As a kid, eating healthy was not only something that we didn't do, it was something that we weren't taught to do either. My family on both sides have never eaten healthy-lots of processed foods, sugar, carbs. Growing up in Alaska added another element to the formation of unhealthy eating habits. Food is incredibly expensive in Alaska, especially things like fruits and vegetables due to the high shipping costs. In addition to that, the long transport times tend to deliver less than ideal produce. So we grew up on cookies, candy, carbs and other cheap meals. A lot of times in the morning rush, my mom would throw three Rainbow Chips Deluxe cookies on a plate and that was breakfast. I was addicted to sugar by the time I started school, if not sooner. I don't blame her for it-she was in an abusive relationship, struggling with alcoholism, didn't get that education either from her parents and was working a menial government job and couldn't afford healthy foods. I would've done the same thing in her situation.
My weight has fluctuated since grade school and I think I'm once again overweight by about twenty pounds for the fourth time in my adult life. This wreaks havoc on my self-esteem and gives me another way to put undue pressure and criticism on myself. It's a bit of a constant thing.
These habits transported directly into my adult life. At first, I found the taste and texture of fruits and vegetables to be repulsive. They also didn't hit my pleasure center like sugar did-and still does. Eventually I got over that but I certainly wasn't eating healthy food on the regular. My depression and sexual trauma feed into my unhealthy eating habits as a subconscious way to try to make myself unattractive or beat myself up while simultaneously provide short lived pleasure and comfort. Fucked up, isn't it?
It seems like 2016 on into 2017 is more shedding of old skin. First it was my relationship to work, then it was my ability to give and receive love. Now it appears to be time to tackle my longstanding body issues and learning how to care for myself in this way as well. There's a steep learning curve here-I wanted to buy beets today but wasn't sure what they looked like-but I'm going to do myself a kindness and learn.
This is another reason that my little garden is such a healing place for me at such a divine time. And I did find those beets eventually.
After my contract with UW ended, I was out of a job. I wasn't overly concerned about that, as I was good and done with UW and had an interesting gig ahead of me. I had taken a job working with the small Native village of Kivalina, Alaska. They were looking for a Wellness Coordinator to help create community support and projects primarily focused on youth and young adults but because of the small population, would no doubt affect and involve most of the villagers.
Kivalina is in the Arctic Circle, in an area known as the Northwest Arctic Borough and has a population of just under 500, many of those residents under the age of 18. Less that two square miles in its entirety, Kivalina is only accessible by bush plane. They struggle with many social problems-alcohol abuse, domestic violence, depression and other mental illness and lots and lots of sexual assault-something that Alaska has had a shockingly long and intense reputation around. No accountability for violent offenders and no escape for victims. However, the catalyst for a Wellness Coordinator was the staggering rate of suicide in the Borough and specifically in Kivalina. In the last nine months, three young adults committed suicide.
In January, I spent four days in Kivalina essentially on a working interview. Meeting with villagers, learning more about the current state of the village and how it got that way. I stayed in the only school in the village, a school that had been rated substandard over twenty years ago. The building smelled of backed up sewage, there were three working toilets out of six and none of the showers in the lockers rooms worked. This was the nicest building in town and the only building with plumbing.
I met many villagers-some welcoming, some suspicious-but I was always invited in and fed. All homes in Kivalina and HUD homes mostly building in the 70s or 80s and most all are ranked substandard as well. Holes in floors, broken windows, no plumbing. People literally shitting in buckets. Third world country conditions in the great America that we need to make great again. Amidst all of this, however, were all of these beautiful people! Mothers raising young children, often alone. Grandmothers and grandfathers wanting to spend time with the young people of their village. A Tribal Administrator that wanted something different for his village. And survivors. So many survivors of so many things.
A few villagers that captured my heart were the four young adult interns working with a newly formed project called Kivalina Food Sovereignty Project. The brainchild of my colleague and friend in this adventure, a UW PhD Anthropology student, it was a chance for young adults to invest in their community in a real way. The interns were all in their early 20's but had already lived the lives of someone two, even three times their age. Some of their experiences are ones that many will never have to endure. Their internship was to be five months long and would culminate with a trip to Seattle in May to present at the Indigenous Food Symposium at University of Washington. What an exciting prospect for young people who have never left the confines of Alaska. I remember how liberating it was to leave too.
I was intrigued by the opportunity to work with this village. My heart went out to them regarding their circumstances. I felt good about the opportunity to work with Native people, my people. I found it curious that life had brought me back to my home state almost twenty years to the day. I was up for the interesting adventure that this promised to be. The Tribal Administrator was too and offered me the job. I would spend two weeks on and two weeks of in Kivalina for one year.
About a month later I made my first trip out to Kivalina. The first couple of days I stayed under the radar but by the third day, word had gotten out that there was someone from "down below" staying in the village. I started getting long glances, propositions, questions like "are you wild?". Shit was starting to get real.
It was then that I started to struggle. I had left Alaska twenty years ago because of ten years of childhood abuse, paired with a rape that last year that I was there and numerous other sexual violations throughout junior high and while I was homeless. Like I said before, Alaska has had a shockingly long and intense reputation regarding sexual assault. Now I'm back in Alaska twenty years later and it is all too familiar and a little disconcerting in the ways that it was familiar. Suddenly I was a light sleeper again. Just like that I was on autopilot, looking for vulnerable places in the house that could either be broken into or that I could be cornered in. Surveying the house for all potential weapons and hiding them. Sleeping with a weapon. Triple and quadruple checking the lock on the front door and my bedroom door. Putting force into both doors to see what it would take to break them. Sleeping in the room closest to the front door.
My fifth night there it happened. I woke up at 3am to the sound of boots crunching on the snow. I was up like a shot, sitting in pitch black and completely still. I hear someone fumbling with the door, trying to break in. Oh fuck, they're in. Weapon in hand, I sit on the edge of the mattress in the dark. I hear my door knob jiggle. Yep, he's after me.
I'm up like a shot, light flipped on, phone in hand and foot wedged against the door as I beat on the inside of the door with my heavy Maglite flashlight yelling "who's that?!", being sure to cease from making noise to hear where he is headed. Texting other villagers that I know are safe and are up. I get responses right away and within minutes I had five people coming to my rescue. We found the intruder hiding in an empty bedroom in the dark, highly intoxicated. It was someone that I knew had been tracking me for three days.
The next morning or rather, four hours after the incident, I went to work. Another survival mode practice on autopilot. That day was a blur in a parallel universe-I was harassed and verbally abused by the Tribal President and blamed for the incident. When I asked for my money back for the lodging that I paid for that I was no longer going to use, I was denied and verbally abused some more. I was attempting to make travel arrangements to get the hell out of there but all airports were closed due to a heavy winter storm. Alaska State Troopers weren't able to come out to apprehend my intruder, not that they would have made much of a priority of it anyway. The stress was intense within that situation but that wasn't the only thing going on. A coworker was crying because the young child in her charge had eaten laundry soap and she wasn't sure if he was going to get flown out to a clinic in time to be saved. Another young woman left crying after finding out that her paycheck wasn't ready; she was crying because she owed her father money and she knew he was going to beat her up if she didn't have it for him. I just wanted out but I was stuck.
I spent the next two days riding out the storm by taking copious amounts of NyQuil and sleeping. I spent some time with my rescuers who were so kind to come to my aid and take me in for two days while I waited to depart. I left Sunday afternoon to get to Anchorage for the red eye and was back in Seattle 430am on Monday with another layer of trauma compliments, once again, of the last frontier.
As the shock started to fade, I felt a range of emotions-violation, humiliation, anxiety, depression. That wasn't the hardest part. The hardest part was the deep full circle that this experience was. Sexual violence, violation of space, verbal abuse, victim blaming, Alaska. Almost twenty years to the day. There is a lesson here but I do not understand it.
It took me almost three months and an intense four-day depression crash to understand this lesson. If I were to be truthful however, it is a lesson that has been waiting for me to understand for twenty years. This most recent experience in Alaska was an opportunity, a fork in the road. A do-over. It was the gift of strength in self to decide not to carry trauma in the same old, tired and hurtful ways I had carried it my whole life. It was the universe, in it's strange yet straightforward way, giving me agency to not define myself by my trauma. To no longer carry the shame that had become second skin. An opportunity to forgive myself for the sins of others and be happy. I decided to give that gig a shot.
A few months later and I feel different. Different in the way that I process, the way I carry myself, the way I live in my body and in the world. It's a new way of living for me and I still have a lot to learn but so far I like the road I'm traveling.
Last night I came across the GoFundMe for the young adult interns with the Kivalina Food Sovereignty Project. They are raising money for their trip to Seattle next week for the symposium. They were short of their goal by a bit and without question, I covered the difference which, in an ironic twist was the same amount that I got ripped off for. But I was proud to be in a position in my life to support the hopes, dreams and hard work of these young folks and proud of them for pushing against all odds to find a bigger and brighter world out there besides the pain and trauma that they are so intimately acquainted with.
It took twenty years, a trip to Kivalina, Alaska and four young Inupiaq men and women for me to realize that it was okay to be happy.
"We are never so vulnerable as when we love, and never so hopelessly unhappy as when we lose the object of our love."
Sigmund Freud
I would elaborate on this quote further by saying that we are never so hopelessly unhappy and out of control as when we make the choice, consciously or unconsciously, to push away the object of our love.
I have been guilty of this dynamic. Sometimes called the "push/pull" dynamic or the "idealize/devalue/discard" phase, it is a pattern of behavior that hurts both people involved. The non-clinical description of this dynamic is feeling closeness (idealize/pull), followed by an incident where one or more parties feel hurt and, in reaction to the hurt, push the person away on an emotional level (devalue/discard/push).
This is an incredibly painful process for all involved, regardless of who is "calling the shots". It is exceptionally painful if both parties are participating in calling the shots. The pain magnifies if one or both parties don't realize or acknowledge that they are engaged in this pattern.
These behaviors tend to sprout from the fertile yet toxic soil of childhood and/or adult abandonment, betrayal, infidelity and abuse. It is a subconscious and poorly formed defense mechanism to avoid hurt. However, it is a surefire way to hurt yourself and others.
Andy Weir, author of "The Martian", wrote a short piece called "The Egg". In this passage, he writes "Every time you victimized
someone you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve
done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by
any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”
Thinking of this push/pull dynamic in this context brings different life to it. Why would I want to do this to someone else? Why would I want to do this to myself? Why wouldn't I want to prioritize love and joy? Why do I feel like I don't deserve happiness and love, because someone told me that once? Because someone treated me without happiness and love at different points in my life? Those situations were painful lessons but that's all they were. Lessons.
When you start attending school, your goal is to get to the next grade, obtain the next degree. You don't stay stuck in kindergarten learning how to tie your shoes for eternity. As you walk through life, your goal is to reach comfort, happiness, joy, love, enlightenment. You don't stay stuck in trauma learning how to further traumatize yourself.
So re-frame this push/pull dynamic.
Instead of pushing people away, push negativity, hurt and bad habits aside. Push yourself to love yourself and be happy.
Instead of pulling people in to act as balm to your wounds, only to find out that that's an impossible to task to put on someone, pull people in to love them and let them love you.
Pull good energy in. Push good energy out.
When I went to my first plant ceremony last September, I kept hearing these same words from the ancestors over and over again: "let them love you." On the surface I understood what this meant, felt it was a basic concept. However in practice, it was and continues to be one of the hardest lessons I am learning. I am learning, but I certainly have not graduated from this particular school.
But I am learning. In a recent situation where I felt pushed away, hurt and confused I chose to push negativity out and pull happiness and love in. A hope for happiness for this person and happiness for myself. Love for this person and love for myself. While I felt wounded and frustrated that this person was not seeing their own push/pull dynamic, I acknowledged my own long and arduous journey towards understanding and owning my push/pull dynamic and compassionately understood how hard it is to own this particular dynamic, given how painful and how deeply ingrained it is.
It is not my responsibility to guide this person into seeing the "error of their ways." It's not an error. It's a reaction that hurt and traumatized people engage in as an effort to avoid future hurt. Does it work? Of course not. Does it happen? Of course it does.
My responsibility is to choose to love myself and love the people in my life in an unconditional way. And that includes pulling loved ones in closer and pushing love and energy towards them, even if they can't see it. For with that love and energy comes the confidence and trust that they will eventually see and if they don't see, I can continue to wish them love and peace on their journey even when it doesn't align with mine.
Learn fast and walk slow but in those times that you learn slow and walk fast, love each other anyway.
Shortly after I moved to Northgate from the U District, a friend and I were out taking a walk and found this lovely
community garden tucked away in a neighborhood a block away from my
apartment. The community garden is part of the City of Seattle Neighborhood P-Patch Program. I decided to get on the waiting list for a gardening plot back in September. I doubted I would get a plot any time soon but figured I had to at least try, considering how close the garden is to my house.
So I was thrilled when I was called a few weeks ago and told
that there was a 100 square foot gardening plot available at the
Pinehurst P-Patch. As a lifelong apartment dweller, having a little piece of ground that I could call my own was a thrilling prospect.
When I attended my new gardener orientation, I was led to 100 square feet of dirt covered in weeds. I couldn't have been happier. I waited with baited breath for it to stop raining so I could go pull weeds and prep for planting. The weather finally cooperated last weekend. I cancelled all of my casual Sunday plans to run out to buy dirt, pull weeds and work with the soil.
I spent five hours over the next two days pulling weeds and raking dirt all over my 100 square foot paradise. Rocking out to Blues on the radio, wearing my worn out flannel shirt that belonged to my mom, faded Levi's, muddy Converse and big purple 1970's sunglasses. Singing, laughing and talking to myself, I was the baddest babe in the garden. Shit, if I walked by and saw me, I'd talk to me.
But more important than just feeling physically in my element, I felt calm. My mind wandered to current goings on in my life, memories, songs stuck in my head. Wandered to my grandma and my gratitude towards all of the knowledge I have gained from her about gardening and pride in now being able to do something with that knowledge besides just hold onto it. Wandered to happy thoughts about people I love. Wandered to how fun it is to plant food for myself and the fuzzy children. Wandered to things I'm currently struggling with. Wandered back to the garden where my biggest challenge was finding these weeds that are obnoxious in their abundance but satisfying in the way that their little bulbs pop when you crush them. It felt good to just..... wander.
I spent a couple of hours in the garden today as well. It was a gorgeous spring day but, as Seattle spring goes, it promises to be an isolated sunny day, with rain predicted for the rest of the week. I cruised over to the nursery, excited to get new babies into the ground, especially right before a Full Moon. I had had a bit of a weird day; a lot of things didn't make sense today and I spent a good part of it feeling misunderstood and unheard.
Then I opened the garden gate. For the next ninety minutes, I soaked in the early evening sun, heard some beautiful bluegrass music on the radio and planted my new babies. I gave thanks as I planted white sage, good medicine that lives in the Eastern quadrant of the Medicine Wheel and represents healing and emotional health. My mind wandered to the events of the day. I processed them with unconditional love and without anger and at one point, was briefly moved to tears because the collision of hurt feelings and the song on the radio gave me permission to feel those feelings. Despite the overall discomfort and funk of the day, I walked out of that garden feeling incredibly grounded and happy. My problems of the day weren't problems, they were useless noise sucking up energy that should have been spent on more important and rewarding things. And just like that the choice was made to be happy. What a gift.
While I tend to have a general distaste for most formal mental health diagnoses, there is one diagnosis that I will readily admit that I struggle with. But even that diagnosis has been a struggle to accept and even more difficult to admit to others.
Major Depression.
I have struggled with depression since my early teens, perhaps even earlier. It slowly but surely built itself in as a part of my life in my 20's and, now in my mid-30's, depression has been around so long that I have been able to subconsciously normalize it. Depression hangs on me like a tar, constantly dragging me down but giving me just enough mobility to fool myself and others that I am OK.
Given my back story, it isn't all that surprising that I am depressed. Having experienced constant, consistent and intense trauma for the first fourteen years of my life has rewired my brain in some ways. So has enduring what feels like a lifetime of insults, judgment and criticism from myself and others. High levels of hurt, bad choices and a series of failures in my adult life helped the cause as well. However, I think it's the shame of "not having it together" and having to wear a mask and pretend that everything is OK has given depression so much power in my life.
Since my early 20's, I have had distinct cycles of depression. The cycle starts with losing interest in things that I enjoy doing, followed by disruptive sleep patterns, moving on to isolation from or the pushing away of others, often coinciding with periods of heavy drinking (or wanting to drink heavily and battling against the urge to do so these days), and typically ends in four or more days of not leaving my room except to use the bathroom and getting pissed off that I have to do that. A catalyst for these cycles can be numerous-the loss of an opportunity, work-related stressors, criticism from someone close to me, or simply being worn out by the negative self-talk that creeps in at a consistent pace. The cycle doesn't unfold overnight, sometimes the cycle takes up to six months to really crash down on me.
Last year was an
incredibly hard year for me personally and professionally. It was a
tremendous growth year, something that I am grateful for. However, in
order for that growth to occur, I had to take a lot of long, hard looks
at myself-my behavior patterns, my coping skills or lack thereof, my
personal narrative. A lot of what I saw wasn't pretty. This growth also
had to run in tandem with numerous stressors around my job and
relationship, which was no accident considering that those are the two
areas that needed the most growth. I was being tested last year. I still
am.
I had a dream about six months ago that I am realizing spoke to me about my depression. Given the timing of the dream, it was almost predicting, trying to warn me about my most recent crash. I was sitting in a clubhouse box seat at the racetrack watching the horses run the track. Every single race, a horse went down, broke a leg and had to be put
down. Sometimes the jockey was hurt, sometimes not but the horse was
always hurt to the point of death and in some races, multiple horses
went down.
This dream was jarring to me given the level of death and the symbolism that horses represent in Native culture, my culture. Horses represent Western medicine, healing medicine and strength, so to see horses in your dream signifies that you are given an opportunity to heal, that good medicine is headed your way if you are open to it. Seeing horses die one after the other in this dream shook me awake with anxiety.
My spiritual advisor had a different take on that dream. He said that the "medicine is saying, look, this
is why when you take a tumble you get down. If instead of trying to run a
race the horses/jockeys were out for a stroll, this wouldn't be
happening. Life is not a race to be run or a career to be had, or
anything else than what it is. The ability is there (the jockey), the
strength and will to overcome is there (horse), the path is there (a
track) but it is all organized for going around in circles and
careening out of control into a fall that could be fatal. And every
time that happens then you go into the next race . . . same outcome.
Always, same ingredients, same structure, same outcome. So what is
going to change? Well, it has already changed: you are not one of those
horses or one of those jockeys. In the dream you are a witness on the
bleachers. That is the only place where consciousness abides, in the
internal witness. Only the witness doesn't get all wrapped up in the
next drama, in the next race, in the next win or lose-success or fail
situation. The witness watches and lets be and lets live, lets life . . .
then you can see love, perfection, wisdom and beauty flower out of it
all--truth."
Flash forward to now. I had another crash. I suffered a surreal, full circle blow that was wrapped up in old wounds and patterns of both a personal and professional nature. I won't talk about it here. I held on for a month after the incident, dragging myself through the days, doing "what I needed to do" because that's what I've been conditioned to do. Two weeks ago I found myself laid out in my bed, not eating and not moving unless I had to use to the bathroom. Here we go again. The horse had to be put down again.
Then something changed. I told someone close to me what had happened. Then I told another person. And another. And another. I was met with love and compassion from all of them. Many of them related their own struggles with depression. I felt understood. Normalized. Not alone. It felt good.
I'm feeling a crash coming on again and I'm disappointed in that considering that it's only been two weeks since the last one. Certain events and circumstances have made it difficult for me to take the time I need to dust myself off and care for myself in the way that I should. I've spent the space in between worried about a close friend and most recently, feeling kind of picked on by someone close to me. I don't say this to make others feel guilty, their current circumstances and their choices are theirs, it's my choice to let them affect me. I actually say this to acknowledge my personal growth. The fact that I am identifying a potential crash coming means that I am actively centering myself and giving love to myself. The fact that I am being open and honest with myself and others about this potential crash is growth. These things combined give me a level of genuine inner strength that I have never felt before.
