Because I’m a psychotherapist, every time I turn myself around I encounter somebody wanting to turn themselves around, towards health and a better life.
Yesterday, I turned myself around at work and saw this:
Later that day, during a turn-yourself-around therapy group, I turned myself around to describe how our lives turn around and around and around, while we grow and learn. (If you want to turn yourself around to learn more about that, turn yourself to the sixth blog post I turned out here — The Ascending Coil.)
Then, I turned myself around to meet my boyfriend Michael, and we turned ourselves around towards Norfolk, Massachusetts to attend a memorial service for his late mother.
When her five children, nephews, nieces, and grandchildren turned themselves around to remember and honor her, I turned myself around to take a few photos:
That’s Bobby, my boyfriend Michael’s nephew. When Bobby turned himself around to ask me if I was still blogging, I turned myself around to answer, “Every day.”
Would any of my other photos from yesterday help anybody turn themselves around?
I am now going to turn myself around, towards YouTube, for some turn-yourself-around tunes for today (here and here):
Now I shall turn myself around to thank all those who helped me create this turn-yourself-around post and you — of course!! — for turning yourself around towards here, today.
O…K… Ready-ers — I mean, Readers — are you ready for this?
O…K… I saw that ready carpet cleaner yesterday, at work. And while the carpet in my office does need cleaning, I wasn’t ready to use it. Why? Because I was getting ready to leave for my vacation to Philadelphia and New York City.
O…K… I’m ready for my train trip to Philly to see my bff Jeanette and to try out for “The Voice” on Sunday.
O…K…what helps me be ready?
To be as much as possible in the moment, letting go of unhelpful memories and thoughts and letting go of worry about the future.
O…K… Ready for the other new photos on my iPhone?
O…K… WordPress peeps, what helps you be ready?
O…K… Ready to give thanks and to go! Have a nice day
Yesterday — at (1) my new office, (2) Cabot’s Ice Cream & Restaurant in Newton Massachusetts USA, and (3) an open sing of Handel’s Messiah at a local church — I took these photos, sitting down:
That last photo shows a tulip on the “stupid phone” of Marlyse — a fellow soprano I met sitting down last night at The Messiah. Marlyse told me that every year a tulip comes up outside her apartment, only to be mowed down by some groundskeeper. In 2014, the tulip stayed up, which she called “the triumph of hope over experience.”
Here are some photos I took standing up, yesterday:
Do things look different to you when you are down and up?
While I was up last night singing Handel’s Messiah, my voice hit all the notes, down and up, including these:
Hallelujah!
Thanks to my son Aaron (who joined up to sit down with me for some ice cream at Cabot’s), to Marlyse, to tulips everywhere, to all those standing up and sitting down at the Messiah Open Sing last night, to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and to you — of course! — for being up for reading this down-and-up post, here and now.
Who loves an explanation of what inspired “Who loves ___?”
This lovely morning, as I was thinking about writing a post about anger (and who loves anger?), my boyfriend Michael (who loves me) said, “Oscar loves you.”
Who loves Oscar?
Who loves change? Who loves unexpected change? Who loves changes in WordPress, this morning?
Who loves these photos?
Who loves expressing love?
Who loves music?
Who loves this post?
Who loves the way I always express gratitude at the end of my daily posts?
Who loves Michael, Oscar, taking pictures, music, being a psychotherapist, today’s changes to WordPress, and you? I do.
Some thoughts about “father” on September 9, 2015.
Father is the word for male parent.
Bostonians, because of their accent, say “father” when they mean “a greater distance.”
People who did not have adequate fathers sometimes find other people to fill that father role, which often helps them move father along in life.
Today is my late father’s birthday.
My father — who went father with humor and consideration for others than anybody else I’ve known — was far taller than me than appears in that father-daughter picture.
I have nothing further to express today, besides love and gratitude for my father.
Yesterday, one of my particularly righteous high school classmates messaged me, asking me a righteous question about our righteous reunion, taking place in a righteous number of days and less than two weeks:
How many people are coming?
I replied:
Number is difficult to say.
Here’s the reason her righteous question seemed righteously difficult to answer in that particularly righteous moment: Many of our righteous classmates who’ve righteously expressed a righteous intent to attend the reunion had not sent in their righteous money, as of the righteous Friday before a righteous holiday weekend. I am not the least self-righteous about this, because I often wait to the last righteous minute to send in my righteously earned money, no matter how righteous the bill.
Because my classmate’s question was so righteous, though, I also righteously told her the righteous number of people who had righteously sent in their righteous $ ( according to another righteous classmate, who’s in charge of our righteous class’s righteous cash).
I wish I could say that righteous number of paid-up attendees was 42, since several of my righteous readers have righteously reminded me that 42 — according to righteous author Douglas Adams — is the righteous meaning of life. The righteous reunion number I told her yesterday was not 42, but righteously close to that.
Here’s my righteous classmate’s righteous reply:
41 is a righteous number. This week it will be 42.
How could my righteous classmate so righteously know that our righteous reunion would definitely meet that righteous, meaning-of-life number? She had every right to know, because her righteous check was in the mail.
I righteously expect the number of righteous reunion attendees will, at least, match the righteous number of my class’s years out of high school — 45.
I think
45 years is a particularly righteous number to survive beyond high school and
we shall easily and righteously have 45 people at our righteous reunion.
Actually, I think — righteously or not — that we’ll have a number righteously higher than 42 or 45, on our righteous reunion date of September 19. However, as another righteous classmate texted me last week, when we were discussing the righteous reunion numbers:
Time will tell.
He is so righteously right about that.
Here’s another number I am righteously contemplating this morning:
97
That’s the number of righteously hot degrees we’re expecting in righteous Boston today. Since the righteous high school my righteous son righteously attends has no righteous air conditioning, my son just said to me, righteously:
Maybe I’ll wear my bathing suit to school.
I wonder if I should wear my bathing suit to my high school reunion? I could, because the righteous reunion location …
… is righteously near the ocean.
It’s only righteous that I include a righteous number of new photos in today’s righteous post, in addition to those 2 righteous pictures. What do you, my righteous reader, guess is the righteous number of new righteous pictures I took yesterday, which was righteous Labor Day in the righteous USA?
Was that a righteously lower number than you righteously expected?
Here’s my righteous prediction for the number of righteous readers who will comment on this righteous post:
13
Time will tell if I am righteously right about that, too.
Time for some righteous music for this righteous post!
The righteous number of Gustav Mahler’s last complete symphony is 9. This is righteous movement #4:
Here’s the righteous Leonard Bernstein, taking about Mahler’s 9th symphony:
This weekend, the righteous announcer on the righteous Boston classical radio station WCRB-FM said, about Mahler’s righteous 9th symphony:
It’s like Mahler’s farewell to the world and life
… which struck me as particularly righteous, because of how righteous that symphony is.
According to righteous Wikipedia, Mahler
knew he had “a heart that was defective” when he was composing his righteous 9th,
kept composing and performing until the end of his life, despite his heart condition,
died 2 months short of his 51st birthday because of “bacterial endocarditis, a disease to which sufferers from defective heart valves were particularly prone, and for which the survival rate in pre-antibiotic days was almost zero.”
Some of my righteous readers might understand these 4 righteous words from me:
Thank goodness for antibiotics.
Righteous thanks to all the righteous people and things that helped me compose this righteous post and special thanks to you — of course! — for being so righteous.
What we reflect out into the world — and what we see reflected back at us — is a reflection of our inner, sometimes hidden reflections.
Here’s my second reflection of this post:
That’s a lot of reflection, so early in the morning.
Yesterday morning, after I had reflected some morning reflections in my 975th consecutive daily-reflections blog post, I saw this reflected in my iPhone:
That reflects how much construction is going on around here.
At my office, we reflected about the reflections of anger, and how internal reflections of anger can be distorted:
After four hours of therapeutic reflections at work, I had these reflections:
It was my co-worker Mary’s last day before her retirement (which will give her precious and deserved time to relax and reflect) and — despite both of us previously reflecting that we wanted to meet for some goodbye reflections — I had to leave work at noon, without her image reflecting in my eyes. My sadness about Mary’s leaving reflects her kindness and her beautiful nature.
I was about to see myself reflected, in a medical sort of way, for four hours of pacemaker/defibrillator tests, echocardiograms, and reflections with my cardiologist, Dr. Deeb Salem, who has been reflecting with me since 1980 about how to reflect the best treatment towards my strangely reflecting heart.
Since birth, I’ve often reflected about how to reflect on that strangely reflecting heart of mine, which reflects blood back to my body through very unusual pathways.
Since November 2014, many different Boston cardiologists have reflected back mixed, contradictory, and sometimes dire reflections about my prognosis, which reflects how rare and confusing my reflecting heart is.
Perhaps those mixed medical reflections have been reflected in some of my daily blog posts, since then.
Four months ago, after much reflection, my team at Tufts Medical Center and I decided on a cardiac procedure that would reflect the least amount of harm onto my strangely reflecting heart and which might extend my years of reflection on this amazingly reflecting earth.
Since what we notice reflects our inner reflections, I reflected these reflecting images onto my iPhone after I left work yesterday and went to my medical appointments, sometimes lost in reflection:
Finally, at 3:30 PM — after reflecting with pacemaker experts and technologists and students in the echocardiography lab (not pictured) — I was reflecting, with my wonderfully reflecting cardiologist, Dr. Deeb Salem, upon my strangely reflecting heart. These afternoon reflections included the worries and hopes we’ve reflected together during our mutually reflecting medical partnership for over 35 reflection-filled years. The focus of those reflections reflected the uncertainties of the last year. I also reflected with Dr. Salem some fear that how difficult it is for me to climb steps and hills might reflect poorly on my heart (although it might just reflect my age, the need for more exercise, and/or how strangely my backwards-reflecting heart operates).
As Dr. Salem and I reflected together, our tones probably reflected the fact that we were waiting for the echocardiography lab to reflect back some important findings, including:
my strangely reflecting ventricle’s ejection fraction, which would reflect whether I was heading toward heart failure and
how much my strangely located and reflecting tricuspid valve was leaking.
At this point in this reflecting blog post, I could include many more reflections reflecting all the topics Dr. Salem and I reflected upon yesterday, but I’m reflecting that you probably want the reflections from the echo lab, as soon as possible. There’s no reason why your wait to find out those reflecting results should reflect the time Dr. Salem and I waited together. Therefore …
I think those facial expressions reflect the happiness reflected in the room when the echocardiogram reflected that
My ejection fraction is no worse and maybe a little bit BETTER, reflecting no dreaded downward trend in the functioning of my strangely reflecting heart and
My leaky valve is reflecting blood just the way it has for years, reflecting stability.
Dr. Salem’s reflection to me: “If these numbers stay like this, you should be around for a while. ”
Pretty good reflections, right?
After much reflection on what music to include in this reflection-filled post, I choose to reflect my love and esteem for my co-worker Mary, like so:
Take 6 (singing “Mary”) reflects THE best a capella singing I have ever heard, in my 62 years of reflection in this world.
If you express your reflections on this post, I shall reflect back a reply, after due reflection.
Reflections of gratitude towards Dr. Deeb Salem, Mary, Take 6, everybody else whose reflections helped me write this post, and you — of course! — for all your reflections, here and now.
Yesterday, George — my EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapist — and I discussed (among other things) the games of life you have to play if you’re working for a big bureaucracy, like a teaching hospital in Boston.
Immediately before that therapy session, I had snapped a few photos of the games I saw in the waiting room outside of George’s office:
I particularly noted the building block game Jenga, since George uses Jenga as a metaphor for how EMDR works: picking out old traumatic memories until an unhelpful, outdated, and intricate system of beliefs about oneself and the world …. collapses.
If you’re unfamiliar with the game of Jenga, here is the cast of the film musical “Annie” playing with a giant Jenga set on The Ellen DeGeneres Show:
For the past month, George and I have been trying to remove the building block of a particularly traumatic memory — a doctor calling me a spoiled brat at age 10 when I requested relief for excruciating pain I had after surgery and then leaving me alone, with my pain, in a hospital room.
Last week, I wrote a blog post about George’s suggestion of transforming the effects of that old memory by bringing in a group of helpful, supportive people (including WordPress readers) to revisit that long-ago hospital room and encounter that doctor in new ways.
This transformation, which we worked on yesterday, included:
Jackie Chan grabbing an I.V. pole in the hospital room, twirling it around, and bashing the doctor in the stomach, and
My current cardiologist, Dr. Deeb Salem, telling the doctor he’d better believe me about the pain and take care of things STAT, or his career as a pediatrician was over.
When it came time, yesterday, to forgive that doctor for what he did to me 52 years ago, I had to bring in some big guns, including
One of the gentlemen I had seen pictured, earlier in the day:
They all helped me hear and take in that doctor’s long overdue apology.
Here‘s jazz bassist Stanley Clarke, with a song from the wonderful album School Days:
I recommend playing “Life is Just a Game ” as a musical accompaniment to some other images I game-fully captured, yesterday — before and after George, I, and a supporting cast of dozens schooled and otherwise re-encountered that doctor from long ago:
What games of life are standing out for you? Feel free to play with me, here and now, in a comment below.
Remember,
Game-of-life-changing thanks to George, Ellen, Shirley, Jackie, Dr. Salem, Val, the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, Helen Keller, Gandhi, Stanley Clarke, people who heal in groups, and everybody else who helped me revisit that old hospital room, yesterday. And special thanks to you — of course! — for playing the Game of Life as best you can, today.
