Category: Reflections

When my youngest son was born, he was a tiny little thing – only 7 lbs to my older son’s nearly 8 lb birth weight – and held himself in the fetal position for months after his birth. At each checkup, my doctor would try to pull his legs down away from his chest to straighten them, worried about his physical development. He advised me to do the same whenever possible, but my son kept pulling them right back up again, as if he needed that skin to skin contact.

In addition to his tendency to hold himself in the fetal position, my son also grew into a colicky baby, who spent more time crying than he did anything else. During that first year of his life, I found it easiest to co-sleep with him. That way I could quickly cradle him whenever he cried, and vigorously jiggle my arms up and down until he settled again. He would resume crying again easily if I put him down too quickly, so I spent many hours dozing in an upright position, his tiny body clutched firmly in my arms.

I remember one time when he was about 8 or 9 months old and he contracted a fever. For long hours of the day and night, I would lie with his hot little body curled right up into my chest, just resting there. I felt so much love for him then, when I realized that the thing that brought him the most comfort was this simple, physical contact with me. Even now, we are still close. He contacts me every week, checking in with me to see how I’m doing. Sometimes now, it feels more like he’s the parent and I’m the child.

Clearly, my son has always needed close, physical connection. But it’s not just him. Connection is important to everyone. As social animals, we need emotional and physical contact with others in order to feel well, in order to be at our best. The pandemic was a good teacher in that respect. Those who were isolated and without a social bubble tended to fall into bouts of anxiety or depression, or both. Those who lived in a full household with plenty of social support weathered the storm more easily.

This is something that I’ve been reflecting on recently, as I think more and more about trauma and how to manage it. I used to think that trauma was an event. That it was something that happened to you, like a beating or a rape, or the sudden death of someone close to you. I thought that if you experienced something like this, you would naturally have trauma. But apparently, that’s not how it works.

Terrible events like these are certainly traumatic, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they cause trauma. According to the American Psychological Association, trauma is not the event in and of itself, but the emotional response to that event. This means that we only experience trauma when we find ourselves without the resources or supports necessary to successfully navigate it. In short, we experience trauma when we are alone, or when we feel alone. We experience trauma when we lack connection.

Social support has repeatedly been shown to be one of the strongest protection factors against the development of PTSD. It’s an emotional regulator. It helps us feel stronger and more courageous than we could ever be on our own. And while compassionate support is powerful, it’s absence can be equally devastating.

I find that incredibly empowering. Every day, we have the opportunity to make a choice between kindness and compassion or its opposite. Within every hour, we can either save someone’s life, or make it worse. Which is why it’s so important to be mindful. Please remember that many are struggling right now. Please know that we all need care. And with that knowledge, proceed accordingly.

When I started my yoga teacher training more than a year ago, our instructors told us to be gentle with ourselves as we learned. They warned us not to be overly critical of ourselves if we failed to meet our goals, and to show ourselves compassion. At the time, it sounded like fluffy, airy-fairy yoga stuff to me.

I had always pushed myself very hard in school, forcing myself to give my absolute best to any assignment or project. I may not have had the highest marks in the class, but I was always up there in the Honour Roll, and I prided myself on that. If there was one thing people knew about me, it was that I did well in school.

That was just about the only part of me that most people knew, though. It was also the only part of my life where I felt I passed muster. I needed to do well in school. My fragile sense of self depended on it. Failure – even just mediocrity – was not an option.

It’s funny how strong those kind of past beliefs are. When I started my yoga teacher training, I could feel myself gearing up for the challenge just like I did when I was a teenager. I was determined to be the best in the class, and willing to put in whatever effort was required to wow my teachers.

But almost as soon as those thoughts crossed my mind, I could feel the fatigue welling up behind my eyes. I had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I had already spent all my available energy more than a decade ago. I didn’t have it in me to keep pushing myself so hard. If I did, I knew I would collapse from exhaustion before the program was even finished.

Why did I think I needed to do that? I guess you could say I was never told – or at least I never believed – that I was good enough on my own. I thought that if I didn’t stand out in some way, if I wasn’t special in some way, then I would never be loved. Certainly, I would never succeed.

That appears to be what our culture teaches us. If you aren’t exceptional in some way, you’re not wanted. Our children have to prove their excellence just to earn entry into schools and land low-paying jobs that we could have fallen into when we were young. As a result, they are developing physical and mental health problems that we previously didn’t see until middle age. I may have grown up a generation earlier, but I was still negatively affected by it.

Why are we doing this to ourselves? How can we change?

