This daily blog is therapy for me and, I hope, therapy for you.
Lately, in therapy, I’ve been asking some patients if a letter from a therapist would be helpful. For example, yesterday I wrote somebody this one:
To whom it may concern:
Please get your act together or leave ______ alone.
Signed,
Her therapist
My patient plans to put that on a t-shirt before we meet again in person for therapy.
Are any of today’s images therapy for you?
The Daily Bitch has her own ideas about therapy.
Travel used to be therapy for me but I’m really out of practice, like all of us. Therefore, I’m thinking of traveling to Nashville in May for a few days, which leads me to this:
To whom it may concern:
Any ideas about fun things to do and great places to eat in Nashville? Also, is the Fairlane a good place to stay?
Signed,
Your blogger
Singing along to music is great therapy, so try singing along to this as loudly as possible no matter who is listening:
Gratitude is therapy, so thanks to all who help me do therapy every day, including YOU!
Yesterday, I was thinking about how terrified I’ve been over the last five years, starting with medical experts in May 2016 insisting I needed something that had terrified me for decades — open heart surgery. Terrified as I was, I survived that, only to encounter U.S. political developments that terrified the world as well as many personal losses.
Now that I’m feeling safer, I’m allowing myself to admit how terrified I really was, letting go of terror I’ve been holding, day by day.
Here are my images from yesterday, including photos of an often terrified cat.
Yesterday, on Twitter and Facebook, I got this out of my system:
Responses included
worrying,
anxiety,
guilt,
perfectionism,
panicking,
urgency,
uncertainty,
repression,
resentment,
too much busyness, and
my own prejudices.
Every day, I clear those from my system by blogging first thing in the morning.
Now I’m going to clear images from my iPhone system by sharing them with you.
Decades ago, when I was dealing with upsetting medical news about my very unusual heart, I went to a percussion class and cleared fear, anger, resentment, panicking, uncertainty, and worry from my system by wildly drumming along to “The Dancer” by Stanley Clarke.
If you want to clear unexpressed thoughts or feelings from your system, you can do so in the comments section, below.
As always, I’ve got a lot of gratitude in my system.
Yesterday, I mentioned safe enough spaces at the end of my post. I deliberately did not write “safe spaces” because no spaces are completely safe. In every space, we take risks if we expose our vulnerability and humanity. The more we do that, the more we make the space safe enough for others.
I try to make my Coping and Healing groups safe enough spaces, and yesterday people felt safe enough to share conflicting opinions about getting the COVID vaccines. We all survived our differences and people felt safe enough to stay connected with each other.
Later in the day, I felt safe enough to finally make it to the safe enough sand bar I can see from my home (and which I felt safe enough to write about earlier this week in this post).
Many times, I have tried to get to that safe enough sand bar by unsuccessfully trying to locate its starting point across the safe-enough bay. Yesterday, I had the brilliant and long-overdue idea to walk through some water during low tide and access the sand bar from its end point near me.
Instead of telling myself, “WHY DIDN’T YOU THINK OF THIS BEFORE?”, I made my mind a safe enough space by enjoying the experience, moment by moment.
I hope you feel safe enough to accompany me on this adventure through safe enough spaces.
I discovered that I had been SO CLOSE to discovering the beginning point of the sand bar on a previous exploration, but had turned back when I saw that “no trespassing sign, which made the space not safe enough.
If I had felt safe enough to keep exploring past that scary sign (which referred to something else), I would have discovered the beginning of the sand bar months ago. I feel safe enough to share, here and now, that I trust my process and am happy it happened exactly the way it did.
Do you see safe enough spaces in the rest of my images today?
I assume that this is a safe enough space to share that I am Jewish and that I will start celebrating Passover in an unconventional way starting at sundown tonight.
Over the years, I have heard many people say they are waiting for the other shoe to drop, meaning “to await a seemingly inevitable event, especially one that is not desirable.”
If you’re waiting for more information to drop about “waiting for the other shoe to drop,” here it is:
I know I wrote about waiting for the other shoe to drop before, here at the Year(s) of Living Non-Judgmentally. I’m not going to wait to drop the sole important point of one of those posts, as follows:
These days, it’s difficult to identify one thing that frightens me, because there are so many frightening things out there.
What frightens me on this day includes
the increase in COVID cases and death,
COVID deniers,
anti-maskers,
large gatherings of people,
systemic racism,
climate change,
the state of the world,
the state of my country,
crazy conspiracy theories,
the number of people who believe crazy conspiracy theories,
Trump’s increasingly outrageous behaviors, and
people who do not call out outrageous behaviors.
Is there one thing that frightens you in my latest photos?
Has that cow been frightened off of its base?
Things that frighten you, me, and others have inspired my new song, entitled “What’s Your Fear, My Dear?” for my frighteningly ambitious new project, Therapy: The Musical. I plan to work on my first musical during the dark and frightening weeks of the New England winter.
One thing that does NOT frighten me is sharing my ideas here, so here are some lyrics from “What’s Your Fear, My Dear?”
As I’ve said to several people lately, “I think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I just hope it’s not a train coming in the opposite direction.”
Can you see the light in my photos from yesterday?
Yesterday morning, I had a conversation with a man working at the Starbucks in the New York City hotel where Michael Bloomberg later announced dropping out of the U.S. Presidential race. Here’s the conversation:
