Excellent reframing of a perennial glitch in thought.

I've just found this article by Sandra Tsing Loh, who writes for The Atlantic. It's a fascinating look at what, by some, is considered being a "bad mother." For the author's awareness, agony, and anecdotes, the piece is a thought-provoking read ... and for all of us who are spinning through our days in our overwhelmed, wonky orbits (with child or not), here's a gem, excerpted from Therese Borchard's introduction to her anthology, The Imperfect Mom: Candid Confessions of Mothers Living in the Real World:

"... I've stopped asking myself, 'Do I do enough?' I ask instead, 'Do I lead with my heart?'"


Excellent question, and one I'll be asking myself from now on.

This is atrocious.

I've just read this article at Andrew Sullivan's site. A certain VA officer claims that if vets had more religion, they'd have less PTSD.

For all the so-called honours that are heaped on soldiers after they've been killed, does the military brass really care about its recruits? There always seems to be enough money for advertising, training, and weaponry ... and Lord knows there are more than enough insurance agents ... so how is it that there's a five-month wait for a war-wrecked soldier to even be considered for psychological treatment?

On-the-ground soldiers are being used, broken, and trashed. I can't get these quotations out of my head:

I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in. (George McGovern)

In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons. (Herodotus)

In modern war, you will die like a dog for no good reason. (Ernest Hemingway)

Of course, we also now have female soldiers dying like dogs. Vital young people all over the world are dying like dogs.

For what?


More quotations about war here.

Photograph found here.

Sudden thought while washing the dishes ...

What can I change and what can I not?

So be it.

Just for a laugh ... however ironic

(Thanks to a small dose of life for the image!)

Insomnia: relentlessly awake; becoming aware; writing it through ...

Every day lived in yoke to a habit is an opportunity to unravel one more knot in its becoming. Tonight, while my beloved watched a movie, I lay in bed with the cats and read. At about 10:40, he began his bedtime routine and asked me, with a little amazement in his voice, "Are you ... sleepy?" My mind was dim enough, and my body warm enough, to respond that I might be. As soon as he closed the bathroom door for his nightly shower, though, I suddenly thought of all the little chores that had to be done before I could rest -- like cleaning the cats' poo box and putting our leftover supper into the fridge. I thought of the one more cup of tea I'd like to sip ... of the book I wanted to finish ... of Mah Jong and Hearts ... of my poor neglected blogs ...

I got up. I was sweeping the kitchen floor when my Sweet Man emerged from the bathroom.

"You're ... not going to bed now?" he asked. I heard a weary "Oh, shit ... not again" tone in his voice.

Over the years I've tried just about every sleep-inducing practice and trick except to knock myself unconscious. I wonder again about how hard-wired a brain can be if a pattern is laid down at the beginning of one's life ... I've always had sleep disorders ... no, wait -- that's not true -- !! -- During my man's and my first four years together, I slept like the proverbial (mythical?) baby. Deep, sunken and cradled sleep ... languid sleep ... adagio sleep.



We so easily forget what we've accomplished ... and for some people, sleeping through the night is a heroic act -- a choice to master fear ... and to trust. To trust that our body, soul and consciousness will be safe through the night.

Holy shit -- no wonder we're bug-eyed at 3 a.m.! Safe through the night. Ha!

Once invaded, can a place or a person ever regain its original integrity?

I really don't know. I've lived long enough to see nothing but cycles when I look back. I see movement, and gradual, often timid ascension; I see lots of trip-ups and quicksand escapes; I see a soul doing the best it can, scarred as it is. I see how exhausted all of us are; how few of us deeply rest.


I long to fold myself into my husband's form and ease into sleep. I keep myself up and awake. I make myself think through the night. I'm an army of one.

I wasn't an army when my love and I met. I was freshly bereaved; my mother had died. I fell into sleep like one falls in love. Four years of sweet, sweet sleep. Then the neighbours from hell moved in next door, and all my alarms went off. They're still klanging.

I really don't know what to do this time round. I take a sedative for sleep -- the smallest dose I can get away with. I take it between 2 and 3 a.m. I may or may not see the dawn. Basically, I let myself into bed just before my husband awakes. Then I can sleep.

I've got to turn this around. Someone inside me will not relinquish awareness to sleep. It's a refusal to give up control (and the delusion of same!).

Somebody else in me won't give up hope ... and the memory of nights I have lived: quiet, close, spacious ... boundless. Dream-rich and lulling; spooned with my mate.

I so miss those nights.

I don't want to miss them anymore. How to do this? -- Give up my fear of the night (again). Lay myself down with my mate after taking my little blue pill at a certain time; feel him there beside me bunting my bum with his. Listening for his drop-off ... he's gone in no time. Lulling myself to sleep on the tide of his breath.

That's how it was before the neighbours from hell and the metabolic wreckage they left behind (me).

I've realized tonight that my time of jacked-up awareness corresponds with the daily fourteen-hour onslaught of brutality that I, my family and neighbours were subjected to for 26 months. The kids next door started up when their father left for work at noonish, and didn't stop until around four the next morning.

That's also been my insomnia pattern -- force myself to stay awake 'til 4 a.m. and conk out 'til noon.

~ click! ~


I pull out my Mind Over Mood book. Homework time!

I'm also going to try this "ABCDE" technique I've just found ...


Images:

Top image (clock): artist unknown

"Flaming June" by Frederic Leighton

"Insomnia" by Donna Pidlubny

"Insomniac" by Kimberly Hoffard

Not much to say lately ... but I do have a ...

Thanks to the lovely small dose of life for this wee gift ...

Can empathy make us ill?

Such a strange question to ask ... but a memory brought it on ...

... I'm five or six years old, walking along a roadway beside an adult -- someone I know (whom the adult me can't recall right now...).

We're on a narrow dirt path that's been trod along the edge of a private-school property that's rounded by road. There's no sidewalk.

To my left, scant inches away, cars tear past, bound for the business district. Whoever is walking with me allows me to walk nearest the road. (Idiot! I think now.)

Roots from centuries-old maple trees jut up through the dense, dry ground. It's so hard to walk without tripping and those cars are so close. I'm scared. I keep my eyes on the ground so I don't trip and get hit by a car.

I see a mound that isn't a root. It's yellowy-pink ... flat in parts. It has a beak. It's a baby ... bird ... a robin ... dead in the dirt, choking my gait to a stuttering null. My shadow falls over and weeps for this infant who's been ground under how many heels, and now nearly by mine.


Can a "broken heart" mean this: a child, helplessly open, feels so much, so fast, so deep that the intensity of feeling sets fire to her soul? Burns her alive, in a sense?

My empathy sickens me, I think, and then comes the question: Can empathy make us ill?