Reset Possibilities

Amidst all the collective transitions taking place in the world, I find some new comfort landing once again in familiar territory. My hosts, in the four months I had lived with them upon my shaky return to Washington State, invited me to garden on a property they were selling in San Juan County. In the time period of this post, I have been living in a cottage on their property about 3 weeks. Despite the daily discomforts I am working around physically, I find myself relaxing into the gardens, the dirt, the sky, and the welcoming solitude. 

I raised my kids in the San Juan Islands and enjoyed Orcas Island and its community for 14 years. Friday Harbor is the county seat and the only incorporated municipality in the entire county. It also supports a new hospital, which may become important to me and my kids, if I ripen and fall off the tree of earthly life.

Meet Buttercup. She is an affectionate older kitty that has the run of the full property I am tending. Buttercup likes to jump on my back when I am on my knees or even when I am standing but bent over. The other kitty on the land is more introverted. His name is Wesley. You get one guess as to which movie characters these feline fancies are named after!

When my post-crash health status influenced my decision to be closer to where my kids have migrated (Seattle), I attempted to move to Bellingham first - in December of 2020. My ducks had lined up well enough to transport my household belongings in late November.  Nancy Mullins, a long-time friend of over 31 years, had herself completed a recent transplant from Kansas to Seattle. She offered me a place to quarantine over Thanksgiving. Then, in the midst of all the digital paperwork shuffling from Kewaunee County, WI, to Whatcom County, WA, all the while still submitting coursework to my doctoral program with Northcentral University, I obtained a motel room in Bellingham. This was just a few days prior to my anticipated move-in to a studio apartment, which was owned and managed by Catholic Housing Services. 

Each night my prayers were including honest gratitude for how seamless those recent transition were evolving. Until the seam ripped open, that is. Lord knows I needed some ease but that was not the message that came from the Catholic Housing Services regarding my reserved apartment. Over a discrepancy related to my student status and a tax credit regulation, the compliance department vetoed my move-in. And that was THAT. Two days before the well-timed transport truck was to arrive with 144 square feet of my well-packed household goods, I had to scramble. How does one make a carefully budgeted resource cover a mini storage unit and unanticipated motel costs instead of move-in costs? I couldn't do it. I had to accept a loan from a friend.

Perhaps I'm not the only one to notice, but $500 in reserve simply doesn't get you very far in a housing crisis combined with a pandemic. After that was spent, I had to ask for help. Though I appealed the initial denial of my apartment, through the local channel of the Opportunity Council, the lot was cast, as they say. One must not take a stand against a well-established but should-be-obsolete tax credit issue with a corporation that looks to exclude the needy on the slightest peek of a nose hair. I never met with one person face-to-face in that whole scenario. Communications were 99% email and snail mail, and 1% phone. WEIRD. VERY WEIRD,

After a brief fade of energy when I received the disappointing news, I was rallied by a nap and prayer. I reached out to qualify for all kinds of local programs. But I was 60, with PTSD and physical limitations allowing only part-time employment. Although I had arrived with a bona fide federal housing assistance voucher, and verifications up the wazoo and back down again, I failed to secure a studio or 1 bedroom apartment. Ironically, even though I could prove who I was and what my intentions were, it turns out that the programs I engaged with could not stand by their missions to locate housing for the suddenly homeless: me. 

As grace would have it, my friend Kim Bryan, a former executive director of a domestic violence and sexual assault agency (DVSAS) in the islands, where we both had concurrently worked and lived, invited me to stay at her new home and horse ranch in Skagit County. She is in the midst of realizing her dream of providing equestrian therapy for youth who have been trafficked. See Crossroads Youth Ranch Relieved but nervous how the details of getting my roots set down would all sort out on my end, I accepted Kim's invitation. 

In the loving and faith-based embrace of Kim's family, I slid through my 61st birthday and Christmas. And then on through Easter, playing the digital and phone tag communications game for housing searches, job searches, transferring medical history, attaining medical insurance, finding new providers, and practicing a bit of driving with restricted range of motion. Through all of this, I was becoming quite convinced that someone, much like the Wizard of Oz, was making up new rules behind the curtain. When did I lose my blackened broom and misfit but faithful companions? And where are they now?

If the curtain represents what I need to look behind, no matter what I find there, I still need a process that is kind. That's for sure. Now that I feel a little more grounded, I have embarked on a wellness protocol to revitalize me from the inside out! A weekly physical therapy session is still to be established once again, but I am doing everything I learned from my PTs in the previous twenty-something months. The gardening tasks, and working at my own pace, are helping me develop those critical but more subtle back and shoulder muscles. They had seriously atrophied from months in braces and limited use afterwards.