Well, I don’t know how to change a culture, but we can at least change our own attitude. Studies show that being critical with yourself actually makes you work less effectively. It makes you so afraid of failure that you stop trying.

On the other hand, when you can show yourself some compassion and forgiveness, it actually helps you to relax so you can perform better. You aren’t so stressed and afraid that you view every failure as the end of the road. Instead, you’re able to see it as an opportunity for growth.

It seems counter-intuitive. Many people think that if they aren’t strict enough with themselves, they’ll just lie back and never achieve anything. But in the long run, pushing yourself too hard doesn’t make you do better. It only makes you sick. Like me.

I want you to put your hands over your heart right now and think back to a time when you felt loved, by a friend, or a relative, or even just a pet. Breathe deeply now and allow the remembrance of that love to enter your heart. Breathe it in and really feel it. Know that you are a good person. Know that you are lovable and worthy just as you are.

Somehow, we have to learn to soften towards ourselves a little more. To give ourselves a little more space, to breathe and to just be. To show ourselves a little more compassion. Maybe that is the only way we can begin to turn this world around. Because if we can learn to treat ourselves better, then maybe we’ll start to treat everyone else better too.

A number of years ago, I took this short, half-day mosaic course. In the course, we were shown how to glue multiple pieces of coloured glass onto a wooden slate, in a variety of suggested patterns, in order to create a beautiful piece of artwork.

We seven students sat together at the back of the store, at a cozy wooden table covered in tiny glass shards in a rainbow of different shades. It was so satisfying to pluck colours out of the pile, one by one, and arrange them, just so, into a completely new form. I still have the picture frames I made that day.

I was very drawn to mosaic building during those initial years of my illness because I felt so broken myself. My life, which had seemed full and vibrant until then, had collapsed so suddenly and completely that it took me years to adjust. I just didn’t know how to make myself whole again, either physically or psychologically. By gluing coloured pieces of glass, side by side, on a piece of wood, I felt I could somehow put all the broken pieces of myself back together again too.

At that time, all kinds of broken things began to fascinate me. Broken shells on the beach, broken and discarded plastic cups in the park, trees with their branches broken off, broken sidewalks. When I discovered Kintsugi, the Japanese practice of piecing together broken pottery with gold or silver lacquer, I felt the hand of God pointing at me. Brokenness began to seem sacred.

There’s that famous poem by Leonard Cohen:

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

Life is so fragile, and humans are such delicate creatures. Things can break in an instant. We have all lost things we can never recover, and broken things that can never be put back together again. Bodies get sick, milk spills, people mistreat you, relationships fade. The trick is learning how to be okay with all that brokenness. In being able to see the beauty behind it and within it.

I always hoped I’d find a cure for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I never really did. But what I did learn, was how to love myself despite my brokenness. I learned to become more present, since the present is all we really have. I learned how to sit with the inevitable pain of existence and not run away. I learned to love, fiercely, with the deep knowing that it will end. I learned how to show myself, and others, compassion.

Finally, I’ve learned that I don’t need to be fixed. I can be fragile and still have value. I can be broken and still be loved. In fact, I now see my fragility and brokenness as a strength. Unlike the selfish and brittle hardness of power, a whole lot of softness and love can come out of fragility. And by accepting my own fragility, I can teach others to love and accept theirs as well. That is truly a gift.

My mother died this past November. She’s still here, though. I can feel her all around me. She sits beside me as I work. She watches over me while I sleep. Now that she’s gone, she flits through the air around me and watches over me 24 hours a day. She says to me “Ah! So that’s how it is! I can see now. I didn’t understand before.” And finally, after all these years, after all of our many strained and painful conversations, I feel like I am seen.

It was never like that when she was alive. Back then, no matter how clearly I tried to speak, no matter how closely she tried to listen, it always seemed that we just couldn’t understand one another. There was always a wall between us that prevented full comprehension.

And yet, we were close. I think you could say that. We certainly tried. For many years, I called her every week and we would talk for hours. Even when she moved into a nursing home, we still talked every week, or emailed one another, or both.

I always knew what my mother really wanted of me, though. She wanted me to pay her a nice long visit. Not one of those short, little weekend visits that we often did. She wanted me to sleep over and spend an entire week with her. Just the two of us; her and me. She wanted me to play piano duets with her. She wanted me to sit in the dining room and keep her company while she ate. She wanted to show me off to the nurses. Would that really have been so bad?

Somehow, the very idea of spending a full week with my mother completely exhausted me. I knew what she wanted. Just like when I was a child, she would want me to be her little helper, listen to her, and fetch things for her. She would want me to sit there quietly while she talked about her life. Then, once she had finished venting all of her feelings, she would want to pry into my life, asking me all sorts of uncomfortable questions about the particular things I did each day. There always seemed to be something about me that she didn’t quite understand, something that she wasn’t quite happy with. It was dispiriting. I always left my mother feeling more exhausted than when I came.

And so, I put off that much-wanted visit for years. And when I finally acquiesced, it was really too late. By that time, she was already dying. In earnest.

For the first couple of days that I was there, I was still able to speak with her. In between nurse check-ins, and the administering of medications, she would ask me to play piano for her. Once, she asked me to sit closer, and then even closer, until my face was so close to hers we could bump noses with one another. With her piercing blue-green eyes, she looked at me fixedly for a long moment, as if she was memorizing my face. And then, just a suddenly, she broke contact and laid back in her bed without saying a word.

I think that was the last time she was able to truly look at me. After that, she quietly slipped under the veil. Suddenly, she was too weak to remain conscious. She would still move her head to look up at me, smile, and say “hello” each morning, but there would often be no other response from her for the rest of the day.

I stayed by her side and tried to communicate with her as best I could, just as I have always done throughout my life. I sang to her, and read to her. On some days, either my brother or my father would be there too, and we would all talk together. And even though she couldn’t speak, it always felt like my mother was right there, listening, just waiting to jump into the conversation. Just waiting to put in her two cents worth.

My mother loved me. I know she loved me. She loved me beyond measure. I was her daughter. Her only daughter. And she wanted me so badly. There was a primal hunger there, a hunger I never seemed able to fill. No matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried to please her, she always seemed to want more. It was as if I could never really satisfy her. I could never be the daughter, the person, she truly wanted me to be. I could only be myself, and somehow, that never seemed to be enough.

There was a period there when my mother’s Parkinson’s was worsening, but she was still able to walk around. This was years before she entered the nursing home. She had started to have problems with her vision, and would see double most of the time. “I know you’re not here, but I can see you out of the corner of my eye,” she would say to me over the phone, “It’s like you’re sitting right next to me, yet when I turn my head, you’re gone”. It both pained and pleased me that I was the one she was trying to see. That it was me she so desperately wanted to catch hold of. It meant I was important to her. It meant that, even though I may have failed her in many and varied ways, I still meant a lot to her.

It’s funny how things change. Because that’s the way I feel about her now. If I look around quickly, it’s like she’s right there and I just missed her. Like I couldn’t quite catch her out of the corner of my eye. Mostly though, I just feel her presence all around me. Like she’s sitting next to me, watching me with interest, keeping me company, offering guidance and love. Tragically, it’s only through her death, that I finally feel heard and understood. It’s only through her death that I fully feel the power of her love.

We are now a couple of weeks into the year 2023, and I’m feeling the pressure to create a New Year’s Resolution, as I always do. It happens every January. Our success-oriented culture encourages us to take stock of our lives, and implement changes to improve who we are. To become more accomplished. To become more successful. To create superior versions of ourselves.

Except that this year, I’ve decided to sit that whole thing out. I’m weary of trying to improve myself and become a better ‘me’. I’m tired to trying to be fitter, or happier, or healthier. At the age of 52, I am finally starting to accept myself for the way I am, deficiencies and all. So, instead of trying to fit into someone else’s cookie cutter version of how they think I should be, or look, or act, I have decided to stick with what I’ve got and be happy as I am. It just feels right to me right now.

My mother died 7 weeks ago. This has no doubt affected my thinking. At the time of her passing, I thought I was handling it well. I was supported by kind family and friends who checked in on me constantly to see how I was doing. I spilled out my heart to them and was pleased that I was able to let it all go. I was living in the moment, feeling all the emotions and not holding anything back, just letting it all pass through me. I was fully present and felt completely alive.

But over the last number of weeks, my grief has become heavier. No longer the sharp pain I felt at her passing, it is now more of sadness, a weariness. More worrisome, I’ve been feeling numb and fatigued, a sure sign of nervous exhaustion. I know all the characteristics now. I’ve been down this road before. I know that if I don’t stop and take care of myself, worse symptoms will arrive before long.

And so, feeling the full weight of all that stress, and grief, and sadness, I’ve decided that this year, I will not try to become a better ‘me’. I will not push myself into exhaustion. I will not become more pleasing to others at the expense of myself.

This year, I want sit still enough to hear the deep whisperings of my own heart. I want to hear my own breathing and watch what is going on in my own mind. I want to sit still enough, with openness, curiosity and kindness, until I can hear my own voice. This year, I will listen.

