Pat Bertram's Blog, page 82

Being Reminded

It was too windy for me to go for a walk today, so I worked around the house — dusting, dry mopping, wet mopping, and various other chores. What struck me as I was pampering my house is how many people contributed in one way or another to my being here, through small inheritances and other legacies, furniture donations, help in fixing up the place, in oh, so many ways. I don’t like thinking that people had to die for me to be here, but the love they left behind is something I do like to think of. At times, it feels as if the house wraps me in comfort and safety, which I particularly needed to be reminded of today.

Elections don’t normally affect me one way or another, but this one has me scared for what it portends for our country. I’m particularly aware of the revolution going on that will upend the core beliefs of many of us and make the world a lot less safe. With potential new taxes, with new mores, with the lack of any desire on the part of some leaders to stop the looting in various cities (in fact, some nominees actually approve of looting and want to keep it going), there will be no way to keep what we have from the grasp of the various powers if they want to take it. (Not that this is anything new. It’s just that I never had anything before to be taken so it never seemed personal.)

Although I knew this revolution was going on, and has been going on for many decades in one form or another, I never thought to see it gaining ground so rapidly. I figured I’d be gone by the time this country became unrecognizable. Luckily, I live in the back of beyond where people still believe in accountability, responsibility, family, equality, freedom, law and order, less rather than more government, and all the other strengths of a stable society, so maybe I won’t feel the effects as much as I fear.

But whether those big changes come soon or are still several years away, for today, I am surrounded by all the love invested in this house. And that’s a great place to be. And a wonderful thing to be reminded of.

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And speaking of being reminded, let’s not forget that in nine days, my latest novel,  Bob, The Right Hand of God will be published! If you would like to be notified by email when the book is available, click here: Bob, The Right Hand of God, sign up for email notifications, and Amazon will let you know the minute it is for sale.

Countdown to Publication

It’s only ten days until the publication of my new novel, which will be published on October 20, 2020. If you would like to be notified by email when the book is available, click here: Bob, The Right Hand of God, sign up for email notifications, and Amazon will let you know the minute it is for sale. Meantime, here are a couple of brief excerpts to whet your interest:

The screen went black.

“Something must be wrong with the cable,” Isabel said. “I’ll call them tomorrow.”

After thirty seconds of whistles, hums, and buzzes, the picture came back on. Instead of the anchorperson, the head of a gnomish man with a round, bespectacled face, a bald pate, and a receding chin filled the screen.

“I am Bob, the Right Hand of God. As part of the galactic renewal program, God has accepted an offer from a development company on the planet Xerxes to turn Earth into a theme park. Not even God can stop progress, but to tell the truth, He’s glad of the change. He’s never been satisfied with Earth. For one thing, there are too many humans on it. He’s decided to eliminate anyone who isn’t nice, and because He’s God, He knows who you are; you can’t talk your way out of it as you humans normally do. For another thing—”

Isabel clicked off the television and stood up. “We must have missed the news.”

Clutching the remote, she stalked to the guestroom and shut the door.

Chet continued to stare at the darkened screen. He would have liked to see more of Bob—looked like it could have been an interesting science fiction movie—but dealing with Isabel exhausted him. He didn’t have the energy to get up and manually turn the television back on.

[The next day, John the butcher stopped by Chet’s pet store with entrails and such for the reptiles. They talked for a bit, then John started to leave, hesitated, and turned back.]

“Does it feel a little strange to you today?”

“Strange how?”

“I don’t know. Just a creepy feeling I have, like a storm’s coming.” John twitched his shoulders. “Probably nothing. Maybe I let that Bob thing get to me.”

“What Bob thing?” Chet asked.

“Some guy pulled an April Fool’s prank last night. Hacked into the television signal. Claimed he was The Right Hand of God. Silly, but I’ve been feeling creepy all day.”

“I thought it was a movie.”

“Nope. A friend of mine at Channel Ten told me they lost the signal for about five minutes.”

Chet shivered. “Now I’ve got the creeps. Thanks a lot.”

And so the saga begins . . .

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***

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

Oh, Look! My Book!

My new novel will be published on October 20, 2020. If you’d like to be notified by email when it’s available, click here: Bob, The Right Hand of God, sign up for email notifications, and Amazon will let you know the minute it is available.

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All Chet Thomlin wants is to be left alone to care for the abandoned and neglected animals at his store, Used Pets, but his obnoxious customers and clinging mother make life miserable. And nothing ever seems to change.