This past Friday, I located the therapeutic counseling group that can help me build on the progress I had made before my move. PTSD isn't just psychological. Having control over my physical progress gives me evidence of tangible improvement. I ended the month of March treating myself to a consult with Csilla Veress, ND, from the True North Health Center to help me get on a pathway of proactive digestive support and healing the polyvagal system. Not only am I juicing every day, alternating a juice only phase for 7 days and then a week of raw, and lightly cooked plant-based fare, I am also preparing mentally for a 30-day supervised water fast and the requisite two week re-feeding protocol. 

One of my son's is setting up an online fundraiser so I can enroll in the residential program with True North. Medicaid insurance doesn't cover adjunct medicine, no matter how well proven it is. I'm hoping that by documenting parts of this journey into wellbeing, I can chart a better course for myself and that others will find it useful.

Here is what my first two weeks on the juicing protocol looked like:

Filling the fridge with fresh veggies and fruits. At the local island food co-op, there are two amazing benefits: 

One is that produce is 50% off for the first $40 purchased, if you have an EBT food card. I have one. Phew!

The other is that much of that organic produce is locally grown. 

I get to support local farmers and they get to support me. I like that kind of balance.

Once the goods are in the fridge, then it's a daily process of prepping some for different juice blends. After washing comes cutting, to fit into the juicer feeder. Pretty minimal time and tasking, which can be done with music or an audio book playing in the background. I tend to be an early riser. Therefore, after my meditation, I use the juicing process as a gentle segue into my day. I usually complete the prep and juicing before 8 am.

It all starts to add up very quickly and deliciously. I particularly like the carrot, cucumber, kiwi, pear, and ginger root combination for mornings. 

I take my greens with lime, celery, cucumbers and apple later in the day, thank you very much! 

On some mornings, I add raw turmeric root and an orange to my carrot blend. My green juices are made with a variety of leafy greens, but not all mixed up. One day I will feature chard leaves, another day kale, and another day spinach. I have also found a cabbage-based juice rather spicy, so I add celery, apple, and ginger.

The first time I ever did cabbage juice, by itself (Read carefully: BIG MISTAKE!), it was like drinking an explosive with a delayed detonator. Really POTENT. So go easy when you try it.

There's nothing like the satisfaction of bottling up my meals for the day. The above photo represents one and a half days of juice. I added the waters to remind myself that water continues to be essential, even if I am not feeling particularly thirsty. Most American's tend to be dehydrated from over consumption of caffeine and refined sugar products. I do, in fact, drink at lease 1.5 quarts of water in addition to the juices each day. It's a lot to pee out in the first three or four days, but the body adjusts and becomes more efficient at using all that liquid nourishment.

Lest anyone should worry about energy levels, I can assure you that I enjoy a 3 to 5 hour day in the gardens, with breaks to let my easily taxed muscles reset.  Plus 2 to 4 hours of writing each day. Until I started gardening again, I usually had to take two naps a day, especially after a physical therapy session. And there was no end to muscle spasms. Spasms are becoming less bothersome as my muscle tone improves. And the resets are happening within minutes rather than taking hours, as they did a year ago.

I am normally a patient person with strong internal resources. But the loss of my usual pace of life has been a tremendous blow to my confidence and sense of accomplishment.  For those who have suffered through a near-fatal accident or crime event, please be gentle with yourselves and those around you. Stay focused on what you can do and learn to do breath work. Get a coach for this to make it stick. On some days, breathwork will be the best that you can do when other aspects of the body's healing must go deeper or you experience a seeming setback.

Here is glimpse of what I tackled during my first week on San Juan Island: an overgrown and weedy greenhouse.

Balancing the ongoing weeding of the outside gardens with the warmth of the greenhouse, after just three mornings, it looked like this (below): Ready for some new seedlings!

Since this isn't my property, but a labor of love for friends who have helped me, I won't get to plant my own garden this year. Nonetheless, I do find the tangible work very satisfying.

I believe that working with the soil and plants is one of the greatest ways to become grounded, literally. As a metaphor, I find myself talking through issues, planting thoughts, and grieving so much gun violence this year. My gratitude that I can walk and kneel ( with care to not get up too fast, because of inner ear issues) and manipulate hand tools is off the charts! The reason for this is that head injuries often cause loss of memory and compromised nerve function. 

While I'm still addressing the nerve function parts of my body, I did not suffer loss of memories of my children's early lives or even of my own early life. There are certainly aspects of memory I sometimes wish had disappeared, such as the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) I've absorbed, but I know I am me.  I cannot help but wonder about identity and how much of our collective or unique pain might overly dictate how we perceive ourselves. If struggles make us stronger then maybe to hope for too much ease is a recipe for weakness or vulnerability that could actually endanger our resilience.

I'm not saying that my crash was a blessing. I am experienced at jumping hurdles with leaps of faith in God's grace. However, I am sensing that such show-stoppers can engage something mystical about divine providence. We can become more purposeful in how we spend our time and choose our friends. For me, I cherish the living connections between people and circumstances that reveal synchronicities and love, where I might only have been noticing random violence and chaos.