Tag Archives: buddhism

Buddhist life, death

How to Use Beginner’s Mind to Talk about End-of-Life

My end-of-life doula training emphasized from the beginning the importance of bringing curiosity and an open mind to conversations about end-of-life. Even when we think we know how someone feels or what they want, we need to allow room for them to surprise us.

Adopting beginner’s mind is a great way to do this. Engaging your beginner’s mind means letting go of preconceived notions and approaching something with curiosity and openness. When done intentionally, it can allow us to see something familiar in a new way, the way a beginner does.

A recent visit with Shawn, a friend in his 80s with some early dementia, gave me a great opportunity to practice beginner’s mind. I was pretty sure I knew what he wanted in terms of burial. He’s made offhand comments about hating the idea of being buried and preferring cremation. But I decided to be extra curious as we discussed his wishes.

I was surprised when he brought up water cremation and expressed how much he would like his body to be used as compost for a tree.

When I thought about it later, I realized I shouldn’t have been too surprised. He has always been drawn to the outdoors. When I helped him go through old photos, there were more of flowers and nature than of people. I’d ask him about the people in a photo and he’d say, “I don’t recognize them. But that’s a moonflower on a trellis I built of cedar around 1998.” One photo of his wife and then six close-ups of the peonies in a planter at her feet, capturing different angles.

Still, I was surprised that he even knew about water cremation, let alone that he was interested in it. I just learned about water cremation myself a few years ago; if I hadn’t been intentionally engaging my beginner’s mind, I might have let my own arrogance about being more up-to-date about burial practices and my assumptions about people older than me being traditionalists convince me he would want conventional cremation.

In fact, I was so sure that I already knew what he wanted, that I hadn’t even meant to talk with him about burial, but when our conversation went there, I let it. And I’m glad I did! Now I know what Shawn wants and I can help him and his family learn more about water cremation.

If you want to practice beginner’s mind, here are a few of the strategies I used in my conversation with Shawn:

  1. Listening without thinking about my response. This can be tough! I had to remind myself a few times while Shawn was talking to let the responses forming in my brain go. When I felt the urge to interrupt to challenge something he said or point out how it contradicted something else he’d said, I took a deep breath and imagined the words forming in my head leaving with my exhale.
  2. Allowing pauses in the conversation. Another tough one. I fall into the trap of judging the quality of a discussion by how little silence there is. But when I’m really listening to the other person, I need a few seconds after they stop talking to formulate my response, which means there will be silence. I sometimes say, “Give me a moment to organize my thoughts” to acknowledge that pause—to myself as much as to the other person.
  3. Asking questions that elicit more information. “Tell me more about that” is one of my favorites right now. Shawn loves to talk about himself, so when I say “tell me more,” he does! It’s not always on topic, but that’s ok. Whatever he says helps me learn more about him and that’s my real purpose.
  4. Letting go of efficiency. Beginner’s mind means taking the scenic route. It may take multiple conversations or some meandering to get to any meaningful answer to a question. It took me an hour to learn that Shawn was interested in water cremation. Beginner’s mind cannot be rushed.
anxiety, Buddhist life

Dealing with Post-Break Overwhelm + Anxiety

I had friends in town for a few days last week. I worked while they were staying with me but let most everything else slide. Within moments of them leaving, I was overwhelmed with all I had to catch up on. My mind seemed to instantly fill with tasks that felt urgent: vacuum up all the dust bunnies, clean out the fridge, pull the weeds in the sidewalk cracks, read all the texts that came in, reassemble the pull out couch, figure out what the packages are that arrived (WTF did I order?).

Every time I tried to turn my brain off, it just generated more items for my to-do list. I hadn’t done laundry in days or checked my personal email. I needed groceries. A lightbulb needed replacing.

And then my anxiety kicked in. My brain said, “I think I noticed a bit of mold on a lemon in the fridge last night. What if it touches the lettuce and the lettuce gets all moldy? And then what if the mold spreads beyond the lettuce?” Then my mind jumped to the washing machine—it made a scraping sound—what if it’s spinning too fast and catches on fire?

