Category: addiction

Reminders of Respect

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Today’s words are in memory of a childhood friend and in honor of those who are surviving right now in situations less ideal than my own.

We’d just started our sophomore year of high school. It must have been maybe the second week of classes. I don’t remember the exact date. What I do remember is walking into school that day to find my classmates in the hallways crying. Eventually the pieces came together. There had been a party. Kids were drinking. He was beaten. He didn’t survive.

We went to a small school. Some of us had known him since kindergarten or maybe even before. Now he was gone and a space in our lives was empty.

I was talking with some of my students yesterday. They’re in college now, just a few years older than I was when I first learned how alcohol can kill. They reminded me that people today do just like we did then. They use alcohol and drugs to fight boredom and frustration.

I’d been talking with one of the staff of Someplace Safe this week too. We know that alcohol and drugs plus people stuck together with limited outlets means an increase in violence.

If you’re reading this and find that this staying home thing is increasing your drinking, I am going to ask you to take a look at how that drinking is impacting you and your relationships with the others you’re sharing space with. Are you being respectful to yourself and those others? You and your relationships are worth more than the bottle.

If you’re one of the people who’s in an unsafe space. First, I send you love and strength. You’re not alone. Please, if you are able, call, email, or text, your local domestic violence support group, a friend or family member, police, or someone else you can trust. These are hard times. We all need our support systems. Groups like Someplace Safe are finding creative ways to keep working and get people into safe places out of harm’s way. You deserve to be safe and treated with caring and respect.

Take good care friends.

The First Day

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Sundays are a day for me to go to Pizza Ranch. It’s a thing in our little town. A lot of people seem to go there for the buffet after church. I skip the church part, but the buffet has often been part of my Sunday. I am proud to say that this Sunday held no buffet for me.

After a breakfast of berries with yogurt and a little chia seed pudding (and I will admit to some sugar free chocolate chips mixed in), I went to the gym. I’ve just started going back. Today was my first day doing leg weights. The weight was really low, but given that I am healing from a broken ankle just two months ago, I am feeling really good about what I was able to do.

It was a nice day so I took advantage of it and after the gym, instead of going to Pizza Ranch, I took my dog Buddy for a long walk that included some off leash time out in the Pomme de Terre Park. We both loved it.

I don’t know that lunch was totally healthy, but it was a lot healthier than a pop and multiple slices of pizza. I made myself buttered noodles with asparagus and tomatoes and had a little cottage cheese while I was waiting for it to cook. Later in the afternoon I had some fresh pumpkin/ apple bake with a bit of yogurt and berries (and I’ll admit to more sugar free chocolate chips).

The afternoon held a little nap and then working on various projects. I realized something. I realized that my energy is coming back after being really low when my ankle broke. Two months ago I was sleeping all day and night. More recently I was waking up multiple times during the night, but not doing a lot during the day or accomplishing my household tasks. Then I started meditating again and using frankincense in hopes of getting my sleep back and avoiding seizures. Well, I am just waking up once or twice a night now and my house is getting back in order. I’m not sure what, but something is working. My dreams have changed too. They’ve gone from nightmares to strange and entertaining.

Dinner was unusual. I bought tofu yesterday on a whim. I’ve not bought tofu in years. Tonight I threw together the tofu with an array of veggies– broccoli, onion, tomato, garlic, and okra, with a bit of miso, coconut oil, and cayenne pepper and baked it up for about 45 minutes. It was surprisingly good. That’s good because I made enough to have leftovers for a few days.

I snacked tonight on a bit more of the pumpkin/apple bake with berries, yogurt, and chia pudding with more of those sugar free chips. I think the next step may be getting rid of the chips. I can’t imagine they’re at all healthy, but they do taste good.

It was a healthy day and I feel good about it. I hope you all had a good day on your wellness journey as well.

A New Challenge for Me

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Okay, tonight’s post is just going to be a short one, but it’s an important one for me to write. About 4 years ago I had my allergies tested and I found that I had a list of mild food irritants. Most are pretty easy to avoid. Buckwheat just isn’t something I’ve ever eaten on a regular basis. But some are harder to stay away from. The truly tough one and the one that really messes with my health is sugar. I have a mild allergy to cane sugar.

