Questions of Faith

Jon over at ASBO Jesus, has another great comic up.  I like a lot of his work and am the tiniest bit jealous because I can’t draw.

I saw this one and immediately thought of how true it is for people on either side of the debate currently going on in my own denomination.I am reminded of a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  ”It is not the experience of Christian brotherhood [community], but sure and certain faith in brotherhood [community] that holds us together.”  Life Together

May our faith be greater than our differences.

Next

Christine is back from some amazing trips and offering another poetry party.  This week she invites us to honor our ancestors and supplies this image.

The door leading out of this life
is a place I have spent time near
but never clearly seen,
and I have to wonder if any
of us on this side have.
I suspect (and hope) this threshold
can only be seen as and after we cross it.
I lingered long enough to have
invested time wondering
what my greeting might be.
The solemnity of that moment,
hopefully distant,
might lend itself to reverent silence,
but I find myself wishing for the
ongoing clamor of a party,
for the welcoming noise of friends,
long separated, catching up.
And I imagine the stories I’ll tell
and the stories I’ll hear,
and live in anticipation
of what will come next.
written 11-06-09

Being Able

I watched Survivor last week.  I don’t usually.  But that episode has made me think.

Apparently, it’s been raining, a lot.  (Which is something that happens in places like Samoa.)  And Russell, who is the captain of the winning tribe, spent a lot of the first several minutes of the show trying to keep the fire going.  While his teammates comment on this fact and how hard he works and if it’s really a good idea in this case.  Then Russell comes into the leaky shelter and comments that he needs to raise his body temperature.  All of this is what happens when it’s raining stuff until Russell collapses twice at the inter-tribe competition.

The on-site medics come over and assess Russell.  The competition is declared over and more information will come at the tribal council.  Of course, one of the camera crews stays with Russell and the medics.  And we see Russell being cognitively out of it, hear about some blood pressure and heart rate concerns, and see him collapse yet again before Jeff Probst announces that they are pulling Russell out of the show for medical issues.  (Russell tries to protest and, during the closing credits, talks about how hard it is to have to leave because his body couldn’t handle it.)

Elsewhere there has been some recent discussion about how disabilities are, or rather aren’t, represented on TV shows.  Russell’s exit from Survivor isn’t about that.  But it is about how part of ableism is the assumption that your body should be able to do what you want it to. I know better.  I know that other people do too.  I’ve been ruminating on this episode (oddly titled “This is the Man Test”) as a sign of our cultures obsession with doing it all and insistence on health as a default–even to the point of being unhealthy.  I’ve been thinking about how out of touch these emphases actually place us with our bodies.

And I’m wondering what everyone else is saying about Russell leaving.  Because I don’t think his body failed him.  I think he failed his body.  I think his game strategy interfered with his ability to make responsible choices about his health.  I think he failed to take care of himself and this resulted in his leaving.  It was bad strategy of the kind they don’t feature on the show.

Claiming the Truth

I’ve recently found a great new blog: FWD/Forward.  It’s incredibly new and, though I forget how I found them, I’ve really been enjoying the voices of the contributing authors.  And, yet, every time I go to comment (which is not something I usually do, I’m a great lurker), I hesitate.  I hesitate because FWD is for Feminists with Disabilities.  I struggle with both of those labels.  Because I’ve been a good cultural sponge and I know that women are *suppose* to be quiet and well-behaved and people are *suppose* to be healthy.

But I have and express my opinions.  But my health, or lack thereof, impacts my life.  More than that, when I read posts like this one on narcotic pain medication I hear echoes of my story (you all remember The Headache?).

So I’ve been thinking about labels and what they mean.  About the truth.  About my life.

And I’ve been commenting and thinking and being slightly less alone in some of the muddle that is, rather frequently, my life.

And all of this, alongside FWD, is good.

liminal

I grew up in the mountains of the north

Loving the high, craggy peaks,

Snow graced and miles above.

Majestic beneath stars held high;

Mystic hidden in clouds come low.

written 10-20-09

It Sucked and then I Cried by Heather B Armstrong

It Sucked and then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown, and Much Needed Margarita
Heather B Armstrong
253 pages
2009, Simon Spotlight Entertainment

Heather Armstrong is best known for her blog Dooce, which is pronounced like moose, and which features daily photographs and commentary on her life.  Armstrong’s voice, on her blog and in the book, manages to be both humorous and truthful.  It Sucked and then I Cried is her memoir about her pregnancy, early months of parenthood, struggle with post-partum depression, and how, with the help of a good doctor and medication, she reclaimed her life.

As should be expected, there is a lot of similarity between her blog and her book, as she was blogging during the events the book covers.  The book focuses on her life during pregnancy and early parenthood.  Which is also to say that, while Armstrong writes openly about depresssion, the book is not a memoir of a depressive spiral.  Which is one of the things I love about Armstrong’s approach to her story.  She is saying, “Yes, I had a baby; yes, I had a breakdown.  I learned to deal with the one so I could enjoy the other.”  While mental illness can be dramatically life defining for some poeple, there are many others like Armstrong for whom it is one facet of life.  And I’m glad that this story of that reality (plus the super cute baby, dog, and love of capslock) got told.

When it must be both

Last Saturday I was asked how I was going to survive the next day or so.  The person asking knew that I had been having headaches as a result of long days.  My answer was something along the lines of, “I have good medication and I know that I will need to crash and have found a good place to do so.”  He seemed surprised by this reply.

I still can’t think of what other reply I could have given.  I knew what I had chosen and committed to doing; I knew that my body was not entirely on page I wanted it to be.  If there had been someone else who could have done some part of the rest of my commitments, I probably would have tried to step back a bit and let/ask/beg them to do more.  But there wasn’t.  And I was fine.  By the end of the weekend, I had reached a level of tired that I don’t enjoy.  And, just as I don’t know what other reply I could have given, I don’t know what other path I could have chosen.

I had a great weekend and I’m glad I did every bit of it.  It wasn’t the perfect weekend.  But my life, much as I love it, isn’t the perfect life.   It’s just mine.

Choices: Pain vs a Life

Between Wednesday evening and Monday morning–just under 5 days, I spent time in two states, two time zones, and five cities participating in six events–one of them a multi-day experience.

Which is the long way of saying that the last few days have been busy.  Busy enough to have made this trip a decision.  A decision about how much pain I was willing to court and about how I want to live my life.

Friday morning the group I was with wound up discussing a scenario of tension between the demands of being healthy and the desire to live life.  I’d love to have both good health and the ability to pattern my life in the manner I want.  I don’t.  (And I would argue that none of us really do.)  I live in a body that will experience pain if I try to do too much.  I consider myself lucky to know about where that line lies.  And sometimes I choose to push and bring extra pain meds.  And sometimes I choose not to push and to be pain free.  There’s no magic formula.  I try to balance the life I want against what I expect the physical costs of extreme activity to be.

I’m still happy with the choice I made about those 114 hours of my life.  In exchange for a series of mild headaches, which are now over, I got to do several things which are important to me and which will and should enable me to do more similar things.

It was never my intention to stack these days and their events against my pain levels.  It just happened in response to a series of events beyond my control.  And, as I was unwilling to pull out of most of these commitments, I played the balance game.  (There was another commitment which was more optional and which I did not attend.)

Sleep is very important.  And I worked hard to make sure that I got enough.  But, and this may sound odd to some of you, it’s only been about a year and a half since my last surgery, a year and a couple of months since my last major medical procedure, and less than a year since The Headache miraculously ceased.  So my body has not been out of stress for very long.  A lot of my energy still goes toward healing and moving.  I don’t have a big reserve to lean on.  There was a time when I could have done a trip like this, unpacked, gotten a good night of sleep, and started playing catch-up.  And someday, I hope and trust, there will be again.  This time, in this season of my life, it took two good nights of sleep and the extra day in between.

1st Snow

Given that I drove through a snowstorm both of the last two weekends, I wasn’t too surprised to wake up to this.

Unlike last year, it is still snowing.  It’s beautiful but I’m wishing I didn’t  have to go out at all.

There should be mountains in the background, not cloud and fog.  And the clouds have settled in more in the couple of hours since I took there photos.

Telling the story

I read this quote sometime last week:

“Throughout history, the way women have gained control of the female experience is to talk about what is happening, and what it’s like. We see that women’s lives are more enjoyable, more full, and women are more able to summon resilience when women talk openly about their lives.”

It struck me, not because I feel that I as a woman am not allowed to tell my story.  But because I as a person who lives with chronic and repeated serious health issues am not allowed to tell my story.  I can name some of the reasons which are not unknown to us all: a cultural obsession with health, a need to not be vulnerable.  I can name some of the reasons which are less spoken of: a basic lasting stigma of illness, a desire to medicalize all things related to illness rather than approach the experience of them, the need for illness to be among the things in life that we can fix.  I know these things and I have already chosen not to let them dominate how I live with my illnesses.  And yet there are stories from this weekend that I want to tell, but haven’t started to write yet.  And yet, when I started this post it read, “I read this quote yesterday.”

Penelope Trunk, the author of the above quote, was writing about her decision to be open about her miscarriage.  She has taken some heat for that decision.  (Apparently miscarriages and potential abortions are to remain in the private sphere of life.)  Ms. Trunk has a tendency to be incredibly open about her life.  I don’t necessarily want to draw my boundaries where she has drawn hers.  But I do want to draw my own boundaries, not have them delineated for me.  So today I will post this and start writing the stories of the weekend.  Because I think I should.  Because they are stories a lot of people don’t tell or hear.  But mostly, because I want to.  This is my life.