On April Fool’s day, a gnome-like little man appears on television. He introduces himself as Bob, the Right Hand of God, and says that as part of the galactic renewal program, God has accepted an offer from a development company on the planet Xerxes to turn Earth into a theme park.

Chet laughs at the prank, but then bizarre things happen. Carrier pigeons return, millions of them, darkening the sky as they hadn’t done for over a hundred years. His mother and her entire subdivision are wiped off the face of the earth. And his friends disappear.

On Easter Sunday, a bright light appears, and Bob tells the remaining population of Denver that if they enter the light, they will be safe from the reconstruction zone. Chet watches people enter one by one, but he refuses to step forward, thinking that he’d rather have his freedom than to be in a dubiously safe place.

The light fades, and Chet gets what he wanted. He is left alone. Well, except for Bob. Bob won’t let him be. Bob calls Chet on his now defunct cellphone, taunts him, plays with his senses. Being chosen by The Right Hand of God is no fun!

Even worse, Chet gets more change than he can handle. Plumbing and all other signs of civilization vanish. Denver becomes a prairie of blue flowers that sweep into an inland sea where a prehistoric monster lives. Volcanoes grow at his feet.

And Chet has become prey.

Maybe going into that mysterious light wouldn’t be so bad after all . . .

***

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

Yang and Yanger

When I was young, I thought the world would be a different place when women began to run things. Oh, my — what was I thinking?

Looking back, I suppose I was thinking that the women who would achieve leadership would bring feminine attributes to the position, a mother earth (or earth mother) who sees all, gently ushers us to peace and prosperity, shows us the way to kindness and caring, displays wisdom and understanding and especially creativity — an outflowing of life-giving forces that take us where we need to be.

Instead, what we have are a whole slew of Lucrezia Borgias and Lizzie Bordens. Women who will do anything to achieve their ends (their ends, not our ends), to do what is best for them (best for them, not best for us). Women who, it seems, will bludgeon us with their power and if that doesn’t work, they’ll bring out the axes. (I’m probably maligning Lucrezia and Lizzie for the sake of parallelism, but they were the first names that come to mind for examples of women who are seen as more vicious than men.)

I know the consensus is that women have to be more ruthless than men (unless you were a supreme court judge, then you needed to be simply ruth), stronger and more aggressive to get ahead, but if this is the case, then what do we need women in power for? We already have men playing those games. Instead of the balance of yin and yang, we now have yang and yanger. This doesn’t bode well for a well-rounded world, which, in fact, isn’t round but is an oblate spheroid or oblate ellipsoid, but you get my point.

Their point, the point of those in power, that is, has nothing to do with a well-rounded society at peace with itself and the world. It has everything to do with . . .

I had to stop here and think. What is the point of those in power? What are they trying to gain? More power for themselves, of course, as well as a ton of money, but other than that, I haven’t a clue. All I know is that both men and women are struggling for a power that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with making us or our lives better.

It’s disappointing to me (the me that was once young and idealistic) that women are settling for so little. I thought we were better than that.

Apparently not.

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***

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

A Rainbow of Blogs

I’ve temporarily found a way around Facebook’s total block of my blog. I share the blog to another blog I have, and then post the link to that blog. So far, so good. It’s possible FB’s algorithms will notice that the blog is not posting anything original and ban that one, too, but then I’ll do the same thing with another blog. I have plenty, most of which are moribund.

Back when I learned to blog, I discovered that I could change the color of this blog theme, so I started all sorts of blogs in order to have a whole rainbow of them. There was also one I started much later because I liked the notebook format. Then, as did all the rest, it fell by the wayside.

I did use all those blogs for a while, though I can’t remember why I started Wayword Wind — well, I needed a green blog to finish off my blog rainbow, but there must have been some other reason for the blog. With the way I purposely misspelled wayword, I must have planned on using it as some sort of writing blog, maybe even a place to post 100 word stories that I called Mini Fiction. For a while, I posted photographic essays, but since I don’t save this blog just for articles about reading and writing any more, I now post photos here.

The purple blog was a compilation of articles about book promotion, which I haven’t looked at for a while. I tend to think most of those articles are now outdated, but I leave them up anyway. What else can I use a blog for that’s called Book Marketing Floozy?

Then there was the orange blog I originally started to talk about all the things I did to procrastinate, which I called Dragon My Feet. (As you can see, I thought I was clever back in those days.) When I procrastinated too much to post to the blog, I turned it into a blog to promote other authors – all they had to do was send me an excerpt and links, and I’d post it for them.

