Parking the Car

In previous posts, I have mentioned my dad and my grandfather. My dad passed away at the end of 2014. There was a very nice tribute written about him on YoYoNews.Com. You can see the post here. My grandfather is still around. (This is my dad’s dad.) We visit him as we are able to. He especially loves my sweet puppy, Bella. She is a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and a friend to everyone. A funny side-note. If we are out walking, “everyone” wants to pet her or meet her. Occasionally or probably rarely, we meet someone who isn’t a dog person and doesnm’t even glance at her. Bella always gets confused by such people. She wonders why they aren’t petting her already? It’s really cute. She is a sweetheart. 

[This is a photo of my sweet dog, Bella. She is a fawn and white colored Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. Her spaniel ears are the fawn color. She is curled up in a sleepy ball, lying on a turquoise blanket.]

Grandpa loves dogs so much. He told me a story about a dog he knew when he was a boy. I will share that in another blog post. I like to write stories, and I wrote down the story that he told me. It’s a good one. Glad I wrote it down as I am already forgetting the name of that dog!

Anyway, so I have been learning a LOT from my vision doctor, Dr. Tod Davis, and his Vision Therapy team. 

One thing I learned recently was that people who Dissociate (this will be more blog posts) often have a lot of similarities with each other. He said that Vision Problems and Dissociation often go together. It’s a thing. He didn’t say whether one causes the other. He just said that they seem to often be connected. 

He gave a lecture that I got to listen to. I am hoping to see if he can lecture a few more ways, and then I can share the links here for you to listen to, too. Anyway, in the one lecture, he told of an older teenage gal and the issues she has, and then he told about me (with my permission / he interviewed me for the lecture). As he shared the teen girl’s issues, he said that she has trouble driving, parking, gaging her speed when driving …. And I thought, “I have all of those issues, too!” 

It made me think of my dad, and then it made me also think of my Grandpa. 

I think Vision Therapy is a relatively new field, so it is possible that my dad and my grandpa also have or had the same problems that I have. (It turns out that my younger son does, too, and that will be future blog posts, too.) 

I remember being a little girl and my dad talking to me about where he parked the car. He always parked the car at the far end of a lot, where there were lots of empty spaces. He said he didn’t want someone to ding his car with their door, and that’s why he chose the farther, emptier spots. 

It turns out that I also do the same thing. I find it easier to park when there are 3 empty spaces together. I can’t tell how far things are away from me, so I just would rather have nothing near me when I am pulling in our out. I have never hit another car when parking, but I am sure I park more slowly than other people when it is a tight space. Because I can’t judge and have to trust that I won’t hit the other car. So far, so good. 

Anyway, this teen gal said that she also parks far away, where there are many spaces. And I immediately jumped to that little Jodi inside me, walking across a whole parking lot to get to the door of the place we had driven to, listening to my dad tell me about not wanting his car door to be dinged. And I thought about how I park far away, under the trees when I can (just like my dad did), at my local Aldi grocery store. I guess I kind of feel like “that’s my spot.” 

The teen has worked with Dr. Davis now for a while and is driving and parking better. She is now able to gage her speed and how to park. I know I was doing better for a while, before the Corona virus hit and I wasn’t allowed to go to Vision Therapy for a few months. I slid downhill; I park 3 feet away from where I mean to park, again. Hopefully I will get better again now that I am back at Vision Therapy doing the work with a trained therapist.

It is super interesting to see similarities between me and other folks.  I don’t feel so alone or “weird.” 

Resting Your Eyes vs. Palming

When I was little, I remember my dad saying, “I’m just resting my eyes.” I am not sure if it was because I was talking too much and he needed a break. (He did, one time, yell at me: “You talk too much!” I went next door to the widow and asked her if I talked too much. She so graciously replied: “I like it.”)

So, Dad would be sitting up, and “rest his eyes.” He would close his eyelids and sit there for a while. 

When I started Vision Therapy, they taught me palming. Well, I had read about it in a book years ago called, “You don’t have to wear eyeglasses,” that my violin teacher had loaned to me at one point. I never really did it. I didn’t think much about it. 

[A photo of me covering my eyes with my hands. Left hand's fingers overlap my right hand's fingers.]

I got to Vision Therapy and on the first day of therapy, they told me to Palm. I cupped my hands over my eyes, and rested my eyes for a bit, wondering how this was different from what my dad did when I was little. 

After more than a year, going to Vision Therapy, I was, once again, Palming in between activities. As I sat there, palming, I asked my Vision Therapist “what is the difference between closing my eyes to rest them, and palming?” 

She gave me a great reply - she said that closing our eyes is fine. But if we palm, then the warmth from our hands can cause our eyes to tear up just a little bit. It gives our eyes some moisture. 

What a fantastic reply! I had no idea! New information! I love learning new things!!

Thinking back about my dad “resting his eyes,” now that I am a parent, I wonder if perhaps he was napping. 😆😂

Dissociation

My Optometrist gave a talk on Memorial Day. He interviewed me and I was 1 of 2 current patients of his that he featured in the talk. In order to see the talk, you need to have a membership to an optometry website: I heart VT. Like - I love Vision Therapy. I think this is the link: https://www.iheartvt.org 

[Photo: the iheart VT logo. There is a black heart to the left of the words, and the photo has a magenta offset heart above it and to the left, and a turquoise offset heart below it and to the right.]

I wonder how many of you relate to some of the things he said?

The topic was Dissociation. He was explaining how Optometrists can recognize that many of their patients probably do it. And how to help them with Vision Therapy.

There are some of the symptoms -

1. Tunneling. Meaning, focused so intently on what you are looking at, so that the background disappears. This can show up as a person walking and staring at the ground, unable to look up as they walk. This can also show up with horse back riders - they stare at the horses head to the frustration of horse riding trainers.
2. Sensitivity to light. Keeping lights off in the house. Walking around in the dark.
3. Issues with driving and parking. Not able to gage what speed you are going. Not able to park straight.
4. Being startled easily when things come in to your visual range.
5. Unable to focus on reading. Unable to focus on studying.
6. Things (like furniture, the floor, fixed objects) “move.” (Jareth has this. It was my normal; I didn’t realize I have this until vision therapy made things stop moving and then it was AMAZINGly calm.)
7. Perhaps existing in a “fictional world” in your head. That can feel very real. 
8. Isolation. This one struck me big - because I see me having been doing this over the years, more and more: Isolation, over time, means "not wanting to leave the house." Closing curtains and closing yourself in. It doesn’t start when someone is younger but increases over the years. I just blocked off my windows with contac paper maybe 2 months ago. My decluttering expert unblocked windows of mine. And I have basically re-blocked them off. Remember, I am approaching 50. So if you’re in your 20s or 30s, you may not relate to this one. No worries.

The exercises they have given me - wear ankle weights during vision therapy and at home now and then (light weight: 1 pound weights) and use a weighted blanket have helped me. There was a time during Vision Therapy with my therapist, A, when she asked me "how are you doing?" And I replied: "I think I am dissociating." She got into gear and made the exercise much harder so I was forced to pay attention!

That moment was a pivotal moment for me - I need to pay attention to the HERE and NOW. Smells, sensations, my 5 senses ... these are the things I pay attention to much more now after months of vision therapy with their focus to help me not dissociate anymore! I don't think I dissociate anymore, but I will get back to you on that. This is HUGE!

By the way, people who dissociate in their childhood (as I did), have large chunks of their memory missing. I have large chunks of my memory missing. I do remember, as a child, thinking, "I need to remember my memories, or I will forget them." And I would sit there and intentionally review my memories. I wonder if other people ever did that too? Please let me know your thoughts on this topic in the comments, below. Thank you!

Migration Complete

I have moved the posts from the very expensive blog host to this much less expensive platform (and much easier for me to use) to Blogger from Google!

I hope you will subscribe to my blog posts, so you will be notified when I post new blog posts!

The mail chimp newsletter service no longer works from the old blog, I am not sure why. But Blogger has their own "Subscribe to my posts!" Link - it's in the right side bar on every page - just under the "About Me" photo. 

I have typed up a few posts and they will run soon. I will keep the posts coming on Mondays. My vision therapy days have been changed to Thursdays now that we are doing Vision Therapy back in the office in Manassas. 

For the Vision Impaired

[This is my friend, Phoenix's logo for his business, Midnight Hobbit. It is a cog wheel with an artistically drawn letter M. The cog wheel and letter M are lit in subtle transcolers - fading from light blue to pink to white, and back to pink and light blue.]

A friend of mine, Phoenix from Midnight Hobbit, recently started updating his social media posts with words to describe what images or memes say. 

A lot of memes are too hard for me to read. Phoenix's descriptions help me understand what it is I am looking at. I have started to do this sort of thing, too, when I post things. 

I just want to give a shout-out to Phoenix for introducing me to this concept and also to my friend, Stacey of Stacey's Solutions, for recently talk-dictating a meme that she had posted that I just couldn't read. I am grateful for my friends who help people like me, with invisible disabilities, so that we can engage in the things they want to share. 

[Photo, a bright fuscia zinnia on a blurred green background. A bee collects pollen from the bright  yellow stamen in the center of the flower.]

My Artwork on Masks

I have previously mentioned that I am an artist. I love to paint with acrylics and watercolors. I also illustrated a few yoyo books for my dad, "Professor Yo-Yo." 

You can order masks with my artwork on them from Zazzle at: 

https://www.zazzle.com/s/jodiarts+masks

This is a photo of my favorite mask. I wear it a lot - it has my favorite water painting on it!

The masks are lightweight and let you breathe in cool air instead of your own hot air. Also, they have a pocket for you to add an optional filter if you would like one. 

Migrating

[A photo I took of some wild purple and lavender flowers that sort of resemble daisies -- a yellow center, surrounded by shades of purple petals.

 They look like poofs on a tall stem. The background of the photo is blurred green foliage.]

Hello! 

I type this on September 2, 2020. (What a year!) 

I am migrating my blog from BlueHost to Google Blogger. 

I will be putting up all of my old posts & hopefully I can put in their date to the date they were published the first time. Unfortunately, comments from the first blog, I can't seem to find them and post them. I hope folks will please comment on my blog posts. I like having comments so that I know I am not talking to a black hole. 

I have a lot of things to share soon with the Vision Therapy I am doing, and some insights and other Vision related things that I had no idea were Vision related. .... 

Speaking of migrating, in the last week, I have seen 4 Monarch Butterflies fly past me! Have you seen any? A friend of mine the next state North of me has also seen some Hummingbirds & declared that it's now Hummingbird migration season too! Have you seen any migrating animals? I know Canada geese always make an appearance around here twice a year, too. 

I hope everyone is doing well. 

Sincerely,

Jodi