Just like that, the feeling of being behind morphed into fear of a deadly mold infestation and a fire.

In these moments, I know I need to calm down but telling myself to calm down just makes things worse. When I’m upset, if someone tells me to calm down, it has the opposite effect. When I tell myself to calm down, the same thing happens. I want to scream, “How can I calm down when the house is a disaster and about to explode into mold and flames?!”

Decision paralysis takes over. I can’t identify what to do first. Planning a trip to Africa for some future point seems equally important as having to pee right now. It all must get done now!

At some point, I finally remember what works: I tell myself, “Take a deep breath.” Zen Buddhism brings everything back to the breath. All we have is this breath, and then this one, and then this one. The breath is all that really matters. Focusing on my breath calms me. Each deep breath slows my brain down a bit. Sometimes it takes just one breath and sometimes it takes a hundred, but when I let my breath become my focus, all the mental clutter fades away.

I have a tendency to hold my breath when I’m exerting myself, whether mentally, emotionally, or physically. My personal trainer is always cueing me to breathe, reminding me that when I hold my breath, lunges and squats are harder. It’s true for everything: holding my breath makes thinking harder, sleeping harder, conflict harder.

The simple act of breathing with awareness reminds me that none of those things I think need to get done actually need to get done. Life will go on, whether the laundry is done or the email is answered. I can make choices about where to focus my energy.

I remind myself that I will never be caught up. The expected outcome is that I will die with things undone. My husband died with things undone. My mother died with things undone. It’s ok.

Life is not about getting things done. When I remember my husband or my mother, my mind goes to my love for them, the moments we shared, not the things they left undone.

caregiving, grieving

Accepting “I Did the Best I Could” is an ongoing process

Accepting that I did the best I could when my husband had his stroke is an ongoing process. I often find myself thinking, “yes, I did the best I could,” followed by “my best wasn’t very good,” and then I dwell on that second thought.

Of course I would be a better caregiver today than I was when Tom needed me. I know so much more now about holding space than I did then. I am better rested now without the exhaustion of around-the-clock caregiving. Without the constant worries about Tom’s pain, his mental health, and his prognosis, I can now reflect and make decisions at a more leisurely pace.

And oh, yeah, my caregiving all took place during a pandemic, which made it difficult or impossible for many friends and loved ones to help out.

Still, while I generally feel pretty good about how I showed up for Tom, there are times when I am reminded that acceptance isn’t a one-and-done thing but rather something I need to do over and over and over again.

I have spent the last week accepting again that I did the best I could.

Last week I read Summoned by a Stroke: An Homage to Love, Relationship, and Living Life Fully, Judy Friesem’s memoir of life with her husband Kim after he had a stroke. There are many similarities between Kim and my husband Tom. Like Tom, Kim had a massive stroke on the right side of his brain, leaving him paralyzed on the left. Like Tom, Kim exhibited incredible grace and acceptance of his new reality.

But I saw many differences between Judy and me. Judy seemed to have much more insight than I did into what Kim was thinking, feeling, and needing. Where Judy is generous, I was narrow-minded. Where Judy seemed to intuitively know what Kim needed, I had to figure out Tom’s needs by trial and error. Even when Kim couldn’t speak or write, Judy was able to communicate with him, while I sometimes overlooked basic niceties or argued with Tom or thought I knew better than he did what he wanted.

I know, I know—Friesem’s book is an edited version of what happened. I know she had imperfect moments. I know she struggled. I know this, and yet, I found myself thinking as I read, “I wish I had been half the caregiver she was.”

I did the best I could at the time . . . and I hate that I couldn’t do better at the time.

In this current round of accepting that I did the best I could, I am finding that talking to myself in the second person is more effective than reminding myself I did the best I could. I talk to myself, saying. “You did the best you could,” or “Give yourself some grace—you were operating under terrible circumstances” or “Tom loved you and appreciated everything you did.”

I think using the second person puts a little space between who I am now and who I was then and makes it more possible for me to feel compassion for that past version of me.

