Gail Shurtleff

Editor’s Pick: The Rose Room

Posted on April 14, 2025 by Gail Shurtleff in Everything Mental Health

Originally posted on August 23, 2019, this piece is good reminder of how carving out one’s own little special space can help us find peace during times of struggle.

-Claudia

As some of my readers know, I’ve just painted and will be painting the rest of the space soon. There was one room that has gone untouched. It is a beautiful rose color, and in it there are many treasures. It is the Room of All Things Gail.

On the walls there are works of art, and each piece has a loving history.

There is a painting that my aunt Ruth did way back when that I treasure. I love it because she let me have it, knowing how much it meant to me. There is the counted cross-stitch that my friend Leann labored to create for me. It is beautiful, and I cherish it because she performed a labor of love when she stitched it.

Along with that, my older sister Beth has a place of honor with the picture that has been with me since childhood. It is a Gail version of The Princess and the Pea. She put me in a blue dress on top of many mattresses. Each mattress is a different color and design. I love this so much and someday it will go to one of her daughters.

Hanging in the Room, and moved from the bedroom, is another counted cross-stitch. My sister-in-law Peg made this for our wedding. It, too, was done with love. Shared love is the only requirement to be placed in this Room.

I also have two stained-glass pieces of art that my mother-in-law Mary made. I am so thankful to have them.

Hanging in another place of honor is the wedding bouquet that my three sisters-in-law Peg, Bev, and Rebecca created for me.

There are two parasols that Jon hung up. I’ve mentioned in “Sneakiness is Happiness” that he backlit them for me. That is a day I will remember forever. Oh, the love that filled the space that day!

The Room holds objects that span the years of my life and are sacred to me. It holds something from a friend who I came to know in the last five years of my life. That friendship has given me many gifts of thought and hope. Thank you, Betty. The Room is my place of healing and restoration. I can sit quietly, get ready for my day, and read in that room.

In some ways the Room has existed for a few years, but in other ways the Room is new. The Room in its present form emerged into its new role in my life over the late summer and early fall. It started with knowing that I wanted to place a new piece of furniture in the Room, and as I envisioned where it would go and how it would feel in the Room, The Room grew in purpose and my understanding of the space began to change. What I had used as an office during Jon’s life would be no more. My office was to move to the other side of the house where the sunlight can stream into it and I can see out into a larger world.

This Room called Gail is a place of healing and hope. This is where my heart is found, where the healing is strongest, and where, when I enter, I find the most peace.

For those of you who read “Raw” or listened to the podcast (Parts 1, 2, and 3) that I posted late in 2017, my healing journey has been both traumatic, challenging, amazing, and in some ways even peaceful. I suppose that it has been a combination of watchfulness, the love and caring of others, and the understanding that this type of pain and hurt only dissipate when faced head-on. It is my tiny sanctuary, however, that allows me to find what I most need in my heart.

It is the realization that I can say a loving goodbye to someone I have loved deeply. He is not in pain now. It is also an acceptance that I can hold on to his memory in new ways.

The creation of this space has done its secret healing and holds a place in my soul that I didn’t understand until I let go to find it.

I don’t think that there is any single or correct way to heal from something like this. I think that the best healing comes from following your heart and soul and listening to your gut. Healing involves talking and finding a supportive listener. For the listener, you need to choose wisely. Find someone who you feel a bond with, someone who respects you, and who you respect. If there is not such a person in your life, then find a good therapist who understands both grief and the loss involved with a completed suicide.

Healing is about recognizing that you will have really good days, really bad days, happy days, and days of hopelessness. Healing is about allowing the depression that will come because of the death that has entered into your life. Sit with the depression for a time, and if it doesn’t fade, seek professional help. Healing is about understanding that the pain will diminish and calm. Healing is about loving yourself. It is about seeing yourself in the mirror as “enough”: no more and no less than “enough.”

Healing takes strength and courage. It is your own unique journey.

As I spend time in this healing space, I’m discovering its complete power. It is the power of the lit candle in the darkness. It is the homing beacon that steadies me. It is that place that tells me that I’m loved, both by myself and by many others who I both know personally and who I only know because of the Internet.

To walk through the process of healing is also to be able to look out the window on a grey day and see the sun that the clouds hide. It is a knowing that you and only you can fully understand. It comes from traveling through it and stumbling along the way. It happens when you stand up once more and say “AGAIN!” You are never beyond, but you have moved on.

Forward movement takes on many forms. Sometimes it is a return to the old haunts, and other times it is the unexpected and unfamiliar that call to the soul. In many ways, the Room of All Things Gail was totally unexpected to me. It was a feeling that I had to create a place of sanctuary.

As I write this, I am in my new, blue office space surrounded by books, my sand tray collection, and hope. This space is one I’ve claimed as mine. As I look out of the window, I see the stormy skies closing in; I see the other homes in the area. Most of all, I see LIFE. It is good. It is peaceful and this is my space now. This is the room where he wrote the notes. This is the room where he spent so many hours. And yet, this is not “that room” any longer. The painter came one November day and covered the rich green walls with my beautiful blue color. The painter took nothing away but what had to go. It doesn’t hurt like it did a year ago. This is a place I come to work and to enable the healing of others. This room also holds some treasures.

While blue is the color of my soul, it has not been the color of my deepest healing. That has been rose. That Room is just a few steps away from where I now sit working on this, and I shall go there to feel the warmth of the sanctuary: the Room of All Things Gail.

As I sit here, I realize that I could not have created this lovely space without the Room of All Things Gail. It was the power of healing that let me say goodbye to what had been, and greet anew what was to be. It was the power in that Room of Rose that set me on a journey to claim the space I’m now working on. It was the realization while sitting in that space that I could, and should, listen to my heart and follow my desires to create what I wanted for myself. Thank you, Rose Room. I think I’ll go there now to pause, give thanks, and continue the journey.

Do it for World Peace

Posted on April 9, 2025 by Gail Shurtleff in Everything Mental Health

In the past few weeks, I’ve noticed that stress levels are rising. Prospective clients are seeking services because they “can’t calm down to think,” and taking deep breaths is becoming essential to all of us.

I understand that tensions are high worldwide, and laughing isn’t what it used to be.

I’m going to suggest a few things to help people in this storm that we’re in. You don’t need to spend money to do these things—you only need to keep it simple.

You are not alone in this! Everyone is feeling this stress, and at this point in time, community is more important that ever.
Take a look out your window and notice that there is a world out there. Then go out and find something in nature to be grateful for. A fallen leaf, the sky, the sun, or a tree. We learned this as children in school, and as adults our societies have taken it from us. It is time we restore ourselves to what sanity we can!
Hold those you love close. Cherish the ones you love. You may not have biological family. You may have a chosen family. Share time together.
Share a meal with others where you all contribute to the bounty on the table. Connection builds new relationships.
Kindness goes a long way. Kindness done with an open heart can touch another person in powerful ways. Pay it forward because the person you touch with kindness may need your gift.
Love your fur friends? Take extra time to pet, walk, play with, and nurture them. They can, and do, sense your stress. They’ll love you unconditionally if you let them. OK, I know, dogs have masters, and cats have staff; they will seek you out. My cat did, and in that time of need she curled up like the lovely fur family member she was.
Meditate.
Discover exercise because your body will thank you, and it helps with the stress levels.
Try “grounding” yourself. If you can, go outside and take your shoes off. Stand in the grass and let yourself sense the earth. Notice what happens.
Take a nice warm bath or shower. Notice how the water feels on your skin.
Smile and say hello to someone that you don’t know.
Share a treat with someone.
Set boundaries. Say no, because too much on your plate it not a sign of anything but not being able to set healthy boundaries for yourself and others.
Practice taking mental health days. Time off from everything will create focus for yourself and enable you to return to your life relaxed and ready to meet the day.
Create time to enjoy your favorite meal. Have lots of it! If you can, share the meal. It is your reward, and rewards are important.

It is my personal belief that when we care for ourselves, we also care for others, and in doing this self-care the world becomes a happier and healthier place. So, if for no other reason, do it for the betterment of the world we all live in.

Legacies

Posted on April 1, 2025 by Gail Shurtleff in Musings and Insights, Soul Peace and Journeys

The past few weeks have been centered on what I want to both leave behind and create as the leader of a small church group. My thoughts have taken me to the legacies we each receive and leave as we journey in life.

Over the years I had not given it much thought because I have no biological children, and aren’t legacies what you leave for them? I will leave this world as I came into it: unconnected. Maybe that is not an accurate way of looking at it. We can build deep connections during our lives. We may or may not exit with deep connections. It’s up to us to build connections, and to pass them on: legacies.

I suppose this is why we focus on leaving something behind, so that we can mark our connection to the world we’ve lived in. My thinking about all of this changed about seven years ago. Now I am preparing for a new life journey that is opening up, and once again asking myself what I’ll be leaving behind. It is causing me to explore new possibilities, and to think along new lines.

As I look back on others who have left their mark on this planet, I think of my parents. They touched many lives, and they never gloated about it. It was always done in a manner of simple quietness and generosity. I will never know how far their lives reached into others’ lives. That is a good thing, and it has served as an example to me: do it quietly and leave no trace.

I think of others who have touched my life, and it seems to always play out in the same manner. It is a quiet sense of doing something behind closed doors and out of the public eye. I owe these men and women so much.

Legacies can serve as gifts or not-so-pleasant packages of regret. I hope that what I leave will be the gift package wrapped up in a pretty, fluffy bow.

How does one leave a legacy? I think by doing the best they can. And in many situations, it turns out to be a neutral desire to do good in the world. Parents raise children who step out into the world and contribute in unforeseen ways. I’d venture a guess that most Nobel Peace Prize winners didn’t set the goal to win that prize: their work won it for them. At some point in a person’s life, the work that they are doing becomes bigger than they are. Mother Teresa is such a person. A lesser-known Nobel laureate is John Nash. His life was portrayed in the film A Beautiful Mind, and his greatest work was in mental health. That was not his area of expertise.

One legacy I cherish is the legacy of music my parents created in their family. My parents had decided before marriage that music would be a primary happening in our home. My father was a pianist, and my mother sang. We all sang. We each did other musical things as well. Of all the legacies left to me, music is the one that has affected me the most. Singing and the sounds of music have shaped my life. Even my wedding reception ended with music, and I found myself singing without a care on a cozy December evening in 1998. Music was just what my family did.

I’ve written about the different paths we travel in our life journeys. Each journey unfolds to teach us new thoughts about ourselves and our greater lives. I don’t know where I’m headed on this new path—I do know it will be a good place, and I’ll do my best to make it count. I understand that I needed to heal, and to leave the battlement to get to where I’m headed. The courage to heal came from my listening to my body, my heart, and my head. I followed that path of knowledge and now stand with a new path facing me. Where will I go?

The Hard Things (Revisit)

Posted on March 25, 2025 by Gail Shurtleff in Beyond Grief, Soul Peace and Journeys

Originally posted on July 3, 2023.

This past week has been a roller coaster of sadness, fear, contemplation, and soul-searching. I’ve had to step back and look at the last seven years of my life and reconnect with feelings that I thought were buried.

On August 29, 2016, I sat at my dining room table and wondered how I would get through life as a disabled person in a country where I didn’t have family or many friends. The fact is that I was traumatized, in shock, and trying to make sense of everything with no way to make sense of anything. And so, a journey began.

I began to read and learn and discard the useless junk books. People spout Elizabeth Kübler Ross’s stages, workbooks on working through it. They said that if you do this, that, or the other thing, you’ll work through your grief, and all will be well.

I call BS. Grief can’t be fixed or cured. I stumbled on one book that I will recommend. The author went through traumatic loss and did what she needed to do to come through things. It’s OK That You’re Not OK by Megan Devine is an excellent book that portrays the awful, the trauma, and the struggle to stand up again when grief and loss enter our lives. Death, unlike other life events, presents unique challenges for each of us. Someone’s death by suicide adds to our saying goodbye in unique ways.

Devine’s experience was different from mine, and yet she touched on similarities: the inability to feed myself, to sleep, to drag myself into a new day or to know what to do. I’d had to shut work off and allow for healing time. I was compromised.

The only thing I fully understood on August 29, 2016, was that for the next year I would not be making any major life decisions that could be put off. My father had taught me this, and it served me well during a time of tears, fear, trauma, and uncertainty.

I was able to visit the US in the summer of 2017. It felt like I was in a foreign country. It wasn’t home. Europe was home. Going to the States was a chance to explore and connect with family, and to realize that I needed to find my own path. It was time to begin to do the deeper work of change.

I needed to let go, and to trust that the process of healing would occur as it needed to happen in my life. I let go and engaged in trusting the universe and myself. I had to trust that I would walk a path that needed to be walked. At the end of two years, the type of tears I was crying had begun to change. My life was changing, and I had begun to trust my process. I was headed into new territories. It was a velvet road that I walked. Yes, the road was bumpy, and there was much to learn. The transition was done on velvet and I only realized after the fact that I’d been moving to a new place.

Newbies to this process often ask when the tears will stop, when the pain will stop, when the missing will stop. Things change; things don’t stop. You don’t get over people you love; you work through it all. Learning to walk through things is the real work of grief, loss, and an acceptance of the life we move into. And so, I began my education in standing stronger and finding how to heal from the awful, and unthinkable, of surviving my husband’s suicide.

This last spring, I completed continuing education units (CEU’s) for my license renewal. The presenter on surviving a death by suicide had me until he played a snippet of a video on forgiveness. I thought about it and I asked why you would need to forgive someone for doing what they felt they needed to do in life. I realized at the end of those hours with him that he didn’t get it in the same way I got it. My husband’s death has never required my forgiveness. It never will. I digress.

In 2023 I’ve begun a new soul journey that calls me to an acceptance that my vision is changing. Once again, I must face the fact that it is harder to read, to see what I once saw, and to figure out what the new path forward will be. Once again, I’m grieving the loss of what was, and sitting with the fear of how bad it will get. Once again, I’m wondering if I can do this hard thing.

How does anyone get on doing the hard things? I got thinking about this yesterday when I realized that I had a friend who hasn’t quite walked the life path I’ve walked and doesn’t understand the messiness of facing the hard in the same way I do. I hold out space for this person because they’ve had different challenges.

I think some of us who have faced a constant stream of hard things tend to shortchange those whom we view as not having hard and challenging lives. I’ve had to call myself out on this. What looks like an easy, privileged life is seen from the outside. One of the things the past seven years has pounded into my head is that judging this type of thing is a trap. It’s a trap because we might look at ourselves as knowing more when it comes to doing life. I don’t think we know any more than others. We only know a different thing.

I get that my clients and directees come to me for various reasons. I expect them to need to deal with hard things. I’ve had to learn that I need to cut a great many people a great deal of slack. We each face our hard things differently.

I tell you all of this because I’m learning to graciously accept others’ sincere comments about my doing hard things. While it’s second nature to me, it isn’t to them. I realize that I want to respect their desire to support me just as I would support them. My journey is calling me out on being a judgmental person. Oh, this is a hard thing! This is deep soul work.

I think back to when I was in my twenties and I wondered how people older than I was got to where they understood all of this. It’s about not being afraid to call the old self out to the new self. That is what grief and loss are all about.

Slipping into Chaos

Posted on March 11, 2025 by Gail Shurtleff in Musings and Insights

I’m in mourning. As I sit here in The Netherlands and observe a nation I was once so proud to call my own, I can no longer utter words of pride. Oh, USA, where have you gone to? It used to be that I would want to visit, and to eat my way from one place to another. Now, I wonder what will be there for me when I board my flight in May to visit.

As an expatriate, I’ve chosen to live here because life is better for me here. I can get a bus, and then a train, and get anywhere. I can walk from point to point knowing that I can be independent.

I decided to stay here on this side of the pond after my husband’s death. I needed time to think, and this turned out to be a good place to do the thinking.

In staying here, I once again committed to put down my roots here. Now, here I am, watching from a distance as a land I was once proud to call mine slips into chaos.

My heart is heavy as I watch in sadness as nations react and wonder about the why of it all. History is happening before us. What will we do about it? There are no easy answers to this question.

Maybe this is about choosing to look at the reality of it all and not deny what is happening. While we can allow ourselves to feel the sadness of it all, just mourning the loss of what once was isn’t enough.

Earlier today as I scrolled my Facebook page, I became so aware of how those posts don’t change much. I’m placed in a position to feel compassion for many, and yet the words don’t help me to find a path through.

I’ve posted about our disappearing villages, finding sanctuary, and breaking away from the trauma of life events. As I write this, I know these things matter, and I also know it feels as if it is not enough.

Once again, I return to the things that guide my life: service to others, listening to others, and enabling others to look deep into themselves.

Right now, the Christian world celebrates Lent. Most people understand Lent as a time to give something up. What if we add more compassion, more service to others, and move charitable giving into the mix? This year, after much contemplation, I added rather than removed. I started a few days late, due to my uncertainty about what I needed to do for myself to grow in new ways.

As I sit here and write the words, I’m finding that while I’m mourning this loss of a nation, I’m able to face the collapse in a healthier way. I’m also able to act and not panic. Where we’ll all be in the future is an unknown. We may or may not be able to control some of the choices we must make.

I think about my passport. I think about how I used to look at it, and all the stamps I have in it from places I’ve been. I think about my past passports, and how they were also filled with stamps from wonderful places. There are places I suspect I won’t be visiting again. I choose to believe it can get better. I choose to believe that if I do my small part, it will help. I choose to hold my head high and face this all honestly. I choose hope.

One Wish, Please (Revisit)

Posted on February 25, 2025 by Gail Shurtleff in Musings and Insights

Originally posted on April 4, 2023.

We watch as suffering comes over the world. A mother cries for her lost child. A father mourns the death of his son, who was sent off to fight a war that should have never been. A parent mourns the loss of the son or daughter they believed they had in order to discover the new trans child they will get to love. A child endures bullying at home, while another child becomes the bully at school. Somewhere in a police station, a human being’s rights are violated. Marchers descend on a capitol in hopes of bringing a message of solidarity with those on the margins. A young boy witnesses the death of his friend on the streets of the inner city. We become one of six. There is trauma in all of this.

It seems that the cycle never ends, despite the cries of the injured and the questioning of parents, and others who care about the victims of what can’t be stopped. If only the emotional pain would end. Life doesn’t offer that. We protest the needless suffering, bigotry, senseless acts of violence, and raise the question of where and how it all began. Ultimately it begins in the home.

If I could wish one thing for the world we inhabit, it would be to have functional homes, where each human being is loved, honored, respected, and has a recognized voice. A home where each child is raised to enter the world as a functional adult who is ready to take their place in society and contribute to making the world a better place. What a wish! I’m not wishing for utopia. I’m wishing for something better: a healthy peace for all. It starts in homes. Oh, I want to see this happen!

A home with a loving parent(s) who offers up a platter of love, protection, and acceptance to a child so that they can become who they were born to be. I salute the courageous! I honor those who try to learn and understand what might be different to them. I honor the parent who says “I don’t understand, and I’m committed to learning” when their LGBTQ2s child comes to them with fear of the consequences of coming out: first to themselves, and then to others.

I applaud the enabled person who struggles to meet daily challenges in an abled world. The parent who shepherds the child in the hard times as well as the good times. Homes need to be safe havens for all of us.

I’m not building to a kumbaya moment here—that takes a great deal of work. I’m building to something else: peace. The peace-filled home that spills over into the neighborhood, then the city, and spreads out to all corners of all nations: it begins within our homes.

Saying it is one thing, and implementing it is quite another process. My husband’s psychiatrist once made the point that all voices in a family need to be heard, acknowledged, and respected. Parenting isn’t about giving orders; it’s about guiding, setting boundaries, and being willing to have hard conversations with growing children of all ages. Parents create a micro-community in their homes when they commit to bring tiny humans to dwell with them.

It’s about accepting your child for who they are, and where they are, offering a safe space to explore their identity, speak their point of view, and explore their own values. Eventually, children need to make their way out of the home and into the world. Happy, healthy adults have experienced many of these things.

Mentoring begins from birth. Mentoring is about parents doing things with kids, making it fun, teaching them the value of working for something, and waiting for results. It’s about offering children healthy choices so that as they grow, they develop empathy, social skills, insight, and inner strength.

Boomers were raised by parents who dealt with the Depression and WWII. Their children faced the 60s and 70s and began to question the culture of parents and grandparents who came out of a more authoritarian view. And then, things started moving faster. I believe that with Gen X and beyond, we’ve never quite caught up. Time has sped up, society has changed radically, and with it, the home has been rocked on its foundation. There is a real need to re-examine relationships and to have hard conversations about what works and doesn’t work.

One of the consequences of this radical shift is that parents say “yes” when they need to say “no.” Yes and no have to do with setting a healthy boundary. It is about helping a developing child understand long-term choices and offering the mentoring to enable them to think it through for themselves. Now more than ever, children need the skill of thinking it out for themselves! The thinking starts when parents offer up limits such as a healthy diet that incorporates varied food choices, or reading to children daily and offering up experiences that teach the young child to choose good and age-appropriate things. It’s a confidence builder. It continues as the child matures and is able to make task-appropriate choices that will enable them to learn and grow. When a child experiences failure, with a parent encouraging them to give it another go around, they will! I also understand that some parents are faced with needing the village to step in while they work three jobs. Who we put in our villages can enable parents to have that needed assistance to raise the child to healthy adulthood. Successful single parents and two-parent families have a village to back them up.

I acknowledge that I’m speaking from a point of privilege. I grew up within a home where there were two parents, and they were able to provide the basics but not the luxuries. Money was tight and there was a village of extended family and community.

With the way things have sped up, it is essential to cultivate relationships that include extended family, friends, community members, schools, and charitable organizations. A parent may not know their village until a crisis happens.

My wish includes people sharing a meal and coming together to learn from one another: people who discover that in diversity, there are both differences and sameness. The sameness begins with recognizing that we are all humans residing on this pale blue dot. The diversity offers up the gift of human understanding, culture, and a differing world view that teaches us to learn, listen, and understand. In table fellowship, we offer up the gift of being heard. It is listening that bridges gaps, strengthens the person, enters the home, and moves forward to influence the neighborhood, the community, and eventually the world.

Two Dots and a Bouncy Ball

Posted on February 12, 2025February 12, 2025 by Gail Shurtleff in Living With Disability

My world has been challenged by panic-out-of-control crazy. What do I do about this? It has to do with my ability to read. The state of overwhelm is handled by slowing it all down and being able to rationally think it out. When the thinking is done, the solution is clear, and then you just work the solution.

A friend with Ushers told me that the hardest part of her process is the daily trauma of waking up with just a little less sight, slowly saying goodbye to all of her sight, but not knowing when it would all go.

Last night I listened to a woman talk about the things she could no longer do. No longer doing what we could once do is the focus of the beginning stages of the process of loss, grief, and, finally, acceptance of a new life.

While the words are easy to type out, doing them is not so simple. The anger, rage, depression, denial—and the ultimate loss of what was, for me, easy—now turns out to be a long journey. This journey results in each of us finding out what we’re really made of. It is ugly, and in the end, it can be beautiful.

And so, my own journey was re-established as Kindle took out the text-to-speech feature. I don’t like voice-over for books. What other options did I have? After researching it, asking questions, and finding out that what I’d need to do was reasonably priced, I ordered my two little dots (Amazon Echo dots). Yes, Alexa has arrived at my doorstep! The blue one will be upstairs in my bedroom, and the white grapefruit-sized dot will reside in my living room. I can program the dots to serve me in all my listening needs. I’ll be free to read where I want to read! Now to see what I can read! My Audible, Kindle, and music will be at my voice command. Thank-you, adorable dots.

Or maybe not so fast. I have to set them up with the phone app, and the phone app is in that faint, small font that some kid with x-ray vision designed. Good luck, kid, when your parent or grandparent comes at you yelling that they can’t read it. NO, you’ve robbed me of my dignity—I’m disinheriting you for this savage act. Good luck, kid—you’re gonna need it. Wait until it happens to you. Ah, but I digress.

My bouncy, happy self is not bouncing right now because the world doesn’t yet fully understand that by not making things accessible, they leave me out of activities I need to be able to do. My joy over my dots has faded to frustration and sadness. Once again, I mourn the loss of pleasure.

Once again, I have to struggle to do what sighted people do so easily. I have to ask for help to do something I could do it if I could see the screen. The joy of the new dots has passed; the bouncy ball is deflated, and once again I must seek help for the simple things that low vision blocks me from doing. I listen, and I feel it all: the deflated ball and two dots waiting to be useful to me. There are no other words for my sadness.

Please Call

Posted on January 28, 2025 by Gail Shurtleff in Living With Disability

This week I woke up to discover that my vision is not working as it should. I’m scared. The doc that I saw said that no, I wasn’t going blind. The doc that I saw in October of 2024 told me then that I’d maxed out what anyone could do for me as a low-vision person. New glasses won’t help. So, this coming week I’ll talk to my regular ophthalmologist, and I’ll ask her if there is anything that they can do to help me read print better. I’m typing this in 24 dpi (dots per inch). If I need to read aloud, it has to go to 36 dpi.

The above being said, I don’t like to read to others. I read slowly, and things don’t always turn out right. I have gained confidence in my public reading, but since I can’t read at my talking speed, it is something I don’t do well.

I’m scared, and it can be heard in my voice. The thought of not being able to use the sight I do have is beyond words to express. Ever since the docs put glasses on me, the work has been mine. Now, I’m feeling it all! Now, I’m beginning to look at Amsler grids. The lines aren’t wavy… and yet, something is terribly wrong. PXE and being born with cataracts, are not a good combination, and I’m the one who must cope with it.

So, I ask again: Am I going blind? I guess I’ll need to talk with the doc, and most likely get there to see her ASAP. What is going on? I’m widowed; I’m alone, and I wasn’t ready for this to happen, and yet, something is happening.

Our stories of searching for answers have their own path, and this time the adventure is not one of excitement but one of great uncertainty. Sight is something those of us who have it are thankful for—we should be. When it changes, it is traumatic, and it is needful that we find safe paths through the process.

While I was at the Visio’s Loo Erf, I observed many residents with their own adjustment issues. Most people had the need of a good therapist, and there weren’t enough to go around.

I have sat at this machine with eyes that sting. The art of adjustment is to understand when to stop working and step away. When I start work today, I’ll be dealing with seven client hours, and mails. Most things are time critical. Balance is what makes it work. Stinging eyes will be on my list to prevent. The trick is to schedule things.

As of right now, no call from the doc. Does she really understand that until I have answers, even an “I don’t know” and “We can try this” is better than sitting with what I’m sitting with now? Please, call!

Author’s Pick: Dancing in the Sunlight

Posted on January 21, 2025 by Gail Shurtleff in Musings and Insights, Soul Peace and Journeys

My greatest joy as a therapist is to witness as those I work with make discoveries that alter and transform their lives. This piece, originally posted January 27, 2024, was such a celebration of a client’s discovery. Come, celebrate in the sun with me!

-Gail

The paths we walk are each different, and sometimes we are so engaged with our own selves that we are brought up short when others make fantastical progress. And so, it was a client this week, who went to that place. For some time, I’ve noticed that movement from the past and into the present. Then, like the wind carrying the leaves to new places, the miracle of change blew in, in its full color!

“I want to know more about…” The words caught me off guard. I’d hoped for these words, and as a therapist I understand that I can only watch, and lead, this person to new waters. Drinking is their choice. All a sudden, they were ready for the next step, and it was a moment to bask in, not for myself but for someone who has done some very hard work.

Insight therapy is about becoming acquainted with the you that is locked deep inside and for whatever reason hasn’t been able to dance in the sun. This week a client made the break to enter into the warm sunlight. This week, someone stepped off the old conveyor belt and into the unknown. They don’t know that yet; I do. I’ll continue to watch and to learn from them. I try to learn from everyone. Some of the lessons are easy, and others are hard.

There is something about growth that has always energized me. I’ve never been able to pin it down; I just understand that it causes me to burn with passion. Whether it is myself or others, it is the process and progress that ignite amazing things in our souls. It is a soul journey that takes us to new places of the heart and mind. Growth feeds our souls and our spirits. It causes us to gaze back for the WOW moments, and to look from our boats out on the river of life. Yes, we have crossed into new places: new territory that opens its arms to welcome us to a new and brave uncertainty. Sometimes, we’re on the river, and at other times we’re inland. It seems that our souls intuit where we need to be and move us to the places of exploration.

Growth is friendly, painful, and wonderful, and it is always a challenge. Growth calls us to the crossroads of being and enables us to question our past and our present, and then wisdom takes hold and we understand that we can’t go back. Going back is self-betrayal.

When you see this on someone’s face or hear it in their questions, you understand what this work is all about. It isn’t about the research, the studying you’ve done that has delivered you to this point in time. It is about the gift of standing with someone in their courage, and having your eyes opened to their sun dance. I can’t claim this dance; all I can do is witness what is now, and hope for what will become.

I entered therapy to grow, to change, and to discover my own path in life. I became a therapist for reasons I thought were good, and I thought that I would walk a different path than I have walked. Tonight, as I type these words, I marvel at my own journey and maybe, just maybe, I’m doing my own dance in the sun.

As I sit here, the tears come, and I’m gratified by them. They are tears of joy and thankfulness. I’ve been given a gift of a dance in the sun, and I feel alive!

Editor’s Pick: Eighty-Four Months

Posted on January 14, 2025 by Gail Shurtleff in The Suicide and its Aftermath

When mental illness takes its toll on individuals who are afflicted, caregivers can be easily overlooked or even forgotten. I’ve chosen this piece, which considers caregivers’ needs, originally posted in September 2023, as my Editor’s Pick for the week.

-Claudia

During the summer of 2016, I sat in my office and realized that I needed to make a hard decision: do I leave Jon, or do I stay? Leaving him would mean that I would be able to pursue my own path, and I’d exit the caregiver role that had taken up so much of my emotional energy for the past twenty-two years. I was worn out. Staying in the marriage would mean that I’d continue to do what I’d been doing for most of our relationship.

Leaving him when he was not able to stand on his own yet could mean suicide. He was doing Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. DBT was created from Marsha Linehan’s work. I’m thankful that she had the insight to bring this forward for the mental health community. For Jon, it was a slow process, and one that would take many more years. The therapist needed to help him resolve family-of-origin issues, as well as provide him some life skills that would help during times of crisis. In the long run, I’d benefit from what he was doing.

What no one knew in July of 2016 was that in six weeks the horror of suicide would confront me. He was entering into another psychotic episode, and this was the one thing that would cause him to end his life. He wore a mask of fear around facing another psychotic episode and recovering from the damage it would cause. He had disclosed to me that if he felt himself moving in this direction, he would end his life. Not one of us who might have seen it coming saw things for what they were.

As I think back, compassion fatigue had burrowed deep into my mind. I was physically and mentally exhausted.

Looking Back

Where was I? If he told me to gather up the objects that would enable him to end his life, I would go through the house and do so. I would store them away until he felt safe from himself. When he stressed and had a crisis, I talked him down from it. Sometimes it took hours to get him to a point where he would swallow an extra dose of medication. Then I’d need to make sure he slept. When he overspent, I could no longer fight it. I had no energy to go up against the crazy. Everything combined took its toll on me. I felt like I was abused, and there were no bruises to show for the abuse I was enduring. If he felt something, I felt is as well. I was becoming nuts in my own way. How could I not feel for him? He was suffering in ways that cut deep into his soul. I couldn’t sense this in its fullness as it happened. Our humanity leads us to compassion for suffering of this magnitude. Compassion calls us to act when we can’t empathize with something that we haven’t experienced. I will never know what it is like to feel the level of darkness, dysfunction, and despair that he felt on a daily basis.

I asked questions to understand. It is one of the reasons I’ve placed his writing on this site in the form he constructed his blog Jon’s Hideaway. Jon struggled with sharing the little he did share. I’m glad he was courageous.

There were the comments, and the assumptions. I was told that I wasn’t putting enough into the marriage! Holy hell, I was dying inside!

Being raised in a patriarchy and a high-demand religion wasn’t helping me in any way whatsoever. I raged inside as there was no place for me to turn. Had I gone full disclosure to my family, I would have been told to divorce him. I loved him, and I couldn’t see a path that would have served us both well. What I needed was mental and emotional relief from the situation. When you are dealing with compassion fatigue, you can’t understand the pulling apart of your own soul that is taking place at the time. The fatigue blocks it out.

The Needs of Caregivers

What do caretakers who deal with the bipolar population need? First, and above everything else, we need safe places that allow us to disclose our needs. We need a supportive friend who can listen and keep us objective, and also show empathy. We need someone to spell us off so that we can get out and get away from the stress when the stressful times increase. We need others to come in and help with housework or meals when our energy is low.

One of the huge issues I had with Jon was around keeping his dignity intact. Jon was a brilliant man. Mental illness robs people of dignity. As his caregiver, I fought to shelter him from people who didn’t understand. He was well aware of how mental illness is viewed. We talked about it often.

How do you explain to people that bipolar isn’t the person going creatively mad? Most of what bipolar brings into a person’s life is darkness, dysfunction, days and nights of sleeping, and not being able to care for yourself. Showering can be put off for days. Brushing teeth might not happen, and if a person is alone, they might not eat, or they might overeat.

During the time I was out of the home for a vision rehab program, I had people set up to deal with the crisis end of things. I didn’t have people set up to check in on him. At the end of one of my four days away from him, I walked in on a scene that scared me. He hadn’t fed himself, showered, taken out the trash for pick up, and had I not come home it would have become worse. I called the psychiatrist and got him in. Then, I took a week off from the program in order to stabilize things at home. I wasn’t worried about him attempting suicide: he didn’t have that kind of energy. I needed more help than I had.

What Else?

There is also the obsessive-compulsive factor that surrounds bipolar. Not all bipolars are also diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD); however, there are components of the disorder that show up for many people. For Jon it was being able to make his guitar. He needed to have the perfect neck for him to play. So, he never really played his guitar: he researched, purchased tools to “fix” it, and then never got to fixing it. There was also the thought that he would record his own music. So, he began to build his own recording studio. Trying to reason with him became a war zone. I stopped fighting with him. I didn’t want the war to resurface in our relationship.

Then the issue of me cleaning our house came up, and I wasn’t allowed to clean the house because I couldn’t see it all well enough to do the task right. He would put it off, and every once in a few months would take several hours and clean. I sunk further into despair. When we moved out of our home due to bankruptcy, and people came to help us move, I was the one blamed for the messy house. Once again, no one asked the why question, and it wasn’t safe to explain it all. As my mother used to say, “Assuming make an ass out of you and me.”

One thing led to another, and by the time he took his own life, I was beyond worn out: I was numb.

Aftermath

While I was able to understand on some level what the marriage had done to me, I wasn’t able to understand it in its completeness. It would take years for that to happen. It has taken over eighty-four months to write this post. It isn’t that I was unaware of compassion fatigue; it is about the fact that grief work involves sifting through so many aspects of life. For me to fully process this has taken almost eighty-five months. For some of you it will happen much sooner in the process.

When I look into the mirror, I see a face that isn’t stressed, a woman who can smile, and a life that is taking me along paths that I never imagined I’d walk. It is enough.

The Getaway

Posted on January 8, 2025 by Gail Shurtleff in Musings and Insights

Happy New Year! I think I’m ready for 2025. The rain is falling. I’m in my cozy home; the wind is blowing hard outside, and I have new plans for the year.

Working more hours is causing me to need to take more time off to care for my own mental health. I figured this out over the Christmas holiday week. I decided to go to Norway for a tiny five-day break. What happened there taught me that I needed to treat myself as well as I tell my clients to treat themselves, and so, this year I’ll take more time off to care for myself.

Maybe last year’s learning about my own personal growth experience did the trick. When you deal with the deep stuff inside, you also come to accept the need for better self-care.

I had not taken a break in some time, and between falling and having to walk out of the rehab center, and everything else, I decided to brave the travel mess and get on a bird. Because I stayed on the continent, there was not the hassle of passport control. Norway was delightful, and so were my friends.

Why do we need breaks? The obvious response is to recharge and reset. There is nothing like doing nothing! Maybe I got too relaxed, and that is not helpful. Or, maybe I haven’t been that relaxed in years and forgot what it felt like. I think that’s what we need to do on a getaway.

The above statement causes me to ask the question: How much relaxation is the right amount? How do I learn to recreate and recharge, and to do it in a reasonable amount of time? As someone who wasn’t raised on vacations, I haven’t learned this vital skill. How do I learn this? Well, Gail, you learn it by doing it, planning for it, and building the new habit.

Staycations won’t work because I need to leave my place of employment—my home. I need to get out from my office. That means leaving, and going to a place that isn’t my bed. I need to not cook, to not see my office, and to find a place to be myself.

I’ll need to come up with some local, and not-so-local, places that offer me peace and a sweet break. The hitch is that I need to be able to much of it independently. I don’t see like I once did, and I think I may be scaring people. I know I need to have help, as that is the way my life is now. All I want to do is sit and veg out. I do enough at home!

So, no crazy destinations with things to see and do. I need to teach myself to be still, and to be pampered. A spa is really sounding nice. You get pampered at the spa.

I have a lovely year ahead. I could take mental health days, and just sit outside! The glitch in doing this is that it can only be done in the summer, and when it is sunny and warm. I guess for this one I need a new umbrella for the sun. Hmmm… purple or blue sound like nice colors to consider for this.

The obstacle to all of this is that it has to be implemented by me. Isn’t that what it’s about? Taking charge of our own well-being? I’m learning to care for myself in new ways. I’m realizing that my clients need a therapist who honors her own needs, and who will get away.

I may take off not only US holidays: I may take off some Dutch ones as well. Yes, this also requires planning, and in the end, it is good for me. Setting boundaries is a good thing to encourage the wonderful time I need for myself to refresh.

Happy 2025, Gail. The new year is looking like a brighter year.

It Pays to Rethink Things (Revisit)

Posted on January 1, 2025December 9, 2025 by Gail Shurtleff in Living With Disability

This post was originally published on November 28, 2023.

26 April, 2023, is the day I spoke my truth for the first time. I wrote about in “When Sanctuary is Offered.” I meant every word then. Really, I did. I was also willing to give up the social life that was so destructive to my mental health.

27 November, 2023: the day my hearing deficiency was dealt with.

I don’t do 9:00 a.m. appointments. If I have to walk, take the bus, and be out of the house that early, it doesn’t work. I’ve set that limit with people. Today I had no choice and arrived ten minutes late. As it turned out, 9:30 would have been soon enough. The Monday chaos of gathering, prepping for the day, and being ready for the first clientele was interesting, and frustrating, to watch. Oh well, with my morning caffeine in me, I walked into the room. I had an agenda: better hearing aids that would be covered by the insurance. I had a list of requirements. Was I nuts? I’d soon find out.

An intense trio of hearing tests confirmed my suspicions: I’d lost a wee bit more hearing. I wasn’t shocked by the news, as I was prepared to hear the number. What I wasn’t expecting was what happened next.

I love the “gadgets” that I’ve worn for seven years. I’ve put off getting new ones because they were the best! Well, they were the best until they weren’t, and I finally broke down and made the appointment at the ungodly hour of 9:00 in the morning. UGH!

If one has to do the unthinkable, then I advise a list of the absolute requirements. If those can’t be met, don’t do it. This is how the second half of the appointment began.

The new ear molds had been made. My ears are even petite. First item: Are these things covered? Yes. OK, let’s move on. I want the chargeable, and not the battery, type. Now, here’s the crazy part. If you go with batteries, the insurance will cover some of the cost. At 90 euros per box, and a three-week battery life per set, you will go through some boxes. I’ll buy the charger, thank you. Personally, I think the insurance didn’t think that all the way through.

Moving forward: What can you do for my hearing in a social situation? How about a microphone that does a couple of things? It will link with your desktop, and it will serve as a microphone when you need to talk with someone in a densely populated social setting. I WANT!!!! The insurance covers it. Oh yes, I’ll do it. This is the answer to multiple issues.

By now, I’m feeling like I just had Christmas, and Santa answered my every need and want. It is true that I just inherited more chargers that will replace the ones that will be given away, but it’s a good trade-off.

My bag had three boxes in it when I left some two and a half hours later. As I walked home, I noticed the feeling of gratitude that I was feeling and took the time to honor it properly. As the gentle rain hit my umbrella, I had to focus on the path I was on. My heart was full, and as I entered my home, I was excited to try out the new gadgets. I cried when the mic put the sound into a better hearing place for me. I was calm, relaxed as the stress of listening changed from difficult to much better.

Tomorrow is Giving Tuesday. It is a day when people in the US give to charities. While I do have a co-pay on this new hearing aid, it is not what I would have needed to spend had the insurance not covered things.

I have no more words for what happened today. They aren’t needed. The gratitude that I feel for what I have sitting in my ears is goon enough.

The sun set around 4:30, and I’m thankful to be in a warm house. It is time for some dinner and a relaxing evening. I need to start thinking social again. Yes, I just said I’d socialize again.

Closed Doors

Posted on December 17, 2024 by Gail Shurtleff in Discharging Trauma, Musings and Insights

My therapist said, “This is the you that you are without the trauma.” This is the person that I am now. It is a strange feeling. I notice myself reacting calmly to what once upset me.

It’s been twenty-four hours since I heard those words, and I find myself mourning the past, and wondering about the changes that have come about. It is a gift that I want, and yet I find myself asking the question: Would I change it if I could go back in time? That door is closed because I’ve been formed by life events. I’m a stronger soul for it. The trauma has vanished, and though I’ll know of what happened, I won’t feel the pain of it.

If the work around the trauma is deep and well thought out, the result is that it leaves our lives, and in its place a calm and quiet comes into being. I’ve not had this type of peace in my life… ever. The adjustment is mind-blowing and surprising to me.

As I thought about things last night, after my client sessions were done and the dishes washed, that is when I let myself relax into the newness of what is happening to me. The soldier really left the battlement because I told them to go. The therapist keeps checking in with me, and at first I thought, why is this being done? I do this work. And I didn’t think it all the way through when it came to myself. It was the past talking. I’ve changed. In the beginning I told the therapist that I was presenting myself as a person who needed help, and that I was going to be the client/patient in this situation. I tried to leave the therapist at the door. Maybe I left just a tad too much at the door. I’m glad I did. I’m grateful that I didn’t try to become a therapist in my own therapy sessions. I believe it made all the difference.

The above doesn’t mean that I had not done much of the work before I entered the therapy process to discharge what I shouldn’t be discharging without guidance. You know the saying “Physician, heal thyself,” or the one about a lawyer defending themselves? Well, I’m not a fool, and I know better than to think I can see it all and be aware of everything. And so, I left my therapy hat at the door.

Some people who are receiving ketamine therapy for the treatment of depression say that they can’t remember the depression. They know they deal with depression; it feels as if it was never present. I’m not certain that I’d argue that depression in and of itself is traumatizing. On the other hand, I can argue that psychosis is traumatizing, and that being in a hospital mental ward is traumatizing.

The closed door that separates those on the outside from those struggling to relocate themselves can be traumatizing. When the brain tells us that our reality is off, and we know that the “off” thing is not supposed to be that way, it can get very confusing and scary, and the trauma of the inside ward might not be such a bad place for someone—if debriefing is a part of the after care. I’ve learned this truth from listening to my husband and others. Clearing trauma is the same way: debriefing is needed.

Jon and I had more than one conversation about the trauma associated with a psychotic episode. He shared with me the horrors of what happened to him during the single episode, and his recovery from it. He was never hospitalized. At the end of his life, he wondered if he should check himself into the hospital for a short stay. It didn’t happen.

This brings up the question of whether it helps to seek hospitalization. Sometimes, the depression is so debilitating that the person needs to be in the hospital, and then process the results of the stay with renewed energy and insight. The risk is that, when the person is discharged, they have the energy to carry out a plan. When you can’t get out of bed, you can’t think well enough to formulate the way forward. That door is only open when energy is available for that type of thinking. A good discharge plan can serve to help someone through this phase. Remember that suicide happens when the resources run out. Two things that lower the possibility of suicide are a feeling of a sense of belonging somewhere, and resources that can help to support the needed issues.

Living without the trauma is new, and so, like someone who is getting good treatment for depression, good post-trauma work should include the adjustment phase of the process.

So why bring all of this up in a post about healing from trauma? Trauma alters lives and minds go to strange places, and while I’m celebrating the strangeness of it all, and moving forward in my life, someone else might not choose to cope in the same way. I can see how someone could become overwhelmed by it all. Now what do I do? I spent years stuffing it all down. I don’t need to do what I once did to cope. I understand how someone might feel a wee bit out of place in their world.

Accepting new things and new ways of being can be challenging for people, especially if you don’t like change in your life.

I sit here with my mind free of what was. I wonder where all this newness is going to take me. I remember the past life, where the trauma came to greet me so often, and I realize that the timing was just right for me to do the work I needed to do. What an open door.

The Man Who Never Hit Me

Posted on December 11, 2024 by Gail Shurtleff in Musings and Insights

In the summer of 2016, I began to contemplate divorcing my husband. It was about economics, and my survival. I’d had to unofficially shut my life down for him. As I sat in my rose room and thought about the consequences of what I was thinking of doing, I had hard questions to answer.

I needed to work. My work enlivened me and brought me fulfillment. I needed to work because we could use the money. I needed to work because I missed seeing people and helping them to explore their lives.

He couldn’t deal with not having me in a constant support role. I was wilting on the vine, and it didn’t feel good. Once again, the narcissism of bipolar was rearing its ugly head.

So, why did I stay? I suppose you might say I stayed because I knew how sick he was, and what could happen if I left. I could have left and returned to the US and begun a new life. I stayed because my bottom line for remaining in the marriage was physical abuse.

Creepy? Yes, and no. He never hit me, but he had thrown things at walls and screamed at me. I had the emotional black-and-blue bruises to show for it; I had the environmental depression to show for it. But—he never hit me. I lived with a charged phone and a credit card that could be used at a moment’s notice to escape the marriage. I could grab my fully loaded purse and walk out the front door of the house never looking back. Like so many women, I’d leave with the clothes on my back.

He told me that he’d commit suicide before he would hit me. On August 28^th of that year, he made his exit, and I didn’t need to return to the question of leaving him. And after twenty-two years of being together, he’d never hit me.

And yet, he did. I just didn’t have the photos of the physical bruises to show for it. He’d hit my soul, and my heart. Sometimes, the only way to see the damage is to see it from a distance. That view came after several years of being a widow, and before I returned to the work I love.

Now, eight years later, I know what it looks like, sounds like, and feels like to hear the words spoken by someone. I get the hesitancy to leave. And yet, the urgency to do so is present. It isn’t until you’re out that you fully understand the scope of the damage.

Well-meaning friends and family often judge and urge the person to leave—to get free of that lousy, no- good-person. It isn’t that easy. It’s super complex.

Most abuse victims do try to leave, and wind up going back because they haven’t got a plan of successful escape. Unless they’re fortunate enough to have a strong support system, leaving fails. They return because it is better to have shelter than to live in the uncertainty of the “what if and what will I do” type of thinking. Sometimes nice things look better than the one bedroom or studio flat that you have to take to escape. A homeless shelter isn’t very appealing either.

How do people really leave for good, and how do they start over? I’ll offer up one starting point: https://www.womenshealth.gov/relationships-and-safety/domestic-violence/leaving-abusive-relationship.

A Google search turns up many resources. Local women’s organizations are also a good place to begin to learn.

I’m not going to tell you how to leave. I am going to state that the bruises on the inside show through just as much as those on the outside. The makeup for the inner concealment tends to not work because it comes out in how one behaves.

I think back on the work I’ve done to heal my soul. It’s been a long, winding road of a soul journey to stare at the new woman in the mirror.

Reworking Narratives

Posted on December 4, 2024 by Gail Shurtleff in Soul Peace and Journeys

Our lives unfold in ways we’d hoped, and not hoped for. The paths we walk may be scripted or unscripted, and there are times when we find out about our paths only when we go exploring to figure out the why of it all.

And so, the story of our lives unravels with the truths and the lies we tell ourselves about who we are. We act and we react, or we choose to ignore it all and do nothing, hoping that it will all go away. When it doesn’t go away, I see the person in my online office. And the narrative of their life is laid out for both of us to see.

I once asked my husband to tell me what one gift he’d give me if he could. The problem with his well-meaning gift was that it would have erased a huge part of who I am. Knowing that I am a person with disabilities is something I accept. What I wish I didn’t have to accept is the junk society saddles me with as a disabled person. And so, this is how it is with my life narrative: I accept it. I wouldn’t swallow a pill or anything else that would change it.

The paths we walk shape who and what we are. Accepting both the good and bad choices, and their outcomes in our lives, is hard. Dealing with it in therapy is hard, and the result can be powerful and liberating.

Powerful outcomes result in posts like the ones in “Discharging Trauma” or “Soul Journeys.” It’s the lightbulb happenings in “Dancing in the Sunlight” that enable people to grasp that things are worth it.

Therapy is about reworking our narratives and coming to terms with them as they are and not how we wish they were. What we can’t change is linked to our past and present. What we can change is created by the choices we make for our future lives. It is like good soup.

I don’t offer a quick fix, and I don’t want it for myself. I want to build relationships with people. I’ve found that when we dig into our lives, it gets messy, and the process of digging out of our messiness is often not pleasant. What people need in therapy are tools, listening, and understanding, and to be called out on their stuff. Therapy is not for wimps.

While turning over the blockages in our lives is hard work, the results are worth it! I’ve learned that mental health planning is a good skill to have. If I can think ahead to how I can plan for some possibilities, I may be in a better place to manage the unwanted outcomes. I accept what I can’t control. I wholeheartedly embrace what I can control.

I want to take the path of openness, and I want to be able to turn over the rocks in front of me that stand as barriers, and not the old ones that got placed in my past. I’ve looked at the rocks of the past. Forward is a much better way of doing things.

As I write this, I realize that I want to chase the fly; I take delight in the adventures that I can have. Our life paths are narratives that we can watch and create in real time. Don’t just sit by the lake: chase the fly!

Equal Opportunity Discriminator

Posted on November 26, 2024November 26, 2024 by Gail Shurtleff in Living With Disability

This past week I honored those on the margins. I did a presentation on disability. It was nice to speak my truth, and to have others receive that truth from me.

There are realities that those of us with both vision and hearing loss face. When we step out our front doors, the world can be a hostile place.

My sister, who was more blind than I have been, expressed her issues with appearance this way: “If you cut your hair, I may not recognize you, so identify yourself.” As for me, I need several hours of “face time” with you so that your facial features get imprinted on my brain. Putting it all together for me is difficult because I spent the first year of my life blind.

The first year of development is when our brains learn to recognize and discriminate objects and people. As humans, we need to be able to identify people in all their detail, unlike how we would look at simple chimps or monkeys. We need a highly effective visual discrimination ability, and I have had to learn to do it because visual recognition skills develop during the first year of life. It’s been hard to do, and I’ve done much of it as an adult when I’ve been able to fully understand what I’ve needed to do to learn people’s faces.

Stepping outside of my house also unleashes so much helpfulness in others. Then, suddenly, when I need a helpful soul, they are nowhere to be found. I think this sense of helpfulness is more about people being uncomfortable with the disabled, and needing to relieve their own discomfort. I’m fine with who I am and what I must do—even the difficult things.

Right now, the city I’m in is redoing the main street to create a better bus line. I’m cut off from my universe! The city didn’t ask me how I’d be affected, and once again I’m out in the nowhere, and they’re already two months behind.

“Where’s my village?” is something I ask more frequently now. I think those in the disabled community are asking this just as much as I am these days. With the fact that villages are disappearing, I shouldn’t be shocked that, once again, I’m posting on the cruel nature of what life can look like for those of us who must cope with a less-than-abled body.

I reflect back to being asked if I’d change it all for sight. My answer is still a resounding NO! It is all about who I am and what my disability represents. To be honest, I can’t imagine who I would have become without the disability. As much as I’d like to be able to see like you and hear like you, I wouldn’t be able to deal with it now. It would be as if my brain would struggle to make sense of it all. That really is a gift I would refuse.

Just as much as I love my petite body, I do love who I am in it. So, maybe living on the margins is also about accepting ourselves on the margins.

I have said that disability is an equal opportunity discriminator: it doesn’t discriminate at all. It doesn’t care about gender, race, age, intelligence, financial status, or anything else. If your number comes up, you’ll need to learn to cope with it. So, be kind to me, as someday it could be you needing the same help you want to give me when I may or may not need it.

I was saved the trauma of having to deal with disability later in life. In an odd sort of way, I’ve had it a little easier than my siblings, who had to greet their disabilities in their thirties and forties. I grew up this way. They each had to deal with another type of existence and coming to terms with the losses that disability brings, as well as the belief that they can still do it all.

I step out my front door, walk to the bus, and then a train, and am thankful that they are there for me. I still am dwelling on the margins of society. I’m self-sufficient in a world that prizes ability.

External or Internal?

Posted on November 19, 2024 by Gail Shurtleff in Discharging Trauma

I sat with someone as they went through a memory of an event. They were in the past, seeing it in the present. My job was to calm them down. It took a while.

Trauma is both internal and external. Surviving a heart attack is internal, and we also witness it externally. We’ll carry the memory with us inside our head forever.

Trauma can also be deceptive. What we experience as being within ourselves is actually outside of the self. A physical reaction to external cues might cause internal reactions. We might come to believe that what we experienced was internal rather than external trauma. And so it goes that we might live years believing and thinking about our experiences in one way rather than another.

When I was six, I was abused by those who used water to traumatize me. I wasn’t able to learn to swim… until one day when I was seven, and I figured out that the water would hold me up, and I’d be able to float on the top of it. Once I figured that out, I was able to take my feet off the bottom of the pool and kick. At first nobody could tell I had my feet off the bottom of the pool, and then I got it and you couldn’t keep me out of the water. Water is an equalizer. The memory of the water stayed in my head as I conquered the physical act of swimming. It was an external thing that lived in my head.

What we fear might be the monsters in our head, and for some people with mental illness the monsters become quite real. For most of us, the monsters we live with are easier to cope with.

Sometimes our liberations come via a comment, something others say and do with us that causes us to rethink the vision of ourselves. Trauma can cause a great deal of self-doubt and second-guessing who we are. We second-guess who we are to ourselves and to the world. What if we need to cut ourselves a great deal of slack? Most of the time we need to offer ourselves kindness.

I’ve witnessed the trauma perfection cycle, and I believe it stems from thinking that “if I just do this right, all will be well.” The problem with this type of thinking is that you can never do it well enough.

When trauma is discharged, and we set our loyal soldiers free, something amazing happens. Our ability to love ourselves increases and, with it, the loss of perfectionism. Along with this loss comes the ability to react differently to what once bothered us. We tend to look at those old rainbows in new ways, and our minds are blown away by our new actions. Now the rainbows are alive with vibrant colors that we may have never been able to see before!

I’ve talked about arriving on new shores after crossing the river Styx, and this is different. Whatever this is, it brings deep peace. It satisfies. This is a different internal that resolves the external stuff. I think it is to be defined for each person in their own way. What I understand isn’t what you will understand. Once again, I thank the loyal soldiers who served. Once again, I stand in amazement for what they did for me. For now, peace has come and made a home in my soul.

Please Do! Suicide and Trauma (Revisit)

Posted on November 11, 2024September 1, 2026 by Gail Shurtleff in Discharging Trauma, The Suicide and its Aftermath

Originally posted September 30, 2019.

When someone takes their own life, what do you say to those left behind who must rebuild, pick up the pieces, and move forward?

If natural death is difficult for people to deal with, traumatic death and death by suicide are far more complex. This post is about what I call “the death bubble” bursting and making a mess. Oh, what a mess a traumatic death can be! And a death by suicide is far more complex than any other type of death. Why? Maybe it has to do with the unthinkable, and that the person taking their own life, in a sense, is “playing God,” or choosing to control a process that society says, and believes, should come at a natural end-of-life sequence. To so many it is “taboo.”

Maybe this taboo is what makes others pull back and not say anything to those affected by the death. In so many ways, those who are faced with a death caused by trauma or suicide need different support than others. I’ll try to say some helpful things here.

This Grief Is on Steroids

The grief that surrounds suicide is intense and feels like a volcano erupting. The catch here is that it erupts in stages, each of them violent. It quakes, it steams, and at some point in time it will explode, and then all that lava slowly runs down the sides, burning everything it touches. Everything about the event and its aftermath will alter how most people who survive those they love will alter their world view. This subject matter can be addressed in another post. For now, the reader can choose to accept that the above-stated fact is fact.

As I’ve stated in other posts, grief does not have stages—it never has. Grief, at its best, is messy, and grief that surrounds suicide is best likened to a catastrophic eruption in slow motion.

During the first days, people might have to deal with a biohazard team cleaning up a very unpleasant mess. There might be a loss of possessions. These possessions could be meaningful to family and friends. The biohazard team takes it all away. If authorities in the area the person resided in still place crime tape at the scene of a suicide, there is that added burden on loved ones.

There may or may not be a viewing. There may or may not even be a funeral or memorial service. The closure that these events offer to those who mourn can be shadowed by the difficulty of these events.

During the first few years, those who mourn are forced to come to terms with their own lives, deal with the contents of a note, or the lack of a note, ask the “Why,” say over and over “I should have,” process guilt, come to terms with the death on a spiritual (not religious) level, as well as process any religious beliefs around suicide and possibly confront them. Simply stated, many survivors of a loved one’s suicide face an existential crisis. Supporting such a crisis is challenging.

What Can You Do?

Everything I stated about death still applies here. There is more, and here it is:

The First 24 Hours

If the death has occurred in the family home, please, if possible, provide another place for the survivors to sleep. Try to keep everyone together. Ideally, a hotel should not be on the list of places to gather together.

If sleeping somewhere else will not work, the next best thing is to move in with them for the first two nights, make sure the family is fed, cared for, and assured that for right now, they aren’t required to show up for life. They are going to need to deal with arrangements for the service if there is to be such an event. They will need help on so many levels.

If there are young children involved, and if schools are in session, ask the children what they would prefer to do and arrange for it. YOU be the one to make school calls. Empathetic staff will understand the gravity of the situation and support the children in their needs.

Assistance with meals and errands can be helpful. With meals, consider the fact that clean-up needs to be kept to a minimum.

The Death Bubble

If you’ve been through a death, you know what I’m talking about: that place where the world stops for you, and the focus isn’t about getting it done. And for however long it takes, you are in this place, or state, of surreal being. The world has stopped. Then the memorial or funeral happens, and society tells you that you have to get back to the races. You step outside, see the cars and people whizzing by, and you think, I have to get back on this grand people mover that is whizzing by me a million miles an hour! How? So you jump for it, and maybe you make it, but most likely you fall off again and wonder, Why? What is wrong with me? Then you stop and you think, I forced myself to move, and I tried to leave the bubble, but I’m still really in the bubble, and HELP! With suicide, it is as if you jump into the people mover, but you are hanging in the air and you miss the people-mover, and you get all banged up. Re-entry into the bustling world happens at a slower pace.

When someone finally reaches a place of resolution and forward movement, it is because the hard work of grief has been journeyed. And while all might not be as it once was, a new normal is emerging.

I tell you all of this so that you, the reader, who have not been in this place, can be aware of how to help in the beginning, the middle, and the continuing future. You get through it, but you don’t get over it. For those of us who have faced this in our personal lives, there will be differences in our process, but the understanding is there.

Please Do!

1. Look with your eyes. Act with those eyes and be proactive about bringing in meals, coming to clean the house, take the children for playdates, or whatever else is needed. In other words don’t ASK when; TELL your family, or friends, when you will show up! Then show up.

2. Listen to, and provide a place for, someone to talk—if and when they want to do so.

3. This is about them, not you. If someone is behaving in a self-centered manner, they are doing so because the pain they are facing is raw. Gentleness is needed.

4. Keep in mind that no two suicides are alike. Once again, make no assumptions that what your friend or family member is now dealing with is anything like what you dealt with. Ask what the experience is like for them.

5. Never ask about how the suicide happened. It isn’t any of your business. If the person wants you to know, they’ll share it. The fact is that you might not really want to hear the details that would be shared. This is not violence on a screen—this is real.

6. What was in the note? Once again, this is private. Some people leave a note, and others don’t. Some notes give detailed reasons, and others don’t. To share a personal example, my husband worked on several versions of a note which I have. In the end, the note I found was only for me, and it was short and signed in a way only I understood. The note doesn’t get shared with others for that reason.

7. Please stay near your friend and family member. Now, more than anything, they will need you to be present. They won’t need “fixing,” just lots of love and support.

8. Please support them and remind them that while they may have the urge to make major life decisions, now might not be a good time to do so. If a major life change has to happen before the first year is completed, be present to support it.

Why is #8 important? If you are in a place of dealing with trauma, the chances of making a good decision in your life is slim. Staying in a routine can help to calm the eruption that is occurring during the first part of the process. When a volcanic eruption happens, you are in “fight or flight” and survival modes. This means that cognitive functions might not be functioning as they need to in the realm of competent life choices. Offer to be a sounding board and sit with them to help them flesh out the “why” of the process.

9. While there are no set stages to this process, there might be some feelings that are common to suicide. Some of the most common feelings and emotions that arise are anger, guilt, shock, hurt, “If only I’d known,” and being stunned into inaction by what has happened. This is normal. You don’t fix it; you listen to the survivor. In understanding this, you might also be better placed to listen as someone works through #8.

10. Could this suicide have been stopped? This might seem strange, or out of place, on a tips list. It isn’t. I’ll share some things I learned from living with a man who was bipolar, and who discussed his ideas about why some people decide that suicide is an option.

People in emotional crisis need resources that work. They need psychiatric and other mental health people to be fully present and fully willing to serve as holding containers for their pain. The family and friends that surround them need to be open to serious listening. For instance, I had to go to some very dark places with my husband. It was going into these places that enabled me to understand the magnitude of the pain he was in. He had a workable cocktail and a great psychiatrist, and psychologist, who were extremely supportive. It wasn’t enough. For this post, it doesn’t need to be explained.

One of the things he shared is that when the urge comes, it could be just that: an urge. I would remove what he asked me to remove from the house and get him calmed down. Those three seconds of non-access to tools made all the difference for years. He knew that I understood.

I’m glad that places like NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) and Suicide Prevention are around. They do good work. I’m especially glad that they are present for children, adolescents, and those in early adulthood. When the brain isn’t fully developed, understanding the consequences can be challenging at best.

I’ve said it often: no one should have to find the note or the body.

The above is complex. No, not all suicides can be prevented. There are several reasons why this is so. I’ll list them in no particular order:

Lack of accessible resources
Lack of support, or ability to get to the resources
Undiagnosed mental issues that could have been treated had the person sought help
Family structures that are too rigid and do not tolerate outside assistance
Religious beliefs that prohibit mental health consumerism
Lack of understanding by others of what the person is really dealing with
The person masking the severity of the symptoms
Secrets that are thought to be so terrible that they can’t be shared with another person
Intense mental health issues that are so painful and untreatable that the only way out for that person is to end it
Uncontrollable impulsivity
Isolation that has gone on for decades

I’ve listed just a few of the reasons the person who completes their suicide chooses this route.

I’d like to make a plea to the Western world: Please do take the time to know your family and embrace them for who they are. Please recognize that while we can’t save everyone, we can support and help those within our reach. A smile, a hug, sincere concern, and understanding go a long way to stopping the flood that causes so many to cross over and reach for whatever they have that will end it forever.

Please Do!

Losing Our Villages

Posted on November 4, 2024 by Gail Shurtleff in Everything Mental Health

“Please, tell me what to do.” I’m hearing more and more of this from clients of many ages and generations. The first time I heard this, I didn’t think much of being asked this. By the time I’d heard it multiple times, I had to stop, and I had to ask myself why. Why was this coming up for people?

As I think about this, a few things emerge.

Being Young with No Life Experience

Adolescence is a proving ground. In this phase of life, we need to test the waters, try new things, discover ourselves, and make the crazy mistakes that cause family members to smile, laugh, and say “Oh, that kid!” Then they hug us, and we know that we’re loved, and that we can learn from our mistakes. We get up and move forward in life.

Failing Is an Option

When we test the waters of youth, we come to understand that maybe we don’t know it all, and that we might be less capable than we thought we were. We start asking questions.

Some parenting styles also set a person up to be expected to know what they can’t possibly know. This happens in many abusive situations where the child is told to perform tasks that are age-inappropriate, or where a dysfunctional parent forces a child to make sense of something they are not mature enough to understand the entire picture of what is needed, and how the world works. This can, and often does, cause trauma and leave emotional scarring that bleeds into adult life. People become crippled by not understanding what to do in any given situation.

Another issue here is that parents set their kids up to “succeed” at the cost of not allowing failure. If you never learn to get up after a bad fall, how are you going to know you can survive the survivable? The gift of being able to dust yourself off and to learn from mistakes is HUGE.

More and more people are coming to therapy with struggles that are not really struggles but that turn into struggles because they never learned in childhood.

Being told to go get a job when you’ve never learned how to get the job creates genuine difficulties for both teens and younger adults. The job market has changed since the time when our great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents had to go out and get their first jobs.

At one point in time, the job was in a family-owned business, on a farm, or a formal apprenticeship process. Now, farms are large, and fast food isn’t a person’s first job; many teens do neither fast food nor retail. They want to create their own jobs and a company. The trades are not attracting as many people, and soft skills dominate hard skills. Yes, it’s messed up! It has changed.

Falling down is still needful; poor job reviews and the learning that comes because of failure is a good life skill to possess. You still learn to ride a bike by mastering balance, and by falling down and getting back on the bike. Those that master the basics master the art of success in a healthy way.

Covid

I realize now that Covid really altered how children and younger adults do things. The shutdown of school and other common social areas where life skills are learned shattered expectations.

When you are young, you plan it all out, and you believe that the dance will come, and your friends will all gather for the Friday and Saturday night fun. There is a belief that it can all be yours. And then a worldwide pandemic sweeps in and sends us all scurrying to our favorite messaging platform; Zoom expanded like it never had before. While we could communicate, we could not gather as we had, and social skills were lost. Our sense of knowing what to do—our how to deal with life situations—got stomped on. This pandemic affected everyone. Common sense was questioned.

Overnight, the waitlist for therapy rose to new heights as people attempted to cope. Therapists were needing to work it out for themselves, and at the same time help others. The world sank into a sink hole of “HELP ME! WHAT DO I DO?” People who once had healthy self-confidence now questioned the world and how to successfully cope with basic life choices. It was during this time that I started seeing clients again. Several years of a grief journey that sent me into reframing my life in new ways altered how I did life. I had to rethink and struggle before the pandemic hit, and I saw how it was affecting people.

When I think about this, and how we learn to get through the hard things, it boils down to learning in childhood that a crisis can be dealt with by having community support. This is why a healthy family system is so important, and the family blends into community. It really does take a village to raise a child, and we’re losing our villages.

It is time to recreate functional families and the villages around them that will turn into supportive communities. Lately, this is what I tell clients to do.

A village and a family are made up of all ages and identities. We need our village elders, and even the village dreamer. The elders have lived it, and the dreamer creates the unthinkable and challenges the norms. A healthy elder advises wisely, and a healthy dreamer challenges our norms yet has common sense. The elders push for homeostasis, and the dreamer pushes the limits. We learn from both sides.

I don’t want to see either the elder or the dreamer not be present in our learning process.

There was a time when villages also had the religious, the spiritual, the skeptic, and the atheist, and everyone else in between. It seems that the village makeup is shifting, and I’m thinking we need it all. We need it all, and we need it to be healthy. We’re losing our balance and, with it, the ability to understand how to cope with basic life situations.

Elders and dreamers and everything in between teach us how to discover for ourselves what we need to do to get up and do it better the next time around. It is the circle of life.

Healing and Icebergs

Posted on October 21, 2024 by Gail Shurtleff in Musings and Insights

I stand in an empty place. The battlement and castle that once stood as a fortress have been carried off to a place of full discharge. There are no loyal soldiers here anymore. They’ve been honorably discharged, and they served well.

It is a peaceful feeling to have said goodbye to all of them; they were tired and in need of the rest of the valiant warriors they were.

At the beginning of the discharge process, I was sent something by my therapist, and it made me cry. It felt safe, and as if the process I was about to undergo was one of healing. It describes the therapy process well, and it fits my way of thinking. I’ve fallen into a mad crush with the iceberg, and I have my own whimsical vision of what she looks like. I want you to know about this gem of a description of therapy, and so, I’ll share it here.

THE ICEBERG

A tale of therapy

Author unknown

Once upon a time, in a place at the end of the earth, there lived an iceberg. The iceberg was quite a small one, part of a much larger one from which she had broken away and floated free in the cold water.

Sometimes she found herself brushing up against other icebergs, but she learned to steer clear after a particularly painful bump during a patch of stormy weather. On the whole, she managed to stay out of trouble, watching the weather carefully and adjusting her course to suit the conditions. She was weary and lonely and wanted to find a place where she could be with other icebergs who wouldn’t hurt her and where she could relax a bit.

Now we all know about icebergs and how that part that shows above the water is only a very small part of the whole. This particular iceberg was bright on the surface, and when the sun shone on her, she sparkled and twinkled and danced about on the water, bobbing up and down as if she didn’t have a care in the world. This was the part that showed above the water, but below there was a great weight of ice into which lots of debris had become frozen. All the flotsam and jetsam of her own and other people’s lives had become entangled and was firmly lodged into this heavy submerged part; it was slowly dragging the tiny tip of the iceberg right under the water. Steering herself had become more and more difficult and dangerous.

Then one day the iceberg found a small sheltered bay on the edge of the land and she floated into it without even realizing where she was going. She just felt she was safe at last and able to stop worrying about bumping into other icebergs for a while. She rested herself and basked in the warmth of the sun that shone on her. When night came, she thought that she would find that she had floated out again into the dangerous waters, and every new day, when the sun came out again, she marvelled at it and wondered if it could possibly last. And it did.

After some time, she really began to trust the constancy of the sun and found that she didn’t need to worry about it anymore. Sometimes a cloud passed in front of the sun, but it soon passed and afterwards the sun seemed all the warmer by comparison.

The longer she stayed in the sheltered bay, the warmer the water became, and then a strange thing began to happen. The edge of the ice beneath the water began to melt, freeing some of the debris trapped in it. Every day the sun shone, and the ice melted a little more. The iceberg watched in amazement as bits floated to the surface; she realized that these were bits of herself that had been submerged for a long time, causing her to feel so heavy, dragging her down. She began to understand why things had been so difficult for her, and she was glad to watch the rubbish drifting away into the wider waters.

The sun’s warmth had also changed the bit of iceberg that showed above the water. The great deep, jagged clefts etched down her sides had been smoothed away by the great rivers of water that streamed down her as she watched the debris floating to the surface. The tip of the iceberg, instead of becoming smaller, had actually become larger as more of herself showed above the water, freed of entanglements.

This affected the iceberg in different ways. At first she found it hard to recognize herself and she wondered if the other icebergs would know her, or if they would notice a change in her. She wondered if her new size would cause her problems when she went back into the wider waters, and if she would be able to steer clear of the other icebergs in quite the same way. But then she realised that, now that she was bigger, she would not need to be so fearful of being bumped or hurt. And, being free of the debris, she would be able to steer more easily and have more choice about the directions in which she moved. She was less likely to be dragged down or tipped over, even if she did occasionally bump into other icebergs. She began to feel more whole, as though the part below the water was less separate from her.

Although there were still some bits of rubbish frozen into her submerged parts, at least she knew they were there and how they might affect her, and that, in time, they, too, might work free and float away. Now, it may seem that all this happened a little too easily, but it was not so. Whilst the iceberg basked in the sun after first finding the sheltered bay, there was a lot of turbulence beneath the surface, and the iceberg was very anxious, not knowing exactly what was going on down below. At times she was frightened of the degree of agitation in the waters and wondered if she would be able to maintain her balance. But all the time the sun kept shining, and that reassured and comforted her and made her feel that, whatever was going on beneath the waters, all was still well above.

When the iceberg had melted enough to free the debris, the disturbed particles began to hurt as they broke free, and the pain was worse as the icy numbness dissolved away. The iceberg was dismayed when she recognized some of the debris that had floated to the surface: bits she didn’t want to see; bits she had forgotten she had picked up on dark and stormy nights; bits she was frightened about and with which she wished she had never come into contact. But she had to admit, they were all parts of her, whether she liked them or not. And the sun still shone.

The sun shone on the good bits and the sun shone on the bad bits; somehow that made the iceberg feel as though things couldn’t be so bad after all. Some of the bad bits didn’t belong to her at all, but were parts of the larger iceberg from which she had broken away. As the debris floated in the water around the iceberg and the sun shone on them, she was able to look at them more closely and see how they had been harming her. She allowed herself to feel angry about the bits that had been attached to her by others and that she had thought were hers. She had always realised something was there, weighing her down, but she had not known what to do about it. Some of the rubbish might even be quite useful, like lots of flotsam washed up on the shore, useful at another time, in another place. It had made her the shape she was and now her shape had changed to something that was much more her own.

The iceberg looked out towards the wider waters and wondered if it was time to risk herself out there. She knew the sun that warmed her would still be shining down on her, and that it did not only shine on the sheltered bay. She still needed the sun and the wind and the rain in order to be fully aware of living, experiencing, and growing.

She felt the breeze stirring around her, tugging gently at her, and she let herself go, with new hope and courage, out into the wider waters.

Pearls

Posted on October 14, 2024 by Gail Shurtleff in Musings and Insights

When I was a child, my mother and I went to the Japanese cultural center in San Francisco, and I selected an oyster that had a black pearl inside. Eventually, that pearl was turned into a necklace. My understanding of how pearls are made increased, and I found I related to the pearl in many ways.

As a child, I loved to look at my mother’s pearls, and I enjoyed the box they were laid out in. The pearls lay in a spiral, and I thought they were beautiful. On my wedding weekend, it was those very pearls that made up the “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.” The blue were the shoes and the bow on the dress. The borrowed and old were the same things: the pearls. I would inherit her pearls a few years later.

I had purchased my own pearls when I was single, but her pearls had deep meaning to me.

Then there were the engagement pearls: a necklace and a set of earrings and a pearl I had for an engagement ring. The earrings became a part of me and were my favorite things to wear most days. They were a constant reminder of the journey I had taken, and was still continuing on, in my self-discovery.

During the past few months, as I’ve rediscovered who I am in this phase of my life, I’ve found that my pearl earrings are a reminder of the me I was and the new self I’m evolving into. Discharging loyal soldiers is hard work. I’m finding that, with the healthy goodbyes, there are also some refreshing old yet new hellos. The pearls that had been an old “Gail wardrobe standard” are now a new reminder of the strength that comes from taking it all down and rebuilding. Last week the call within my heart to wear the pearls again could not be ignored.

Engaging in life, with its many colors and possibilities, is a delightful journey, though sometimes we’d rather wish it away and stay cozy in our beds.

The downside of the process I’ve been engaged in is that I must rediscover and claim parts of myself that I haven’t wanted to see and live with.

The upside of discovering the self for the next new time is that it is liberating. It’s kind of like going grey when you’ve been coloring your hair, and you think, “Why didn’t I do this sooner?” We go grey when we’re ready to reveal that part of ourselves. Freedom from the bottle is a liberating experience.

The journey from where I was to where I am now has softened me, taught me patience with others, and enabled me to be called out on my stuff in new ways. We deconstruct and reconstruct in wonderful new ways.

My pearls have been with me for most of my life, and I don’t think I’d want to be without the message they remind me of. Our lives generate the stuff of pearls in all their colors and splendor. I’m glad I have all my pearls, and the memories they hold for me.

When (Revisit)

Posted on October 7, 2024 by Gail Shurtleff in Life and Death

Originally posted on March 30, 2020.

“Mommy, are we there yet?”

The woman in the front seat of the car is fighting the urge to turn around and duct-tape her child’s mouth shut—permanently. This phenomenon has happened on every long journey since time immemorial. Then the mother has this flash in her mind that carries her back to the beginning of time and particles smashing together. Maybe it even happened with the sludge of the universe as the Big Bang occurred. Imagine two atoms: “Are we there yet? Are we done yet? Can we get on with the Paleozoic Era?” But, duct-taping them would have caused a disaster. She smiles to herself instead and continues to focus on the road ahead.

Maybe in the grand scheme of the cosmos, delayed gratification is one of the great laws. The universe took the time it needed to come to its present state. That can teach us something. The universe was formed with only what it had on hand from the first moment all things slammed together and all things followed in order. No credit here. It waited. The universe used its resources where it needed them, when it was ready for each new phase.

Let’s face it: Putting pleasurable stuff off is a drag, but a necessary drag. Delayed gratification is about learning to respect the journey. Delaying gratification is about knowing that you can never have it all, instantly. Delaying gratification is about learning to work for what you want—waiting for the good stuff until you can get it in a healthy fashion.

But isn’t that a myth? You well remember that last flick that showed someone having it all: the big house, expensive car, fashionable wardrobe, fulfilling job, loving family and friends, and, let’s not forget—physical beauty. But, it rarely comes instantly. Real success, like the universe we live in, is painstakingly forged one item at a time. Yet, today, there are those who can’t wait. Saving is a thing of the past. Sorting out needs from wants is becoming blurred.

Remember childhood with its lazy times of fun and exploration? If you are old enough to have been raised during a time when play was really creative and done outdoors, you perhaps remember when books were a passage into another world (and not instantly made into movies), and TV was something that you watched for very few hours weekly. If your childhood was like this, then you are one of those who learned a valued lesson: doing fun things takes planning and time.

It is also highly probable that chores and learning to work were a natural part of your life. You had to save for what you purchased. I remember going to the store to purchase some shoes I’d saved for. For weeks I walked by that store window and looked at those slingbacks. Getting them made me feel “adult” and responsible. I earned those shoes. I wore them out proudly, had them repaired, and continued to wear them out.

For each of us the lesson is different: Anticipation is a good thing. Anticipation makes the gift we are receiving more intriguing, the new dress more exciting, and the new car that we saved up for more valuable. Anticipation gives a deeper meaning to most things we have and desire. There is a type of magic to working for something. Keeping it becomes valuable to you because to discard it when it still works means that you are discarding your hard work. Tossing it out just to get the latest thing can be an issue.

As I think of all the technology that has evolved since I was a kid, I remember that sunny, July day when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touched down on the moon and life as we then knew it was altered. The moment was electric. Now it seems that much of the “electric” has gone out of innovation and progress. Progress is a constant in an advanced society. More and more, having it all instantly is a must. Trading up for the latest in tech, when the old is still of value, is common. To suggest that you keep what you have might be heresy. It is about having the latest and dumping the old. There is a rush on to have it all NOW with no waiting period.

We now have smartphones, smart drugs, and smarter cars, and yet we have not become any smarter ourselves. While results are faster, we as humans are still finite. We live through our technology. We live, thinking and feeling as if all answers must come fast, as if deeper thought should somehow be instant. We want that insight NOW, rather than being willing to let life teach us. We might even become impatient when our first few searches on Google fail to turn up what we need. Searching shouldn’t take us so much time. Why can’t we get it faster? Well, searching on Google is hard work, that’s why. Finding the correct answer does take some deeper looking and heavier reading. In the process you might conclude that there is not a perfect, or good enough, answer to your search, and that maybe it DOESN’T exist out there in cyberspace.

Remember when science was supposed to save us? Remember when the Peace Movement was the answer to conflict? Remember when autonomy was the answer to authority? I think we need to reread The Glory and The Dream by William Raymond Manchester.

Maybe we as a world need duct tape on our gratification instincts. Okay, that is an eensy, weensy, bit extreme. Or is it?

I have taken up baking. It is wonderful to create something that comes out of the oven and is warm and yummy. The fact is that baking demands that you wait. There is a proper time when eating will bring the desired pleasures of good food. Just think of something you love melting in your mouth and your brain will light up in anticipation. Your mouth might begin to prepare for the pleasure as you read this. BUT, you have to work to make it, so you had better make lots of it to enjoy!!!! Yikes!! I want to eat those scones I plan to bake for Saturday, but I want them right now!!!

The whole idea for this commentary came from a conversation I had with someone about the guide dog I’m working on getting. I’ve been in this process since 2010. At this point, I just want to move on. I’ve had to think about whether I’m ready, or even wanting, to move forward, because I can’t wait. Like the universe, I have had to work with raw thoughts. I’ve had to shape and train them. Crossing the street in safer places has become a must. Thinking about HOW I’ll do it and memorizing routes takes time. Learning the train stations and bus stations has been fun, but I’m glad I’m past that.

I’ve had to reevaluate my established walking routes, my future needs, and the needs of our cat, Penelope, who will have to welcome a dog into the house. Getting this dog is life changing, and making the correct choice at the right time is important for our family.

I’ve spent 15 months in Apeldoorn learning what things that I’ve needed, and lacked. While I was in Apeldoorn, I was also able to observe others with dogs. My process is of more value because of all of this. While I don’t want to rush things, I feel the time has come to move things along. It isn’t about “when” but rather about the process and how secure I feel with it.

Childhood is all about “getting there.” Young adulthood seems to be moving in the direction of attempting to get it as fast as possible and show it off. Eventually there comes a time in life when you reach “wisdom,” or the point when you accept that you never will fully have everything you think you need, but that you can have the “needful things.” The journey is what it is all about. Saving up for the good stuff is where the greatest reward lies. Understanding our real needs and allowing ourselves to have wants that might become realities brings peace through expectation.

“Mommy, are we EVER going to get there?”

“Yes honey, count the green and red cars, and tell me how many you can find.” I’ll be content to count the red and green cars until the doggy enters my life. I hope it is sooner than later because I feel better about “it” coming into my life now.

*Note: The dog turned out to be a no go.

I Suppose (Revisit)

Posted on October 1, 2024 by Gail Shurtleff in Musings and Insights

Originally posted on July 10, 2023.

Before me is a blank document. What do I put on the page? This time of year used to be gentle; it has become hard. What were once simple lazy days with blue skies have become days of reflection and wondering. I tend to review, explore and wonder where I am now compared to the last year. I suppose that surviving a suicide of a husband will do that to you. I realize that his suicide freed him from a very painful life, and it presented me with a rare gift.

I am not shocked or upset by this thought. He gave me the ability to move forward myself. I was given the time and freedom to explore our relationship in ways I couldn’t do when he was alive. I was an innocent when we got together.

Before I met Jon, I didn’t understand that you could doubt or question someone’s love. Yes, I got that there was love that is dysfunctional: manipulation masking as love, and love that I had not seen. In my life, and in my mind, love was gentle. My relationship with Jon educated me in new ways.

Relationships teach us the good, bad, and questionable things about ourselves. Living under the same roof brings with it challenges and a need for commitment to the process of growth. If there is one thing that enabled our relationship to last, it was a commitment to growth and exploring the hard things together.

Sometimes we couldn’t resolve an issue in a day, and that was OK. Being in hard places is good for growth and exploration. I learned to become more adept at remaining open to the long-term solution. There are things that only time and deep insight can resolve, and the commitment to do the work “until” is essential to making it work.

The best counsel I got from his psychiatrist was to give him space. OK, I needed to give myself space too. Walking away enabled us to resolve issues faster. I’m thankful for this knowledge, and the gift that it is.

There were times when I wondered if he could love me. The bipolar cut into him in ways that he couldn’t even express. His upbringing cut into his soul in other ways. My heart ached for the both of us at times. After his death, the love question surfaced, and I knew I’d have to face it.

There is a time in the grief process when it all gets put on the chopping block. It all has to go on the block. It is the deep work of grief and the exploration of the shadows that we hide from. If we’re willing to do the hard work of grief, we must extract the ugly, unpleasant stuff and dive in. This is where many stop their work. It is ugly and messy, and do “I” really want to face this truth? My innocence committed me to explore this place of shadows. Sometimes innocence is a great motivator.

Some couples do this hard exploration while they are together in life, and some widows or widowers are forced to do this difficult exploration after the death, and before moving into a new relationship. I had to cross into this place after, and I’m glad I did. My willingness to do the work didn’t make it any easier. I’ve always invested in self-improvement and growth.

What bipolar takes from relationships is debatable and unique to each person. It took my innocence. In saying that, I’ve had to admit that while I love Jon, he opened my eyes to a very dark side of the world. I would not have chosen to go into the dark abyss of a hell few can explain, and fewer still can understand, and yet I went, and I find that I don’t regret the journey to this place. It is a gift I wasn’t looking for, and I’m richer for having taken the time to open this gift.

The gift of knowing you are loved comes in many forms. In the first few years after his death, my reflections led me to explore the “he didn’t love me” side of things. Sitting with the doubt, the hurt of things done, and understanding who he was deep within, moved me to the place of love. I came to a realization that through all of it he tried his best, and so did I. There was love in the tiny things he tried to do. There was love in the sneaky things he pulled off; there was love in the gifts he thoughtfully gave, and in a mixed-up way, even in the way he ended his life. In that velvet way, I didn’t even notice the change I’d made in my thinking. Wow!

When I think about what it means to show love in deep ways, he did his best to do that. I accept what he wasn’t capable of doing. I can also view my side of things with more realism. I can take responsibility for the failures and the successes of my part of the relationship, and some of it hurts.

I suppose this journey is about being able to find the deep peace that I’ve needed to put things to rest. Coming to this knowing also brings up the fact that nothing is ever at an end point. Only the final eye closure can and will bring things to an end.

I find that I’m standing taller; I’m wiser, and at the same time I question more.

As I pass into this new place where the gifts are for opening and exploring, I turn, look back, and realize that the lazy summers of exploration have gifted me some cloud-filled summer days. I suppose that’s just fine.

Dear Helpful Soul (Revisit)

Posted on September 23, 2024 by Gail Shurtleff in Living With Disability

Originally posted on October 24, 2022.

Dear helpful soul,

I realize that when you see me at a street crossing, you want to take my arm, tell me it is clear to cross, or even help me to cross the street. Your kindness, while well meaning, is not appreciated. I’ll explain why this isn’t helpful, or needed.

I’ve been living with disability my entire life. For many within the disabled community, this has been our situation. For some who are disabled because of illness or injury, this is not the situation. Their journey into disability might be more traumatic. They may slowly lose function in an area of their body, wake up one morning to the horror of lost capacity, or find themselves in a hospital bed with a missing limb. Many of us, if not all of us, within the disabled community deal with trauma surrounding the disability, and some must cope with ongoing trauma due to a gradual loss of even more function. Imagine someone with Usher Syndrome, who faces this on a daily basis. When sight or hearing can disappear, or you watch as you see less each day, or can’t tell what is gone until there is a radical difference, it is traumatizing.

Trauma may look different for the disabled. Please, ask and listen to understand. Someone may seem to be reacting abnormally when it is normal for their circumstances. When someone lives with ongoing events that are traumatic, and treatment for the trauma doesn’t completely solve the problem, cut them some slack. They may need it.

In most of the above situations, the journey of learning to live again may take a person to a rehab center. My journey into a rehab center began with the realization that I’d lost more vision and couldn’t see as I once had been able to see. I was down to twelve percent of my vision. For me, rehab was about learning better ways of doing things, using less of my vision, and confronting myself in a new way. I’d spent most of my life trying to fit into mainstream when I didn’t fit into a mainstreamed situation. I had to come to an understanding that now, more than ever, I had to embrace new ways of doing most things. When I think of leaving my home without my cane, I cringe and know I’m not safe without it.

Why do I need a cane? At first, I thought the need for the white cane was to enable me to navigate tricky spaces. I understood that I needed the help at night, but why did I need it in daylight? The longer I used the cane, the more I became aware of a few things. The cane let me sense areas to stay away from, such as sand or gravel. Both sand and gravel do not allow me to feel what I need to feel underfoot. I need to avoid both sand and gravel because I could slip and fall. The same scenario goes for ice and snow.

The cane also serves as a warning to others that I’m not going to see you clearly. I may not see you at all because you are out of my field of vision. People need to be prepared to take evasive action to get out of my way! This brings me to my first gripe: anyone on their phone and not tuned into their environment. Do you want me to collide with you? No, you don’t. Prevent this by walking with 100 percent of your attention on the task of navigating the space you are presently in. Having had several close calls with people who have been inattentive to their environments, I know it would be appreciated by so many. We don’t want to injure you or become injured by you. While you may not be driving, you are navigating spaces, some of which are very crowded. Please look out for oncoming people because if you don’t, someone might say something like “Watch where you’re going!” to you. They’re correct in saying this to you! Your phone can wait, and if it can’t, then move to a safe space to focus on what you need to do.

If you feel I’m being harsh, I’m attempting to protect myself in an environment that isn’t always friendly to me because I can’t see everything.

Offering Assistance

Here’s some handy advice on assisting those with visual disabilities. You’re at a street crossing where there is no signal. You can see that the traffic is nonstop (the visually impaired person may be using their hearing to know when to cross). You also see that there are gaps that would be difficult for the disabled person, even though you could make it to the other side rapidly. You could make the offer of assistance in this way: “Wow, this traffic isn’t going to slow to let you cross easily. Would it be helpful to you if I assisted you to make a faster crossing to where we need to get?” If they say yes to this question, ask them how they want you to walk with them. This approach places the disabled person in the position of accepting or declining, and it comes with a reason for the offer. It is good help that may be very much accepted and causes us to accept the offer because it isn’t a rescue, allowing us to remain dignified—and that is a win for everyone! If we’re at a signal with a walk feature, we don’t need your help.

Speech and Hearing

Imagine not being able to hear clearly. When you can’t hear clearly enough to distinguish a D from a T or and S from an F, or other consonants and vowels, the life of a hearing-impaired person becomes stressful.

Imagine trying to spell words that you can’t hear properly. Imagine not being able to pronounce those words properly. Add the challenge of uncertainty when you’re not sure if the word you heard spoken was “who” or “shoe.” The conversation becomes draining, confusing, and if you’re in a crowded room, it can become difficult. Social situations can become a challenge. For those with a hearing loss, the issue may be about isolating as best one can.

While at the rehab center, those who dealt with the added hearing loss gave voice to the difficulty of hearing in the crowded dining area. I spoke with staff about not being able to enjoy the mealtime, and the need to engage in conversation at the table. No one had spoken up about this issue before. I was asked for solutions. First, I was isolated. That didn’t work. I didn’t want to eat alone. The next step was to ask others in this situation if they were experiencing this. “Yes, I am!” This was the common response. The next step was to reserve a table for us. This table was on the edge of the dining area. Nope, that didn’t work. Then they put us on the other side of the space. They were hoping the distance would solve the problem. Distance didn’t work as the noise trickled into our space, and it was difficult to filter it out. When I left, they were still working on the situation.

I’m faced with the fact that I need to semi-isolate in social situations or avoid them altogether. I’ve tried it both ways, and enclosed social situations with heavy noise levels are a pass for me.

I’ve been in The Netherlands for over twenty years now. I’ve tried to learn to speak and hear Dutch. It has been a challenge to learn a second language with a hearing loss. For the most part I try my best to converse in Dutch, and for the most part people are polite. Then there are the ones that judge and condemn. I’m told it is my fault that I can’t speak this language fluently at this point in my residency. The people who respond to me negatively are few in number, and to them all I can say is that given my situation, I do my best. Don’t judge until you understand that hearing is my challenge.

So, helpful soul, please listen for understanding. Understand that I know what I need, and above all treat me, and my disabled brothers and sisters, with respect. We’re having to face this every time we step out of our front doors. Cut us some slack, please.

In Hearts, Homes, and around the Table

Posted on September 18, 2024 by Gail Shurtleff in Musings and Insights

When I was growing up and attending church as a child, there was a song we sang that had the line “kindness begins with me” in it. For much of my life, the act of simple kindness was not something I experienced. In the past few years, this has changed.

Since my fall in February that resulted in a broken femur, I’ve had the experience of kindness. It might also be possible that I’m more open to such acts now.

Maybe I’ve healed enough to allow kindness into my life. Maybe I’ve softened. Or maybe I have drawn people in that are kind. Whatever the reason for all of this is, I’m willing to accept it, and explore it.

As a disabled child and younger adult, I was faced with people who were less than understanding, and who didn’t understand my abilities and saw only what they felt I couldn’t do. Not having a fully abled body does not mean I am not fully capable. Being treated as such really hurts the soul.

I’m coming to believe that kindness is an attitude that we both learn and come to understanding within ourselves, and our own motivation for behaving in a kind manner.

There are some people who are naturally willing to give of themselves to others. The compassion switch gets turned on at a young age because they are raised to notice people in need. There are others who learn to offer help because they feel that is the proper thing to do. Another group of people I’ve come to know have a desire to give and serve others because they’ve developed gratitude and also thankfulness for what they’ve been given. The result is that they want others to enjoy the pleasures of life in simple ways.

I grew up in a household where we were taught to give to others because they had less. While that is all well and good, it builds an attitude of privilege that is not healthy.

Since my fall, I’ve encountered small acts of kindness that have caused me to grow into being kind because I want to see others receive from me what I can give to them. Sometimes I’m sneaky about it, and at other times I’m learning to offer and allow the offer to be accepted or rejected.

I think about things that have happened to me.

A recruiter could have but didn’t blow me off when I needed extra assistance to get onboard with a new contractor. A home health care worker made sure I had what I needed when I needed it so that I could work from my home. A nurse took the extra time to come in and show kindness when she could have been in someone else’s room. A guy paid for a meal before I could get my card out to pay for it. People didn’t complain when I was walking in unfamiliar areas and had to go slower. They chose to walk behind instead of pass me.

Kindness is a simple act: a smile, a friendly hello, the offer of a glass of water or other drink. Kindness is radical hospitality at its best.

Kindness comes from the heart, and it begins in homes. It begins around the table where we laugh, cry, share, and come to understandings that we haven’t experienced before.

Kindness is an art and a way of being. It begins with one person deciding that today they will go out and make their community a better place by doing something simple for others.

Kindness enables us to build stronger homes, communities, and lives, and it is not always easy but well worth the effort. It begins in our hearts.