No time for health

In all of the methods I've found for coping with Chronic Fatigue there is one thing all of them require. That is patience. Just resting and letting the things you think you ought to be doing, or would like to be doing, letting those things go. Weeks like this one where every day is spectacular and the garden is calling out to be dug, plants moved, seeds started, I have to make myself rest. One good way is to watch a movie every day, that seems to slow me down a bit. Most of the gardening that needs done requires truly hard work, digging, hauling dirt and stones, climbing around and getting the irrigation ready to go. I have to just choose one small area at a time and do a complete job on that area no matter how many days it takes to complete.

I've begun investigating the role of healer as I've had to become my own healer. There are so many beneficial techniques of healing available to us these days, and yet I fear that I would be completely frustrated as a healer. The reason for the frustration is that it is so hard to find anyone who is willing to work for their own health. Even other healers I know do not have the patience and the time to give themselves to the requirements of healing.
The method of healing I've found most beneficial is Tai Chi, which of course takes years to learn. But it becomes beneficial as soon as we become willing to let it change us and our way of life. But that's another problem.

The next most beneficial healing method I've come across is cooking for myself. I've become aware that food you have invested your interest and time in feeds your body more fully.

Finally I've found a method of Acupressure called Jin Shin Do which is marvelously relaxing and has granted me great jumps forward in my healing. I've learned to do it and have been really excited to think that I can help my friends and family, even with minor things like headaches, hot flashes, chronically cold hands and feet etc. To my shock, the people I love do not have the patience to lay on a table and be held for the amount of time needed. Impatience overcomes them. Wow, we are sicker than we think.


The photo is of a local canyon in a spring snowfall last week. You can see red sandstone cliffs in the far back of the photo.

a day without a good meal is a day wasted

Those words were spoken by the Chef of one of the oldest restaurants in Paris, that means one of the first restaurants ever in existence . http://www.ovationtv.com/programs/151 But sometimes the meal that makes the day worthwhile is not a meal of food, but a meal of life. For me today, it's the ferocious love of a half grown kitten, the sun and the soil of a warm spring day.

That's not to say that these things are all I desire of life. Sometimes the possibilities of the world seem overwhelming. Even to live an ordinary life in a place where the history and art are as grand as Paris. Or even to live in a city which has one of those great looking markets where you walk by stalls brimming with vegetables, herbs, seafood of the freshest kind. Or to find that thing at which one could be great, stand out from everyone else and change the world. These thoughts torment, tantalize, cause ambition and discontent. I'm not saying ambition and such things are bad. There is no good or bad here, there's just life.

Here is a description of the acupressure point B 47 from A Complete Guide to Acupressure by Iona Marsaa Teeguarden http://www.jinshindo.org/products.htm, The quote begins with the name of the point; "Ambitious Room or Room of Will influences Zhi (human will), ... The character for Zhi consists of two parts. The upper half depicts plants which are growing: the lower half denotes the human heart-mind. The character Zhi may be taken to indicate the will of the heart growing into the world, directed by its own intention. It is human will (Zhi) which enables a person to align his/her heart and will with the will of heaven, and thus fulfill his/her destiny. " This is such a beautiful image, lovely growing plants rising out of the soil of our hearts. Meeting our destiny, by aligning our will with whatever it is that provides us with destiny, as naturally as plants growing out of the fertile ground.

The Tao Te Ching says discontent is the worst calamity. Taoist wisdom would seem to indicate that being content in one's life, whatever life it is, the Tao can be trusted to lead one to one's destiny. I think it's positively un-american to think that one's destiny might be to live a small life at home with one's animals and loved ones, cooking and cleaning, serving one's friends and significant others, and perhaps never making one single significant mark on the world.

You can see my struggles here. That's why I named this blog 'struggles with nothing'. Because truly it's a contentment with Nothing to which I aspire, and many nothings which cause so many struggles of discontent. Aligning one's will with the will of heaven, if that will is destiny, what is there to struggle with?

what a spectacular day

After a cool start it was a really wonderful day - too warm to work in long sleeves. Well it is seed starting time and I'm on a high from having my hands in the dirt, my head in the sunshine and an accomplishment under my belt. It is true that soil contains an antidepressant, the best one I've ever tried.

Of course to do any one thing you have to do three other things in order to get that one thing done. So I uncovered my potting bench (of all the debris it had collected from its time in the garage), dragged it out of the garage and up some curved steps to the back yard gate. It's about eight feet long and heavy enough that I can only just lift it. I'm sure anyone watching would have got a laugh out of all of that. Once I got it inside the back yard gate I put one end of the table in a garden cart and carried the other end, hauling it to a new place on the back patio.

Of course I then had to spray it down with a couple of spray cans of outdoor urethane. letting it dry while I moved the bags of soil pep that were in the way, still there from last year when I didn't get it spread. Then covering the table with a sheet of plastic in case it wasn't thoroughly dry I finally got down to the business of starting the seeds.

I have the usual collection of Tomatoes, Eggplant, Peppers, Herbs, a few flowers, plus Okra and Artichokes and a few other thing I can't remember at the moment. I'm always excited about trying some new things and this year it's Epazote and Tomatillos for Mexican food, Asparagus, and Leeks.

In all of the things I had to do today it seemed like I had an unusual clarity. The solutions to problems and the decisions about what to do came with unusual ease, I really liked it. I hope it has something to do with the acupressure method I've been working with lately and that it will continue.

Right now from the way I feel, exhilarated and tired, I'm guessing I did too much and won't be having such a good day tomorrow. Still, it sure was a good day.

chronic fatigue: about what causes it

Actually the causes of chronic fatigue are what I wrote about on my previous post, but , as usual, I think I published an incomplete thought. All of my ranting yesterday about the universal message of never being good enough which we receive from our culture, our families, and ourselves is the crux of the thought. The completion of that thought is that it drives us to overwork, with a big dose of anxiety thrown in. And in pursuit of the goal of finally being successful - even good enough - we learn not to value the things our body needs. Such as good food prepared with our own hands, adequate sleep, and gentle rejuvenating exercise. We also forget the things which feed our spirits such as laughter, friendship, and spiritual/emotional growth. The result is that we don't listen to our bodies until the minor things which might be warning signs become major things we can't ignore. Like Chronic Fatigue.

So now for example, even after six years of careful rejuvenation, I still struggle with fatigue. Frankly, I did too much yesterday, woke up tired, and have had to spend today resting even though it was a spectacular 60 degree day and I would have loved to have been in the garden. At least I recover more quickly now and there's a chance that I will be able to enjoy some activity in the next few days.

chronic fatigue the first thing

A woman named Holly suggested that I had chronic fatigue a couple of years before I was diagnosed, I told her it couldn't be. I still feel guilty for not acknowledging that she was right, more about that later. Finally one day I said, half joking to my husband, that surely everyone couldn't be in as much pain as I was that morning. He said "probably not" and I realized that I was dealing with something real. By that time I was limping after a long day, and groaning into life every morning. That was six years ago now, and over those years of thinking about it I guess I probably had symptoms as far back as my teenage years. After diagnosis I refused to talk about it for a year or two. I did not want to face the conversations that would inevitably come. I expected two things - those who had a cure they wanted me to try and those who were sick themselves and just wanted to talk about how sick we both were. I still resist both of those conversations. The first because I'm always already trying a cure and you can only try one cure at a time - otherwise how will you know what's working. Despite the good intentions behind people's suggestions of cures I ought to try, they can't understand that I spend days at a time researching these things, and months trying them, and so I have trouble with something somebody heard was helping somebody's sister in law, or with the one cure that cured them and so surely will cure everyone else.
The other conversation about how sick we are I resist also because I'm not really interested in how sick we are. This will show me to be duplicitous on both counts because I am going to talk about the things which have helped me, and maybe now and then - especially in mid winter - about how sick I am.
The conversations which surprised me, I guess I was naive, were the ones in which everyone wanted to talk about what I think caused it. So let's get that out here right away, to make a proper start on this blog. I think it's caused by a whole bunch of factors together. Here are some possibilities:
It's cultural: I grew up upper middle class and in my social class not a day goes by when we don't tell our children, and each other, that we must be successful. I don't know if this is just a middle class thing or universally true. "You could write a book!" is my favorite example of this mind frame. We keep thinking, 'if only' we, or our children, did things right, and wrote a book about it, we would be whatever it is we think we ought to be. And if we're only average, well, it's just never good enough. Then we grow up to be average and our society accepts -moreover needs - us that way but we still keep hearing the message - it's never good enough.
I think it's familial - in my family I repeatedly received the message, "if I only did things right I'd be whatever I think I ought to be" ... We hear this or receive it wordlessly as children and parents.
I think it's personal, being someone who internalizes things, and feels guilty over every mistake I've ever made, I felt I could never do well enough. In my eyes any unpleasant occurrence must be my fault, and any mistake was a failure. I felt if only I could do things right I'd be whatever I thought I ought to be.
In my head is that song from My Fair Lady with Audrey Hepburn - "In my own little corner in my own little chair I can be whatever I want to be." We tell our children "you can be anything you want to be" because we don't want to limit their dreams, but the truth is that what we say is only true for the very lucky, very talented few. I met a man who was responsible for monitoring and sending out repair teams for the power grid for the city of Zurich. Important, yes, successful, in a manner of speaking, the money is good, but it certainly is no child's dream.
And I think it's physical. It could have come from a virus, or from an undersized pituitary gland, or an overactive nervous system, or from any of the many other physical factors that have been proposed in the many medical theories out there.
But my conclusion is that it is all of these things together. You cannot separate mind from body. Our attitudes towards ourselves influence our bodies which shape the way we think about things which dictates the way we feed ourselves which influences the way we feel about ourselves which dictates the way we work which controls the way we exercise which overcomes our common sense which makes us insensitive to what our bodies are telling us, and on it goes.
There's no one cause. There's no one cure.
The story of my recovery, my struggles with nothing, new worlds I've found, things I've had to give up, things I've learned to value or am trying to learn to value, will unfold over the coming days.

May You Be With the Force.

S 10

Cooking cooking cooking

Made a second effort on bread. Trying to replace the bread I love, Maple Leaf Bakeries' Multigrain, a staple in my life for the last 4 or 5 years. At nearly $4 a loaf it is now too expensive. I'm working with a recipe called Jack of All Breads from an old paperback camping cookbook which has long ago passed out of my collection. It is the only bread recipe with which I have had consistent success. Instead of wheat germ used quinoa - tasty and nutritious. Also added a mixture of seeds for their analgesic value, and because the bread I love has seeds too, especially sunflower seeds which gain a certain yummy texture and flavor when baked...I digress. Also made Arroz a la Mallorca to eat by myself over the next two weeks, and Monterey Chix with rice out of an old Southwest Cookbook to feed to friends on the ranch this weekend. I'm sure there will be more about these over the next few posts.


I hope this blog will be about the last ten years, a struggle with self, culture, hereditary expectations, Chronic Fatigue, tai chi, healing, food, Western Colorado (my home whether I like it or not, sometimes both in the same breath), and many other things including the philosophy of Terry Pratchett. May the gods bear with me.