Tag Archives: forgiveness

Aluminum and gold

21 Thursday Dec 2017

Posted by in medicine, PTSD, Rape

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The CBS national news is featuring a story today that I appeared in as a PANDAS expert. PANDAS is a medical condition affecting kids where their immune system attacks their brain when they get sick and gives them things like tics, OCD, anorexia, rage and cognitive impairment. It’s vital that awareness is raised because so many kids get misdiagnosed and don’t get the treatment they need.

Check it out here

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End of PSA. Here’s the deal:

The story is a personal vindication for me. After my trauma, the story-slash-international-sex-scandal hit the AP wire and was featured in national and international news. It was not a flattering story for me. My name isn’t mentioned; I’m called simply, Noyes’s sex slave (should have read RAPE slave. there I fixed it for them). It led to a public shaming that contributed to my chronic PTSD settling for seven long years.

The head of my med school said I’d never be a doctor because of my moral failings. Not only am I a doctor (make that, an expert) but I am using my degree to fight the good fight. Quite the opposite of what she uses hers for.

Forgive them Lord for they know exactly what they do and do it anyway but you are a merciful God. Good way to flex your mercy muscles.

2017 is drawing to a close and here I am again, writing another reflective end of year post. I haven’t written in this blog in quite some time as I have a blog on my medical practice’s website now. This blog is really about trauma (although that’s not what I intended when I started it. Life’s funny that way I suppose). It’s about trauma in general and about one trauma in particular. The trauma Jeremy brought to me that cold snowy winter of 2008.

The trauma started January 2008. I began healing in January 2009. I got the subpoena written out by he himself to testify at his trial January 2011. I had my final healing from PTSD January 2015. And so…. January. January is coming again.

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It will be ten years since The Ordeal. An anniversary. What are you supposed to give as a gift for your tenth anniversary? I looked it up and it said tin/aluminum for traditional and diamond jewelry for the modern gift tradition. It’s too bad I skipped our ninth anniversary because that one’s leather (get it? He was into BDSM. Leather. Get it? It’s ok. You can laugh. Or look at me awkwardly. You do you)

So what should I get to commemorate the occasion? A tin man? A Coke can? Perhaps an aluminum foil hat to block aliens from stealing his thoughts?

The thing I have in common with him is that he and I both think about The Ordeal everyday of our lives without fail. No one else does. Not consistently. Not without prompting.

My relationship with Jeremy has changed over time but I will always have one with him. From Stockholm Syndrome to fear to anger to forgiveness and then back and forth a few times. To compassion. Ok, sarcastic compassion at times, but compassion nonetheless.

My husband is reading a book about domestic violence right now and we ended up having a conversation last night about the importance of being able to confront an abuser and bring them to task.

“Did you ever do that with Jeremy,” he asked me

“No. I sent him to prison for the rest of his life. I really didn’t need to say anything”

“No but did you ever assert yourself with him verbally. In the courtroom maybe? I wasn’t there when you testified.”

“No… no. He was completely out of touch with reality. He said “I forgive you.” to me”

Eric continued on about the importance of this confrontation of the abuser and I interrupted him and shut him down. Just… no. No. This conversation wasn’t happening. I had no energy for it.

His point was that Jeremy needed that in order to come to terms with what he’d done. Bullies will never change if no one stands up to them. My point was that Jeremy is delusional and believes my sister and I orchestrated a grand conspiracy to frame him with the entire FBI backing us. He honest to Jesus Joseph and Mary believes that raping little girls is actually good for them, so… I’m really not seeing this asserting myself thing doing a whole lot. And quite frankly, if sitting staring at prison bars for 45 years doesn’t cause you to do a little soul searching, I’m pretty sure a sassy physician confronting you ain’t gonna do it either.

He continues the discussion of abusers as bullies and you need to stand up to bullies and all that and my mind wanders back to the courtroom. Back to the bedroom. Bitter, grey Erie. That uneasy feeling in my stomach. That fight or flight in my muscle fibers. In my eyes, always darting, scanning for danger. As it laid next to me.

There was a discussion at work today about what each of us would do if we won the lottery. Conversation drifts to the importance of buying land as it’s a limited resource and I find mySelf saying “or gold.” They begin discussing the merits of gold versus silver for price stability and my mind wanders back to the gold shop in Erie.