That space also allows me to see the distance I’ve come since then. My listening skills, in particular, are so much better now, and while I wish Tom could have benefitted from them, I know he’d be proud of having taught me to listen.

“Another lesson from Tom DeBlaker,” he would say with a wry smile, and I would hug him and bury my head into his shoulder.

Aging, Buddhist life

Embracing Aging

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This month I’ll turn 55. I hated birthdays as a child because of family dysfunction, but after my stroke when I was 27, birthdays finally felt meaningful. Making it to 28 did seem like something to celebrate. Now I celebrate all birthdays with gusto—mine as well as those of other people. So much can happen in a year and I love taking the time to reflect on that and appreciate it.

Even the difficult events and developments of a year can be seen as milestones worth savoring. Living three years without my husband is a grim milestone, but it’s also motivated me to explore being a hospice volunteer and becoming a living kidney donor, two things I’m very excited about. I’m proud of the ways I’ve grown out of necessity in my 55th year—for example, taking “date night dancing” off my calendar and reframing my relationship with my house. I don’t regret the growth, despite it all coming from adversity.

Aging means facing adversity. There’s no way around it; with aging comes loss—loss of relationships, loved ones, ambitions, and more. Sometimes because of those losses, we grow. Other times, the losses open up opportunities. Other gifts of aging come simply with age itself.

When I hit 47, the age my mother was when she died, I thought about how I was having experiences that come with age that she never got to have, like having a relationship with my teenage daughter. When my sister and I traveled together, I did so with the knowledge that my mother and her sister never got to do that. When I had my first hot flash, I laughed out loud, thinking, “Well, Mom, you never got that treat, did you?”

Once my husband died at 61, the lesson was sharpened: aging is something not everyone gets to do. The aspects of aging I might have complained about in the past now take on a different meaning: they are things he will not get to do. It’s easy to think of aging as a series of bleak losses. Our independence and health may ebb away or disappear suddenly. Loved ones continue to die. With those losses, though, we may find unexpected spaciousness.

I don’t mean that we ever stop missing or loving what we have lost, but that in addition to those losses, there are some gains. And those gains can be appreciated and even celebrated. I welcome my new interest in hospice work, which feels like a calling.

I’m trying to approach aging in both a practical way—it will happen whether I like it or not, so might as well make the best of it—and a Buddhist way, which is to reduce suffering by letting go of attachments. For example, when I recognize myself feeling attached to things my younger body could do easily that are now not so easy, I try to be grateful for the ease of the past rather than angry about the loss. Anger about the loss assumes I have a right to hold on to that ease. But it was temporary, like everything.

I do enjoy many aspects of aging. Feeling less pressure to please others is quite liberating. Being comfortable in my body, familiar in a loving and appreciative way with its quirks, is lovely. I wish my husband had gotten to experience more of aging’s rewards.

Many of the wonderful gifts I am experiencing with aging are available only because I’ve suffered losses. Several of my most cherished relationships deepened with my husband’s stroke and death. The older we get, the more likely it is that we will experience loss. Every loss will hurt—I don’t think that ever stops—and also present opportunities to connect with others.

The loss that comes with aging also provides motivation to reflect on what matters. I have clarity today about what matters that I couldn’t have had earlier in life simply because it took me 55 years of history on this planet to get there. That clarity was earned.  

Buddhist life, grieving

You’re not the only one who is lonely

In his compassionate and deeply thought-provoking book Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World, Vivek Murthy makes clear that nearly everyone is lonely at some point in their life but one of the cruel tricks of loneliness is making you think you’re the only one who is lonely. You are suffering through an almost universal experience yet believe everyone around you feels connected to others. The truth is that if you are lonely—whether it’s a longtime state or a fleeting feeling brought on by a particular situation—others near you probably are, too.

Loneliness often accompanies grief. If you are already lonely when grief hits, your loneliness may be compounded. We don’t tend to talk about either loneliness or grief, and by not talking about these outlaw emotions, we fail to develop not only our skills for talking about them but our ability to tolerate them in ourselves and others. When we see grief or loneliness heading toward us, we hurry to slam the door and lock them out.

We label people who are grieving downers and we urge them to “move on,” “get back to normal,” or cheer up. But being told to move on or cheer up just makes me feel lonely—it’s proof that the person talking to me doesn’t get it. When someone has told me to move on or cheer up, not once have I felt less alone, and more importantly perhaps, not once have I gotten closer to moving on or cheering up.

While I find those comments completely unhelpful and even alienating, I feel for the people making them. I think they are afraid. The next time someone says something like that to me, I hope I have the presence of mind to respond with, “I’m afraid of grief, too.”

It’s not just fear at work, though. I think people equate taking time with grief to a lack of effort or activity, as if the hard work of grieving has no value.

In a culture obsessed with productivity, taking time to grieve seems wasteful. It appears to be “doing nothing.” We think activity is inherently valuable while doing nothing is inherently lazy, but in fact, the opposite is often true. One of my favorite Buddhist sayings reminds me of the folly of taking action in lieu of reflecting: “Don’t just do something, stand there.”

I guess you could say that in my grief process, I’ve done a lot of standing there. I have chosen not to distract myself with activity and instead to turn towards my grief and give it space. I’ve been a downer. And yet, more often than not, when I’ve talked about my grief with others, they’ve reciprocated in authentic and vulnerable ways. Being a downer and standing there with my grief rather than hurrying through it has become a connecting point between me and others.

Often standing there with my grief is difficult. For example, last week I took something off my calendar that was a reminder of the life I had with my husband before he died. Date night dancing showed up every Saturday on my calendar. Taking it off my calendar was the easy part. The hard part, the real work, has been sitting with the hard hollow that forms in my throat every time I see the empty space on Saturday on my calendar. Even harder has been not pushing past those tough feelings with distractions but rather sitting with them, feeling them, acknowledging them, turning toward them.

Standing there with someone else who is grieving means holding space for them, not trying to cheer them up or fix their grief. That person in front of you who is grieving feels lonely and thinks they’re the only person feeling it. But they aren’t. You feel it or have felt it. I know you have. Don’t just do something—stand there.

Buddhist life, death, grieving

Celebrating Special Occasions

Almost any time I have a glass of wine or a cocktail with someone else, I say “cheers” and clink my glass with theirs. I love the “cheers” and clinking ritual. It reminds me that I am lucky to be sharing a moment with whoever I am with and it adds a note of celebration. It’s impossible for me to say “cheers” and clink and not smile.

I recently began wondering why I only do that with wine or a cocktail—why not with cups of coffee or glasses of water?

The only answer I can come up with is habit, which means I can replace it with a new habit—“cheers”-ing and clinking with any beverage.

Ever since my stroke in 1997, I’ve tried to celebrate and appreciate every day. My late husband had a similar attitude. One of the first commonalities we found was that we both believed in keeping a bottle of prosecco in the fridge at all times, just in case. When there’s a chilled bottle of something festive on hand, it’s easy to find excuses to celebrate.

I think the death of a loved one is a reminder that our time here on earth is limited, which to me highlights the specialness of every moment. Any moment with a loved one could be the last one, so why not celebrate it? And if it turns out not to be the last one, well, celebrate that there will be more to come.

Another version of this philosophy is to use the good stuff everyday rather than saving it for “a special occasion.” I was raised in a family that saved many things for “a special occasion,” which meant that sometimes something got thrown out because it spoiled or broke before an occasion special enough presented itself.

When I was in  grad school, I read Alice Walker’s short story “Everyday Use,” in which two adult sisters present arguments to their mother about which one of them deserves the family heirloom quilts. One sister argues that she should get them because she’ll hang them on the wall where they’ll stay pristine and be admired. The other sister would put the quilts to “everyday use” as bed covers. The mother gives the quilts to the sister who would use them, noting that actually using them is the most authentic appreciation for them one can offer.

