Countdown Reason # 23: The Facts Are…

Countdown Reason # 24: Hugs, the Flu, and 25 Steps Down the Hall

Every night we have a ritual at our house. I walk the ten footsteps down the hall to my son’s room, hug him as he sits in his desk chair, doing his forever-homework, and say, “Good night, I love you!” He sometimes mumbles the words back to me, but his arms squeeze around mine. And then I walk fifteen steps more down the hall to my daughter’s room, where I say it again: “Good night I love you!” and she, at 14, still lifts her head up to me, hugs me, and says the words back to me, as she has for so many years now, “Good night, Mommy, I love you!” And I think of all the times, when she was so small, we said our nighttime hug-words in a rocking chair, over and over again, as I rocked her to sleep. Today, sometimes the words come out so fast it’s “goodnightmomluvu.” She is a teenager. And the new Taylor Swift album, or her science project video, call. But her eyes are on mine. I carry those hugs back to my bedroom. Whether they are full, long hugs or short brief hugs with distracted teens. Either way, I carry them. For the last four or five days I’ve been down with the flu and not able to post. For me, this is a dicey thing, the stomach flu. But I won’t go into that here. I want to talk about hugs instead. The last few nights the ritual has been reversed. I had a high fever and would wake occasionally to my beautiful 14-year-old daughter leaning over me, holding my hand, “Are you okay mom?” she would say. And an hour later, “Mommy here’s some ginger ale.” And at some point I could mark day from night because she came those same twenty-five steps to my room and said, “Good night mommy I love you!” before she went back to her room, and to bed. And my son coming in, my dimly viewing him, his hand on my arm, my shoulder. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. This morning he said, “Mom I kept coming in and standing here, checking on you, but you didn’t know I was here.” “I knew,” I said. “I knew you were here.” “I love you mom. Feel better, mom,” he said this morning, standing at the doorway to my room. A few minutes later I heard him downstairs, getting himself and his sister breakfast, and out the door to catch the school bus down the road. My husband spent much of the past four days beside me, rubbing my back, bringing me whatever I needed, but mostly love, often in the form of bowls of his homemade chicken soup which he hoped I’d eat. They were each in their own way, giving me a hug. Physically, mentally, the hug was visceral. And every possible piece of literature tells us that these healing touches matter. And that matters to me, because the stomach flu is not the friend of people with my autoimmune history. Those 25 steps down the hall, one direction or the other, they really matter.  

Countdown Reason # 25: How my Friend “S.” Shifts Her Mindset to Joy

My dear friend S. shared this with me. I saw her a few days ago. S. faces her own daily health challenges — her own and her partner’s. She’s started taking a meditative walk each day, at sunrise, and marking each walk with a photo. She looks back at the scene she saw that morning at dawn, later in the day, in the midst of whatever mental, physical, medical challenge she’s facing. It shifts her mindset to joy. Meditation + Nature. Excellent combination. When she showed me this photo, she smiled. Her whole body smiled. Despite what she was going through. I smiled at the thought of her taking her morning walk, meditating with her camera in her hand. I hope you smile. I hope you’ll tell me how YOU shift your mindset to joy. In 25 days, I’ll tell you how I do. And how doing so can change us.

Countdown Reason # 26: Because This Matters

In my last post I asked the question, what do we mean when we say “cure?” Can a cure be the same as “healing?” And if so, what do we mean by “healing?” Many “chronic” conditions may not be “cured.” But we can change the quality of our moments and our days. Is that healing? Is it a cure by another name? Some of the responses seemed so important to me that I’ve decided to repost them here. Julie says: “A wonderful healer I worked with very eloquently said that healing comes in all forms. It doesn’t always look like physical wellness. It may be peace in the heart, or family mending, or a distinct lack of anger and fear. Soul healing does not always translate to the body. A dear friend who did her work, was bathed in love, moved onto the next realm anyway. I feel she had complete healing. Thank you for starting this dialogue!” From Pat: “I am looking forward to the book and I also realize it may not “cure” me in the traditional sense. Much like when I pray, I ask for peace and acceptance of where I am and what is going on in my life. Prayer has not cured me but it has allowed me to not let my health entirely dictate who I am. If there is another tool to use that will improve the quality of my life I will be the first one to open up that tool kit.” What do you think healing is? What do you do, in your own life, to feel “healed?” I think this really matters. If one out of two American women are living with a chronic condition — back pain, fibromyalgia, depression, lupus, Lyme, cancer — healing matters every minute for a great many of us. And yet we are so seldom willing to talk about how we seek that healing. Some chronic conditions may be more serious than others, some situations more dire. But until we open up the dialogue about what heals us — and whether that feels curative — we’re going to find it hard to change the quality of our moments and days.

Countdown Reason # 27: A Cure by Any Other Name

What do I mean when I use the word, “cure?” I struggled with that, to be honest, as I set out to research and write The Last Best Cure. My friend, who I’ll call J, challenged me on that. J. is a breast cancer survivor, who has faced a tough road. “I question whether cure’ is the right word,” she said. “I worry that this just heaps more on women’s shoulders – making us responsible for one more thing,” She paused. “That you’re saying that we’re responsible for curing ourselves. That in addition to taking care of everyone else and taking care of ourselves, we have to figure out ways to change our mindset, feel joy, and activate a more healing brain no matter how bad we feel or how sick we are. What if our brain can’t heal us? Is it our fault if we don’t get well?” Hardly. The science presented in this book is provocative – and powerful.  So powerful it might be tempting for some to use this information in the wrong way, blaming those who are ill for being sick in the first place – and for remaining ill if they can’t “heal themselves.” So let me be clear. When I say “last best cure” I do not mean that as a stand in for “heal thyself.” The brain-body connection is only one of many factors affecting our health outcome.  Every woman faces her own unique genetic predispositions, family history, and environmental influences. Pursuing the new science of joy is merely one more tool in our healing arsenal. Nowhere in this discussion is there room to imply that those of us who are chronically ill caused our own illness, or that we’re at fault if, despite all the brain-body methods we employ, illness, pain and suffering do not improve. For some women, practicing approaches that help shift their mindset toward more joy may help to bring them closer to physical well-being.  For others, practicing these approaches may simply provide freedom from the mental suffering that so often accompanies chronic conditions, offering them a newfound state of well-being that enhances their quality of life — regardless of whether their physical condition improves. Ask anyone of us who faces a chronic condition, be it physical or emotional: to intervene in the mind’s orchestration of suffering – especially when anxieties rage — is no small gift. Let me tell you exactly what I think of when I think of the word “cure.” I think we think of being “cured” as being free of symptoms, free of illness — when we need to be thinking in terms of healing. Being “cured” and feeling better often overlap; they are not the same thing. Our health is affected by a range of emotional components that impact us at a cellular level in ways we still don’t completely understand. But we do know the impact is real. We know that efforts to shift our state of mind from pain and fear to joy and well-being don’t merely make us feel better, they induce and maximize the healing responses in the brain in ways that affect our biology in lasting ways. “Chronic” conditions may not be “cured.” But we can change the quality of our moments and our days. Meditation, yoga, and acupuncture help chronic conditions even if we are still working on the why. Sometimes those efforts will result in an improvement in our physical state and sometimes they won’t but in all cases we will experience a sense of greater joy. And more joy is joyful. And joyful feels good. Even, well, healing. And that is what I mean by The Last Best Cure.