Then there was the red interview blog, Pat Bertram Introduces . . ., another blog to promote other authors. All they had to do was follow the directions, and I’d post and promote an interview about them and their books.

It seems naïve now, but back at the beginning, even before I had a single book published, I thought if I promoted other authors, they would in turn promote me. Um. No. Both book blogs were popular, and I seemed to be spending hours every week posting the excerpts and interviews, but when I realized all my work did nothing to help with the sales of my books — that in all those years, only one or two authors ever thought to reciprocate — I made reciprocation “payment” for my promotional efforts. And both blogs died. (I’d also had a promo group on FB for authors to post links to their books, but it was a reciprocal thing — they had to like or share other people’s work. When I realized that they were sharing only their friend’s posts but not mine, I got vindictive and erased everyone from the group. It was too much work for nothing.)

As it turns out, it’s good I have all these blogs just sitting there. I’ll probably need a continuing range of such blogs to stay ahead of FB’s vendetta against this blog.

I tend to think the bio I put on the bottom of each blog is the issue. Originally, I had several links in the bio rather than the single link I have now, but the damage has been done. I’m certainly not going to remove the bio just to pacify the computers that run an increasingly dubious site because the bio is important. There are many automatic blogs that pick up and post any blog they can find, and for a while, they did this to me quite regularly. I could complain and get the offending blog sites removed from WordPress, but more kept springing up. Other people had the same problem, and the only recourse they had was to make sure there were a bio and links in the blog so that it would link back to the original author. So that’s what I did. This way, it doesn’t make as much difference if someone steals the whole article — the message still gets out there.

I suppose if I had used a different bio each day, the computers wouldn’t have picked up on it, but it’s too late now.

And anyway, it will give me a use for that whole rainbow’s worth of blogs.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

Learning the Tarot

I’m still doing my one card a day tarot study, though I’m not sure if I’m learning anything. The whole thing confuses me — if the card tells me what I already know about myself, then it seems unnecessary. It it’s supposed to help me see where I am going, then that too seems unnecessary since I will know what I know when I get there. And if it’s about delving deeper into my psyche and coming in contact with my higher self — well, so far that hasn’t happened.

It’s possible the lack is in the tarot itself. After all, the tarot is only a deck of cards — specialized cards, but still just cards. Although each card is assigned a meaning of sorts, a core truth, the cards are open to interpretation, so whatever a person thinks the card means that particular day is the meaning, and that meaning can be different on a different day. This all seems too imprecise and ambiguous for my logical and concrete mind.

It’s possible the lack is in me, not just my inability to intuit any meanings, but my inability to connect with any particular deck. It’s possible I’ll be able to find such a deck — after all, I have dozens of them. Each month I use a different deck, and so far, the ones I’ve used are off-putting. The artwork doesn’t speak to me, and the symbolism of the artwork seems specious at best. Still, I’m sure I will find an affinity with at least one, and then we’ll see if my studies take a different turn.

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Having said that, I’ve been keeping track of my daily card, and I do see a pattern to the cards I pick, vague though that pattern might be, because the same cards seems to show up again and again. For example, the king and queen of pentacles show up at least once every month, sometimes two or three times. Since I pick a card randomly, this repetition seems to indicate that more than mere chance is at work. If I used the same deck all the time, I’d think that perhaps the card hadn’t been shuffled well enough or was sticky or had some sort of defect that made the card stand out, but I use a different deck every month.

These two cards do seem to be a reflection of my life. The queen, in a few words, represents someone who is secure in her personal possessions and in her place in life, and the king refers to stability and not having to prove oneself. Since the cards are open to interpretation, and since every tarot writer has assigned various meanings, these few words don’t tell the whole story, but they suffice for the purposes of this article.

Another and seemingly opposite card that I get frequently is the ten of swords which spells ruination, disaster, calamity, though this seems to reflect my thoughts about the current USA situation rather than my own. The card is also a reminder that though I can’t change the actions of another person, I can change how I respond, which seems a timely reminder, for sure.

The cards I pick are mostly swords and pentacles. Very few cups or wands. Very few of the major arcana, though The Tower shows up periodically, which among other things, points to changes — a release of tension that has been building up, a flash of sudden insight, or maybe a warning.

So does any of this mean anything? I don’t know. My daily card pick is helping me get used to the tarot, and it is getting me familiar with the various way experts interpret the cards, so that’s something. The card itself sometimes seems to refer to me, sometimes it seems to refer to what’s going on in the rest of the country, sometimes it seems to be a reflection of my worries. But does it add anything to what I know? Not that I can see.

Sometimes the cards tell me I am more intuitive than I know, other times they seem to think I rely on my intellect. Either way, does it matter?

I do try to find a bit of advice in the daily card, as I did with the ten of swords mentioned above, but these are merely reminders of what I already know.

I suppose it’s possible that after years of study, I might find . . . something. But then, that’s not the point of my studying. I have the cards, and I do find the array of the different decks compelling, and if there is any esoteric knowledge hidden in the cards, I’d like to know what it is. But more than that, it’s about connecting with my deceased brother, the one who collected the cards. “Connecting” might be the wrong word since I’m not trying to connect with him in any psychic way. It’s more that I am connecting with my memory of him, with the private person buried beneath his polarizing personality, the beloved brother I lost way before his death.

That connection, if nothing else, does give my daily card reading a meaning.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

Kill Your Darlings

“Kill your darlings,” is a quote by Stephen King. No, it was William Faulkner. No, it was Agatha Christie. No, it was F. Scott Fitzgerald. Well, of course, they all said it, but the first use of the construction appeared in print a hundred years ago by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, who urged wannabe writers to murder their darlings. (Quiller-Couch was the inspiration for Rat in “The Wind in the Willows.” It’s amazing the things you can find out with a bit of research!)

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By definition, darlings — those parts of our manuscripts that we love even when they don’t advance the story — are painful to kill, but some are more painful than others. Originally, More Deaths Than One was designed to be a series of stories told to Bob Stark (so named to remind me that he seems an ordinary fellow, but is stark of speech). It was through listening to the various stories that he was to discover the truth about himself, but though the idea had merit, the first draft was terrible. Bob barely surfaced in his own story, and the storytellers themselves seemed disembodied. I rewrote the book several times, trying to find the right way to tell the story, but it wasn’t until the fourth draft when I gave Bob a love interest, a waitress he met at a coffee shop, that the story took off. He had someone to butt heads with, someone to ooh and aah over his achievements, someone to be horrified at what had been done to him.

After the story took focus, the original idea of Bob learning about himself from tales told to him had to be scrapped, and some of those tales — those darlings — had to be scrapped. It was hard to get rid of those sections, but I did it for the sake of the story.

In my soon-to-be-published novel, I didn’t have any darlings — at least, I don’t think I do — because as I was writing the book, I remained focused on what I needed to accomplish. This is the first book I wrote with a theme in mind, and that helped considerably. If something didn’t further illuminate the theme of freedom (how much freedom we’re willing to give up for security, and how much security we’re willing to give up for freedom) I didn’t even bother to develop the scene.

Not everyone is able recognize let along kill their darlings, especially if those darlings are the whole reason for writing the book. For example, I just finished reading a novel that had been given to me by a friend of the author. It was readable, but his darlings destroyed the story. The book reads as if it’s a roman à clef, a story of the author’s struggle with alcoholism, which would be fine if that’s what he wanted. But apparently, he also wanted to write a political thriller, which gave the book a rather strange duality, as if two different stories had been cobbled together.

Authors, of course, can write whatever they wish, with unkilled darlings galore. But once they decide to write a particular type of story, they have to focus on the story they want to write, and to edit out anything that doesn’t fit. (Like a sculptor, chiseling away at all of the marble that doesn’t benefit the artist’s vision.)

Because the first half of this particular book was all about the personal story, the second half with the political intrigue was shortchanged. The author relied too much on current events to piece the story together, which kept him from having to fully develop the president or the situation he was involved with. The author just assumed everyone would know. Even worse, there was no conflict in the political part of the story, just internal vacillation as the character tried to decided if he wanted to finish the course of action he had started.

The author would have been so much better off using the personal part to add depth to the political part. Also, adding conflict to the political intrigue would have turned it into the thriller the blurb described.

The only reason this matters to me is that I read the book. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have cared because I wouldn’t know.

I suppose more than anything, this book is a reminder to myself to kill my darlings or, even better, don’t bring them to life in the first place.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

I’m going to Blog for Peace. Will You?

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One month from today, on November 4th, people all over the world will blog for peace. Blog4Peace was created and founded by Mimi Lenox, who believes that because words are powerful, blogging for peace is important.

Mimi began blogging for peace in November, 2006. Thirteen years and thousands of peace bloggers later she — and all those she inspired — are still blogging for peace. On every continent. In 214 countries and territories. In war-torn countries and peaceful villages. Whole families. Babies in utero (yes, really!) Teenagers. Senior citizens. Veterans of war. Poets and singers. Teachers. Classrooms. Authors and artists. Doctors. Lawyers. Cats (many, many cat bloggers). Dogs. Gerbils. Birds. Goats and Bunnies. Scientists. Designers. Researchers. Stay-at-home-parents. Kids. Baby Boomers. From the Netherlands to Kansas. And everywhere in between.

