How Good It Can Feel to Feel Good

Recently, I have been taking mental note of times when I feel good. Not just okay, not just fine, but truly, genuinely, good.

For me, these moments can be fleeting, but I am grateful nonetheless. They are afternoons of winding yarn and listening to a fantastic new audiobook. They are times when I feel inspired by a new project or plan. I am setting up a life for myself in Berkeley, CA, so in August I will be moving there. Thinking about that, planning my move, looking for apartments, and setting up job interviews and opportunities-- all of this gives me joy and fulfillment.

For quite some time now, I have been feeling down. Not clinically depressed, not panic attack level anxious, not the struggling dependence of ADHD, but just somewhat off. I didn't realize it fully until recently, and not until tonight, as I am writing this, am I recognizing the complexity of what I have been going through.

Social media will have you believe I am knitting up a storm of beautiful projects while laughing with my family on the weekends and holding it all together working part time at a local preschool. But that was hardly the case. Because life is never how it is on social media.

The Hygge of Singing the Shema

My Nightly Tradition with Nonny

My grandma on my mom's side, who I call Nonny, calls me every night to sing the Shema. When I was growing up, my parents would sing the Shema and "shelter us" song to my sister and me, and recently Nonny and I have continued the tradition nightly. We talk about our days, catch up, and recite the Jewish prayer.

This tradition started a few months ago. I live in Claremont, and my grandparents are only about an hour's drive away (which, to be fair, can greatly depend on LA traffic). I liked the idea of visiting my Nonny and Poppy, my maternal grandparents, about monthly. This slowed down a bit once I started teaching at Kiddie Academy, but I did get to visit them this past weekend.

A few months ago, when I was visiting them, I recited Shema with Nonny and we exchanged thoughts about what we are grateful for. It was a nice little thing to do before I slept and made me feel a type of familial comfort I hadn't felt since living on my own.

Sickness and Health

For the past two weeks, I have been pretty sick. It's what my supervisor at the preschool calls "preschool-itis", basically guaranteeing that the ridiculous amount of germs and illness we teachers come into contact with on a daily basis will make any new teacher come down with the all too common cold.

I'm not perfect yet, but I'm pretty close to getting back to full health. For the past couple weeks, I have been coughing, wheezing, going through phases of complete voice loss, and other symptoms that made my daily life miserable. There were good days and bad, and it was especially rough to manage it all alone since I didn't have my parents to take care of me.

I honestly never thought I'd say this in my life, but I am so grateful today to be at the gym. I know, I know! It's crazy coming from me, but it's true. I'm finally back into my comfortable routine of walking the quarter mile uphill to the Claremont Club (my local health club/gym) and sitting myself at the cafe to write out a blog post before getting in a workout. It's strange, but I am so grateful to be back.

I'm a preschool teacher!

I come from a family of educators. My dad is a college professor in American Jewish studies, and my mom has taught and subbed in elementary school for as long as I can remember. When my sister and I were growing up we had a little playhouse outside we converted into a mini classroom, complete with an old fashioned desk, a chalkboard, and dusty, cobweb covered workbooks. I was always the teacher and Shayna was my student (other than the times she wanted to be the cleaning lady). The schoolhouse was later converted into a chicken coop, which was later donated along with the chickens when I left for college. But some of my fondest memories stem from my aspirations to emulate my parents, to teach, empower, and engage.

Around September of this past year, I was enrolled in a graduate program for developmental positive psychology at Claremont Graduate University. I tried to convince myself this was a good fit, that teaching would be too draining and I wanted to work in research or the clinical practice. After a few emotional days and what I would consider a full breakdown, I decided to reexamine my choices. (For a longer description, see the full post)

I majored in psychology at Pitzer College and managed excellent grades and strong extracurricular activities. My main work experience came from the Autism Center at Claremont McKenna, which led me to the graduate from at CGU. What I discovered while at CGU was that while I loved working with the kids and engaging with behavioral psychology concepts, the research, academics, and statistics were not suited for me at all.

So I took a break, a gap year if you will. I had rented an apartment in Claremont and my lease lasted a year, so I stayed. I decided to try and find my path.

One reason I love my apartment in Claremont is the proximity to Starbucks. There's a small shopping center about 500 feet from my door, which includes the Starbucks I went to on a regular basis in my undergraduate time. What I also found was a daycare/preschool called Kiddie Academy, right next door to my favorite Starbucks, just a stone's throw away.

My mom encouraged me to apply, but I was hesitant. I was convinced teaching would give me burnout, a defeat even more intense than my breakdown from the psychology master's program. But here's the thing about burnout:

It's harder to burnout when what you are doing lights you up.

Seasons of Love

How do you measure a year?