“Your brothers are weird!”

“You are the only normal person in your entire family!”

Those were the sort of things that people said to me as I was growing up. There were other insults too, but those were the ones that chilled me to my bones. They hurt because they made me doubt the value of my entire family. They made me feel like I had no safe space to go. After all these years, there is still an empty hole in my heart where a sense of belonging should be.

Ostracism hurts. It particularly hurts when you’re young and trying to find your place in the world. Life would be so much easier if we could all be born into families and communities that welcomed us unreservedly, and with open arms. Sadly, for many of us, that is just not the case.

At the time, I responded to those comments with a bashful smile, just grateful to be acknowledged as “the normal one”. But really, I felt anything but normal. I was terrified. If the rest of my family was considered weird, then how could I possibly know what normal was? I figured I was most likely “weird” too. The only reason why it wasn’t as evident was because I was so quiet. As a result, I became afraid to speak, to act, to live. If I actually showed up, then people would realize that I was weird too, and I would be just as excluded as my brothers were.

Staying quiet may have been the safer route, but it wasn’t any less painful. Because if you don’t speak up, you are never heard. You are also never seen. No one ever knows who you really are. I might as well have been a ghost during all those years and I certainly felt like one a lot of the time. My brother once told me that he admired my courage in leaving home so young. But it wasn’t courage that led me to leave. I was dying in my hometown. I had to find a way to escape. That’s not courage; that’s fear.

It’s taken me a lot of years to break down the walls of isolation and fear that I built up during my childhood and adolescence – and even into my adulthood. Because when I escaped from my hometown, I didn’t really escape the problem. I just brought it along with me. Marrying into Mike’s family seemed like a good solution – a brand new family, just like that! – but eventually brought to light all the destructive coping strategies I’d been too distraught to notice before. The people-pleasing, the fawning, the co-dependency. What a mess! The only good news is that I now feel like I finally understand the problem. That’s a big milestone, in and of itself. Along the way, I’ve also learned a lot of things, and picked up tools to help me on my continued journey.

Traditional Chinese medicine has been one of them. I never knew how closely linked my emotions were to the state of my body until now. Somatic yoga is another. I needed to learn to feel into my body, and listen to what it needs, and somatic yoga has a particular ability to bring you back inside your skin. Meditation is another good tool. I’ve sat and rocked myself through the force of a lot of old emotions, with tears streaming down my face until they finally cleared. Finally, and most importantly, there’s compassion, both from others, and from myself. Healing really only works if we feel cared for, seen and understood. Crucially, I had to learn to love myself, and it wouldn’t have gone nearly as smoothly if my husband hadn’t been there to light the way.

Which is why I am working on opening up a yoga studio here. I want to create a place of support for others who may be struggling like I did, but who may not have the same level of support. A place of caring and community where a stressed and dys-regulated nervous system can finally begin to regulate itself. A place of calm and healing. If you’re interested, stay tuned for updates. We’ll be getting started in the months ahead.

“You have to understand that many of the people we treat have underlying struggles with mental illness. It affects their ability to follow our suggestions and also to create change in their lives,” my mentor explained. My heart immediately softened and I felt a well of compassion growing within me.

This particular bit of advice followed a rather bizarre incident last week where a client unexpectedly lashed out at me. She was asking me how I had gotten her contact information and accused the clinic of stalking her. Well, I had her contact information because she was on our patient list, and I was only calling to check up on her. A paranoid confrontation was that last thing I expected.

The clinic I’m talking about is not at Sensible Health. It’s a free clinic in northern California, set up to provide herbal treatment to low-income individuals who might not otherwise be able to afford it. I work there remotely, under the guidance of a mentor. The patient I am talking about was known to have a difficult home-life, with a lot of stress and anxiety at work.

Before calling her, I had looked over her chart. I noted the persistent difficulties with stress. The occasional episodes of great emotional turmoil. Her tongue pictures showed a considerable coating of phlegm, and that caught my attention. I had just attended a webinar on anxiety and depression, and in almost every case, we saw that same, hazy mist of phlegm across the tongue. I was beginning to see the pattern.

More troubling was the knowledge that my own tongue had a similar coating of phlegm. My own tongue had the same “heart crack” that pointed towards emotional issues. All my life, I have been in denial, but I am finally starting to face the music: I have persistent issues with anxiety and depression too.

When I was growing up, my mother dismissed my feelings regularly. I guess that’s where a lot of my anger comes from. If I told her I was feeling sad, or depressed, or unhappy, she would say, “Well, you have a tendency towards that anyway, don’t you?” And it seemed to me that she was using that label to dodge any responsibility for how I was feeling, or what I was going through.