I joined the peace bloggers in 2012. And I still blog for peace. 

This year’s theme is “Peace in the time of quarantine,” and that is a theme I can adopt. Although I do not believe in the possibility of world peace (because war and stressful times are never our personal choice but are fostered by others or foisted on us by circumstances) I do believe in personal peace, in finding peace within ourselves no matter what happens to provoke us into chaos.

And yes, words are powerful. And yes, this matters.

How To Blog For Peace:

Choose a graphic from the peace globe gallery http://peaceglobegallery.blogspot.com/p/get-your-own-peace-globe.htmlor from the photos on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/BlogBlastForPeace#!/BlogBlastForPeace/app_153284594738391 Right click and Save. Decorate it and sign it, or leave as is.Send the finished globe to blog4peace@yahoo.comPost it anywhere online November 4 and title your post Dona Nobis Pacem (Latin for Grant us Peace)

Sounds cool, doesn’t it? See you on November 4!

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Rigor Mortis Setting In

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I seem to be switching between the effects of rigor mortis inching into my life and my gradually healing knees. The change is as pronounced as dark and light. Oh, wait — the change is all about dark and light! Or rather, the relative inactivity of night and the relative activity of day.

Sometimes when I have to get up in the middle of the night, I am so stiff, I can barely inch along using the wall for balance, and I wonder if a walker is not far behind. I have gotten in the habit of stretching a bit before I get out of bed, which helps, as well as making sure my legs can hold me before I start making my way to the bathroom.

And then, the daylight comes, and I wonder why I presumed there was problem. As long as I don’t sit too long in one position, I’m fine. Actually, more than fine. I walked almost five miles today, something I haven’t done in a very long time — maybe a couple of years. The last quarter of a mile today was a bit draggy, and I expected to feel sore the rest of the day, but apparently, my body is waiting until tonight when the rigors of mortis will once again make themselves felt.

I do know, of course, that one does not “catch” rigor mortis while one is still alive, but aging does make it feel as if death and those rigors are slowly creeping in.

I’m hoping, of course, that the nighttime stiffness will eventually dissipate a bit as my knees continue to get stronger, but even if the status remains quo, I will still have my daily walk to sustain me.

I think it helps, in a way, that I live close to an assisted living facility as well as an unassisted facility for older folk because I see so many people using walkers. It keeps me walking a bit more than I would normally feel like doing, perhaps in an effort to store up that feeling of independence in case I get to the point where I’m unable to depend only on my own legs. And, of course, it reminds me that using the ability to roam while I can will help insure that I will remain ambulatory into my elder years.

But what may or may not happen later on isn’t important. What is important is that today I walked. Today I was able to challenge myself.

Today I lived.

Hopefully, that feeling of living will be something to remember tonight when I am slowly creeping through the dark hall, like some sort of half-dead ghoul, in answer to the needs of my body.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

54321

I don’t often get caught up in politics or the news, but this year has certainly been compelling, with all the lies and the absolute inability of people to see those lies, the rampant hatred, the destruction in our cities and our way of life and the disinclination of the mayors and governors to do anything about mob rule, as well as the mask mandates and other laws that further isolate already isolated people. It all makes me so very sad.

And stressed.

And I don’t want to be sad or stressed.

Recently, I read about the 54321 technique for grounding oneself during a panic attack: focus on five things you see, then four things you can feel, three things you hear, two things you can smell, and finally, one thing you can taste.

Although I’ve never had a panic attack, I can get “ungrounded” and lose focus on what is around me. And what is around me is a lot of beauty. I see zinnias, Halloween bulbs, and New England Asters in my yard. I saw a waterfall when I was out doing errands. And I see the stack of books I got from the library as well as one I was gifted.

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I feel my fingers on the keyboard, the chair I am sitting on, the wooden table beneath my arms as I type, a bit of chafing on my elbow. I hear a distant train, the tapping of the computer keys, the refrigerator. I smell — well, not much of anything. The air is smoky today from distant forest fires, which shuts down my smeller, but I can taste the smoke.

Ah, there. So much better! This exercise doesn’t, of course, change anything that is going on elsewhere in the country, but I don’t see how I can change anything anyway.

This way, at least I won’t be adding more complication to an already complicated world.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator