Wednesday, January 15, 2025

 Wednesday, January 15, 2025

     I slept well again last night. I woke up once to go to the bathroom and was ready to get up at 5:30.  Yesterday, I woke up too late to do my morning exercises.  I planned to do them after the walk. That never happened. I got them done today.  I remembered to add 15 sit-stands.  I can do that with relative ease.  Because it was raining, I didn't go for my regular morning walk immediately.  Around 7 am, I checked again. It had stopped raining, and Elsa and I headed out.

   I called Jean, my Hanai sister.  She didn't answer; her husband, John, did.  Sadly, he is suffering from memory loss.  His short-term memory is only good for 3 minutes.  He is delightfully at peace with his condition.  He's a model for me should I suffer a similar loss.  While I experience increasing problems remembering names and occasionally words, I'm still doing reasonably well, as my writing attests. Well, at least it looks reasonably articulate to me. I enjoy reading my own writing. Moreover, I have received several compliments on my writing. It makes me happy that people enjoy my work.

   At 9:30 am, my alarm went off.  It was time to head into town for the second session of the Grief Workshop.   I find aspects of the program frustrating and anxiety-provoking.  The program talks out of both sides of its mouth. On the one hand, it says there is no right or wrong way to grieve, and then it does a one-eighty and gives a list of incorrect responses.  It's not that those actions aren't ever wrong; they are. It's just they're not always wrong.  As it winds up, I'm not the only one who notices the inconsistencies.  It's just that I'm the most distressed.  And then again, maybe I'm not the most distressed. During a bathroom break, I shared my observations with another participant. She sees the same thing I do.  At the end of the small group activity, one of the women said she was so happy I was in her group.  When I told her I was considering dropping out, she said she would make sure I continued.  I appreciate the support.  I know closed-mindedness is especially scary for me; it's the Nazis, you know.   The group leader is from a military family and lost her mom in a car accident when she was eleven.  I understand where she's coming from. I know she is not a threat to me; I'm still so frightened by the mental rigidity.

  That being said, I liked the exercise we did today.  We had to share the results of our homework from last week in small groups.  While one person spoke, we were not to say a word, ask questions, or comment. There was to be no discussion.  That went surprisingly well.  We had written our responses; they were there for us to read. I didn't have to ask questions to pull it out of people. 

    Two of the women in our group of four were Asian.  Their response to loss was culturally driven. They put on their big girl pants and did what had to be done. This program says doing that is wrong. Huh??? I thought there was no wrong response.  The program does not make clear that holding on to that response and not allowing other emotions and responses which all for ways to deal with grief.  Instead of making these women feel comfortable, it makes them feel like misfits. Both their stories were particularly tragic by any standard.  They had to do what they had to do.

    I told one of the women that that's what my mom did when my dad died. She didn't sit around and mourn.  Within a month or two, she had moved her mom out of her apartment and into our suburban house and gotten a job.  Because she did, my sister and I didn't have to face compounding losses: the loss of our home, school, and social community.  That would have added three significant losses to the one we had already suffered. Did my mom do that just for us? Nay. She did it because she suffered from serious, if not severe, PTSD and my mom was at her best when she had to be heroic.  While she was a disaster as a gentle, caring, supportive mother, she was a clear winner when it came to the practical.  I am grateful every day for what she did and button-busting proud of her to boot.  My heart swells when I think of how she rose to the occasion and all she did for us, not only as school-age children but throughout the rest of our lives.  She put both of us through college, knowing that's what my dad wanted for us, even though she had no idea what she was doing.  She then saved and accumulated wealth from which my sister and I benefited.  That woman was a force of nature, for better and for worse. I'm happy to complain nonstop about the damage she did when I was a child and sing her praises from now until eternity for what she did for us after my dad died.

   My relationship with the leader of the Grief Recovery class was forged in hell.  I criticize the program for talking from both sides of its mouth,  but many problems with her are a result of our respective fears. Insecure people who are rigid thinkers drive me crazy.  I drive them crazy, too. It's reactivity all the way around. I want to use this workshop to see if I can control my inner barking dog, which is warning me my life is in danger. It's not. But man, that inner dog is not listening.

   At least, I no longer fear that I will prevent the other participants from benefitting from the workshop. Two of the women, Asians of all things, have overtly connected with me in a positive way.  One I audaciously did a physical healing on.  I'm not usually called to do that the way I used to be.

    One of the women complained of arm pain. She spent a lot of time paddling when she was younger. (this is a big thing in Hawaii.  It's not rowing as it is on the mainland. It's paddling in the tradition of the Polynesians who founded Hawaii.) I approached it differently than her PTs.  I felt a relationship between her shoulder muscles and the muscles on the left side of her head. It took less than five minutes to make a small change. I advised her to massage the left side of her head on her own.

   The mother of seventh-grade LV texted me to say her daughter wanted to quit. She preferred in-person sessions versus working online.  Her mother had pushed her into working with me because of my qualifications.  I felt the girl had warmed up.  Her reluctance felt more like a resistance to tutoring in general.  I thought she made progress in three sessions. However, we never got to work on comprehension. She tested on a 3rd-grade level for that.  Too bad. She probably could have made enough of a difference in three more sessions.

  Seventh-grade RC is done, too.  I don't find working with her satisfying. She isn't resistant to the sessions. I think she has improved a lot.  Her biggest problem is her negative response when she doesn't get something right.  Good God. If I felt that way, I'd give up life.

  RC says she doesn't know if she's improved.  She may not. She may be inclined to never see anything positive about herself. It may be an Asian thing to never say anything positive about yourself. I was okay with that with Adolescent D.  He denied improvement to the point of insanity.  He once claimed that he could always read at a sixth-grade level.  I started working with him when he was in eighth grade. His mother reported he had never tested higher than on a first-grade level in reading.  I asked, "If you could always do it, why didn't you?"  he said, "I don't know." Some of that is the Apex Effect.  If a problem clears up, we feel like it was never there in the first place. No reason to dwell on issues that have already been resolved.