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Nova Terra

~ Just another way of stalling on my other writing

Nova Terra

Tag Archives: women

In Which Our Highly Trained and Educated Heroine Uses Her Mad Skills

25 Thursday Apr 2019

Posted by lionsofmercy in Blog

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day jobs, jobs, motherhood, motivational interviewing, recovery, women, work

I’ve been noticing over the past several months that the helping profession is disproportionately filled with women. If I thought about it at all, I figured that it was connected with our socialization as nurturers—and that it was probably also spurred by the low pay/hard work equation which keeps women trapped as sub-par wage earners, despite our often heading single-income households.


I recently attended a training on motivational interviewing (where there were 13 women and two men), and my fellow students voiced my own tendency to want to FIX IT. (This in MI is bad.) I joked that MI was going to be a hard sell, because everybody in that room got there because they were fixers. On the job, we’re so often—possibly even usually—faced with a crisis, small or large, that demands immediate action: fixing.

However, this very morning I was given a small—a very small—crisis, and instead of getting all Socratic with my recoveree as I should probably have done, I . . . fixed it. And then after a few moments, I had to stop myself from further inserting myself into my recoveree’s issues. “Stop being a mommy,” I scolded myself. And then it hit me: Women—fixers—helping professionals—mommies.

How many of us still carry things like emergency bandaids?


In fact, I suspect that helping profess—ah, hell, call us what we are: fixers. I suspect that fixers are in a way uber-Moms, regardless of our gender. We’re the people other moms call for a consult, or would if we were better able to listen and less willing to roll up our sleeves with a savage grin and fix the hell out of the thing. This is obviously a social problem, which is counter-productive to our own self-care. Fixers (and for this I mean women) are probably short on friends of the galpal, chillaxing with the homeys variety. And that can only add to our stress, which ironically makes us poorer at what we do.


It’s all very well to tell us to listen more than we speak. That just makes most of us give ourselves a smug little pat on the back, because we do listen—it’s just that at the end we tend to give out a well-reasoned solution to the issue. Fixed! Check! Pleased to be of service, ma’am!


I’ve gotten to the point of keeping silence because once you take my fixing away, I don’t know what to say half the time. I just crack out one of my large supply of listening noises (got ‘em for every occasion) and hope my conversational partner will comply by continuing her flow of words. I’m glad to be learning techniques for what can be thought of as stealth fixing fu: I need them for me.

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Season of Epiphany

07 Saturday Jan 2017

Posted by lionsofmercy in Blog

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faith, heart attack, hospital stuff, New Age, spirituality, women

I had a small heart attack a week ago, probably some little clot, and it led to the surprising discovery that my right coronary artery (that’s one of the big ones) was 95% blocked. They squooshed the clot with a balloon, and put in a teeny titanium tube to hold the artery open.

Yikes. Had to process this.

Confession:

Truth to tell, I was so ready to go, except for my being the material support of my kids. What was up with that? Feeling ready to quit. To be beaten. Life always wins, but it shouldn’t cheat that hard, and my Life seemed to hold mostly bad cards.

I wouldn’t say I was depressed, but I’d had no perceived purpose in life. Evolution was done with me, so that made the rest of it up to me. Problem was, I had no answers, just a vision of a blank wall coming closer and closer.

Now that I’ve seen the Precipice, I am ever so excited and joyous that I have been given another chance at life.

Another chance. Another life. Washed clean. My sins have been forgiven.

I feel different now. Every beat of the gelatinous sack of vibrating goo is special, sacred, valued, thanked. I love my heart now. This must mean something.

I think part of why I’m so happy is the sense that I mattered to some non-coincidental angel. I have realized that I am, actually, pretty damn cool, and that losing me would have been a Bad Thing.

Yeah, I need to get my books out, but in terms of purpose: If there’s a shortage of something on this Earth, it’s people who maximize their coolness. So why don’t I try to do that? Spread it as far and wide as I can. Try to make the world a better place, one smile at a time.

In return, I am prepared to be delighted with Life, having been shown with a tube of titanium where to look.

 

Season of the New Year

07 Saturday Jan 2017

Posted by lionsofmercy in Blog

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Tags

angioplasty, faith, heart attack, hospital stuff, life, New Age, recovery, religion, waiting, women

The day before New Year’s Eve, I got up from an indulgent post-breakfast nap with my throat on swollen fire. I had a column of nasty pain running up from about where the esophagus hits the stomach, all the way up to my jaw, and it was even going into my left arm a tad.

“GERD,” thought I. But it seemed unfair. It had been a small breakfast. And sitting up wasn’t relieving the pressure in my neck. It had never made it to my jaw before. Tried TUMS, tried milk, and sent the kid to the store for Mylanta. By the time he got home, I was feeling some better, but it was still bad. Mylanta did jack. That was when I . . .

