don’t quote me on that. Anyway, it’s built in the English style, symmetrical and staid. Built to impress.

By contrast, here is Laura:

Very French, don’t you think? Because that’s partly what Creoles are—a people of French or Spanish descent, sometimes with Afro-Caribbean or Native American mixed in. They speak Creole, cook Creole, and make Creole music.

I was enjoying the tour of the plantation. Then we stepped out back to the slave quarters and it was like everything turned from brilliant color to grey. We “toured” a restored slave cabin, but only two or three of us could fit inside at a time. Meant for a family, it was about half the size of a boxcar, made of rough-hewn wood and sparsely furnished. Next we gathered outside so the guide could talk to us all at once, and that’s when I happened to turn and notice this behind me:

You don’t need to read French to know this is a bill of sale for people. My eyes welled with tears. I’m teary right now. The poor woman at the end of the list is a “lunatique.” What did that mean? Was she schizophrenic? Autistic? Rebelious maybe? Would someone have bought her because she was cheap? For what purpose? Ugh. Double ugh.

—

I passed around the brochure about the tour and told Lynn, Molly, and Christine about it. No one wanted to go. Maybe I should have left out the part about the lunatique.

When I was younger I would have pressed and wheedled until I guilted everyone into going, because I thought it was an important, historically significant tour.

But I got it. Lynn and I had spent half a day in the civil rights museum learning about slavery and lynchings and Jim Crow. Molly is a head start teacher whose kids live in trailer parks and whose parents are in jail or on drugs. Christine works for Oxfam, which aids people in disasters and wars. I got it. We didn’t need to be “sensitized.” And we were on vacation!

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You may be wondering, “What’s a Cajun?” since I wrote about Creoles above. Cajuns are descendants of Acadians, who lived in eastern Canada and the Northeast U.S. When the British took over this region, the Acadians, who are French and Roman Catholic, refused to sign an oath of loyalty to the crown. They wound up in Louisiana, either voluntarily or forcefully exiled, and that was a much better fit for them. As with the Creoles, the Cajuns have their own food, music, and language.

So there’s this theme in Louisiana of cultures coming together—French, English, and Spanish; African, Caribbean, and American Indian. It seems like they mostly got along, although that may be because they stuck to their own territories. In New Orleans, for instance, Canal Street marks the boundary between the old English and French parts of town.

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Back at the B&B, we had our own little cultural casserole. The English couple avoided the Germans, who were sour faced but friendly in their serious German way to the Dutch pair. The French couple seemed anxious about everything while the Scotts and Canadians were outgoing. I had two free bus tour tickets and offered them to the group. The Germans recoiled as if I were trying to hand them a rotting fish, while the Dutch couple eagerly grabbed them.

The Grey Lady Stumbles

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This is the seventh post in a series that started here.

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I left Cuernavaca having learned a lot of Spanish and with a new vocation. Off and on since then, I have worked in international development. That doesn’t mean I don’t care about causes here at home. I just think that, as a mission driven person, I do better work if I’m passionate about a cause. And for many reasons, I am passionate about trying to end poverty and suffering in the developing world.

Before I left Cuernavaca, I booked six more weeks of Spanish immersion through Amerispan. This time I would go to Morelia, a beautiful colonial city that is no longer an Amerispan choice. I’m guessing this is due to Morelia’s unfortunate #1 ranking as the city most caught in the drug war that has erupted in Mexico since I was there.

And that’s my transition back to one of my favorite subjects, addiction.

The New York Times published an article a few weeks ago about an alternative treatment approach to addiction. I read it, cut it out, and was saving it to write a post about. My initial reaction to it was, “Why not? Why wouldn’t you try both traditional treatment and AA and this thing, if you could afford the time and money.” But now I’m having second thoughts.

In a nutshell, the article profiles a psychiatrist who has opened a new addiction clinic that approaches addiction as a chronic disease and treats it with drugs, in place of the Twelve Steps and AA.

At least three people have brought the article up to me in conversation, so it’s causing a stir.

When I revisited it for this post, I noticed it was in the Science section, which implies that the content is scientifically valid. Plus it’s the New York Times, right? It’s got to be true.

When I searched the NYT website for “addiction,” I found that all the other articles about addiction are either in the Opinion or the News sections. So you’ve got news about a big drug bust in upstate New York, for example, and then people ringing in with their opinions on what should be done about the drug crisis and the related problem of mass incarceration.

I scrolled to the bottom to read the comments. There must be hundreds, I thought, and I wondered how many commenters would hail this as a godsend or criticize it as irresponsible. But there was no comments, and no way to make comments. That’s strange, I think.

—

Among other things, Dr. Mark Willenbring states that 60 percent of addiction is attributable to a person’s genetic makeup. The NYT adds that this is “scientifically unassailable” but offers no evidence.

Dr. Willinbring, a psychiatrist, is no slacker. For five years he headed the federal agency that studies addiction. Coincidentally, he’s a Minnesotan and he opened a private clinic called Alltyr in 2012. It’s within walking distance from my house.

Alltyr treats addiction as a chronic medical condition. Its treatment plans include drugs used to treat depression, anxiety, ADHD, or chronic pain; family “training,” and cognitive behavioral therapy—which, as I’ve written, was a worked miracles for me. Alltyr also uses anti-relapse drugs, and I wondered what that meant.

I didn’t have to wait long to find out.

—

A friend and her husband have been struggling with his drinking. He was on a wait list for Hazelden Betty Ford, one of the world’s premier rehab centers, also within walking distance of my house. Then he read the New York Times article. Alltyr got him in the next day, and after pooh-poohing Hazelden, he cancelled his reservation there. (Despite Alltyr dismissing traditional treatment, I can’t find any evidence in the article that its method works.)

Alltyr put him on two anti-relapse drugs. I spoke with my friend the next day. “He must have still had alcohol in his system,” she said, “because he was so sick he couldn’t get out of bed—much less go to work—for two days. He said it was like all the worst anxiety he’s ever had in his life rolled into one giant ball and stuffed into his chest.”

In Pig’s Eye

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I’ve been writing about a road trip to South Dakota that I took for work last week. I can’t say a lot more about it. There were some eyebrow-raising moments which have to remain confidential.

But one of my intentions in blogging is to demonstrate how you can experience adventure close to home—and even in your head. You don’t have to spend thousands on a trip abroad. Your own neighborhood can hold surprises.

I’ve lived in St. Paul almost all my life. It’s not that big of a city—about 300,000 people. I went for a long walk on a Sunday afternoon and found the following things that were new to me.

I crossed the Smith Avenue Bridge, which everyone calls the High Bridge, because it’s, well, high. The High Bridge was new to me. What a view. I know, my photos are not the best, but they’ll give you the general idea.

Sadly, because it’s high, the High Bridge is one of the preferred bridges in the Twin Cities for people to jump from. There was this tender note from a stranger to a stranger.

There was this makeshift shrine to someone named Teagan. I don’t know if she was the same person to whom the note in the previous photo was written, or a second jumper.

Someone has been thinking about how to prevent suicides from the High Bridge. I don’t know. Would you have the presence of mind to call the number, or would you even see it if you were intent on jumping off a bridge?

Ah, the sun came out, very welcome after being reminded of suicide at every footstep. This is a view from the Wabasha Bridge toward the train bridge. I don’t know the name of the train bridge; everyone just calls it The Train Bridge.

Now I was in Kellogg Mall, a long strip of greenery between downtown and the river. I don’t normally read plaques. Because I travel so much, if I read every plaque (and spent time on every portrait of the Madonna and Child, for that matter), I would never do anything else. But this one said something about Fr. Lucian Galtier, who gave St. Paul its name.

At the base of the rock there was a bag containing a hat, scarf, and mittens with a note that said, “I’m not lost! Please use to keep warm!” Presumably this is for some homeless person who has a preference for pink.

If it hadn’t been for Fr. Galtier, St. Paul might still be called Pig’s Eye. Pig’s Eye Parrant was a blind-in-one-eye French Canadian fur trader who squatted outside Fort Snelling, near present-day St. Paul. He made hootch and sold it to the soldiers, then eventually built a shack on the river landing below what would become St. Paul, becoming our first civilian resident. The details are sketchy, but it makes a good myth and we have a pretty good beer named Pig’s Eye as a result.

So go for a walk! Think how you would tell the story of what you see to a good friend, or to a stranger. Get out of your rut. Take a different route than the one you’re used to. Take a left turn instead of a right. Follow that path into the woods you’ve always wondered about. Notice things. Snap some pics, or not. Adventure is all around you if you hold the right attitude of inquisitiveness.

Dakota Bound

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I’m on a road trip! No, not to New Orleans. Believe it or not, I am going to meet with three potential donors in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Yee haw!

Here’s the deal. The Center for Victims of Torture, where I work, does psychotherapy, physical therapy, and social work for survivors of torture and war trauma. We do it in groups in Jordan, for instance, because all the clients speak the same language. We do it on an individual basis in Minnesota, because clients come from 36 different countries and speak myriad languages which must often be translated, which doubles the time everything takes.

This is all good as far as it goes, except that there are an estimated 1.3 million torture survivors in the US alone. We do a lot of training to try to equip professionals outside of CVT to recognize and help torture survivors. But there’s also no way we can train every doctor, social worker, cop, or immigration officer that might come into contact with a survivor.

People have been talking about doing something with technology at CVT for years, but without funding that’s just dreaming. Part of my job is to find new sources of funding, and that’s what I hope I’ve done. I won’t bore you with the details, but there are three HUGE international development innovation funds that we hope to tap. To do this, we need to find partners who know how to reach patients in remote or difficult to access situations. That’s why we’re going to South Dakota.

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It’s so important, when you’re trying to get people fired up about complicated ideas, that you have the right people on your team. My co-pilots on this trip are a colleague who is from Sioux Falls and whose father has opened some doors for us, and CVT’s clinical advisor for our international programs, who is Kenyan and a PhD psycholgist. He describes the needs this way:

In Nairobi, there are thousands of Somali torture survivors living in the slums who are not there legally, under the protection of the United Nations. They literally cannot leave their dwellings during the day, because the Kenyan police will round them up and shake them down for bribes. Which would you choose: Pay a bribe, or be sent back to Somalia where you may face certain death? They may not have iphones, but could we develop a text-based therapy intervention?

Among the survivors who are in Nairobi legally, there are many Congolese and people of other non-English speaking nationalities. Kenya is an English-speaking country. The refugee kids may have already missed years of schooling due to being forced to serve as child soldiers and living on the run or hiding. Now they spend 12 hours a day in school—regular school, plus an extra block of time added on to learn English. They have survived unimaginable horrors. Many of them need psychotherapy or physical therapy, but they don’t have time for it. Could we develop a game-like therapy intervention that would appeal to youth?

CVT also works in Dadaab, the largest refugee camp on earth, in northern Kenya near the Somali border. Its population is about the same as Minneapolis—about 350,000 people. Could we do tele-therapy with them—either mental health or physical? If so we could reach so many more people. We could also use videoconferencing to train our own and other organizations’ staff.

“Do they all have smart phones in Dadaab?” I asked. I have been to Nairobi but not Dadaab.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “We would have to do a survey to determine who has the old Nokias, how many have smart phones. The Chinese are making big inroads into the African market with cheap smart phones. Most Kenyans use their mobiles for everything. They don’t have tablets or desk tops or TVs or land lines. They’ve basically skipped over those generations of devices and they do everything on mobiles.”

I love projects like this. They’re big, messy, uncertain, and complicated. They require me to work with people with whom I don’t normally interact. They may have big payoffs. And in this case they require a road trip.

When Worlds Collide

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I’ve been writing a series of posts about traveling in Cuba that starts here. I am pausing that for a day to write about an unsettling experience where my worlds collided.

I volunteer with the Minnesota International NGO Network, or MINN. MINN is composed of Minnesota companies and nonprofits that work overseas, like my employer, the Center for Victims of Torture (CVT).

Last year MINN launched a class called MINNspire, which helps 50-somethings to explore doing something abroad. This could be anything from volunteering with Peace Corps, to teaching English as a second language, to consulting on communications, as I have done. MINN isn’t there to find them placements; we’re there to guide them through the thought process. I led one of the four sessions last year and will do the same this year—I think.

I was excited that we had 18 people registered—about twice the number as last year. It’s kind of a big commitment to come to something after work, in the dark, during the winter.

I walked in and said hi to my friend Carolyn, one of the four facilitators of the class. There were already two students in the room. Carolyn said to me, in a way that told me we might have an “issue”, “Something really interesting happened with registration. I spoke to a Rotary Club that happened to have a lot of members of the DOC, and we’ve got 10 people from the DOC registered for the class.”

The Department of Corrections. The people I never wanted anything to do with, ever again.

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I had come from work, where I had spent the day writing about Eritrean torture survivors. Eritrea is known as the “North Korea of Africa.” They have forced conscription, which means every young man must join the military or go to prison. In the military, they are worked like slaves and their service is indefinite. If they try to escape, Eritrea throws them into underground prisons where they are tortured. If they make it to Ethiopia, they wind up in refugee camps with no future, and their family back home is persecuted. Sometimes they try fleeing to Israel, the one country that reluctantly takes them in, but often they are caught by—essentially—desert pirates called Rashida who hold them for ransom, torturing them while their families listen helplessly on the other end of the phone.

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As you might imagine, a lot of Eritrean torture survivors have PTSD, and that is where CVT comes in. We provide trauma therapy and we hope to add physical therapy next year.

So I was writing about this all day and then I stepped into a room of people who had been my and my son’s tormentors for a year and a half.

I am in no way comparing what I went through to what Eritreans have endured. My point is that I know firsthand what a flashback feels like. A surge of adrenaline surged through me. My heart started racing and my palms got sweaty. I felt a powerful urge to bolt.

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“I figure if I was a prison warden for 20 years, I can do anything!” one of the women exclaimed. The thought of her volunteering in an orphanage made me uneasy.

“My son just finished the boot camp program,” I told them. Might as well get it out there before she said something that would cause me shoot my mouth off. They oohed and ahhed said what a great program that was.

Carolyn knows my back story and has a high EQ. She emailed later:

“I would never imagine that you would come face to face with your oppressor in MINNspire. I mean, last year you were in Palestine, looking for ways to collaborate, professionally, with enemies of the Jewish state and now you come to St Paul and you are asked to teach the people whom you’ve written about for years.

“ I have to shake my head at what the universe is throwing at you. But if anyone can handle it, you can.”

I hope she’s right, because I thought about backing out of the class but I’ve decided to stick it out. I’ll keep you posted.

Happy New Life, Again

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Happy New Year! I am re-posting this from January 1 of last year. I hesitated to share such a personal story then, but it has been the most-read post of the 232 Vince and I have written. Maybe it’s the story, or the encouraging advice. Or maybe it’s the guns.

If you received this twice, that’s because I accidentally posted it for January 1, 2015. Off to a good start, I say!

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Three years ago, I hit bottom. I had lived with depression for as long as I could remember, but then…. I had to have a tooth pulled—boy, will that make you feel old! Then during a Christmas Day blizzard my car was towed and I spent four hours waiting in line outside at the impound lot to pay $300 to get it back. I then drove to Fountain to visit Vince. The trailer he shared with Seth was full of guns, beer cans, and smoke. I figured what the heck, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, so after he assured me that none of the guns was loaded, we posed for photos that became my holiday cards to my friends in the UK, where they had a good laugh over us gun-crazy Americans.

Due to the blizzard I spent the night in Seth’s 5-year-old daughter’s bedroom; she was at her mom’s. Here’s a tip for parents who smoke: Keeping your kid’s door closed doesn’t keep smoke out. I couldn’t open the window and after tossing and turning until 5am I slipped out and drove home. On the way I started itching. Great—now I had bedbugs!

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I contemplated suicide. I leaned my forehead against the screen of my 20th floor window. I had turned 50 the year before. Thinking about being depressed every day for another 30-40 years wasn’t real appealing.

—

Here are the things I had tried to manage depression and anxiety:

Meditation

Medication

Prayer (including begging, pleading, and bargaining)

Acting normal

Abstaining from drinking

Cutting down on coffee

Self-help books

Alanon

Exercise

Getting outside every day

Appreciating beauty, be it fine art, nature, music, babies, or kittens

Gratitude lists

Avoiding negative people / avoiding unnaturally happy people

Running away to other countries

Denial

Journaling

Telling myself, “At least I’m not a refugee / amputee / blind / fill-in-the-blank.”

Psychotherapy

Retail therapy

Sleeping, drinking, and movie binges

Reaching out to friends, even when that was the last thing I wanted to do

—

I thought that jumping out of my window would be exhilarating, until I hit the ground. I had some leftover pain killers from the dentist, and my prescription for Restless Legs. I googled an overdose of the two and learned that they wouldn’t kill me, but that I would likely need a liver transplant. I decided to keep living.

—

That spring, I visited Vince again and this time, made a reservation at a B&B. On the free-book-shelf there, I picked up a tattered copy of, “Feeling Good: the New Mood Therapy”, by David Burns, MD. I read it and did what it told me to do, and I stopped being depressed. For good.

The book was about Cognitive Therapy. I had been instructed to use it at least twice in the past, but I’d been too stressed out to do it. Basically, you write down your negative thoughts and then argue with them rationally until you’ve de-fanged them. Writing it down is important; if you try to do it in your head you’ll end up down a rabbit hole.

So was a lifetime of depression cured overnight by one book? No. I think it was all the other things I had tried over the years—the good things, anyway—and then I added this on top of them and together they all added up to a breakthrough.

I still feel sad sometimes–there’s plenty to feel sad about–but I’m not depressed and I’m committed to living.

Sorry for the long post but, if you’re struggling, I want to encourage you to keep an open mind, keep plugging away, and keep trying new things.

PS: I didn’t have bedbugs after all. I think I was just itchy from the smoke and dry air. Living with addiction can turn you into a drama addict.

The Choice

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This is the second in a series of posts, starting with this one.

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I was unmarried and pregnant with a one-year-old baby, on welfare, living in public housing. I was 19.

I had just started to feel better about myself and the future. The first pregnancy had been due to carelessness. This time it was due to birth control failure. It was painful knowing people thought I was stupid.

I had just gotten rid of my pet rat, Smiley, because I couldn’t afford to feed him. If I couldn’t afford to feed a rat, how could I afford to feed another kid?

—

I had gone to a doctor because I was exhausted. His name was Charlie Brown, believe it or not.

I figured he would say I was anemic.

He laughed a yucky laugh when he saw the look on my face.

“That’s what happens to girls like you.”

“What?” I was confused.

“Girls who sleep around shouldn’t be surprised when this happens.”

“But it’s the same father.”

He glanced at Vince as though he was a cockroach.

“So the father is white?” He lowered his voice. “I know some people who would pay handsomely to adopt this baby.”

If a doctor named Charlie Brown said this to me today, I would punch him in the face, then sue him. Instead, I thanked him mechanically and never returned.

—

In spring semester I would take Statistics, English Literature, and part two of Pathology, Anatomy and Physiology, and Abnormal Psychology. My favorite class was Pathology. The Hennepin County medical examiner taught it; his name was Vincent which I took as a good sign. It was basically one long gruesome slide show—or should I say, sideshow. There was the guy who had been decapitated when his snowmobile ran into a barbed wire fence, a baby born without a brain, and a glistening, five-foot-long tapeworm with eye-like markings. I loved it. I didn’t want to drop out.

—

I went to see a social worker at Catholic Charities. Her name was Judy.

“You could give the gift of life to a childless couple!” she exclaimed. I had an image of her as a Tyrannosaurus Rex, drooling and flapping her little claws over this baby. This white baby.

I didn’t care about helping some rich couple who probably lived in the burbs and had a foosball table in their basement.

“I don’t want Vincent to be an only child,” I said. My siblings and I didn’t always get along, but I imagined being an only child as very lonely.

“You can always have more children,” said Judy, “when you’re married. You’re certainly fertile!”

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My psych instructor gave a lecture on “high risk youth,” the new buzz phrase. There were certain early experiences, like being beaten, locked in a basement, or put up for adoption, that caused youth to become drug addicts, criminals, and psychotic.

“Statistics show our prisons are full of men who were abused, neglected, or abandoned by their parents—usually single mothers on welfare.”

My best friend from high school was adopted. I thought about the times I had seen her mother belittling her. “You’re so fat! Are you going to wear that?” What if I gave this baby up for adoption, which I now understood was an act of abandonment, and his new parents abused him?

—

I told some of my classmates and they urged me to have an abortion. “At this stage it’s just a clump of cells,” they reasoned. This was true, but I couldn’t have an abortion so soon after giving birth. I couldn’t explain it. I just couldn’t do it.

“Don’t be a tool of the pro-lifers!” the one male student in my class said. That was a valid concern too, but I had to set it aside. Choice meant choice, right?

My mother didn’t tell me what to do. “If you go through with adoption,” she said, I don’t want you anywhere near the family. It’s got to be our secret”

Hedgehogs, Mice, and Echidnas, Oh My

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I pride myself on writing realistically about life. You can count on me to tell the truth as I know it, to question everything, and to imagine the worst case scenario. I don’t know why the Pentagon hasn’t called me yet to offer me a disaster-planning job.

But that doesn’t mean I’m depressed, or even “unhappy”—the more generic term. Being a highly-analytical thinker has its rewards. I notice and think about things that other people do not. There’s often absurd fodder for laughs. Sometimes I’m the only one laughing, but that’s okay, right?

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There was an article in the Sunday paper about a study that debunked the popular myth that “happy” people are healthier and live longer. Yes! My friend who works in an old folks home—or whatever they’ve been rebranded as now—has always said, “There are plenty of miserable, crabby 90 year olds. And they’ve always been that way, because their kids tell me they have.”

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About five years ago, I kicked the depression that had dogged me all my life. Since then I have felt mostly contentment, punctuated with the normal situationally-appropriate emotions. I felt angry when my landlord raised my rent $300 a month, which forced me to move. I was stressed when I moved again three months later so Vince could live with me. I was anxious when Vince was in solitary confinement. I cried for everything my sister and her kids went through when she had cancer. I felt awe hiking in Petra, in the Jordanian desert, and nervous about crossing over into the Palestinian territories. I felt powerless rage when I was banned from visiting Vince. I had a blast with my friends in Berlin. I’ve been bored at work. I was proud when Vince led his squad at his graduation from boot camp. I am excited at the prospect of remodeling my kitchen.

Hey, I guess I just wrote my Christmas letter! What a year it’s been.

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None of it lasts. Some people figure this out somehow, much earlier in life than I did. Emotions come and go. The pleasant and the unpleasant, they’re all fleeting. So enjoy the nice ones while they last and know that the bad ones will dissipate. Don’t panic if you feel blue once in a while. Don’t latch on to the negative feelings or thoughts. If the blues don’t go away for weeks, of course, seek professional help.

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In the last week I’ve had some really good times with people I love.

Yesterday I took my mother to tour the Purcell Cutts House, a prairie-style home build in 1913 and owned by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. This is the living room:

The guide explained that the simple, serene style was in part a reaction to the chaos of the age. The architect was from Chicago, which was the industrial center of the U.S. Meat packing and other industries attracted droves of immigrants and African Americans from the south. There wasn’t enough housing, and the water and sewer systems weren’t up to par. There were no child labor laws, workers’ compensation, welfare, or social security.

So architects brought nature and art inside. Obviously this was not a house that could be produced on a mass scale. The immigrants and African Americans still lived in poorly-heated hovels. But at least this one architect could escape all that and find sanctuary at home!

Last weekend, I hosted a cookie-baking party for Vince and his cousins.

They’re not pretty, but we had fun. Strangely, Vince and I had prepared enough dough to yield 16 dozen cookies but only nine dozen made it to the final stage. Hmmm…or should I say, Mmmmm….cookie dough?

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So enjoy the moments that contain things you love. In my case: design, craftsmanship, nature, history. Kids, creativity, and cookie dough.

Breaking Free

Living Well, Despite what Life Throws at You

Category Archives: mental illness

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When Worlds Collide

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The Choice

Hedgehogs, Mice, and Echidnas, Oh My