Rent, the stage musical as well as the movie version, has shaped a lot of my beliefs around living and what it means to exist. (Given my liberal arts education, I can of course look back and see the problematic aspects of the storyline, but for the sake of argument, let's set those aside for now.)

One of the most famous songs from the musical, as well as in general as a Broadway tune, is "Seasons of Love" (or you may recognize it by the chorus, "525,600 minutes/525,000 moments so dear/525,600 minutes/How do you measure, measure a year"). Here's the movie version if you want to check that out.

I've been reflecting on that idea a lot lately, especially since I have begun documenting and essentially scrapbooking my life in my journals and planners. And as December 24, 9pm, Eastern Standard time approaches (Rent reference), I thought I'd reflect back on what made up my year of 2018.

Joining the Health Club

New Election Cycle, New Me

You've probably heard of new year's resolutions. You know, the time of the year you are definitely going to lose 20 pounds, go to the gym, wake up early, and cook a three course meal every night? Yeah, that idea. Well, I'm starting some now, on a Tuesday in November.

Tragedy Overload

Saturday I woke up to breaking news of another mass shooting. Barely a day has gone by since the pipe bomb suspect was arrested and now we have something else. My heart broke as I clicked the news video, and it sank deep into my chest as I learned, in horror, that this one was targeted at a synagogue.

Something in me broke.

Something I had been pushing around for some time now, a sense of doom and hopelessness and sadness. This morning, I felt it. The utter sense of sorrow, of grief, of acceptance of tragedy. The point I realize I cannot leave, I am not immigrating to Europe, this is real and this is my life now. This is our American reality.

Each time something happens, I tell myself I am done. I will fight this. I will vote. I will protest. I will move far away from this dystopian reality. But this morning, as 8 souls were snatched from this world and hundreds of lives forever changed, I just sank.

I checked my Facebook obsessively. I shared a post, I followed the breaking news. My feed was filled with Jewish friends and family sharing outrage and non-Jewish friends expressing fear and sadness.

I didn't know if I could take it anymore. So I stopped.

I turned it off. I clicked away. I put mu phone on silent and my media on pause, just for a minute. And you know what? It was okay.

I made myself some iced tea. I changed my sheets. I tidied my floor. I cast on a new knitting project. And it felt alright.

No, it didn't solve anything. The news was still there when I got back, and the hurt and the pain came rushing back. But that afternoon, I needed some time to shut off before I shut down.

What We Talk About When We talk About Mental Illness

Roseanne, Kanye, and Mental Health Awareness Week

Photo Credit: What I Be Project by Steve Rosenfield

October 7-13 was mental health awareness week, with NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) starting a CureStigma campaign. You may have seen posts on social media of friends or acquaintances posting about their struggles or their allyship/offers of support. If you hadn't seen or heard, I don't blame you-- I had to google it prior to this post. I had heard the term "mental health awareness week/day/month" floating around, and I figured now was as good a time as any to share my personal thoughts.

In addition to NAMI, the constant news cycle reminds us of how prevalent and even marketable serious mental illness is. Kanye West, for example, was recently at the white house, rambling about our country's problems, his solutions, men, male energy, alternate realities, the 13th amendment, and more. He mentioned the Unabomber and prison and bipolar disorder. In general, it was an extremely disjointed and fantastical discussion. (If you are interested, here is the full transcript)

Roseanne Barr, an up and coming (and subsequently fallen) reboot star was recently on the Joe Rogan podcast. She discussed her infamous tweet, her personal history with serious mental illness and psychiatric hospitalization, and the fallout from her drugged out post. I have not finished the full episode yet (it's a two hour podcast), but it is available here if you are interested.

This is a lot to dig through. This is a representation of not only our attention seeking culture, which values the extreme, but also is subsequently a version of how we understand mental illness, specifically psychosis or other dissociated forms of reality. 

To be fair, it could be worse-- at least we're not talking about mental illness because someone with a firearm took that constitutionally protected firearm and used it to murder innocent people. And at least these people in the spotlight are successful in some regards. They are creative geniuses despite their demons. There are so many angles to approach this question of celebrity culture and mental illness.

What is a self described mental health advocate to do?

Finding my Path

Withdrawing from my CGU Master's Program

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out. 

This is a tough post to write. This is the post where I will be talking about my choice to withdraw from my graduate program at Claremont Graduate University, a highly competitive and intense masters track for Positive Developmental Psychology. This is not easy to admit, and yet for some reason I still am writing it. Because there is power and truth in personal vulnerability.

Living for the Future

Graduate School Anxiety and Overall Stress

As you may have heard, I am starting graduate school at Claremont Graduate University in Positive Developmental Psychology. I am pursuing my masters at the moment, with hopes that perhaps I would continue on to get my doctorate. And it's time I admit something: I am scared. I am terrified. I am overwhelmed. I am vulnerable.