where my mind has gone during this COVID-19 pandemic

I’m learning a lot about myself as we start ramping up in intensity here in my area with precautions. I already tended to keep to myself long before the social distancing (such a vague and confusing term) and shutdowns were in place, and I am lucky that spending all day every day with my toddler is no change to my life (if you are at home with your toddler and need ideas, I am by no means any sort of expert but I’m happy to share the weird things we get up to day to day).

I realized early on that the end of the world probably won’t be some crazy catastrophe like in the Hollywood movies, but rather a culmination from misinformation where no one knows what’s going on and everything interprets things differently. So many people put out opinions all over the internet and media, which we state as universal truths, and everyone can read it and then decides who they believe. I’m not talking anything drastically polarizing issues either. For example, with social distancing (I really hate that term) should we literally stay inside all the time, or can people continue to go for walks around their neighborhoods, workout together outside, go on hikes and bike rides, etc so long as they eyeball keeping 6 feet between them? Because from what I’ve seen, people are out most of the time, and social distancing just means don’t get in anyone’s bubble. But is that enough to stop the rapid spread? (Also note, I don’t think COVID-19 will be the end of the world, but I think it is the biggest thing that has happened in my lifetime as nothing before has managed to shut down the entire world to such an extent).

Food allocations also presents a looming challenge in my mind, and not because I feel that I don’t have enough. I am blessed and don’t have to worry about scarcity, but in thinking about how a quarantine could go on for months, I realize that scarcities in food are more complex than we thought. It’s not just about how much food the average American wastes, or how many people are currently starving, though those were and are huge issues already before COVID-19. But should infectious diseases rampage our populations indefinitely, our way of getting food (grocery stores, shipped from online) would break down and most of us would be left without supplies quickly. Our general systems rely on others to provide food for us, and we don’t really have a backup plan (besides, it seems, aggressive hoarding) when suddenly those others can’t keep the supplies open. We have created large bodies of people that cannot maintain themselves, and I’m not just talking about in urban areas. We don’t know how to farm sustainably, we don’t know how to read the land and know where to find food, or what is edible versus toxic or what we can help grow, what we can preserve and store and how, etc. We are really removed from being able to handle food (well most of us… I know there are lots of small and large scale farmers and permaculturists and foragers who make their way just find without relying too much on external systems). We also don’t think sustainably… how are you going to keep growing your foods when you can’t go buy extra soil at the store? When there are no more instant fertilizing blends or pest killers, and when we don’t know how to plant things that will grow together and survive multiple years? Do we even know how to cook if you don’t have electricity, no stove to boil things, no oven to bake in, no microwave easily available, no manmade refrigeration? Do we have ways to store water for when our infrastructures fail?

And then that leads us to water. This one is even scarier of a thought because we rely completely on water treatment sites and facilities to provide us water (at least where I live). And without water you die much faster than without food. In Maryland, there are not many (if any) natural lakes; they are all manmade and human-maintained which means they aren’t able to keep themselves in an equilibrium that keeps water pollution in check. So can we drink that water? Probably not unless you are desperate (or maybe if you already keep camping filters handy?). So what to do? Most places don’t have well-water established for their homes, and even if they do, you have to worry about what else is getting in and not filtering through. We all know about the chemicals people are finding in water supplies and in fish- from Prozac to birth control, but we forget about other aspects like how close are you to a military base that had a history of dumping chemicals? Do you live near a cemetery that practices embalming (those body goos and embalming formulas have to go somewhere)? Near a highway and its runoff? We haven’t had to think about where we get our water or how contaminated it is if we don’t have a system that attempts to filter it very much in our modern lives and it’s times like this that make that lack of thought all the more concerning.

And let’s talk about reproductive health. Sure we can tell everyone who doesn’t already have a semi-permanent style of birth control (inserts, condoms or birth control pills before they run out, etc) to abstain, but seriously… the human species hasn’t survived because people abstained. If we should have an end of the world, chances are people will continue to have sex and then where does that leave us? Do we even know how to be pregnant and take care of ourselves when we can’t have any medical visits, no vitamins we can buy, no internet to research what’s normal, no community of mothers and wise women to draw from because we’ve all lost that independence and knowledge decades ago. It makes me realize again how important it is to be communal, and why people like birth and postpartum doulas are so important.

And speaking of doulas. What do we do if someone dies? Do we know how to handle a body if there is no infrastructure to take it in for us? When there is no crematory open, no embalmer waiting? Can we still physically dig a hole and know how deep (3 feet, not 6!) to put a body so that it does decompose but also so animals don’t get it? Do we even know how to take care of someone who is dying when we don’t have access to medical care? These may seem like dark thoughts, but most of my rumination was spawned from reading about different practices we followed within the last century. That is not that long ago yet we seem to have lost how to handle and survive anything at a more local level in that time period.

The structure of humans has been that as we grow and make civilizations, we have specializations develop and people take over certain roles. But our communities have also expanded exponentially and now it seems that most communities outsource most of their needs and cannot rely on themselves to survive. Like I live in a census-designated place (apparently really common in Maryland), where we don’t have a common place/town square/mayor’s office, etc. If, in an apocalyptic future, we needed to go to a place to barter and trade we’d have to go to the next town over. There are no real sources of any business in our CDP, and everyone who doesn’t have the ability to work remote or at home (or at the one elementary school in our community) must commute somewhere else. So should infrastructures in our neighboring towns shut down, along with the mail and delivery systems of Amazon, google, etc… what do we have left?

I know this sounds dark, but in actuality I think these reflections help show where we have shifted our priorities as a civilization, and the limitations they present. It makes me wonder what the result of this pandemic will be… will people will retreat more into their own communities and try to bolster their innate skills and learn how to cooperate once more? I fear it will just make people try to switch to remote work more, and try to buy more supplies to stockpile in case of the next pandemic.

As someone who is studying death, these kinds of thoughts also make me think about our choices and if they matter on a large scale human spectrum (because obviously it matters for individuals, communities, societies, etc). We know we are all going to die…. do we as a whole make attempts to shift how- like work to address how progress comes with limitations and how we need to balance long term results together all as a team, or do we just let things continue in the direction they are going and hope the outcome won’t be any of the directions I worry about? And if the former, how do we do that?

