​(I received a free copy of Unstrung from Netgalley in return for an honest review.)

On a whim, I previously purchased Laura Spinella’s Ghost Gifts because of its subject matter. I quickly became engrossed in a novel that embodied romance, mystery, and the metaphysical. Not only was the story of Ghost Gifts addictive to me, but Spinella’s words themselves rapidly became captivating. She is one of those authors whose prose is like poetry, flowing smoothly across the page and roping the readers in so that they stay up all night reading her work. Ghost Gifts is one of the best books I’ve read in recent years.

Upon finishing Ghost Gifts, I quickly turned to the internet and was delighted to find that Spinella had a new novel, Unstrung, about to release. As I began the story, the main character Livy (Olivia Klein) is reading and ridiculing Ghost Gifts as being a preposterous book. I love when an author (or anyone, really) can laugh at herself.

As I progressed into Unstrung, I found myself enjoying a much more intense read than I expected. I actually had to take break from reading the novel because it touched on some very deep topics that are close to my heart. The plot seemed simple and somewhat superficial at first: Livy, a first chair violinist, is having major marital problems with her second husband. Her best friend and lawyer helps her through legal troubles, and Livy is serving out community service time at a local school for students with life challenges.

However, once one gets into Unstrung, the powerful theme of loss appears as the overarching tie between the characters of the book. The theme of loss applies to so many parts of the characters’ lives: illness, death, miscarriage, money, love, adoption, abuse, addiction, tragedy, broken relationships, divorce, and dreams. As Livy and those around her struggle with these painful issues, their lives come together in unexpected ways.

As much as I loved the majority of the work and as much as it challenged me to examine issues around loss in my own life, the improbable ending was a let-down. These were not the directions I could have seen for the characters, and they were not ones that felt realistic to me. I would have chosen a very different ending had I written Unstrung. However, despite the ending, Unstrung is a fabulous novel. I look forward to reading more by Spinella.

©2017 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

The day after the 2017 Presidential inauguration, my 16 year old daughter came downstairs and asked me, “Is it true? Did they really get rid of the LGBT pages on the White House site?” Sadly, yes, it is true. I was amazed that she was puzzled by this happening. She continued asking me, “But who did that? How can they do that?” I let her know that the Republicans were in power now, and the new Presidential staff was more than legally allowed to remove any pages they wanted from the White House website. They want to make those in the LGBTQ+ community disappear. They want to restrict rights for those who are not heterosexual. They are going to try to repeal gay marriage. This is the way the next four years are going to be.

My daughter just sat there, looking dismayed. Her reaction made me realize on a deeper level what a privileged upbringing her life has been in terms of gay rights. She has grown up in a home where all people are seen as equal regardless of their sexual preferences, orientation or identity. Her grade school principal was an out lesbian who was partnered with one of the teachers at the school. Our nuclear family has friends and extended family members who are LGBTQ+. My daughter has been raised in a world where all of that is seen as so normal and acceptable it doesn’t even need comment. In her world, people are sexual beings, and any range of consensual sexual activity and identity is fine, most especially when it stems from love.

Yet back in the real world, members of the LGBTQ+ community still face daily discrimination. Not everyone is as accepting as our nuclear family. My daughter has never really known this except in the fact that gay marriage wasn’t legal until a few years ago. She doesn’t have the memories I have of being raised Catholic and being taught that homosexuality was a sin. She doesn’t remember the shock in a community when someone “came out.” She doesn’t realize the horrible stigma that HIV/AIDS initially had as a wrongly-perceived gay disease. She doesn’t understand the history of violence that was so prevalent and still continues in many places against those who are LGBTQ+.

I hate that my daughter’s innocence is being shattered, though I know she was privileged to be able to hold on to living in a utopia for as long as she did. Now, the issues of the LGBTQ+ community are personal to her. She is a proud ally. Her best friend is transgender. When my daughter’s friend announced his transition and his new name, she accepted him without question and knew her parents and siblings would, too. Now she is having to deal with the fact that the new order wants to make her best friend disappear, just like those webpages that were suddenly gone within hours of the inauguration. Yet she, like me and so many other allies, is not ok with that. They will not make those we love disappear just by removing a webpage. We will continue to fight to make all people visible and equal. In less than two years, she will be a registered voter, and she will be doing her part to make change happen in the mid-term elections as well.

​©2017 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Like many in this nation, I’ve been using denial as a coping technique over the past two months. I’ve been trying to believe that somehow, miraculously, the shift in power we were dreading would not happen. I was hoping that it was all a bad dream or a horrible joke. It’s not, though. Our lives are about to change drastically.

The night of the election in November 2016, my 16 year old daughter came downstairs to the family room at about 10 pm from doing homework. Her twin and I were watching the returns come in with dismay. She had just received a text from her boyfriend about the ominous news. Her only words were, “Tell me it’s not true.” I had to tell her it was. She then asked, “Can we move to Canada?” Given that we have family there, it’s not too outrageous of a request.

My daughter’s reaction left me thinking. Her boyfriend is a darker skinned racial minority whose parents were immigrants to the US. Her best friend is transgender. Her mother is disabled. She is almost a woman. Her world is going to be drastically impacted by the changes that result from the election.

My life is also going to be impacted as well; the obvious is that I am a woman and I am disabled. Both of those groups have been declared targets of hatred in the new era, and I personally have already experienced it. I fully expect large parts of the Americans with Disabilities Act to be repealed because the ADA costs money to businesses in order to make them fully accessible, and in the new order, corporate money is far more important than those with disabilities.

There are other places where the new dawn is going to impact me. Without the Affordable Care Act, I am no longer insurable due to the past 14 years of health issues. I face insurance companies refusing to cover my medical bills because of my pre-existing conditions. Healthcare is going to be the most obvious place where I will feel the change.

Other places are less obvious at first glance, but they are real threats. I have never had an abortion in this life, and I hope I never have to. However, Roe v. Wade has ensured that abortion has always been an option in my lifetime. Now I am at a point in my life where I would have to terminate any pregnancy I might unintentionally conceive because of health issues, yet I expect Roe v. Wade to either be eliminated or heavily restricted in the coming year. If that is the case, I will have to limit my sexual partners to men who have had vasectomies or are otherwise sterile. I’m a little more than angry about (primarily older white men) deciding whom I can have sex with.

There are bigger fears, too. I spent the first part of my life living with a narcissist, and having a narcissistic man who uses gaslighting as one of his primary methods of communication in national power is triggering for me and for many others. Watching someone so ill-qualified and so mentally ill about to assume command of so many life-or-death decisions is truly terrifying, especially if one knows how fickle and dangerous narcissists can be.

I’ve spoken with my spirit guides, and they have assured me that the new Narcissist in Chief will not be pushing the big red button. However, they have also affirmed my fears that we are facing an ugly uphill battle in the near future. As a friend of mine phrased it, we are facing at a decision where we as a nation have to decide if we will be governed by fear or governed by love. As things stand now, we are heading toward being a nation governed by fear.

I choose not to live my life in that way, though. For me, the first question to any decision is always “What is the healthy decision?” That question is always accompanied by other similar supporting questions: “What will bring the most love into my life and the world?” “What will bring the most compassion to me, to others, and to humanity?” “What is the right thing to do even if it is the hardest?” I will continue to strive to hold those values dear even when the world around me is leaning in the opposite direction.

So for me, January 20th, 2017 is a day of mourning. I’m dressing in black, the traditional color of mourning in our culture. I’m letting myself grieve as hard as I need to, but I also am holding my heart in a place of love rather than a place of fear. While I can’t change the national or the global situation, I can keep working to enact change around me, helping those who aren’t accepted by others. I can keep working to get compassion enacted in our society on personal and legal levels.

The final words from “Memories” from the musical Cats have been echoing my head all day, prompting me to write this post. We are facing the new day, the new dawn, but we must hold tight to the memories that bring us hope and love.

Daylight
I must wait for the sunrise
I must think of a new life 
And I mustn't give in
When the dawn comes
Tonight will be a memory, too
And a new day will begin
​
©2017 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Trigger Alert: This post is about sexual abuse. 

I have been sexually abused by at least three different men in this lifetime. This is unfortunately not unusual. I’ve seen statistics that suggest one in four women have been sexually abused, but I suspect the number is closer to one in two. Likewise, I’ve seen numbers ranging from one in five to one in eight men have been sexually abused. No matter what the actual statistics are, the number of victims is still way too high.

I was recently speaking with someone who has a very young daughter. He knows of my history of sexual abuse, and so as a concerned parent, he asked me how I thought we could prevent it from happening to our children. After a moment to think about it, my answer was one that I don’t like but which I think is ultimately true: We can’t. Sexual abuse is going to happen. We can do some small things to try to ward it off. We can teach our children not to abuse others in hopes of lessening rates for future generations. But like most traumas and tragedies, even with the best preparation for prevention, it will still happen.

So what can we do try to reduce the number of children who are sexually abused short of locking our children into padded cells? The biggest thing we can do is teach our children that their bodies are their own, and no one should touch their bodies without their consent. Then we need to respect what we teach them. That means ending corporal punishment. That means stopping the horrible social custom of making our children hug and kiss distant relatives and unknown adult friends whom they don’t know or care about. It means letting our children know that they are the ones who are in charge of their bodies and “no” is an appropriate response when someone wants to touch them in a way they don’t feel comfortable with.

There are books for helping talk to children about sexual abuse in ways that aren’t scary. One is called “Your Body Belongs to You” written by Cornelia Maude Spelman and illustrated by Teri Weidner. The book frames body safety in a positive manner. There are no scary strange men ready to jump out of white vans to abduct children. The problem with the book: The page that says “Some places on your body should never be touched by other people—except when you need help in the bathroom or getting dressed or when you go to the doctor.” Two of my abusers were medical doctors acting in their official capacity but greatly taking advantage of the situation. These were men I should have been able to trust, but they acted in unethical ways and violated my body. The third man who sexually abused me was a relative, one who was greatly trusted by my parents. We also need to teach our children that even those they should be able to trust will sometimes act inappropriately.