Jeremy was fixated on buying gold. He thought he could make money buying and selling it. He watched the gold markets obsessively. He never slept. I remember that. He was up all night on his computer. Barely slept. He watched the markets and talked to Alex in New ZeLand and researched evil.

He thought he was amazingly smart. Smart enough to outsmart the police. Smart
enough to make it rich buying and selling little gold bars. (Spoiler alert: he’s not)

At some point in The Ordeal he had me take my money and buy gold. I lived off student loans At the time so the money I was to live off of was dispersed in two
payments: one in August and one in January. He had me lend him this money I had set aside to live off of later in the year so he could buy gold. He would then sell it back and pay me back and keep the interest I suppose. I don’t remember the details. I remember very little about it. I remember driving to the bank near the Moe’s to withdraw the money (Welcome to Moe’s!)

I remember sitting in the Cheesecake Factory with my sisters that spring and mentioning the gold to them. I remember the look on my sister’s face and the way she spoke. She spoke to me the way you’d speak to someone holding a gun in their hand about to shoot. She looked horrified. She spoke calmly and slowly. She told me I needed to sell the gold back and put the money back in my savings account. I told her I would. I was glad she wasn’t angry. I was worried by the way she’d talked. Was I crazy, I wondered. She talked to me like I was crazy.

I remember insisting Jeremy give me the gold back in June. He said, the price of gold has gone down. You should wait and I’ll sell it and you won’t lose money. But I insisted and he complied. I don’t know what excuse I gave him. It worked. That’s all that matters.

I needed to get the money back because I was turning him in. Soon the government would seize his assets. I remember sitting there in the minivan with the broken air conditioning outside the gold shop in Erie. Sweating in my heavy black Land’s End skirt.

I still have that skirt. Still looks good. Damn good quality skirt.

Purple scrubs now, standing in urgent care a few lifetimes later. I walk away from the lottery discussion to work on notes. The memory of the Cheesecake Factory is unsettling. It fills me with shame. What decisions I made at that time of my trauma were mine and which were not? Maybe I would have done something crazy like buying up gold even if I hadn’t been in a situation where he controlled me through force.

If so, do I deserve to feel ashamed? No. I remind myself of this. I take a deep breath and let the shame go. Sort of. Hey, life’s a process. Don’t rush me.

So maybe I should get Jeremy something gold for our anniversary? No. Gold was a mistake. I’ll definitely stick with aluminum this time. Maybe foil for the rabbit ears on the prison TV so he can learn about PANDAS and the good fight.

food is not love ( or: Hail keystone party mix, full of carbs…)

12 Saturday Nov 2016

Posted by in kids, love, parenting

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I’m working a lot of days this week. 6 out of 7 days. Which when you work 12-13 hour days, is a lot. For me and for my kids and husband. #UrgentCareLife.

I needed to prepare for this by making freezer meals for both this hellish week and then the week after since I’d have no time to make *those* meals as I normally would the week before. Because I’m working 6 out of 7 days this week. Did I mention I’m working 6 out of 7 days this week? It’s kind of awful.

I was making a new recipe for the freezer. One I had never attempted before: chicken cacciatore. As it was simmering, I thought of my childhood, of my grandmother’s house. She used to make chicken cacciatore. She wasn’t Italian; she was a farm wife whose people had come from Scotland and England like the people of Appalachia tended to have done. She always cooked from scratch. Three meals a day. No sandwiches for lunch. It was boiled potatoes and pork chops and sliced tomatoes and fruit and… Something was always cooking, the scents hanging in the house when you walked in the door. She wasn’t much into baking so when we would walk the mile down the road to her house on hot summer days to go swimming in her pool, she would bring us Keebler Soft Batch chocolate chip cookies as a snack. Something we did not get at home. Something we absolutely loved.

I thought back on the chicken cacciatore she made as I watched mine coming along. I felt my heart warming to think mine was turning out as well as hers. And then I thought, my Grandma never seemed to love me. I mean, I’m just being brutally honest here. It sounds awful, but I come from a dysfunctional family where I just had no emotionally intimate connection with anyone. It astounded me when I grew up and found out how other people felt about their grandparents, the close bond they shared. Not so with me and mine. I had just assumed that’s what a grandchild-grandparent relationship was *supposed* to be like. Turns out I was wrong.

So, why was the chicken and peppers boiling away in our cast iron skillet making me feel all soft and gooey?

I thought back on my grandmother’s chicken cacciatore and my mother’s snickerdoodle cookies. The peanut butter bread my mother made for us with raisins that made a smiley mouth and two mini marshmallows for eyes. The trips to McDonalds with my mom when my sisters were at school, just me and her. I told myself that food was her way of showing love. But it wasn’t. It was the desperate attempt of a little girl to believe her mother loved her in a way she definitely did not. Children are completely dependent on their parents for their very lives. They have to believe in them, in their love. And so I found a way.

What I didn’t realize until that moment in the kitchen next to the hot stove with the chicken cacciatore wafting into my pores, is that it wasn’t love at all. It was just food. And for all these 37 years I’ve been alive, I have comforted myself with food because, to me, it is love. Not a symbol of love, not a sign. It is literally love. When you’re upset, you should be able to go to your mother to be comforted. I never could. But I could eat chocolate. I could pour my sadness out to Little Debbie cakes and my anger into Doritos.

If your parents don’t comfort you when you’re young, you never learn to comfort yourself. Not in a healthy way, anyway.

For me, food has been my answer to sadness, worry, uncertainty, joy, anger, boredom, frustration. It’s been my self care and entertainment. It has been my secret, my rebellion, my hiding place, my distraction.

I remember being 10 years old in 4th grade and we had to all cross the road to the YMCA and take swimming lessons. I felt horrible about my body. I thought my thighs were just massive. I couldn’t stand the thought of being seen in a bathing suit. I’d never been made fun of. But the idea was there because of what I heard discussed at home as well as the messages we get in our culture. I began looking for excuses not to participate. I would forget my clothes on purpose. Say I wasn’t feeling well.

There was a vending machine at the Y that we were forbidden to use (this is in the days before there were vending machines in schools). I used to try to be the first one out of the locker room after class so I could quickly deposit my quarters to get a snack size bag of Keystone Party Mix. A compilation of pretzels, cheese covered tortilla chips, barbecue corn chips and cheese doodles. I would hide it away in my bag and save it for later. I would take it back to my bedroom and eat it in secret.

My parents found out I was missing swimming class and sat me down and asked me why. Was someone picking on me? No, I answered honestly. But I knew I couldn’t tell them why I was really skipping class. An unwritten, unspoken rule of the family. Don’t have negative emotions. Don’t expose your vulnerability or they will pounce. Everything. Is. Fine. And so I said what I was supposed to. Made up some unbelievable excuse which they readily believed. Everything. Is. Fine. After all.

My Keystone Party Mix comforted me. My Keystone Party Mix was the secret I kept from them. It was mine and mine alone. A protective wall. The more they know about you, the more they will hurt you. Reveal as little as possible. Protect yourself.

Hail Keystone Party Mix, full of carbs, … protect us, Mother.

That was the beginning of it. This is the end.

I know I deserve more now. I deserve love. And food is not love. I am finally able to eat healthily and be happy. I am able to comfort myself without turning to cake. I can get angry with my husband and not stop off at McDonald’s on my way to work for a Sausage McMuffin. I can make it through a boring, frustrating day at work without noshing on candy all day. I can stop after a handful of chips or a single brownie, because I am not empty and searching. I hope I am giving this to my children too. The ability to sit with the hardships of life, to turn to people who love and support them, to know they’re worth more.

I do cook for my family because I love them. I work urgent care for them and clean for them and kiss boo boos too. But I do not offer food as a substitute for love and compassion, emotional validation and open, safe, discussions. Sometimes our family *isn’t* fine. Sometimes we’re a wreck. No, like, a flaming tire fire kind of wreck. And that’s okay. It’s life. It is what it is. We all have permission to feel whatever it is we’re feeling at that moment. We’re allowed to have boundaries. I hope they like my cooking and the birthday cakes I make them, but I hope that’s the least of what I mean to them. They deserve more.

 

After 37 years, I did

03 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by in empathy, kids, love

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I feel different today. I feel lighter.
I am 37 years old and have never stood up to my mother. Never spoken back to her. Not once. Not as a child, not as a teenager, not as an adult no matter what she said or did to me. I have never stood up to my sister either. Yesterday, I did. After 37 years, I did.
*
I have worked hard to turn the other cheek, to look for the log in my eye and not the splinter in theirs. I have tried to be empathetic and loving and kind. To not meet their aggression with mine, as you cannot dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools. But there is a difference between being aggressive and being assertive. I gave up the passivity that defined my role in my dysfunctional family.
*
It was no great scene. Not emotional or dramatic. I simply told my sister I did not want her dirty money (I don’t. She made it off the backs of the poor) and that someone who’d hurt my children like she did, did not get to dictate the terms of our dispute. And then I told her something true that I’m sure cut her to the bone: that she is just like our mother. Because she is.
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My mother responded by telling me she knew I’d sent “hateful” texts to my sister. I told her the truth. I told her I’d simply told my sister she was just like my mother and my sister apparently considers that hateful. (it’s kind of funny, looking back on it) She said, I suppose I won’t be hearing from you for a while again (referencing the months I’d taken while in therapy a few years ago to work out my wounds from her and what kind of boundaries I needed to establish. During which she was free to see my children whom adore her, but whom she chose not to see). I replied, No, unlike you I don’t write people off for disobeying me. I wouldn’t hurt my children like that.
*
I texted her today to assure her she was still invited to the three children’s birthday parties we have coming up and that the children would be sad if she didn’t come. No reply. I’m not surprised but I am sad for my children.
*
The narrative of what happened will go down in the family history book like this: crazy Libby did something irresponsible again (believe it or not, this whole thing was precipitated by a dog I’d bought impulsively. Don’t ask) and responsible Becky came in to save her and the poor innocent dog (my mother was considerably more concerned about the puppy she’d know for 24 hours during our exchange than her grandson she once referred to as her “soulmate”). Libby responded vindictively and cruelly.
*
I’ve no doubt my sister Becky, who had shut my parents out of her life for the past five years along with me and my children, will now return to the fold. And so my dysfunctional family will go on as it always has. But without me. Not by my choice but by theirs. And my children will be the ones to suffer. First their cousins taken away and now the grandparents they adore.
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I hope this doesn’t happen. I hope a distant awkward peace can be made enough that they can bring themselves to see my children.
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I spent my childhood trying to be the good one, trying to earn their love and never be bad. Good grades, never talk back, extracurriculars, stuff your emotions down, don’t ask for help even when you’re in so much pain inside. I was never good enough. I tried.
*
And so in my lightness today, I am using my energy to write letters to my children. To let them know I love them and I’m proud of them. To let them know I only push them so they can be their best and achieve their dreams and purpose in life. I admit to them I am imperfect but I’m sorry for my wrongs. That they don’t deserve the frustration I take out on them at times. I remind them they have a perfect mother in heaven who is always there.
*
Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone, I seek a new people now. For mine are gone away. They were never there; I just couldn’t see it.

Better Living Through Science

21 Wednesday Jan 2015

Posted by in autism, doctors, empathy, kids, medicine, parenting, Sin, special needs

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I’ll admit I spend a good amount of time on Facebook. I like to see what politcal/social justice type things my friends from college are up to. I like to post pictures of my kids for distant friends to see. Sometimes I’ll take one of those quizzes: Which Golden Girl are you? (I got Rose, in case you’re wondering. I was really hoping for Dorothy but I guess I haven’t matured to her level of sass and pith quite yet). One thing that dominates my feed is posting from my fellow doctors and nurses bashing parents who don’t vaccinate their kids. And yes, I mean bashing. I don’t mean expressing concern for their children. I don’t mean seeking to find ways to turn the tide of increasing numbers of people not vaccinating their kids. I mean, bitching about them and how they’re screwing up herd immunity for the rest of us because they are bad people who ignore science.

I have issues with this.

Ironically, these people of science are not being scientific at all. The whole argument is that these crazed non-vaccinators are ignoring science. They’re irrational. They’re backwards. They’re stupid. They’re ignorant. The problem with this argument is that the accusers here are ignoring the fact that *they* themselves are not being scientific. Let’s look at the facts:

-By and large, non-vaccinating parents are highly educated with average to above average intelligence. That’s what the research shows us. Most of them have read everything their doctors have read and come to the decision that it’s not compelling evidence to them for one reason or another. So, calling them stupid or irrational simply isn’t accurate.

-Most parents who do not initially vaccinate will vaccinate their children within a few years. The vast majority of patients questioning vaccination cite their doctor as their most trusted source of information. But here’s the rub: the research shows that if their doctor comes at them with the attitude most doctors hold, these parents actually become *more* likey to not vaccinate. What has been shown to work, scientifically, is for physicians to engage in respectful, open minded dialogue with them and not engage in scare tactics etc.

We have an obligation as physcians to pediatric patients of these parents and also to the greater community and society. We’re tossing aside evidence based medicine and compromising both with our attitudes towards these parents.

Why? Basically because this topic makes most doctors really really mad. And we allow really really mad to get in the way of our obligation to these kids. We find it emotionally comfortable to get angry and make it into a moral failing in these parents. Some of it is righteous anger in defense of community health. Some of it is control issues. We don’t like it when patients don’t do what we say. We got into medicine to help people and now they’re not letting us help them. Maybe it makes us sad to see them hurting themselves. Maybe it pisses us off they’re messing up our plan.

I was discussing a law recently with some fellow residents that I read about going into effect recently in a southern state. They were starting to arrest mothers who did illegal drugs while pregnant once the babies were born. Two of us thought it was a terrible law because addiction is a disease and criminalizaing it really wasn’t the answer. Putting a baby’s mother in jail soon after birth is incredibly obviously not good for a baby. Knowing she’ll go to jail if she delivers her addicted baby in the hospital will inevitably lead to some of these mothers delivering their babies at home and not getting proper medical care. They’re certainly going to be more likely to lie to their physicians about what drugs they’ve been doing. The resident in favor of the law was adament that these women must be punished. They’ve harmed their child and they must be punished. The fact that this law was only going to hurt these babies further was not the issue here. Addiction was not a disease, it was a moral failing.

The truth of it is, it is simply easier and more satisfying to write these non-vaccinating parents off as kooks and lost causes. But if you truly believe not vaccinating their children (your patient) puts them at risk, you have a moral obligation to not write them off as a lost cause. You are that child’s advocate. You are a physician practicing evidence based medicine. So act like it.

Parents who are simply questioning vaccinating may or may not know much about it. So, guage how much they know and offer them education in a respectful way. Talk when appropriate and listen when appropriate. Don’t engage in scare tactics. Show them some compassion. This will maximize the chances they will vaccinate today or soon therafter. In case we’re not clear on this: making them sign a release recognizing they’re placing their child’s life at risk by not vaccinating is not productive in this regard.

Some parents are at the point where they are refusing to vaccinate and have probably read up on a lot of what you have to tell them about vaccine safety and efficacy. If you can tell they’re already familiar with the information you have to offer, it’s time for you to sit and listen. Ask them why they don’t want to vaccinate and listen respectfully and compassionately. If they’re open to your responding, then go ahead and respond. If they’re not, then thank them for sharing with you and let them know you truly believe vaccination is the best thing for their child and that you hope the dialogue can be kept open at future visits.

If the above approach chafes your chaps, if it seems just plain wrong, that’s a perfectly valid feeling you’re having; but it certainly isn’t scientific.

Instead of reading self-congratulary after self-congratulatory article on how awful these non-vaccinators are, you’d be better served to read up on why parents make that choice. Better yet, try talking to a few of them. As a mom of a child with autism, I can tell you there are plenty of parents in that community who would be more than willing to talk to you about it. Step back from the moralistc thinking and consider all the psychological and social reasons parents might have to make this socially unpopular choice. What life experiences have they had that have led them down this path?

One thing I try to stress to my interns starting out in residency is that there’s a place for book knowledge but most of what you need to know about being a good doctor comes from experience. Your experience as you go along and learning from the experiences of the doctors teaching you who’ve been at it so much longer than you. If you’ve seen a child suffering from a vaccine preventable disease, you’re most likely eager to share that with your patients. But, you’re better off trying to find out about their experiences affecting this decision. Scientifically speaking.

One common misconception amongst the American public that upsets physicians is the idea that vaccines cause autism. How can so many people believe this stil?! It’s been scientifically disproven! Heck, it’s even been anecdotally disproven in the case of thimerosol. Let’s get rid of the exclamation points and ask that question for real. Why is it that people still believe all vaccines or MMR or vaccines containing thimerosol cause autism? Is it all due to that villain Dr. Wakefiled who published that now discredited study in the Lancet? Has he mesmerized these foolish parents? Or could there be a more logical explanation. Perhaps one explained by medicine?

Let’s set aside the vaccine facts for a minute here and consider some facts that are at the core of every family’s life who has a child on the autism spectrum:

1. Doctors do not know what causes autism
2. They’re pretty sure it’s a genetic predisposition that gets triggered but they don’t know what’s triggering it
3. But they’re pretty sure it must be mulptiple things because they can’t really find any one thing these kids have in common
4. Doctors have no cure for autism
5. Doctors don’t even have a very good treatment for it
6. Most PCP’s don’t know nearly as much about autism as an informed parent. As PCP’s, we’re generalists and it’s not something stressed in med school
7. The rate of autism keeps climbing and the truth of it is, scientifically speaking, we don’t really know why

Can you honestly tell me a parent in this situation would be irrational to question things that are dogma to modern medicine such as vaccines? Modern medicine has failed them. What they need from you is not a lecture or an anecdote of what can happen to unvaccinated kids. Assurance of the rarity of adverse events from vaccines (and yes, there are rare but quite serious effects at times) will not comfort them. They need their trust in medicine restored. And that begins with you, the PCP. I say begins because it is a process that can’t be rushed. You have to sit with them, sit with the uncertainty and anger and helplessness that comes with special needs parenting. You need to show them their child is your patient who you care about. That you see the challenges and the joys of their life. To show them that this isn’t about a battle for control. That you want what’s best for their child. And that you’re open to learning from them. That it really is a dialogue and not a lecture.

Only 1% of parents in Pennsylvania choose not to vaccinate their child, but the lessons we can learn from this issue will make us better doctors in a lot of ways. And better people for that matter.

Listen. Empathize. Validate. Assert. Repeat.

I often tell my kids: it’s okay to get angry. It’s not bad to feel angry. But when we get angry, we have to make good choices of what to do with that anger. I think we could all stand to hear that on a regular basis. So, my fellow physicians: it’s okay to get angry about vaccination. It’s not bad to feel angry. But you need to make good choices.

You’re a physician practicing evidence based medicine. So act like it.

New Year New You! (How Ima Got Her Groove Back)

10 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by in empathy, kids, love, medicine, my awesome husband, parenting, PTSD, Rape

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I found this idea on Pinterest for keeping a jar where you write down happy/funny things that happen throughout the year and put them in this jar. I believe it advised a big jar (with the assumption being you’ll have lots of good things happening I suppose). You open the jar up at the end of the year and read over all the little happy moments you otherwise might have forgotten. The woman who’d pinned it had written it was a “super cute idea !!!!” and that she was definitely going to try it.

I pitched the idea to Poobah and he liked it (although he didn’t call it super cute or exclaim). So I took the large clear plastic teddy bear shaped animal cracker jar and dumped the animal crackers out into a bag (they’ve been sitting uneaten in the jar for 3 months so why not keep them uneaten in a different container a little longer) and wrote 2015 on the bear’s tummy with a Sharpy.

As I did so, I thought, why only write down the happy times? Why not the bad times too? It was January first and I was heading to work soon. I wasn’t very cheery.

But it wasn’t just working on a holiday that made me think that. I’d been bogged down in PTSD and working crazy hours and stress and financial problems and family discord. Bogged down for a while.

I felt like there wouldn’t be much to put in the jar.

I said goodbye to my husband and kids and headed to the hospital. Holidays can be slow because people put off going to the hospital on a holiday if they can, but it’s been a particularly busy year for hospital medicine because of all the influenza. I expected I’d be fairly busy and hoped it wouldn’t be any worse than that. I hoped no patients crashed. I hoped for some time to think.

Earlier in the day, Poobah and the kids and I had gathered in the living room around our old school fake Christmas tree (the kind that really do look fake and aren’t “pre-lit” and don’t have green concentrated pine scent aroma sticks discretely hung on a strategically chosen back branch) to continue a tradition my sister Nicci and I had started when I was still in high school. Every New Years we make predictions for the upcoming year and then the following year we read over them and see who got the most right. We also talk about things that happened over the past year that were unexpected.

We’d each made three predictions but I wanted some time before I went and started the admissions to write down a few more and think about the year ahead.

I started writing and this is what came out:
I need to move forward. But these next 6 months are going to be exhausting. I’m not sure what to do. I wish it were a simpler tale. I wish I could figure it out.
Where did it begin? Before I was born? If it did, then what?

We all seek to be an individual with self-esteem
There are those who stand in the way
And so we assert to be ourselves in maladaptive ways
Because of the innate drive towards maturity

Malcolm has something special in him. Malcolm could change the world.
He said he wants to be an astronaut so he can change the world.

Mies has this amazingly unique combination of traits.

They’re extraordinary.

Maybe I am too.

And with those four little words, I got my groove back. I didn’t just get my groove back from before Jeremy Noyes traumatized me seven years ago or before my medical school rubbed salt in the spiritual wound and made it stick. I mean I got my groove back from Way back.

It’s a process, of course, but it is set in motion. It is inevitable. The rate limiting step of the reaction has been overcome and the chemical cascade is in full swing.

I’ve spent most of my precious little free time since then wading through shame and heartache, cleaning out every dark corner of the past 35 years. It’s amazing all the things I’ve been ashamed of over the years. It’s amazing how ashamed I still felt now, decades later, simply writing out the words different people have said to me. I’ve done that sort of thing before, sitting and trying to process bad memories. But the difference this time is that I finally believed that I didn’t deserve any of it. I finally believed I’m extraordinary and so deserving of love and safety and joy, it’s ridiculous.

The words lost their power over me. Those people lost their power over me.

There are things I’ve done in my life I’m ashamed of and I sat with those too. Some of them I reminded myself I had no control over (feeling ashamed I “let” myself be raped, for instance), some I decided are just inevitable mistakes of youth, and some I had to forgive myself for. I regret very little as a general rule, but the things I’ve done that have hurt people, really hurt them, I do regret, and I had to forgive myself and let go of the shame.

Another inevitable piece of it is that I am losing the extra weight I have clung to for many years. It’s time to let it go and so I am. I feel hungry but it doesn’t distress me because it’s what’s supposed to be.

I’ve recovered from political amnesia and am reading feminists and progressives and anarachists again. I’m engaging with people about things that matter. I’m throwing a hundred evolving ideas out to my husband on everything our future holds after we graduate this June.

It’s not that I’m becoming a whole new person. It’s that I’m returning to being myself. I’m doing what we are all made to do: becoming more myself and finding what it is I am supposed to be doing to make the world a better place.

I look at my two year old daughter and see she’s there. She’s got her groove on. She knows what she thinks and wants and feels and she lets you know it. She’s engaged with everything and everyone she comes in contact with. She’s alive. She’s in the flow.

I want to do everything I can to keep her there as much as possible. I want to help all my kids find their flow. And anyone else I can. Because that’s what life is. But I see now, it’s not selfish to enjoy having my own groove on. Quite the opposite. Flow begets flow.

And so, the other day, I took a little green slip of paper next to the empty animal cracker jar and I wrote the first memory of 2015: January 1st Ima got her groove back. (our kids call me Ima. I’ll tell you about it some time)

This is for my husband now: My name is Elizabeth Spaar and 2015 is the year I got my groove back

The surprising mathematics of shame

05 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by in christianity, empathy, kids, love, medicine, parenting, PTSD, Rape

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I came home from working a 24 hour shift and thought, I should relax and watch something funny before I head for my nap. I have a tendency not to follow through on such intentions very well. I tend to wind up watching a documentary about something heavy instead. My therapist Dr. O said my main hobby in life seems to be thinking and that has its benefits and its drawbacks. One of the drawbacks being my insomnia largely caused by my unending pondering. So I knew logically that I really should put on something lighthearted to unwind and then go take my nap, but logic rarely dictates what we do in this world and I am no exception.

In my defense, I did go to the Search area of Netflix and begin to type in “Sex and the City.” I can’t be blamed for Netflix suggesting I might enjoy the TED talks on the topic of sex and love.

The first talk was “eh.” It was about parenting taboos I didn’t exactly find earth shaking. Maybe because I entered parenting via the special needs route. I was doing calculus when the parents giving the talk were still learning to count. Not to say their talk didn’t have value. Sesame Street has a lot of value, for instance. But I digress….

The second talk was different. It was by Brene’ Brown, a PhD in social work, and it was titled “The Power of Vulnerability.” She talked about the most basic human need being connection. She said it was the meaning of life. She talked about the thing that keeps us from it too: shame.

She described shame as the fear of being disconnected. Our fear that if people really knew us, they would reject us.

She said something else too: the less you talk about shame, the more you have.

She said the key to happiness in life was vulnerability. Being willing to sit with uncertainty, taking risks worth taking.

She said that the difference between people who feel loved and connected in this life and those who don’t is whether or not you feel worthy of being loved and connected.

She said we numb vulnerability with food and buying stuff and drinking and medication but when we do, we also numb joy and happiness and make ourselves more and more miserable.

She said more in 15 minutes that is worthwhile than I learned in four years of medical school. My husband says I’m exagerating a bit when I say that. I’m prone to exageration, so I guess I’ll rephrase: what she said launched an epiphany for me that will make me a better doctor and a better person.

You see, PTSD is about disconnection and not being able to be vulnerable and numbing and shame. And shame. I’ve been trying to figure a way out of the disconnection and numbing and avoiding vulnerability piece. It didn’t occur to me that the key could be shame. And it didn’t occur to me there might be a simple mathematical solution:

Talk about the shame –> less shame

I always thought it was the other way around. Maybe that’s why therapy hasn’t done a lot for me over the years. Maybe.

So I’m on a mission to talk about my shame. Every last bit of it. Everyone has it except for psychopaths, so there’s no shame in admitting you feel ashamed.

I had a grrl band when I was in college called Dum(b). Don’t ask about the parentheses. I named the band Dumb because we were a grrl band giving voice to women’s and girls voices (dumb used to mean mute in addition to meaning stupid FYI). I used to be an oral historian trying to give voice to marginalized people (thank you Howard Zinn, God rest his soul). But it’s time to look at myself now.

I need to talk about the things I’ve kept silent so long. The things I have tried to stuff down with food, to forget in the rush of infatuation, have tried to bury under a pile of things bought with credit cards. The things that have kept me from being fully present, that have made me afraid to be vulnerable.

These things that keep you from being alive. The opposite of life.

When I look at my children it is so easy to see that they are extraordinary just as they are. So easy to know in my bones they don’t deserve to feel shame. What I have come to realize is that I need to feel that way about myself.

I have spent the past seven years surviving. Surviving for them, because I had to. But survival isn’t life. It’s a holding pattern. I need to live and not just for them. I need to be fully alive again for me too. Because I deserve to be alive and joyful and self-confident and full of plans and hope and possibility.

Possibilty. It’s been so long since life seemed to hold real possibility.

I went to sleep for a few hours last night during a lull in admissions for the first time in so long. I prayed and thanked God for what the Holy Spirit has revealed to me through a TED talk. And then I stopped thinking and went to sleep. Because I deserve it.

And as I typed the words, I came to believe them

04 Thursday Sep 2014

Posted by in christianity, empathy

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I got triggered the other day for the first time in a little while. I refer here to my PTSD. Something happened at work and I had a flashback to what had happened to me in medical school. When one of my fellow students did unspeakable things. And when those higher ups punished me for it instead of helping me. I have never had this happen at work before but there I was. My heart rate was picking up, my throat beginning to gag, the tears welling up. I quietly slipped away from the lecture. I wanted to call my husband but I knew if I spoke, I would begin to cry and wouldn’t be able to stop. So, I texted him instead:

I had a flashback and had to leave. Feeling sad. Please pray.

He couldn’t read the text right away, busy with taking care of baby Princess and our castle. So, I decided to pray with him anyway. I texted him:

God is good. God is good. I knew He is. Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ on my left, Christ on my right. Christ in the ear of all who hear me, Christ in the tongue of all who speak of me, Christ in the eye of all who see me. We pray for (the Violent Man)’s soul, for (the unethical Higher Up)’s soul. Poor banished children of Eve. May God have mercy on their souls.

And as I typed the words, I came to believe them. And I became calm.

I cannot say I never get angry with the Violent Man or the unethical Higher Up, but I have forgiven them as much as I can as of now. I pray for them and when I do, I forgive them more and more. I forgive because that’s what God tells us to do. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us. God has forgiven me, poor wretched sinner that I am. But it’s also true that forgiving them makes me feel better. Brings healing. Loosens the hold it all has over me.

Life is not static. It is not clean. I have my days of mourning and my days of joy. But I have come out of the whole thing better than might be expected. I have forgiven, I have trusted. Because I have to, really. We’re not owed anything in this life. It’s all a gift. There will be trauma. There will be pain. But there is so much more.

My husband got my text soon after I’d sent it. I texted him I was calmed down but asked that he still pray for me. He replied simply:

Yes Love…

My husband loves me. My babies too. God loves me perfectly. Jesus said that it’s easy to love your friends, but that we’re called to love our enemies as well. I used to think that was for the benefit of the enemies, or maybe just a way to keep us all in line. But I think it’s more than that. God really does love all of us more than we can comprehend, yes even child molesting sociopaths. So, yes, it is for our enemy’s sake he tells us to love one another. But he also knows that in striving to love our enemies, we grow closer to him, closer to being good, closer to all that is good. And so in trauma we find God, we find goodness. Our dark days are a gift as much as our joyful. He really does bring beauty from ashes.