How's the Weather?

By Courtney Pierce

The late-great David Bowie had the best advice for weathering tough times: Turn and face the strain. I’ve sung that line from Changes a hundred—maybe even a thousand—times in my fifty-nine years. Like many other baby boomers, I’ve lost a job or two, lost family members, and lost a husband (not by death, but a loss nonetheless). Any one of those derailments of life is particularly tough on the psyche.

But as is the way with Mother Nature, traumas are balanced with great joys. I’ve excelled in a career or two, won the hearts of two parents and two sisters, and gained an amazing husband and a stepdaughter from the ashes of devastation.

I owe it all to checklists. Don’t laugh. I’m completely serious.

I make lists about everything: complicated things, mundane things, and lists of lists I should make. Emotions are difficult for me to process, so when they’re part of a list, I can keep those tears and fears at arm’s length. We writers banish these big things to the page, not on our sleeve.

Rationalize, monetize, organize. Salute!

But then I think about the stupid things that many people deem to be traumas, like losing keys or trying to squeeze into those favorite jeans that don't fit anymore. Sometimes there’s no trauma at all, only an endurance test of the daily assaults of life. How much time do I spend deleting spam or interrupt a game of Scrabble to check my work email? I need to make sure someone else’s trauma doesn’t become mine. I’m never prepared for the Wi-fi router going out or my laptop inching like a slug from Internet slow-downs. And what about when the Bluetooth on the Bose has ceased to pair with the music library on my phone?

What the heck? Stop the presses! Is this fake trauma like fake news?

But nobody dies from these things. No one’s kids are maimed. Let’s put the challenges in prospective in our instant-gratification, now-means-now world. All anyone really needs to re-calibrate is to lose electricity for a week or two.

The absence of a 60-cycle hum of appliances makes me take notice. Ahhhh… After a day or two, I get used to the lack of rush from the heater or air conditioner. The still atmosphere makes my skin soft and supple. No ambient light from neglecting to turn off the switches ceases my huff and puff about the electric bill. No phone, either, without cable or satellite. We learned our haste from a pattern of waste.

I say a silent “thank you” when the power goes out. My urge to reconnect with my neighbors is powerful, and I reach out to friends for a long overdue lunch to become grounded again. If you’ve been through a hurricane, tornado, flood, or any natural disaster, then you know what I mean. The pull to walk away from technology is overwhelming after a couple of days without it. Then I dread that power coming on again. The respite is over. Back to normal life.

But what about emotional disasters? Relationship-changing disasters are quick to slice and slow to heal, űber-sore like an infected paper cut. I won’t lie, they carry a sting that’s hard to let go. Long after the clean-up of carnage is done, the invisible arrow still protrudes from the chest. Try as I might, I can’t yank it out on my own. Only those close to me, with a commitment of mutual love, know how to twist  and inch out that spear. 

My two sisters are quite colorful, Siblings can be wonderful at alleviating relationship stress. 

We subscribe to the “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger” rule for weathering the traumas of life. It's up there with the 7-second rule for food items dropped on the floor and headed to the mouth. Here's our recipe:

Shut off the T.V. . . .

Shut off the radio . . .

Close the browser . . .

Pour a big glass of wine and make a bowl of popcorn . . .

Then take stock.

Photo: Loma Smith

Courtney Pierce is a fiction writer living in Milwaukie, Oregon, with her new family. She writes for baby boomers. By day, Courtney is an executive in the entertainment industry and uses her time in a theater seat to create stories that are filled with heart, humor and mystery. She has studied craft and storytelling at the Attic Institute and has completed the Hawthorne Fellows Program for writing and publishing. Active in the writing community, she is a board member of the Northwest Independent Writers Association and on the Advisory Council of the Independent Publishing Resource Center. She is a member of Willamette Writers Pacific Northwest Writers Association, and She Writes. The Executrix received the Library Journal Self-E recommendation seal. 

Check out all of Courtney's books at:

courtney-pierce.com and windtreepress.com. Both print and E-books are available through most major online retailers, including Amazon.com

COMING SOON!

The Dushane Sisters Trilogy concludes with Indigo Legacy, due out in early summer, 2018. There's love in the air for Olivia and Woody, but will their family history get in the way? Ride along for the wild trip that starts in a New York auction house and ends in a mansion on Boston's Beacon Hill.  And the sisters finally get the answers they've been seeking about their mother.

New York Times best-selling author Karen Karbo says, "Courtney Pierce spins a madcap tale of family grudges, sisterly love, unexpected romance, mysterious mobsters and dog love. Reading Indigo Lake is like drinking champagne with a chaser of Mountain Dew. Pure Delight."

Just Breathe...Correctly

While there are hundreds of ways to cope, there is only one way to keep going—tough times or not. The answer is simple: keep breathing.

But the human spirit wants more than mere existence, we want to feel good; we want to be happy. While most of us can “soldier on,” sometimes life makes every bit of that march pure torture.

When my husband died, my marching halted altogether and a friend suggested I meditate. I complied; not because I expected a new-age, guru woo-woo thingy would make me feel better. I mean, come on…nothing had helped. Not counseling, not exercise, and not even that pint of Ben & Jerry’s I consumed every night. I tried meditation only because I hoped I’d go into some kind of trance and maybe have an hour where I didn’t have to feel.

Imagine my surprise to find out sitting quietly and focusing on my breathing actually helped (the fact that moi could actually sit quietly was amazing in itself). My first inclination was to believe the passage of time was responsible for my improved mood, but there hadn’t been that much passage. There were other changes, too.  Not only had my grief fog started to pass, my overall focus was better than it had been in years, maybe ever.  The constant ache in every muscle in my body started to vanish. Being the logic-driven geek I am, I couldn’t accept that something so hokey as mediation could actually help, so I began to do research to see if my brain improvements were…well, all in my head.

Another surprise. Over 3,000 studies had been conducted on the benefits of mediation, all with a consistent theme: significant improvement in the human mind and body. MRI scans showed that the human “Fight or Flight” impulse actually shrank after only eight weeks of a mediation activity. The pre-frontal cortex responsible for Fight/Flight is also responsible for awareness, concentration and decision-making—enough said.

Without going into a lot of brain science, which makes my head hurt, here are just some of the many improvements scientist say occur as a result of mindful activity (aka meditation):

• Reduced Stress – One study of nearly 1,300 adults showed that meditation not only decreases stress, but  the effect was greatest in those who were the most stressed. Research has also concluded that meditation may also improve symptoms stress-related conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome, post-traumatic stress disorder and fibromyalgia.
• Controls Anxiety – If you’re less stressed, you’re likely to be less anxious (well, duh), but a study of 2,466 participants showed a signficant reduction in their anxiety. Symptoms of anxiety disorders (social anxiety, phobias, anxiety attacks) were also reduced. Another study in a group of nurses showed meditation may also reduce job-related anxiety.
• Improved Attention Span – While my own experience confirms this finding, I was pleased to see that perhaps it wasn’t my just my imagination (now that Temptations song is in your head, right? 😊). One study that examined the effects of an eight-week meditation course concurred: participants had a better ability to maintain their attention. Workers remembered task details better than their peers who did not practice meditation. Another review concluded that meditation (even meditating as little as four days) may reverse patterns in the brain which contribute to mind-wandering, worrying and poor attention.
• Reduction in Age-Related Memory Loss – A review of twelve studies found meditation increased attention, memory and mental quickness in older volunteers. I bet I have your attention now.😊 Meditation can also partially improve memory in patients with dementia and can certainly help with the stress of caring for family members with dementia.
• Improved Sleep – One study compared one group that practiced meditation and another that didn't. The meditation group fell asleep faster and stayed asleep longer. Meditation also helps control “racing” thoughts which tend to keep a person awake.
• Pain Control – One study used an MRI to watch brain activity as participants experienced a painful stimulus. The participants who had gone through four days of mindfulness meditation training prior to the study showed increased activity in the brain centers known to control pain and reported less sensitivity to pain. Another study researched the effects of habitual meditation in 3,500 participants and concluded meditation was associated with decreased complaints of chronic or intermittent pain.
• Decreased Blood Pressure -- A study of 996 volunteers who used a silent mantra (repeated, non-vocalized word) while mediating reduced blood pressure by about five points, on average. Meditation seems to relax the nerve signals that coordinate heart function and tension in blood vessels, thus lowering the pressure.
• The best part… Meditation is free, requires no special equipment, and can be done almost anywhere.  Trying it certainly won’t hurt anything, right? And just a few minutes each day (or even a few days each week) should do the trick.  Don’t expect major improvements after one session though.  Give it a couple weeks minimum.  You will get the instant effects of relaxation during the actual session.

So how do you meditate? That’s a subject for another blog since there are a variety of methods for achieving Zen. Personally, I’ve had really good luck with the guided meditations available on YouTube.  You will want to google mediation methods and find the specific type that’s right for you.

Let me know how you do. Peace be with you. 😊