not so grounded

The Most Perfect Day Ever

Awoke early for a glorious long canter (Elise does not walk ...) across More Mesa bluff and then down along the Pacific.  Magnificent gray swells and kelp, seals lounging on jagged rocks, timeless fog against eroded cliffs, warm sweatshirt against the cold.  We met another friend, 5 dogs between us, and glided through wide empty swaths of low-tide beach. 

Returned to prepare for the workday, suddenly stopped heavy by an overdose of global overwhelm,  confusion on top.  Dusted with a little frustration, or maybe that's sadness?  Probably woven with fear.  Not a specific person, thing, circumstance, client, or item in the news  But every organization I work with, everything I observe, so much that I encounter ... folks are burning to a crisp.  Somber and weighty. 

I know I'm supposed to help my clients accomplish measurable business objectives, but, quite honestly, I'd rather wrap them snug in star-kissed silk, serve them warm chocolate chip cookies, and tease out something worth a belly laugh.

I cleared my head with a hot shower, stepped onto the back deck just as the sun appeared in full, and took a deep breath.

What if we all got out in the sun?  Stepped away from the responsibilities, to-do lists, and frustrations that prop up illusions we don't even like?  I know how to shift my vibration - a moment of gratitude for sand between my toes, my closest friend in the next room, the scent of fresh eucalyptus, laughing for no reason ... I'm so there.  

I just want everyone there.  I want everyone to awake every morning knowing this will be the most perfect day ever, the 6+ billion different ways that might be defined. 

Is that too much to ask?

The Alternative Route

We were discussing utilization management when I started feeling wonky.  I was growing a fever and an acute need for a bed.  Or, ideally, a place to send my body into time-out until it was better behaved.  I don't think the topic made me sick, although ironic since UM (we love acronyms) is how healthcare folks decide if symptoms, diagnoses and treatments really jive.  I was still in the symptom phase, and they were getting worse. 

This has been my second Wonk in a month, which worried me, so after Lesa's Herculean nursing and 36-hours staring at HGTV in the hotel, I drove back across North Carolina and straight to Sam Williams, homeopath and functional medicine wizard.  He hooked me up to his frequency machine (which, I swear, sounds like Vegas slots), ran through a battery of tests and permutations, and smiled kindly at the end when he said, "Is there something you know you should be doing with your life, but still hesitating?  Because your body suggests it's time to get on with it."

Damn.  The flu woulda been easier.

Here's what I love (or hate - lol) about "alternative" medicine.  Things aren't parceled up like in Western medicine.  While I worried mono, Sam found existential.  He checked for parasites, bacteria and viruses (even Epstein-Barr), but found my 12th chakra gone awry instead. (Hell, I didn't even know there was a 12th chakra ...)

Fortunately, "alternative" medicine can also treat the existential, or at least ease my angst enough so I can get on with it, as Sam suggests.  Nobody kicks bacterial infections like our family docs, and Western meds and surgery have saved many a loved one's life.  But alternative medicine can treat some things that Western medicine can't.  Heal them, in fact, not just calm the symptoms and pain.

I know that's a leap.  But conventional and alternative are really really different.  Different enough they require radically different questions, assumptions and mind-sets.  Even conversation is tough.  It's akin to translation -- Sanskrit and Swahili are both languages, but it's sure hard to talk when the characters remain foreign.  Oversimplification:  Western sees mechanistic precision, exquisite attention to each detailed part; bacteria invade and must be eradicated for normal functioning to resume. Alternative sees wholeness, a tapestry of unfathomable interconnections; a sentry got distracted, caused by one of a zillion possible reasons (a passing fantasy, partied too late last night, been pissed off at the boss for 16 years ...) allowing the virus to sneak through that gaping hole in the wall.  So let's find the unique thing to close the hole, get rid of the virus and help the sentry heal what ails him (endless possible treatments for endless possible scenarios).

A week into Sam's treatment last fall, Maddy's acute mono ceased; within a month she said she felt better than she had in a year; within 3 months she felt better than she ever remembered.  Bonnie Walker's acupuncture once stopped a full-blown migraine instantly; a few more treatments and they never returned.  My chronically high cortisol and that intense chest-clench I've been ignoring for months?  My weird, sudden muscle spasms and aches and allergies? John's lingering symptoms from 40-year old knock-outs to the head?  All been healed by "alternatives."  (I have a fabulous list of folks -- I'm happy to share.)

So Friday afternoon Sam gave me half a dozen little containers of homeopathics to take 3 times a day.  A few treat predictable things: flu, fever, stomachache.  But the flower essences are my favorites:  filaree to regain a cosmic perspective on mundane worries; golden yarrow to find comfort and protection in an expanded, open life; and mimulus to help my soul find the strength and purpose of my higher self.

I spent Saturday in bed, Sunday finished some chores, today I'm physically back to normal.  Now it's on to "getting on with it," whatever "it" might be.  I keep tracing back to Wednesday's utilization management discussion, those links between symptoms, diagnoses and treatment.  We need to broaden them somehow, expand them, create something that bellows, "Ya know - we need all the types of medicines we can get!"  I suspect there's an "it" in there.

I'm SO Sorry!

Huge apology to my blog subscribers!  I closed out my other blog, moved all the posts to here and fear it means y'all are receiving a zillion emails. 

Promise, I won't do this again.

Beyond the Story

Enjoying some literary downtime on my recent Santa Barbara business trip, I attended a writing workshop and dinner with LeeAnn Howe, at the invitation of our mutual friend Marisela Marquez (my UCSB client and a close buddy from grad school).  She led us through a miraculously simple yet powerful series of writing sequences that inspired me immensely, even though I didn't really follow the directions. (Note to teachers:  I never really follow directions.) Then a small group of us women had delicious mole enchiladas, chili verde and Tecate's at Del Pueblo Cafe.

We were asked to write about an object of meaning, to explore our own stories through this catalyst.  LeeAnn chose the stones in her heirloom ring.  Perhaps the ring also has Indian significance, for she's an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and much of her work embraces Indian stories and themes.  Part of her fabric as a person, a woman, a writer and scholar.  In fact, everyone at the following dinner has an identity she allows to enrich her individual personality -- lesbian, Indian, Japanese-American, Chicana, women of color ... 

Except me. 

I guess I could, sort of, although my dry-spell fantasies sure confirmed my mainstream sexual preference and my ethnic ancestry's a few generations back.  Three of my four grandparents came from Europe, aged 3 or 5, wide-eyed and perhaps a little seasick, holding tightly to their parents hands in a blurred mishmash of strange languages and faces, stepping through Ellis Island amid confusing paperwork and beleaguered immigration clerks who changed their Polish or Italian tongue-twisters to names easier on the New York ear.  My other grandparent was mid-point through an equally unique lineage -- four of her five grandchildren (including me) mark five-generations born in Brooklyn, certainly a whole culture in and of itself.  My mother was raised Jewish before converting when she married my father, the Episcopal seminarian; I was the preacher's kid who attended my 2nd cousins' bar mitvahs, the Goyeh who's Cousins Bea and Arthur had concentration camp tatoos.  My father, the priest, had gratis memberships to the most exclusive clubs in our Long Island suburb, but they would have banned my mother had they known her heritage. 

But I never wear these things.  I know for certain that my discipline for diversity and tolerance moves lightingly straight with the fact that my best friend and I weren't allowed to swim together in the country club pool.  But, I think my bewildered fury preceded the insult, and, besides, beyond that I'm wary to Identify.  With anything. 

Mostly, I am wary of Stories, particularly my own.  They seem to interfere with, more than illuminate, who I am.  Even my strangest personal adventures seem inconsequential backdrops to my ever-sharpening unique qualities.  I'm fairly reserved, smart, well-spoken, determinedly naive, a fierce friend, clear to articulate, and a staunch defender that everyone should be able to invent her or his own rules and life.  I increasingly believe my stories merely illustrate these things, not shape or define them.  And, quite honestly, I can't imagine why anyone, including me, would care about the narrative tragedies and triumphs of my ancestors or my past. 

I honor others' stories, but honestly -- running the risk of stepping beyond correctness -- they don't interest me nearly as much as the essence of the story teller.  I admired LeeAnn Howe because of her obvious commitment and skill at inviting forth the deepest nuance from her workshop participants, not really 'cause she's one of only half a dozen full professor Indian women in the country, inspiring as that is.  I embrace Marisela's Chicana identity marvel at her melodic Spanish.  But I love her because she is kind, wise, smart and has one of the deepest hearts I know.  And I bet she's been like that far longer than our 24-year friendship.  Far longer than her stories, too.

I get that story telling allows us to express our essence in ways that closed ears might hear.  But I'm eager for the time when we know each other without the need for such accompaniment.