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.

Maybe there’s hope for me…

In today’s New York Times, the lead article in the Sunday Review is titled Where Have All the Neurotics Gone? by health reporter Benedict Carey.

Where are neurotics today?

It seems they’ve become a thing of the past. An old, dying breed. According to Carey,

“For a generation of postwar middle-class Americans, being neurotic meant something more than being merely anxious, and something other than exhibiting the hysteria or other disabling moods problems for which Freud used the term. It meant being interesting (if sometimes exasperating) at a time when psychoanalysis reigned in intellectual circles and Woody Allen reigned in movie houses.

“That it means little now, to most Americans, is evidence of how strongly language drives the perception of mental struggle, both its sources and its remedies. In recent years psychiatrists have developed a more specialized medical vocabulary to describe anxiety, the core component of neurosis, and as a result the public has gained a greater appreciation of its many dimensions.

“But in the process we’ve lost entirely the romance of neurosis, as well as it’s physical embodiment – a restless, grumbling, needy presence that once functioned in the collective mind as an early warning system, an inner voice that hedged against excessive optimism.”

In January, whilst in the thick of my Eating Disorders Outpatient Program, I began knitting.

A scarf. I knit it on circular needles in three colours from a design in Alison Hansel’s Charmed Knits, Projects for Fans of  Harry Potter.

I didn’t follow the pattern very closely. Pattern-following isn’t really my style.

I knit a work of wearable art…

I refined the design. Used three colours instead of two and let my mood dictate when I would change those colours.

Thus, my scarf, which I now wear all the time ~ or as long as it’s still chilly here ~ is a bright piece of wearable art, with no pattern.

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.

This afternoon I met with the service manager of the Canadian National Institute of the Blind ~ the CNIB.

Kids with mental illnesses and visual impairments…

She and a group of teachers, parents and professionals working with blind or visually-impaired kids had asked me to speak at an annual conference ~ about mental health

A New Challenge…

Admittedly, I have never spoken or facilitated any kind of workshop on the subject of mental and emotional health for children and youth who are visually-impaired, had never even thought about this particular demographic

The topic fascinated me, so I was anxious to continue our dialogue.

Since Hurricane Irene visited New York…

I am relieved to report that Cherry Grove is still there, but the phone lines are bad and my cousins are busy moving back to Manhattan. I have no other details.

As I was saying…

It’s hard to explain how I felt when I first visited Cherry Grove 15 years ago.

Then I found this charming graphic by Fire Island resident and artist Susan Ann Thornton titled “Fire Island Boardwalk.”

It’s from her series of children’s books called Adventures of Baby Cat in Cherry Grove and it captures my perception of the ethos and spirit of this heavenly little summer place.  It’s magic transformed me back then, temporarily, and it did, again, a few weeks ago.

As conflicted I am right now about my body and my eating, in Cherry Grove, I found myself wandering about in shorts and halter tops and engaging easily with lots of people, especially those with dogs.

My psychiatric ‘history’ doesn’t exist. Nobody’s does. People let each other “be” and this total acceptance and inclusivity is utterly liberating.

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.

Hello…

I was thinking of taking my “rant” about Norway down. Killing it.

I was thinking it might be hurting you and others.

It might be insensitive. It might be completely wrong. Out of line. Madness. My madness.

I wrote it on Monday, the day after ~ I can’t remember when, exactly.

Lately, I’ve been turning day into night…

My sleep cycle is all over the map. I was speaking from emotion, more than reason. Pure feeling. Not stream of consciousness. That would be too kind. And incorrect.

Just bald, naked, raw anger and fear. Fury, about how such a horrible and horrifying act of violence could happen to such a beautiful nation of peaceable people.

Other things were playing in the background of my mind, too.

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 …

This post is in response to Dr. Suzanne Phillips and Dianne Kane‘s fascinating Healing Together for Couples post on Hoarding Behaviour.

It began as a comment, but was so long, I decided to post about it.

Thank you for the inspiration.

It struck a chord.

Also, I’ve had personal experience with hoarding and hoarders.

Don’t you think almost all of our behaviours are as a result of some sort of “trauma” in our lives. We’re attempting to fill a void inside of us because we don’t feel good enough.

Perhaps that traumatic event or events were in vitro. Or in our infancy. In some long forgotten or “blocked” or “repressed” event? Depending upon one’s levels of sensitivity, traumatic events can happen all the time. Little psychic bumps and bruises along the way.

Through my 51 years of psycho therapy, Dr. Phillips, I’ve learned that seminar event that triggered my psychotic/manic episodes happened when I was raped in a mental hospital by an orderly in 1962. I was 14. And I repressed that memory. This was long before Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was created. That memory came back to me in 1976, when I was 28 years old.