Lefty

 Left-handedness

I woke up one day as a left-handed person. I had a cancer called LMS Sarcoma in my right arm. The cancer’s removal meant my right arm was in a sling.

    I did a little research into left-handedness. Historically, right handedness was considered good and left-handedness was associated with evil, with criminality. These neuromyths were discounted over decades as left handedness went from evidence of evil to stupidity to weakness to creativity.

    Recently, a large international study said 10% of people in the world are left-handed.The research shows being forced to change hands from left-handed to right handed as a child does not help the brain. It actually complicates learning in children. However, becoming left-handed as an adult does have benefits in thinking.

    It’s interesting if a little distracting to find yourself considering wilder alternatives. A sarcoma is a rare lump like cancer which grew rapidly in my arm. Sitting with fear, accepting the diagnosis, thinking through treatment options and doctors recommendations is like being transported to a different landscape.

    At this stage, post surgery I notice how much loss there is in the cancer. My son died almost 7 years ago. Both events have the feeling of stepping through a door. The door closes behind you. You cannot go back. Your perception, your reality, your emotional landscape are instantly different upon hearing a few critical words; you have cancer. Your son died today.

 

    It isn’t just the clichéd awareness of your own mortality. You can see how time works on the fabric of your life with a before and after. In the first days;, it’s odd how the world can change inside and stay the same outside.

    Waking up left-handed was mild but physical evidence of change outside. Left-handedness is clumsy, requiring asking for help to cut food, to open things. Being unable to use the capable, confident hand made me feel somehow ashamed. Like deep loss, everything was harder but ironically required more internal strength.

    I believe a high level of uncertainty is present in all losses. We question the future. We question our perceptions of the past. Uncertainty can send me into a spin of endless questions and choices.

 

    What did I do to cause this cancer? Should I have eaten healthier, stayed out of the sun? Could I have handled stress better?

    What should I have done differently to keep my son alive? What were the critical mistakes? I believe I was biologically wired to keep my son alive. I wasn’t able to do so. What I accept is I can never know that a change in my behavior would have changed the outcome. There is a twisted comfort in the after.

    After my son died,I travelled to places I’ve always thought about, did things I’d always wanted to do. I see from my this new perspective, I was learning to live with an understanding of the power of a before and after. My life became richer, even carrying loss.

    This time, loss was mixed with the fear of losing my own life. The sarcoma had attached to my arm bone. The surgery involved removing the cancer and performing a bone graft.

    A piece of my arm bone had to be removed.  A piece of bone from my right legs’ fibula bone was cut out and put in my arm. It sounds radical doesn’t it? I have a working arm due to the hard work of a team of surgeons. I am grateful.

    I think there is a sense of obligation with loss. It’s up to me to appreciate this gift of life through living on. It’s up to me to live fully.

    With the loss of my son,I surrendered to pain. Surrender helped me to acceptance. I will always feel pain over his passing. 

 

    With cancer, the biggest surrender occurred on the way to the operating room. How can there not be surrender when you are unconscious and allowing people to perform surgery on your body? 

    I think about the juxtaposition of loss and physical changes to an individual. How does the outside sometimes mirror the inside? Scars are confirmed evidence. Grief and emotional pain feel physical and can show.

 

    One of the ways I explained the pain of my son’s death was to say it was like somebody had pulled off one of my arms. I was talking about my right arm. The arm with the greatest capacity to care for me, to care for my children. The primary arm cooking food for my family. The arm I counted on the most.

    What I meant was the loss felt like a part of me was suddenly gone. It is illuminating and sad to understand the value of my right arm from this new perspective.

    As a psychotherapist, I acknowledge the impact of my clients’ stories and work on my life. I am a believer in the power of stories; the ones we tell ourselves and others. 

    My own sense of hope has grown hearing the incredible variety of ways people solve their problems. How different our perspectives are, as we mix our history with our current lives and problems.

 

    I think about, as a lefty, how to create my life story differently with this after body and after story. Loss does leave you a rough map. And helping others through loss helps me. Despite being left-handed, limping and in recovery from cancer and surgery... I know how to go forward. 

    Yes, I’m surprised by the beauty of small details walking slower on a familiar path. But I love to run. I want to be someone who loves running and notices the small details. A way of me trying to live with before and after to create a new solution.

    The world is a random and chaotic place; a mysterious landscape. I take comfort knowing the answers to my life questions have changed over the course of my lifetime. That, I believe, will continue.

"DARE MIGHTY THINGS" Teddy Roosevelt

Life is full of uncertainty. I have faced crossroads many times. I know what it feels like but what is always challenging is which way to go.

 I know where I am now.  I know what I am grateful for, I know who and what I love; I carry these in my backpack. Today, Having these gifts with me, sustains me. Hiking is not just what I love. It is a metaphor for my internal landscape.

 This coming year, I'll dare mighty things. Physically but also emotionally and mentally. The saying, with age comes wisdom...I know it as with age comes an understanding and compassion for my flaws; my mistakes keep happening. And a commitment to continue to do good when I can, where I can despite my own limitations and fears. There is enough evidence of evil. I want to be evidence of good. 

Happy Holidays!

Letter to Don Henly/ The Eagles

Dear Mr. Henly

I listened to your song "The End of the Innocence" today. I was driving down a wide street on a beautiful fall day; clear blue sky, Maple and Oak trees in full red and yellow bloom. I thought about how old age is our chance to throw it all out there like the trees. Show all this incredible color before dying. The trees, inspire me by doing this transformation again and again. 

The lyrics, “Lay your head down on the ground, let your hair spill all around me” made me sob out loud. Amidst all this beauty is the suffering, the wrongness of what is happening right now. It is truly another chapter in the end of the innocence.

I feel whatever happens from now on, another evil has been let loose upon the world. I believe good is stronger but honestly, I do have some despair. The evil has grown with the explicit and implicit consent of so many of us. 

Anyway, I am writing to thank you. Your words, years later, made me think, made me cry, made me go from hopelessness to the comforting image of being held by the earth, on another human’s shoulder. 

The feeling of comfort made me think; the end of the innocence shouldn’t happen in silence, right? We should go all out to fight evil even if we have to do it again and again and again. 

Thank you,

September

 The oak tree in the backyard is finally turning yellow. I'm always reminded of these photos I took with Andrew and Nadia when the tree was fully yellow. He was teasing her. There was a moment where they stood barefoot, side by side against the huge trunk with outspread yellow arms. They looked so cute. It's a sweet memory in my mind.  A spontaneous moment. 

I know someone else whose son has died. The death hit me hard. Usually I'm calm hearing about the loss of children but this opened up this dark place in my heart. I fully felt that familiar pain for the first time in a while. A part of it was about the season.

I realized a couple years ago how hard September is for me. It's all about the scars... I know there were some bad September's in Andrews life which I won't detail here. The scars hurt in September; an aching pain about all the lost opportunities, the pain and suffering he endured in some Septembers. Me watching, worrying and trying to help. I question my choices less but I still do it. I remind myself he loved starting school, sports, seeing friends for most of his life, too.  

I fought this insight because I used to love September, love Fall. I'm hoping I'll have some September goodness at some point in the future. Here we are in October. I'm appreciating the beauty of fall again. I know Fall gets married with loss; the name Fall, the leaves falling. The color, to me, seems a reminder to bloom. To stretch yourself fully even as you know you will die. To think about hope and faith in a future; looking forward and enjoying this transformation now. 

Anyway, the pain has passed a bit. In psychotherapy, it's called an anniversary reaction. A way the body and spirit know without the mind having the first acknowledgement. It's inner knowing. I am a big believer. I have seen it, felt it. Intuition is powerful and underused. I'm trying to use mine as much as I can. It's a gift, I believe. 

Barry Lopez

 Ive just finished a book I started years ago. It was one of those books that made me too sad. So, I put it aside. This week, I picked it up and became absorbed, finished it. It was Embrace Fearlessly The Burning World, by Barry Lopez. I love his writing. Barry Lopez died in 2020. This was his last book. 

I'm also reading another book, quite good so far, called The Correspondent. It's about an older woman who writes actual letters to people over the course of her entire life. I was reminded of how in this blog, I wrote to a nature writer, to my dad. I decided to start doing that again. Letters are such a wonderful short form. And writing to someone specific works for me. 

Dear Barry Lopez

    I love the title; Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World. It speaks to me of courage. We are all being asked to stand up these days. More so than when you finished the book. The title helps. You are a truly great writer. Your words make me feel and think about things I didn't even know I wanted to feel and think about.  Your words make me fiercely want to be a better writer. To write even close to how well you wrote...that would be an accomplishment. Years ago, I went to an event and had you sign one of your books. I digress.

Mr. Lopez, in the Lessons from the River chapter…Near woods vs the Deep Woods. I was able to identify a feeling which has been sweeping into my consciousness and then ebbing away. Sometimes, I don't explore sad or loss feelings. They touch my losses too much. It's sort of like taking the lid off a box. It's too much all at once. 

   I explored the feeling today, sitting on my deck with the huge Maple and Oak trees branches sweeping the sky.  I am thirsty for the deep woods; the silence, the remoteness from human sounds. There is a sweetness inside I feel which belongs only to that silence outside. There is a whole part of me, this is hard to explain but I think you might understand, a part of me that I hear so much better there. I miss her.  

    I live on the border of the near woods. I walk my dog almost daily on a crooked tarred path at the bottom of a ravine which starts in my backyard. The forest extends at the path about a mile in one direction. The houses and development come close in the other direction, passing a long marsh, past an elementary school. 

    

    Over the summer, some fierce storms took down more trees than I have ever seen in my 27 years here. They were big trees; some Maples, some Cottonwoods. Some fell into the arms of  other trees. Some fell across the river winding through the area. Some lost arms in big splintering chunks. Seeing this uprootedness has tossed me around a bit. I don't know why I assumed the forest would change in a predictable way. 

  Learning and comfort have come from noticing more. I learned to look for the wild Rhubarb mingling with the thistles, stand watching the waving branches of a cottonwood separate but not alone on the edge of a Marsh, see the stand of birch trees tucked into a slope waving in the wind. These are signs of constancy as are the trees. 

 I try to be alert for the animals and for my dog. Once, an owl landed twenty feet in front of me. A hawk flew directly over my head and into the trees as if saying hello. I've seen deer standing still,  merging in the  brown woods, watched them leap in front of me. I saw a nest of baby foxes and their mother standing guard. A coyote looked at me sprinting across the path. Wild turkeys with their shiny feathered prehistoric ugliness cackling in the woods next to me. 

    I’ve taken so many photos. I only look at them when I go away because I miss the forest. She has become like a friend; a comfort, a peace giver. My experience of the near woods has human sounds mixed with no sound.  Daytime, I  hear the roar of trucks, the passing of traffic, and this summer, the beep of road construction. 

   Why do I lately thirst for the deep woods silence? That silence, on a mountain top, in a place so remote as to be inherently dangerous. It's been a noisy summer of storms, smokey air and road construction. Still, I feel greedy. It's not easy financially, physically to go there. I have the resources, used judiciously. 

    As I write this, I'm thinking how I can go there. I know winter, if we have snow, will muffle some of the sounds but others thrive across the top of it. I didn't find that type of silence in Iceland or Scotland; my last two trips. I found it in Nepal; not on the top of a mountain but hiking across the flanks. I've found it in the Boundary Waters especially in the morning or evening. No sounds and calm water; the silence of a green wilderness.  On reflection, I'd like to find that silence here in the United States. It would give me hope. I'll think on it a bit. 

Thank you,

Margot Storti-Marron

Uprooted

August spirals into summer’s end and the beginning of Fall. The acorns from the Burr Oak , half eaten by busy squirrels are kerplunking like the slow rain, onto the deck again. What must it be like; abundance and the feasting of harvest carried with a muted signal of too little on the slowly drying, green horizon.  

I walked the dog down the marsh path today. Huge leaves of wild rhubarb, pockmarked with insect holes, line the path. Thistles weeds with their pink blooms are intermarried among them. Milkweed, a steady influence persists nearby. And what I call the fairy webs of spiders are sprinkled in the wet, cool grass. The wooden bridge across the marsh is a long green tunnel. I stood on the railing for the calming view of a sea of swaying cattails leading to a horizon of dark smudged trees. 

The almost weekly storms have left a large number of sticks everywhere. The dog just steps over them now. He’s become a connoisseur of sticks. It's harder to step past are the wind snapped branches like the inner white arm of a tree limb with a jagged edge ripped from nearby tree dangling into the path. 

There are four large trees, at least 100 years old, with their huge trunks toppled sideways, roots half exposed who fell into the arms of their fellow trees. Now, they bear them like burdens. Living at the edge of a forest has taught me Nature, harsh, beautiful, and responsive is about the big picture. Life goes on as it can. 

My own losses should have taught me the impossibility of bargaining with fate. Some changes do just happen. The neighbors house caught fire in a lightning strike a few weeks ago. The front door and her beautiful garden are intact but the top is open to the sky. Since then, I’ve been considering the comfort of magical thinking. Our house seems so sturdy. It’s been here for a long time. We have survived lots of storms. Those facts don’t prevent a lightning strike. 

The deer, foxes and other forest animals are working harder to survive in this summers’ conditions. So much to eat but so much rain, storms, so many bugs, mud, smoke from forest fires to navigate to get food. They persist because they have to which means they want to..survive.   

Today, as I write this, our street has been converted to dirt. The sewer pipe replacement project has reached our front door. The pounding and dredging of large equipment, the immense concrete pipes are laying on our lawns. I’ve moved cars, circled the street to avoid the holes and shrug my shoulders about the dirt and the noise. This is, eventually, about a good change. It’s temporarily uncomfortable.

Our Hosta salad garden for the deer, is growing again. The deer, probably frightened by the noise and heavy equipment moving ever closer, are not venturing into our backyard.

     We tried everything to get the deer to stop eating the Hostas. I have accepted the some Hostas will be eaten. Also I love seeing the deer up close. The sight of them releases beauty into my heart. Do I think they could live without my Hostas? Have I eaten deer? Yes to both questions. Change is, I guess, not pure but messy and ongoing. 

This summer with the changed forest, the changed streets, the changed neighbors house; I see change every time I look outside. It isn’t my choice. It is my view of the world.  How much change happens to us all every day? How much do we acknowledge, how much do we ignore, avoid every day? I too, persist because I have to. It’s fate again; not a bargain but what I can do as me. It seems a poor answer. Doing nothing seems a worse one. 

Doing nothing is sometimes a form of giving up. For me, failure leaves as much pain as giving up. I’d rather act. Honestly, I’m enjoying driving my car on the bumpy dirt streets. I love seeing the deer. I’ll keep praying and showing up for my neighbors. And in this season of storms, of change, I am accepting global warming is here.  Nature and I may be able to persist. The question is how much will I have to accept and how much will I refuse to accept. All of which means I’ll have to change. 

Iceland

 

Dark blood red rock covered with

cerulean green moss. 

A lumpy land with water cascading; 

thrumming, drumming, pounding, 

speaking eternity. Endless power

reduces me. There is my proper 

size in the universe's eyes. 

A visit to coarse black sand beaches with

dark obelisks scattered on shore and

water. Am I seeing what

happens after?  The remainder of time. 

Those thick white sheets descending 

into ragged edges.  Each form fully combined 

with power. I saw people shaken inside,

say they loved you.You gave us,

them joy. Hearing you sing echoes inside. 

Thoughts

 In my work as a psychotherapist, I am fascinated by how often a persons’ stories interact with their natural landscape. How much of their identity is tied to their "home" landscape.  I’m curious about identity. How does our mobile culture, where people move frequently, untethered from the landscape of home… impact identity? 

Identity is basically our personality traits and values, roles over time and impactful life events. Identity changes over our lives. I was born in San Francisco. Memories are the sound of the sea and the smell of Eucalyptus trees. When I smell Eucalyptus, I access the girl who spent most days finding solace in green park spaces.  When I visit, I remember her better. If any landscape would be my home, wouldn’t it be my childhood home? Instead, in San Francisco I feel bittersweet; seeing the familiar and how it and I have changed. Would I feel differently if I had lived through the changes? 

I moved a lot between then and now; settling in Minnesota behind an old growth forest of oaks and maples. Those huge trees have anchored me.  I watch them thrashing in storms, standing green leafed arms outstretched, barren and still in a cold winter. How old, how much they witness just standing there! I have been comforted and able to bear more in my own life. I feel I have grown some patience and perspective with their silent help. 

 I believe there is a type of learning we can’t get from each other, from AI, from any other place but the natural world. We can learn how to know ourselves better from interacting with the unknowable and to most of us, the beautiful. I have always loved the quote, "And what shall I love, if not the enigma?"

As a therapist, I listen to stories. . One of the most curious and inspiring type of stories is the “fight for love.” I don’t mean romantic love. I mean when loving is hard and challenging. When loving changes you but… you do it anyway. 

It could be helping a family member through illness, loss, financial hard times. It could be fighting for land, community.  I have heard farmers say they love the land. It could be the hard fight for the voiceless which includes love of nature, animals, the vulnerable. The point is the person fighting is mostly motivated by love, not hatred or justice.. although other values are usually involved. Motivation can be a murky business.

I have noticed some themes in those stories. Giving up is thought about and even happens silently, again and again. Acceptance of how hard this is and renewed willingness to keep going, happens again and again.It's rare I hear someone fully commit and not question their commitment at some point. To me, it seems human when we are suffering to question even if the answer is always the same. 

A challenging love helps us learn about how we love; positive and negative. The recommitting, the sticking it through.  Support from strangers, friends, relatives seems to be pivotal, synchronistic. Also, the negatives; people saying you should give up, you are crazy, it’s hopeless.  Many people have told me the “stop it' comment has the strongest opposite impact. 

Recently, I was in another country. I met people who were concerned, angry, disgusted by what was happening in my country. And so am I. When we finished talking I said but… I love my country. And they nodded. They understood. 

I realized in that moment, part of my identity doesn’t have to be about living in a certain landscape. I have a national identity. I love this country. This country is home, in a very broad, only way I know, definition of home. One of the inspiring things about the fight for love is choice. We can choose to fight for what we love about our country. It will change us. That’s the way love works. And what better to change us, then love?

 Andrew’s birthday today. It’s a harder day this year. I had this great photo pop into to my head. So I went with it. Andrew telling me what post… it’s a very happy photo at his birthday party. That great belly laugh! I miss my boy today. 

Piano

Driving through the blue gray

sky, the piano is moving her

Soft hammers sounding out

the dark bells of loss.

The cool air of spring is on

my cheek. Molecules are 

whispering in my ears, swirling 

into my brain. Pushing 

through my helpless chest 

into living cells.

We are all the same substance 

full of a million holes.

Leaking out and taking in.

This tender world is saying

You are sad. Go easy, go easy