Then again, I tended to dodge responsibility for it too. I have always considered my tendency towards moodiness and depression to be situational. Meaning that, if I wasn’t in this particular situation, then I would be fine. It was the situation that was the problem, not me.

But there was something about the combination of that woman’s tongue pictures, as well as her irritable defensiveness, that finally brought me home to the truth. I am also 52 years old this year, and there’s something about being in your 50’s that calls you to pause and take stock of things. I started to ruminate on the situation. Ruminating is my specialty, after all ;).

I began to wonder what might have happened if I hadn’t gone through what I did. Would I still have this tendency towards anxiety and depression? Then I started to wonder if everyone who goes through difficult early life experiences has the same type of emotional problems. This seems logical too, but also unfair. Survivors should be rewarded for their tenacity, not doomed to a life-time of emotional dysfunction. And yet, in the majority of cases, this appears to be what happens.

Over about the last 5-10 years, I’ve been trying mightily to change things. I’ve been meditating regularly. As I sit in silence, I imagine a mother figure loving me unreservedly – be it Mary, the mother of Jesus, or Kuan Yin, the eastern version of a compassionate, feminine being. I do tonglen practices to open my heart and extend compassion towards myself and others. At first, I found it very challenging, but I’m getting better at it.

Negative self-talk and poor self-image are the other, big cornerstones of my mental and emotional problems, so I’ve been trying to change those things too. There was always an extremely critical voice in my head, that shouted me down whenever I messed up, or failed to be perfect. I started to call this voice Mr. Critical, and as I became more aware of that voice, I would shove it away whenever I heard it. I would yell at it and tell it to “Get out of here!” I would imagine brandishing a bat, and warn him there will be violence if he says another word. All of this may sound absurd, but it has made me feel safer. For the first time in my life, I feel protected.

The other morning, as I climbed out of a deep sleep, I began to hear a voice in my head. But instead of the constant negativity of Mr. Critical, this voice was curious and funny. I can’t quite remember what it was saying as I awoke from my dream, but I remember the feeling it evoked. It was one of friendliness and humour. I remember thinking, “I like this person. This is a good person to have around”. The voice felt like me, like my true self. Someone I have barely known throughout my life because it’s been hidden behind a thick veil of emotional issues.

Using herbs has helped too. As I continue with my training, I’ve begun to notice a pattern between an increase in “dampness” in my system, and a definite slump in my mood. Without fail, they always occur together. This has been fascinating, and has also brought me greater confidence. It has given me another tool to use when depression threatens to overwhelm me.

The patient who angrily confronted me at the beginning of this piece will no longer be coming to the free clinic. Her misdirected anger ruffled too many feathers, and the director decided to remove her from our patient list. My heart goes out to her. We might have been able to help her. Having struggled for years with my own tangle of emotions, I have an idea how she must feel.

As for myself, the road ahead is finally becoming a bit more clear. I’ve gathered enough tools into my tool-belt that I can walk with a little more confidence, and just a little more joy. With time, I hope to be able to offer those tools to others, but for now, I’m just relaxing into this new version of myself. I’m breathing a little easier and enjoying the feeling of progress after years of hard work. For perhaps the first time in my life, I can finally say, it’s nice to be here.

My grandmother died about two months before I turned 18. She was my last surviving grandparent.

I should have gone to visit her on the day she died. Just a few days before, she had been taken by ambulance to the hospital, complaining of chest pain. I had a piano lesson just down the street and could have stopped by. Instead, I drove right past the hospital and went home. “I have homework to do,” I remember saying to myself. “I’ll go next week”. And though I did have a test the next day, it was likely cowardice that stopped me. At the age of 18, I was still very uncomfortable around illness and death.

To be fair, none of us thought she was dying. My mother had visited her just the day before and said she was looking better. I think we all believed that this little incident was just a slight setback. That she would continue to live for many more years. For almost a decade, we had marvelled at her strength as she dressed, fed, and generally took care of my grandfather, day in, day out, as he struggled to recover from a series of strokes. The only health problem she had was high blood pressure.

But after my grandfather died, she seemed suddenly weak and lost. Her strength evaporated. Without him as her anchor, she began to fade, drifting slowly out to sea. When she was brought into the hospital with chest pain, it was just two months after his death. She died less than a week later, her heart literally breaking into pieces.

For years afterwards, I beat myself up over my failure to visit her. I could have been the last to see her. I could have reassured her when she was frightened. I could have been the recipient of her last words. Instead, she died alone while I went home and prepared for my test. I don’t even remember if I did well on it.

After my grandmother’s death, my mother began to have these weird, vivid dreams about her. In these dreams, my grandmother would come to visit, and they would converse. They would talk about how my brothers and I were doing, and what my mother planned to do that day. “These conversations seem so real,” my mother would say, “like she’s really there.” At the time, none of us believed in ghosts or spirits, but the very vividness of my mother’s dreams made us wonder. Maybe my grandmother really was there, watching over us from beyond the grave. It was a reassuring thought.

After Julia died, I remembered my mother’s experience all those years ago, and fully expected Julia to visit me in my dreams too. I wondered if she might have something to say to me, some message from beyond the grave. I began to wonder what she might say. And then, I grew scared.

Julia and I had been friends for many years, but things began to change as she declined. Her mind became increasingly cloudy, and her judgment withered. Even so, she would never admit to it. As far as she was concerned, she was still the smartest person in the room, and that made her very hard to live with. Little insults that used to be bundled up a bit more carefully, were said more bluntly and then repeated over and over again. I’ve always considered myself a patient person, but I lost my temper with her on more than one occasion. She was really pressing my buttons, and I had a lot of difficulty coping with the situation.

Now that she was dead, I wondered what Julia would make of it all. What would she remember? If she could speak to me again, what would she say? Would she visit me in anger? Would she plague me with nightmares? Would she assault me with insults, over and over again, as she had done in life? There were some nights when I went to bed apprehensive, not sure what I might meet with in my sleep.

When Julia finally did arrive in my dreams, it was almost disappointing. I dreamt we were working together in the kitchen, and Julia was talking as she wiped dishes with a towel. I suppose I was doing the washing, although that wasn’t clear to me. As she worked, Julia would glance at me from time to time, but mostly she was talking to someone else. A blurry third person was in the room, and it was to her that Julia directed the bulk of her attention.

In this dream, Julia seemed happy. She was her usual talkative self. I felt no particular venom being directed my way. She behaved in death very much as she had in life, and I awoke feeling immense relief. I don’t know how these death dreams work, but if Julia is haunting anyone’s dreams, it is not mine. If she is visiting wrath upon anyone, it is not me. I can rest easy, for now at least.

This past year, I’ve been making a determined effort to show myself more kindness and compassion. To forgive myself for not being a perfect person. It hasn’t been easy, but I’ve been really working at it. This includes my behaviour towards Julia, my failures with my own grandmother, as well as any number of other things in my life that I could have done better. Daily, I remind myself that I did the best that I could with the resources that were available to me at the time. I can’t ask any more of myself than that.

During one of my last visits with Julia at her nursing home, I kept trying to get her to sit down and talk with me. But she wouldn’t sit. She never would. Thinking she was still at work, she would putter off, wandering the halls, checking doors and turning off lights. She would wander around and around the floor, much to the annoyance of the nursing staff, no doubt. On that particular day, after failing once again to corral her, she said something in Mandarin to the nurse beside her, and the nurse laughed.

I thought perhaps it was an insult. Julia was famous for her insults and she’d been spreading them around pretty generously by the end. But the nurse turned to me and said, “Julia says you are good,” and she laughed again. “You like your daughter-in-law?” she said to Julia. “You think she is good?” “Yes, good,” Julia repeated, and then she continued on with her walk, wandering off around the corner.

I sighed with relief that day, pleased that, after everything we had been though over the years, she still thought of me as a good person. In her very clouded mind, the feeling that stuck was a positive one.

I expect Julia will visit me again some night in my dreams. It may be sooner, or later, but I believe she will come. When she does, I hope it will be a good visit. A friendly visit. A death dream that heals.

About twenty years ago, the movie Seabiscuit was out in theatres, to mostly good reviews. I happened to love the film, as I also loved the book it was based on. It’s primarily a story about a racing horse, yes, but at it’s core, it is a story about heart, and courage, and kindness, and how desperately we need those things, especially during difficult times.

In his review of Seabiscuit way back in 2003, Roger Ebert wrote: ” I saw people crying [at the end of] “Seabiscuit”. It’s yet more evidence for my theory that people more readily cry…not because of sadness, but because of goodness and courage”. I thought that a very astute remark, because when I thought back over the parts of the film that made me cry, it wasn’t during the moments of sadness – and there were plenty of those – but after a moment of unexpected compassion. The scene absolutely gutted me.

I only mention this movie and my reaction to it now, because of a real life experience I just had where the same grit and heart exhibited by Seabiscuit was demonstrated by a good friend of mine. Her name is Melissa.

Melissa was born with a congenital heart defect called tetralogy of Fallot. You may have heard of this condition before, as children born with it are often referred to as “Blue Babies” due to the blue tinge of their skin. A hole between the left and right ventricles prevents proper oxygenation of their blood, which is what causes their skin to turn blue. Without life-saving surgery done within the first year or two of life, these children don’t survive. You could say that Melissa has been a survivor all her life.

In addition to the shunt that was put into Melissa’s heart when she was just 13 months old, she has also undergone two major open heart surgeries, survived cardioversions, endured cardio catheterizations, and had trans-esophageal echoes. You might think Melissa would try to play it safe with a heart condition like this. That she might prefer to stay at home, and protect herself from all unnecessary exertion. But Melissa refuses to live her life that way. She is always pushing ahead and she absolutely never gives up, facing challenge after challenge with a smile on her face. She inspires me regularly.

No more so than on our recent hike up the Crack in Killarney Provincial Park last month, where Melissa bravely faced a climb that is challenging even for people without any heart issues. I was feeling daunted by the climb. I imagined failure. How must it have felt for Melissa, whose delicate, patched-up heart beat furiously if she climbed too quickly, and became out of breath if she pushed herself too hard? By the time we were 3/4 of the way through the hike, I was feeling guilty that we’d even considered it.

At the final climb to the top, there was a bottleneck. Dozens of people who had already completed the hike were coming down, and there wasn’t room for all the newcomers to climb up at the same time. We would have to go up single file. One at a time. Every man for himself. And so, one by one, the rest of our group made it to the top and found a place to sit. Then we waited, with increasing worry, for Melissa to make her appearance. Five minutes went by, then ten, then fifteen. We began to shift uncomfortably, concerned about what Melissa was putting herself through.

And then, suddenly, there she was! Relieved beyond measure, we all whooped and yelled. “Take that, tetralogy of Fallot! ” cheered her daughter. The smile on Melissa’s face was priceless. We were all so proud.

But this story doesn’t end there. We still needed to make it back to the ground again before dark, and no one knew that better than Melissa herself. Climbing up to the top required strength and stamina, but getting back down again would mean patience and careful footing. Slipping over the smooth rocks could easily cause a break or sprain. I could tell by Melissa’s sudden quiet that the descent was weighing on her mind. And so, after a period of rest, we all took a deep breath and began the arduous journey back to the bottom.

Again, our group split apart, with the faster among us moving quickly through the crowded, narrow parts, while Mike and I followed a more moderate speed with Melissa’s grand-daughter, Ava. Melissa wisely took a slower, and more careful pace. I could see that her legs were weakened by the exertion it took to make it to the top. She was struggling to navigate over the smooth rocks without falling. We had all been hiking for hours. We were all tired. But the strain on Melissa and her heart must have been that much greater. Undaunted, she kept going. Again and again, I was inspired by her mettle. We paused at regular intervals as we waited for her to catch up.

The part really that got me, though, was when we were almost at the end, just a kilometre or two away from the parking lot, when Melissa and her grand-daughter began to talk with one another. Naturally, Ava had also been struggling throughout the climb, and she wanted some encouragement and reassurance. She began to chatter, as 8 year olds do. And even though I knew how sore Melissa’s legs must have been, and how hard it must have been for her to keep walking, she answered all of her grand-daughter’s questions with patience and kindness. She praised her for her strength and hard work. She told her how proud of her she was. That’s when my heart started to wrench.

Melissa could have been more concerned with herself. After all, she was the one with the heart condition! If anyone should have been praised for the climb, it was her. And yet, she made no reference to herself and used her remaining strength to reassure her grand-daughter. She didn’t complain about her aches and pains. She didn’t complain about her tiredness. As I walked ahead of them on the path, listening to their gentle conversation, tears begin to fall down my cheeks.

I have spent the last few years among people who have done nothing but judge. All through my mother-in-law’s long decline, as I struggled to keep myself going, they smugly turned away from me, refused help, and did nothing but complain about their own problems. It’s been a long and painful exposure to the darker side of humanity. More than Julia’s illness itself, it’s been this that has weighed me down and nearly broken me.

But as I listened to Melissa’s quiet conversation with Ava and took note of her kindness, her patience, and her complete lack of ego, I felt something soften and lift within me, like the gentle fluttering of a butterfly. I was reminded of the goodness that still exists in the world, and of what a courageous and beautiful person Melissa is. I am lucky to have her in my life. It was also a reminder of what true strength is, and what it means to have heart.