So how do we figure out whom we can trust? The biggest way is to learn how to follow your gut feelings. Listen to that voice inside you when it tells you no. That inner voice is something or someone trying to protect you. If you feel unsafe or uncomfortable with a situation, then don’t put your child into it and/or don’t put yourself into it. Furthermore, if your child tells you, “I don’t trust that person,” listen to them. Find out why your child doesn’t feel comfortable. If it’s an instinctive response, respect your child’s intuition. Children are often far more in tune with their intuition than adults because they haven’t learned to ignore it through society’s mandates. Teach your children to respect their gut feelings, too.

Another very important aspect of sexual trauma is that victims are often not believed. If your children ever tell you that someone has touched them inappropriately, believe them. Do not punish them for what has happened to them. They are children, and they did not know what was happening to them. They were unable to give consent. No older child or adult ever should be touching them inappropriately. Instead, once you have listened to their version of events, seek counseling for them and report the event to the proper authorities. Hiding sexual trauma only allows it to continue, and others will likely become victims to the same perpetrators.

One other way to help reduce sexual trauma (which is not a method all will find palpable) is through energetic work on our second chakras. I believe that many of those who are sexually abused as young children have been sexually abused in previous lives. They come into this life with already damaged second chakras, and that weakness energetically attracts those who will abuse them again. Healing any damage to our children’s second chakras and/or strengthening their second chakras will reduce sexual predators’ attraction to them. This work can be done with talented energy workers who have already healed any sexual trauma they might have endured. If they have not healed their own traumas, you don’t want to have them working on you or your children.

Sexual abuse is scary. It scars us deeply, even when it happens at a very young age. The damage it causes can become the roots for physical illness as it did in my case. Thus, it’s very important that sexual abuse of children be taken seriously so that it does not cause a lifetime of damage. Preventative education can help children stop sexual trauma from happening, but if they don’t know that what is happening is wrong, they won’t be able to stop it. Likewise, education can help victims learn to report what happened rather than living with a sense of shame that they caused the abuse to happen to them. While we can’t always prevent sexual abuse from happening, we can support victims appropriately and prevent perpetrators from acting again.

©2017 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Full Disclosure: I received a free digital copy in exchange for an honest review by NetGalley. However, I also bought a paperback copy to share with the many friends whom I’d lent my copy of How Not to Fall.

We’ve all heard the saying, “The sequel is never as good as the original.” More often than not, it’s unfortunately true. We build up our hopes for something even more amazing than the story or movie which stole our heart. Unfortunately, our fantasies are often too great, and the eventual reality is disappointing. For me, this phenomenon happened with How Not to Let Go by Emily Foster. While I adored its predecessor, How Not to Fall, I was nowhere near as enthralled with the sequel. That’s not to say that How Not to Let Go wasn’t a good book: It just wasn’t as amazing as the first in the series.

How Not to Let Go continues the story of Annabelle and Charles, two lovers who met while she was a student and he was her supervisor. After her graduation, they began a torrid one month affair, ending it when she left for medical school in Massachusetts and he stayed on at his position as a post-doctoral researcher in Indiana. In the sequel, we witness the two trying to cope with their breakup, and after a year has passed, we get to join their journey as they work toward reuniting.

The story jumps back and forth between the US and England where Charles’ family of origin lives. While attending a conference, Annabelle and Charles meet for coffee but choose not to give into sexual temptation. However, when an overly convenient plot device of potential terrorist activity leads to Charles’ brother shutting down the London airports for security reasons, the two lovers spend several days at Charles’ brother’s home having abundant sex once again. Eventually, the two both end up in Massachusetts, and they continue to work through the relationship, its issues, and their individual problems.

I struggled to figure out why this sequel wasn’t as exciting for me as the first book. The process of falling in love is a powerful and wonderful one, and that first love part of Annabelle and Charles’ relationship happened in the first book. There’s no way to recreate that initial passion and romance as a relationship continues. Reunions are hot, and the sex that follows them is also quite intense, but it’s never quite the same as the beginning of a relationship. However, the sex scenes between Annabelle and Charles were still very arousing.

The means that Foster uses to push along the plot of the novel were often a bit too over the top for me. Rich geniuses (more than one in a family!), a trust fund, a potential terrorist attack, a conveniently located gorgeous home… it all just felt less real than the first novel. The more honest parts of the novel, the ones that involved family dynamics or relationship growth, were too few and far between. While often difficult to read because of how toxic the relationships were, the family scenes were the ones that kept my attention and made me want to keep reading. Unfortunately, the great family scenes were surrounded by extensive and detailed rock climbing adventures which became tedious for me.

Foster definitely writes for sapiosexuals, readers who are turned on by intelligence. In How Not to Let Go, though, the use of imagery to describe Charles’ psychological struggles becomes burdensom. Perhaps it is the kind of language and conversation that would happen between two psychiatrists, but for most of us, we don’t create such elaborate illustrations for our personal struggles.

The hardest part for me about the book was probably not due to the author or the book itself but was due to my own life. In the novel, Charles struggles with having an avoidant attachment style due to the dysfunctional family he grew up in. He’s the kind of guy who is commitment phobic as a result of having been hurt too much in the past by those he loved. However, unlike any man I’ve ever known who has an avoidant attachment style, Charles enters intensive psychotherapy to work on healing his wounds. He regularly flies across states to continue seeing the same therapist in person. He is determined to break through the psychological struggles that hold him back from having a healthy and secure attachment to Annabelle. Perhaps I was jealous of Annabelle having found a man who was willing to do this healing work for both himself and for her, but another part of me found it very unrealistic. That left me wondering how one finds a partner who have successfully done this powerful and deep healing work, because the people who have are very rare. Thus, another part of the book felt unrealistic to me, just in a way that made me feel jealous rather than bemused.

I definitely enjoyed reading How Not to Let Go, but it was a less passionate enjoyment than I felt for its predecessor. I have already recommended How Not to Let Go to a friend with an avoidant attachment style, but I probably won’t recommend it to others whom I shared the first book with. That said, I hope Foster plans to continue writing other novels which cater to sapiosexuals, which teach healthy sexual relationships, and which portray realistic sex scenes. The world of romance definitely needs books that fit this niche!
 
© 2016 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Trigger warning: This post discusses sexual assault, rape, pedophilia and similar topics. There are no explicit depictions of any of the topics; the post is a discussion of issues around the topic of violation and consent.
 
We live in a nation where one of the major Presidential candidates has been caught on film advocating non-consensual sexual assault of women. Since this film was published in the media, many women have come forward to state that they’ve received such treatment from this candidate. Likewise, that same candidate is going to trial later in December for allegedly raping a 13 year old girl, a situation where consent can never be obtained due to the victim’s age. Despite these issues, that Presidential candidate is managing to hold a projected 40+% of the nation’s votes. What this tells us is that we live in a culture where women’s and children’s sexual rights are seen as irrelevant by far too many people.
 
Given that we live in such times, I don’t believe it is possible to discuss sexual boundaries without discussing the issue of sexual consent. In his book Sex Outside the Lines: Authentic Sexuality in a Sexually Dysfunctional Culture, Chris Donaghue attempts to do just that. The general premise of his book is that we need to break down the boundaries around sex, gender and sexuality. Donaghue doesn’t believe we should refer to ourselves as male or female, man or woman, straight or gay or even pansexual. Instead, he visualizes a utopic world where labels around sexuality are not used at all so that everyone’s sexuality is accepted.
 
As I read through beginning of the book, I kept asking myself repeatedly, “But what about consent?” By the end of the first chapter, I felt as though someone whose sexual pleasures included acting on pedophilia or rape would feel completely justified in their sexual activities and would see them as acceptable based on Donaghue’s rhetoric. By trying to break down *all* boundaries, Donaghue is doing just that: He’s getting rid of the good along with the bad. I believe that there are some very important boundaries which exist to protect us from trauma, violence, and abuse, and I believe those protective boundaries cannot ever be eliminated if our society is to become more sex positive as Donaghue hopes.
 
As I kept reading through Sex Outside the Lines, the word consent did not appear anywhere. I even stopped to look in the index to see if the word was there. It wasn’t. Finally, on page 166, Donaghue finally mentions consent in passing. He states, “As long as sex is consensual and no one is injured, then it’s all part of healthy sexual expression.” This statement, in an expanded form, needed to be at the very beginning of his book. To me, as a woman who has experienced sexual abuse and assault both as a child and as an adult, consent is an issue that cannot be ignored when discussing sexual boundaries. I wasn’t looking for an entire chapter or an entire section on consent. Instead, all I wanted was a paragraph early in the book devoted to the importance of consent as a boundary that can never be violated.
 
As my book group discussed this work, I hypothesized that Donaghue may not have had any peer readers of drafts who had endured sex abuse. Someone in the group who knows Donaghue told me that she knew for a fact that he did. Yet even under that kind of advice before publication, Donaghue still chose not to include any vital discussion of consent early in the book.
 
This issue of consent came up during Chris Donaghue’s presentation for the Southwest Sexual Health Alliance on October 8, 2016 in Austin. The SWSHA has a saying, “Don’t yuck somebody’s yum,” a phrase that was invoked before Donaghue’s presentation. In short, it means having respect for all sexual practices. What may disgust you may be the most arousing activity for someone else. We all should have respect for that difference between us. At one point, though, a therapist politely but obviously concerned asked Donaghue, “I don’t mean to yuck anybody’s yum. But what about pedophiles? What about the issue of consent?”
 
