I guess I haven't posted a blog update last week or the week before. Life got in the way 2 weeks ago. And then the next week, I may have been trying to sort out what to say about how life got in the way. But ... you know what, it doesn't really matter. On the scale of life, I had things to do. I am sure you did, too. I had emotions to feel and things to think about and stuff to do with my teenage boys who are taller than most men I meet. Sooner than I would like, they will launch and I will be able to sit around all day and write nothing but wonderful blog posts.
So, I hope you either didn't notice my absence, or you took a nice break and did something wonderful. I will begin posts again next week. As soon as I am done typing this one, I will start working on the next one. It should run next Monday, as usual. Although I am thinking of switching to a Wednesday schedule. My vision therapy days are on Tuesdays. I usually leave those with a bunch of blog posts swirling in my head and Mondays doesn't seem to be a day that is working for me to consistently post. It is strategically the furthest day from my Tuesday therapy as it could be. (or is it the closest?)
I hope everyone is having a lovely year. We are almost done with Month 1 of 2020!
Last night, I looked up at the cold winter sky and saw so many constellations. The sky was brilliant. I hope you will consider going out to see if you can see the sky and constellations. They really are quite beautiful. I was in a neighborhood that is just filled with light pollution and I could see all my favorite constellations. That sort of floored me, to be honest. So even if you live in a light pollution area, go look at the night sky. Make up your own stories about what's up there if you don't know the ancient stories about Orion & Pleideas and Taurus ... Cephus and his baby goats ... Canis Major and minor ... the Gemini Twins named "Castor and Pollux." And - do you happen to know what "Betelgeuse" means? It's kind of funny once you learn it.
Note: I just signed up to be an Amazon affiliate. This blog & information is provided free, from me. I would appreciate if you are going to buy something on Amazon, what I recommend or something else, if you could please click through either of the two products I mention in this blog post. It will maybe give me a dime or something. But every dime helps me right now in my life. Thank you so much. <3
About a year ago, I started going to a neurologist to diagnose my constant migraines. He did wonderful work. I had several brain scans and blood tests. All sorts of things.
He laid out a plan that was like playing chess - pawns in the front to help guard the more important pieces, then stronger pieces guarding the King.
The pawns in his regime for me include: drinking water, getting enough sleep (I have a constant awful time with this piece of the puzzle), and eating fairly well.
The Queen is the one low dose medicine he has put me on.
Before he put me on this regime, I had a constant migraine. It varied in pain from about a 2 to an 8. But it was always there.
After starting the regime with him, my migraines went down to about 1-3 per month. If I get one, my first order of defense is to take Aleve. Most of the time, that solves the problem. If it doesn't, he has a caffeine medicine for me to take. I rarely (basically: never) need to take that medicine. I keep losing and finding that bottle. I don't know where to keep it, because I don't use it!
This past week, my personal life stress has been through the roof. One of the things I have done is gotten my resume together and also started to apply for jobs. I was turned down for about 10 jobs.
My personal life is just overly stressful.
As I was staring at the computer, making my resume and applying for jobs on indeed dot com, I realized that it was easier for me to read if I took off my glasses and shut my eye. (The habit of how I have read, my whole life.)
So, I did that. I didn't think much of it.
At the end of the day, I was telling a friend that I had a bad headache. My friend asked me if I had worn my glasses that day much. I confessed that I had hardly worn them at all. I had been staring at this computer for most of the day.
"Aha!" My brain said.
Ok. Notes to self:
1) wear glasses
2) take breaks
3) try to remember to keep both eyes open when reading
4) don't keep staring at the computer for an entire day; look out the window and focus far away
5) palm (to palm is to cover your eyes with your hands and let your eyes have a rest. They aren't bringing in any visual information. This allows your body to relax).
Maybe when I start to feel a migraine, I can slow down, let go of the tunneling stress that I do inside my body, and breathe. Check and see if I am wearing my glasses. Am I shutting one eye. Do I need to palm? Should I drink some water?
There is a lot to learn. I am so grateful for the good people at my vision therapy setting me up to succeed! They are teaching me solid life skills that I never had, growing up.
I feel like I am starting to get my feet on a good trajectory.
This is one is the recent posts I did on that blog. I also post there as "anonymous" and have written other posts too.
One of our regular posts over there is on Thanksgiving Day; a bunch of us contribute every year.
This year, I am sure I will be sharing my gratitude for vision therapy.
In September, 2019, part of my story was in the Oprah Magazine. Here is a link to that story, too.
I just felt compelled to give a bit more information about my background.
I had a guest vision therapist today at Dr. Magic's office. He taught me many things today. I will share them one blog post at a time.
He told me that our bodies can only heal when they are in a safe space, a safe environment. If we are full of tension or are being subjected to unsafe conditions, we cannot heal.
When I go to vision therapy, I love how supportive these folks are. They tell me to breathe. They constantly pay attention to my breathing. And my stress level. They tell me when to palm (to slow down my (trachea?)) to calm my breathing and help my body know it's in a safe place.
Today, my vision therapist had me working with blocks.
[The photo has disappeared. I will need to photograph it again at some point & replace the photo that was here in the original blog post.]
It was my task to line these up in a certain way, on this cork board. He was checking out my cross-body coordination, manual dexterity and some other things.
When he had me stacking on the white blocks, he told me to "go faster." (I was doing a specific task, arranging the blocks.)
My breathing got faster and I felt pressured to perform well.
He told me that my vision narrowed when I was searching for the correct "next block." This, he said, was tunneling. I was feeling frantic in my body and my vision narrowed as if I was looking through a cardboard tube.
For the next half of the test, he had me doing the same thing. This time he told me I didn't have to rush at all. He told me to take my time. After I did one or two, he told me to try to take in the whole board instead of just scanning 1 block at a time.
I gave myself permission to put the blocks on and straighten them as I did the exercise.
After it was over, he asked me how it felt. "What was different?" He asked. I had felt more calm. He had kept pointing out for me to breathe (I love when they do that), and had helped me stay calm and focussed as I did the exercise.
He then pointed out that my arms had been in constant motion pretty much. Whereas before, when I was tunneling and stressed, I kept stopping and starting. When I was calm and breathing and just trying to do a good job, but take my time at it, I was actually much more efficient. My body kept moving.
The way he described it felt like a Thai Chi exercise - fluid movement from the center of our body. I don't know if that is how Thai Chi is spelled. If someone lets me know, I will fix it. I don't even know if that is the definition of it. But, it's how I understood what he was saying when he was talking about my constant, calm motion, as opposed to my frantic "start and stop" motion.
As I remember to stay calm and teach my body that it's safe, I will be able to tunnel less, and be able to teach my brain how to sort things better. I will gain larger pictures instead of narrow pictures. And so many things should become a lot more clear and easier to understand.
Thank you for following along on this journey with me.
If you would like to order these blocks on Amazon dot com, this is what they look like. I will post a link when I find them on Amazon.
I feel like these blocks would be a wonderful tool for a wide variety of people. They are versatile and can be used to do many kinds of tasks. I bet they would be great in a preschool or Kindergarten situation too.
So, yesterday I was thinking about a moment I had with my current therapist, early on. I was telling her about a bully incident I had at work. My coworker who pretended she was my all-knowing boss used to bully me like crazy. And it drove me crazy. Everyone else there at the job liked me or loved me or was genuinely friendly with me at least.
And this co-worker was so cruel, I had to leave the job. I couldn't handle it. I could never understand what I did to get on her bad side. I did my job. I showed up on time. I took care of things when issues came up. My managers all liked me. But this co-worker was constantly criticizing every little thing I did.
My therapist told me, "Well, Jodi, you're different."
Um, ok? (For purposes of this blog, which I hadn't started when she told me this, I see things differently. I just do. As I am typing this, I literally see the words double and also a shadow and a highlight of the words, surrounding the words. I'm probably just not focusing on the words like I am being taught to in vision therapy; but that's for another blog post in the future.)
She told me that in the wild, if an animal is "different," like a hen in a hen house, the other hens will come around and pick on the hen that is different. She told me some people absolutely cannot tolerate people who are different, so they pick on them incessantly. My therapist basically told me that this person (and others before her) just pick pick pick pick, because they see something different and it bothers them. They don't know how to step back and be okay with something out of the typical.
I was thinking about this in relation to something else yesterday (I can't remember what now), and then all of a sudden, that song from the Claymation version of Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer came in to my head - "we're a couple of mis-fits, not a couple of nit wits. What's the matter with mis-fits? Why don't we fit in?"
It's sung by Rudolf and an elf who wants to be a dentist instead of a toy maker. Come to think of it, the modern Christmas movie called "Elf" has a misfit too - Will Farrell doesn't fit in as an Elf (he is too tall and makes toys too slowly), and he doesn't fit in as a human (that is, until he finds his niche. by telling his story to children).
I think there are a lot of children's stories about misfits. Like the Ugly Duckling story; the baby "not a duck" turned out to be a swan.
As I sang that song and heard the lyrics over and over in my head "we're a couple of misfits, not a couple of nitwits...." I suddenly realized that I am a misfit. I have always been a misfit. It's part of who I am. I'm okay with that, until I get bullied for it. I see things differently. Vincent Van Gogh saw things differently. I need to gather my thoughts and words to explain why I look at all of Vincent Van Gogh's work and think: "of COURSE he painted it that way! That's what it looks like!" Mind you, I don't see the Pablo Picasso did. Not the cubism. But I definitely see the Impressionist way that Van Gogh saw.
I got to thinking about how members of my family are also misfits or have been misfits in their lifetime. I think there are so many of us! And then, I realized that the entire story of Rudolf. it's a story of a misfit. I mean, duh. It's obvious now that I have realized it. But I didn't realize it until I was singing that song over and over in my head yesterday, pondering the word "misfit."
The cool thing about a misfit is that IF their specific talent can be found, they can actually bring about a LOT of good, that people couldn't have expected. Like Vincent Van Gogh. Rudolf's nose "shone so bright" that he was able to lead Santa's sleigh.
Pondering all of this, and I was suddenly grateful for the story of Rudolf. I wonder how many kids and adults and humans it has helped over the years, to be ok with being a misfit. I know it brought me a kind of comfort and joy yesterday, to realize that there are famous, well-known stories about misfits who figure out how they can fit in & do miraculous things.
If you haven't seen the video of the two singing "we're a couple of misfits," here is the link to watch it on YouTube:
[A photo of me on my back deck. I have short blonde hair and dark blue glasses on. I am wearing my sunflower dress. My hair has remnants of lavender dye I put in it. You can see my Virginia Pine Tree in the background.]
At vision therapy, my vision therapist told me that an important part of our journey is forgiveness.
With my own journey, I have had many different viewpoints on forgiveness. I have blogged them and written about it in journals and my books.
I bristled because of where I am on my current journey in my personal life. I am not ready to forgive someone significant in my life right now.
I listened to what my vision therapist had to say, though, and I came away with a new definition of forgiveness that I want to share.
He said that forgiveness means to let go of something that was taking up significant space inside us. And then, we will have room for the next thing to come in there to take up the space.
He said it much more eloquently. But that was the general idea.
Essentially - let go of the thing that is bothering you, so that there is room for something good to come in and fill that space.
Isn't that a beautiful definition of forgiveness? I love this idea. It's a definition of forgiveness that I can easily embrace.
I am a dog walker now. The company I work for has a nice app where you tap "arrive," it tracks your walk via GPS, you can take pix of the dogs you walk and upload them, and then you tap "finish."
I have meant to do a blog post of the concussions I have had over the years. There have been many. I can't remember if I wrote that yet or not. But last week I got another one. It is because of the multiple concussions I have had, that I am now in vision therapy.
Last week, I had just finished walking a dog. I tapped "finish," and I was glancing at a photo of the dog I had just taken, to see if it was cute enough. And I walked straight into this staircase.
The wooden staircase that I walked into last week, head first.
I was stunned for a moment. I was angry at myself. And then I realized I might fall over, so I went and leaned on the wall to the right and just stood there, crying.
I eventually drove myself to a local doc-in-the-box. They asked me a bunch of questions. I don't remember them all, but one was, "do you have double vision?" I said, "I always have double vision." She said, "is it worse?"
I looked at her, examined her face and realized: "yes, it's worse."
She sent me to the Emergency Room. I drove to a place that said, "Emergency Room" on the outside but they didn't have a CT-scan machine, so I had to drive to a 3rd location - a different Emergency Room that had a CT-scan machine.
Of all the concussions I have had, this was the smallest one by far. Having said that, it's a week later as I type this, and my head still hurts.
At the third location they gave me a CT-scan. They determined that my brain looked ok and it wasn't bleeding. So that's very good.
Then they told me:
"Don't drive until all the symptoms are gone."
Yeah. Like I have a choice about that. I will just have my chauffeur drive me places until I feel better. ... That's a joke. Hopefully it's an obvious one. I most definitely do NOT have a chauffeur.
There is so much I want to say about this, but the thoughts in my head are so jumbled. So, I will write more in future blog posts.
