Brave? Brave.

 

All right, one more time for the peanut gallery (very loud and very clear).

We do not say:

I’m so embarrassed about my heart condition

I’m ashamed about my cancer

I’d be mortified if anyone knew I get headaches

What’s the matter with her? She can’t handle a little stroke?

So why do we feel:

I’m so embarrassed that I have bipolar disorder

I’m ashamed that I have anxiety

I’d be mortified if anyone knew I get panic attacks

What’s the matter with me? I can’t handle a major depression?

Yet that’s exactly what our society continues to do: shames and criticizes and diminishes the struggles of those with mental health issues. Forces those people to go underground, to hide and lie about their conditions for fear of that shaming and criticism. 

Honestly, I hoped we were doing better. In the 15 years since I was diagnosed, and became active in the mental health community as an advocate, I’ve read and heard encouraging things. People of influence have spoken out about their conditions. In 2018 my show, This Is My Brave, featuring regular folks telling their true stories of mental illness, was presented to a sold-out audience in center city Philadelphia, and I’ll produce another one in 2022. Good, important conversations have been happening.

Now Simone Biles, one of the most gifted and hardest-working athletes in the world, has stopped competing in the Tokyo Olympics because she is fighting crippling anxiety. Unable to perform at the level she expected of herself (and, by the way, the public fully expected of her), she stepped aside and let her teammates take over in the race for medals (and, at this writing, they have risen to the occasion beautifully). 

And there has been a vicious backlash against her. “What’s brave about not being brave?” sniffed one clueless and nasty commentator. Would this have been his attitude if she dropped out due to a serious physical injury? I doubt it. There is an acceptable range of injuries and disabilities, and mental health issues and other “invisible” illnesses do not make the cut, very often. Instead, we are quick to label these people as weak, somehow lacking in character (or, I hate to say it as a church worker, but sometimes the reaction in religious communities is that his/her faith is deficient.)

By all accounts the world of top-level gymnastics is an incredible pressure cooker, also marred by sexual misconduct by trusted coaches. Is it any wonder that Biles struggled in that toxic environment? 

I don’t know what it will take to completely de-stigmatize mental illness, but I know we have to keep trying. If for no one else, for our young people, many of whom are in great psychic pain they are afraid to share, and are turning to drugs and even suicide. So…

Let’s make honesty about mental illness normal, and risk-free. 

I believe Simone Biles IS brave, and that this is a teachable moment for America.

The question is, will we learn?

Beach Ready

Normandy Beach, NJ circa 1960 with Mom and sister Mo--happily heedless!

Good morning! The sun has not yet risen, but I feel confident that situation will be different at 5:53 AM. I launch into my day down here in Lewes, Delaware, armed with the knowledge that my daytime high temp will be 88 degrees, but it will feel like 94, unless I stay in air conditioning, in which case it will feel like 68 (if Steve is home it will be briefly adjusted to feel like 88, until he leaves the room and I adjust it back down). 

The winds will be westerly at 6 MPH, a mere “2 fly” rating on the Damn Fly Meter (an Honest to God thing, kindly provided by the Delaware surf fishing website.) Note: west wind or “land breeze”= pesky flies on the beach. But I won’t let those nasty creatures spoil MY outing—I am marinated in Cutter repellent, as well as slathered in SPF 50 sunscreen (to guard against a cancer-causing sunburn). I wonder if this combo may, one day down the road, prove to have been toxic, but that’s a worry for another time! Why borrow trouble, I say!

Aiden and Peter are here, so I have to add a close look at the tide charts as well. I don’t bother when it’s just me. High tide is perfectly safe, after all, when viewed from under a beach umbrella many yards from the shoreline. The chances of my being carted off by a riptide, or walloped by a monster wave, are relatively small, because I never (ever) get more than my toes wet. But my little guys are fearless water venturers, so for them I vastly prefer the lowest of low tides. My favorite is the occasional sandbar, which on Lewes Beach can extend so far that you could probably walk on it to Cape May, NJ. 

How did I ever manage without this boatload of info when I was a young beachgoer? In the 1960’s, when it was hot, it was just plain hot, and I had no idea what a “heat index” was. When it was sunny, it was time to break out the Sea n Ski dark tanning oil of course, and indulge my fantasy of having the kind of skin that would NOT turn crimson and peel like crazy. We would SAY “those damn flies” when buzzing hordes arrived, but that verbal acknowledgement was as far as it went. Wind speed and direction? That stuff was for sailors, right? I only noticed if my beach umbrella actually uprooted and blew away. And while even back in ancient times there were still both high and low tides, I never recall checking the status prior to arrival, so the size of the waves was always a surprise. 

Today, I have to allow at least 45 minutes for a thorough check of conditions, and equally thorough preparation to deal with those conditions, before going outside. Which means that, by the time I’m beach ready, conditions may have CHANGED.  

Then what?

Damn Fly Meter Logo--love it!!

