(original date published 3/14/20)

Greetings!

I hope this finds you in good health!
 
I’m going to apologize for sending this to everyone on my mailing list, even though it may not apply to some of you.
I’m sure that you have already received a gazillion of these letters from other businesses and services explaining to you how they are handling the Covid-19.  I will try to make this additional one as brief as I can:

I am taking extra time to clean and disinfect surfaces including door knobs in my office.  In addition our building is cleaned daily.
No more blanket, so please dress in layers as the inside temperature varies and I have little to no control in altering it.
If you do not feel comfortable going out of your home, you have the option of using facetime or skype, or simply telephone to conduct your session until some of the warnings subside. Please notify me in advance of scheduling if you prefer this mode
I cannot guarantee that your insurance company will reimburse for sessions not done face to face.  I am offering a letter to accompany your claims stating that technology was used as a protective measure against the spread of Covid-19.
 
I hope this helps to reassure any concerns you may have for future visits.  Please take care of yourself and stay healthy!
 
Best!
Mary
 

They all die in the end.

Original publish date 3/14/20

Greetings!
I’ve seen several people and talked with many more in the past week who are concerned in different proportions about the current pandemic. While we may all have different concerns at the top of our lists, the common link is that the Corona virus is affecting every single one of us in one way or another.  Some people are out of work, some are working ridiculously long hours to compensate.  Some are waiting for medical procedures, while others are simply waiting for this to pass so they can go back to their “normal”.  Parents and children are finding themselves spending more time together, while others are feeling isolated because they can’t go out and socialize.  Few could have imagined any of this, including a toilet paper shortage!

Over the past 20 years or so, we’ve been warned to prepare for many possible disasters, from Y2K, to Bird Flu.  Thus, many of us took this latest warning expecting it to pass over like a blip on the screen.  Maybe there will be a little inconvenience here and there, but all will be well.  And that may certainly be the outcome of this one, except that the inconvenience will likely last longer and be more significant as businesses close to weather the storm.

On Sept 12, 2001 I heard two radio personalities talking with each other about the attack on our soil the previous day.  The first said “Wow, we woke up today to a very different world.”  The other responded, “No.  We woke up the same world, but we no longer have the luxury of pretending that things like this can’t or won’t happen to us.”

Remembering that dialogue has given me a perspective on what is happening today.  Nothing has changed from the standpoint of our mortality. Last month, six months ago, 5 years ago, we were all guaranteed life up until the moment.  None of us were/are immune from our lives ending in a single instance.  We could have a heart attack, contract pneumonia, get hit by a bus, even have a plane fly into our dwelling.  I’m sure most of you know someone who has passed away due to unforeseen circumstances.  We are all in this together and no one is getting out alive, its just that none of us knows in advance what or when that time will come for us.
It is universally true that we begin the process of dying the moment we take our first breath.  In that sense, today’s news about the risks/prevalence of coronavirus doesn’t change this truth.  Yesterday or today each of us has different levels of vulnerability to this thing called our existence.  Sadly, any of us, or someone we love could in fact, contract this virus.  But we or someone we love will experience a life ending condition at some point.
I write my blog with the intention it will help someone feel better.  Despite the dreary tone thus far, I hope this post will do the same.
Imagine for a moment that I had the ability to tell you exactly when your death will occur, say March 21, 2031 at 3:00 in an auto accident.  My suspicion is that anyone with that information about themselves would become hyper-focused on that fact.  It would likely inform every choice from that moment forward and perhaps prevent you from living your life as you would have before knowing that information.  I doubt this would be a positive thing for some of us.  “Live as if each day is your last”, is predicated on the concept of “IF” But knowing an exact date and time fear, unsettledness because it is no longer an if, but a when.   It promotes that natural tendency within us to move into survival rather than living mode.

In survival we use less of our frontal cortex.  We anticipate, starvation and deprivation.  We stock up on bread and toilet paper.  We live in a constant state of heightened awareness and readiness to act because we are relying mostly on the primitive parts of our brains.

By relying on the more primitive or instinctual parts of our brains, we trick ourselves into thinking that we can do SOMETHING to increase our odds.  We can have more money or have more toilet paper.  We can believe we took the right vitamins or washed our hands enough than other people.  We won’t take a trip or go to large gatherings and thus we will beat this thing!   Many of these actions may in fact, tip the scale in our favor.  But there are people who will do everything “right” and get the virus and people who do everything “wrong” will not.
I’m not suggesting we don’t prepare, but rather we do so with the same sense of urgency that we would if the hype of the COVID-19 was not so present in our waking moments.   Yes, we are all affected by some of the externally mandated changes in our way of life.  However, we need not let those changes suggest to us that our likelihood of living is always greater than our likelihood of dying, just as it always has been.  If you accept that you were born, and that you will die, it allows you to LIVE to the best of your ability in the time in between.  Living in NOW is the only guarantee any of has, just as it was prior to the appearance of the corona virus.  Worry and anxiety suppress our immune system.  Perhaps instead of worrying and putting your life on hold, try focusing on the joy of right now and the people who accompany you on your journey.  Besides, stress suppresses your immune system.

 
  
 
 As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts.- however I still don’t have my website working properly.   or now, please email your comments back to me and I will post them on the website and without your name unless you specify otherwise.



Mary

In recent blogs I’ve introduced you to people achieving some amazing results through perserverance. My hope is that their stories are inspiring. I realize however, that sometimes people will see a story, such as these, and conclude, “but I can’t do anything that monumental” and actually become less inspired, rather than more.

That’s incredibly unfortunate, because there is often something amazing in showing up to a “regular” life every day. It takes work. It takes commitment.  And an uninspired conclusion comes from what I call “snapshot” thinking. It means to look at what you see in one image and think that, what you are looking at, is the whole story.

When we look at a snapshot of a model its easy to conclude that the woman (or man) is beautiful and we can’t possibly compete. But what we fail to consider is that the person photographed doesn’t actually look like the photograph either. The photo has probably been airbrushed to remove imperfection. It has also been staged, and in our normal everyday lives, most of us don’t have stage hands.

The people I introduced you to don’t have airbrushed lives.   It was their effort, and mostly their attitudes that made them incredible. But what I presented to you was the snapshot version. It is the end result. I didn’t describe to you in detail how many times they curled up in a ball and cried, got overwhelmed with fear or just plain failed. Maybe those moments lasted minutes or days at a time. But they kept at it. They got knocked down along the way, but they kept getting up (eventually).

Sometimes its harder than others to get up. It’s harder to keep going when the finish line appears so far in the distance. I’d like to introduce you to a video that I find very inspiring as a source of motivation.  Unfortunately at  just over six minutes,  it’s too large to load directly on my site so I’ve included only the link.  I think you’ll find it worth your time. Here is an excerpt:

Pain is temporary. It may last for a minute, an hour, a day, or even a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit however, it will last forever.

You can find the video here:

“All marriages are happy. It’s the living together afterward that causes all the trouble.” – Raymond Hull

I ran across this quote recently and it jumped out at me.  My own version of this is to say that many couples who come together are focused on a wedding, but rarely do they think about the marriage.

A wedding is an event.  A marriage is a process that is constantly changing, and constantly challenged.  It is a verb, not a noun.  Marriage is an active decision that must be made every day.  It’s a decision in fact that IS made every day.  We make the decision to support it or neglect it.

“We want to have kids.  We agree on how many, therefore we are compatible.”  Seems innocent enough.  But have you, do you talk about why you want to have kids, what role will they play in your life, how will you manage care, discipline, education and religion for those children? 

We want to buy a house and live in ____ area.  Do you know how you will afford the house after the initial purchase?  Do you agree on a budget for household expenses?  Does one of you intend to not work if/when children come along, and if so, how will that impact the house affordability?

Family is important to us.  Does that mean your family or does it include your spouse’s family.  Will you participate in their rituals, make room for them to have a place in your lives going forward as well?

It never ceases to amaze me when a woman comes in complaining of her husband’s drinking problem.  When I ask her when it started she says “college”, but now they have been married for five or ten years and she thought it would have changed by now.  What do you use as the basis to assume that something you found distasteful before marriage will change after marriage? 

Yes there are times when someone we marry becomes very different over the years.  But more frequently we find we are married to someone that is the same that they were 10 years ago, but we have matured and now want them to be something different.

The longer I do this work, the more clearly it becomes that marriage is not about getting what you want, or sacrificing to ensure that your spouse gets what they want.  Its about looking at the union as something in its own right that has to be cultivated, managed, and protected from everything else in the world, including sometimes, our own demands and desires.  It means if I want a fur coat, but it hurts the union, then the fur coat is off the table.  It means if he wants to go on a boys fishing trip, but it hurts the union, then guess who should make other plans.  I don’t mean to suggest that we completely ignore our individuality, but rather we appreciate that our individuality chose this union.  Our individuality should be reflected and included in this union.  That is why it is important to ensure before marriage that we are selecting someone who has similar values, desires and capacity of discipline to work towards those goals.  The marriage should reflect “us” and us should reflect the marriage, which again is not a constant, but rather constantly growing along with us.

