It’s been a rough go the past couple weeks and I cant help but wonder whether its a little st johns wort and Vitamin D I need, though when I went to look for my tincture I made this summer, I found the jar empty. This has happened before, when hamish would take a swig of my tinctures on an evening, but he doesn’t really have much opportunity anymore, so maybe it evaporated out? But then also found my stashed bottle of red wine in the pantry empty; did I finish it one day and not put it in the recycling straight away? That would be strange of me.
I feel like I’m having mild mini panic attacks throughout the day, for over a week. During hour or longer massage treatments, I find myself overthinking while I’m working, I lose my grounding and spin out into strange worst case scenario situations, I lose sense of who I (think I) am and what’s good and true. I walk away from a day of work writhing in feelings of fraud - these people paid how much for my massage? I don’t know what I’m doing! I couldn’t get that pelvis back into neutral, I have no idea why her mobile leg feels like crippling achilles tendonitis, I don’t know why her whole right side is in lockdown spasm, I think she was hating the craniosacral.
I am wearing so many hats. Felix’s social life is of high importance but so is having nothing planned home days on the farm, plus three trips to town already for work. There was a horse here for half a week and I got out to pet him two times.
I’m staying up late looking up tcm cooling foods so that I can have a somewhat normal body during day and night. I cheated and drank three ounces of my blackberry brandy last night and my face is swollen and sinuses drippy and soggy. It’s off to the garden for me as soon as I’m done typing, I’ll pick fresh dandelion by headlamp. It’s my magic superfood.
I’m learning fingerplays and movement songs and opening and closing verses for circle time. I’m writing down lyrics for old germanic songs about autumn, I’m planning a lantern building workshop. Felix has started wanting to write, which wasn’t supposed to be in the curriculum till next year but I follow Felix, so I’m busting open the two inch thick homeschool book for waldorf grade 1…in my spare time.
The garlic needs to be planted at…full moon, new moon? I have had no desire to be in the garden since apple pressing time. The need just dries up. I can barely move in the pantry because of all the unprocessed dried herbs in bags and basins and hanging from racks, but outside the tomato vines still hang neglected from their bamboo stakes and the giant dahlia just keeps on blooming. The marshmallow needs digging up and so does the ashwaghanda and the parsnips and carrots. All the beds need to be mulched with straw I hayed by hand, carted over the pasture in wheelbarrow loads. More kale needs to be planted to keep up with my high steamed greens requirements.
I’m doing a hakomi workshop this weekend. Instead of having a home day, or seeing my new friend Mirona at second beach. But I can’t not go. There was an open door in answer to my calling out to the cosmos for guidance and growth. All my critiscism of and my needs from others sound like hypocrisy, sound like advice I need to take myself. I feel insecure in how I am in all of my relationships right now. I can’t quite tell if I’m being ok or being a jerk or narcissistic or a vampire. I am lacking that objectivity - it just all feels fuzzy and mildly anxiety producing. Hamish and I can barely even greet each other these days before the conversation goes off the rails - it takes about two and a half minutes for me to feel flooded and sound like I just swallowed bitter medicine. Felix immediately looks at me like, mama, keep it together dude.
And Felix’s care? I’m seeing that internally rotated right leg and his weak glutes and pronated foot and the terrible balance and his hamstrings that just don’t lengthen. They’re dramatically short. He aged out of the free local physio and anything else is on the Island. Or long computer evenings putting my mind to learning something outside of my wheelhouse. I can’t stand the thought of what it’s all doing to his pelvis and low back and interroception and core firing. And I’d love to get him to a kid therapist - he has some coping methods that seem off, some interesting triggers, some behaviours that are unsocial and I don’t know where to start. I don’t have the money, mostly. Raising a human on one’s own…how do I not turn him into me? So much consciousness is needed. Constant being in grace and presence. Being calm. How does one do this? Having a healthy homelife helps. A healthy marriage and family dynamic and healthy body and healthy movement routines, not a mama who's absolutely lost and adrift.
It’s such a jarring moment when my mother thinks I have it all figured out and gets almost aggressive with me in response to my faltering and uncertainty. I go to her on my knees, needing some sort of help, begging and she doesnt’ see it. I think it shakes her up to think I may not have full control of everything and she says as much. She comes at me with such hardness in those times, I experience this full regression to being a very young child experiencing a safety crisis. Emotionally it knocks me out. I’m breathless the rest of the day, my mind veers around the experience and throws a veil over it so I can’t even quite remember what was said. She has always needed me to be strong and unshakeable and I’m seeing more and more the effect that’s had over the years. I needed her and still do. I don’t have anyone close who I can lean on with absolute certainty, knowing they can handle it, and whom I don’t have to take care of in a parent way.
My father is in hospital since Monday. I'm relieved actually, since he’s in a place where he can’t mess up his meds, or fall against his plant stand when he gets light headed, or smoke, or drive. But as the days go on and I hear that he’s spinning out, he’s spiralling, he’s freaking out like a trapped animal, I am having a hard time being here and not there. He’s alarmed everyone with his constant talk of shooting himself, and I do wonder how his talk with the psychiatrist went. I haven’t spoken with a doctor yet - they called my half sister instead of me to do a cognitive assessment, which made my ego feel very uncomfortable. It’s becoming apparent that he can’t live in his apartment alone anymore, and a seniors residence is the logical answer. I had a ball of anxiety in my core last night at this thought -I am so against shuffling seniors off to these institutions, but the situation here does not support me taking care of another human. I’d need a different vehicle, I’d not be able to work as much, would we all bunk upstairs, stairs are a problem, he’d need a level of independence that I cannot give and a level of care I want to give but do not have the bandwidth for. Maybe I could stop work and get paid a benefit for taking care of an elderly parent. I love my work. I had grand visions of Mike living at Joyce’s in Salmon Arm but I think he needs more care than that. That would have been an option 5 - 10 years ago. He would have had independent supportive living in the real community. Would he move to Germany to be with his sister? He’d be a foreigner and not have any medical coverage. They would be able to take care of him though. This is the ping ponging that is happening all day and night.
I can’t seem to make it work in my mind how I could go spend time with him now - Felix is attached to me day and night and has never and wouldn’t yet sleep without me. Oma wouldn’t sleep out here at the farm, but probably wouldn’t be able to handle child care 24/7 for multiple days. And hamish of course, the other member of our little trip team, he’s out of commission since his parents flew back to nz days ago, he’s holed up in his cobbage. He’s been drinking hard liquor again and the need for a breathalyzer is becoming imperative. I can’t go to Edmonton on my own. I would love for the functioning healthy hamish to come with me - then he’s the man to have at your side for coming up with ideas on the spot, solving problems of logistics in a big city, for navigating and pivoting and traveling lightly. He shines, sometimes. But it’s never guaranteed and doing this mission with a surly drinker in victim mode who becomes mean and childish when in uncomfortable situations (someone else’s apartment, not having one’s own vehicle, taking care of someone else, managing ones emotions) would be worse than going without him. Going with Oma might be similiar. I don’t know when she’ll be brilliant and flexible and solutions oriented or when she’ll crumple and need me to solve all her and my problems of logistics and smelly hotel rooms and a different bed and a kinked neck and not being able to cook her own food. Going with Felix alone doesn’t work either. He’s six. The only way would be to lobotomize him with a screen. And I’m not about to do that.
I want to be out there to calm my father down. I want to talk to his team. I want to watch an old western with him on a laptop in his hotel bed and read out loud to him. Bring him some good salami and a shiny apple, some yogurt.