Donaghue stated that his easy-out answer is that he follows the law and advises others to do the same. He also said that healthy sex starts with compassion, and that this is the approach to work on boundaries with the clients. Donaghue noted that all of us have desires we’d never act upon, a true statement. He voiced his opinion that most people with pedophile desires know that such desires aren’t appropriate to act upon and are trying to refrain from engaging in them. I think that belief of his may be based on the population that he works with: Those who are actively working to stop from acting on non-consensual desires. I don’t believe that statement is actually true for all who violate consent, though. However, I’m viewing it from the place of a practitioner who helps those who have been violated, so my viewpoint is vastly different from his. An estimated 1 in 4 women has been sexually abused (though I believe that number is inaccurate), and an estimated 1 in 6 men (again, a number I believe is too low) have been sexually abused. Even if they are underestimates, those statistics indicate a lot of people who aren’t resisting their non-consensual urges and are harming others. Overall, the answer Donaghue gave in response to such important questions felt very unsatisfactory to me.
 
Additionally, Donaghue pounced on the therapist’s use of the word “pedophiles.” He doesn’t like the word because he believes it is a word laden with shame. He prefers to use the phrase “intergenerational sexual attraction.” On one hand, I see his point. I don’t believe in using shame the way our culture does as a disciplinary method. I’m a huge fan of Brené Brown whose work attempts to undo the damage of shame in our culture. I believe all people are capable of change though I also believe many are unwilling to do the work that is required to change and grow.
 
However, I also believe in calling a spade a spade. I’ve been in a sexual relationship with a man who is 14.5 years older than me. That is an intergenerational sexual relationship that included a lot of intergenerational sexual attraction. It was a wonderful experience for me. I’ve also been sexually abused by men who were 20-40+ years older than me when I was 3, 7 and 18 years old. Those were not intergenerational sexual relationships. Those were abuse, assault, and nonconsensual relations. They are vastly different experiences. By conflating attraction of two consenting adults to the same thing as a person attracted to and acting on pedophilia, Donaghue is helping support our culture that disregards sexual assault as a serious issue that isn’t being addressed properly. By Donaghue's logic, the term rapist should be changed to “a persuasive sexual practitioner.” However, it’s never ok to downgrade the severity of sexual abuse and assault. Language is powerful, and by rejecting language that actually names a toxic act, Donaghue is rejecting the pain and suffering of so many people whose bodies, spirits and minds have been violated.
 
I agree with Donaghue that our culture desperately needs to evolve to become a sex positive culture. In order to create that new openness towards sexuality, we must establish respect as one of the most important roots of sex positivity. We must have respect for others’ desires, for others’ bodies, and for others’ genetic predispositions, and for others’ choices. We must have respect for everything sexual about a person. Yet in order to achieve that broader respect, one must also have respect for the boundaries that are necessary to keep each person safe. Consent is a boundary that cannot ever be eliminated in a healthy sex positive culture. As we move toward a new paradigm for sexuality and gender in our lives, we must bring consent into that new culture. We need to create a world that respects everyone, especially each person’s right to say no.
 
© 2016 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Love is where compassion prevails and kindness rules. ~my tea bag’s inspirational message this morning

Yesterday I had the privilege of attending the Southwest Sexual Health Alliance’s presentation of Chris Donaghue, Ph.D., who lectured on concepts from his book Sex Outside the Lines: Authentic Sexuality in a Sexually Dysfunctional Culture and an upcoming book. While I have yet to put up a book review of Sex Outside the Lines, the short version of my opinion of it is that I both loved it and hated it. It’s a work that asks readers to stretch their minds and ideas, sometimes outside the realm of reality and into a utopic society.
 
One of the things that Donaghue is very good about acknowledging is his own privilege: He knows he is a good looking, intelligent, well-educated, white male. He also recognized during the talk that he’s been recently alerted to the thin privilege he experiences. While I think his awareness of the privilege of being a fit and attractive person is a good start, I feel several of his more popular ideas continue to play directly into the overwhelming prejudice in our society against those who are not thin.

My own experience in the dating world as an obese woman is one which very much demonstrates the attitudes and prejudices in our society towards those of larger size. In the four years since I opened myself up to dating again after my separation and divorce, I’ve had very little success through either Meetups or numerous dating websites. My experience is not unique; almost every overweight person I’ve met who has tried online dating has given up because of the discrimination they faced. I can immediately name you a handful of friends and acquaintances who haven’t been on a date in years because they are seen as undateable by most of the population because of their weight. It’s not due to a lack of openness or effort on their parts.

Despite their desires that I not do it, I often call people on the difference between preference and prejudice. One of the most common things I see on dating profiles is men stating, “I don’t date fat women. I know that sounds rude, but it’s just a preference of mine.” The reality is that it’s a prejudice, not a preference. When we judge others before we even interact with them solely based on their appearances, we are discriminating. I ask people who say or write these words to replace them with a racial minority. Would they say, “I don’t date black women. I know that sounds rude, but it’s just a preference of mine”? The reality is that most of the people I interact with are aware enough to understand that to say such a thing would be incredibly rude and prejudiced. However, to them, it’s ok to have that same prejudice against those who are overweight and excuse it as “just a preference.” To say that you are not attracted to all fat people is blatant discrimination against an entire population of people without knowing them as individuals. It’s judgmental, uncompassionate, and unloving.

While Donaghue laudably argues that people should expand their boundaries and date outside of their comfort zones, he simultaneously argues both in his book and at the presentation yesterday that people should date those whom they are attracted to. Unfortunately, to most men (and probably to most people, though I don’t have the experience outside of my heterosexual experiences to verify that) that translates into being immediately attracted to others’ physical appearance. In her fabulous senior thesis Can She Really 'Play that Game Too'?, Leah Fessler describes the dating experience at Middlebury College in 2015 with a focus on the difference between men and women when it came to the “hook up culture.” One of her assertions is that a majority of men refuse to consider being with a woman if she is not immediately physically attractive to them:

I suspect a wider study of American society would find a similar pattern.   

My own experience has confirmed Fessler’s theory and expanded upon it. When I first got on dating sites, I put up professional quality pictures. When I messaged men, 95% of them did not respond. However, in my most recent round of online dating, I put up a profile with no picture; I noted at the bottom that if men had read that far, I was happy to send them a link to my picture if they were a good match for me. This time around when I messaged men, 95% of them DID respond. What I discovered is that I am very attractive on paper. Men see a woman who is highly educated, open-minded, compassionate, not looking to trap them into a marriage with babies, sex-positive, and more. I’ve had dozens of well-matched men interested me, many of them asking me out, some even providing phone numbers so we can arrange the dates. However, the moment they request and see a picture, the same men disappear into the woodwork. Only a few have the decency to send a final “thanks but no thanks” note. The overwhelming majority of men I approach have interest in me as a person until they discover I’m overweight. Suddenly the same very attractive woman is no longer appealing. That is the very definition of fat prejudice.

I also believe based on my personal experience that sexual and romantic attraction is rooted in much more than just physical appearance. Two of the three men I’ve been in love with in this life were friends before they were love interests. I was not incredibly physically attracted to either of them when we first met. Sexual attraction can develop over time once one has gotten to know the other person better. More often than not, that hot sexual attraction leads to relationships that are doomed to be short-lived. It’s nothing more than hormones speaking. While there’s absolutely nothing wrong with having relationships like that, it’s also not wrong to open oneself to relationships that might develop from mutual interests rather than hormones. Sexual chemistry and connection can be very successful in a relationship even when there’s no immediate physical pull towards that person if one opens oneself up to the possibility.

Thus, when Chris Donaghue advocates that people should date those whom we are attracted to with no qualifiers attached, he’s perpetuating social dating dysfunction. Donaghue is very aware that people are highly influenced by the media and advertising. Study after study has shown how deeply advertising and media can influence our subconscious minds, changing what we think we want and what we think we are attracted to. Magazines, advertisements, tv shows, movies: They all tell us we “should” be attracted to slim people who fit a certain profile. Most people aren’t consciously aware enough to realize how media is warping their attractions in the dating world. It takes very rare and very strong people to step outside of those cultural ideals and date people who are attractive on the inside when their appearance is outside of that approved by social media. Most people don’t even recognize that their “types” are actually rooted in dysfunction, not genuine attraction.

One of Donaghue’s ideas that I’ve seen shared in numerous places is, “Experience a lot of sex/sexuality so you truly understand it.” This quote was directed towards a person who wanted to become a sex therapist and wanted Donaghue’s advice about it, but a statement like this also becomes shaming for those who daily fight fat prejudice in our society and who, despite their efforts, can’t find dates nonetheless sexual partners. Likewise, stating as he does in Sex Outside the Lines that “Working on oneself while solo is easy and lazy, and is an actual avoidance of doing the real work” also is a very shaming statement for those who are not single by choice  (101). It’s far better that individuals work on themselves when single rather than sitting around and feeling sorry for themselves. Just because they aren’t in a romantic relationship does not mean they are not in relationship with others, and just because they are working on themselves while solo doesn’t mean they are lazy.

Last weekend, I went on a generally enjoyable date with a man I’d met online. We messaged for a few days, discovering that we had a tremendous amount in common, so we decided to meet for dinner on the following weekend to see what the chemistry was like in real life. Despite having seen full-length pictures of me in advance, this man declined the opportunity to pursue anything else with me after that dinner because after seeing me in person he decided I was too fat. This is the reality of dating in modern America for those who are overweight. We aren’t fighting against attractions and preferences. We’re up against outright prejudice.

© 2016 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

When I rejoined the dating world, I quickly learned the term sapiosexual: One who is attracted to intelligence. The term is an apt descriptor for me and almost always for the men who are attracted to me. We are among those who find people who use their brains to be some of the sexiest lovers in the world. We want partners who can talk smart to us before they talk sexy to us. After all, the brain is the sexiest organ in the body.