Eating sugar is an addiction. It’s an addiction for a lot of us. I do pretty well when I am at home. I don’t bring sugary substances into my house. My problem is that it’s too easy to go out to eat. I will often eat at a cafeteria at work where my meal almost always includes bread made with sugar, breaded mozzarella sticks that include sugar and marina sauce with sugar. Outside of work I’ll go out for pizza which is generally filled with sugar and I’ll have pop which either has sugar or high fructose corn syrup, so basically either sugar or sugar. Sometimes I’ll go out to a restaurant for a burger or something. Again, I’ll have a soda and there will inevitably be something that has sugar in it whether it’s the onion rings or the hamburger bun or something. Then there are the times where I quite simply crash and decide I’m getting a sugary dessert just because. I don’t feel better when I eat like that. Instead I feel my stomach upset and the fatigue that comes with eating poorly.

My addiction has been getting worse in recent weeks since I broke my ankle and my weight has been going up. So, now is the time to detox again and the way I am choosing to do that is to quit eating out, including the cafeteria at work, for the next month. I’ll let myself go if invited by friends or family. I am a person who mostly eats out alone, my family lives far away, and I don’t often meet friends eating out, so I don’t think this will be an issue.

I am hoping the next month will get me back on track, help me lose that 5 lbs I’ve gained in the last two months, get me cooking more good foods, and maybe help me save a few dollars at the same time. I also hope that this challenge will help me get just a little healthier for my next visit to the neurologist.

I hope your health journey is going well!

Sweet Holidays

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About one and a half years ago I changed my diet. I didn’t go on a diet. In my experience, diets are almost always temporary fixes that don’t lead to long term solutions. I opted instead to change the foods I eat for a lifetime in order to live longer and better with hopes that it would help decrease my seizures and help with the bouts of depression that I’d been facing.

I worked with an old friend who now is a medical professional to test my food allergies. We found nine. Not surprisingly, most were things that I was eating daily, things like potatoes and cane sugar. I was craving these items just like any other addict would crave the substances that harm them. So, my list of harmful substances in hand I cleaned out my kitchen and began again.

It was tough at first, but I began to quickly see the benefits and they kept me going. Over time I lost 50lbs, found greater energy, began to be able to sleep through the night again, felt mentally clearer, and stopped needing to run to the bathroom every two hours. The change of eating habits definitely has helped my life a great deal. It’s hard to say whether it’s cut my seizures or not, but I’m down to about one a year which is much better than bouts of them every few months where I was a few years ago.

Over the holidays I decided to try an experiment to see how my body has healed in the last one and a half years. I decided that while I was visiting family for the week between Christmas and New Year’s that I wouldn’t stick with my healthy food choices. I wouldn’t go overboard, but I would allow myself things like sugary Christmas cookies and cheesy potatoes if I wanted them.

It is amazing to me the impact that food has on our bodies. There were many meals this past week that told me immediately that they weren’t right for me. I wondered how I handled the food roller coaster for the first forty-five years of my life. I’d find myself eating some food that I’d once loved; processed macaroni and cheese, buttered noodles from Noodles and Company, rice crispy bars, all these heavily processed, sugar laden, super carb foods that were one minute tasty on the tongue and the next causing me to say “ugghhh, I should not have done that.” Food should not elicit that kind of response.

Over the week I found that most of my allergens I can live with or without and not care too much, but there is that one demon. Yes, you probably guessed it, sugar. I am only allergic to cane sugar, but just eliminating that from my diet significantly cut my overall sugar use. When I reintroduced it this past week, I suddenly found myself reaching for more and more Christmas cookies even though I knew that within the hour I’d want a nap. Every day I slept for about an hour in the afternoon. Every night I got up at least once. I could see and feel the changes in my complexion and just my body overall even in just nine short days. And, the cravings were amazing. It is a strange thing to find myself thinking about the next cookie or piece of chocolate or whatever.

I am glad that I did the experiment and glad to be home and going back to my normal way of eating. I’ll probably be juice fasting for a few days to rid myself of toxins. Then, I hope I can keep passing all the sugary processed stuff everywhere and get back to being healthy. Wishing you all the best of health in the new year.

Is It Control?

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Continuing my Turning Toward meditation this morning, I find myself asking if my attempt to look at my need to seek control might not have some aspects of seeking control within it.  Still, it was an interesting exercise and I appreciate what I saw and am left to wonder what might be opening up.

This morning I mentally walked into the meditation acknowledging that I struggle with a need to find some control in my life.  Many years ago it came to life in what maybe was properly labeled as anorexia.  Recently, life has been pretty stressful and I saw, just for a moment, some old tools resurfacing.  Twenty plus years after I thought my battle with my eating disorder was over I found myself thinking about how I could cut my food consumption in some unhealthy ways.  Thankfully, today I have a wealth of other tools in my collection that I didn’t have two decades ago.  I was able to look at myself and say “Woah, I don’t want to go down that path again.  What’s happening here? What do I really need?”  Thus, I meditate, write, balance time with good people and to myself, walk a lot, and with the spring am starting to garden again and eat the fresh veggies that I’ve grown in community with others.  With help, I’ve also been able to address some of the things that have caused the stress.  One by one they’re being taken care of and life is smoothing out again.

Still, I wonder about that control piece.  Why do I need to be in charge? Why do I avoid asking for help? I’ve found some answers in meditation of late, but it feels there is more.  Yet today, the question refused to be acknowledged.  Instead, the meditation took me to the woods.  It was the woodlot on the back of the farm where I grew up, just a tiny patch of trees, but big enough for a little girl’s dreams and firewood for the stove in winter.

I saw the box where we used to store some of wood cutting equipment, at least I think that’s what used to be in that box.  I never did much with it.  The woods was a play place for me mostly.  It was where Hawkeye lived, a chickenhawk who was my symbol of grace, strength and freedom as a child.  It was also home to unicorns, fairies, and an array of other magical beings as well as the creatures of this world.  There were tall trees that had fallen and made wonderful climbing toys.  It was a magical forest.

Hmmm…. maybe this morning’s meditation was simply reminding me of a time and place where I didn’t need control and it was ok

That’s the thought for the day.  Thanks for reading.  And, thanks to Feedspot for adding Sustainablelifeinaction to the to top 75 Sustainability Blogs! https://blog.feedspot.com/sustainability_blogs/

Taking Care

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I wonder when I became a care taker rather than someone to be taken care of and what the balance of these things is?  When did I decide that others were more valuable than myself and have I changed my mind?

My meditation of late has led me to a practice of turning toward.  I’m being encouraged to take a look at something in my life that troubles me and sit with it for a bit.  I’ve been recognizing that I am a “wonder woman.”  I’ve known it for a long time, but this practice is encouraging me to look at it and see where it comes from.  I help people.  That’s what I do.  That’s what I do for a living and that’s what I do for a life.  I don’t like being helped though.  I don’t really trust it.  I like to be the one in charge of the process or simply just to do whatever it is myself.

The last two days as I’ve done this meditation laying in my bed I could feel my body tied down and the rock in the center of my stomach as my mind took me back to childhood again.  Doesn’t it always go back to childhood?  We must have all been messed up as kids.

This time it was back to grade school.  I remember being really excited about going to school.  I loved books. I wanted to learn.  I wanted make friends and to have a nice teacher who cared about me.  It didn’t totally work out that way.  I did have nice teachers who cared about me.  I learned a lot.  I had a couple friends.  But, I went to a small school so I wasn’t only picked on by the kids in my class, but by the entire school.

It was the 1970’s and 80’s.  Grown ups didn’t step in much if at all to deal with bullying.  I was just told I needed to get over being shy without being given any tools to do that.  In some sense, it became my fault that I was being harassed.  So, day to day I struggled.  I wanted to have friends.  I wanted to be a part and to have fun at this school that I’d dreamed of.  I wanted to feel safe there.  Instead my stomach was permanently clenched and I dreaded every moment never knowing when my tormentors would get me next.  I tried to hide in plain sight.  It sounds unbelievable to me now, but I don’t think I ever, in six years, asked to use the bathroom during school hours because I didn’t want to draw attention to myself.  I just held it until I got home.

That wasn’t ok.  I needed a grownup to help me and the other kids develop our relationships.  There’s nothing to change now about what happened then and that’s ok.  It’s just good for me to acknowledge what I needed and didn’t get and now I can move on.  What happened then isn’t the determinant of what could happen in other situations if I allow myself to be helped or taken care of.  I don’t need to always protect myself by being the one who only takes care.  I can both take and accept.  We each can.

Thank you for reading my thoughts today.

Where are the Lines?

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My beginning meditation practice continues to open my vault of memories and encourage me to look at myself asking questions of my experiences and responses.  I don’t believe that there are bad people.  I believe that there are people who are injured and need healing.  I wonder now if that doesn’t make life more complicated?  Wouldn’t it be easier to just be angry and just give up on the possibilities of forgiveness? What hurt and anger do I hold for myself when I don’t give it to others?

Many memories are resurfacing these days, some good and some sad or scary.  One that I was surprised to see again came from sometime after I graduated college.  I was back in town for some reason staying with friends.  One of them had an extra bed in his room where his son usually stayed on weekends.  That was where I was going to sleep.  I felt totally safe.  I’d been friends with this guy for several years.  I was tired from my trip and went to sleep before he got home.  When he came in that night he slid into my bed and began to grope.  I swatted his hands away.  He got up and went to his own bed.  Neither of us ever spoke of what happened.

In seconds I went from feeling completely safe to terrorized with just a touch.  He’s gone from my life now.  We just didn’t stay in contact after I left town again.

For years I didn’t have a name for what happened.  I’ll admit I didn’t know which bed in that room was his and which belonged to his son.  I did blame myself.  I said to myself that maybe I’d gotten into the wrong bed that night and maybe that caused him to think what he did was invited and ok.   He was my friend.  In my mind,  I couldn’t translate the idea that it could possibly be assault.  He wouldn’t hurt me, right?  He walked away when my body stiffened and I swatted his hands away.

I had no name for what happened.  All I knew is that the trust was broken and I couldn’t go back to that place of trusting again.  I didn’t want to blame him, after all I don’t believe in bad people and what happened scared me and emotionally hurt me.

This morning I looked up the definition of sexual assault on several different online sites.  I saw two things that struck me.  It is any unwanted sexual contact.  It is never the victim’s fault.

Maybe twenty years later now and I have a name for what happened.  It was sexual assault.  I can call it that.  I can be part of that ever growing community of women who’ve been assaulted.  No one wants to be part of that community, but a community it is and strength grows there.

It wasn’t my fault.  It was his.  I still don’t believe in people being somehow bad or evil.  But, I will say he was responsible for his actions and what he did was wrong and hurtful and I didn’t deserve it.

Now, it’s time for me to get up from that bed in that room twenty years ago and walk out into the light of a new day.  Thank you for sharing my journey.

500 Years of Genocide

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I went to listen to the senior seminar of a student that I’ve had the good fortune to work with over the past few months today.  Quinn will be graduating with a degree in psychology and was speaking to the problem of suicide in Native American communities in the U.S. and the connection to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and inter-generational trauma.

Her presentation was excellent overall and gave me something particularly new to think about.  I’ve heard the comparison over the years between the holocaust and Native genocide. Quinn pointed out a key difference.  Many of the survivors of the holocaust were able to leave the concentration camps when the war was over.  That’s not an option in this case, at  least not for the vast majority.

I am reminded of my old friend Walt Bresette. Walt was Anishinaabe from the Red Cliff Indian Reservation on the shores of Lake Superior.  He would often go around speaking to groups about mining and other environmental issues and he would tell these largely non-Native groups– We must come to recognize this place as our home. We don’t do that.  We tend to believe that if we don’t live here we can live there.  It’s not that way for the Anishanaabe.  For the Anishanaabe this place is home.  This was where the creator led them, to this place where the food grows on water, that food we call wild rice.

So, we look at the history of Native people in the U.S. forced into small corners of their home,  these corners we call reservations, as part of the torture.  So, on the reservation is the place of torture because it is what remains of the home and off the reservation is the place of torture because it is the part of the home that was stolen.

What do we do with that?

I’m thinking about all this not only because of Quinn’s presentation, but because I lost an old friend and mentor this past week.  He was shot.  His nephew shot him.  A middle-aged Indian had his brains blown out by a somewhat younger Indian.  Why? No one really knows.  I doubt the nephew really even fully knows why he pulled that trigger.

What I do keep thinking is that while that young man pulled the trigger, a whole society, a society of which I am a part, murdered my friend.

The stealing of land, the failure to tell the truth of history, the economic, environmental, and social acts of destruction aimed toward the Indigenous people of this land for the past 500+ years, told that young man who he is.  Those actions helped him define his own view of himself and determine his response to the world.  Every action leads somewhere.  Quinn spoke today of inter-generational trauma and ACEs impact on the high levels of suicide in Native American communities.  I suspect the same is true for acts of violence and for deaths due to drug and alcohol overdoses as well.

Until we, as a society, really deeply and sincerely address those underlying causes, until we speak the truth of the history,  mourn together, and change our actions, we are still engaging in genocide every day and every moment of each day.

The Boarding Schools Continue

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I was a foster parent for a bit over a year before I moved to Morris.  It gave me an opportunity to learn quite a bit about the foster care system in Minnesota as well as to care pretty deeply about some profoundly hurt children.

The foster care system in Minnesota is a lot like that in other states.  It needs systemic change.  Wonderful, caring people work within the system.  They are overworked, under prepared for their roles, often lacking cultural competence for working with the groups that they interact with, and eventually just burned out.

There’s a piece though that troubles me most deeply about how the system works.  Here in Minnesota that piece goes back to 1871 with the opening of the White Earth Indian School.   The White Earth Indian School was one of sixteen boarding schools in Minnesota, the largest of which was on the campus where I now work.  The Morris Industrial School for Indians which was begun by the Catholic Sisters of Mercy and later run by the Federal Government had over 2000 students during its 22 year history from 1887 to 1909.  These schools were where Minnesota lived out that idea made famous by Capt. Richard H. Pratt, who founded the Carlisle School in Pennsylvania, “Kill the Indian. Save the man.”

Native children were kidnapped. Their hair was cut. They were denied their traditional diets and forced to speak only English.  They could no longer practice their own spiritual beliefs or learn from their elders.  Entire generations began to lose a sense of who they were.  We know now that this loss has fed into many of the challenges that our Native communities face today.  We understand that the destruction of the Native diet has led to diabetes, heart disease, depression, and other illnesses. We know that people need a sense of family and self to stay clean of drugs and to succeed economically and emotionally.  We know that many of the elders who lived through the boarding schools still carry the trauma and that those experiences are handed down one way or another.

Why does that matter?  Well, here in Minnesota 2% of the population is Native. Yet, over 20% of the children in foster care are Native.  In 1871, maybe the Federal government didn’t understand the culture of the Native people and how the community raised children.  Maybe they really thought they were doing something good.  I don’t know.  What I do know is that today we know better.  Today we know that it’s wrong to simply kidnap those children, cut their hair, take away their language and their beliefs, and feed them poison.  Yet we continue.

The system needs to change.  Stop putting Native kids in foster care at record rates.  Instead, feed them good food, bring back their languages, let them learn their history and their values, honor their communities.

The Red Dress

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Image may contain: people standing and outdoor

Miigwetch to David Manuel or whoever took this photo.

 

I’ll start this by being clear.  My ancestors are from Luxembourg and surrounding countries.  Sometimes when I advocate that the people of the over 500 different tribal nations in the place now referred to as North America get treated with basic respect and dignity I am asked if I am Native. I’m not.  I was just raised to care for and respect my neighbor.  And, I’ve had the good fortune to count some great Indians among my dearest friends.

I saw the photo of the red dress this morning.  It made me think.  I have long believed that racism is an act of fear more than power.  Somewhere in our being white folks recognize that we’ve done wrong for these many generations and we’re afraid of retribution.  We’re afraid of what could happen if everyone else had homes, jobs, money, education, and a safe place to be, at the same level that we do.

I’m not talking about individual fear.  Some people individually have moved past it.  But, as a group, we’re afraid.

We women, we have to address that fear.  It’s our to address because we are strong.  I remember as a young activist standing on the steps of the Wisconsin State Capitol, listening to Frannie Van Zile from the Mole Lake Nation.  She was talking about the proposed Crandon mine.  She said “You women, you women out there, you are the keepers of the water.”  Those words changed my life.  In many Indigenous cultures women are respected and honored. They are recognized to carry an important power, that they are keepers of the water, bearers of life.

That red dress reminds me that Native women, in fact all women of color, are in great danger because fear attacks where power resides.  It also reminds me that, as a woman, I have a responsibility to my sisters to care for them, to mourn their loss, and to do what I am able to keep them safe.