Altered Calendar and Gratitude

I have a confession. You know how medical students sometimes go through a phase of hypochondria when they are learning about all the things they may die from someday? Okay, I don't know if that is true, but I have heard rumors. I think psychology types go through the same thing. We diagnose our friends and ourselves. Mental illness is everywhere. As for me, I would give myself ADHD and I am kinda in a constant mild state of mania; not like spending all my money or running naked through the streets mania, but trying new things and feeling giddy on the regular mania. It's a gift really. Hallelujah. Blessed be.

The ADHD tendencies on the other hand, can be troublesome. I would like to be more organized and less distracted, so I was excited to start a new project with my calendar this year. I am making an "altered calendar" and I also came up with a plan that I have been using on work and personal goals. First, I underline one thing (maybe more for work depending on deadlines, but I try to keep it as minimal as possible) that I must do. I make one priority in my schedule and do not allow myself to move on to what I would rather be doing. In my personal life, this has made me study everyday this week rather than do a hundred other things to avoid it. At work, it has made me turn in large reports on time or early. It's been a productive week and I feel good about my self-diagnosed ADHD management. I tell you this, in case you also struggle with time management and doing what you are supposed to be doing rather than everything else possible in the whole wide world.

I have two agendas that I use. One at home for my personal beeswax and one at work for my professional self. As for the one at home, I have spent the end of each day drawing over the day with something about the day, so it becomes a visual art journal at the end of the year. This also means I am forced to create everyday.

My Personal Agenda, Week One

I love fresh beginnings, so I spent some time thinking about structure I can add to my group when the kids got back from vacation. I decided that for the month of January, and maybe beyond, we will spend the first five-ish minutes writing or drawing in a gratitude journal. I have a lot of guys who hate everything, so the rule is they must think of one good thing at the beginning of group twice per week and document it in their journals. Afterward, they may voice all of their complaints, if they like. To decorate their journals, I brought stamps. The guys were all over that. They loved stamps so much, I think I will continue bringing them for each day. We don't always have a lot to work with, so these are just a few pieces of legal sized photocopier paper, folded in half with staples. It was so simple and the guys were very pleased to make them. I started one, because I feel with my kids, it's important to set an example, because they often feel they have rules and demands others don't have, so when I make them work, I work. When they have to play and I am around, I play as an equal participant. These are a success so far.

The Journal I Started Working on During A Group

A Photo from Today, Just Because

The Sketchiness of Last Post

Okay, here is the final project I was working on last week for my Art Therapy and Social Action class.

The inspiration came from the first two principles of Buddhist Psychology: "1. See the inner nobility and beauty of all human beings and 2. Compassion is our deepest nature. It arises from our interconnection to all things" (Kornfield, 2009), a guided pair meditation of looking into the eyes of another to increase empathy, Hiu Lui Ng (making me realize the need for people not objectifying another and treating as object) and the artist Isaiah Zagar.

It's about getting to know one another through looking into another person's eyes and hearing his/her story, a social action of connection if you will.

I envisioned this as a large mural with hundreds of eyes and stories. My artistic response was a smaller version of the eyes and stories of people in my house. 

Still sketchy? Probably. My ability to write decreases with rising temperatures and beautiful weather I think. In the meantime, here's the trailer for In a Dream, the documentary about Isaiah Zagar. 

He makes me want to take a road trip to Philadelphia this summer. 

Do You See What I See? Integrating The Mind and People

Last night I returned from NYC where I saw a 2-day discussion between Jack Kornfield and Dr. Dan Seigel. Tonight I am taking a break from heart palpitations and possible aneurysm to make an extremely short post... practically a twitter-post to give you the word of the day: integration.

Integration because that's one of the things I learned about the last couple of days and two because I am integrating what I learned into the final push (and source of said palpitations and aneurysms) of finishing this grad school deal. Worlds collide.

This is my 10 minutes of art making for the day, which is part of a course final project and has to do with integration. No time to explain, but that's what's up.

Phase Uno of Larger Piece: Do You See What I See

Party on!

Pretty Dead Things

Things are starting to come up in my yard and it reminds me of a metaphor I discovered and photographed last year. I'll start from the beginning. Tulips have always been my favorites and they became even more favored once I had space to plant them and became aware of how easy they are. Even though I hate gardening, I always have a thing for photographing what comes up in the spring. No reason. I just do it, but then I feel sorta hmmm, matured I guess, because I know from printing experience, photographing floral shit in your yard for no reason is what many retired folks do.

One of the new things I learned about my mom was that she loved pink flowers. I'm pretty anti-most-things-traditionally-feminine, so I avoid pink for the most part, but planted pink and white stuff for my mom and my inner 80-year-old-hobbiest photographed them. Under most circumstances, I would never admit to photographing pink flowers, being more a fan of body parts, abstraction and digital weirdness, but...

I noticed things when the flowers started to whither and die. They became somewhat cool to photograph. In color, it isn't anything special, but in black and white, it starts to be all about light and texture and in photography, that's more delicious than hot macaroni and cheese on a rainy day.

So, you ask, what does that have to do with grief processing? Well, first of all this was what I did while hanging out in my grief garden last year.

Second of all, I thought a lot about how these flowers became much more rich, deep and fascinating to me while they were in this weak dying process. I thought about my mom in particular and how amazing she was while she was sick. It's easy to be happy and positive while we're healthy and all is well, but going through sickness and the tough times are when we really see what we're made of. My mom was always friendly, kind and positive and even when she was dying a torturous death due to medical error, there could be no doubt that her traits were authentic, because most of the time, she still was all of those things. She worried more about us and provided support and counseling to us in her greatest time of need for as long as she could. Like these flowers, her light and texture was more evident as she was leaving the world.

Also, my dad was alive this time last year, but I feel like I saw him differently after losing my mom as well. He had always been strong, rational and absolutely-no-nonsense, but without my mom, his shell fell off and for the next year and a half, he was fragile and sensitive. He too developed a deeper texture.

Also, I think for those of us who live, getting hit with losing half of our immediate family in a short period of time brought out a new texture in us. I think the relationship between my siblings and I have changed. I don't know about them, but the way I look at the world has become more wrinkled like these flowers, but also the wrinkles are what makes it richer in a sense. Life isn't as beautiful as it used to be, but now I can see the beauty where it is. I don't think I knew how well I had it, until I lost it, but losing it, makes me love what I have left even more. Like a good photograph, contrast brings out the best in things. Or, at least it makes it more interesting to examine.

Does this make sense? Looking at these photographs again now, I'm thinking this may be another photo project for this season. I see things I would like to do differently. I have a whole body of work in my mind. We'll see how that goes.

I want Sacha Goldberger for a grandson

Is this art therapy? I say hell yes.

A few years ago photographer Sacha Goldberger found his 91-year-old Hungarian grandmother Frederika feeling lonely and depressed.  So to cheer her up, and put a spark back into her life, he turned her into a superhero! He took a series of awesome photographs of her wearing costumes in unusual superhero type posses. "Grandma reluctantly agreed, but once they got rolling, she couldn't stop smiling."

For the full story and photos, go here.

Grief Flags

I may have made up the title, "Grief Flags" just now. In reality, these are called "Prayer Flags" if you're sorta religious and "Peace Flags" if you are not. My flags are not about prayer or peace, but about loss, so I'm renaming them.

The original Tibetan concept of these things is that you hang the flags out at a certain time of the year (I think February, but I'm not really sure) and they blow around and fall apart for a year or so. The flags have prayers written on them and as they fall apart the words are released into the air where the gods can hear them. If you want to know more about Prayer Flags go here. It makes a lot of sense to apply this to writing to someone lost.

I made some of these to my mom, which is probably a really sacrilegious thing to do, but since I am sorta sacrilegious anyway, it worked out well. For my process, I did pay attention to the color symbolism and order, making something about the writing or design apply to space, wind, fire, water, earth, but otherwise was pretty liberal in how I made and used these.

I felt it was important to sew these a little, since my mom was a quilter, but also important that they be able to shred in the breeze, so there are no knots or hems. I used fabric paint and markers and transferred photographs in places. Everything was done by hand, so this project took awhile.

Fire Flag
This is a picture of my mom in high school.
The music is hand drawn and a copy of Friedrich Kuhlau's Sonatina in C, Op. 20 No.1
My mom used to play this.

(This is not my mom! But, the music sounds like this.)

Through doing this I felt like I was honoring my mother, but also realized two important things that were good for my grief process. The first was that I didn't have any unfinished business with my mother. Everything I wanted to write on these, were things we had already discussed before she died. Secondly, I became aware that even though my mother's death was unfair on many levels: most people don't lose parents at my age and the cause of her death was not supposed to happen and therefore extremely torturous for everyone, I wouldn't have traded my experiences of daughterhood for anyone else's. This helped me move into a place of greater acceptance. It is really difficult not to accept even the worst of circumstances when you realize you don't want to live in another person's shoes.

On a technical note. These flags are holding up AMAZING! There was some discolored dripping from the rain, but not a lot. Very little fading. And they're not falling apart all that much either.

Last Flag and a moment of awareness for me.

National Geographic at My House

Today in spite of heartfelt fake manipulation crying and authentic Californian-in-winter whining on my part, I was unable to convince my significant other to do all of the shoveling while I sat in front of the fire in my pajamas. In the interest of practicing radical acceptance of the great suck that is snow and winter, I found a way to reframe and experience mild enjoyment outside today.

I observed the elusive Sock-Swiping Miniature Australian Shepherd in its natural habitat... my yard.

Witness this: Otis Finnegan Spunkmeyer, aka "Odor" and his pure snow joy.

 

Video Therapy for the Winter Challenged

After decrease of these shenanigans, we (Otis and I) had a still photo shoot with my good camera (above was filmed with a junky point and shoot).

Oh wait, shenanigans maybe not complete...

Documenting this little dog's snow love almost makes me feel better about winter.