I was intrigued by the idea of using something as a sign of respect and it shifted my thinking about my own habit of writing in my books. I had grad school colleagues who sometimes bought two copies of a book so they could keep one clean and write in the other. They were appalled that I wrote all over my books, “ruining” them. But after reading Walker’s story, I realized that for me, a book that looks like it’s never been read is the ruined one. A book covered with scribbles has been loved and considered.

My favorite things of my late husband’s are the ones that bare evidence of his love for them—the sweatshirt that’s a little grungy around the sleeve edges, the flannel shirt that’s missing a button, the life jacket that looks like it had a few close calls.

The idea of using the good stuff everyday aligns with the concept of being choosy about how you spend your time and spending your money while you’re alive instead of aiming to leave a large inheritance.

For me, the point is to be intentional about appreciating the moments that make up a life and acknowledging that what makes an occasion “special” is my recognition of the specialness. If an occasion isn’t special, well, that’s on me for not noticing the specialness.

What, truly, could be more special than this moment?

Cheers.

Buddhist life, grieving

5 Ways Grieving People Can Start 2024 Peacefully

I like to take some time in December and January to reflect on the year that has passed and to use that reflection to think about how I want the next year to go. This is my third time going through that reflection process as a widow. I haven’t changed the process I use in those three years, but I have noticed that the kinds of planning I’ve done for the year ahead has changed in response to my grief.

I end every year with a review of my journal, calendar, and camera roll to identify the key events, challenges, and developments of the year and start planning the next year intentionally. The two times I’ve done this since my husband died have been really helpful in allowing me to realize that I am moving forward even when I feel like I’m not. This year, for example, I was able to appreciate all the work I did to clear out the garage in the spring and become a better steward of my husband’s vines over the summer.

I find the process cathartic—it’s emotionally exhausting and gives me an intense feeling of lightness at the same time. It helps me lay bare the joys and challenges of the last year and gives me a sense of a trajectory for the year ahead.

After I reflect on the past year, I think about how I want the next year to be similar and different, or I what I want to bring forward from the last year and what I want to leave behind.

Before my husband died, I made resolutions that hinged on things I wanted to accomplish in the next year, such as articles to write and fitness goals to hit. Since his death, I’ve been moving toward a different kind of resolution that focuses more on practices than goals. For example, instead of aiming to write and publish a certain number of essays this year (a goal), I am planning to spend one day each month identifying submission deadlines in the next 30 days that I can write toward (a practice).

The concept behind many New Year’s Resolutions is basically, “I suck but I’m going to change that in the new year.” I prefer the attitude described in this beautiful Buddhist story: we can accept ourselves and our imperfections and our resolution can simply be to enjoy our imperfect lives. By committing to the practice of spending a day each month looking for submission deadlines, I’m aiming to shift my writing practice. What I’m not doing is setting a productivity goal that will stress me out and suck the joy out of writing for me.

Here are five practices from the past year I am taking with me into 2024 that I think could be helpful for anyone grieving:

  1. Give yourself amnesty. For email and all the other things that didn’t get done. For all the times you didn’t show up the way you wish. If you’re grieving, some of the time and energy you might normally put into keeping up with daily tasks or being social has gone into grieving, whether that means attending memorial events, dealing with your loved one’s estate or belongings, curing up on the couch and crying, or something else. That’s normal—and allowing yourself the time and space to do those things is more important than keeping up with email or mail or social events or whatever. Feeling bad about letting that stuff go for a while doesn’t do anyone any good, so I say, give yourself amnesty, release the guilt, and move forward. (If the idea of email amnesty is new to you, check this out for inspiration.)
  2. Give everyone else amnesty. If you’re holding onto a grudge because someone else didn’t behave the way you wanted, consider letting it go. That doesn’t mean you are saying their behavior is ok, it just means you are releasing the anger about it. In the year before he died, my husband and I worked hard on forgiveness. We were both holding onto anger that wasn’t serving us. We both found that letting go of the anger allowed us to feel peace that holding onto the anger had kept us from feeling.
  3. Make commitments to yourself for the new year. I suggest gentle ones that will make you feel more at peace. Make commitments grounded in kindness toward yourself and others. In 2023, I committed to talking to myself with the same kindness I talk to others, which meant no calling myself names. It was hard at first, but now it feels natural.
  4. Honor your loss with some time to go down the grief rabbit hole. Near the end of last year, I gave myself a weekend to wallow in grief. I plan to do that again in 2024. I don’t know exactly when, but I’m certain that at some point, my heart will tell me it’s time to take a weekend off. I’ll cancel whatever plans I have and have a guilt-free weekend to cry, look at photos of my husband, and miss him.
  5. Look at the year ahead and block off the days that might be difficult for you. Your loved one’s birthday, your anniversary, whatever it might be. Based on the last few years, I seem to have a pattern of being a mess in the days leading up to special days and then feeling much better afterwards, so I’ll block out the day before each special day and the day itself.
academic life/work, anxiety, Buddhist life, failure, mental illness

Befriending Overwhelm

I spend a good part of my time at the intersection of Depression, Anxiety, and Grief. When overwhelm hits, which it often does, and a wave of panic rises up in my chest, I take a deep breath.

I find my Buddhist practice very helpful when I feel that panic. Panic makes me feel like I should be hurrying—doing something, anything, and fast! But Buddhists aren’t known for hurrying. When my impulse is to move fast, I consciously slow down. With each deep breath, my panic subsides a bit until it is manageable. Sometimes I have to go through the process of taking a deep breath and letting my panic subside multiple times in a day or even an hour. It’s ok, I tell myself, take your time.

I was at a conference last week that put me into overwhelm. I was surrounded by brilliant, energetic, competent people and I felt dull, slow, and outdated in their company. Each session I attended left me feeling more overwhelmed by the feeling that I could never perform my job the way they perform theirs.

For me, overwhelm is often quite sneaky and I don’t always recognize it for what it is. I often notice that I feel a heaviness I can’t quite identify for hours or even days before I realize, “Oh, I’m feeling overwhelmed!” Once I label the feeling, I say hello to it. Really—I say out loud, “Hello, Overwhelm, my old friend.” That may seem ridiculous, but greeting it as a friend helps me not react to it with fear.

Then I sit down with it as I would with a friend having a tough time. If possible, I do this over coffee or tea, just as I would with a friend. “What’s going on?” I ask it. Here’s how my conversation with Overwhelm went last week at the conference:

Me: What’s going on?

Overwhelm: Everyone here is doing such amazing things! I’m so far behind—how can I do cool things with antiracism and undergraduate research and STEM support and all the other things I need to do?????? And I’m behind on publishing and . . . It’s a hopeless situation.

Me, speaking to Overwhelm as I would to any friend: Hmmm. I wonder if being at an academic conference is kind of like scrolling through Facebook. Presenters are showing their best work, just as most people on Facebook are showing their best moments. Just as the happy family photos don’t tell the whole story of a person’s daily life, a brilliant conference presentation doesn’t tell the whole story of an academic’s work.

Overwhelm: Huh . . .

By that point, Overwhelm started to lose its energy.

Of course, that wasn’t the end of it. The next day I went to a session where I heard about an amazing and elaborate program that I would love to replicate. Afterwards, I was overwhelmed with thoughts that quickly led me to a downward spiral: I will never be able to replicate the program, but I should try, but I can’t ever do it like she did, I will fail, I suck . . . and I’m behind on email and . . .  So I took a deep breath. And another one. I’ve learned I must regulate my breathing before I can regulate my thoughts. Another deep breath.

“Hello again, Overwhelm,” I said in between deep breaths.

Once I was breathing in a non-panicked way, my thoughts were already a little more manageable. I wrote them all down in a list. All the thoughts went on the list: I’m behind on email, I have a report due in November, if I don’t stain the back fence before it gets cold it will rot away this winter, I will never be able to replicate the program I heard about, I suck . . .  Giving each thought its own line on the list gives it some space. It can exist. It is an ok thought. When all the thoughts were on the list, I gave one breath to each thought, taking the length of one complete breath, an inhale and an exhale, to acknowledge the thought and linger on it. Sometimes that lead to more thoughts, which went on the list.

Sometimes all the thoughts want is a little space to be acknowledged and then I can let them go. The thought that whatever I come up with will never be as great as what this other woman came up with was one I could easily let go of once I gave it a breath. No, what I do won’t be as great as what she did. I’m not in competition with this other person, who is at a different institution in a different state. OK. Good bye, thought.

Other thoughts are useful and become items on my to do list or bucket list. The report due in November and staining the back fence went on my to do list.

Thoughts like “I suck” just want space. I give that thought a breath and then cross it off my list. I know it’s not true in any meaningful way. I used to have to fact check those thoughts—do I suck? I’d ask. And then I’d write down the evidence for and against that verdict. There was always more evidence against the verdict. Now I don’t have to do the actual fact-checking, I just have to remind myself that I’ve held this trial many times before and always the verdict has been, no, you don’t really suck.

Buddhism tells me that any time I want to hang on to a thought, hold it in a tight grip, I should instead open my hand and give it space, let it float away if it wants to. It usually wants to float away. Thoughts that float away sometimes come back, but if I again loosen my grip on them, they float away again. Sometimes they float back and I let them float away several times a day for years and years. It’s ok. I can keep letting them float away. Once I learned how to let them float away, I began to trust that they will float away if/when they return.

Letting the thoughts float away doesn’t “cure” me of my grief, depression, or anxiety. All it does is make the overwhelm go away. And I’ll take that.

Buddhist life, grieving, mental illness

Welcoming Depression Back into My Life

A couple weeks ago I realized my grief was veering into depression. Depression has been a constant in my life since I was about 8, but at that time, the world thought 8 year-olds couldn’t have depression, so I was just considered moody and bitchy. I was finally diagnosed in my teens and got on anti-depressants, which I took until my early 20s, when I was able to taper off of them and mange my depression with meditation, exercise, and lots of intentional choices about food and alcohol.

I was always aware that I was off medication “for now” and knew that I might need to go back on it at some point. Last year, when I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and panic attacks, I started taking a low dose of Escitalopram, which can help with both anxiety and depression.

Over the last few months, many of the things I’ve attributed to grief had started to happen less frequently. I was still feeling intense grief but not every minute of every day, and sometimes I could go entire days without feeling intense grief. My appetite returned. My sleep was mostly regular. The sneaker waves of grief came less often. I didn’t feel compelled to visit my late husband’s bench every day.

But last month, I started wanting to sleep all the time again. I slept through my alarm in the morning. I craved sugar. I didn’t want to work out, which is one of my favorite things to do.  

A couple weeks ago, I noticed that instead of feeling my normal grief mindset of “life is hard today but it will pass,” I was thinking “life is hard.” I didn’t have my usual sense of temporariness. I felt a kind of doom I’ve come to understand as anxiety, but it wasn’t anxiety. Anxiety shows up in my stomach and chest, but this doom was showing up everywhere. It was all encompassing, like a weight holding me down. It felt physical, as if a heavy blanket had been thrown over me and I had to drag it around with me all day. I couldn’t shake the heavy blanket or get out from under it.  

It happened slowly enough that I didn’t quite recognize that anything was different. Then I started reading Depression: A Public Feeling by Ann Cvetkovich, which is part memoir about her own experience of living with depression. Some of her descriptions of how depression felt resonated intensely with me. She uses words like “pervasive” and “relentless” and describes being unable to work on a project she had been passionate about and “the impossibility of physical relaxation.”

My first thought was, “It sounds like grief,” and then I realized grief hadn’t felt at all like that in a long time. I went back through my journal and saw the proof there that I had not always felt like I was dragging a heavy blanket around.

I’m now taking an increased dose of Escitalopram. The increase pretty much made me sleep for two days straight, but now I can stay awake all day and I’m starting to feel more like myself.

