Stress can’t begin to describe how it feels to cope with being unemployed.

In today’s economy, with soaring unemployment rates, cut-backs, massive lay-offs and a consumerist culture shouts “buy, buy, buy,” it’s devastating to be jobless.

Furthermore, our cultural values are out of sync – how we value ourselves and our mental and emotional health versus the value of work, money and “stuff.”

(Ironically, volunteer work builds self-esteem more than a huge salary and it’s a great stress-reducing strategy while job-hunting.)

All this hit the headlines last week…

Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen belittled Mitt Romney’s wife Ann and her full-time career as a housewife and stay-at-home- mom.

“Guess what? His wife has actually never worked a day in her life,” Rosen said on CNN.”She’s never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing, in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school, and why do we worry about their future.”

That comment rang alarms with everyone across the political spectrum. Especially women.

I don’t want to think about when I last wrote to you. I feel and look like a different person. Inside and out.

It is overwhelming for me to explain these differences.

They may not even appear to you, but they are shouting loud and clear to me.

Yes, I hear voices, all the time. Perhaps you do, too.

Or you do not to listen to them…

Today, you’re probably different that you were a few months ago, too. We’re changing all the time, if we’re lucky and open to change. I like change. If we’re buoyant, strong, “resilient” ~ that buzziest of psychological words these days.

When I broke my arm on December 14, I cut off all my hair. There was only so much I wanted to impose on my husband Marty who was doing everything there is to do around this place. Cleaning, cooking, caring for our dogs. Chauffeuring me hither and thither, here, there and everywhere.

Since then, and after another haircut, I am utterly shorn. I not only have “wash and wear hair,” I have “get up and go hair.”

It’s liberating…

The hair is but a superficial difference. Inside, where I have lived these 63 years, or made a semblance of living, the landscape is transformed. My ebullient personality, my default mode, is but a cover, I will confess. It’s a great mask behind which the real me lives. A me, no one really wants to know.

I don’t blame them. I’m getting a little tired of her, too.

I’m a perfectionist.

So, naturally, I’m attempting to follow the meal plan designed for me in my Eating Disorders Program right down to every teaspoon, gram, ounce and millilitre.

I am trying to eyeball my portions, but my eyeballs are slow learners.

Plus the stresses of my life make this precarious…

I keep forgetting that I don’t have to be perfect. No one expects perfection.

I miss the support and camaraderie of the other patients in my group plus the expertise and advice from all the psychiatric, psychological, nutritional and social work staff who were always there for us, watching us, keeping us on track and caring about us.

Now, I’m doing everything by myself…

All my meals were supplied for me, with the exception of my breakfast.

By myself, alone, it’s a huge challenge to stick to this meal plan, which involves eating a wide variety of foods (anything, including my forbidden foods) at five specific times and in specific quantities.

When I graduated from my six-week Eating Disorders Program on January 6th, I knew much more about metabolism and normative eating.

I had a fresh, liberating understanding of what “normal” eating is for me. For everyone. We need a minimum number of calories for our bodies simply to function.

That number is always ignored by the diet industry. Though I no longer count calories or weigh food or even weigh myself, I know that my body needs 1,400 just to exist.

Because of my broken arm, I’m not doing any exercising. Not yet.

Risking a fall isn’t an option right now…

Furthermore, exercise is an activity I must work back into in a safe way, since I have used exercise as a form of purging. That kind of thinking, exercise in order to control weight or change body shape is no longer an option for me. It’s not healthy or realistic. It’s a specious way to try to control your weight. You can’t. Your genetics determine your optimal body weight. That’s a whole other story.

November is not a pretty month in these parts.

Today is typical. Though we have had some lovely, sunny, sweet un-November-like days, today is not one of them.

It’s grey and damp and drizzly.

Not a day to lift one’s spirits…

I have often said that I do not suffer with clinical depression. That is not to say, however, that I am immune to situational “sadnesses” or “the blues” or “the blahs” ~ and lately, that is how I’ve been feeling.

There are some solid reasons for this.

One is a feeling of worthlessness. Right now, I am not gainfully employed for the first time in my life. I am awaiting a call from an Eating Disorders Clinic that will tell me I must report the next day. I have no idea when that call will come, thus, it is rather futile to look for any kind of job.

I am not working. I am not writing, as you well know.

My posting here has practically stopped cold.

Just back from a sublime five-day sojourn in a little slice of paradise called Cherry Grove on Fire Island.

This tiny community is one of many on Fire Island, a 50-kilometre long sand dune off the coast of Long Island, New York, about two hours from La Guardia.

Our first vacation since 2005 …

For our 11th anniversary, we decided to celebrate with two of our favourite people in the world. I’ll call them Q & T. They summer there and for years they have offered us an open invitation.

If ever there was a year to accept, this was it …

Travelling by plane, car and ferry, the instant we stepped onto the dock, the pressures of city-life faded away.

For three days, Marty swam, sunbathed and snoozed or read and unwound in the jacuzzi.

Everything was perfectly magical.

Once again, this morning, I sat in a small office in the teaching hospital Eating Disorders Clinic in downtown Toronto for the second half of my psychological assessment.

This session lasted two and a half hours.

I wasn’t prepared for the excruciating questioning…

It was even more emotionally demanding and draining than my first session two weeks ago.

Before that first assessment, I was asked to filled out a detailed questionnaire.

I couldn’t face the questions about trauma…

The last three questions concerned my experiences with various types of trauma. Over my entire life. I simply couldn’t answer them. I circled “No” for all of them.

I couldn’t face them.

In February, my family doctor began cautioning me about my obsessive dieting.

She explained that eating disorders are psychiatric conditions, mental illnesses. She used the “A” word. Anorexia.

I thought she was out of her mind…

I am not thin. I’ve never been thin. Certainly never too thin. I feel I need to lose more weight. To get thinner.

She began monitoring me, monthly. By May, overly concerned about my inability to perceive myself realistically and my relentless determination to lose weight, she said this was related to my “mania” ~ my bipolar disorder.

She sent a note to my psychiatrist.

He referred me to an Eating Disorders Clinic…

Last month, my kidney transplant specialist expressed similar concerns. He didn’t want my electrolytes to go out of whack. When I diet, my sodium levels plummet.

When these three doctors, the team that keeps me alive, showed such alarm, I decided to investigate eating disorders myself.

I’ve started fitness training to stay on top of my moods which are all over the map these days!

Plus, I need to build up my diminishing my bone mass.

With borderline osteopenia, I want to avoid more medication.

All drugs have side-effects, so it’s best to avoid them, if at all possible…

I take eight (8) different prescription drugs a day, in various combinations, plus weekly injections of Aranesp or EPO for chronic anemia. That was caused by my immuno-suppressants. All for my transplant. Only one for my mood.

I die without them ~ so I live with them. I will do anything to prevent taking more.

Exercise is a great preventative of a million and one things ~ including in some cases, the need for pharmaceuticals …