Author: Gail Shurtleff

Gail Shurtleff is a California-licensed marriage and family therapist residing in the Netherlands, where she is registered as a clinical psychologist. She also authors "The Gift of Being Heard" blog, where she explores trauma and grief (including the experience of losing her husband, Jon, to suicide from bipolar disorder), the spiritual journey, disability, and life.

Three Minutes

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in The Suicide and its Aftermath
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The summers come and pass into falls; the ground hardens, and winter calls the earth into its slumber. Awake, and come forth out of the ground, sweet spring! The cycle continues. And so it goes with grief. We spiral through the cycles of the years. With time, the tears change in quality and quantity, until one day, when we least expect it, we notice ourselves standing on new shores and feeling new emotions.

The longer I move forward, and as the years fade one to another, I realize that if I’m doing this well enough, I’ll find myself challenged in new ways. At the beginning I thought the process of grief was to arrive on the new shore and celebrate something. The something to be celebrated never came. What I came to understand was that doing grief well enough is not for wimps.

The further out I move from what happened eight years ago, the more I find myself in the forest of uncertainty. That place where the monsters of exploration and uncertainty dwell. In a strange and surprising way, this summer gifted me with sanctuary. I wasn’t expecting any of what has happened in my grief journey this summer.

Three minutes of my life have affected me for eight years. In July of 2023, a sequence of events began to unfold in my life that set me in motion towards resolving three minutes of a conversation that had scared and wounded me in a way I’d never been hurt before. I’m healing from his suicide in a way I could not have imagined a year ago.

I tell people that there is grief, and that all grief is difficult, and some of it is filled with unexpected trauma because life is not predictable in any way. We may not see a death coming. We don’t see a person who exits life by suicide coming. They’ve done the unthinkable. They thought of it and carried a plan out. We’re left with a puzzle. Why?

If they left a note, it explains their thinking, or sometimes the lack thereof. Jon left several notes, and they did explain the why. It has taken me eight years to unravel the crazy of the last three minutes of our life together.

He was sick, and while I was in the room with him in that moment in time, I didn’t understand just how sick he really was.

Healing this wound has required me to examine our relationship, and it has led me to a place of forgiveness for the last three minutes of our married life. Forgiveness should never be done without thought. When we forgive, it doesn’t mean that we won’t remember what happened. We’re human, and humans can’t forget things. In time the pain can fade; the relationship can heal to something new. You can’t go back. That will never work.

Forgiveness is about being able to move forward with a new understanding and a new normal. It is about seeing an old rainbow in new ways. Forgiving is about growth and understanding by all parties involved. It is about authentic acceptance on both sides. It is also about realizing that the other involved person or persons may never be able to get to a place of doing authentic forgiveness.

There are reasons why someone may not ever be able to authentically forgive, and so the process backfires:

  • They are being rushed or pressured to move to the “forgive me or forgive someone else” place.
  • The religious may see forgiveness as a sign of healing and progression and lack the insight and understand that this can only happen when enough healing has occurred.
  • “Hug your brother or sister and say you’re sorry.” This one is a doozy! What this actually teaches children is that they don’t really need to think about the wrong they’ve done if they do an action and say two words. 
  • Forgiveness stems from our hearts and souls and has a spiritual base. 

There are also readiness factors for accepting someone’s apology:

  • Has enough personal work been done on the receiving end so that the matter can be discussed and resolved?
  • Is there clarity about how the new relationship will move forward? Have the appropriate changes been made?
  • Is there understanding that a new trust will need to be earned, and that trust takes time to build?
  • Can both parties agree to work on the trust in in an open manner?

Jon isn’t here for me to talk this out with him. I understand now just how sick he was, and that those three minutes of my life happened due to the fact that he was in unspeakable pain. If he were here, I’d now accept his words asking for forgiveness, and the relationship would move forward with new understanding, and we’d both grow. Today I miss Jon.

Reaching towards the Sun

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Discharging Trauma, Soul Peace and Journeys

I ended a recent post with these words: “Maybe a candle will be lit, a chocolate offered, a sunflower presented as a means of closure on this chapter of my life. Maybe a new dress? I know it will be meaningful to me, and to what the future can bring. I’m beginning to cry just thinking about it, and that’s a sign I’m on the right path.”

As I stepped away from writing that post, my heart was full. It’s been a very long journey, and it is ending in being able to say goodbye to the old, and welcoming in something new. Discharging the warriors of the past has been a labor of both love and pain. I wasn’t certain where I’d be led to in future days.

I’m choosing to say goodbye slowly and treating each warrior with respect, cutting them some slack for the hard work they did in my life. I’m welcoming them all in with open arms, and dismissing them with love in my heart. To do less would be to dishonor the process of the discharge, and myself. I needed them to stand for me when I couldn’t stand for myself through painful times.

I’m discovering that, in saying goodbye to the old in my life, I’m also saying goodbye to old things that served the process of defending me, thereby preventing me from moving forward. One such thing is podcasts that I no longer need to listen to. And so, after sitting with the concept of not needing them, I unsubscribed. The algorithms will show them for a bit and, in time, these unneeded coping tools will fade away.

Doing the deep work of the soul is also about accepting the birth of new things in my life. This work takes us into the liminal or thin spaces. You will find it spoken about by Richard Rohr and other authors.

I’m in the process of replacing some plants. I’m discovering that what I might want now is far different because of the change in my life direction. This change is opening me up to new ideas and new colors. The cool colors of the past need to be greeted by warmth along the fences of my garden. I want the colors to embrace me. I think it is about the sunflowers that have become a place of connecting in spiritual ways. I first considered them as spiritual friends after reading Water, Wind, Earth, and Fire: The Christian Practice of Praying with the Elements by Christine Valters Paintner. She took me on a journey to places I hadn’t been before, and I engaged with the sunflowers.

Deep Shadow Work

I believe that if I haven’t done my own deep work, I won’t be effective with those I work with. You can’t ask someone to heal wounds that you haven’t looked inside yourself to heal. You may not have the exact same issues, but everyone has wounds and, left unchecked, they cause problems for us. Henri Nouwen wrote on the wounded in The Wounded Healer. Nouwen had his own set of challenges. This priest found rest in his own way, and by doing his own soul work. His writing is telling.

What I understand is that one of the most powerful places we can dwell in is the place of uncertainty. When you don’t have all the answers for all the things everyone wants answers for, it brings a sense of humility to our lives. Saying “I don’t know” may be the wisest thing we can say. I can tell my clients that I can lead them to healing. They have to do the work and discover their own answers.

Engaging our shadow side brings us knowledge and understanding of ourselves that we can’t bring to the surface in any other way. We are also faced with the reality that there isn’t much we know because we’ve just dug deep into the ground of ourselves and unearthed our deepest truths. This place leads us into the liminal places that cause us to rethink it all.

Not knowing is a gift not only to ourselves—it is a gift for others. As we engage with others and have the attitude that we’re open to learning their truth, we add to our knowledge base and maybe recognize within ourselves a portion of our own truth that had been blocked by our arrogant knowing.   

Having written “Solidiers of the Mind: Honorable Discharge,” I find myself sitting in the quietness of more uncertainty. I find myself asking who or what will show up in my garden to teach me something I need to learn. I think I instinctively knew that sunflowers needed to become a symbol in this process. And so, I will reach towards the sun.

Chasing the Fly (Revisit)

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Musings and Insights

Originally posted on June 12, 2023.

I’ve been wondering why there is a rise in stress and anxiety among younger adults. At first, I thought it was because they didn’t learn to play and create as my generation had done. That is one part of the problem. Then I noticed the influence of marketing on these kids. Maybe, and maybe not. As I dug deeper, there was a realization that in competition everyone had to get a trophy, and be special. The topper was the safety issue. When we can’t hear opposing views, something is terribly wrong. Yes, this is going to be a wild post. 

The last few weeks, parents have been posting on Facebook about their kid graduating from kindergarten. KINDERGARTEN!!!!! Get real, people. When, and how, did this become a thing? Personally, I think it’s a retail scam, kind of like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Let’s promote buying something, and don’t forget “Black Friday,” which has now left the U.S. and is doing a migration to Europe. But I digress. Back to what is going on here: adults with anxiety, teens, tweens, and kids with anxiety and depression. Oh, I won’t go down that rabbit hole. 

My thoughts wandered to a question that couldn’t stay buried in the rubble of the mind: Have people become so set on getting ahead and providing all good things that all good things are becoming lost on the way to the getting of them? (I need Bill Bryson to do the research on this and put it in a book so that I can synthesize it and digest how we got to this topsy-turvy place on this hot rock of ours.)

Then my editor told me about Jonathan Haidt. His research is brilliant. I spent the weekend devouring two of his books. They provided some grounded answers along with some thought-provoking questions. 

I think of parents over-scheduling children and not allowing time for relaxation, creativity, and free play. Sorry, people, “play dates” are not free play. There you have it!!!! Play dates!!!! OK, so I’m from a different generation when kids did really crazy things, like when we went to our friends’ homes on the spur of the moment because we could walk or ride our bikes there. When my mother called my friend’s mother, telling her that my friend’s brother had fallen out of the tree at my home, her mother yelled at us to “stay in the house, don’t go outside until I get back!!!!” Yes, George had a broken arm; Jenny and I remained at her place, and our mothers remained calm but concerned. We understood that play had its risks, and falling out of a tree or falling off a bike were some of the risks we took. About a year later, I was the injured person. While at a friend’s home, I broke my collar bone. Life happens. We didn’t stop doing creative things. We explored and discovered things about life. When riding down a steep slope, you must slow the bike and not fly over the handlebars. I rode the bike to my friend’s home, where her mother took a look at things. Yup, I needed a doctor for this one. It hurt. I was OK, and I’d be out of play for a bit.   

This brings me to the thought that we’re sending the wrong message to children now. Life isn’t safe. There should be healthy conflict and exploration in our upbringing. We should be teaching children to explore new things and new places. They need to discuss all sides of an argument and search out opposing points of view. Are we learning to think? Are our children and grandchildren learning to think? 

In 1999 my husband and I accepted a job assignment in Germany. We risked and stayed here in Europe. I didn’t know what I’d be facing as a disabled person here in Europe. What I found was a freedom I’d never had before. In 2016 I made the choice to remain here as a widow. It’s been a challenge, and I’m glad I’ve done it. It was a risk that has been stressful at times but worth the life balance I have because I chose to remain here. My childhood of roaming free, playing freely, and learning from it all provided some useful building blocks. 

During the last thirty years, some of those freedoms have come and gone for many children. In 2018, Utah, followed by Oklahoma and Texas, passed “free range” laws that restore the rights of parents and children to be on their own, just as I was when I was younger. It will be interesting to follow children in these states as they mature. Will these kids display lower levels of anxiety and depression? Will they be capable of riding a bus on their own? Will they know more of their neighborhoods? Will these laws get kids outdoors? Will they exercise more, and will obesity in children decline?  

Will children begin to have less homework and more free time to create?  

When I think about why I began to write this over a week ago, I realize that I want children to experience the fun and delight to be had in life. Remember the Dr. Seuss book Oh, the Places You’ll Go? If children can go to wonderful places, will things become better for them? Will depression and anxiety levels lower both in schools and homes? This would be great for children, and yes—bad for all the pill pushers hoping to get parents thinking that their kids need drugs when they may not need them. Before you scream, I’m pro wise use of medication if it’s needed. To quote one of my favorite books from childhood, and a book that takes the reader on an adventure with a boy and a fly: 

“I sat at the lake. 

I looked at the sky, 

And as I looked,

A fly went by.” 

(From Mike McClintock’s A Fly Went By.)

My hope and wish is that children will once again have life adventures where they will learn, explore, question, and connect with life in real ways. Let them sit by the lake and chase a fly.

Soldiers of the Mind, Part 2: Honorable Discharge

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Discharging Trauma

Continued from Soldiers of the Mind, Part 1: Walking the Battlements.

As I write this days after my therapy session, and having sat with my thoughts, I still don’t know how I will discharge this soldier that defended me from something that wasn’t mine to defend. Decades of living, and I realize now I held on to an order of defense that wasn’t mine at all but had gotten routed to me by others who failed to soldier properly.  

Why hadn’t logic and reason won out in this situation? In moments of reflection, I felt relief. I hadn’t seen things in the proper perspective. I kept thinking at lightning speed that I knew better! No, I didn’t. Not really. 

How Our Soldiers Trick Us

The lie I was telling myself was that I needed to protect the people who should have been protecting me, and who failed to listen to the child and young adult in a vulnerable position. My own inner warrior was hurt, angry, and tired of carrying something that wasn’t mine to carry. This heavy backpack had been placed on me at a young age by people who turned their heads instead of seeing the wounded.

Here I was, in a war of the mind because I had not been able to let go and say that it wasn’t my responsibility to defend. As I write this, I’m angry. I’m angry at people who should have cared enough to stop the circle of violence that raged in my life. I’ve not had one broken bone due to abuse—the brokenness was in my head. The warrior screams out patriarchy! Now there is new understanding surrounding some of the choices I’ve been guided into making over the past decade.

Our soldiers believe what they are programmed to believe. It starts when we’re young, and it creeps in slowly. By the time we’re adults, our thoughts and behaviors have become ego-syntonic. All seems normal. We don’t question what is present, and we defend our inner normalcy. The disruption comes when the cracks begin to form, and what we once believed as syntonic, or in harmony, with ourselves becomes ego-dystonic.

A good way of thinking about this is to think of how you first thought of your home as normal, and then you went to friends’ homes where there wasn’t chaos, or a parent or sibling wasn’t abusing someone. There was a different feeling in the home. Things were done differently.

Inside your head, that soldier is having to sort it all out. Wait a minute! Slowly, how we once viewed our world is altered. In healthy adolescent development, we begin to challenge and to rethink it all. We rebel to grow and to find our own personal normal. It is when we fail to question our own status quo that trouble begins to brew, and our soldiers light torches to signal threat when there may be no threat at all.

Soldiers must be called off because they are trained to act according to procedure. Most soldiers don’t question the orders because questioning can get you into a court-martial situation. Teaching our soldiers to question in intentional ways and to break cycles in our minds is needful.

A year ago, my head began to spin after a close encounter with death. It took about five months for everything to unravel and for me to really understand that my soul was not at peace. It was a thought that began to nag at me and to challenge the ego in new ways. Syntonic became dystonic, and I knew I had more shadow work to do. For that, the soldier had to leave my head and be told thank you and goodbye. The defender of my mind needed to be honorably discharged from service. It was time to stop a raging internal war and to survey the carnage. This run of the river would be much different than other stretches I’d run.

Running the River

It would take months of research to find the new therapist, and that would be helped along by an incredible spiritual director who would support what I was about to do.

In The Way of Discernment, Elizabeth Liebert lays out the framework I used to enter into the process of discovering who to see for this healing process. I found a gifted healer.

As an enneagram type eight, I understood that I’d need to let myself navigate the entire circle to bring to the forefront everything I’d need to prepare for the crash that was about to arrive. I’d let myself prepare and plan for the journey by spending time thinking about what might happen and planning for the unforeseen that would arrive. I’d observe myself closely and track it all, and I’d not stop the emotions from surfacing. I’d also ask for some helpful companionship. I’d do all of this prep before the first session, and so when the first day of talking came around, I was ready to have the soldiers of the mind face confrontation.

With many soldiers ready to be discharged, the last one stood, steadfast in her knowing that she alone was right. She wasn’t right at all. This warrior woman was not going to leave the castle battlement without a good reason to do so, and I was being handed reasoning that made sense. It wasn’t I who needed to protect anyone! The fault lay elsewhere.

Ritual and Healing

For me, rituals that I construct have always played a role in freeing me to go to new places.

In the fall, winter, and spring, my home is filled with the scent of burning candles. I breathe in the scent of a room and move to peaceful thoughts and days where the light and darkness move me to a quieter place. As the spring returns light and new growth to the earth, I hope for new things.

This past spring was a time of preparation for the castle battlements to be cleared.

My first therapist had created a story for me. It featured a lost girl who sat on the edge of a forest, and she knew that she had to go into that place, and she was scared. She went in with a guide, and in a meadow beyond the scary she discovered a butterfly with a gift: a lavender pearl.

That pearl has traveled with me for decades. I’ve crossed through many hard places, and the butterfly and pearl have been with me.

Building our own rituals of healing is a multi-level thing. It requires finding our spiritual, emotional, and mental epicenters.

I do know that my goodbye ritual began with a prayer of healing, hope, and understanding that I was not walking into this particular forest without two friends by my side.

I admit to not knowing how I’ll send this last warrior away, but she is on notice. It has been a week, and as I make my way to the battlement to hand this warrior woman her honorable discharge orders, I’m uncertain of what the goodbye ritual will look like.

Maybe a candle will be lit, a chocolate offered, a sunflower presented as a means of closure on this chapter of my life. Maybe a new dress? I know it will be meaningful to me, and to what the future can bring. I’m beginning to cry just thinking about it, and that’s a sign I’m on the right path.

Soldiers of the Mind, Part 1: Walking the Battlements

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Discharging Trauma

“Gail, this is not your shame. This is your x and y and q’s shame.”

I sat in my chair, stunned, completely speechless, and relieved. I was also feeling so many other things in that moment. At the end of the session, my therapist looked at me and said that I looked exhausted. I was, and it is taking time to sort out what happened to me in that hour.

Decades of sadness, anger, and a feeling of needing to protect something washed over me. Logically, I understood I’d been protecting something. But what? I loved those people, and yet I didn’t love what had happened. I’d ripped the duct tape off the final wound and insult in my life, and there was nothing to say at first.

First, I needed to think about what had just happened in order to open up the way for the words to come.

What I was feeling in that first moment with my therapist was the shame of a burden that had been placed on me by others. Vulnerable, and with my heart wide open, I sank. And then I asked a question only I could answer: How do I resolve this? How do I jettison decades of damaging thinking? 

My usual process after such a session of deep shadow work is to let the heavy stuff sit in its juices, and then return to it hours or days later.

This time, things are slightly more intense. I’m sitting with the verbal release of the burden and am now asking myself how to let go of things spiritually and emotionally. It is going to take time to figure out what I need to do to let go completely. This is new for me because other issues have healed naturally.  

The difference between knowing what to say and feeling what has to be said is vastly different.

Feeling what needs to be said is about more than empathy; it is a different type of knowing. It is a real understanding of what is at the bottom of the dark well shaft where the light doesn’t reach. It’s dark and cold, and it doesn’t smell so good down there. At times people live in the well shaft, and people need to know how to find an exit.

Most of the time the help we need to exit the well comes from within ourselves. Healers can guide with questions so that we can find our way out of what might be equated to crossing the river Styx.

Richard Rohr, in Falling Upwards, speaks of the need to discharge our loyal soldier. This concept stems from Japan and the end of WWII. Soldiers had returned to communities where their warriors were no longer needed, and yet the communities still needed the men. How could they become useful in new ways? The soldiers needed to be released to make way for the new.

Many times, our old defenses are like soldiers walking the battlements of our castles. They are alert to our needs long before we realize we need to defend ourselves. They send the signal by lighting the torch. Slowly, as the message gets passed from one waypoint to another in our psyche, the soldiers that are needed are called to the front to defend us from our own monsters and goblins.

This journey is rarely pleasant, as most soul work isn’t easy. Acceptance is the process of facing what our psyche would have us deny. Our soldiers stand strong in defending our status quo. Our status quo is all about having us stay in our comfy clothes when we need to put on the clothes of work so that we can leave the safety of sheltered environments and look at the hard things of life.

Next week, in Part 2, I will share how it was to leave that safety of my sheltered environment to look at some very hard things.

The Relationship File (Revisit)

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Beyond Grief

Originally posted on June 22, 2022.

In the last decade, I’ve lost my husband, mother, brother, and sister. I’ve jokingly told my younger brother that he’s under orders not to die on me. I’ve also said goodbye to an old faith home and welcomed a new place of faith into my life. All of this comes with grief, loss, mourning what was, and needing to reexamine relationships.

Of those who have exited life, only one was old enough to do so; the other three were all far too young to go. The reality is that they are all gone. The relationships now stand for review in the memory file, and what is done is done. The past faith home also stands in a memory file. Everything is up for discussion and it’s all fair game; nothing is sacred, not even my mother, whom I love deeply.

In looking at all of this, I must turn back the clock to the year 2006, when my husband’s questioning of his faith began. At the time, I wasn’t questioning, but I did want to hear about what he was thinking, feeling, learning, and what was making him angry about it all. The process altered the way we communicated, and it led me to my own path of discovery. It was a good thing, and ultimately, I took from it that relationships can change and that the change can be for the better. We didn’t need to go to antagonism. The concept that we could be different and have a healthy relationship was new to him. We could talk and nothing was off limits. That was where we were when he made his exit. Because examination of things was possible while he was alive, it made it possible to return to the relationship after his death and turn over some of the things that I needed to look at.

Relationships don’t end at death. We carry them forward; they are woven into the tapestry of our ongoing existence. As much as we may wish to erase someone or something from our lives, we can’t. We learn through turning over the rocks to look at it all.

This is also true of my relationship with my mother. I was fortunate that for approximately eighteen years, my mother and I spent every Monday in conversation. We’d giggle, laugh, cry, learn from each other, and talk about things that were deep and serious. Obviously, we spent hours before that time in conversation. When she made her exit, the “I love yous” had been said, and the one question I never asked—the one that I’d like to go back and ask now—I think I know the answer to. Her death came less than six months after Jon’s traumatic death, and I did not go to the memorial. My not attending was a bad choice, and I learned from it. Being there is needful in so many ways.

As I examine my relationship with my mother, I can make peace with what negatives there were. I think the fact that we had that conversation base to draw on has really helped. Pushback was allowed.

Then I look at my sibling relationships. My two older siblings and I didn’t always understand each other. I’m sad about this, and I also know that it wasn’t of my making. I tried. Could I have done more?

In looking at the hard question of putting things right in life, and after they’ve made their exits, I’m challenged by the meaning of our relationship. What is “right?” I love them both. I know that they, each in their own way, loved me. As I take relationships apart, I arrive at the same nasty conclusion that I did in life: They never understood disability the way they needed to understand disability. They were never able to completely understand me. I’ve come to the conclusion that I can be at peace with my end of the relationship and that is the best I can do. This brings up another question for me, and it is one I’ve been musing on for some time.

Why is it that in death, loss, and grief, many people choose to move forward without the work of examining the loss they’ve had in life? The urge to replace someone or something can be strong, and it can also damage us. The more I sit with this question, the more I wonder if it has to do with the fact that our society has radically changed relationships, trauma, and life in general. I’ll explain using WWI and WWII.

Both of my grandfathers were veterans of WWI. They came home on ships. They came home together with war buddies, and in large numbers. On the ships they had time to process the violence and the trauma, and they supported one another. WWII came around, and their sons enlisted and went off to two different fronts: Europe and Japan. They also witnessed violence and trauma, and they came home on ships. They also came home to a hero’s welcome. Their fathers had processed the war and now could mentor their sons. War breeds atrocities, and WWII left the world with several that can never be undone. Old times weren’t any simpler, but they were slower. What’s changed? My grandfather knew the wisdom of allowing his son to prune the rosebushes and tend the garden. He worked through some of the trauma that way.

Leaving the site of battle is a matter of days or hours now. People now come home by boarding a flight that will carry them home. Veterans now come home to a fast-changing society, fast tech, and a culture that is in constant motion. They return traumatized and, in many situations, misunderstood by loved ones and society in general. It alters relationships. This is not to say that my parents’ and grandparents’ generation didn’t suffer from PTSD and other war-related issues. I’m pointing out that their return was slower and allowed for a different type of processing time.

I’m suggesting that maybe we’ve become immune to the damage we’re causing to each other by not slowing things down. In the past seventy-plus years, we’ve moved forward in both healthy and unhealthy ways. This applies to how we treat our relationships.

Are we willing to slow down and take the time to process our lives a wee bit more gently? Parting is hard. No matter how hard we try to avoid it, the past does catch us, and sooner or later what we failed to look at in the near or distant past resurfaces to bite us when we’re not looking!

I reflect back to a night around the dinner table when my father lost it over food. I realize now it was a war memory that he should have sought therapy for, but in those days doing therapy wasn’t common. At the time, it had been about thirty years post war—pruning the roses had not resolved it all. I wonder what would have happened had he looked, talked, and resolved? I wonder how our family would have been changed had he looked. I know how I’m being changed by working slowly and deeply on the past, whether it is peaceful or difficult. I’m moving forward in a healthier manner than had I rushed into my future life. I’m walking into something new, and I hope I’m doing it with grace.

The Trauma Queue

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Everything Mental Health

This past week I read some Jonathan Haidt. He’s a researcher and writer. His latest book is titled The Anxious Generation, and it held few, if any, surprises for me. With the advent of the smartphone, and with younger kids finding themselves submerged in content that is not age appropriate, I’m not surprised at all to see the general mood of the world becoming less stable and less forgiving of others. The unreasonable push towards perfection has society caught with a noose around its neck.

I’m not against social media. That being said, I’m not for anything that causes our young adults and teens to not understand themselves. I’m for a compromise.

People shout about large pharmaceutical companies. I think we need to be even more concerned about social media companies that get people hooked on screens, who then find depression and anxiety kick in. I’ve surveyed clients informally, and I find that those who can turn off their social media feeds and decrease screen time are more capable of understanding who they are. They are more skilled at working towards constructive goals. These people are not trying to keep up with the Joneses—they are their own family.

As a therapist and spiritual director, I see more people with more uncertainty every day. They ask: “My life isn’t exciting, so what can I say or do that will make me interesting to others? I’ve got to keep people engaged.”

The “like” button is a curse to all.

I come from an era when keeping up with the Joneses meant getting the first or second pool on the block, or having the latest tech when that was a stereo system that had an amazing sound system with speakers that put out wonderful noise.

Now the things that tech allow are both wonderful and dangerous.

Anxiety has risen to unreasonable levels. Life direction for people in their twenties is questionable, and people don’t know how to be friends and form face-to-face personal relationships. Living under the same roof is really hard work. Doing things without tech is a skill that is being lost.

Michael Crichton, in Jurassic Park, asks us to consider the question of whether or not we should create even though we have the technology to do so. I’m thinking that, in the 2010s, this was a question that wasn’t fully asked by those with the skills to create this new thing on a screen. And yet, we’re finding answers that we weren’t prepared for.

A queue for the local or online therapist is much longer today than it was when I began this work thirty years ago. Back in the 1990s, therapists were marketing to get clients. Waiting lists are very real things now. The waiting lists are filled with people needing help with anxiety, depression, and claims of trauma. I don’t question the anxiety and depression, but sometimes what I hear as trauma is someone encountering a situation that they lack the skills to handle. I reframe this and do some teaching. Clients show clear relief and can move forward with a better outlook on life. Those with trauma want nothing more than to work through it and move forward. Trauma is soul shattering.

Do we ask ourselves if we’re doing the right thing? Do we follow the crowd? For some people, not understanding the process of decision-making is real. When you surrender yourself to the crowd, things can go wrong, and you might wind up in a queue that isn’t for your favorite ride at your favorite park.

Leap Frog

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Living With Disability

I’m a child of an era when disability was not understood as it is now. And still there is so much that is in the unknown category.

This weekend, as I met with clients who must deal with disabled children who are in their home, and also try to teach the children who are not disabled about the need to understand and make allowances for the differences, my own upbringing flashed before me.

For some disabled children and adults, emotional development centers around the ability to develop in pace with their peers. For others, emotional development might be delayed by two to five years.

A younger sibling might surpass the older sibling in emotional maturity and leave their sibling behind. I like to think of this as leap frog for siblings. The pain and confusion for both siblings can be an issue. It can unravel the order of things in family structure. Jealousy and questioning about treatment can surface. If the disability is one where intelligence is not affected, the pain can be greater than the norm. As I heard my clients talk about all of this, my mind flashed back to my own youth. I had not been ready for certain things, but was in other ways far more mature than my peers, who didn’t have a clue about things in life that I had already had to confront and think about. I hadn’t thought about all of it in some time. It had become second nature to me.

I went off to an out-of-state college at eighteen and returned home to lovely California at twenty. I was then in a place to understand what I wanted and needed from a school. The fact is, I made a better decision at twenty for my future education. To be fair, most adolescents aren’t really ready to make major life decisions at younger ages. I knew where my interest was and took my time getting there, and in my thirties, I felt ready to follow the education I needed to fulfill the goal I had set long ago.

In 2011–2013, I participated in the rehab program at Visio Loo Erf in Apeldoorn, The Netherlands, and discovered that a culture will influence how the disabled are viewed as being able to work or having to sit it out. I remember thinking that, of course, I’d go back to work after I’m done here. Many didn’t have that attitude and would spend their days not fully engaged in life. That fifteen-month period of my life turned out to be a learning laboratory for my future life path. I was exposed to a side of disability I had not seen before.

I’ve spoken about the value of work, and how it is physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. I’m beginning to understand how deeply the disabled are shortchanged in the “work” department when others perceive or judge that they can’t grow to their full potential. This weekend I was reminded that there are disabilities that will prevent some children from being able to go off to school when they’re eighteen, and still others who are told that the proper path is higher education when the trades might suit them better. We need capable people who will thrive in the skilled labor area. My sink needs a plumber, and my home needs a serious electrician. There is a shortage.

Is the world demanding unrealistic behaviors of this generation? I’m beginning to think that it is. While book education is great, the world needs plumbers and electricians. We need those who can fix broken things and make them work again. We need long-haul truckers, gardeners, and construction workers, to list just a few of the areas where skilled labor is necessary. The skill of the laborer is essential to our world economy.   

There are plenty of jobs that need doing, and the disabled might be good with their hands or see a path to repairing things that others can’t repair because our brains don’t see things as theirs do. The five-year-old kid who takes things apart because they want to know how it works is saying something loudly.

Skilled labor does not denote a low intelligence. The women and men who have cut my hair are skilled in understanding what my head needs to look like. They can picture it when I can’t. The carpenter knows how a piece of furniture should be made in order to function well. We need these gifted people!

Why do we force unrealistic things on people? What is it about career paths that panics so many? Keeping up with the Joneses?

I sit here writing this and think about the pain in my clients’ home, how some of it has been scripted by society, and how other parts of it might be due to not understanding the power of work that someone can do. The leap frog will be played out once again. It is played out in homes in Western society often.

I remember back to my childhood. My father couldn’t fix much at all but had a friend who was an on-call anesthesiologist at the local hospital. On his days off he liked to tinker. He said it relieved the stress from the intense work he was doing. He was our plumber. Knowing him taught me the value of the trades. And so, now I ask myself why there isn’t more of a dialogue about the trades.

A quick Google search brings up a good starting point for information on this subject: the US Department of Labor blog. Further searches will bring up articles on things the disabled should consider when opting to go the skilled labor route.

Having stated the above, and having known a guy who plumbed for the relief of it, I must mention that skilled labor needs to be valued for what it is: essential to society and its smooth functioning. High school education in the US would do well to make a case for the trades rather than singling out students in relation to “intelligence” level. The guy driving a forklift might do so because he wants to think about the book or art that is created in his head. The woman in the bakery may be using her knowledge of physics to engineer a cake that defies the norm and looks and tastes incredible.

We value the artist, and we sing our favorite songs. We marvel at the tech of a well-designed software program and are thankful when our doctor can explain what is wrong with our bodies, and why. When I need an electrician or a plumber, I’m told that I’ll have to wait because there is a shortage of skilled laborers that can do the job.

Not all work requires a higher level of education. Some work requires skilled labor and a knowledge of what makes something work. It would be nice to see students graduate and do what they want to do and have the skills to do, and not be shamed because they aren’t headed out to get more education. Our family plumber knew his physics and could save a life in the surgical theatre. My client’s kid is intelligent and understands physics. Most plumbers or electricians get the physics of clogs, flow, and making things work when things must work.    

I hope that Western society will soon settle down to allowing for career paths that make sense for each of us.

Morning Has Come

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Everything Mental Health

The shouting, the screaming, the yelling that carries through the halls and walls of a home: the children cowering in rooms behind locked doors, curled up in balls at the bottom of a bed, hoping that if they do so, the noise will go away. It never does. They live in hopes that their parents will see the error of staying for the kids and end the terror of days and nights. They didn’t ask to be a part of this.

This is how you come to see me. This is how the secrets of lives get unbottled: slowly, gently, until they all spill out in their ugly horror. They fall to the ground for us to inspect, and when we dare to look, because we can no longer ignore what is present, we must come to realize and understand that the path we’ve been on can’t be walked alone. If we try to do the walk alone, it falls apart. We understand this because that is what we tried the last time, and it didn’t go well for us.

It is not reasonable to attempt to fix trauma by ourselves. To do so is risky. When you are in the forest, where it is dark, you need a light held for you so that you can navigate through the trees. The forest has goblins, witches, and wizards waiting for us. Some sit quietly, waiting to see what the trees tell us; still, others would cast spells. With the light, we see dimly to the next safe spot, and as we weave our way forward, the cries of the darkness begin to recede.

At times we stumble, and at other times we run forward, believing we see the light in its fulness, only to fall and injure ourselves. It is then we understand the value of the person with the flashlight. It is the guide who has been in the forest before. Guides understand the nature of the darkness. They run rivers and are willing to return to offer safe passage to others. These guides may or may not have run your river or walked through your forest. What they have faced is their own journey, and come out on the other end. 

We stand at the place of boarding, waiting to connect with the one who joins with us. We gently clasp hands, at first in timidity, and then more surely. Then we jointly launch ourselves into deep exploration.

In our transit to another place, there are codes that are both spoken and unspoken. It’s a sensing that the guide, able to transit us to new places, understands. In this place we learn from each other. We both have things to teach and to learn. 

Trauma is a teacher and guide if we allow it to be. It teaches us to be brave enough to heal and to listen for the lessons of the hidden passages. In healing, we discover unknown strengths and weaknesses, and we encounter questions that we didn’t want answers to and yet need so desperately. 

In discovery, we come to understand who we may have damaged along the way. We realize those we must part company with for our own well-being. We must also seek forgiveness from others we’ve harmed. The brokenness that we entered with is healing in ways we couldn’t imagine. Our bodies and our souls are made stronger for this experience, and as we see to the full light of day, we raise our heads high and walk slowly into the light of a new beginning, for morning has come.

Not for Wimps

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Life and Death, Soul Peace and Journeys

Therapists have therapists. What is to be said? Wise therapists have some form of professional that they can turn to for their own needs. Let’s call it professional self-care of the soul.

Our souls need to be able to be heard and assured. We need to explore our interactions and pamper ourselves. It is also good professional ethics, as it keeps us from making huge mistakes.

I’ve spent time thinking about the care and watering of our hearts and souls over this past week. At the end of a particularly difficult session, my therapist made it a point to ask me about what I’d be doing the rest of the day. Our conversation was different because of the work we both do. The result of my process that day was that I became aware of how long it took to calm my heart and let the results of the session work inside of me.

What can we do to exercise self-care in times of need? This seems to be something that people need to learn, and so I’m going to list things.

Free Stuff

I’m suggesting free things because self-care shouldn’t stress you out. If money is an issue, trying to pay for something will make it counterproductive.

I’m not suggesting things to pay for because you’re going to have your own personal favorites (mine is sushi).

The list below is meant to trigger ideas:

  • Listen to music
  • Enjoy a garden
  • Binge-watch an old favorite show
  • Watch your favorite movie series
  • Read an old favorite book
  • Stay in bed longer, but get up and take the day slower if needed
  • Observe nature from where you are
  • Find a pair of shoes to dress up your feet
  • Do something fun with a scarf in your hair, or with what you’re wearing

Why Do We Need to Care for Ourselves?

Why wouldn’t we want to show ourselves the compassion that we show to others? Self-care enables us to know our bodies and minds better. Self-care is also an important component of a balanced life. I posted about a holiday that I took to Wales, and along with it the hitches that come with my travel experience. When friends found out that I hadn’t done anything for myself in years, the push was on to get me to holidays. 

The first Saturday, I crashed on the comfiest lounge I’d sat on. The exhaustion of ten years of caretaking, and not feeding my spiritual, emotional, and social needs, sent me into a sleepy state of being. I didn’t understand the depths of needing to get away from it all. I’d done too many “staycations” and not enough real holidays. I returned replenished and ready for a new chapter in my life.

Self-care is about allowing ourselves to claim our inner strength and acknowledge that we need to feed all of the self. Self-care is about being brave. Self-care is not for wimps. Another way I practice self-care is to keep a lovely supply of scented candles in the home. I’m presently burning three in different rooms of the house.

Candles allow me to imagine the sea and smell different types of air: the pumpkin of fall and the fresh breezes of the spring season. It’s about the candles and the scent. They are a spiritual practice that I love.

Light On, Light Off

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Life and Death

Over the last two weeks, I’ve had leg pain. I call the doctor, and I ask for something that won’t make me walk into walls during the day. We spend time on the phone, and she comes up with a pill. Great. I take the pill before I go to sleep and wait for an hour for it to kick in to working mode. Since it says I can take three pills per day, I do so in the middle of the night. I’ll sleep it off. RIIIIGHT.

I spent my Saturday fighting sleep—with no caffeine in the house. I now believe that there isn’t a painkiller that won’t make you dopey. It’s the nature of the pill, and what it needs to dull. Endure the pain and stay awake. Take the pill and let the body heal. But you’ll have to sleep it off at night and deal with pain during the day. So, I must listen to the pain during the waking hours.

I can take pain, but this time it made me cry as I walked on my leg, and this time I didn’t like what I heard. It was a cry of an animal in pain. It scared me to hear it. That is why I phoned the doctor. The physio says it’s neurological. She’s entitled to her opinion. I’m entitled to my thoughts: it hurts and I want the pain gone. I also want to know why the other leg is acting up, and the physio is most likely correct about why my right leg is hurting.

While pain can serve the function of letting us know that the body is in need of rest and care, it also lets us know we’re injured. Pain is nature’s message to us that we need to listen to our bodies. Pain also takes time to recover from. In Western society we aren’t good at listening to our bodies. We push them, abuse them, and, ultimately, and many times when it’s too late, pay attention to impending doom. And yet it is the same with mental pain. It is also a signal that something is wrong, and we need to listen and get help for the pain. That’s my job: to help you through the mental pain.

The body amazes me, and baffles me. I’m amazed that this thing I dwell within is complex and functional, and that it for the most part allows us to move and do things for ourselves from a young age. We’re the only creations that must be cared for during the first years of our lives. We have no instincts that kick in to tell us what is safe and not safe. Parents are supposed to do that. We’re born helpless, and we’ll die and go out helpless. I say this about death because we can’t control our deaths, and thus can’t control the process: we’re helpless.

The body baffles me because of its complexity and how things function. When things go wrong, we try to fix them. I marvel at the brainpower at Utrecht’s UMC. Every time I set foot in that place and I head to the right to all the outpatient clinics I must access, I understand that the physicians in those clinics are full professors and researchers. They are curious souls who want to know everything they can about a particular part of the human body. While something might baffle them, their response is to research about it. A statement of “we don’t know” means that they don’t have a legitimate answer for me. They keep plugging away at the questions that need answers.

When I think about animals and how they die, many go off alone. It’s instinct that drives them to separate from the group. It is a community preservation instinct. As humans who are older and nearer to death, our sleep habits change. Some people start wanting a light on, while others drift off to sleep quietly. Some become religious, while others swear like sailors. 

This last year has caused me to think more about the process of death. I don’t know what death holds. Do we just switch off? I don’t know. Do we drift off into the cosmos? I don’t know. Is there a heaven where we go? I can hope, but I don’t know. I think about death more now because I’m at that point in time where I have more life in front of me, and much more behind me. Hmm.

When you start thinking about death, it becomes an existential issue. What happens? What do I do with all my stuff? What do I need to resolve before it all ends? People might want to draw family near to them. The realization that soon it will be too late to say what needs to be said becomes real. This is why hospice and chaplains can be such a great gift for so many. Making peace with it all before we die is important.

Maybe that’s why sleeping with a light on when you’re older and near death is a thing. If you die, and it goes dark, you’re dead. If you die, and it gets brighter, you’re dead. If you die without the light on, will you know you’re dead? Light on, or light off? That is the question.

In the Living Years

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Life and Death

There’s a video from 1994 where my hands are smooth, and my fingers are manicured. As I look down at my hands today, I see short nails; the skin is aged, and there is arthritis. In the younger years, you can’t imagine how your aging process will play out, and when it starts to happen, you only realize after the fact that it is really happening. Today we’re more aware of what will happen, and still it happens. We can’t stop the process; we can manage it.

When I was in my practicum during grad school, my first supervisor wanted me to gain experience with the geriatric population. I didn’t understand how I could possibly relate to someone thirty or forty years older than I was. I learned that I wasn’t so different, and that Dan Fogelberg sang about it in “Windows and Walls.” At the end of the video, Dan tacked on a comment that this is a reminder to visit and contact aging family members, because you’ll be there all too soon.

Those I worked with lived full lives. There are many people that would love to be fully engaged in life, and they can’t do so. My heart hurts for them.

One of the gifts of an extended family is that we see the aging. We are witnesses to what our grandparents, aunts, and uncles endure in years that should be filled with joy and love from family and friends.

This is why my parents made sure that we visited my great-aunt and my grandparents often and, as much as possible, my aunts and uncles who lived further from us. I didn’t think about growing older, and now that I’m older I realize what a gift it is to have family that call and check in when I’m thousands of miles away. I have a niece and nephew that take the time to check in by Zoom, and others that use Facebook to find out how I am. 

Sometimes, living nearby isn’t the catalyst for the check in. So, I’ll tell you a story about my family, and why checking in meant so much to me.

For the first twelve years of my life, my great-aunt was a part of my life. My parents made sure that we’d get to see her monthly. We’d make the drive into Berkeley and park in a place that scared me: her driveway. She lived on a hill, and the house was old. The driveway sloped downward and led into a garage. Quite frankly, I could never understand why anyone would build a house that way. They did, and that was that. I’d get out of the car and walk up to street level, and then climb the stairs into her house. It was her house that was filled with treasures that made that small walk worth it. Once inside, I forgot about the car, and the parking brake, and the fact that every time we parked there I fantasized about the car careening through the garage door.  

We’d sit in her living room, and she’d talk about history, the knowledge she had. Her enthusiasm for sharing it was contagious. Because of her, I fell in love with history and Haley’s Comet. She inspired me to read, and to learn even more. Talking to someone who has lived what you’ve only read about is what brings it to life. She was born in a time before automobiles, space launches, and women getting the vote. She was connected with people I’d only read about in books, and she was able to tell me more about them. She gave me a book written by Helen Keller, who was a childhood role model of mine. In her will, I was given many beautiful blue things, because she knew and understood what the color blue means to me. I still have most of the blue I was given. The memories are kept alive in looking at what she willed to me, and the stories remain in my head, and make the blue things more significant.

In her later years she suffered from dementia and begged my parents not to put her into a care facility. There weren’t the options there are now. We went and visited her there, and were witnesses to the slow decline. She was right: her mind slipped from her, and she didn’t really know us in her last months.

I’m proud to say that, as a family, my parents’ generation, and that generation before them, were loved, cared for, and engaged with. We were taught to make the time. Once they’re gone, they’re not here to ask about the stuff you’d like to, or should have, asked in the living years.

It breaks my heart to know that, out there in the world, there are those who sit with their phones, and nobody calls. Call those you love, because in your busy life, there will come a time when they are no longer around.

Snark

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Living With Disability

Learning to not walk funny is a process, and it is taking hours of focused training time. All of this is done in the home. I exercise on the treadmill, and I stand by a chair to do some of the work. I’m up to eight minutes on the treadmill, and it is still taking ten minutes per session for the rest of it. The goal is to get up to thirty minutes of walking time per day. At the ten-minute point I’ll try to leap to fifteen minutes twice per day, and then up to thirty minutes in one session per day.  

The truth is that this is eating my day.

Ticktock, the clock goes round, and as it does, I still walk funny. I’ve asked the physical therapist if she sees it, and she says no. I know that when I get up from a chair, I walk goofy. So, I don’t want to sit that long. I think I’m becoming impatient with this process. When I think about it, I have to admit that it is better to be here at home than stuck in a rehab center. I can do this at home.

I’m caught up with some things, still catching up on taxes, and now I find myself attempting to figure out how to get my hair cut and my hearing aids checked. When I stop to think about things, sending me home was needed, and I need to have a driver on call until I can really walk again. Being mostly blind and not walking in a steady manner is not a good combination. Not walking well shows me how bad my vision is. It is scary to see it.

When I take notice of what it is I’m not able to see, and I allow myself to think about what fully sighted people see, I cringe. What I see when I look is the places I can’t walk safely. This last week, while heading home from the UMC in Utrecht, I was confronted with a construction mess. For sighted people who could see, the process was easy. I had to figure out that I couldn’t get to the tram and would have to take the bus down one stop, get off, and then walk to where the trams pulled in. I got lucky, and people were helpful. The shock of it all is never a good thing. Someone with Usher syndrome told me that for her, every time there was more vision loss, there was more trauma.

While I’m not affected by Usher, I do understand the risks involved in going out when you can’t see or hear as others do. It is important for me to be steady on my feet, and to get back into a safe walking mode.

As much as I post on this—and I may sound like a recording or a broken record—I have to say it again: being disabled is traumatizing.

Last week I had to call for help with something. The woman at the other end said, “Perhaps you can ask your neighbor for help.” I replied that I’d done that earlier in the week, and that while my neighbors are kind to me, I am asking you for help.

G: How would you feel if this was said to you constantly?

Rep: Oh, I understand.

G: No, you don’t.

She had nothing to say in response. She had not a clue about what I deal with daily in an abled world as a disabled woman. She never will, unless it happens to her or to someone she cares about. I hope that someday, when she’s still got all her marbles, she’s bugged by her neighbor.

What’s out There?

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Life and Death

I had a minor stroke in October of 2014, and altered my lifestyle to take it slower in the mornings. I’ve gotten to like the morning. I’ve enjoyed the lazy two-hour waking up and relaxing before I do anything. I sit in bed and listen to podcasts or read. I meditate. I wander downstairs, eat, and begin the day in earnest. It’s really been nice.

I’m giving it up.

I’m giving up the lazy part of the morning due to the fact that I’ve been confronting myself about why, after so many years, I’m still doing the lazy. It’s time to call out myself on being lazy and loving it. It isn’t a helpful thing for me to do. It has served its purpose. It was needful for the first two years post stroke. It became a habit after that.

After Jon’s death, I felt at liberty to heal the mind. Reading a note that your husband killed himself, and being told where to find the body, and trying to open the door that is locked from the inside is traumatizing. I needed to heal. I healed, slept odd hours, ate at strange times, and took two years off to begin the process of getting back to a new normal. I was fortunate in that I could do a two-year break from working.   

There is not one normal thing about doing the work of grief and becoming the new person that lies beyond the death or serious loss of someone in your life. Many years of reflection is what it took for me to feel like I’d come out of the fog and daze that grief causes. Getting up off the bench I was sitting on yet again is what it’s all about.

There have been mornings when I’ve wondered about how to fill the days, and days when I’ve wondered how I do anything. The changing times seem to allow for the seasons of loss to come and leave their mark. I think back to my grandmother and my mother and my aunts, and now I understand that lonely of not having a life partner next to you in bed. With eight years gone by, I think I get it.

Now I understand why getting back to a more active way of living is so hard. This other life, the one where I can do lazy mornings, is habit forming. I have had no desire to place myself in a position where I’m accountable for the exit.

Yesterday I changed the way I identify my personal appointments on my calendar. It was an eye-opening experience. I took out the nickname my husband used, and I replaced it with Gail. It felt like it was time to do that little act.

I have been fortunate to have several family examples of how to get through the grief process. I’ve been able to observe my grandmother, two aunts, and my mother. Some of the family pattern has been useful, and other parts have been strewn with problems. I hope that I’m doing it in a healthy way.

I’ve had my own set of challenges with being disabled. I’ve had to build up new confidence and come to terms with my own past demons.

Now, it is my turn. Eight years going on nine, and I’m asking the question, “What’s out there?” I’m finding good things to explore.  

Going In and Coming Out (Revisit)

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Beyond Grief

Originally posted on February 28, 2023.

It is a fact that grief is unique to each of us. We go into the process thinking that there are rules, and we emerge knowing there are no rules. Nothing is certain because nothing in life is certain. As much as we may deny it, at the beginning we’re grieving because something happened that was unexpected.

After Jon left this life, I didn’t do anything major for two years. My rule was simply to not make a life-changing decision during the first year of a life crisis, and I extended that to a second year. 

When the severe crying was over, my days were mostly calm, and I was moving into year three when the real changes began. I’d taken over the larger room and turned it into my space for when I would return to work. This meant sorting through things that had to go. They were his, and I didn’t need his stuff in what had to become a new space. This process has taken several years. 

I decided to let things happen in a natural manner. My desire to trash things has gotten the better of me at times, and this time I’ve exercised a great deal of caution.

The big change has been sitting with the space, thinking about what I really want for it, and allowing the thoughts to come as my head let them come. It is also about making decisions that are realistic. Like a person becoming sober and clearing their head, grief—and the journey out of grief—will take us to places where our heads clear up. Think of it as grief sobriety. This doesn’t happen rapidly; it takes distance and hard work. Sometimes clearing the head takes years because we don’t have the ability to ask the correct questions in the beginning. 

Doing a reclaim of the self is about time. Who was I before this relationship? How did this relationship make me a better person? What did the relationship do to me that wasn’t good for me? How is my relationship with myself affected by this event occurring in my life? Each of these questions are questions that we answer as we look long and hard into a mirror. Ultimately, we answer the questions, and this allows us to move forward. 

One of the tiny things that I realized was that I’m living with chipped cups and plates. It began to bother me each time I took a cup or plate out of the cabinet. Last night, the feeling hit a fever pitch when I saw something that I liked, and for a price I loved. The thought entered my mind that I didn’t need to live with what was not pleasing me. I could replace my daily table setting with something that would make me smile. Ordering that blue set was liberating. Ordering the set triggered an insight into what I was doing in the home to make it mine. Now, with my eyes open, I was seeing clearly. I need to let myself enjoy the space I have here. I’m widowed, loving my space, and I can do what I want, when I want to do it. That is the plus side of moving forward.  

The Gift of Grief

There comes a time in the process when we ask ourselves: What do I want my life to look like moving forward? This is the gift of grief, growth, and exploration. 

Creating our future comes our way when we’re able to make peace with the past and move ahead with an understanding that we’ve done the deep work of our past life. We are usually older, wiser, and with the living we’ve done comes a freedom to think it through at a slower pace. 

The healthy side of grief allows us to slow down and to plan an unrushed future. I think of this place as being in a condition of contentment.  

Coming out of grief could mean we’ve been deeply affected by any number of life situations: death, divorce, realizing that we are LGBTQIA+, coping with a disability, experiencing traumatic events, growing up and moving out on our own, or something else. Recognizing that we’ve been in a foggy place, and now the skies are clearing up, is what coming out of grief is all about. Most people quietly leave where they were for where they are. We don’t even think that we’re glad it’s over because it’s a velvet transition. 

While entering the grief space is, for the most part, traumatic, walking into the future is soothing. 

If had been told at four years after the loss that I had to sit down and plan the future, I would have planned a messed-up life. At four years, I was ready to work and to learn again. I was ready to think about what I wanted beyond that point in time. For instance: I wasn’t ready to consider new tableware. I wasn’t ready to make the emotional parting: I needed time to say goodbye. 

Gail’s Learning Since 2016: a Few Tips

Allow the tears to flow and the anger to do what it needs to do within yourself and avoid others who tell you that you’re on a schedule. 

Don’t force something that will happen naturally. Forcing emotions that aren’t ready to surface can be distressing. 

Making life decisions before the end of the first year of whatever it is you are coming out from might not be such a healthy place to go. Take the time to let your head clear. 

With some types of life situations, there are things that have to be done legally, and they are on their own schedule. You might not begin to grieve until the resolution of an estate or other major happenings. You may need to sell the home, move to a new place, or do other things in a rapid manner that will affect your grief process. Cut yourself some slack. Do the essentials and work to calm things so that you can connect with your grief. 

Isolation within a relationship is not healthy. Being so content that you spend time only with a partner can lead to social struggles when the relationship ends. Stay engaged with others! Healthy relationships thrive on variety and a sprinkling of others that we can engage with. 

Your address book will rearrange itself. I can tell you from personal experience that some family couldn’t deal with a suicide, or a faith change, and they distanced themselves. It was the same with people who I thought were friends. Grief shows us who is able to stick around when the life waters get choppy. There are also others who show up in amazing ways. These are people who are living life in a way that allows them to join us where others can’t go.  

I believe the greatest thing I’ve seen and learned as I’ve traveled this path is that rushing into anything that can be slowed down will pay off in a huge way. Rushed relationships can end sadly; rushed life changes can land us in a pickle. Saying we “won’t ever_____” may cause us to need to recant the words. Judgment can come back to bite you, and wanting it to all go away will cause you to miss out on discoveries that will make all the difference. What we think we want at the beginning isn’t what we’ll need at the end of the process. We don’t need a quick fix: it’s a thoughtful journey, this walk in the woods. 

And, All I Did Was Fall.

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Life and Death, Living With Disability

Last week the surgeon told me that I’d see him every three months for this year, and every six months for year two, and that it would take a full year to get back to normal walking. That was a hard reality to digest. My heart sank in that moment. Will this ever end? This week I’m up to four minutes, and ten seconds per treadmill session, and I’m walking slowly. The latter is by choice. I decided to go for endurance rather than the speed, as it felt right for my body; it is wrong for my head.

Enneagram type eight people connect with their bodies more than the non-body types. I listen intently as my feet move on the treadmill, and I’m listening for smooth, even steps. As I do the mostly simple exercises, I listen, and count. Some sessions are better than other times doing the same repetitive thing. I must do it. It is challenging me to be enthused about something that, in some cases, I struggle to do. Keeping myself balanced is hard. Now, I’m being told that I have to do things that I can’t do without holding on to something. I’m scared of falling. 

This break has caused a sobering feeling to come over me. My walking is more intentional. I’m more aware that I can slip and fall. I don’t want to have it happen again. I’m securing the home so that if I fall, people can get in with a secured lock system. I’m thinking of apps that enable certain information for me and about me, or maybe an iWatch that does more than show the time. Carrying the phone everywhere is difficult. It’s a reminder of what I’m feeling as I work through this process.

One of the developmental lessons that young adults learn—and here I’m speaking of adolescents and those in their early to mid-twenties— is that they are not indestructible. This lesson can be learned in any number of ways, and have varying outcomes for the young person learning the lesson. The developmental process of learning all of this is that you come to a realization that you can die.

As an older adult, the lesson becomes that you can die, and you’d better think about how to alter your life in a responsible manner. I’ve sobered up once again to a new life-altering reality. It is scary; it is annoying; it is something that challenged the ego, and we need to rebuild things. This isn’t something that is histrionic behavior: it is life telling us that it is confronting us in new ways.

As I rolled around the rehab center waiting for the leg to heal, I felt like I was wasting time, and that my carefully crafted schedule had been completely messed up and rearranged. The fall and break did the rearranging automatically. While I did walk out of the rehab center on my own, I still needed some assistance. Almost three weeks later, I returned the rolling walker and set out on a new phase of walking on my own. I’m home, unless a friend with a car comes by to take me places.

What I’ve modified is my sitting time. I also have to remember that failing to walk will cause me to walk with an awkward gait, and it all hooks into the recovery process. This growing-older-but-not-old process is different. Old is in the eighty to ninety range. There are books about all of this, and most of us don’t read them; we should read them when we’re young. When we’re young many of us don’t think about growing old, even if we have older people in our lives. We prepare for retirement but we don’t prepare for the aftermath of retirement.

This journey is one of the body and the soul. It forces me to be alert to who I am, and what can happen with every step I take. Unlike a recovering alcoholic who has done some type of recovery work and is aware of not taking a drink or using their drug of choice, there is no permanent community for growing older.

Our friendships and others we know can change on a daily basis. My mother had a friend give her a wall hanging that said something to the effect of “My friends are all dead and I suspect they think I didn’t make it to heaven.”

I have an ex-therapist who mid-career decided to specialize in geriatric patients. She was thinking ahead of her time, and I wish I had asked her what she’d learned. Once again, I pause, and I’m sobered by the fragility of life, and what I don’t know.

Somewhere I read that we should play while we’re young and do the work that we’d love to do when we’re old. The only problem with this is the aging process. I believe that society needs to teach children to take their time growing up, and to make life decisions that work for the person and not for having a lifestyle that looks good on the outside. I know people who would rather work with their hands, and who have a master’s or PhD-level of education. We need more plumbers, gardeners, welders, and more people in the trades. The trades are being abandoned.

Once again, I must stop, and I must think about my values and society’s values. It seems I’m thinking about my values a great deal more now. All I did was… fall.

And Then, There’s That Dream

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Musings and Insights

Yesterday I made an attempt at going outside, getting in a car, walking more than I should have, and returning home. It didn’t tire me out: it caused my left leg to tire. I’m not there yet. 

I feel like the kid in the back seat of the car asking “are we there yet?” I have to keep reminding myself that I get there when I get there.

Watching myself walk is forcing me to listen to my body in new ways. As I do the required exercising and walk on the treadmill, I need to listen to the sound of my feet as I step. Am I stepping evenly, or am I dragging my feet? What this is causing me to do is to feel how I walk. I have to notice the tiny things that I’ve never noticed before.

Last night as I slept, I dreamt that I was walking around a track, and I was in a race. My self-talk was that I needed to slow it all down, and that this was not a race. I woke up to my 7:00 AM alarm knowing I’d just processed what I was thinking and doing. I felt called out by my own actions. When I told the physical therapist, she just laughed. Not funny: she’s getting to know me too well.

With all the exercising I must do to heal this, I’m feeling cramped. It’s an hour’s work. I find myself wanting the time to expand when time is closing in on me. There is so much to do, and not enough time in a day. I’m feeling the crash of the fall once again, and this time around I’m thinking that I need to slow it down. I can’t slow it down, and that dream tells me to slow myself down. I want chocolate in some wonderful form. I know I can’t eat my way through this, and the more I walk, the better off I am. This is stress bleeding its way through.

The grass is never as green on the other side of the fence. I understand that once I’m done with the rehab process, it will be something else that pops up in my face.

So, how does one deal with the avalanche of life and keep calm? I’m finding that my quiet time is valuable, and that I have to create quality time. I no longer have the time I once had post Jon’s death. This makes me think about the grief process, and how we go from the funeral bubble to getting back on the conveyor belt of life. 

Wow! When I think about the eight years I’ve been in widow/single status, I am blown away by what I’ve done, and how I’ve changed. 

Getting back up is a process that we do on our own terms. Society demands that we move faster than we should move. It makes me think of the woman who told her friend that she had six months, and then it all had to be back to normal. Six months? That isn’t even enough time to figure out that you are a mess due to the grief you’re feeling.

And then, there’s that dream…

Revisiting Our Hardwiring

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Musings and Insights

Author’s note: I’m involved in a book project that is requiring me to submit one chapter on the idea of perfection. This is huge, and I’m going to write about some of what I’m musing about today.

Today’s meditation was one of exploration. I began by asking about why humans are hesitant to include those who are disabled. My path of thought led me to question many things.

Animals may kill a defective offspring. Maybe they smell it, see it, or somehow sense it, and then they kill. As humans, we judge our species based on different criteria. We struggle to accept humans who are diverse.

We run from diversity as if it were a disease that it isn’t. We struggle; as humans we are born hardwired to fear diversity. What we fear we push away or shun. Like animals, we react rather than question.

A doctor friend once told me that back when he was in medical training, they didn’t teach doctors how to properly react with the parents when a disabled person was born. They handed the newborn to the parents and sent them home, only to have the concerned parents show up at the pediatrician’s office with the disabled baby, where they’d experience the same attitude. Things have gotten better, but we still push away what we as humans can’t cope with.

It is a process that makes sense but doesn’t make sense at all. There is Enneagram theory that supports the concept that we all begin as type six, and then slowly move out and around the circle to other types. Type six souls have a fear component in their makeup, whereas type eights lack this fear. Eights have fears: we just deal with it differently. Humans are wired to fear diversity. Can we change as humans to evolve into people who can learn to not fear other humans?

There are more type sixes than any other type on the Enneagram. While I might want a type six in a crisis where we run out of crazy survival stuff, I don’t want a six who hasn’t done their work on themselves in other situations. I digress.

We tolerate diversity, and in that tolerant space we still want sameness. We thrive in sameness, and when there is failure to thrive, we label it abnormal, stick it in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), and many times tell the mother that she’s doing it wrong, or that the baby isn’t “right,” and try to move on. Meanwhile a little human needs help.

Jon and I had a kitten who couldn’t get the milk she needed from her mother. Jon fed the kitten, who we named ‘Roo. She bonded with Jon, and we adopted out the mother and kept her. ‘Roo grew into a beautiful cat who loved us and the other kittens we adopted. From ‘Roo I learned to love in new ways.

Humans bond with all types of critters but not all types of humans. We are like animals who are selective in who they allow into their space.

Over the past forty years, we’ve begun a movement to change all of this. This morning during meditation, I began to wonder if we can change from fearful to naturally curious and wanting to know about the differences and embrace them joyfully. 

I want to live in a world where I’m understood. I want to live in a world where the questions I get are ones that lead to that understanding instead of more intolerance. I’m confronted by the human condition: fear.

Here in The Netherlands, the word “revalidation” is used when someone must recover from injury or stroke. The word means to be made acceptable again. It is no different than saying rehabilitation in English. We value a certain level of acceptability, and we attempt to have conformity. While societies choose to punish the nonconformist, those of a different color, religion, economic status, the LGBTQIA+ community, and the disabled are separated from many in society.

A quick search on Google shows that the Han Chinese are the largest race in the world. Other facts that turned up are that the U.S. still thinks that it is the world. And this is not good for the human condition.

My Monday meditation has taken me to a place I would have rather not gone. Is there hope for us as a species? I suppose if I could raise Mr. Darwin from the dead, he’d tell me that the human condition is set, and that evolution will occur, and we will all evolve, and some of us will be wiped out.

I think I’d tell Mr. Darwin that while we are evolving, we’re devolving. While children are becoming more tech savvy, many are losing the ability to form human relationships, and relationships are what it’s about. If we fail to teach children to put down the tech and look people in the eyes, we’re not evolving.

Tolerance is one thing. Understanding and acceptance of what causes us to fear is another thing.

I wouldn’t change who I am because my disabilities have been a part of that process. I’m happy with who I am. The problem is that society doesn’t fully understand me.

Humans are hardwired in a weird or confusing way.

I Miss (Revisit)

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Beyond Grief, The Suicide and its Aftermath

Originally posted on June 1, 2022.

Last night while reading, my mind was blown by what was on the pages. It seemed as if I had been sent sailing into the outer limits of my mind, and that I was needing to process all the fantastic thoughts that were coming to me. I realized that my out-of-this-dimension-process-person was gone. OUCH!

In realizing this, I also noticed that I wasn’t shedding tears, I wasn’t angry, or even sad: I just missed him and the easy access to processing wild thoughts. Now who do I do this with? The one person who might go there with me no longer speaks to me due to where my life has gone. (That’s an entirely different post.) What do I do now?

The prospect of finding a new conversation partner for exploring the out-of-the-box things that need to be spoken, pondered, turned over in the mind, and configured into working theory and thought is difficult. He is gone.

I began to reflect on those long conversations that took us into first one and then another subject, until the wee hours of the morning when my intellect was stimulated and all we could do was collapse into bed, not remembering exactly where we began—only knowing where we wound up.

While walking on the treadmill this morning, I realized that somehow, without my knowing it, something inside of me had shifted. What piece of the grief puzzle, the loss, the resolution, had gently moved into place?

Is it that in our journeying and self-discovery and the multiple examinations of the past relationship, we resolve the ugly, the painful, the hidden along with the happy and joyous parts of the relationship?

In contemplating this, my thoughts turned to the fact that death is for the most part traumatic. It is traumatic for the dying and for those left behind. We don’t expect it will happen when it does, or how it happens. We don’t get to have closure. Yes, if there is a terminal illness involved, we might be able to have some of those conversations—but not all of them. We move forward, and in time, shifts happen and things change.

There are no certain answers with the grief process. There is no ready formula that creates resolution and stops the tears. There is no end point. Time doesn’t resolve the pain and loss. There are people who are in the same struggle ten years after they’ve lost someone—the pain is just as intense. I think there are things that can stimulate forward movement. I’ll talk about a few of them in no particular order of importance.

Be open to the tears, because tears tend to cleanse our souls and open new paths of healing. If we fail to care for ourselves by honoring times when we need to let the tears flow by pretending that shedding the tears is weakness, we shut ourselves down to legitimate growth. It is natural to cry in pain, to feel the hurt fully, and to allow our bodies to respond naturally when we’ve been assaulted by physical, mental, or emotional pain. Tears are a cue to the self that all is not right within us.

Shrines are damaging, so don’t build them. Shrines to anyone tend to block progress. They stifle our development by keeping us in a memory loop that can lead to not being able to move forward. We become trapped in the past life we had with this person.

Reclaiming a space that may have been the domain of another person is difficult and emotional work. It is a good idea to go into a bedroom or workspace with a supportive friend or family member to enable the beginning of the process of restructuring the new space.

Photographing things we want to remember enables us to move forward and hold onto memories. It also allows us to create new spaces for the living. I think people create shrines in fear of forgetting. This doesn’t mean that we go in and take everything away. What all of this means is that we give careful thought to finding some of their possessions new and loving homes. We become selective about what will really mean something to us. We might store some things in order to determine at a later time what we want to hold onto. There is an element of realism to this. In sorting through things, we can remember and face some of the work around remembrance that must be done in all relationships. I had sufficient space to store some things until I could realistically come to terms with what I wanted to do with them. Intentionally packing things away, asking others about some of the items, and coming to terms with how I felt about things enabled me to not erect any type of shrine that would be unhealthy.

In stating the above, it does not mean that I’ve wiped my husband out of the home. There are photos and other special memories tucked away that I can enjoy when I want to do so. No shrine.

Stare it all down. If we’re not willing to look at something, we need to as ourselves why we’re avoiding doing so. If we’re in a rush to explore everything, why is it a rush? Would allowing time and a gentle approach serve us better? There are some realities that we’re forced into dealing with, and meeting them with courage rather than denial does wonders for us and others. Denial, in its own way, is a shrine to the unknown.

Recognize that if you listen to your heart, your head, and your gut, you will gain insights into the when and the how of looking at issues. You will also have a better sense of when you are stuck and need to seek help in moving forward to the place where you become unstuck. For most people, the process of looking at it all and facing the reality of whatever loss it is seems to be the most difficult. We’re not animals who are designed to move on. We’re humans, and we function differently than out pets, who may remember and miss their pet housemates or human companions, but who will move on as the scent fades with time. We’re wired to remember, and we should!

Speak the person’s name! Speaking of memories and uttering their name is a good, healthy thing. Burying the person is one thing and keeping them alive in a healthy way is another area of work. Out of sight is not out of mind. Talking helps us all process the loss.

There will come a time when you will be able to remember and reframe the relationship that was lost in a better and clearer manner. Allowing for gentle time, courage, and uncertainty as to when it will all come together is key in moving on. Yes, I miss him in a different way now, and it is both sad and good at the same time.

The Secrets We Keep

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Musings and Insights

Since coming home from the rehab center, I’ve been playing catch-up. This weekend I binge watched Netflix. 

Why? There are two reasons. My birthday was this last Friday, and I needed a break to reboot it all.

The physical therapist is doing house calls right now because I’m not walking distances yet. In talking with her today, I told her what I’d done, and how good it felt. She commented on the fact that I’d been through a great deal with it all. Yes, I have, and no one has asked me about dealing with the stress of it all! I commented on this fact, and her response was that it’s different for each person. Here I am writing this, because someone should ask everyone about the stress of such injuries.

The fact is, injury that requires a rehab stay is hard, and dealing with it all is difficult. I knew the signs and still felt that I couldn’t ask to talk to someone! I will now.

This is all about understanding our needs and tuning into ourselves, and yet I was overwhelmed and couldn’t ask. When you’re in the soup, you can’t see out of where you are. Trauma of all sorts causes us to need assistance. A grieving person is stuck in the soup, and they need people to come and “please do” for them. It might be the dishes, the garbage, a meal, or something else.

I try to be independent, and I need help at times. My enneagram type eight can be a hindrance if I don’t get to my two arrow, which softens me, and then I can ask for what I need. So now I’ll go there and get what I need. 

This makes me think of all the things that are hard, that we don’t speak about, and that we keep in until we discover that we’re not alone in our thinking. I get that we need to hold things confidential. Confidential isn’t a secret, and we keep things secret to ourselves. There are many things that we all fail to process in the time period they are happening to us. Then it makes it easier to hide from the facts. My spiritual director has been a real resource for this. She calls me out and asks good questions, and in reflection I learn where I am. My therapist makes me work to fix what is going on within, and I go there when I need to do short-term work and fix-it work. Both are helpful.

My hunch is that we don’t talk about some of the stuff we need to talk about because of old taboos. In the past, depression and sexual assault and molestation were two of the biggies that got buried deep down. Addiction, and all of its variants, was another area that was not to be spoken of. Here we are in a time when we can speak, and we hesitate until it gets so bad that it may be critical. Opening up about what ails us can be good for the soul.

Sometimes we wind up on a new soul journey, and as we navigate the river, it feels like we might be evaluating old relationships with all areas of our lives. I think we’ve crossed a river of time in how we talk—and don’t talk—about things. We’re distracted, and so, maybe we hide it all. What a wild web it all is.   

We’re distracted by tech, the fast pace of life, and the stuff that happens automatically that we don’t see. We’re caught off guard by the global pace of change. What we need to do is build in time for ourselves to reflect. This weekend was all done on instinct. My psyche knew what I was ignoring: I needed to vegetate and do nothing. Today I can face the world again. The time not thinking seems to have reset an internal clock that needed resetting. This week, the catch-up will hopefully move to the caught-up phase. This week I’ll ask for more help. Lesson learned.

Just As it Should Be

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Living With Disability

About ten days ago, I walked-rolled through my front door. My front door is still a mess; I can’t lock it well. I can’t go out because my left leg is still weak, and I’m playing catch-up here at home. It could be worse. 

What I noticed was how everything seemed shorter, as I was able to stand up again. The sink, the toilet, closet shelves, and the bed! For someone who must live in a wheelchair the rest of their life, the world is seen from a different angle. When I was using wheels, it seemed normal, and when I stood up again, my world changed.

The physical therapist just left. I have to climb the stairs differently, do some chair exercises, and all of this is to build strength.

When I went to the surgeon, I saw that it was a busted femur with two long screws inside. OK, that makes sense. I’ve been so out-of-whack that my logic hasn’t worked well. Painkillers mess you up. These painkillers don’t work like they used to. 

Back to playing catch-up. The only way I know to do this is to do one project at a time. Next are the taxes and finishing up a project that began in early February. I’m hoping to get these done this week, along with the normal stuff.

Why is it that when our lives get interrupted, it is hard to hold the focus on where we were? Maybe because where we were isn’t quite where we left it. Stuff moves around, and we move around, and we change. My kerplop on the landing, by its necessity, moved me into new territory.

This is like the funeral bubble, and kind of not like that bubble. The difference is that you don’t go to thin places—you go to new places of self-understanding. This time I’ve grown, and I’ve experienced an area of disability that I’ve learned from.

The first night I was there, the nurse got in my face and said, “You can do this.” Well, of course I can—I must. When I think back on all of it, I must have looked really scared. She was using a wheeled device to transfer me to the toilet. I was irritated by her telling me what I knew I had to do. I did set about doing it. Not rapidly. As I gained confidence that I could do a spin on one leg and not fall, I picked up my momentum. Then dressing became easier, and so did other things. 

People often say that the disabled are courageous, and maybe there are times that we are showing courage. For the most part, I believe that our acts are a part of daily living, and this is what we need to do to survive and live our lives.

Maybe there are “please do’s” for the disabled that I should list here. Just as with grief and loss, there are some helpful things you can do for us.

Do:

Allow us to do what we do normally. Things like crossing the street are second nature to low-vision and blind people. If you see someone in a wheelchair who can’t reach an item high on a shelf, ask if you may reach it for them. Do ask, and if you don’t know about a specific disability, ask us if we can explain things. Sometimes this is doable, and at other times it isn’t welcome. Use common sense. Be polite and, above all, accept the answer given. It is also OK to tell us you’re asking because you’d like to become informed. Can we refer you to a good source? With a phone it is simple to jump to a website.

Teach children how to interact with all diversity. Kids pick up queues from adults. When adults can teach proper manners and behaviours, kids learn. Kids want to be smart.

Don’t:

Don’t try to force us to do something. Being helpful also means that the person needs to do the simple things him- or herself.

Don’t rush someone. You might be able to do it faster, but it feels awful to be made to feel like you need it done to suit your own pace. I’ve had people do this with me, and it feels degrading. 

If you think it is rude, don’t do or say it.

If you mock, your children will mock, and in the long run they’ll be seen as ignorant. Kids want to be seen as fitting in appropriately.

I’m home with a new way of thinking—just as it should be.

I Will Walk Out of Here

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Living With Disability, Soul Peace and Journeys
photo of person using wheelchair

I never thought I’d be spending six weeks in a wheelchair. I also never thought I’d get so good at wheeling myself around. This ability has surprised me, and I’m proud of the fact that I’ve been able to get better at it the past six weeks. I’ve learned a few things as well.

I’ve become more patient with myself. Walking is something most people do without thinking about it. Once we’ve learned to put one foot in front of the other foot, we do it automatically. If we suffer a stroke or other brain injury, then the task of learning how to walk is something that must happen again.

Learning how to not walk is another challenge; we must wheel ourselves around just to shower, to dress, and to do all things that go along with preparing for the day. I can’t walk to what I need; right now I roll to what I need, and I must think it out. So I roll to underwear, socks, and then what I want to wear. Then, once I have that secured, I can roll to shower myself, and this will take assistance. 

I’ve had to learn to safely transfer from a bed to a wheelchair. Soon it will be devices such as a walker or a rolling walker that will give me more mobility, and then independent walking, putting one foot in front of the other.

Before I leave the chair, there are lessons that I’ll take with me.

I can do more than I thought I could do in this chair. I’m fairly self sufficient, and for a person with only 12% of her sight, that is pretty darn good. I can roll this thing anywhere I need to go. I’m still building arm strength. The arm that was damaged in the minor stroke that I had is coming into new strength. I’m asking why this wasn’t done at the time of the original rehab. It is happening now, and I’ll look for ways to keep the arm building up strength. Rolling is good physical therapy.

If I need something from nursing staff, I buzz, and then go into a queue. I’m becoming patient, and realizing that others here may not be as able as I am, and so I’m learning to wait. Waiting has also been motivation for me. Can I do the transfer alone? Can I do what I thought I needed someone to help me with on my own? Each success has built on a foundation of a new understanding and wiped out the fear that happened with the fall I took. I can do this! I’m doing this! With low vision I’m pulling this off. WOW-lesson learned: when you are put into situations that limit you, the human spirit chooses to crash, to rise, or to slowly trust that there is a way to rise to new highs. Fear only has a hold on us when we believe there is no way out of where we are. Hope offers ways to get to new places.

This week they’ll x-ray my leg, and I’ll be told if it’s safe to walk on the leg again. I’ll enter a new cycle of fear, learning to trust that I can put pressure on the leg in real time, and trusting the physiotherapists to not allow me to go faster then is prudent.

Physiotherapy by its nature is going to cause me pain. My mind by nature is questioning what happened, and if it will happen again. Now I know it can happen, and I’m doing the prep work to “Gail-proof” that house with some security measures. When stuff happens, we get cautious as we have thoughts about it happening again. It is why a grandparent warns children to not get too close to the edge: it isn’t that they want to deny fun to the children, but rather because they’ve lived long enough to know that unexpected things happen to all of us. We trust our bodies to be predictable when in reality they can be faulty, and when the faulty stuff happens we wind up in the ER asking why and hoping for good news. Listen to older people because they’ve seen more than you have by nature of living longer.

It is true that what I’m talking about is not wisdom. I’m talking about life experiences and general knowing.

Ultimately, we’re led to do the journeying our souls and hearts need to do. The unexpected has a way of bringing us surprises that can benefit us. My fall was a seven-week life detour, and while I haven’t enjoyed it, I’ve learned from doing it.

Last week they moved me. The room I’d been in since my arrival had a view of the tree and the window in the house across the street. The image that I saw daily looked like the perfect cover for an old Nancy Drew mystery. They’ve move me to a place further away from the tree, and now I’m looking at the employee parking lot. The movement came with other changes as well. The biggest change is that I can see how far I’ve come in six weeks. I think the huge change is the fact that I’m expressing far more gratitude for what I can do and for those who have engaged with me to bring about the change. The charge nurse on my first day here looked me in the eyes and said “YOU CAN DO THIS,” and I was annoyed by that statement. Now I’ve done much, and in the next ten days I must launch myself to new heights. I will walk again. I will walk out of here. 

Exiting the Box

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Soul Peace and Journeys
kittens on box

I was raised in a high-demand religion that placed me in a box. When you’re young, you only sense that something is off, and it was my nature to knock down barriers. Boxes are barriers, and so it began at a young age, the push–pull of trying to walk the line, yet break free of the box. The breaking out was needful, and the process almost broke me.

Breaking free is a process that takes time, knowledge, exploration, and courage. How many of us realize that we each live in a box? Our boxes are made up of different restrictions, in or out of high-demand religions and other groups. It takes strength to knock walls down. It takes strength to call it out when others remain silent. I discovered that it was lonely being the only one in the room who understood that I was trapped. It was lonely not being able to put the pieces together at a young age. It took so much time to fully connect the dots.

I’ve been knocking walls down since my adolescence. I must admit that I wouldn’t know how to live a life without breaking personal barriers, and if it helps others I’ll bring them along. I’ve spoken about this in the sledgehammer piece I wrote. I think over what I’ve done, and I want to share more. How did I find the courage to move to a new place in life?

When I look back at all of this, I’m caught up in the WOW of it all, and I think back to how I navigated the choppy parts of the river. Who was in my boat? People who were living outside of the box I’d been in. At first I didn’t understand this. The further I moved away from what had been, the more I understood out-of-the-box thinking in real time. Being in the box won’t free you to do the thinking you must do outside of the box. First you must get out!

The people outside the box enabled me to leave the bench I was sitting on and move forward. I’ll admit that this process has been both velvet in its feel and scary as I’ve crossed into the underworld and new territory.

Leaving the box causes others in the box to not understand why you would choose to leave the secure space. In my boxed situation, I was told not to “leave the boat,” and I was asked where I would go if I left the boat. I jumped into the water and into the waiting dinghy that was there for me. As I rowed into new, warmer waters, I discovered that there was new growth and so many new places to explore! What an expansive universe I lived in!

I found myself discovering so many new things! The current was swift, and as I stretched myself to learn and to ask new questions, I grew in ways that I never thought I could. Over fifty years spent in a box, and while I mourned, I also moved on. I must also admit that Jon’s suicide was a catalyst for personal growth. How could it not be a process of moving me forward? I wasn’t willing to roll over and play dead.

I discovered that it was time to put the sledgehammer away, and to discover more peaceful means of breaking down walls and moving forward. I was truly sad about stowing the sledge, as it had been a lifelong companion. I was comfortable with it, and I understood the sledge’s use, and there were better ways of creating change.

My soul work moved me forward. I now find myself in a place of peace and contentment, and it’s weird because I never imagined myself in this place. In the box, this was not possible. Outside of the box, it is doable. I think the difference is that I’ve discovered more of who* I am, what the world is all about, and that I’m finding lots of wonderful new ways of looking at everything I encounter.

While my exit from the box was velvet in its nature, it did cause me great pain. There are people who have turned their backs on me, and they’ve walked away. There are others who won’t talk about the hard things. You know—the things that really need to be said. In the box, people can’t go to these places. How I long for people I have known to go to the harder places! The price we pay for breaking ourselves out of the box is the loss of people we thought were friends. So, we must grieve again.

I’ve found that the the grief process here is no different from other grief, and that the “please do” that must be a part of our process in the exit is a major must. This is a lonely process, and it is often one that is done alone because our new village might not understand what we need in our lives.

The box I was in taught me some good things. It taught me to give to others, and to do it when it might not always be convenient. It taught me to listen to myself, and that enabled me to “jump ship” and get out of there. Who I was, and who I am, was not to be found in the tiny box.

I move on, forward, into the unknown, which is exciting, wonderful, and scary. It never ends, this discovery business. I wonder what I’ll learn around the next bend?

Relics

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Everything Mental Health
polaroid picture on a box

This last week was interesting. My church decided to sell 200 million dollars worth of relics to the Mormon Church. The Mormons like relics. Relics are about the past, and not about the future. I’m a forward thinker, and in the end, while there are some disturbing components, the sale is not a negative. Both churches won.

Relics and the past led me to think about my sister, who died when I was eighteen and heading off to go to college. She died one month before I had to be there to register and orient myself. It wasn’t good timing; it never is. Life and death do their own thing and do it on their own time. Births, for the most part, are not planned, and deaths tend to be inconvenient all the way around. It is all part of the nature of existence.

My mother woke up one morning and announced that Joyce’s room would not become a shrine. We got to work and decided that one of her friends would get the bedspread and matching curtains. I inventoried her clothes, taking the one dress I could wear. Joyce was big and bold in her style, and I took the one calmer red dress because I could pull that one off.

By the time I left for Idaho, the room was neutral. Eventually, the room served as a place for all of us when we returned home on breaks. We all could lay claim to that space. This has made me think about moving forward from loss and how we grieve. In the beginning, the tears are out of our control, and we want them to go away. It feels awful to cry when it doesn’t make sense to cry. It feels awful to get triggered all the time, and days turn into weeks, and then months. Grief sucks.

Eventually, the crazy tears go away. What the crazy is replaced with is tears that are calmer, and tears that we can identify for what they are. When Jon died, I decided to send his things to new homes. I kept tiny things of his that I liked. It was hard and needful to part with his things, and yet I knew that I needed to say goodbye to the things in our closet. I still had his side of the bed to smell and enjoy. That changed when I bought a new bed for myself. I was ready for the goodbye to the bed and the old room, and I was ready for the changes I would be making, from a milk chocolate brown to an ice blue! A very blue bed came in, and new colors flooded into the room. It was now a Gail space! Goodbye to the old and hello to the new. Still, there were tears.

Those tears! Will they ever not be present? I suspect that they will always return in unexpected ways. Now it is different, and I can identify the “why” around them. We move past the old in search of something new. We can’t get to the new without looking at the past. And so, we keep stuff that reminds us of the good in hopes of moving on. Sometimes we deceive ourselves into thinking that if we don’t look, we won’t cry. It never works that way.

Grief, and the work that we must do to resolve it, all has a nasty way of biting at us when we least expect it. It says, “Hello, remember me? I’m here to remind you to look at your past.” Then, if we are wise, we do. If we’re holding on to relics and making shrines, the chances of taking a truthful look are slim. We don’t cross the river Styx. I’ve mentioned before that it took me into my third year to really look at my relationship with Jon, and to deconstruct it. It needed to be done, and I came out stronger for having faced the ugly truths and the deep truths of love that lay beyond the surface of it all. He tried to make it a good thing despite the bipolar depression that plagued his life on a daily basis.

Relics lead us to truths that we need, and they trap us in the past that may not be useful. I choose paths that keep me in the present and guide me to a future that is not known. I’ve found this to be the best way to do the work of grief and loss. What I learned from unpacking the relationship was that the relationship was neither all good nor all bad, and that the various shades of colors were there for good reason. One of the trial notes for his decision of suicide was long. He said that he’d wanted to give me so much more but couldn’t. Reading that pierced my heart: a guy who woke to depression most every morning, feeling trapped because he couldn’t do what he really wanted to do, his truth laid out for me to see and hold. I had to look, and I had to be sad for the past.

Oh, my Jonnythan. I love you for your vulnerability, your strength, your brain that took us both to places on the outside of thought. As I write this in 2024, it seems like a different world. It was a world of sadness, a world that might have been, and a world that was what it was. It was sad, happy, joyful, and humorous. It was a world in which we were both helpful and supportive of each other, and at times not so much. It all stands for what is was. I can live with all of this. The looking back into the dark places no longer brings tears. I’ve moved on, and in this situation that is good. It feels good to breathe the air of progress. This new shore is a great place to get off the boat I’ve been on, and to go into the interior environs and poke around. 

Change, One Fall at a Time

Posted on by Gail Shurtleff in Living With Disability, Musings and Insights
person sitting on wheelchair

“Raise your leg.”

It is spoken easily, and yet how often do we think about the effort it takes to lift a leg? Many of us don’t give it a second thought. We do it; we move our legs, our arms, without thought. Three weeks ago, that changed for me. I fell and broke my hip. I got lucky, as my hip didn’t shatter, and the surgeon put two screws in. I still need to stay off the hip for six weeks. I’m in a rehab center.

The “How’d you do it?” phase has come and gone. Let’s face it, citing the fall is only good for so long. What is before me is six weeks of learning to sit in a wheelchair, and being confident that I will leave here walking. It is about intention, and about understanding my reality. Right now, my reality is about getting my leg to do as I need it to do six times per day. Right now, getting my leg to raise a wee bit more with each cycle is the goal and the world I live in. Listening to my body with intention is altering the way I go about things.

This place has a two-month turnaround. Friendships aren’t made here because Europeans don’t do US-style friendships. This I know, and so I don’t expect any such thing here. I expect to work hard, to build strength, and to rehab a hip. And so I will focus on that. I watch as I tell myself to raise a leg, and I watch as the leg struggles to obey. Each day a little higher, a little easier, and somewhat stronger. I marvel at what I do as I sit in a wheelchair that is locked in the center of my room, and I am becoming more secure in many things. I need to do this, and so I dive into it.

The courage to heal from pain and trauma in one’s life is a challenge that some choose to hold on to with all they have, because they understand that the only way forward is to go through it. Every time someone writes or phones a therapist, an act of courage is taking place. Saying that you need help is an intentional act.

The evening shift just came on. The transition to less-intense activities has begun: dinner, and then the evening. My work hours are coming up; many here will retire to bed and television. I’m on the younger side for this place.

I think about intentions. What will I learn tomorrow that I didn’t know today? What new low level will I need to grasp on to and raise to a new height? It’s about simple range of motion that I don’t have yet. Just like all change: raise it higher and fight the pain. I am learning, once again, to tell myself to raise the leg higher with each try! This is how change happens. One fall at a time.