I agree with Roger Ebert. It isn’t sadness that most moves us. It’s goodness and courage. And now, thanks to Melissa, my heart is full.

The wind, already brisk, picked up unexpectedly. I watched as my friend’s baby carrier began to shift against its strength, and then slide away across the rock surface. “Quick! Grab it!” I shouted to someone. Anyone. But no one seemed to be paying any attention. Steadying myself against the wind, I made a swipe for it, but my balance was challenged by the uneven terrain and I stumbled.

Suddenly, my hat began to lift off of my head and I clamped the palm of my hand down forcefully over its top. “Oh, come on!” I thought to myself, cursing this sudden course of events and my lack of control over them. Just when it seemed all was lost, my brother saw the baby carrier as it flew across the top of the cliff, and nabbed it before it was lost forever. I sighed with relief.

We had made it to the top of the LaCloche mountain range in Killarney Provincial Park in beautiful Sudbury, Ontario. It was the perfect day for a hike – cool, yet sunny, with just the barest wisp of clouds above us. Aside from complications caused by the brisk wind at the top, we were all feeling pretty elated. It had been a tough climb, but the view was magnificent. Well worth all the effort it took to get there. Feeling profoundly moved by the view, we settled down together at the top and enjoyed a moment of silence. Our new perspective was broad and serene. From this height, all the problems in my life suddenly seemed far, far away.

The landscape in northern Ontario is spectacular. Jagged, rocky cliffs are topped by grand forests of coniferous trees threaded through with cool streams and and the bubbling spray of waterfalls. All along our way to the top, I had stopped to take pictures, struck again and again by the beauty of our surroundings. “You know, it’s the same lake,” my husband would remind me, somewhat bemused by the number of pictures I was taking. “Same lake, different perspective,” I would quip back, undeterred.

And indeed, the perspective did change as we clambered higher and higher up the cliffs. In one spot, the sun suddenly emerged from behind the clouds, causing the water to glitter and shine. In another, the lake appeared larger, as the trees diminished in size beneath us. Later, as we came back down the perspective changed again, with the bright morning sunshine now replaced with a calmer, yellow glow. The streams that had seemed joyful and energetic on our way up, now seemed slower and wiser. The crickets came out and warned us of summer’s end.

As I sought out more and more great shots, each one more beautiful than the next, the dizzying array of perspectives began to get to me. It was starting to remind me a little too much of myself and the way I’ve always valued the perspective of other people more than my own. In fact, I’ve never really felt like I had a much of a perspective at all, which may sound odd to those who don’t understand co-dependency.

If you’ve never heard the term before, co-dependents grow up in households where they are either abused or ignored, and in order to feel loved or valued, we assume a people-pleasing role. More than anything else, we fear abandonment, and so to secure our role within the family, we begin to cater to the needs of our parents, hoping that if they are kept as happy as possible, we will be seen and loved. It rarely works. Nevertheless, we become so desperately attuned to the feelings and opinions of others, that we become little more than empty shells ourselves.

On that day, as I sat on the top of that cliff, with my belongings buffeted by the wind, I finally began to get a sense of my own perspective and its importance. It came silently as I watched a small, coniferous tree that had somehow planted itself among the rocks, right near the edge of the cliff. Despite the harsh weather surrounding it, it stood tall. In any other place, it might have looked small and insignificant. But here, it was a strong survivor, possessing a surprising, and awe-inspiring tenacity.

As I held on to my hat and watched that tree, I imagined the wind blowing away all the other perspectives in my life. The only one that really mattered was my own. Just like that tree, only I had seen all the events of my life, and everything I had gone through. Only I truly knew how I felt about anything. If I wanted to survive like this tree, I knew I would have to cling to my own perspective. I would have to start listening to my own heart and follow my own longings.

And what did I love? Well, for one thing, I had loved this hike. I had loved the challenge of it. I had loved the difficulty. All the way to the top, I had doubted my ability to complete it. I had told myself I might not make it, and yet, here I was, all the way at the top. I had done it! It was a wonderful, powerful feeling. I began to feel like that tree, small and lop-sided, but with a core of strength that only a few were aware of. As the wind blew around us, I began to feel a change within myself.

“We’d better get going if we want to make it back down before dark,” my brother warned. I nodded and began to gather up our things, already mentally preparing myself for the difficult descent. I looked up at the sky, and noticed a bird flying high above us. It struggled against the high winds, turning and shifting its wings as it determinedly followed its own path. I nodded, recognizing its challenge, and then took my own first step down toward the ground, vowing to hold tight to my own, unique perspective and do the same.