En Route

 

Smiling Peter age one...we could (usually) figure him out!

As we approach two years since we first planned our since cancelled, COVID-cursed trip to Germany/Austria/Hungary/Czech Republic, and we dare envision another rescheduling for Fall, 2022, I am taking stock of my diminishing mental capacity, especially where foreign languages are concerned. I am still royally stuck at the very bottom of the Chinese 101 class, even as my high school French rapidly recedes in the rear view mirror of my brain. Like playing piano and parallel parking, it’s becoming quite clear that I will never achieve competence, much less mastery. 

As a traveler, I realize that English is the Open Sesame to most places on earth, but how do I meaningfully communicate with someone who is haltingly expressing him/herself to me, yet also obviously letting loose with a fluent cascade of Words with Friends? Everywhere I go, these same folks chatting to one another rapid-fire in their native tongues are, I assume, mocking me. “She just asked for a poached book!” they will chortle. “And did you hear her massacre ‘buona notte’? Hilarious!”

But I recently discovered a lovely little film that tackles language barriers head on (and removes said barriers). “En Route” tells three short stories of train passengers who don’t speak one another’s languages, yet come to understand each other in profound ways. A crying British baby is soothed by the magic tricks of a Roma woman. Two melancholy people, a young Assyrian man and an older German woman, intuit each other’s emotions while sitting across from one another in a train compartment. In the most delightful segment, an animated deaf couple helps a befuddled young Asian traveler head in the right direction to Genova.

Would that life was like that magical train trip! We humans would be able to transcend our misunderstandings and help one another along life’s journey. Such a shame that could never happen! But wait…

Why not?

What if we looked at language, not as a private club for the cognoscenti, but as a convenient short cut to comprehension—and not always really necessary? What if we realized that we can all easily find workarounds, even when we don’t know the grammar or syntax? Babies have no problem making their feelings known, right? And last time I checked, newborn infants do not yet speak the King’s English, but darned if their parents don’t do a more than adequate job figuring out their needs! For us older people, gestures and facial expressions work wonders, especially when paired with an intense desire to be understood. 

We are all en route, on life’s mystical train, destined for the future. Our traveling companions hail from all over, and at first communication can be tricky. But as our journey goes on, we discover our ways to connect, don’t we? 

So, as I once again spread out the European travel brochures, and stress about the foreign street signs and menu items, let me rest assured that we humans will always find our way through the world. 

One family. Understood.

"En Route"

(enjoy this sweet short film)

Cool It!

Once in a while I will encounter Life’s Big Questions: would you rather be too hot or too cold? I always ace the answer (“Neither”) and move briskly on to: would you rather be too short or too tall? Eat just ice cream or just pizza for the rest of your life? Live with only one arm, or one leg? (“Tall, pizza, arm—as long it’s not my writing arm. C’mon, what else have you got?”)

But, truth be told, while I do prefer tropical to Arctic climes, in reality I’m only happy in the hot weather when there’s air conditioning close by. I’m old enough to recall the signs on the deli doors in NYC, courtesy of Kool cigarettes “Come in, it’s Kool inside (air conditioned!”) We lived on the 7^th floor of a Manhattan apartment building, and long summer nights would find my sisters and me sprawled on the living room rug, fighting over which sister was hogging all the "chilled" air from the big box fan. Our early cars were air cooled by opening the windows as we hit 60 MPH, an experience much like putting your head inside a clothes dryer. My point is, I remember when A/C was not a given.

Moving South in the late 1960s, we got lots of summer sniffles from our travels (freezing store to sweltering parking lot and back again); it was in “Hot-lanta” that my addiction to freon really took hold. As an adult, I may have only enjoyed the central air life in the summers at the shore, but it was enough to convince me that life as a human stir fry was no life at all. 

Steve, on the other hand,  literally NEVER feels the heat. A visit to his home office in July renders the unlucky visitor flushed, disoriented and dizzy, while hubs hunches over his computer keyboard, completely oblivious to the scalding temps. 

In recent years, climate change (and I’m sorry but yes, it is a thing) has taken expected weather patterns, shaken them up and spilled them haphazardly across the landscape. Just a couple of weeks ago, a “heat dome” settled over Evan’s new home, Portland, Oregon. Oregon summers are usually quite temperate (highs no more than 80); suddenly the thermometers were soaring to 112 degrees. I panicked, picturing my son collapsing from heatstroke. It seems, however, that Ev is not quite as bothered as his mother. He weathered the weather just fine, he told me on the phone, as I sat not two feet from the “High Cool” setting on my window unit, yet still sympathy-sweating.

Summer is only two weeks old. It’s bound to get hotter, and I am bound to find myself in an un-air conditioned setting from time to time. At those unfortunate moments, I will fall back on my Catholic upbringing and “offer it up” for the poor souls in Purgatory.

But I’d still rather figure out a way to air condition Purgatory, so that we’d ALL be comfortable.

My two cool cats, "digging" the Lewes Beach sandbar