So geeze Mary why didn’t you give me this insight before I got married?  Probably because I didn’t know you, or most likely because just like me, you wouldn’t have listened if I had.  Do we have to get divorced now that we know?  You can.  But you don’t have to. However, staying together requires a willingness for both people to work on these things.  Working on them doesn’t mean battling it out to see whose version of the union is the right one, but talking things out to find the common ground.  It means making a decision together to value the union over our individual priorities and seeing that choice as a win, rather than a loss.

My puppies are now a year old.  I wasn’t writing during the events of last year, but a week after my oldest son Alex left for the Navy, and 3 days after my youngest Andrew left for a 3 week camp we had to put our 13 year old German shorthair dog, Snickers to sleep.  It broke our hearts.
I lasted about two months before I convinced my husband that we needed another dog.  And then I came home with two.  The new girls are the same breed, as Snickers; German Shorthair Pointers.  These two are named Millie and Olive and are a handful to say the least.  They swim in the gold fish pond and have dug major trenches in the yard.  They have chewed on furniture, eaten countless phone ear pieces, electronic training collars, shoes, cash from my wallet, the comforter on the bed, and a list that goes on a lot longer.  And by the time each night rolls around, we still say to each of them “You’re a good girl and I love you so.”
Love is a funny thing.  It’s one word with many meanings.  It’s not just that it means one thing to me and another to you, although that is true, but it also means one thing to me, and then can mean something different to me depending on when I’m using it.  But so often when we think about whether or not we love someone, or don’t love them as the case may be, we tend to think it has something or everything to do with the other person.  I believe it has everything to do with our own hearts and heads and the stories we tell ourselves.
I say I loved Snickers because she was a good girl.  But I love Millie and Olive who are ridiculously mischievous  girls.  It seems their behavior actually has little to do with how I feel about them, because if it did, I would have given them away to a puppy orphanage long before now.   Instead, I seem to be able to look beyond my torn up shoe and see only the adorable puppy eyes that routinely melt my heart.
I have often said to my sons “Your dad drives me bat____ crazy.  And that is precisely how I know I love him.  Because even after he has done so, I still want to be with him at the end of the day and so I know it must be love.”   It is love which allows me to look beyond the parts of him that make me want to kill him in his sleep sometimes.   I still wake up each morning despite the fact that my snoring has kept him awake most of the night.  I suspect, he too must have loving feelings for me that are stronger than sleep deprivation can break within him.  Love is a very powerful force indeed.
Think about the example of a new baby.  (or if you prefer, stick with the puppy metaphor).  But new babies are generally speaking not that attractive, even though most of us parents don’t realize that until we look at the hospital infant photo about a year later.  That new baby doesn’t do anything except cry and fill diapers.  They bring no dowry to the relationship and in fact cost us an arm and a leg.  In short, they bring nothing to the table.  And yet, we are immediately smitten with the little creatures, full of love in our hearts and eyes.  We imagine all sorts of scenarios ahead filled with joy because of the love we have for this little “soon to be person” despite the reality that he or she has done absolutely nothing to “earn” that love except show up.  But even in the anticipation of them showing up, we start growing immense feelings for them.  So how then, can it be that love comes from the outside?
Admittedly, it is difficult some times to find the feelings of love within us when the other person behaves in certain ways.  It is hard to feel loving when you’ve asked someone to do something repeatedly and they ignore you.  It’s hard to feel loving when someone behaves inappropriately.  It’s hard to feel loving when you are expecting someone and they don’t show up for you.  That is when it’s easy to say I don’t love them because of their behavior.  But their behavior is just that:  theirs.  And our reaction to that behavior is a choice we make in accordance with our expectations.  When the person does things that fulfill our expectations, we love.  When they don’t fulfill our expectations, we choose to not love.   We don’t love or not love because of their behavior, but rather because our expectations and stories are filled or disappointed.  Thus, we don’t love or not love because of who they are, but rather because of who we are.  

Thank you to the incredibly generous responses I got for my last blog.  Apparently I’m still technologically challenged and did not have the link to the web comments page working but hope I have it fixed for now.  Also, an astute reader suggested that I request you make reviews on Google rather than health grades.  I will be greedy and ask for both.  Remember, I have a few more years to work as I have puppies to feed.

People keep asking me if I am still writing my blog.  I tell them yes, but only in my head.  I have written some really good stuff there, but it seems that none of it has made it on to the screen.  So when I was asked again yesterday, I decided I would give it a shot and see what comes out.  Here goes:

I have a few regular sayings.  You may have heard some of them.  One of them is “Therapy is supposed to make you feel better, but unfortunately that’s not going to happen today”.  I usually pull that one out when someone is in a really tough spot and I have no great fix all answer, or I have to deliver news to them that they would rather not hear.  Yesterday was that kind of day.

I sat with a young woman whose life is breaking apart from all that is familiar to her.  It’s painful.  I told her life is painful when you do dumb stuff and screw it up and then have to face hard consequences.  But it’s harder still when you feel like you’ve played by the rules, worked hard, and done it “the right way” and it still doesn’t turn out like its “supposed” to.  It seems unfair.  It seems brutal.  It seems pointless to keep trying.  Most people have this experience at one point or another.  Some people seem to have it at a level of unbearable frequency or intensity. 

So how does one find the energy, motivation, hope, courage or perhaps blind faith to pick themselves up and keep going?  Not everyone does.  Some people give up.  They end their lives.  And some people keep physically alive but they shut down to a level in which they merely exist, waiting for their time to on earth to come to an end.  Sometimes the latter is facilitated with an addiction that keeps one so numb, they are no longer aware of their original pain, but become embroiled with the pain caused by the addiction itself instead.

People in the throes of despair usually feel alone in a private hell believing that not only is their pain too great to bear, but that they are in a hole where no one else can or cares to reach for them.  They feel certain that ending or giving up is personal and won’t really matter to anyone else.  And that even if it does, another’s concern or misery will be short lived and forgotten sooner than later.

As Wally Lamb says “This much I know is true”.  I can only speak from my own experience, both my personal reactions and the stories told to me over the years.  There is a blue plaid teddy bear that sits on the bookcase in my office.  It was a gift I gave to a client many years ago.  It was returned to me a few years ago by her sister after my former client committed suicide.  In the time I had seen her she contemplated it many times and we always managed to talk it through.  When she was in despair, she always told me no one would remember her.  A few years after we finished our work, I learned she had taken her life.  I still remember her.  I don’t need the bear on my shelf to remind me but I keep it there as if to keep some part of her alive and to bear witness to her pain.  When she left, she may have ended her pain.  I hope so, but she also deprived the world of something good and strong, smart and creative, capable and wise in ways she didn’t know and didn’t live long enough to prove to herself.  And most of all, she left the potential of joys not yet known.

Last week I saw a different young woman.  I met her a couple of years ago and after only a couple of sessions with me she made a very real suicide attempt that she survived only by the grace of God.  Today that same woman is getting married soon; to a man that is her best friend.  She has a job she likes and hopes to have a family.  All of these are things she could not imagine when she was in despair.  Had her suicide attempt been successful, her best friend would be looking to a different kind of life ahead.  Her children would have no chance to be born.  Her mother would still be experiencing an unbearable grief and trying to remember how to answer the question “How many children do you have?”

Agreeing to try again provides no guarantee that you will win the prize.  It provides no promise that things will not get worse again.  Trying again only means that you fully accept being human and to fulfill the contract of being here to do whatever it is you are supposed to do, even when you aren’t sure what that is.  Just as your mind takes in a million marketing and social cues everyday unconsciously, so too does it take in interactions as small as a nod or a smile.  You may never know how you being where you are at any given moment affects another person and helps them get along more easily in the world.

So just as therapy doesn’t always make you “feel better” the moment you want it too, this blog, long awaited by some, won’t likely provide the “feel good” message they may have hoped for.  But I hope it will touch just one person who thinks trying again, doesn’t make sense.  More importantly, I hope it will touch people who are in a good place to use some of their grace by looking a little bit longer at the stranger who may be struggling and ready to give up and offer them a smile or an act of kindness.  There are so many ways to do this with so little effort on our part. 

When I drive through the McDonalds (yes I’m admitting this) in Eureka, the person who takes the money hands out a dog treat when I have my dog in the car.  She has done this for a couple of years.  I tried to give the manager some money to go towards the treat fund assuming the employee was paying for this with her own money.  The manager informed me that a gentleman who lost his own dog supplies the branch with treats and makes sure they never run out.  I’ll never meet him.  And it’s not that my dog can only get a treat if she goes to McDonalds.  But the act warms my heart and reminds me that there is goodness in the world and that we always have a choice to turn pain into something productive.

On a final note, I now have “What would Mary Say” bracelets.  Yes, for those of you who enjoy remembering some of the things I say or more realistically, they serve as a reminder to listen to yourself the way I listen to you, stop on by my office for yours.  They are silicone bands (like the Lance Armstrong livestrong).  If you are an out of towner, send me a note. 

And finally, I have a favor to request.  I am trying to be more mindful that we now live in the age of technology and that I should actually join that movement.  If you have something positive to say, I would appreciate a review at Healthgrades.com
If you have something not so favorable to say, I hope you’ll write that to me and give me the opportunity to address it first.

I’m back in the saddle so to speak.  I still have a gimpy arm, but I’m managing pretty darn well and seem to have had the good fortune of having had a lot less pain than most people with this experience.  It’s still a process that will take a few more months to have a “normal” arm.  The rest of me will likely never get there.
In my down time I received so many beautiful notes from many of you.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart and I mean that with all humility and sincerity.  Your notes and calls lead me tot the realization that I will likely never retire.  I am so blessed to have a job I love so much.  Thank you.  Thank you.

As many of you know, I keep a write board on my waiting room wall.  The current quote on that board is “If you aren’t willing to change, don’t expect your life to”.

So often, we think about changes we want to have occur in our life but unfortunately we don’t connect the realization that we are the ones who actually have to take step by step actions in order to make those changes occur.  Even if we do get that far, many of us would like to take the action once or twice, for maybe a week, but certainly not from here on out!.  We want to diet for a day and lose 50 lbs.  Quit drinking for a month and be “over it”.  Or, we want to send out a resume and have a great job land in our lap.  We might date the same type of person over and over, and believe he or she will change “this time”.

Last week I heard myself saying to someone “The illusion of comfort you feel right now is preferable to the pain you will feel if you make a change.

Make no mistake.  Change often brings discomfort if not all out pain.  Often, our perception and anticipation of that pain is magnified in our minds and we believe we can avoid it by not embarking on that change.  We make a mental pro and con list in our head and determine that the comfort we get in this moment (pre change) is not so bad.  Heck, it might even feel good IN THIS MOMENT.  But we miss that it may be costing us a hefty price by continuing the status quo.  notice this within myself when I want to avoid my “painful” therapy exercises on my arm at a time that I feel completely comfortable doing something else

 Continuing to spend what we can’t afford because obtaining an item makes us happy, doesn’t take into account the pain when the credit card comes and we can’t pay the balance.  But in the moment of putting those goods in our shopping cart, we maintain the illusion of our current comfort and don’t want to feel the pain of not going home with our goodies.
Continuing a relationship that is not good for us may feel preferable to the thought of ending and having hurt feelings to consider.  But what about the pain of missing out on a relationship that might be better for us?

Pain is part of living.  The sooner we come to terms with that and stop trying to run, hide or dress it up in lies for ourselves, the sooner we become able to stay in the moment of our present lives.

I had an encounter recently that was reminiscent of many I’ve had over the course of my career.  I’m going to describe it as pertaining to a woman, but there are male versions that come to mind as well.   It goes something like this.  I’m sitting with a young woman in her mid 20’s to mid 30’s.  It’s a beautiful, accomplished, smart woman with a lovely disposition.  And she is telling me about her low self confidence, esteem, unattractiveness and perhaps even a lack of merit.  The Beauty and her Beast.

Her beast is the version of herself that lives inside telling her everything that is not only not okay with her, but is the opposite version of what most of us on the outside believe we are seeing when we look at her.  We may seem kind, encouraging and may even believe we have empirical evidence when we try to contradict her Beast, but we are often no match.  The Beast has held her captive for quite some time.

What about those of us who aren’t strikingly beautiful, don’t have stellar credentials, or won’t get invited to Mensa?  How are we supposed to feel great about ourselves when the people we aspire to emulate still don’t get to feel that they are even near the finish line?  Does that mean OUR Beasts are real or justified?

I think not.  I think part of the human condition is that we are a constant work in progress and because of that, we never feel “ready” or complete.  There is some merit to that idea, as it is a motivator towards expanding ourselves.  But how about evaluating the incompletion simply as a stage rather than a judgement?  When I bake brownies, I know that at the half way point they are simply not done rather than flawed and incapable of reaching optimal tastiness.

One of my favorite children’s books is called “There’s a Nightmare in My Closet.  The little boy who is afraid of the nightmare in his closet discovers that his nightmare is equally afraid of him and he has to ultimately comfort the nightmare.  Perhaps our beast is really just an untamed, part of ourselves who may even have been unjustly wounded a long time ago rather than an abusive dictator to whom we must submit.  Maybe we could see our Beast as perhaps uneducated, or lost in an earlier time.  Maybe our Beast is really a product of collective voices that no longer fit in the world we now live within.  Or maybe our Beast is just a scared part of us that needs to be comforted so it will stop being a bully.

Either way, it becomes increasingly clear to me that achieving something on the outside is not what will make us feel better, ready, richer, happier.  We are who we are, and while we hopefully will continue to grow and evolve until our last breath, the state of feeling enough is ours simply for the price of deciding it is so.  Beasts need not apply.