Just as I tried to make friends with my anxiety (we are closer now but not quite friends), I am trying to take a non-combative approach to my depression. It is part of me and if I love myself, I must love the depression in some way.

Two ideas have been helpful to me in this regard:

When I started grad school in 1993, nobody knew me or my past as a person with depression, so I didn’t mention it to anyone. I wasn’t consciously trying to hide it, but I also wasn’t bringing it to anyone’s attention. A few months ago, I added “I live with low vision” to my online bio, and soon after that I added anxiety to the list. A week or so ago, I added depression to the list.

Acknowledging publicly that anxiety and depression are part of my identity feels risky. Mental illness is still stigmatized and often seen as opposed to critical thinking, which is prized in academia. But I know from casual conversations that many of my students and colleagues live with mental illness. (I have tenure and am a full professor, so if I feel nervous about the disclosure, imagine how folks with less job security feel.)

Acknowledging depression in my bio is one way I am being compassionate towards myself and owning my depression.

grieving

A Grief Spike at 16 Months

I have been told so many times since my husband died that my grief will fade with time. That may be true in terms of the general trajectory of my experience, but here I am, 16 months out from his death, and I have been just flattened by some of the hardest waves of grief I’ve had.

Sunday night, all day Monday, all day today. Halloween, which was my husband’s favorite holiday, is coming and last year it triggered some pretty tough grief, so I figured that could happen again this year. Expecting it doesn’t seem to mitigate it, though.

Grief makes my head hurt, my eyes dry, my belly feel unsettled, and my chest sore. I had to go to work on Monday and barely held it together. When I got home, I immediately fell apart, sobbing all evening. Tuesday I was able to work from home and experimented with what I’m calling “timed grieving”: I set a timer for a certain amount of time, usually 15 minutes, and give myself that time to sink into the grief, sobbing, howling, screaming, moaning. Sometimes I empty myself of the grief and drift into sleep until the alarm goes off.

The dogs have learned how timed grieving works and come running when they see me moving toward the couch. They rest their heads heavily on my legs or my chest, just as they did for my husband when he was in pain after his stroke.

I’m back into that early feeling of disbelief that he’s gone. One day he was here, he was my husband, and the next day he was gone and I was a widow. It’s still unfathomable to me sometimes. I had a dream that his stroke wore off and he was his old self. Sometimes those dreams bring me joy, giving me an avenue into beautiful happy memories of the past. The last few days, though, they hurt, even though the pain is mixed with gratitude that I got to be with him in that last year and the amazing 11 years that came before it.

Before my husband died, we spoke every single day. My favorite part of every workday was being reunited with him when we both finished work. We had a lovely tradition of dropping everything when the last one got home to greet each other with a hug. In warm weather, we would then sit on the front porch with drinks; in cold weather, we snuggled on the couch with drinks. We’d spend a few minutes catching up with each other before I started making dinner.

When we weren’t together, we spoke on the phone in the evening. It was usually a very brief call—often just a couple minutes, focused on “I love you” and “I miss you.” Occasionally, when he was rafting or camping without me and didn’t have cell service, we’d go a few days without talking. It was hard. I would eagerly anticipate hearing his voice again

After his stroke, we were together 24/7. His quiet presence filled the house with love. Just knowing he was in the house, whether he was dozing in the bed I had moved into the living room for accessibility, sitting at the front window with his binoculars, watching neighbors and squirrels, sharpening knives (the hobby he picked up after his stroke), or watching videos on his phone, made me feel warm and loved. Sometimes he got studious and wheeled up to the dining room table where his books on Buddhism were piled. I loved hearing him moving around the house from my office, the sound of the wheelchair wheels making their rubbery squeak against the wood floors.

I’ve now gone 488 days without him. 488 days of no moving Buddhist books out of the way to clear space on the table for our dinner, no rubbery squeak of wheelchair wheels against wood, no “I love you.” Buddhism reminds me that everything is temporary, including this wave of grief. It will subside and dreams of my husband will again feel like a delicious gift.