Michelle L. Rusk's Blog, page 33

Carson the Wonder Dog

I have been prepared for the day that Carson would die since he came to live with us nearly fifteen months ago.

He was fifteen, the oldest dog in the city shelter, and no one– the shelter people, his foster guardian, nor us– expected him to live more than a few months. When we went off to California this summer, I fully predicted that in July I would be seeking out a new dog to fill his spot.

Carson had other plans though. While he no longer takes morning walks with Hattie around the park– he much prefers to sleep in– and his back legs are failing, he still attempts to chase Lilly around the backyard and shows up for the “peanut butter spoon” after the blender starts whirring away in the morning for my breakfast smoothie.

Yet in that steady decline, we also know he won’t live forever and Friday– after watching him fall backward into his poop twice in twenty-four hours– I felt maybe it was time to let Carson go. I made a vet appointment for the afternoon, took lots of photos, spent time with him, and fed him too much cheese. I was fully prepared, even in my sadness, that Carson wouldn’t be coming home with me from the vet.

When we showed up at the vet, he refused to go inside. I was convinced it was because he’d been dumped into the city shelter at age fourteen and there was no way that I could convince him that I wasn’t leaving him behind.

I’ve never seen Carson so scared and upset and by the time the vet appointment was over, the vet declared that he had too much spirit and quality of life that he deserved another chance.

We went home with a bottle of Rimadyl (dog ibuprofen) and he slept the rest of the afternoon.

I have been to the end with several dogs before, I know when they’ve given up and are ready to move on– Daisy, Gidget, and Chaco all stopped eating and drinking– but Carson? No, he’s not ready. I believe that he finally found a good life and he’s not wiling to let it go just yet.

As I write this, he’s curled up snoozing under my desk. Happy as a clam. I know he wishes he could run like Lilly and the four year old he once was, and that he’s glad to still be here.

I realize the day will come, but Friday was confirmation it wasn’t time yet, and for now, we’ll enjoy all that we have.

I can see for miles and miles

There is a place as I’m driving to downtown Albuquerque from my house that is at the top of what doesn’t look so much like a hill until you realize how much you can see heading west to the mesa where the city ends.

(The photo above is going the opposite direction– up the steady incline toward the mountains).

I was driving that way to 12:10 pm mass recently– which means it was early enough that the day still felt fresh and crisp– especially because the temperature was going up to 90 degrees in the afternoon and it wasn’t hot yet. Everything felt new. And hopeful.

I had lived right there in a studio apartment during my first year of graduate school when I moved to New Mexico when I came to Albuquerque with no car. That meant I biked south to campus. And when I found a high school cross country coaching gig, I biked several miles north– and about two miles east– via the bike path to the school.

Growing up in Illinois and attending college in Indiana, seeing for miles– especially when it wasn’t a cornfield– wasn’t something I to which I was accustomed. Quickly, I found the views inspiring and reflecting back I see how lucky I was that I had the opportunity to bike it daily. The wind wasn’t so fun but until fall kicked in, I felt as if I hit the jackpot every afternoon.

As I drove that way to church last week, I realized how much that view was hopeful to me. And then I recalled the many times I’d made the trip on my bike when I first moved to New Mexico. Then as a 22 year old who uprooted my entire life and being to become part of the desert landscape. It wasn’t an easy time as my younger sister had just died eighteen months before, but I can look back now and see how coming here was part of my hope.

Continuing to live here with these vistas and sunny days is part of where I still find my hope and inspiration.

Where Everything Collides...and Finding Hope

It's National Suicide Prevention week and I thought it would be a good time to give what has become my yearly thoughts on the topic. I've been a little more immersed in it recently because of writing and speaking opportunities– plus a suicidal person the outer ring of my life and several people in my life who have lost loved ones recently to suicide. 

I can't help but shake my head when I look at the numbers and see how much they've increased in the years since I've been speaking and writing about it. And the more I spin it around, I see clearly that we're not making headway not just because suicide is so complicated but because we're not tackling it where we need to.

There are a bunch of reasons I could write about that I believe are the reasons that the numbers of suicides have increased, however, mostly what I see is a lack of hope. Our technology-laden world has changed not just how we interact but how we spend our time. I've come to realize that the more I watch people on their phones, the less time I want to spend on my mine.

This isn't a fix all for suicide– I'm not saying that– but what I do see is that we've become too reliant on something outside of our inner cores to make us happy and give us fulfillment. While I am clearly an advocate for social media– that's why you're reading this, right!?– I find the more time I find off my phone, the happier I am. It's become a bad habit to pick it up and look at apps or whatever. 

I've been thinking back on my early teens and where I learned how to fulfill myself through what made me happy– through accomplishing goals I set, particularly through running, and through spending time with the people who meant something to me. In some ways I'm trying to take the me of today back to those aspects of my life that brought me joy rather than finding them in technology.

It doesn't mean I stop posting or looking at what other people are doing. Instead, it means I'm working at balancing how technology fits my life so that it doesn't steal time from what really matters.

For suicide, we need to take a step back and see how we got here. What's missing? What are we doing wrong? Why are we missing people even in a time where we talk so much more about seeking help? There isn't one answer that will "cure" suicide, but by looking inward at ourselves it's a step in the right direction.

The Goal I Didn't Set: Leading the Grief Journey

I was laying practically upside down on the chair and ottoman by my pool, of all the silly things, trying to lighten up the underside of my hair. After taking biotin for three years, I've grown a second head of hair and I've spent the summer trying to get it all into one shade of blonde with Sun-In (not that I'm having much luck).

It had been a quiet Labor Day and I was working steadily through a stack of magazines that that alluded me. I picked up my phone randomly and found a message from one of my closest friends from my early teen years that she had lost her brother to suicide recently, the second of my friends from my adolescence to lose a sibling to suicide in the past two years. 

I am reminded of the song lyric, "these are the people who raised me" about a group of friends from the singer's adolescence. These two friends of mine who have been so instrumental in my life of who I am today, of the creativity that I share, and now sharing the pain that I never would have wished upon them– or anyone.

Never could I have predicted in a million years that anyone close to me would experience something similar to what I've been through, maybe because I've met so many other sibling survivors of suicide over the years that I didn't think it would include the friends from my life when my sister was still alive, the friends who then walked that road with me, an uncharted road of loss for anyone of us.

My road takes me forward but there are still ways I'm contributing, even when I don't write about them– the suicide article I'm writing for a national magazine, the two keynote conferences talks I have coming up. And for these two friends, leading the grief journey and hoping that in some way my experiences will bring them hope that they will survive their heart break, their sadness, and know that their siblings are still with them as they continue to live their lives.

 

The Secret No One Should Keep

As former high school teacher and coach, there's something that always strikes me when school starts in the fall and we stumble upon National Suicide Prevention Week in September: the reminder to teens that no one should keep the secret of the suicidal friend.

Sometimes teens (and kids, too) share with each other what they're afraid to tell their parents or any other adult. Sometimes they think adults aren't aware because everyone is busy and more caught up with what's going on their phone rather than around them. 

Instead, teens might share in passing to friends that they are thinking of killing themselves. Whether they are or aren't isn't the question here, instead it's about making sure that secret isn't kept by the person who has become a keeper of it.

Teens should know to always reach out to an adult they respect and trust, that if they are suciidal it's okay to get help. And if a friend has confided in them, they should share the secret rather than  holding it inside and worrying what might happen to the friend.

They are surrounded by adults, maybe not their parents who are dropping them off at activities after school and picking them up and taking them home in time for dinner, homework, and bed, but also coaches and other mentors. In there somewhere is someone they respect and know will help.

Bottom line, teens don't always have to share with their parents what friends have told them. It's okay to reach outside that circle to another adult as long as the secret isn't kept. After all, the friend might be reaching out to the teen because he or she believes the cry for help will be heard by that person.

Mom's Decor Lessons

I bought this mug for less than a dollar at an estate sale about a month ago and I haven't been able to move it from this spot on my desk. We didn't have the same exact mug (this one has FTD Flowers stamped on the bottom) but we had a similar one growing up. In the bathroom.

Mom decided at some point that the upstairs bathroom, the one us four kids shared, called "the hall bathroom" was going to have a rainbow theme. This was the late 1970s, long before our world in the Midwest associated rainbows with the gay movement. Rainbows were everywhere including all over my elementary school life– on back pockets of jeans, printed across t-shirts, stickers galore. And our bathroom.

She bought a rainbow shower curtain, made rainbow curtains with fabric she bought from a local fabric store, and filled the two-shelf wicker unit above the toilet with rainbow items like this mug (I also remember a rainbow bar of soap).

Mom was good about finding inexpensive but creative ways to decorate. We didn't go to garage sales or estate sales– that would come to me later in life when I moved to Albuquerque– garage sales were something we held at our house so Mom could unload things like crock pots and blenders that never got used (two items that I use often in my house). 

My intention was never to have my house filled with furniture from my childhood but it's worked out that way because as I got older, I began to see what great mid-century taste my mom had (and I probably should give my dad some credit here because they picked out the furniture together). The desk I'm working at right now is the kitchen table we ate off my entire life, bought when they built their first house in 1964. The couch I watch television on each night has had new cushions and been repainted but it's the one we sat on in the basement of the house. The coffee tables in the my living room are the pieces– also refinished– from our family room. In one of my guest rooms is the stereo, one day to be repurposed, but for now looking just fine in a corner of the room.

What I see now is how much she taught me, without outwardly teaching me, about having a sense of style and making something that's your own. I am lucky to have these pieces because they not only hold memories and fit well in my house, they are better made than much of what one will find in the market today.

Over time I've figured out how to merge the past with the present, putting my own spin on it, but I've only been able to do that because she taught me not to fear finding small, new pieces to make changes. Decorating isn't just about running out to the store and buying everything new. It's about working with you have and adding pieces that bring it together. It's a process to figure out how to do that as I have learned from my own experience. Then one day you realize it all fits. 

Including a rainbow mug.

The Forward Path

I have been spending much of my thinking time this year devoted to understanding how I got where I am, to who I am, to what motivates me, and what inspires me. This morning while I was out walking Hattie, it struck me why I write the kind of fiction that I do– characters that take adverse circumstances and turn them into something positive– because that's how I've chosen to live my life. 

I've been a high school teacher, a track/cross country coach, a speaker, and you could say I've been an educator on many levels. I've watched people face many challenging circumstances. I've watched people set goals to move forward. What I find most interesting is that for all the self-help information out there, people still stumble, mostly by their own choosing.

I could make a list of the many challenging life experiences I've had, but what I can't exactly say is how I learned to hold my head high and move forward, to show the people who didn't support me, didn't like me, or whatever, that I would accomplish more than they could ever dream, that I would be the best that I could be, that I would never let them get me down.

I tend to believe I'm an old soul and while I am a late bloomer in many aspects of my life, I can look back and see where these lessons were being taught to me. Of course I didn't understand them then but as the years went by and I was faced with other situations, I could pull on those coping strategies and push myself forward.

This isn't to say that I didn't recoil for some time. Of course I did– every time something happens to us that changes our lives in some way (I'm talking particularly here when people leave our lives), it's a loss and we have to mourn that loss. But somehow in that rest period I allowed myself, my inspiration, motivation, and strength would return. Ultimately, I am stronger each time because I've used these building blocks of life experiences to grow.

Life isn't supposed to get us down even when it's easy to feel that way. I still believe that inside each of us an ember burns– even one that can be barely seen for some people–  but it's there. And while I do believe everything we do should be because it makes us happy, there's no reason not to use the experience of hurts from others to motivate us to go forward.

The Desert of Prayer

I hadn't seen Fr. Gene, the priest with whom I do spiritual direction at the Norbertine Monastery here, since my surgery two months ago. When I met with him Friday, after talking about how the surgery had gone, he asked me if I had felt God with me. The answer was no but not for reasons that might be obvious.

The day before my surgery, Fr. Marc at our church had given me the anointing of the sick and it was the last piece to my pre-surgery puzzle. Not everyone knew I was having surgery, I mostly told the people in my immediate circle and those whom I knew would not just say they would pray for me but would actually do it. 

The morning of the surgery I went through my usual prayer routine and then I let it go. I knew that I had what I needed and I had to let the fly away. By the time we arrived at the hospital still in the early hours of the day, I was distracted but not in a bad way. I had done all I was supposed to. That was a good thing. There was no hurried, "Help me!" 

Yet when the surgery was over, and all had gone well, there was an emptiness regarding my spiritual life that would stay with me for several weeks. You could attribute it to the anesthesia and chemicals run through my body for the surgery and the fact that I didn't feel like myself for some time. I went to church several times, mostly to light candles, and felt distanced from the spiritual piece of me even though I returned to my prayer life. My prayers felt empty, God felt far away. It wasn't that I didn't feel God, it just felt like he and I were on different planets.

At some point in July, things started to slowly shift. I returned to writing and sewing even when I didn't feel that great. By the time I saw Fr. Gene on Friday I could explain that while I felt I had changed in more than a physical way since my surgery, the other pieces were still unfolding in my life and I wasn't sure how they would completely play out.

It was then that he explained to me that I had just traveled through the desert of prayer, not unusual for any time or point in one's life. We continue to pray even though we don't feel anything– and I have finally come to understand that often my prayers aren't answered when I ask for what I need but at different points, often when I least expect anything. 

Life is an ebb and flow of so much that doesn't make sense as we travel through it but– if we are open– there is much opened to us if we choose to keep the door cracked. Personally, I keep them wide open because I don't want to miss a thing. I might not get to go though them when I want to, yet suddenly something happens and I realize it's because that door has been left opened, that prayer given away, and there's the response right there in front of me.

My Daily Three Halves

I didn't think much about it when I took I took this photo at the library Friday– I simply thought it was a fun photo with a Chelle Summer handbag. But then I began to think how in many ways this at least partially describes my day. 

I don't have one single project or job that makes up my day. My work is part time and around that I use the hours that I have left to work on the projects that I believe are most important to moving my life forward. It took me a long time to figure this out and some days are easier than others but there is a balance to what I need to accomplish each day.

While I don't talk about it much, my writing is still very important to me. However, along this path, I found that the more I discussed my writing on social media, the less I did of it. I also know that writing isn't really something you an share on instagram– it doesn't lend itself well to photos especially because it takes such a long time to create on manuscript. I have writing goals and I try to devote as early morning hours as I can to them before my day gets away from me.

The sewing and creating part of my life is the one I'm sharing most these days, particularly because it does lend itself well to photos. But these projects also tend to be smaller and I can throw out process photos as well. It's also the part of my day that I sometimes don't get enough of because other items come up that I have to tend to.

Still, the daily goal Monday through Friday is to divide my time as much as I can by three which allows me not just what I need to accomplish (for the job that pays the bills) but also feeds my creative soul that I hope one day will pay the bills instead.

A Place for Longing

Sometimes we find that we long for a person, a place, another time. Or we might long to have a different job, a different experience. The list goes on. Then sometimes longing for whatever it is takes over our minds and we feel a sadness that we're not where we want to be, we're not with who want to be with, or we're not experiencing what we want to. 

What we often don't realize is that maybe that feeling of longing is a nudge to take our life in a different direction or to take it forward in another way. It's not meant to be something that stifles us and yet that's what it usually does.

Maybe we won't ever be with someone certain but instead it's the universe's way of saying, "Hey! Take this opportunity to make yourself the best that you can be. One day maybe that person will come into your life or maybe– just maybe– I have someone out there who is better for you!" 

If we long for something to be different in our lives, then how can we make that change? Breaking big goals into small goals will help us get there but there is always a place to make that first step. 

Longing doesn't have to be negative. We can use longing as a stepping stone to something new, to creating new opportunity in our lives. It's like longing is poking us to make change. We want to live happy, meaningful, productive lives. Every moment of our lives won't feel that way– that's reality– but there is often much we can do send it forth that way.