And on a slightly lighter ending note… I apparently talk about green burials so often that my daughter decided to give her grandma’s garden gnome one:

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weeds – friends to the soil (and supplements for us)

When thinking about how best to prepare any type of disaster, natural or otherwise, one of the first questions that always comes up (apparently after how much toilet paper do I need to stockpile), is where do we get our food? Say you’ve got a supply of some cans and non-perishables stored away… is there a way to ensure you will still have some noms if you aren’t at home, or your house is impacted, or you run out of edible supplies when disaster strikes?

Since I was young I have been in love with the idea of foraging and understanding ecosystems enough to know what different plants are telling us. I recently read The Hidden Life of Trees written by Peter Wohlleben, a German forester who started studying the trees in the forests he helped commodify. He figured out so many insights about how a forest is doing, what the natural age of trees and their progressions through life look like in various conditions, which ones play well with others and which ones bide their time until they can takeover. He addresses forest fires and moisture-loss, how and why trees grow weak and unstable when their root system is maimed (which is why you see so many felled trees have those huge horizontally spreading root systems!), and more. (Did you know most of the time moss is not a good indication of which way civilization is? It forms on the side of the tree where rainwater drips down, so only if civilization causes specific tree warping patterns would it really line up.) Anyway, it was a fascinating book that argued maybe we need to look at trees a bit more like how we see animals rather than just as firewood and lumber, and it gave logical reasons for why we shouldn’t clear old trees from forests. In general the book helped me start to think about different frameworks for how we can think about ecosystems, from forests to our local suburban landscapes.

It was after that book that I started back in on permaculture books, finishing up Paradise Lot by Eric Toensmeier and Jonathan Bates the other night. Though I have differing ideas on a few points, I’m pretty confident that I have found my people. I have been getting all manner of ideas and new knowledge that I am eager to try out in our backyard (and to some extent the front, depending on how much we can do without the HOA getting annoyed) from this book. With all these new plans swirling in my head, I started looking into how to be more self-reliant especially in a suburb. Most of the country lives in suburbs of some sort now and we tend to waste our resource spaces with grass and large houses, furthering dig ourselves into the mud should grocery stores shut down/online shopping go offline. And so began my quest on how to start to amend that trend, beginning with our own little family. In a future post I’ll talk about water conservation after I’ve learned more.

Since the weather has been warming, Figlet and I have been adventuring outside in our backyard often to figure out what’s already happening out there, sans human intervention. We have identified that we currently have a lot of ground ivy, hoary bittercress, wild onion or wild garlic (not sure which yet), and some specific scatterings of daffodils (Narcissus pseudonarcissus), mock/Indian strawberry, and wine raspberry, so I decided to start my permaculture/foraging research with those guys.

What I learned is that all but daffodils are edible, and also that the appearance of many of these plants in a yard can indicate signs about the state of the soil. I’ll go into each below.

Ground Ivy (Glechoma hederacea)

These pretty little guys are popping up all around our yard mostly around the center bits of our yard, and around the above-ground tree roots. Apparently these guys show up and prevent soil erosion (which supports one of our theories that the hilly nature of our yard means that soil has been getting washed down the hill, exposing the tree roots, what with their horizontal growth, over time). Ground ivy is a cool plant because it was also historically used to brew beer, predating hops! Their presence might indicate that there is a high level of organic matter in the soil, which bodes well since I was hoping to make a sort of mandala of vegetables grow around their areas, in between the tree roots.

Hairy/hoary Bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta)

https://www.instagram.com/p/B9j5Jb8HIOm/

This guy has edible leaves and flowers, that I’ve read one can use similarly to other cresses (like watercress!). I’m still working on learning more about this little guy.

Wild Garlic (Allium vineale) or wild onion (Allium canadense)

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Looks like we will never run out of wild onion! 🐌 #backyardforaging #wildonion #alliumcanadense #allium #foraging

A post shared by cally (@feralgoing) on Feb 18, 2020 at 6:53am PST

I’m not sure if we have crow garlic (Allium vineale) or wild onion (Allium canadense) but we’ll see when the flowers come up and/or when I get around to digging up some of the bulbs… (or if I just get better at identification). Either way they are the most prolific thing in our yard at the moment, and both are edible. There are also other edible types called Allium ursinum and Allium tricoccum… and basically the internet calls them all wild onion and wild garlic so this is where the scientific names (and photos) really help.

Wine Raspberry (Rubus Phoenicolasius)

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Hello there, excessively spiny friend. Are you wine raspberries or someone more nefarious? I'm guessing these guys are invasive based on their profilic appearance in the woods, but I do hear their berries are delicious… if you can beat the birds to them. 🐌 #backyardforaging #wineraspberry #wildplants #rubusphoenicolasius #invasiveplants #edibleplants

A post shared by cally (@feralgoing) on Feb 4, 2020 at 8:15am PST

This guy is a non-native from Japan. It produces berries similar to raspberries, but apparently are so good, you’ll have to be on the ball to beat the birds to them. They also have intimidating looking spikes and are showing up all in our woods. Peter Wohlleben would probably point out how they are able to take over so easily because the woods don’t have their natural level of fall trees and other debris to kill off such invaders.

Mock/Indian Strawberry (Duchesnea/Potentilla Indica)

I kept thinking these plants were wild strawberry… but the leaves were so weird, and the flowers were yellow. Google led me to Mock Strawberry. Apparently these berries are kind of bland, but the leaves can made into a potherb or they can be made into a poultice and used for eczema!!! HWAHHHH? HELLO FREE HOME REMEDY.

Moss

Apparently this is a huge sign that our yard has areas that are acidic and soggy (the latter which isn’t surprising since a lot of our yard is in the shade and was buried under full leaves for years).

Other familiar faces of the suburbs

Crabgrass (Digitaria sanguinalis)

This guy shows up in soil that is lacking nitrogen and calcium. It can also indicate that the soil is acidic, which might be good for some crops like blueberries, potatoes, and tomatoes, but won’t work if it too acidic. I’ll keep searching the yard to see if we have any and add a photo later if I should discover one.

Plantain (Plantago major)

Grows in compacted (heavy trampled) soil, that is often very claylike. Plantains are edible in their entirety (squeezing the juice out of them, or using the leaves) and have a rich history of being used for bladder and GI problems, skin problems, toothaches, you name it! Still looking for some in our yard, but so far I haven’t found any.

Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale)

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Found one! A single dandelion plant hiding behind our trash can by the side of the house. These are my favorite weeds because they make decent tea, are packed with nutrients, and the presence of them in your yard means you are lacking some soil nutrients but their long taproots are here to help draw some up for all to enjoy. ❤ 🐌 #dandelion #taraxacumofficinale #weeds #edibleweeds #backyardforaging #weedsarefriends

A post shared by cally (@feralgoing) on Mar 16, 2020 at 3:24pm PDT

The infamous yard weed of every traditional grass-growers nightmare. These guys show up in compacted soil, and their presence is actually a good thing because they grow long taproots that help pull nutrients from deep in the soil and help fertilize your yard. Also they are said to grow in places with low calcium but high potassium. Dandelions are also high in a bunch of nutrients and can be used to make tea, used instead of coffee grounds (baking the roots), and their leaves are edible as well for greens. I found this little guy on the side of the house… so many the foundation was made with potassium?? (I know literally nothing about housing materials).

Speedwell (Veronica hederifolia and Veronica filiformis)

https://www.instagram.com/p/B9sve2QnUac/

I saw the purple version of this (V. hederifolia) flowering next to the sidewalk off the highway by where we live. I then found a different species of it with pink leaves (V. filiformis) in our backyard in one spot, so I might want to get some water-hogging, dirt-aerating plants for there as apparently these guys pop up where the soil has bad drainage and compaction.

My gardening direction

As I learn more, I find myself so excited to experiment with the land we are renting. I’m like a mad scientist, that ignores rhyme and reason and formal frameworks of established scientific directions to be like “BUT HOW CAN I GROW THIS WARM SEASON CROP IN THE TAIL END OF WINTER RIGHT NEXT TO THIS INVASIVE NATIVE WEED?!” I realized my style of gardening is pretty aggressively minimalist (and insane/defying convention and years of human cultivation strategies). I want to learn how to garden without any enhancements… no added soil, no external mulch, no buying lime or sand… basically only growing with the land and current ecosystem I have, general gardening tools (a shovel, an aerating fork thing, a smaller trowel), sticks and logs for fences, recycled things from the house (I used egg cartons to start some seeds indoors on window sills but am now trying to grow without that method as well), kitchen scraps for compost, and then my one caveat is buying seeds. My thought is that it would be interesting to see how someone could take whatever land they have, whatever the conditions, and really work with what they have to see what they could produce. I can take it to the extreme and say I’m curious to see how can we grow and make food when Home Depot, Lowes, Tractor Supply Co, etc are barren and we have to just know how to grow with those packets of seeds we stored long ago and nothing else but the land we are near. I want to learn how to tend to the land that has been completely overhauled by humans… de-forested years ago, landscaped down to the weirdest of conditions, probably with big ole trees erratically sticking roots up aboveground, or patches of dry clay near housing foundations. I want to experiment to see how one can really work with the remaining surviving weedy nature and see if humans can live off, and tend to that kind of land. Stay tuned to more adventures as the seasons progress, if I am successful or fail miserably.

how to have a hobby as an adult

I don’t know about you, but I feel like the culture I grew up in bred me to think of hobbies more as boxes on a checklist to get into college or for the utilitarian purpose of each hobby, rather than any inherent internal value. My mom tried to instill in me the light-hearted aspects, that sports we did were for fun first, and health second, but the cultural competition and need to use it for the resume always loomed in my mind.

As a result I am now a stay-at-home mom who doesn’t remember what it is like to have a genuine hobby for the sake of nothing more than enjoyment. I tend to think of what I do as some extension of a future career, a monetization plan, an improvement goal. I have always read a crazy amount in an obsessive manner, but for some reason reading has never felt like a hobby. I do love writing; mostly blogging which I began doing in my pre-teen years, and dabbling in poetry again lately, but the latter was bastardized for a while with this drive to BE a blogger. Blogger with a capital B. This made me think I needed to do the Amazon affiliate program, to constantly use tagging, track followers and cater to get more, and to obsess over a host of other SEO stuff. It really ruined the initial intend of blogging for me, which was just to get my thoughts out and if I was lucky find some like-minded people to chime in and have conversations with. You know, making that virtual (and hopefully later in-person) community. I’m slowly coming around to that original intent again.

Lately, I have had the desire to play video games again. I was pretty much a casual Nintendo gamer as a youth. I liked the community-esque multiplayer things like Mario Kart and Smash Bros, loved (love) the Zelda franchise, and was also always compelled to get the next Animal Crossing game. I recently wanted to get back into AC as the new one is coming out in a month (!!!) and it looks amazing (but they all do to me). I feel like a lot of the world in AC was inadvertently formulative for my early inclinations about what a community could look like. Yes, I know it’s a fantasy game about humanistic animals doing relatively little each day besides chatter endlessly, but oh my gosh does it feel cute and homey. It feels like it is the extreme opposite of how busy our days get. In the game you basically have nothing to do but walk around talking to neighbors to see how they are doing, figure out if they need errands done, or chat them up until they engage you to a challenge, give you a gift, or give you some interesting gossip. Depending on the game (they have gotten more involved in newer versions) you can have more influence over the town itself, changing its infrastructure, being mayor, etc, which opens up how involved you can get to a crazy level.

Anyway, video games have never been a hobby for me fully because it was always something that was distracting me from what I should be doing. It always felt like, if I was playing video games, especially alone, that the pressure came down to “you should be doing X instead”. It was likened to binging on Netflix before Netflix existed, and so over time I let it go bit by bit. I know a lot of people think that playing video games is avoiding real life, and I get that view, for sure, but there is something magical about investing in a virtual world and having the patience to finish a game (if it is finish-able) or commit to something and see the rich creation of the world developed in a game. On the extreme end, I found a gamer who consistently kept up 4 different Animal Crossing games for YEARS, which is an achievement in itself not to get bored after the new releases come out.

Andd I lost my train of thought. Hobbies. Right. So in a nutshell, I have found it increasingly difficult to develop a hobby without trying to apply it somehow into being a future career. For example, lately I have been huge on getting my little bug outside every day, and teaching myself everything from naturalism, permaculture, herbalism, foraging, gardening, and more and trying to mix those all together to make a world in which my little one is sparked by her outdoor adventures, and as a result always feels happy and comfortable going back into nature, even if it’s just a smidgen of urban non-landscaped plots in a city, to feel a bit freer. This is also self-serving because I was given a similar framework in my childhood and as a result find immense happiness in just digging in dirt, walking in the woods, or being surrounded by plants. I’m getting a bit more radical in how I want to see plants around me (I sorely wish I could become a living version of the DC comics’ Poison Ivy), working my mind through how I feel about non-native invasives, landscaping and humans’ obsessive control of nature for no reason (I currently am hating grass when it’s planted in plants that literally get no foot traffic, but requires a huge amount of natural resources and energy and money to maintain). I’m also trying to start a chapter of the Free Forest School in my area… which is a cool organization that helps train parents and caregivers to get together and help get their little ones ages 0-6 outside in nature and playing more freely (with adult supervision but no adult-led focuses), to allow the children to develop their own relationship with nature with their peers.

I suppose all these things would be hobbies… the reading, the specific studying and enacting of nature related activities, the writing, the sporadic video game playing, etc… but none of them feel like hobbies. I don’t know how to put my finger on it, but it still feels like they are all just stand-ins for what could be a career if I was driven enough to follow any of them (though I do NOT have the attention span to become a youtube gamer. Love watching them, especially the horror gamer content from youtubers like John Wolfe), but that life is not for me). But overall, I don’t know how to do things as hobbies. Can daydreaming be a hobby? I’m great at that. Eternal idea formulating?

I suppose my obsession with certifications, courses, and what have you would be a hobby, if I didn’t regret most of them almost immediately. I just consistently yearn to collect more knowledge. I’m naturally curious, to a fault. I want to absorb all the information I can and spin in around and reshape it to come up with new ideas about life and how it all fits together. But all that just leads me back to thinking as a hobby. So there we have it. Catch me sitting there pondering things on my free time (or in the middle of the night when the insomnia sets in), looking like Rodin’s infamous statue, The Thinker.

death as my guide

Death studies

I have been reading books on books about death. Death from the perspective of the dying, death from the vantage point of medical professions, death from philosophers, death from people who have lost someone. It’s weird to say, but I love death stuff. Not because I am morbid and have a weird fascination with the idea of being dead (frankly that scares the bejeezus out of me and sends my head into terrifying loops trying to conceptualize it), but because outside of being born, dying/being dead is the only thing I will share with all humans/living things on earth (except maybe tardigrades, and I’m still not convinced they aren’t aliens).

It’s a strange place to be in, being a student of death. I began by systemically reading the most respected books on the subject, am currently looking for a hospice place to volunteer at, and I begin my formal death doula study work in January. In other words, I have jumped down the rabbit hole and am going full speed into embracing the world of mortality.

My shift into this new paradigm of living probably has heavy roots from a topic I mentioned in a previous post. If one lives in a culture obsessed with youth and our early years (think of all the adages we use: “age before beauty”  “you are young, live a little”, etc) having a condition such as eczema/TSW/gene mutation that causes you to have “aged” and sensitive skin to the extent that it alters how you live day to day… eventually you are bound to reflect on the life you are living. The serendipity of ending such a reflection ending up on death’s doorstep is when you look around, you realize everyone will eventually join you. When someone loses a loved one, they are faced with their mortality. When someone grows up able-bodied and becomes disabled, they reflect anew on their mortality. When one grows up in a society that values/develops around intrinsic factors that deviate from one’s own, the forced recognition of not being/having the “in” qualities caused mortal reflections. In every scenario, at some point everyone will be faced with accepting their mortality, so when you do, you are just accepting what makes you innately human, knowing you will die, and the company it comes with is surprising sweet.

I have also been plagued with the urge to try and communicate what I learn from my deep dive into death, and struggle to decide what medium works best to do so. My issue is that I prefer the written hand, but how can I reach others to connect with when the written world is dominated by themed bloggers with deep followings, pay-for-ad bloggers, lifestyle bloggers, and other algorithm-based advantaged bloggers. I miss the early blogging days where it was unique enough that getting your words out what enough to provoke communal responses, before it required hashtags and search optimization. Or maybe I am simply not as compelling of a writer or communicator or thinker, and so my words as mostly unheeded from the larger populace. Either option has the same result. I am stuck learning so much but unable to communicate it with mostly anyone other than my lovely husband, who can patiently decipher my meaning even when my words are obscured by months of sleep deprivation.

I recently also contemplated podcasts, despite my obvious inability to (compelling) speak aloud. My logic was that I would improve in the former, and that most people don’t enjoy reading long form anymore, unless it is streamlined directly into their subset of interest. But who knows, maybe I will return to this idea in a few months or so. It could be fun.

Speaking of months…

Ours flew by and we are finally all moved into our new home. It’s a lovely little 3-bedroom we are renting that is shaped in such a way that our baby’s room doesn’t receive much noise from our upstairs TV room, despite us being able to hear her from said bedroom. As a result, we have been able to talk above a whisper and host friends/my parents after the baby goes to sleep, despite her habit towards light sleeping.

It’s good to be home. I missed this neighborhood, with its friendliness and quirky characters. I am excited to see our little one grow up in this town that is not a town (actually though. I googled it and it is apparently a census-designated place or an unincorporated area with no definitive boundaries). We also have vultures…? I mean, yes of course. I’m studying death so a bird of death must appear!

At the same time, the transition here hasn’t as smooth as I would hope. Having lived away for years now, I have developed a plethora of bad habits that I need to break (like feeling trapped in a city and thus emotionally eating to the point that I gained 20+ pounds in a year!).

I also need to learn to balance my time in a whole new way now that I have more freedom (including the stress reduction of not being able to get myself and my little one forest bathing/into nature). The flip side of this lovely return to a land with trees and fewer cars is that I have been so inundated in environments that always have a heavy amount of ambient light that I no longer know how to sleep well in the deeper darkness of my childhood town. And at night, every sound this house makes sets me on edge (but that’s the case with almost all new places).

In lieu of sleeping

So now I’ve constructed this post to clear my mind. I also re-read many of my older posts. Since getting into death as a subject of interest, I have been reflecting a lot on myself. I have, and continue to, expend so much energy trying to conform to fit in with models of how I have been trained to believe the world needs to work. Many of my posts reflect this as I oscillate back and forth from trying to get my entrepreneurial start to trying to conform to a cookie cutter career; both in an attempt to fit in with this world model I have internalized from my years on this earth. I’m not saying that reflecting on my mortality has rid me of this tendency, but more so that it has helped me highlight the neuroses of it, which in turn is letting me better chip away at the anxiety that comes from it. Though I am no longer to having the ultimate job/career smoothly going, I have gotten better at trying to figure out what my self-decided purpose is with the time I have on this earth.

old plans meet new horizons (aka what I do when the little one sleeps)

In the past, I may have mentioned how I am obsessed with the fourth trimester and all things postpartum, or how when I was in my physical therapy doctorate program, I was interested in going into a women’s health specialty.

After I left the program, I searched for ways to slowly transition into the women’s health field from a different angle. And so from April through October 2018, I worked as a women’s health information specialist for Dr. Brianne Grogan, a women’s health PT and health and wellness coach and the creator of FemFusion Fitness. It was one of those random connections that seems fortuitous- in fact I had contacted her years ago after reading her book (way before I even had applied to PT schools) because I was interested in learning more about women’s health.

My job for her entailed handling email inquiries from women trying to understand

• what was going on with their bodies
• what content Bri had out, and
• who they should see (doctors, PTs, etc).

I also worked on various projects like helping make distributable content for bone building exercises, and I collected research for her new topics. On occasion I did some help with audience outreach to get her free content out into the world.

In time though we amicably went our separate ways. She moved on to focus more on holistic health practices and less on women’s health physical therapy and rehabilitation specifically, and so I continued on in my own direction, which at the time mostly included prepping for my baby’s arrival into the world. Working for Bri was an awesome opportunity because not only is she the nicest, but I got to brush the cobwebs out of my brain about women’s health rehabilitation and really delve into the subject (if you haven’t checked it out already, her youtube is full of free videos of explanations and exercises that cover a gambit of topics like prolapse, diastasis recti, pelvic pain, etc. Check it out here).

Afterward having my baby, I had not lost the love for the fascinating field of women’s health, I merely needed time to rethink how I could enter the world as a professional, no longer coming from the physical therapy realm.

I had been contemplating the idea of becoming a postpartum doula for a long time, and I finally realized what I was missing in that thought process. My objective couldn’t be simply to become a traditional postpartum doula because I would always have to explain about my skin condition, that I’m not contagious, what that means for my services, and work around my own flares and down time. But in reality when I was thinking about my own limitations, I should have been thinking about who could relate to having them. This led me to thinking about those expecting, new, or seasoned moms that have to live with eczema or other chronic conditions (shoutout to all the spoonies out there!) while growing/raising a babe or two (or three or more), and what their needs might be.

It’s not uncommon for people with chronic illnesses to have higher rates of depression, and it’s not uncommon for moms to suffer from postpartum depression, so what about those unlucky ladies that get hit with both? How do they find a support system that bridges both gaps, knowing that some of their depression comes from living with an incurable condition, and the other from being steamrolled with new hormones and emotions as a new life blends into theirs? That is a demographic I feel has not been studied or served enough. And so, I have begun to slowly pull my own experiences (both personal and professional) to better understand and then serve this group. I have been working on merging three of my interests to accomplish this:

1. postpartum education (e.g my postpartum doula course and my position researching and writing postpartum mental health pieces),
2. community engagement projects (two in the works: one to help educate mamas of color who may face discrimination from the medical/healthcare world or not have access to it at all, and one about how to train churches to better serve new moms in their area), and
3. volunteering more with the National Eczema Association. This helps me to be in the know about what policies are being created (or challenged), as well as what new treatments or practices are out.

I use these three directions to help understand my own struggles, as well as figure out how I might work to help mothers out there like me (or other parents/caregivers!). It also gives me more reasons to continually I brush up on healthcare policies, systemic support options, familial/community building techniques, measurable outcome scales, all manner of recent research and studies, etc, which I tend to like to peruse anyway.

I have also been exploring the other side of my interests- traditions and cultures around death. Soon I will be taking Alua Arthur’s End of Life training and learn how to best serve individuals and their families around their time of dying. I think it’s such a taboo thing that we really need to talk about more. The amount of people with traumatizing stories and feelings of regret around their loved ones times of dying is astounding, and historically many cultures prevented this by being present and accepting death as nature, not some scary thing never to be spoken about. As Alua says “talking about sex won’t make you pregnant. Talking about death won’t make you dead.”

I think talking about mortality brings up some important conversations (even just with oneself) about the relative value of our day to day decisions. Interestingly enough, many of my postpartum books now overlap with my study of death. I recently read Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time by Briget Schulte and it had multiple mentions of how mortality was regarded over the years, and how that was reflected in how we approach our day to day lives, including our aggressive work-above-all work culture today. The logic is, if you think about your mortality to a normal moderate amount, you make choices that are more centered around your mortality. We aren’t talking about the “YOLO” ideology, but rather decisions such as ‘maybe you don’t need to take that extra late business call that’s not really mission critical in lieu of spending time with your loved ones’, and that kind of logic.

Oh that reminds me- I did recently finish a class through Mothering Arts about how to create a community supported postpartum space that I really enjoyed. It offered lots of insight in how to welcome in new mamas as well as community “grannies” and draw-in local professional women to offer their expertise to the moms. My only rub is that I want to create a larger scale space than that demographic (though not necessarily a large number of people at one time). I want to create a space (maybe a physical community shop) that welcomes everyone is to have discussions, seek community, find aid… almost something that mixes time banks, death cafes, postpartum meet-ups, with a part-time bartering system, all wrapped into a welcoming looking shop. I get inspired by places like HausWitch though my target audience is slightly different.

Obviously my long term goals are still being constructed, but I think one day I would like to own this type of shop with my sister (who is paving her career in graphic design/UX and my best friend (who is a social worker), offering classes and discussions, innovative tech, and community services centered around the biggest times of change (birth/postpartum, and death). We also want to raise families together so working together would give us the time and space to figure out how to make it all work. ❤

On the book front, I’m currently reading Witches of America by Alex Mar which I’m finding so inspiring. It’s not that I want to be a witch per se, but I love learning about different routes of beliefs and what draws people to them, and Mar explores this topic so well.

Anyway, as the colder months approach, I’m in the hibernation phase of life again. Lots of reading, snuggles with the little one, obsessions with soups, teas, and decaf lattes. My family and I are moving soon, which is a new adventure on its own because we are finally leaving Massachusetts, but is a lot of mental overload on how to move across multiple states (any advice is welcome). The move might be hugely impactful on my skin too because I think my condition gets worse in the fall due to a mold allergy (and fall here is pretty moldy!). I’m actually friggin’ psyched to be moving- but more on that another day.

 

the night school (part 1)

I like finding free things to do online (21 days of yoga, weekly journal prompts, etc). I don’t always carry through with many of them, but I enjoy the challenge and the game of setting up something to do, and usually am drawn towards things that involved a lot of self reflection.

This particular project is called The Night School by Maia Toll. I am doing the “part-time” option, which means I will be focusing on the weekly writing prompts (because I don’t have the time or attention span to watch the discussion and ritual videos… I’m still not super into watching videos that require intense focus). But even so, just doing the weekly prompts includes readings from her book (see below) and some general context and discussion points. I look forward to seeing what comes of doing it for the “semester”.

This week’s assignment was: What in the world feels alive to you and what feels lifeless? Why? Examine your preconceptions.

What feels alive to me? I think I define aliveness too literally, but the email also goes into detail about the energies of things which I find easier to relate to. When I was growing up in Maryland we lived near a small woods. The woods were cool because you couldn’t really get lost in them (it was fairly easy to run out into some neighborhood), but if you knew your way, you could walk through the woods to get all the way to the C&O canal without having to pass really anyone’s homes. I often went into these woods when I was annoyed or upset, or just when I wanted to bike/run through, and if it was getting later in the day and darkness started creeping in (as it always did in the woods before the neighbors since there were so many trees) I remember at some point I started talking to the woods asking for safe passage. I specifically would say the same phrase every time, in French, because I thought the language was older and thus more likely that the trees would know it. Now it’s also interesting because I never had the feeling that the woods were hostile or required me to ask for safe passage, but I always felt it deserved the respect of the question anyway, and that more likely the woods would protect me from something else. In other way, I never had anything bad or shady happen to me in the woods and I continue to visit it when I visit my parents.

Now living in the city where I do I have become much more anxious than I used to be. Part of it was working through my own neuroses of being a stay-at-home mom in a culture where that is very unusual (I am also a young mom in this particular city culture). But even as I work through that hurdle, I realize the city itself makes me anxious. It has such haphazard energy all the time. It is alway noisy during the day (July and September seem to be when all the road construction happens), but it’s also a tiny city that has narrow streets and crazy road patterns, and yet the same 1/4 mile strip of street will be shared with 3 separate road construction projects, 50+ cyclists who have to weave into car traffic to pass one another or to turn, pedestrians that no one can see due to parked cars, standing aside cross walks that have varying degrees of visibility (from electronically lit up to make shift single cones denoting the spot on the sidewalk where they should start to cross). The energy is impatient. People are constantly walking around, no smiles to spare (I often try to say hello to humans on principle and get a range of results). Though the speed isn’t always fast, the tempo varies abruptly as though the very act of having to engage with one another is a burden. And the chug of cars is never-ending. We have driven at all times and find that 3am to 8am is a pleasant time to drive on a weekend in the city. On a weekday, it’s more like 3am to 7am. The weather can be obnoxious, from sun beating down at all angles (it’s literally always directly in our faces when we drive in any direction in the morning) and the winds pick up strong enough to blow away our baby on account of the various wind tunnels created by lots of buildings and few trees. It feels chaotic and it often makes me agitated to encounter it. It took me a long time to realize that this pulse of energy existed and how it impacted me but over time it has become more clear.

Now that is not to say there aren’t pockets that are more peaceful. I keep finding some but the problem is they are hard to get too or fleeting in nature. For example, I jogged through the tree-part of the city to get to an open house for a toddler music class, and minus the fear of being late, the whole adventure was quite relaxing. It had the iconic early fall feel and the class was very cute. That kind of energy emitted a peace that I crave often, and as such, I’ll definitely be taking Fi back, but always by foot if possible.

Examining my preconceptions… well in a nutshell it would seem to follow the standard assumption of city = bad energy, and woods = good energy. But it could be argued that the reason I enjoyed my parents’ woods was because it was near enough to civilization that I never had to feel lost or in real danger. And it could be argued that there are cities that can exude a good time of peaceful energy, particularly ones that are not so jammed with traffic, have more explicit community, and dedicate more time to their green spaces equally across their land. And I know I personally wouldn’t enjoy living in a large woods all alone. I like people- or well, I like community. I think both extremes: alone in a large wood and emotionally alone in a dense city have the same energy to me, fearful. There is something I find primally terrifying about being alone. And not in a “I’ll have to do things for myself kind of way” but in a “no one will have your back if something goes wrong” kind of way. So resonant energies that feel good to me have to leak some kind of energy that feels communal. A crowded Boston T train doesn’t feel communal because everyone is looking out for themselves, usually annoyed to be on the train, and avoiding eye contact with one another, pretending they are alone while sandwiched like sardines. The idyllic memoirs of people traveling in European trains not so long ago had more of the communal feel, with older adults looking out for young children traveling alone, with space on trains to sit and eat, with an impetus to reach out and connect to your neighbor if for no other reason that to pass the time (and that was not unique to Europe, I just happened to have read a French memoir more recently).

Anyway, I’ll stop there for now. My brain has travelled off on to other things.

let’s talk about death

I seem to be drawn to fields of study that general society deems taboo. From talking about vaginas and all things women’s health, to my desire to talk about death, I really seem to have no boundaries. And so, with that, let’s talk about death.

I recently came across the profession of death doulas, and if I have a calling, I think it’s to become a death doula one day. More on that in a bit. First, look at this nifty, relevant journal that I had to buy for my future death doula training:

And now back to the topic at hand.

So what is a doula?

I believe a doula is traditionally defined as a woman who serves, and is used to denote women who work with other women, specifically in a birth and postpartum context. Both birth and postpartum doulas work as support people for pregnant women/moms, helping them to navigate various systems and life changes. Historically, communities were stronger and so the need for doulas was not so defined (women generally were supported by other women of varying ages, from friends to skilled midwives, and this support could start during the pregnancy and continue through childrearing years). But as we’ve become more individualized and modernized, this communal support has seen rapid decline, and so the doula profession developed to help remedy the lapse of the support.

So then, death doulas?

Well, another consequence of the rapid modernization and aggressive individualism has been a shift away from dealing with death. We don’t tend to our deceased personally, we often have family members in homes that we don’t visit, we see more and more people dying in hospitals alone, or dying after enduring unending painful medical attempts to save/prolong their lives. More and more people are starting to feel that the way we treat the dying, and the lack of support around the times of dying are wrong, and it was from this belief that the profession of a death doula was formed.

The first formalized death doula I believe was Henry Fersko-Weiss. Inspired by the birth doula model, and disappointed by his own experience with his father’s and many of his patients’ deaths, Ferkso-Weiss wanted to create a profession that would allow for people to die better.

I know this is a weird and uncomfortable thing to get around

How on earth does one die better? Dying is miserable! It’s the end of life, etc. It’s hard to wrap one’s head around it, but that doesn’t make it any less important. A consequence of our culture’s death aversion has been increased fear. I distinctly remember my own personal existential crisis around age 7 or so when I confessed to my best friend that I was terrified about dying and becoming nothing. She replied back that this is why many people turn to religion, because it gives us something to believe in (very wise words for a 7-year old). This led me to years of trying to decide whether I believed in something or not (jury’s still out) and if not, how did I make sure I had a meaningful life until my time was over. The culmination of years following show a web of confused choices as I tried (and continue to try) to figure out what is important to me. As a result, I personally come across as erratic and fickle because I seem to change my mind instantaneously when in actuality I am constantly weighing my choices via long term projections, and thus constantly tweaking my day to day behaviors.

Now many people think that thinking and talking about death will get you depressed and worried. I believe the results of the death doula profession are seeing the opposite. Many people find that understanding that we are mortal and working towards accepting that allow them to appreciate life more. And people draw to being death doulas seem to be extreme lovers of life. My personal role model is Alua Arthur. She has an amazing video called I Plan People’s Death For A Living, which so distinctly highlights why she does what she does, and how it’s not as morbid as you think.

To fill the time between now and when I start actively studying to become a death doula (so after the baby (babies?) is (are?) in high school most likely), I have begun the process of reading all there is to read on dying, death, and how we as humans think about it, and how we process and deal with our/our loved ones’ mortality. It’s a fascinating field. And yes, it definitely can provoke the waterworks, but that’s just part of being human.

It’s also interesting because having the skin condition/autoimmune issues I do has made me much more aware of my mortality. If everyone is going on about how your 20s are your magic years, your skin is still great and you are super healthy, yatta yatta, than I already identify as someone who is past her prime. And I don’t feel negatively about this, but I do believe it influences the way I see the world and makes me think about the future in a more concrete fashion than many of my peers. Like when I said I wanted kids before 30, I realized I was 26, that it takes 10 months (ish) to create a baby, and so if I want to be done having kids by 30, it was time to start (and luckily my partner felt the same way).

I’ll end there for now, but this will probably be a running series of posts because it helps me get things out of my head if I write them down.

the man who tamed the birds

There are moments when we see something amazing, something that is out of the ordinary or just generally impressive. In these moments, it’s often the case that what we are seeing is Time.

As a new mom, with the privilege of choice to stay at home (which in itself is a misnomer of a phrase because the babe and I often venture out of the home ), I have an unprecedented view of Time. That isn’t to say that I have more time than anyone else, but that I am in a unique position to view it.

Often I must wait it out with Time as my babe sleeps. Time waits for no man, or so they say, but it does cozy down with a parent waiting on a sleeping child. Time and I, we sit and drink tea, and read books, and very often daydream in the quiet stolen moments of when the baby slumbers.

When the baby is awake we sometimes accompany Time on his off moments, the pockets of space where others are ensconced in their own busyness, to head out as a mother-daughter dyad and explore the world. We meander along aimlessly, especially if the weather is fair.

On one such occasion, walking down what I consider a confused highway (Mass Ave), the baby and I encountered Time as he followed along beside an older Asian man. This man caught my eye as I walked by because he too, clearly had noticed Time and abruptly but unalarmingly, stopped not too long after passing me and the baby by.

But what really kept my attention were the birds. They, these pigeons of the city, noticed the man’s approach and quickly behaved like their feral-er cousins and flocked, in rolling bumbling waves, towards the man until they were crowded opposite to him, separated by the chains of an open air lot.

The man, clearly practiced, produced a black pouch from his person, opened it deftly, and began methodically tossing measured handfuls of some sort of seeds to the bird crowd. The pigeons continued their rolling bumble over one another as they entropically scattered to maximize their collection rates.

All through this, I had slowed down myself, intrigued by this fellow Time companion, and smiled as I thought about how after this gentleman must have routinely stopped with Time to have these birds now recognize his approach in earnest.

If you ask me, I can generically say where I was (though I never know what road it was save for off Mass Ave, but I have no recollection of the hour or day. I have seen him once again since that first encounter. This second sighting, in which I paused my husband to witness as well, all I can recall are he man and his black pouch full of seeds. Other than that, Time has rubbed away any other specifics from my mind, because indeed those specifics don’t matter.

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Hey, if what you read seemed dated or familiar, I’ve been combining all my other blogs’ content to this site. Please bear with me as I post older content.  🙂

why doesn’t the postpartum period include eczema care?

As you may or may not know about me, my goal in life (career-wise at least) is to create a company that cultivates support for women with chronic illnesses as they embark on becoming mothers. One of my dreams is that services provided will help to make up for the loss of midwifery-type support that towns and cities used to have, and combat the decrease of share “wise woman” spaces, but specifically in the context of helping women who have varying autoimmune or other chronic disorders.

In my dream scenario, this company I create is inspired by community and healthy social growth, devoted to bringing together all people, not just those who can pay, or who are healthy.

If I ever delved into having a physical space for the company (as opposed to being a traveling owner), the space would be free to visit (when not going to a scheduled appointment), and would have lots of nooks and tables and chairs for people to enjoy the space, and some days would have events that would have an entrance fee but it would be reasonable, and would include a free meal that my husband would make along with other perks like meet-the-community-support-team, free lectures/discussions, etc. We’d work with local hotels, bed and breakfasts, and other places that rent out rooms to make sure there were plenty of accommodations ready too, which would help bring money back into the town.

Anyway, I could go on for days, but as a result of my lofty goal, I constantly have my eyes peeled for events or opportunities that bring about that community feel, especially in women’s health. 4th Trimester Arizona is one of those awesome events I learned of after it occurred. It seemed like the perfect fusion of mixing the community members (moms, dads, grandparents, etc) with local businesses, and with health/health care professionals, allowing for support and engagement for new moms and their families. The event included workshops, panels, free wellness services, a dad track, bonding activities, and more, all with the intent of strengthening community.

Going through a few of the speakers of 4th Trimester Arizona led me to Matrescence 4th Trimester Planning and Support, an organization started by Caitlin Green Cheney and Elizabeth Wood. They hold workshops that include how to prepare for the 4th trimester, including how to make a support system. Here is a Q&A session they did that tells a little more about their company and their backgrounds/how they got to where there are. They also encouraged me, because although they are more of a service you pay for, their intent is still to help provide education in tandem with support. I am finding that one thing most humans seem to crave in this day is more support in their endeavors; the world has gotten so big and diverse that finding a space where you feel a part of is so important. Hence my whole reason for wanting to become a postpartum advisor for women that are usually the most isolated, those who are chronically ill.

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Hey, if what you read seemed dated or familiar, I’ve been combining all my other blogs’ content to this site. Please bear with me as I post older content.  🙂

on parenting, environmentalism, and community

I read the book Achtung Baby by Sara Zaske, which was a great read all about the differences in parenting mentalities and practices of Germany (specifically Berlin) versus the U.S. It covered categories ranging from policies about children walking to and from school alone, to history courses offered at their respective schools and the differing practices when it comes to forming children’s senses of cultural and civic responsibility, to how to allow the children to establish confidence in themselves.

Zaske also addresses the importance of unstructured play on future development of children, and how to try to change/influences policies where you live.

I read this books, not to replace my own instincts in parenting my baby, but to understand how much of my parenting style is built from within a specific culture, and is not just “intuition”. The more I read, the more I see what culture I am blended within, and the more I can truly pick and choose what works best for me.

Of the “parenting” books, I have also read The Happiest Kids in the World by Rina Mae Acosta and Michele Hutchinson. It depicts two expats’ views on parenting, this time in the Netherlands. The expats were one British woman and one American woman talking about their insights into raising children (from infancy to eleven years of age) based on the fact that parenting in the Netherlands focuses on creating happy children. The whole society gets involved to make it a priority.

It’s a good read, and I recommend it for any parents who are worried that they are trying to push their children into checking off too many accomplishment boxes, without taking into account their children’s wants and preferences. Or it’s a fun read if you are just curious to understand how parenting is done in other places.

Previously, I also read Bringing Up Bébé by Pamela Druckerman, and French Twist by Catherine Crawford. So my distribution in countries has extended to Germany, France, and the Netherlands but I am working to expand that presently.

These books aren’t here to specifically instruct or convince readers on a certain way of how to parent per se. In fact, most of the authors are expats raising their kids in a new culture and then trying to blend that with their their own in attempt to find balance. However, they all do reflect on commonalities they see in whatever society they are part of at the time, the one that shapes their raising of children. They also do end up implanting little nuggets in the malleable pockets of my gray matter that make me question the status quo of my own culture. In particular, why does my culture (and many others) prioritize working above all?

How does removing playtime for young children and filling it with structured activities with parental supervision impact both the future generations of children as well as the parents currently doing the implementation? What can individuals do to try to mitigate the cascade of symptoms that lead to a cemented cultural practice enforced by litigation (the culture of suing everyone and everything for accidents)?

My mind is teeming with perceived implications for my own little one, and I’m wrought with fervor to carve out a way to achieve the most balanced route for her to grow as her own person. Now I wouldn’t say I worry about her future yet in the anxious melodramatic ways that bubbles into most of my thoughts, but I would say I’m genuinely curious about what happens next. How do I find like minded, community-based people who want to preserve the innocence of youth, but also encourage the growth of young independence in a society that looks to constant busyness as a sign of success? Is it possible within our societal framework? Also, what is happiness and how do we create a space for our children to discover it, and have it be lasting? More to come on this subject in later posts!

One last tie-in I have for today. I read a book called There’s No Such Thing As Bad Weather by Linda Åkeson McGurk, and it compared different aspects of parenting in Scandinavian countries versus the United States (and other English-speaking countries). Much of it compares how the way we raise our children in regards to their relationships with nature. According to McGurk, in Scandinavia they have more focus on outdoor education for young children so that when those children grow up, they continue to appreciate nature and are naturally (ha, pun) more inclined towards environmental protection.

But another large takeaway from the book was that your society has to support these kinds of initiatives. In some Scandinavian countries, people can cross over (or children can play on) other people’s private land/property (think huge backyards and fields) legally, so long as they don’t cause any damage.

The countries also work to instill independence and responsibility in their children by letting them take more age-appropriate risks (like 8 year olds walking to and from parks alone, or playing outside for hours after they’ve gradually learned the areas with their families). I also recently re-watched Lord of the Rings with my husband, and it always instills in me how important nature is to humans, and how much of humanity just sees it as something to conquer rather than a large part of our health and happiness. We forget that we need the good bacteria from the soil and plants, that the fresh air helps decrease infection and disease risks, that our food either comes from or is fed from nature, that we derive a sense of peace from greenery, and that we can find comfort with change by appreciating seasonal life cycles.

It feels like letting our children learn from and develop stronger appreciations from nature sets them up with a good baseline to be happier and healthier than we are. I’m excited to hear and see about all the different initiatives small communities in America enact to figure out the balance that works for each child and family.

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Hey, if what you read seemed dated or familiar, I’ve been combining all my other blogs’ content to this site. Please bear with me as I post older content.  🙂