. . . started Googling. Heaven forfend I act on impulse and call 911 or something. For GERD? It was most assuredly bad GERD. I’d had most of those symptoms before. But . . .

. . . women and chest pain, we’re weird. Both in the way it hits us, and in the way we handle it. That is to say, our cardiac symptoms are not classic, and ever since menarche, we are conditioned to shrug off pain. Tell you a secret, guys? We think you’re big, wussy babies; we tell jokes behind your backs about how tough you’d be with period cramps. Having a baby, ma’am? Walk it off!

SO there I was, fully dressed and ready to go–and not ready to go. My son, however, snarled at me, which is unlike him, so we . . . called a cab. No fuss here, just GERD.

They let us sit for ten minutes in the ER, which told me the admissions clerk must be just as impressed as I was with my chest pain, especially since I only got about a C+ on the little test she gave me, consisting of male-normed symptoms of The Big One. But they took me in, gave me an EKG–which I aced–and took some blood. I didn’t even ask them why, because that’s what they do: collect samples just-in-case, and send in some brave soul to put in an IV.

Welp, I failed the blood test. The resident was freakin’ perky as he told me that one of my heart enzymes was 50 times normal: My heart muscle had been damaged, and I had had a heart attack. Small, but undeniable.

“Oh, shit,” I said, and started to giggle. I mean, a heart attack? I’m 54. True, I have every other major risk factor except being a smoker (let’s not be excessive here), but it just seemed so surreal.

Because it was a three-day New Year’s weekend, I spent it in the hospital, waiting for the slightly fancier hospital’s center for angioplasty to open on Tuesday. I had many sticky things placed under my left boob and a heparin drip in my inevitably screechy IV. As holidays, despite visits and a good view of the fireworks, it sort of sucked.

Tuesday came, however, and I started off with an echocardiogram, which is a sonogram of the heart. I was a little appalled to learn that the heart doesn’t politely and sedately tap out a simple one-two; it dances sort of gelatinously, and the Doppler picked up several different rhythms, including “du-wacky-du-wacky-du.” What was this thing in my chest, anyway?  Then I had the angiogram.

I thought I’d known what it was and what it was up to.Wrong. Right coronary artery was 95% blocked. In the words of the OR nurse, I was “one cheeseburger away.”

This is having your guardian angel scruff you seconds before you go over a precipice, only it’s THE Precipice, and why not have gone there in the Sooner rather than Later?

Kinda leaves you with a question that wants answering, that does.

Waiting for a Bed

31 Friday May 2013

Posted by lionsofmercy in Blog

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

homelessness, women

One of my adventures involved being homeless for a while. Like so many other people, I got sick, lost my job, had no other resources, and we got evicted. For a period of some weeks, I stashed my daughter with a friend, while I . . . hit the bricks. This wasn’t some fancy-schmancy “Harvard and Homeless” thing where I could go home anytime I wanted to–it was the real thing. Most of it–seven months of it–we spent in a family congregate shelter which was as nice as such a place could be, but for about a month I was waiting for a bed. Always got one, thank God.

I was so naive I can’t believe it now–a product of my class, really–and when I was released from the hospital, I couldn’t believe they would just turn me out into the street. But lo and behold–there I was, shivering with cold and yuppie culture-shock. I had a blank book with me, and so I did what I do: I wrote about it. Not as much as I wish I had, but I chronicled a few hours, at least. Here it is:

February, 2008

It’s 3:50 p and Tyra Banks is on TV in the back of the Multiservice Center between Brookline and Green in Cambridge. I am waiting for the shuttle to St. Pat. These are 12 of us all told–which is good, I think, as there are reportably only 15 beds, But as some beds are supposedly long-term, I’m unsure.

As with other Cantabrigian poverty sites, this is split pretty evenly between races–5 white, 6 black, and me making up the difference.

Most of the women are “obvious”–in other words, if you saw them on the T, you’d know their plight. All of us have Stuff, ranging from the stereotypical black garbage bags to rucksacks and backpacks.

I have a backpack and the brown paper bag which announces my recent hospitalization.

Like me, most of the others appear to be mentally ill in some way or another.

The TV, now on Law and Order, shows the usual depressing commercials: “6 out of 10 Americans are now in debt!” And a new one, which brashly accuses, “If you don’t have a job, you shouldn’t be watching TV.” These ads are in fact at least slightly counterproductive: They are why I tend to avoid daytime television–and I can’t be the only one.

The woman next to me is asleep, her head hanging down to her chest, her mouth hanging open. One scarred and swollen hand tells the story: She’s probably nodding from a recent fix.

Another woman superficially appears very different: white, groomed, wearing generically preppy sweater, collared shirt, earrings, and hair pulled back under a narrow band. However, when I came in, she was busily sorting through thick piles of what looked like cash machine and other receipts, rocking slightly and muttering.

Quarter past. A slender, harried looking woman comes in and surveys the scene. She counts us and has the count affirmed. She zeroes in on the newbies and asks our names.

A man pokes his head in and asks if there is to be a lottery. I’m guessing he takes the losers to the big shelter in Boston on Albany Street. But our beds are safe today. We gather our stuff and move outside. The driver announces that those with wheeled bags will have to walk. She means a 60-ish woman who has a heavy wheeled suitcase among her traps. The old lady has been peering at all of us suspiciously from beneath her birds-nesty hat. Her purse is guarded by a large jingle bell: One wonders if modern pickpockets have been trained by 21st century Fagins to render such defenses useless.

As the white van slides through Cambridge, it ironically goes past my starting point at the hospital. A long hike for the old lady, I think, and indeed I don’t see her arrive later, though it’s not as if I were guarding the door.

There are eleven of us in the van, which is not unpleasantly scented with a Yankee Candle hangtag. “Baby Love” is on the oldies station and a couple of the women sing bits along. I hum a little under my breath. We pull up behind the Catholic Charities building I’ve passed so many times in the happily-unknowing past. We disembark and rescue our bags from the crowded space behind the back seat.

Another woman is looking as awkward as I am. We hang back, waiting to perhaps be invited or instructed, but after a moment, we follow the stream of old-timers into the house. We are greeted by a solid woman in tidily tucked-back dreadlocks, who exudes an air or warmth and command. She asks our names, and introduces herself as Michelle, case manager responsible for the Transitional program, which I learn later is a stable bed program for women with jobs.

The other newbie and I slide into the cozy living room–couch, chairs–TV–as much to get out of the way as anything else, and sit for a moment. We introduce ourselves. Happily for my atrociously porous memory, she has the same name as a favorite (if long-distant) relative. We are soon shooed out into the dining area. Cheerful kitchen curtains, lavender walls.

Six tables are in this room;  five inlaid with green tile in white pine and the sixth butcherblock. The chairs are assorted. Another TV is perched on one beneath the windows; the ubiquitous spinet piano is on the opposite wall.

There are already other women here. Thursday is the only night one can come directly to the shelter, in order to attend a weekly residents’ meeting. Cousin and I sit at one of the green patterned tables awaiting the next step.

The other women swirl and bustle around us, clearly completely at home. The news is on the TV; the bad reception shows an unusually friendly moose ambling up to delighted motorists. We learn the youngster’s lack of fear probably means he has a fatal brain worm, and cries of dismay ring out from several. I’m silent, but feel just as sad. I later realize that at least for me the feeling stems in part from kinship: Both the moose and I are banking on a deus ex machina; by conventional wisdom, neither of us has a hope in hell.

Cousin and I are called into the big room in front which old-fashionedly combines office and kitchen. We’re given packets of paperwork to fill out: vital statistics, why we became homeless, where we spent last night. Where did we spend the majority of nights last week? Month? Year? Who referred us? Which of several single and multiracial options do we choose? (White/Black/Indian is never listed; even in these enlightened days, I’m an “other.”)

Have we ever been incarcerated? A yes from Cousin; apparently the name of her origin which I hadn’t recognized was a prison. Involved with the Department of Youth Services? And so on. I am unsurprised to see on the last page a request to disclose basic stats to funder CDBG.

****

At that point, they served dinner–I remember basic American food, and enough of it. You could get seconds. Then everybody lined up and was given linen–sheets and blankets and pillowcase. I also got a big T-shirt for a nightie which depicted Somerville’s annual Cleanup/City Pride Day from the year before. The people explaining what was to be done with what were brusque. I almost cried, but I was too numb.

I was put into the smaller room, with only four beds. I slept listening to “Mama” in the next bed. The classic bag lady, she would go through all of her stuff, the soft rustle of the bags almost soothing.

The next morning we were awakened at 6 and fed breakfast, and everybody left to go be homeless people on the street. I made the mistake of seeing somebody still in the bathroom and taking my time until 7:10. I was leapt upon by this horrible woman who screamed the information that the other girl had a job and was allowed to stay later, and that if I ever did that again, I would never come back. I sobbed and begged in terror. Another employee ran out and calmed me down–apparently this other woman just had a random streak of bitch.

It was a random streak, because she stuck up for me a couple of weeks later when a roommate kept awakening me for snoring. (At my peak weight I snored like an apneac hippo.) This was made worse by a horrible lingering messy cold. That same roommate got offended when I stopped letting her use my laptop to check her email–I think it’s a sort of code that one hands out random cruelties to one’s mates and expects automatic shares in any spoils–a sort of tribal culture, I guess.

Anyway, some other time I might share an entry or two I made at the kinder and gentler homeless shelter, where we had a room that was ours. But on this summer evening, with both my now-grown kids playing video games, and me being allowed to loll in bed with my badly sprained ankle instead of being dragged up for chores–this is an evening for home.

Nova Terra

just another way of stalling on my other writing

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