Countdown Reason #28: The Cane in my Closet

I was just reading a lovely novel, To The End of the Land, by David Grossman (finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award for fiction). And in it the main character quotes an obscure book by Nahum Gutman, called The Path of the Orange Peels, in which the main character says that every morning when he gets up and puts on his shoes he whistles excitedly, “because I am glad of the new day breaking.” I couldn’t help but think of The Cane in my Closet. That’s not a book title. It’s a real cane, in my very real closet. I keep the cane, which has a bright red and pink and gold flower pattern on it, hanging amidst my clothes, so that every single morning when I hang up my bathrobe and pajamas, and pull out a big, comfy sweater to put on for another day of writing, my cane is right there. The Big Reminder. Gone are the days when it rested every night beside my bed. But I still know the feel of its wooden handle against my palm. I still remember, very well, how I once used it everyday, everywhere, like a Fifth Limb. I remember the moment I got it, when the lovely nurse at Hopkins let me choose it from the array of canes she brought to my room, in a basket. “I think this one is so pretty!” she said. “And bright and happy! I’m so glad they are coming out with these nice patterns now.” And she smiled the sort of winning, willing smile that people smile at you when you are in a wheelchair. And I remember thinking, “Claire will like this one.” (Claire, my daughter, was six at the time.) And I remember thinking how Christian, ten at the time, would like the way you could press a button on the side of the cane, and the whole cane retracted into one small cane you could fit in a travel bag. Like a Jedi sword. Big when you needed it. Small when you didn’t. And I remember the day my physical therapist whisked my cane away. The day he challenged me, after six months of relying on it, to take a few steps without it. How he spotted me on the back lawn, where each small grassy bump or acorn loomed as a cataclysmic obstacle to my balance.  I remember telling him I couldn’t do it, I just couldn’t walk without my cane, and his saying “I think you can.”  Right before he took my cane away. And my crying and putting one foot out, arms spread wide for balance as if the ground were a tightrope. Taking three whole steps before he had to catch me.  And how I promised myself, looking at the new grass coming alive that spring, the birds hopping from one fence post to the next, as our Golden Retreiver, Cody, chased the squirrels racing along the fence rails, that I was going to bring life back into my cold, blue legs again. I was going to walk without my cane. Come back to life. Full life. And so when I read that line in David Grossman’s novel, about the character who puts on his shoes and whistles excitedly, “because [he is] glad of the new day breaking,” the image of my cane came immediately to my mind. How every day when I get up and I see it hanging there, between my bathrobe and my sweaters, I think, “I am glad of a new day, I’m glad to be here, I’m glad to be walking around on my own two legs.” And there is something else. It’s a little bit harder to explain. I am also glad to feel glad. Not because my life is perfect. Not because I always feel great. Goodness knows, my own two legs still have some hard days. But because I have learned how to feel gladness spread through me, like a smile rushing upward from my toes. And that I feel this, every day. For that one small moment. Before the bustle and hurry and stress of another busy family and work day begins. I feel glad of the new day breaking. I feel glad of Full Life. I didn’t get here, to a place where gladness wells up, so quickly. Or easily. I had help along the way. Profound help. Life-changing help. I write about that in The Last Best Cure. And I’m grateful, and glad, to be able (in 28 days) to share that with you.

Countdown Reason # 29: True Refuge

In my own search for The Last Best Cure, I knew that if I wanted to gain a state of mind that was healing for my body and cells — and reclaim joy — I needed help. The best help on the planet. Tara Brach, one of the most gifted insight meditation teachers on the planet, came into my life at just the right moment. She gave me insights into healing my psyche that helped me to rescue my brain when I thought I was at an impossible impasse. She taught me that we all can. I can’t wait for you to read about how (check out Chapter 17: “Psychotherapy on Steroids” when The Last Best Cure hits bookstores in 29 days). But right now, I want to talk about Tara’s new book, True Refuge, which arrives in bookstores everywhere today. Tara is a genius at showing that “beneath the turbulence” of our overactive thoughts and painful emotions there exists a profound stillness, “a silent awareness capable of limitless love.” Tara calls this “our true refuge.” And it’s available to every one of us, at any moment, anywhere. In True Refuge, Tara shares her own unfolding journey, gives us the gift of extraordinary guided meditations, and shares stories of people who have found strength and balance during the kinds of great struggles and life challenges we all face at some point or another. Download it, buy it, read her book. Replace the inner turbulence with your own inner true refuge. Watch her video at: http://www.tarabrach.com/truerefuge.html.      

Countdown Reason # 30: Everyday Stress Shrinks the Brain — Making us Less Able to Cope

Yale University researchers have found that even among healthy individuals, stressful, adverse life events lead to shrinkage in the parts of our brain that help us to manage our emotional reactions. If we’ve had a lot of stress in our lives — financial hurdles, chronic illness, loss of a relationship, you name it — the cumulative effect of that stress causes what researchers call “dramatic changes in brain volume.” That’s not good. I know in my own life I need all the “brain volume” I can get to help me manage my stress reactions and my state of mind. And since I know, after two years of researching and writing The Last Best Cure, that our emotional mindset affects our health so dramatically, I care about my brain volume. A lot. Here’s a little bit more about the study: Yale researchers imaged the brains of 100 healthy people about traumatic and stressful events in their lives, including divorce, death of a loved one, loss of a home or loss of a job. Even very recently affected subjects showed smaller grey matter in their brains in the prefrontal cortex, a region responsible for self-control, our state of emotional well-being, our desires, our impulse control. When we are repeatedly battered by stressful events, nerve tissue in this region literally  disappears, making us less able to adapt in the face of life’s challenges now, and in the future. And health-related stressors, such as living with a chronic condition or losing a loved one, affect our mood centers most acutely. Smaller brain volumes in these centers are linked to depression and anxiety. The good news? It’s great news. If we regularly take action to shift our mindset away from stress states, we can rescue the brain. Really rescue it. Reversing the impact of adversity. Reclaiming our sense of joy, and our inner life force. We can find our way back again. And it feels really good to do it, for our brains, for our bodies, our cells. And that is The Last Best Cure.

Countdown Reason # 31: For Women Like Amy

I just received this website email, from a reader friend named Amy. I asked her if I could excerpt a little bit of it in my blog. Amy is 46-years-old, a dynamo really, who suffers from quite a few chronic conditions. You would never know it to see her. She is beautiful, vibrant, raising two sweet boys, active in every way. She keeps her conditions private, very private. Here’s what Amy had to say about how few of us who have a chronic health issue admit to how it impacts our lives, including our marriages: “In 46 years I’ve never picked up a book on health until I picked up your last book, The Autoimmune Epidemic. Had I not heard so much about it, I still may not have read it. It would be the next opportunity for my husband to poke fun at how much I am becoming like my grandmother.  I hear this type of thing from a number of my friends, including my sister, about their husbands who usually ignore their ailments.” And here is what Amy had to say about how capable those of us who do have a chronic issue so often are, despite our “tiger in the lifeboat:” “I usually think I can handle more than the average person. Some days I may just struggle with a Cat in the Lifeboat. I think a lot of times those of us who are dealing with a condition we don’t talk about are some of the most capable women out there. I’m hoping your book The Last Best Cure helps those of us who already have a positive attitude to realize that we can rally and be more productive than most. And because we have a different perspective on life we are the ones to pass on a lot of great potential and understanding about what matters in life on to our kids. We’re good moms, we’re smart, we’re good at what we do. But we might not pick up a book that seems to be about illness per se. Because we don’t want people to put us in that category. So maybe you should call your book something like, “Fit and Fabulous over Forty?” or “The Real Lives of American Wives?” I had a great laugh when I read Amy’s last title idea. What do you think of what Amy had to say?  

Countdown Reason # 32: How is Your “Life Force?”

A new study on women in mid-life finds that women who have an inner sense of “Life Force” have lower levels of cell-damaging stress hormones and cytokines, such as IL-6. “Life Force” may sound like something out of the annals of Star Wars’ Jedi training, but it’s up-to-the-minute neuroscience (in this case, from the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity). Researchers define “Life Force” as “a sense of innate vigor or active engagement with life.” They aren’t referring, they say, to how physically active we are or how much exercise we get. Investigators report that “beyond physical activity, some people seem to have this innate energy that makes them intrinsically involved in life.” “Life force” has to do with our inner ability to find and experience more joy in life than stress. The idea that our ability to withstand stress-related, inflammatory disease is associated with inner “Life Force” really matters for women because, in general, women have higher levels of inflammatory IL-6 than do men, and due to hormonal differences, we’re also more vulnerable to the physical ravages of stress. We know that chronic stress causes our brain to release hormones that take a toll on our organs and cells. Like any injury, that brings a reaction from the body’s immune system, including the release of immune chemicals that trigger inflammation in an attempt to begin the healing process. That same process goes too far, as we know, in diseases including rheumatoid arthritis, Alzheimer’s disease and atherosclerosis — and many other chronic conditions. In today’s world, most of us face some sort of chronic stress. Who among us can say we have very little stress in our lives? I know I can’t. It’s how that stress affects us — and how much we counter that stress by finding ways to enter a different mindset, one of joy and well-being — that seems to matter most. Bottom line: your inner sense of “Life Force” is directly linked to your cellular health. If your inner “Life Force” is low, how do you get it back? That is the question I asked when I set out to research and write The Last Best Cure. I didn’t know what to call it, but I knew, I just knew, that I needed to work on finding ways to increase my innate sense of energy, my intrinsic involvement in the world around me, my inner ability to find and experience more joy in life — and I knew I needed to decrease the negative, worried patter going on in my own brain. If I hoped to feel better physically, I had to also find a greater sense of inner well-being. A better sense of inner “Life Force.” How about you? Do you need to work on your inner “Life Force” too? If so, what do you think is holding you back?