Lin Wilder's Blog, page 62

Lessons In Handling Stress

Lessons From My Dog Shadow In Handling Stress

Only I and Shadow, the mostly black and gold mellow looking guy lying down on the floor next to the Doberman, witnessed Ally’s sudden death-it took less than ten seconds. I have deduced, after obsessively pondering everything that took place that night, as well as a few of the signs that had presented themselves for the previous few months in the Dobie, that Ally died of a lethal cardiac arrhythmia – most likely ventricular tachycardia which devolved into ventricular fibrillation. Coming up with an explanation doesn’t change anything but strangely, it helps. It has taken most of all of these six months for me to accept the Doberman’s fatal collapse; to focus on the gift of his presence for the few short years we had him.

We live in rural high desert country; a place where people can ‘drop off’ an unwanted puppy with no one the wiser. Shadow ‘adopted us’ when he was somewhere between six months to a year old; he was starving and the Vet was unable to place his age any more narrowly. It took him three days of hiding under the truck of the man who was building the white picket fence that would demarcate the landscaped section of our property during the day and at night, and then trying to find a place to hide from the mountain lions and coyotes during the nights to make the decision of accepting the haven we offered. To survive, the young dog had learned a most rudimentary set of skills: trust no one, expect mistreatment and when overwhelmed by fear and panic, run and hide, hoping not to be attacked.

It was painful to witness the stress imposed by Shadow’s inner battle to accept the food and water, trust the behavior of these people or revert to the running and hiding behaviors with which he had been imprinted. While the desire to find a place of safety, comfort; to take the risk was visibly tempting, his most likely reasonable distrust of people caused him to run after each tentative thrust of his nose through the newly built fence to accept my touch: the dilemma he faced audible in his cries and howls. But after three days and nights, he finally, one day, took the risk, shaking, shivering the fear and distrust distressingly evident as he came onto our porch to drink the water and food that had been offered for three days.

After many months of consistent care and love, this shivering, fear-filled animal transformed himself with the arrival of the new baby Doberman. From the very beginning of Ally’s arrival as a twenty-six pound puppy, Shadow knew he was now the Alpha and he rather miraculously donned the needed behaviors of the Alpha. The first indication of the transformation occurred when the Dobe was still very small and I was training him on the dirt road behind our house. Several times, the Rottweiler down the street would get out in the middle of the street almost daring me to walk past him with the puppy. I was always nervous, not knowing if the dog would attack me and the puppy. The first two times, I thought it a coincidence when the fifty pound Shadow would come out of nowhere and stand between us and the one hundred pound plus Rottweiler. By the third time, I knew it was no coincidence- although I could not see Shadow, he watched while I was out with his charge. Each time this happened, the huge Rottweiler backed off and retreated into his yard.

As the Dobe grew older, I felt comfortable with him hiking off leash; there were no cars to fear and I had been taught to bring food each time we hiked, teaching him that each time he came back, he would be rewarded with food and he loved his food. Until the day when a friend who happened to be staying with us asked if he could hike with the two dogs, that is. We had agreed to let him go alone with the dogs but when David returned in mid-afternoon without either dog, we realized the stupidity of our decision. Our mountains are home to many packs of coyotes and hungry mountain lions; we were very worried. Despite many searches in the neighborhood and back up the mountains, we found no sign of either dog. Until, at midnight, they appeared on the porch, panting, thirsty, exhausted and as happy as were we that they were home. I am convinced that the young Dobe had lost his way in the mountains, had somehow lost his four-footed guide and friend; mysteriously and miraculously Ally was found and led back home by Shadow.

When faced with the stresses of situations which remind us of lessons painfully learned in our early years we have the same choice as did my dog Shadow. The very best way to handle our own stresses is to do like Shadow did: Care so much about another being that we forget our fears and insecurities; we stop running and learn to risk again.

Author Bio: Lin Wilder, DrPH is a former Hospital Director now full time writer. If you liked this article, Lin suggests her new novel, A Fragrance Shed By A Violet [4] now available at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/The-Fragrance-Shed-Violet-Wilder/dp/1630632619  Her website is: http://www.linwilder.com/

Originally published at ClearYourStress.com

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Writing: A Surprisingly Effective Antidote to Stress

 

 

While walking rapidly down the hall of the new hospital, in the new city, new state…new everything, three days after the move I had never planned to make, I was delighted to see the face of a good friend from Houston, never questioning why this physician would be in Massachusetts on a Monday morning in November. Doubling my speed to catch up with him, his name Steve! Was about to burst out of my mouth when the stranger turned to look quizzically at me and extended his hand to say, “Hi, aren’t you the new Hospital Director? Welcome, my name is…” I knew then that my level of stress was off the charts, certainly greater than I had ever experienced.

Embarrassed, hoping desperately that I could hide the crushing disappointment, I smiled and shook his hand realizing that my ‘hallucination’ was a symptom and that I needed to do something to mitigate the profound stressful effects of so many losses over so very short a period of time.

Although you may have never experienced what I’ve just described above, I’ll wager that the scene I just described evoked a memory or three. I recall worried friends in Houston telling me that I would have to find a way to deal with the chaos of my life and my terse and sarcastic replies of ‘I’ll be sure and add that to my list!’

My friends were right, of course, but there are times, when in the midst of a life in chaos, as mine was at that time, that all we can do is put one foot in front of the other, knowing that there is no one to whom we can look for help; that the overwhelming and impossible list of tasks must be done, that there is only one person to do them and it is you. We look back and wonder at ourselves; wonder that we managed it all, alone. But there is always a cost; often physiologic as well as psychological, at some point or another, the physiologic and psychological signs announce themselves in ways that are increasingly difficult to overlook.

My visual ‘hallucination’ that day signaled me that I needed to do something and quickly to deal with the emotions that I had successfully boxed up during the summer my life blew up. Already, I was working out like a maniac, starting my long days with a minimum of an hour work out and grabbing several mile runs on the weekends with the young Doberman puppy who was saving my life. Although I had learned meditation during the few years I had flirted with Buddhism, I simply could not do it; the mind chatter was loud and unceasing.

So I began to write differently from any writing I had ever done before; shocking myself, I began to write poetry. As an undergrad English major, poets like EE Cummings, TS Eliot, Auden, Rilke were opaque to me; I never understood the allegories, my mind far too literal and concrete.

A friend from Houston had given me a book I treasure to this day, Writing Down The Bones along with a beautiful leather bound journal as a going away gift. Once I picked up a pen and turned off the editor in my head, to my surprise, poems began to appear. Over time, there were enough to put together in a book which I self-published several years ago.

Someone once called poetry the language of the heart. It is a good a definition as I have ever found. I have written my entire life but always my writing was of the medical technical fields of my professional life, comfortably intellectual. Poetry evokes another language: one that springs from somewhere else; in tapping into that place, and in taking the risk to write and then publish what appeared there, I found healing and peace.

Originally posted at http://www.clearyourstress.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Divine Symphony

The phrase ‘divine symphony’ was coined by a naturalist, whose name I cannot recall, who studies the effects of clearing the forest in order to diminish the danger of fires. This unnamed researcher audio-taped the sounds before the clearing and after. The effects were both stunning and upsetting: what was a cacophony of sound prior to the removal of every other tree became nearly silence following the actions of the Forest Service.

His point?

So much of the time, what seems reasonable and ‘natural’ to us can have inimical effects upon the very world we here trying to protect; hence the name, ‘The Divine Symphony.’ Although I listened to that TED talk several months ago, the researcher’s observations have stayed with me, as did the evocative name of these sounds….the sounds we take for granted until they are no longer heard.

Like so many of us, my views on certain doctrines or beliefs can change instantaneously once I have experience to ground the idea. For example, were I still living in areas where rain is so constant as to be considered a nuisance, I would form judgments on the actions of the Forest Service personnel as they carry out their tree thinning work passionately so, once I learn the inimical effects.

But now that I have experienced the terror, devastation and destruction of wildfires in an up close and personal way by living in the high desert…emphasis on the word desert, and met some of these men and women who literally risk their lives as they work to save mine, my property and those of my neighbors, everything changes; what was an abstraction is suddenly, so painfully real.

Isn’t it almost comically true that with more information and understanding what initially appears simple…. a no-brainer- suddenly is almost always understood completely differently…we see the complexity and ambiguity; the total absence of a simple solution?

This morning, while going outside in the wet cold morning to feed the birds, ducking the rarely soaked branches of the 30 or so trees branches and shrubs we have planted here in the twelve years we have lived here, I thought of the ‘divine symphony’ in reverse: the chorus of birds I hear is loud, raucous, and beautiful as I dart in and out of the dripping leaves to fill the feeders, step around the puddles of blessed mud, so precious after now, three days of rain.

The fires are out.

And I smile as I listen to what sounds very much like gratitude as I watch the birds dart out from invisible ‘homes’ in the trees to come and eat.

There were no trees when we moved here—only silence. Now we hear a ‘divine symphony’ in our small corner of this earth…small actions we can take to be His hands, actions that matter in ways we glimpse only now and then…miraculous moments in time.

 

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Dolphin Tale 2

In these days of wars on three fronts, headlines of missiles raining down on Syria, ninety minutes of a story based upon a dedicated group of people with the single, pure and loving goal of rescue, rehabilitate and release of Dolphins and other marine animals was just what we needed yesterday.

Dolphin Tale 2 is the sequel to a movie telling the true story of  a group of people in Clearwater Florida who rescued a dolphin they named Winter pictured here with the prosthetic device devised to function for the amputated lower part of her body and her tail. The acclaim of the public to the original story was overwhelming-particularly for those many veterans and children who are amputees. The sight of this dolphin with her prosthetic tail – an animal who would be prey were she to left on her own in the ocean- brought such astonishing international attention and financial support to the small group of people that they were able to form an institution: Clearwater Marine Aquarium.

This sequel narrates another crisis for Winter when her Dolphin friend dies apparently from old age. The crisis is real: Dolphins are  social to the point where another Dolphin presence is as essential as food the lives and well-being of these remarkable creatures. The story of  the dilemma between the need for a Dolphin partner for Winter and the institutional mission of returning healthy Dolphins to the wild is told simply and powerfully.

The young actor and actress who play the roles of the real young people at the Aquarium are believable in their sincerity and passion  for these stunning mysterious creatures who can seem so cerebral, so filled with light, these bottle-nosed Dolphins. And the cameo appearances of Morgan Freeman, and Kris Krisstoferson are added bonuses. If you do decide to see the movie, do stay long enough to see the actual filming of the rescues and of the footage of disabled children and adults who make the visit to communicate with this sympathetic being called Winter.

 

 

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God As Mystery

Only rarely do I get the gift of true understanding- that sense of YES, that is right…that nails it perfectly…this morning it was the phrase  God as mystery used by a man I had never heard of in a pod cast I seldom take the time to listen to. In reply to what you may be thinking, let me quickly ask that you suspend the Duh that is hovering in your mind and ask that you walk with me for a few brief moments while I explain.

I took time this morning after praying the Office to check out Krista Tippett’s On Being. Normally I file them each Saturday when I receive them, thinking this or that interview looks interesting, I’ll watch it later. But later never comes. The interviews are long-45 minutes and are pod casts, a venue I am still trying to accustom myself to; this morning I was attracted to an interview with Richard Rodriquez and decided to act on the attraction. While I listened to the entire interview between Tippett and Rodriquez, called The American Consciousness, I learned from Google library that Rodriquez is Catholic, a devout Catholic, gay and is an award winning essayist.

Following 9/11, Rodriquez traveled to the middle east to ‘see for himself’ the people whose God is his God-the God of Abraham, to visit the vast uninhabitable deserts of the middle east. Wryly, he tells Tippett of the American discomfort with what is understood and loved in the middle east—witness Los Angeles and Las Vegas as the uniquely American response to vast uninhabitable space.

In this engrossing conversation, Rodriquez speaks almost lyrically as he explains his love for Catholicism, including this phrase that seems thrown is as an afterthought: ‘My church forbids the use of love to describe a relationship between two men, together for over thirty years’ and the profound sense of oneness he felt while in the land of Abraham. He works among people, he says, who are totally against religion and talks almost offhandedly of a trip made to San Quentin prison with Mother Teresa. There on death row, he said this tiny woman looked at one of the faces in the solitary cells of death row and said,

“Do you want to see God? Then look at the face of the man in the next cell to your own, the murderer, the rapist. There you will see the face of God.”

The interview ends with a remark from Rodriquez about the a book written by one of America’s most notable atheists- his one comment about Mother Teresa was that she was so ugly. This woman who lived the last 40 years of her life in apparent desolation and despair, an agreement she made with Jesus so that she could save souls.

Do you want to see the face of God?

 

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Mavericks Surfing

We came down for only a few days but I’m sorry to be leaving in the morning. The weather has been perfection. Plus now I understand why this is the home of the Mavericks Surfing contests. The wave looks as if it was shot in Hawaii but it was taken right here in Half Moon, California.

Maybe because of the hurricane that hit the Baja peninsula last night, the surf in the bay where we always stay while here has been wild. People have been standing watching these waves all day; many of us in awe of the surfers who race to the water, bare feet hardly touching the pavement of the road, so excited are these mostly men and a couple of women to ride these monster waves.

Shadow and I walked along the sidewalk, dodging the ocean spray as it thundered over the rocks toward us and stopped next to a guy standing watching, mesmerized at the surfers racing from their cars, boards slung over shoulders as they dashed across the street to get into the water just as soon as they possibly could do so.

“I learned how to surf in Hawaii…this makes what I did look like child’s play.

“Wow do they have guts.”

The wistfulness was written all over his face as he spoke. His shirt was off, demonstrating the beginning of fat around his waist and abdomen that none of these men possessed- each looked pencil thin…not an ounce of extra fat anywhere…the caloric expenditure of these people as they rode or crashed on the waves was extraordinary. He knew it better than I.

“Do you think you’ll join them one day?” I asked.

“If I can get the courage to do it, yeah…but I’d need lessons..and guts.”

 

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Environmental Activist and Oxymoron

There was a time, many years ago, when I was more of a  radical environmental activist than most people I knew. No more.

The phrase has taken on the language of religion; in some cases and political actors, the most fanatical of religious zealots. Governmental policies like the recent decisions of our federal government to lay waste to hundreds of orchards, ranches, farms in order to divert water for an endangered small bait fish, the Delta Smelt, five species of salmon and the North American Green Sturgeon. Despite massive amounts of water diversion, now flowing into the Pacific Ocean, none of the endangered fish has been removed from the list in 35 years. Their population continues to decline while the San Joaquin Valley becomes a dust bowl. An estimated 40,000 people in California have lost jobs due to these Federal policies that boggle the mind when attempting to understand the rationale.

When we moved here to the high desert of Nevada, a friend and neighbor  ,a Californian, as are most of our friends and neighbors, claimed that liberals and environmentalists were religious fanatics; I argued with him back then. I do not any longer nor do I make the large donations I once made to environmental agencies like Greenpeace, World Wildlife, Sierra Club once I investigated salaries and details about many of these agencies.

But the other morning, after finishing my Morning Office, I took an hour I really did not have because I saw this quote from Wendell Berry, sent by Brian, an on-line friend who finds delicious thoughts to ponder on a daily basis. This was Friday’s:

What is good for the world will be good for us. That requires that we make the effort to know the world and to learn what is good for it. We must learn to cooperate in its processes, and to yield to its limits. But even more important, we must learn to acknowledge that the creation is full of mystery; we will never entirely understand it. We must abandon arrogance and stand in awe. We must recover the sense of the majesty of creation, and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For I do not doubt that it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it.

I had heard the author’s name, Wendell Berry but could not recall where.

This is what I found when I went searching at the Google libary: Wendell Berry on his hopes for humanity. It is 40 minutes long; here is a short poem to persuade you to take the time to ‘meet’ this man; a man I am happy to know is breathing the same air as I….right now.

“The Peace of Wild Things.”

When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world and am free.

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Dawn Patrol

We had not been in two, maybe three years and invited friends with young children to make the middle of the night drive from Smith Valley to see the Dawn Patrol early this morning. Although I have been to the Reno Balloon Races five or maybe now six times, the thrill of watching these six pilots ‘glow’ against the September black sky is absolute; it does not diminish.

There had to have been thousands – ten, maybe twenty thousand of us gathered in the park with us this morning for only one reason: the love of beauty, the thrill of these huge mostly silent creations gliding over our heads in the still morning before dawn. We left our house at three this morning to meet the two other families we were ‘wagon training’ in from our little valley. Everyone was excited, the five kids still looking sleepy but engaged.

Our timing could not have been better and the weather during this early chilly morning was also perfect, allowing the pilots unusual latitude in positioning their balloons so that they could hover over the crowd and over the pre-dawn sky of the city.  The announcers leading the invitation:

Counting down from five!

Five, four, three, two, one!

Glow!!

They can hear you!

Over and over again.

 

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