While reading How Not to Fall by Emily Foster, I found the perfect romance for a sapiosexual. The novel is a work of erotic fiction custom designed for a nerd, especially an intellectual who has a fondness for psychology. A far cry from so many romances which are written for the lowest common denominator, How Not to Fall seamlessly integrates psychological theories and knowledge into its text and often into the sexual foreplay of its very smart characters. Despite its intellectual content, Foster writes in a conversational tone that is accessible to all potential readers.

Building on a taboo relationship of a post-doctoral supervisor and an undergraduate student falling for each other, the book explores the month-long relationship that the two of them consummate once she has finished school and they can legitimately be together. Charles, a post-doctoral researcher, is the slightly older, more sexually experienced man who brings Annabelle, the recently graduated virgin, into a new phase of her sexuality. Aside from many vivid sex scenes, the book contains a lot of conversation, dancing scenes, and rock climbing scenes. Foster weaves all of these together in a coherent novel that feels like an excerpt from two people’s lives, not just a bunch of sex scenes thrown together surrounded by weak dialog to sell a book.​

Most important to Foster’s objectives for this romance, the relationship between Charles and Annabelle is one built on equality and respect. From the beginning, Charles refuses to cross a line where he would be taking advantage of Annabelle because of his position of academic power over her. Once they are able to freely enter into the relationship, Charles still insists on taking the relationship slowly so that Annabelle gets to have the best introduction to sexual activity he can possibly give her. Even before they enter into slightly more kinky activities, Charles makes sure he has full consent from Annabelle and verifies that she knows and remembers their safewords (a term not used in the book) so that she can always stop whatever they are doing if it no longer feels right to her. It’s a relationship built on mutual understanding, respect and trust.

From one of the earliest conversations in the book, I began to wonder if Foster had been sitting in on an event in my life. Word for word, Charles and Annabelle said almost the same words as I had exchanged with a previous love in my life. As the novel progressed, I again saw scenes from my own life unfolding on the pages in front of me. While the novel is a fantasy, it was clear to me that this was a work grounded in reality. Much of what happens during the novel could be a part of its readers' lives.

I was hoping How Not to Fall would be a romance I could share with my teenage daughter, but I think it is still a bit too explicit for her at this point in her life. In a few years, I plan to give it to her so she can have a better understanding of what romance could and probably should look like. I also will insist that she should use condoms, something that Charles and Annabelle do not do because she is on hormonal birth control. However, even with frequent STI testing, many people carry strains of HPV that they are unaware of because they aren’t tested for them. I’ve also had a partner whose one set of STI testing did not include Herpes Simplex 1 and 2 because his doctor’s office told him that he’d know if he had them, a very erroneous idea in regard to viruses that can lie dormant for a while before manifesting. Hormonal birth control offers no protection against STIs, and thus, it is in people’s best interest to use condoms when they are not in a permanent monogamous relationship.

I breezed through this sexy intellectual novel in only an afternoon, unable to put it down for very long. How Not to Fall is a fabulous read, and I’m anxiously awaiting its sequel which is due to be published in 2017. I’ve already recommended it to several feminist sapiosexual friends whom I know will enjoy it as much as I did.

© 2016 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Last weekend, I decided to watch The Giver, a movie based on the dystopian novel by Lois Lowry which I’ve somehow never managed to read. In the film, civilization is controlled by The Elders who protect the people from pain and suffering. However, the removal of the negative emotions has also caused a cascade that likewise eliminates positive feelings as well. Characters receive a daily injection to help suppress their natural emotions and to keep society stable. Starring well known actors such as Jeff Bridges and Meryl Streep, the film utilizes black and white filmography with occasional color to powerfully illustrate the blandness of a world without emotion.

The viewer can understand the instinct to want to remove pain, especially when one selected young boy is learning about those things which cause pain and upheaval in society. The images of war that are shown as he begins to understand negativity are truly painful for someone who is sensitive (like me) to watch. Likewise, the extinction of elephants was a horrid scene for me to watch and contemplate since they are one of my beloved spirit animals. At the same time, the viewer gets to watch the young boy joyfully discovering music and dance, practices removed from society because they possess too much emotion intrinsic to their existence. Likewise, love no longer exists in this world. People merely tolerate and appreciate those in their assigned family units.

As I watched The Giver, I felt synchronicity at play again in my life. I recently spent a lot of time with a man who was afraid of emotional pain. As a result, he was unwilling to take risks that would create pleasure because he didn’t want to feel the pain that was an inevitable result of that risk taking. Mind you, I’m not a crazy adrenaline junkie. You won’t likely ever find me bungee jumping or climbing Mount Everest. However, I am willing to try new activities and enter into relationships with new people who might not seem perfect for me from the start. I know that there’s as much potential for pleasure as there is for pain, and that risk is worth it for me.

We see this most often in our relationships with others around us, especially the relationships that involve love. We know when we enter into any relationship, it will eventually end. Most romantic relationships end with a break up. Others dissolve upon death. When we add pets to our family, we know from the start that we will most likely outlive those pets, yet the joy and love pets bring to our families and our lives is more than worth the pain that their deaths impart. Furthermore, as part of being human, any relationship we enter is bound to have some pain in it. We don’t mean to hurt each other, but we do. It’s part of our personal growth experience.

Since my relationship with the man who was afraid of emotional pain ended, I’m left wondering how many around me are also afraid of emotional pain. I question how many people shut down their lives in an attempt to avoid negative experiences, yet in reality, they are only depriving themselves of pleasure as a result of not trying to feel anything at all. I suspect it’s far more people than I want to believe.

What my experience with this man boiled down to is that living without pain is not how I choose to live my life. There’s no question that life is filled with emotional, physical and spiritual pain. Yet I choose to move forward, leaning into that pain so that I can experience the pleasure that is on the other side of it. Sometimes it’s hard to judge if the pain is worth the pleasure because pain can be truly horrendous. Yet at the same time, pleasure can be just as overwhelmingly powerful if we allow it to be. As the lead character of The Giver says so accurately, “If you can’t feel, what’s the point?”

© 2016 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Many of us and our clients have unfortunately experienced traumas in this life or past lives that may include but are not limited to natural disasters, rape, abuse, warfare, deaths, accidents, childbirth and health difficulties. Many conventional approaches to healing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) seem just as traumatizing as the original events because the techniques force us to face painful issues that our bodies, minds, and spirits are not ready to handle.

Join Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., to learn about holistic methods to be used in conjunction with traditional therapy that can help approach traumas in a way that will minimize the new trauma of healing. Topics to be discussed include the body-mind-spirit connection, chronic illness, depersonalization, anxiety, depression, past lives, energetic beings, tapping, energy medicine, intuitive healing, meditation, and more.

This seminar assumes a belief in a higher power outside of oneself which can be anything from qi to god(s). While the content will be directed at psychotherapists, healers in other fields are welcome to attend.

The seminar will be held:
Sunday, April 24, 2016
10:00 a.m to 1:15 pm
3400 Kerbey Lane (in the studio)
3 CEU credits available for LCSWs and LPCs
$50 through April 22; $75 at the door if space is available 

Parking is available on the street and across the street in the office complex or at the school. Lunch will not be provided, but you may bring your own food. Tea and coffee are available. Some of us may go out after the seminar for lunch at Taco Deli to continue the discussion. 

Please note that the studio has several steps to get into the room. If this obstacle makes the seminar inaccessible for you, please contact me, and we will work out arrangements to make sure you can attend. If you have other accommodation needs, please note them in the "comments" section of the registration.

Out of respect for those who are chemically sensitive (including Elizabeth Galen), please refrain from wearing perfume, cologne, aftershave, or other highly scented body products to this seminar. Essential oil products used in moderation are fine.

Registration closed.

(Potential spoilers about Parenthood, season 4, below)
 
As I watched Parenthood a few months ago, the Braverman family began dealing with major health issues in season four. Grandfather Zeek was diagnosed with heart trouble, and daughter-in-law Kristina was diagnosed with breast cancer. What these two family members had in common was that they began lying to their adult children about their health. Zeek didn’t want his adult children to know that he was having health issues since the problems might not lead any trouble. He didn’t want anyone fussing over him. He preferred to use denial to cope with his health issues. For reasons that are hard to define, Adam and Kristina didn’t want to tell the family that they were facing breast cancer; they outright lied to their college aged daughter because they didn’t want her to worry or get distracted from her education.
 
Unfortunately, this tactic of coping with stressful issues is all too familiar to me. My family of origin and my ex’s family of origin tend to take the same approach to health issues: Adult children are still seen as children, and parents try to “protect” the adult children from bad news.  Yet adult children are actually adults. They are, for the most part, capable of understanding and coping with issues about life and death.
 
In my own family, my father was not going to tell me when my uncle died of ALS until after the funeral. My widowed aunt made it clear that my father had to inform me. The death was not a surprise as ALS is horrible degenerative disease. My health was not going to allow me to travel to the funeral, yet it still was the right thing to tell me about the death. My father didn’t want me to tell my children (who were ages 10 to 13), but I insisted otherwise. They weren’t close to my uncle, but they needed to know that he had died. As my father finally came to terms with my decision, he said, “I guess it’s better than them coming to visit and him not being here.” While this attempt to protect us from the pain of death was well-intended, it also failed to respect our right to know and grieve about a loved one.
 
While they say we often marry our parents, I never believed that my ex-husband was that much like my father until after we separated. Soon thereafter, my ex’s aunt died. Even though I had been a part of his family for more than twenty years, I was very much not close to her. She was an odd bird, and that’s coming from someone who proudly identifies as weird. Her health had been declining, so to me, the death was not a surprise. However, my ex chose not to tell me or our kids about the aunt’s death for 48 hours after she died. When I asked him why he delayed the news, he told me that he didn’t want to upset me. In reality, I suspect he just didn’t want to face the reality of her death by speaking to me or our kids about it.
 
With my children, I’ve broken free of this dysfunctional model of hiding important information from younger family members. I treat my teenage children as human beings who deserve to be respected; I've always done so even when they were little. While I might filter information to frame it in a way that is age appropriate, I am honest with my children about big information even if it is painful. I believe that with children, both when they are young and when they are adults, honesty is the best policy. As a result, my children know that they can always trust me to be honest with them even when they ask difficult questions that other adults won't answer for them.
 
© 2016 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

(As always, I am not a medical doctor.  This information is based on my personal experiences and should not be substituted for medical diagnosis or treatment.  Please speak to your health care providers about your personal situation.)

During the 2016 Super Bowl, I was taken completely off-guard by one commercial: a thirty second spot drawing attention to opioid induced constipation (OIC). The black and white ad was not promoting any drug in particular: It was sponsored by five pain related organizations to bring attention to this major issue for those with chronic pain who rely on opioids to reduce their misery. After it aired, I tweeted, “Wow. Attention on chronic pain in a #SB50 commercial. https://www.oicisdifferent.com/.”
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However, the popular response to the commercial was not the same. There were many uncomfortable poop jokes since our society is embarrassed to talk about natural body functions like bowel movements. Most of the negative comments, though, incorrectly and discriminatorily deemed the commercial as contributing toward junkies and the “opioid epidemic” that the CDC has decided is destroying America. Public figure Bill Maher even insensitively tweeted, “Was that really an ad for junkies who can't shit? America, I luv ya but I just can't keep up[.]” I was fairly outraged at the popular reaction, tweeting in response, “Less than amused at the abundance of ridicule by Twitter followers for the OIC commercial. If you haven't been there, don't laugh. #karma” followed by “Also, not all opioid users are junkies. That prejudice is unacceptable when so many people are in chronic pain. #oic #sb50.”

I have blogged before that I see a pain specialist. I am not secretive about this fact because I want clients and future clients to know that I truly understand their pain on a level that many are blessed not to. While my first methods of approach to almost every health related issue are natural ones, I am more than willing to admit that natural healing has its limits. When those natural methods fail, I am grateful that there are drugs available to help make life more bearable. I do not judge others who need Western medical treatment either.

I am not a wimp about pain. My twins were born in unmedicated vaginal breech and breech extraction births. For those unfamiliar with the terms, breech births are when the baby is born feet or butt first rather than head first which is the norm in about 96% of births. A breech extraction is often done in twin births when the second twin is breech. After the first baby has been born, the doctor inserts hir* entire hand into a woman’s vagina and up past the cervix, grabs the second baby’s feet, and then pulls the baby downward so that the breech birth can complete with the baby being born feet first. This is not exactly a comfortable procedure, but I did it without drugs. During the labor for those same twin births, I was arguing medical studies with the doctor on call in between contractions. This is not something most women without epidurals can do at that point in childbirth because the pain is so overwhelming, but my ability to handle the pain allowed me to do so. In my planned homebirth with my 10+ pound youngest child, I labored by myself through ten centimeters, the time when pushing begins. While I was waiting for my then-husband to shower and the midwife, assistant and doula to arrive, I had to distract myself from the pain of back labor. So to do that, I worked on putting away clean laundry while I was in transition. Again, this is the point where most unmedicated women are incapable of doing anything but laboring, yet I am a woman who is able to mentally overcome a great deal of pain through determination and personal strength.

Despite my strength and ability to overcome the pain of childbirth without drugs, I cannot conquer the chronic pain of my ongoing health battles without drugs. To be sure, I use alternative methods including meditation, acupuncture, craniosacral therapy, massage, manual lymph drainage, chiropractic, energy work, an organic gluten free diet, and over the counter legal herbs to help minimize my pain. However, even after spending thousands of dollars each month on complementary methods which keep me minimally functional, it’s not enough. I still require several prescription drugs including an opioid to allow me to be able to do things like take showers, prepare food, get myself dressed, and sleep. Without the opioids, I have absolutely no quality of life and become suicidal due to the unbearable levels of pain. With them, I am able to keep my pain levels at a 5 out of 10 instead of being at an 8+ continuously. In order to completely be pain free, I have to take doses of drugs that render me very heavily spaced out if not unconscious; as a result, I am never pain free.

When I made the decision to go on long acting opioids 24/7/365, one of the major considerations for my holistic practitioners and me was the impact that pain was having on my adrenal glands. In an oversimplified explanation, our adrenal glands sit on our kidneys and are responsible for the hormones that guide us during the “fight or flight” reflex. For someone in chronic pain, the body interprets this as trauma and is constantly in the “fight or flight” response. The adrenals are being asked to do a job they were not created to do, and often they “burn out,” leaving a person deprived of hormones they need to get through every day. The body then begins robbing hormones from other glands (such as the thyroid and reproductive system) to create the necessary adrenal hormones to keep a person functional. There then is a cascade of health problems because one’s body is so depleted from constantly fighting chronic pain. My health care providers and I agreed that the damage I was doing to my endocrine system from the pain I was enduring was not helping my healing process. It was time for me to turn to a pharmaceutical solution for pain relief.

Unfortunately, most drugs come with side effects. Opioids are no exception. The almost universal reaction to opioids is constipation. When I switched between my first and second pain specialists, the new doctor asked me, “What are you doing for constipation?” It was not a “Do you deal with constipation?” question. He presumed, rightfully, that l like others had to battle constipation in order to take opioids. While my battle has never been as horrific as it has been for some others, I still must take action every single day to make sure that I have a daily bowel movement to keep myself functional.

So how do I approach opioid induced constipation? Full force, with determination. Anything less results in a great deal more misery for me. When I first began taking opioids on an infrequent basis, I would use psyllium husks to relieve constipation. However, after a while that began to fail as my body built up tolerance to them. The next place I turned was vitamin C. I had previously been taking vitamin C to assist my completely wrecked immune system. At one point, I switched between brands of powdered vitamin C. The old brand required one tablespoon of crystals for four grams of C. The new brand required one TEAspoon of crystals for four grams of C. Not reading the label carefully, I took one tablespoon or 12 grams of C. The result was that within 30 minutes, everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, in my bowels was evacuated. That’s a mistake one only makes once! However, it also demonstrates how powerful of a laxative higher doses of C can be.

For many years, magnesium was my next approach to handling OIC. Lyme bacteria and other parasites rob the body of magnesium, so it is something I almost always need more of. However, due to absorption issues, it’s difficult to get the amount of magnesium I need in me through oral means. When one hits bowel tolerance for magnesium, the result is loose stools. In the case of OIC, it means that magnesium can act as a natural laxative. However, more recently my body has started using even small doses of magnesium to rapidly kill Lyme creating additional unbearable pain, so I have had to abandon magnesium as a laxative for the time being.

My first pain specialist had recommended Smooth Move tea available at health food stores. However, I am using Get Regular tea which, despite its long list of herbal ingredients, simply tastes like a pleasant mint tea. A web search finds many other herbal teas designed to help with constipation. I am taking Vitamin C in conjunction with the tea, and the two together are very effective for me. At some point they may stop working, and at that point, I will switch to another natural means of coping with OIC.

The public response to the commercial discussing OIC is an indicator of why those with chronic health problems which create horrid pain are treated terribly by the medical system. Those who use opioids are indiscriminately labeled “junkies.” People with chronic pain are automatically presumed to be drug seekers who are addicts contributing the downfall of the so-called “War on Drugs.” Ironically, many of the football players in Sunday’s game will end up suffering from chronic pain after having put their bodies through such intense physical trials in their younger years, and many of them will have to use opioids for pain relief as well. For the 100 million plus people who live with chronic pain, opioids can make the difference between being in bed all day every day and being able to enjoy life. They are not used to get a high for the vast majority of those in pain. They’re used to try to be remotely human.

Like most of those who struggle with chronic pain, I am not a junkie. I am a mother who eats an organic diet and keeps a chemical free home. I am a woman with a Ph.D. who runs a successful business helping others find complementary means of healing. I personally decrease the amount of drugs I can take any time my body will allow. None of these are behaviors of “junkies,” or to use a more compassionate term, people with addiction problems. However, I deal with OIC just as millions of others do. While it might have caused “your Super Bowl party [to come] to an uncomfortable pause with a black-and white ad aimed at chronic pain drug users who suffer constipation,” the commercial was speaking on a wider problem about chronic pain and its daily impact, one that our society needs to accept and research rather than judge.

© 2016 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC
 
*I use the words ze/hir as gender neutral singular pronouns.

When I first heard the title of Going Home Grown Up: A Relationship Handbook for Family Visits by Anne F. Grizzle, I knew it was a book I needed to read. Much to my delight, the fabulous content of the book more than lived up to the enticing title. While tackling a difficult and painful subject for many people, Going Home Grown Up also manages to be amusing, engaging, and highly educational. Grizzle knows her subject well and delivers it in a form that is accessible to most readers.

Early in the book, Grizzle points out something that is so amazingly clear that I sat there for quite a bit wondering how I had never thought of it before. We all know that relationships with romantic partners take effort and even work to keep alive and healthy. So why do we expect our relationships with family members to be any different? Grizzle then navigates the reader on a course of learning how to create better relationships with our families of origin and eventually with our families that we create.
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As Grizzle takes the reader through this difficult journey of creating better relationships with often dysfunctional families of origin, she utilizes vivid imagery to help make her points all the more vivid.

References to popular culture such as The Wizard of Oz, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Robert Frost, Pinocchio, and Lenin’s tomb all fill the landscape of her book, helping make Grizzle’s points clear and well-illustrated. She has amazingly keen and highly insightful wisdom peppered throughout the book. Much of it seems obvious yet at the same time, she phrases it in ways that are novel and beneficial for creating true change.

One of the most important premises of Going Home Grown Up is that we cannot change others: We can only change ourselves. Yet despite that seemingly oppressive limitation, Grizzle helps the readers to make very significant changes in their lives which have the potential to create change in the relationships they have with their families. At the same time, Grizzle is also very realistic that sometimes the reactions from family members will be the opposite of what the reader wants. She recognizes that it all can go wrong and it all can blow up in the reader’s face. In those situations, she helps prepare the reader for the worst while hoping for the best.

The book almost becomes a workbook, peppered with questions that Grizzle encourages the reader to think or journal about. Actually doing so allows the reader to stop and absorb the lessons that Grizzle shares while simultaneously applying the information to one’s own life. While the reader may have many “aha!” moments reading the text, other insights will come from working through the challenges that Grizzle lays out for her readers in text boxes scattered throughout the book.

While the book becomes a tad too religious for my taste at several points, the vast majority is such that it is acceptable to anyone of any faith or lack thereof. Going Home Grown Up helps readers accept their families rather than holding them up to unobtainable standards. Grizzle encourages her readers to take vital steps to “grow up” in their own eyes and the eyes of their families so that future family encounters can take a different tone. Even if one cannot create change in one’s family, one can create change within one’s self that will allow greater peace with the lot we have been dealt through our families.

(The file below is a list of questions that can be used for book or discussion groups or for personal journaling.)

©2016 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

(Apologies in advance for an insanely long blog post. ~Elizabeth)
 
I am a huge Josh Groban fan. I’ve loved his music since I first saw one of his earliest PBS specials. When I came out of my years of silence, his was some of the first music I found myself able to tolerate. On the nights when I was going through horrible intestinal pain that would last for untold hours on end but my now ex-husband was unwilling to be there to hold my hand and support me through that hell, it was the music of Josh Groban (and others) that I played on repeat all night long to keep myself as calm and relaxed as possible. His albums are still my default when I am dealing with pain that medication and meditation cannot control.
 
I have been battling health issues for 13 years; I was all but bedbound for two of those years and homebound for six. Slowly I have been fighting my way back to health. After successfully attending an event at a local church in September, I realized that I probably could start attending live theater and concert events again. This was something that I hadn’t expected to do be able to do for another several years, and it is a huge milestone for me in my healing journey. Fortuitously, my 15 year old daughter is taking a costuming class as an elective this year, and she’s required to go to a live performance every six weeks, anything from a free one person poetry reading in a coffee shop to a Broadway musical. As I looked for options for her (and me) to attend this school year in Austin, I found that Josh Groban was coming to Austin in October and that tickets were all but sold out (two individual tickets available in different balcony sections). I was crushed. I was talking about this with one of my health practitioners who encouraged me to look on Craigslist or to just show up the night of the show to find tickets from someone who needed to sell.
 
So back in October the week before the concert, I was looking at Craigslist for tickets to see Josh Groban. I was thoroughly annoyed at the number of businesses scalping tickets, but after a few days I eventually I found some seats on Craigslist for original purchase price located in the back of the orchestra section that were being sold by someone with a death in the family. As I sat there debating buying them, I got an intuitive hit to go check the concert hall website where I'd unsuccessfully looked for tickets previously: When this happens, it feels like there is someone in my brain loudly saying, “GO LOOK AT THE OFFICIAL SITE!” When I searched this time on the official site, there were two adjacent front row orchestra seats available (plus two adjacent seats a few rows back from that). This was actually fourth row seating because the pit was covered and three rows were added, but it was still close enough that my daughter commented after the show that Josh had a loose thread hanging from the back of the blue suit jacket he wore in the first act that was bugging her. (Yes, she is Type A, and yes, I do know which parent she got it from. Sigh. :) )
 
Josh Groban got seriously ill with a lung infection in October and had to reschedule the Austin concert. I knew when he canceled his New Orleans show a few days before that there was a huge chance that he would cancel Austin as well; I began praying for a reschedule because I didn’t want to lose those amazing seats I had gotten! When the rescheduled concert was set for December 19th, I looked at the calendar and discovered that my ex had just bought Star Wars tickets for the exact same date at the same time for the kids. Fortunately my daughter was able to grasp the concept that she could see Star Wars any time but Josh Groban wasn’t going to be available to sing at any other time. Her cousin took her Star Wars ticket, and our girls’ night was back on, just delayed by two months.
 
Last night, after overcoming all the hurdles of a disabled individual trying to attend an event at a major auditorium, my daughter and I were finally in the theater. Honestly, I sat there in shock for a bit with my hands shaking, so amazed that I was actually in Bass Concert Hall once again. A few years ago I would have said that this might never be possible. If Josh Groban had decided not to sing, I would have been disappointed but I still would have gone home incredibly happy because I simply made it into the theater. That’s how huge of a deal it was that I went last night.
 
Fortunately, though, Josh Groban performed last night despite a “full-blown sinus infection” which he claimed had him performing at only 86% though I don’t think anyone in the audience would have noticed if he hadn’t shared that information. I certainly wouldn’t have! His music was every bit as amazing as I expected it to be in person, and I enjoyed every minute of the evening. I didn’t take notes as I wanted to be fully present in and enjoying the moment, so my retelling of the evening probably has the setlist in the wrong order though it’s somewhat close to the original experience.
 
While I was expecting to be powerfully moved by this concert since Groban’s recordings can leave me in tears depending on the day, what I didn’t expect to happen was that the evening became a life review for me. As song after song unfurled, images from my life, past, present and future, marched through my mind’s eye. Some of the songs that weren’t favorites before suddenly took on totally different meanings as I found new, deep, and very emotional acceptance about parts of my life.
 
Josh Groban walked onto the stage opening with “Pure Imagination” from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a song that speaks to me of the innocence of childhood. I spent my childhood with my head in a book, the safest and happiest place for me to be, though I was actually kind of freaked out by most of Roald Dahl’s books. Groban followed this with “Try to Remember” from The Fantasticks which was the school musical in my sophomore year of high school. While our El Gallo sounded nothing like Groban, the memories still flooded back to me of that time in my life when I was the stage manager and one of my still current friends ran one of the spotlights, terrifying me by scrambling up to its rather unsafe perch. This, too, was a time of partial innocence. While my life was far from happy, I still had my health, and in no way could I foresee the struggles ahead of me in life. Only three months after that production, I began my 22 year relationship with my now ex-husband.
 
After these first two songs, Josh Groban began talking to the audience. My daughter had asked before the concert started if Groban would be doing anything about Donald Trump like he did on Jimmy Kimmel. I told her that I doubted it, and while she was disappointed in that answer, she was not at all let down by the other humor that Groban amused his audience with between songs. During this first round of talking, he explained that he knew that Bass Concert Hall was probably named after someone with the last name of Bass, but he preferred to think of it as one of those talking bass fish like the ones he gets from his aunt for Christmas each year. After having an amusing conversation with an imaginary talking bass, Groban then said for the first of two times that evening that he was highly medicated. I still can’t imagine being able to perform that well while medicated!
 
From there, Groban sang “Old Devil Moon” accompanied by an Austin trumpeter. The song has been going through my head since then including when I woke up during the night. Groban was subsequently joined by the incredibly talented singer Lena Hall for the duet “All I Ask of You” which he sings with Kelly Clarkson on the Stages album. Hall performed a solo afterward, singing “It’s a Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World” originally sung by James Brown. I could tell my daughter was really impressed with Hall’s singing as she was Googling Hall during intermission. I listened to the song thinking about the strong woman I have had to be to survive this life and knowing that my daughter is also a strong young woman, filled with self-confidence, who is going to be able to make her way in a world where women often still aren’t treated as men’s equals.
 
As he had promised earlier yesterday on Twitter, Josh Groban began a few of the songs that he has not performed on tour or in recent history starting with “Dulcinea” from Man of La Mancha. That was probably the low point of the evening for me; both my daughter and I found the red moving images on the curtains behind Groban to be disorienting and distracting. Groban also sang the first of two Christmas songs he performed last night, “The Christmas Song.” He introduced the song by saying that his album Noël (2007) had been very successful, but after its success, he was very Christmased out and didn’t want to sing Christmas songs again until now. I found this amusing because when I announced to my sons that I had bought tickets for Josh Groban in concert, my youngest asked, “Is that the guy who sings Christmas songs?” It made me realize that I play Noël around my kids far more often than any of Groban’s other albums though it’s not the album I listen to most often by any stretch of the imagination.

To close out the first half of the evening, Groban sang “What I Did for Love” from A Chorus Line. This song was one of the most moving parts of the evening as the song touched a pain in me I hadn’t known was there. As I had been thinking about my love of theater throughout the evening, I realized during this song that it was something that my ex-husband had never truly shared. He came with me to various events, but he never understood the joy they brought to me nor the passion they ignite in me. Like many other things in our relationship, that power of music and theater was something that I abandoned, and now I am regaining that lost part of my life again. Yet despite what I gave up in my relationship with him, I looked at our beautiful daughter sitting next to me, and the lyrics “Won't forget, can't regret/ What I did for love” hit me hard. Everything I put myself through in my relationship with him and everything I sacrificed was worth it for the three amazing children we are raising. Though I wish I hadn’t gone through so many years of emotional pain in a toxic relationship, I would never give up the blessings of my children.
 
The second half of the evening was no less entertaining than the first. Josh Groban began after the intermission by singing his medley of “Children Will Listen/Not While I’m Around.”  This opened a whole new level of emotional processing for me. As I had dressed for the evening, I tried putting on a labradorite pendant, but I couldn’t do it. I was intuitively being told that I had to wear my clear quartz pendant. I didn’t understand why until this medley when my heart chakra began aching terribly as the music released a great deal of stored emotional pain and the crystal helped fill the emptiness it left with healing white light. The release continued through the next few songs. This medley in particular forced me to acknowledge how horribly painful it has been for me not to have had someone on the journey who would tell me “Nothing's gonna harm you/ Not while I'm around.” This journey has certainly been one where “demons are prowling everywhere,” yet it’s one that I have had to fight without the support of a partner.
 
Rejoined by Lena Hall in a different sparkling dress than she wore before, Groban sang the duet of “If I Loved You” with her; I actually enjoyed their version more than the one with Audra McDonald on the Stages album. As I listened to these lyrics, once again I was shown some of the happiness that awaits me in the second half of my life just around the next bend. I am impatiently waiting for the day when I have a partner for the first time in hundreds of years who will love me in the way captured so beautifully in the lyrics of this song. Lena Hall then followed this with another solo singing “Maybe I’m Amazed” by Paul McCartney and which she had recorded in honor of her father, a huge Beatles fan.
 
Moving on to another set of songs not on the Stages album, Groban announced he would be singing another Christmas song. Someone from the audience screamed out, “O Holy Night” which would have been my choice had I been able to vote on the song selection. To accommodate that request, Groban instead offered up a short version of Eric Cartman of South Park singing “O Holy Night.”  It was truly remarkable; Groban is a better Cartman than Cartman I think. (I also believe this is the point where Groban again blamed his medication again for his actions.) Having somewhat satisfied the audience member’s request, Josh Groban moved on to “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” which he dedicated it to the troops who are not able to be home for Christmas as he does on Noël. During the song (which is actually my least favorite on Noël but which I enjoyed last night), I was flooded with an understanding that Christmas will never again be for me what it was in the past. It’s still a very fun event with my children who so far this year have put R2-D2 in the manger in lieu of the Baby Jesus, but it will never be the Christmas of my childhood again.
 
The next offering was “Unusual Way” which is from the musical Nine. As Groban related yet another one of his very amusing stories which in no way is captured by my summary, he said that this song was recorded but not released on the Stages album. He had seen Nine live with Antonio Banderas, and he was close enough to grasp one of Banderas’ chest hairs (ok, not really) and make a wish on it and now he was on a stage in Austin singing this song. “Unusual Way” is a song which I had never heard before but which is now on my playlist of favorites. I hope Groban releases the recording of it on a future album! This song again lead me to reviewing scenes from my past while simultaneously having an understanding of what is to come in my future.
 
When I was leaving my house for the concert, I had meant to put a wad of facial tissues in my purse because I was afraid that if Groban sang “Anthem,” I would melt into a puddle because his rendition of that song makes me cry every time without fail. Fortunately or unfortunately, “Anthem” was not on the setlist since I forgot to stock my purse. However, one of the last songs was the one which left me in tears, and not too unsurprisingly it was “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables” from Les Miserables. Groban dedicated it to the victims of Paris, San Bernardino, and all affected by the recent terrorism and violence in the world. For me, it brought on a reflection of all those from my life who are no longer alive, a melancholic reflection that often happens for me around the holidays anyway.
 
As his closing song, Josh Groban sang, “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from Carousel. If the tears hadn’t already started during the previous number, they would have commenced here. This was a song that had never particularly hit me when listening to the Stages album, but it’s now my favorite. Over the past year and especially in the last months, I have struggled with how lonely my journey back to health has been. Few of my friends have been strong enough to make it all the way through the years of illness. When I was separating from my ex-husband 4.5 years ago, I was terrified by the prospect of being alone in fighting the health problems, but what I rapidly learned was that I had already been facing it all on my own for a very long time. It was actually easier to fight the health battles without him in the same house as me draining away more of my energy. Yet that still hasn’t made it easier to walk this path alone. Finding faith and hope that I’m not truly alone has been the hardest challenge for me, especially in the recent months.
 
I’m also at a point where I’m deciding if I am going to be able to go forward in life without a wheelchair. I can walk, but on my bad days, trying to go more than a few feet is draining in an inexplicable way for those who haven’t traveled this same path I am on. So hearing Groban singing about walking, even in the metaphorical sense, prompted more tears. If the choice were just between attending events like this amazing one or not attending them, then I would have no hesitation in getting a wheelchair. However, it’s so much larger of a decision with so many other implications and issues attached that the decision isn’t simple. Thus, I was hearing something in the song that I suspect most other people in the audience didn’t hear: I was trying to understand if the “golden sky” is just around the corner or if I’m going to be living with this level of limited mobility for the rest of my life even once my health battles are done.
 
As the audience gave the first standing ovation and waited for Josh Groban to return for an encore, I couldn’t believe the show was over. It was like I had blinked and the evening was over. I felt like Groban had only sang a few songs until I came home and listed everything and realized it was really a longer evening than I thought! I also went into a bit of shock again. I had done it. I had attended a concert from beginning to end at Bass Concert Hall. I was so amazed and proud of myself for having conquered this hurdle. All I had left to do was get home which actually turned out to be easier than I feared.
 
Josh Groban returned for an encore with “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” This song has never been the same for me since it was used for Mark Greene’s death on ER in 2002; it now carries a connotation of heaven and the afterlife. I’m sure Judy Garland’s youngish death also impacts the association of the song for me. Yet somehow I left this song with an impression and a hope that the second half of my life is going to lead me to happiness that I’ve never experienced in the first half. My journey through hell is almost over and I will be emerging on the other side, somewhere over the rainbow, in a much better place than I’ve ever lived in.
 
When Josh Groban returns to Austin, I will definitely be going to see him again. The privilege of hearing him sing in person was more than words can describe. Hopefully the next time he returns, the struggles I faced in getting to the concert last night will be a distant memory, replaced with an abundance of health and love.
 
© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Bass Concert Hall is one of the the major performance venues on the campus of The University of Texas at Austin. I first entered its doors in 1991 in my first semester at UT as an undergrad to hear Maya Angelou speak. I had no idea whom she was before attending, but everyone I was friends with was going, so I went too (for free!) and experienced an unbelievably powerful evening that I will never forget.

Since then, Bass Concert Hall has been the site of many memorable events in my life. In 1996, my now ex-husband and I went to a Spanish guitar concert on gifted tickets from someone at the church I worked at. In 1998, we went to see an opera on gifted tickets from friends that were in the second to last row of the second balcony; we left after two hours because we were utterly bored and because my vertigo had become so horrific at that point. Feeling like Scarlett O'Hara, I vowed never to sit in the balconies there again! In 1999, my ex-husband walked across Bass’ stage to receive his doctorate, and I did the same in 2001. When our twins had weaned, we finally had a night out, going to see Les Miserables in 2002. We also saw Blues Clues Live with our kids. (Not exactly the best show I’ve ever seen, but our kids loved it.) In 2003, the last time I was at Bass Concert Hall, I was 37 weeks pregnant with my youngest when we went to see Dora the Explorer Live. As my 15 year old daughter and I sat within the walls of Bass Concert Hall last night waiting to hear Josh Groban sing, I was telling her the stories about all of those events as well as others in other theaters.

Since 2003, I have been terribly ill. For two years I was all but bedbound, and for six of those years I was homebound. I still am restricted by extreme fatigue, very high levels of pain and chemical sensitivities. This triumvirate has left me disabled and limited in where I can go and how long I can stay once I get there. Live theater productions have simply not been an option for me in a very long time. Only in the past few months have I reached a point where I can go to large gatherings such as a concert without getting very sick afterwards due to liver problems. However, my newest challenge in life is being able to gain access to buildings when my body is struggling to move. Despite the 25 year old Americans with Disability Act, many buildings still are not very accessible to the disabled.

Parking is a challenge for anyone on the UT campus. This is a fact of life that any Austinite knows well. When we arrived on campus a full hour before the concert, my daughter asked if there was a game at the stadium adjacent to the concert hall. I explained there is no way to hold stadium and concert hall events simultaneously at UT. There simply isn’t the parking. The chaos she was seeing was only for the concert hall. However, despite the fact that everyone deals with this situation, parking for the disabled is even more challenging when it comes to UT’s campus.

After I bought the tickets to see Josh Groban in concert, I looked into parking to see what disabled options there were. As I looked at the parking website, there were absolutely no instructions for people who are disabled as to what to do or where to park. When I looked at Bass Concert Hall’s website, there were no instructions there either even though one page claims to have “directions, parking, and accessibility info.” This is something that is free and easy to fix if one knows how to update a website. There’s really no excuse for a major venue not having instructions for disabled parking and assistance on a website.

I then called the 1-866 number for the parking website and got a customer service assistant who told me that I should buy a parking ticket in the San Jacinto garage. I asked him if he was in Austin, and he confirmed my guess that he was not. Anyone who knows anything about UT and/or disabilities would not have made that recommendation. Hence, I called Bass Concert Hall, and the woman there said that they tell people with disabilities to buy in the Dedman Drive lot (which is what I had planned to do but I was verifying my instinct). To my horror, the woman at Bass Concert Hall also confirmed there was very limited disabled parking and there was no way to buy or reserve disabled parking spots even with a state disabled parking permit. So while I had just spent $352 on two concert tickets, there was absolutely no guarantee that I would be able to get parking that would guarantee my ability to have access to the building. This seems outrageously wrong.

The day of the concert, I did almost nothing. I ran two loads of laundry so I would have clothes to wear. I ate food that didn’t require much preparation. I napped and otherwise stayed on the couch all day. This is what I have to do in order to have enough energy to attend an event like this. I stayed on the couch until 6:15 pm with my legs elevated and braced to reduce pain. I got ready to leave and departed the house at 6:30 pm. On the way there, we encountered not one but two accidents delaying our arrival time to 7:05 pm, almost a full hour before the concert. (And today, the day after, I don’t even have the energy to run a few loads of laundry. The couch is my best friend again for the entire day.) 

When my daughter and I arrived at the Dedman Drive parking, there was only one disabled spot left and only about 10 spots total available in the vicinity of Bass Concert Hall; all were quickly filling. The non-disabled spots had orange cones in front of them to reserve them for concert permit holders, so one had to get out of the vehicle to move the cones to park in them, another layer of difficulty for a person with disabilities who may or may not have an able-bodied plus one in the car. I chose not to park in the sole remaining disabled spot but instead parked a short distance away because I was in good enough shape that I could walk it that night, plus I knew it would make our departure easier by parking in the correct direction facing to get off of the campus. However, that one remaining disabled spot was filled by the time we had walked past it after parking.

When we got to Bass Concert Hall itself, my daughter and I went to the restrooms where there was already a line out the door for the women’s. The men’s, of course, had no such queue. The women’s restroom is on the total opposite corner of the building from where our tickets were. In future, I will try to buy tickets on the other side of the building. There really is only one women’s restroom on the main floor, something I wish could have been remedied during renovations a few years ago, but space doesn't exist to put one elsewhere. I knew there was no way I was going to make it back to the restroom during the intermission because I couldn’t have stood in a line of the length that would have been there at intermission. It’s simply not physically possible for me.

My daughter and I headed toward our seats at 7:15 pm. The auditorium, however, was locked until 7:30 pm. There was nowhere left to sit at this point as the benches lining the hall were filled. I am not capable of standing for 15 minutes, so my daughter and I sat on a staircase in a way that I was able to put my legs at a comfortable angle. At 7:30, we were able to take our seats and remain comfortably there until after the show was over.

I have three major suggestions for Bass Concert Hall, The University of Texas at Austin, and the services they subcontract with in order to be more disability friendly for patrons of events.

1. Put directions for patrons with disabilities on your website and/or include a phone number of a contact for those needing additional assistance.
2. Allow patrons to designate themselves as disabled when they purchase tickets or create a system of allowing patrons with disabilities to identify themselves upon arrival. Those who have done so should be allowed to have priority seating for events before 7:30 just as those who are disabled get early boarding for planes. This solves the problem of there not being enough seating in the halls for those who are disabled yet who have to arrive an hour early in order to get parking for an event. There was also a woman in my aisle who arrived later who normally used a walker; it was very difficult for her climb over all the people already in the row. She could have benefitted from advance seating as well.
3. Please designate the entire Dedman Drive lot immediately adjacent to Bass Concert Hall as disabled parking only until fifteen minutes before the event. Patrons should be required to have a state issued disabled parking permit or license plate to park in this area before that time. Tickets sold in advance for this area should require patrons to enter a disabled permit number or disabled license plate number. The current disabled parking available is severely insufficient for the number of patrons with disabilities (especially at events like last night’s which had a median age of about 50).

I have tickets to attend The Sound of Music at Bass Concert Hall in February with my daughter, and we are both excited about that. Last night’s experience will help me to have a better idea of what to do for attending this next event, but it would be nice if patrons with disabilities didn’t have to learn these lessons the hard way.
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© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

When I opened my email a few days ago, I was greeted by a notification of a post from someone on Pinterest who had told me what an idiot I was to believe in the content of a picture I had repinned. The woman was very clearly someone who worked from a victim’s mentality, the exact issue that post was working to change in people who use that approach to justify any and all of their behaviors, even ones that they are very clearly responsible for. This type of person believes that she is a victim to her genes, her environment, her upbringing, and her education. She does not believe that she has any power to overcome those things. She thinks she is justified in any failings in her life because “they” made her do it.

My response to these posts is pretty simple: I delete the nastiness, and then I hit the block button. I have a zero tolerance policy for such abusive behavior. People who want to engage in intellectual debate of an opposing view? That’s fine. But when the other side attacks me personally, calling me an idiot for my beliefs, there is no learning going on. There’s only abuse. The person has absolutely no desire to learn or grow, only to lash out at a total stranger.

This woman then used my post as a platform for her very maligned views, ones that are exactly the type I help people work through and heal once they are ready. It’s not a view I will let stand as “truth” on one of my pages. She’s welcome to post her opinions on her own pages, but I won’t tolerate that kind of attack on me or others who are my clients.
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These types of posts are rude, and they aren’t helpful to the person who put them up or to the person who received them. I don’t have to put up with that kind of behavior, and neither does anyone else on most social media. To try and convince her of another view would merely have been a waste of my breath and energy. I hope that one day she gets the healing she needs so she is not such a bitter unhappy person, but I will not be the healer to help her along the way.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

One of the causes of conflict around the holidays is the problematic phrase, “This is how we have always done things.” Traditions are wonderful, but there are times when traditions need to adapt and change. Human life is full of change, and as our lives change, so too do our traditions need to morph to fit the new circumstances.

One of the more difficult times for “what we’ve always done” is when a new member joins the family, usually through marriage. As a new family unit is formed, the extended family has to shift its traditions a bit to welcome and accommodate the new member who also is coming from an extended family. However, some families don’t welcome new members with love. Instead, past tradition becomes more important than meeting the needs of the present members.

When I married my now ex-husband, I entered into a small extended family, most of whom lived in the same metropolitan area as my family. My ex has no first cousins as his paternal uncle and maternal aunt never married. The grandparents had no extended relations in the area either. It was just a small family gathering at Christmas time.

In contrast, my paternal aunt’s husband (my uncle by marriage) was one of seven children all of whom had married and had children. For their clan to get together, it took considerable arranging. They had held their holiday gathering on Christmas Day for a very long time in order to accommodate all the involved people. As a result, my paternal relatives gathered on Christmas Eve. There was really no way to change the meeting to Christmas Day if we also wanted my aunt and her nuclear family to join us.

Thus, when I married into my ex-husband’s family, we let them know we would be spending Christmas Eve with my family and Christmas Day with his. His parents protested that we should spend Christmas Eve with them even when we explained the dynamics of why my family could not change their gathering time. You would have thought we had declared his family unworthy of any celebration. The verdict from his parents came down, though: They would be opening presents on Christmas Eve, and if we wanted to partake, we would cancel our time with my family and join them because “this is how we’ve always done it.”  

On Christmas Eve, we joined my family, and his family opened presents without us. There were no young kids involved in his family's gathering: I was actually the youngest one involved in the celebrations in that city. I was clearly able to wait a few more hours to open gifts, but the rest of them were not. What his family symbolically told us that year was that their traditions were far more important than making sure we were included. They were not going to change to welcome a new family member and her extended family into their world. They were going to do what they had always done and it was up to us to show our allegiance. Clearly I was annoyed (at best) by this uncharitable behavior. It had been painful enough to know that I was not welcomed with open arms to the family when we got engaged, but this further drove the point home that tradition meant more than current family members.

I spent the first 24 Christmases of my life in Missouri even though I only lived there for eight of those years. After one miserable Christmas in Austin, I returned to spending Christmas in Missouri for several more years. When my grandfather died, traditions changed again. I’ve never spent another Christmas in Missouri. And that is part of life. When change happens, it’s far more important to figure out what the loving thing is to do rather than trying to force a tradition onto a situation that may not be able to accommodate the ways of the past anymore.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

There is no question that the first holidays after a baby dies are difficult, just as it is with any person who dies. The first year without my grandfather (who died December 8th) at Christmas was difficult for all of us. But with an infant, it’s different. Holidays, especially Christmas, are supposed to be about the kids. It’s about their joy. My daughter Rebecca would have been 6.5 months old at her first Christmas-- the perfect age to love the paper and the boxes far more than anything they contained.

The first Thanksgiving after my daughter died, my now ex-husband and I took the escape approach to the holidays. We didn’t normally visit family for Thanksgiving, so instead we took a week long hotel camping trip to west Texas and east New Mexico to see Big Bend, El Paso, Guadalupe Mountain, Carlsbad Caverns, and White Sands. We spent Thanksgiving Day with a friend’s parents who were on their own, too, since the grown children lived in other cities. When we got about an hour outside of Austin, my ex broke down over the fact we were taking the trip without Rebecca. I tried to point out to him that if she had lived, we wouldn’t have taken the trip because there was no way I was taking a six month old on a float trip and caving, but my point was moot. His distress was just another part of grieving her absence. She wasn’t going to be with us no matter what we chose to do that Thanksgiving.

On Thanksgiving day, I got a positive pregnancy test. By Christmas, I was deep in the throes of all day sickness (falsely called morning sickness by some twisted soul). We also had two foster dogs in addition to our two canine family members; one of the foster dogs was very sick with what turned out to be distemper. The message that our families gave us that year was painfully clear: They didn’t want us to come visit them for Christmas. That was one of the hardest parts of the holiday. It felt like no one wanted to see us because it would have forced them to deal with their grief about our absent daughter. If we didn’t show up, they could pretend the whole thing never happened. The following year when our subsequent babies had safely arrived we were welcomed back in the fold. But that first year after her death, we were personnae non gratae. We were harbingers of death.

In years since then, we’ve done various observances to keep Rebecca’s memory alive and part of our family celebration. We have several Christmas ornaments given to us over the years by various friends that commemorate her life. We put an angel teddy bear on top of the tree. When the kids were young, we took Christmas pictures with an angel teddy bear (pictured above) in them, too, to symbolize her absence. We often adopt a child who is the same age she would have been the same age through a social relief organization to provide gifts in her memory.

Honestly, though, that first Christmas hurt like hell. There’s nothing that can stop that pain. All the remembrances help a slight bit, but there is nothing to fill the absence of a loved one. The only thing to do is feel the pain, grieve the loss, and know that one day things will be different. Each “first” is incredibly hard. One day, though, the pain will no longer feel so hellishly deep. There comes a point where if one does intense healing work, the memory of a loved one lost too soon can bring happiness rather than agony.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC