Attic-dust

The lone bulb sways and flickers
As I travel up the steep stairs
To the attic of my mind.
A place I know too well.
Balancing on wooden beams of philosophical wanderings, big questions, and endless observations.
Don’t fall through.
Life is as gray as the bits of dust
suspended in the dull light.
Containers everywhere.
The only area where I feel it is okay
to take up space.
Leaning over the last wooden beams,
I peak into the abyss.
I like it.
The way it goes on forever.
But eventually I have to get back,
Back to my emotions, back into my body.
Maybe I was gone for a second.
Maybe I was gone for a day.
But you’ll know I’ve been there.
Because that attic-dust,
It sticks.

Searching for frozen songbirds

Dancing to stream music

“Do wolves dance?” Asked the person who had obviously never met a wolf.

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Life is an endless cycle of seasons. There are seasons for pain and grief. Seasons where we lean into our suffering, really feel it. Then there are seasons where we may need a break, when we relentlessly search for a glimmer of joy. We reach into freezing cold waters of newly melted streams, turning over countless stones in search of it. But even when it seems there are no glimmers in sight, we realize that the stream makes music, music for dancing.

Gratitude: an invitation to expand perspective

Gratitude and thankfulness are the vehicle through which we experience and recognize the goodness of the world. But often times we sell ourselves short. We stand in the sparkly beauty of fresh snow, staring at our feet and say, “That’s good, I’m grateful for that.” But we fail to look up and see just how far the snow goes. We fail to recognize the expansiveness of it all. We chalk gratitude up to lists, to things we can count on our fingers, we think it exists only because we recognize it. But goodness is so much bigger than that and it exists whether we choose to see it or not. Goodness splays its sparkly softness across mountain tops, down low valleys and it even nestles itself into pockets deep down in the seemingly darkest places of peoples’ lives. By being grateful we recognize what was already good by choosing to look up, by choosing to expand our perspective. It is everywhere the light touches, and everywhere it doesn’t, it is in the sparkly snow, and it is in the cold air we pull deep into our lungs reminding us we are alive. Goodness can be found anywhere, we need only to accept the gift of looking up.

Sage: a story of mountain rebirth

Anyone who has spent any amount of time in the mountains can probably testify to the extremist nature of everything. Even in the most serene of settings, like enormous evergreens slouching and weighted down with a fresh snowfall and a quiet that is so thick and heavy it envelops everything. Then, in a moment’s notice, an avalanche breaks loose, snapping and uprooting trees and rocks no man could move on his own. It plows down with a force so intense nothing survives in its path. You can revisit the aftermath in the spring once the snow has melted to reveal mounds of snapped timber. But peaking up from the devastation are little lime-colored aspen leaves and one is reminded that out of destruction, there is rebirth.

The seasons themselves come on with extremes. Spring bursts forth from winter with the intensity and passions of a first love. One day it’s snowing and the next could be sunny, rivers raging and full with mountain snowmelt. Flowers appear everywhere in pastel purples and fire reds as hummingbirds make their appearance. There’s a mad rush of survival. Animals emerging to take advantage of the short periods for food, warmth and raising young. The dirt road in front of my house becomes marked with bear tracks. Giant lumbering paws accompanied by smaller baby ones, even the beasts of the mountains are awake from their winter slumber.

And I guess there is something to that, that marvelous duplicity of rushing extremes and yet this quiet contentment and acceptance in the middle of it all. There’s an ability to truly be alive.

If one story can crystallize the complexity of that it would be my birthday last year. We were hiking a local peak with the dogs and making good timing. We made it to the summit well before noon and assumed we had beat the afternoon mountain storms. The summit was full of people, celebrating, drinking, taking photos, puffy clouds full of dimension were casting shadows as far as I could see in the distance. And then in natural mountain fashion, everything changed.

“Everyone get down now! Get off of the summit and spread out!” A man yelled, his voiced laced with panic that ensued a sudden, collective adrenalin-rush and activated nervous systems scrambling to make it down the mountain all at once. Then I realized what was happening. The metal bead on my baseball hat started to buzz, a crinkling popping sound and sensation moved across my skin and scalp unlike anything I had ever felt before. My hair stood on end with an eerie, electric, living energy. The first strike of lightening hit somewhere in the distance and the sky that just moments ago had been painted with Bob Ross puffy softness had been completely transformed by a thick blanket of black. In an instant, rain came pelting from the sky and the boulder like rocks of the summit were now slick and shining. One could only move so fast without risking a fall.

My heart was bursting forward, the adrenaline and cortisol was coursing through my veins, but I could not move as fast as my survival brain was beckoning me to. Like a nightmare where one can only run in slow motion, I scrambled over slippery rocks seeming to get nowhere. Lightening continued and cracks of thunder rattled me to the core as we all rushed for the safety of treeline. I had enough basic Information to know I could take a lightening position curled up and low to the ground but knowing we were on the highest peak for quite some distance was enough to want to get off of the lightening rod all together. Hail started and came down with such force tiny red welts began to spring up on my arms and legs. The hail was building up in piles across the rocks and trail, tearing down the wild flowers that lined the path. We had miles to safety, scambly, technical miles that went on forever. And this was enough time to reduce me to a swirling mess of adrenalin, obscenities, and desperate prayers for survival. But after maybe 30 minutes, it all started to dissipate.

This weird acceptance or perhaps complete exhaustion of my nervous system took over. My body stopped startling with each crack of thunder. The hail stopped hurting. And I found this moment of strange satisfaction about the way it crunched under my feet. Just as quickly as the storm had enveloped me, this weird calm and indifference took over. I looked up at the clouds, swirling and roaring in dark greys and blacks.

“We made it!” Someone shouted ahead of me and then around me, I noticed the trees. The same trees I had looked at from above that were mere dashes smaller than my pinky finger nail. The same trees’ shelter that I had longed for with such intensity when the storm started. I breathed out heavily and felt my heart, still pounding forward, my body shaking out the stress of it all.

I wiped my drenched hair from my eyes and looked up and beyond the tree tops, now there was nothing but blue skies. Skies so blue they made me question the validity of my own senses. There was one more distant rumble of thunder in the distance and just like that, it was finished. The insects awakened to sing in gratitude and the sun beat down with such force and richness it was if I could see the wetness all around me evaporating. The hail piles began to disappear like magic and my own skin and clothes seemed to dry almost instantly. My exhausted nervous system became one with the sunshine that bathed me in a contentment so heavy it seemed to be in the air around me too, the only thing left holding me upright.

The sun baked and held the earth and trees as if it were comforting a child, as if it were apologizing for the storm. The wet sage brush in the sun released a fragrance so sweet and strong it was like incense.

And as I stood there, a thought occurred to me. Perhaps the Creator himself was baptizing me anew. Perhaps the Creator had brought me through the darkness to the sharpest pinnacle of my fears, held me and comforted me in the sun as I was born anew, and then anointed me with the sacred incense of the mountains. I held my hands in front of me to see that I was no longer shaking. I was calm and yet my heart was bursting forth with life, life in the present moment.

And to this day, I can still feel it. That anointed fragrance has absorbed down into the deepest marrow of my bones. I carry it with me. And to this day, I can say with fervency, I am alive.

Embracing Expansiveness: Accepting I’m only human

I was standing there in Girdwood, Alaska, freshly fallen snow all the way up to my knees. The expansive, looming mountain tops boasted a fresh white blanket, covering their trees and rocky faces. I wiggled my toes to feel them again. My breath was an endless reappearing and disappearing cloud until I tugged my snowboarding scarf up over my nose. And for a brief moment, I entertained the thought that somewhere in the world there was a beach. A warm, tropical, sun-soaked beach. It wasn’t that I wanted to be there, I just wanted to be able to embrace that complexity. I wanted to be able to stand in that snow and know, like actually know with every fiber of my being, somewhere a beach existed in that very same moment. But I couldn’t. Because even though my mind could know that, my heart was still in the snow. 

Compartmentalizing would be the fancy, clinical term for it. Us mental health therapists have lots of those kind of words. Enough of them to start sounding unintentionally pretentious pretty quickly once someone asks you to talk about what you do for a living. 

Compartmentalizing. 
It’s when you put things in boxes with labels, only opening one at a time. It’s when your mind shuts doors and refuses to accept the complexities and expansiveness of life. It serves to protect you. And containment in and of itself is not a bad thing. I guess I just realized I was over-contained.

Because I do it a lot. I put things in boxes and never want to open them again.

Not just when I’m in Alaska either. I go to work everyday where I am honored to hold the most vulnerable parts of people’s lives. I hold the trauma, I hold the space for their healing and then I go home and open some other box of who I am. But sometimes I leave the trauma box open.

Someone can tell me they got engaged and I can smile but really I may think, “Wonder how much the wedding will cost… wonder how many impoverished kids that would feed over the summer when school’s out… wonder if any of the kids or teens I work with will have the luxury or opportunity for something like a wedding.”

That’s because if you’re not careful, trauma changes you. Even realist, already semi-cynical, not-very-emotional, me. I mean I was the kid who drew cheetahs running around with bloody gazelles hanging out of their mouths. I saw the world the way it was, even in its messiness and wasn’t afraid of it. I never tried to run from it. Often, I ran right to it. 

Maybe that’s why I ended up in social work.
 My first gig in the field was in residential treatment for teen males. Every soul that entered that building had a rap sheet like you wouldn’t believe, and a childhood trauma history like you really wouldn’t believe. I remember thinking, “How is it that you are even here breathing, still going through the motions in a world that has been so cruel to you?” It gave me some empathy. I’d often also think, “Damn I’d probably done all the same things if I had had your life.” 

I really thought I could handle it. I was praised and pointed out for my calmness, my ability to navigate crises seemingly unnerved. My ability to walk up to the same kid who may have called me a bitch 53 times the day before (yes I’d count) with a fresh, unrattled attitude and a smile. But thinking your invincible is sometimes the worst thing you can do for yourself. Refusing to accept your vulnerabilities just causes the pain to become like a creeping mold, consuming you slowly from the inside out. 

And when I used to walk to my car at the end of the day, and reach for the door handle, I couldn’t keep my hand steady. I would shake. And I hated myself for that. I wanted to be as strong as everyone thought I was, as strong as I felt I was supposed to be. I would go to happy hours, laughing the loudest, swirling my big glasses of wine like I was the most careless person in the world, but really, I hurt like hell. 

One day after navigating some suicidal threats, attempting to break up several fights, and listening to a horrific sexual abuse story, I was called down the hall to assist my coworkers in a restraint of an older teen. I remember helping to hold him down, he’s screaming at me, trying to spit on me, calling me every name in the book, but his eyes, they just looked sad. 

And it was then that I could literally feel it. The pain took a life of its own and I could feel the trauma and suffering flooding from him into me. 

Afterwards, my supervisor sung my praises for another day well done. He said something along the lines of, “Your calm leadership is so appreciated here,” I smiled and nodded but my body reverbated with something ugly, something so much bigger than me. I held my arms out in front of me, turning them and scanning them with my eyes. I wasn’t bleeding or bruised but I wanted to be. I wanted some physical ramifications of my experience, but it was invisible. 

I went to the car at the end of my shift that day and held my hand out in front of me. I watched myself shake. Instead of brushing it off, I just allowed myself to watch that. And for the first time in probably years, I cried. I sat in my car shaking and crying and just accepting it. Accepting all of my vulnerabilities, all of my humanity, and most terrifying to me, all of my limits. 

That was years ago. 

But I still have moments where I have to remind myself I’m human. I still have moments where I have to say, “It’s okay, Kristina. It’s okay that you feel that way, it makes sense that you feel that way.” 

I have to start allowing the same acceptance and nonjudgmental curiosity I allow for my clients, for myself. I have to allow myself to have an unsteady hand at times and then ask myself what I need to heal from all the pain I am holding. I have to continue to give myself those opportunities. And you, whoever you are who is reading this, I think you should too. 

It’s so important. 

Sometimes I think if I go back to Alaska in the winter, maybe I’ll be able to do it. Maybe I’ll be able to stand in the snow and know there’s a beach somewhere. 

Because after all, that whole compartmentalizing thing, it’s something I’ve been working on. 

Little webs of suffering and sacred grounds

“The story of the web of suffering and trauma can be a fearful, beautiful and sacred ground, for it reminds us of the resilience of the human spirit. It reminds us of the capacity we all have for perseverance, growth and healing.” 

Walking on the beach, I am meandering along the ever-changing line where the waves meet the sand. I stop to pick up a sea shell nestled in the firm, wet sand. I crouch down and rotate the shell between my fingers, inspecting. It is a brilliant yellow color and its delicate ribbed pattern is free from the abrasions and chipping the crashing waves usually cause on a seashell’s journey to shore. 

But I stop, my momentary excitement about the find has diminished. A wave creeps up and embraces my ankles. I decide to put the shell back where I found it and I watch as another wave tugs the little shell back out towards sea. 

The sea breeze blows my damp, salty hair into my face, and as I push it out of my eyes, I notice another shell. Unlike the crisp, cheery, yellow shell, this one is lying there content in mute shades of steel grey, beige, and dusty blues.

This shell has a spider web of divots and craters, some likely to be chipped away from its long tumble to shore and others caused by carnivorous sea creatures trying to puncture the shell and eat the clam. But none of the punctures or craters have penetrated the surface, perseverance, I think. 

I run my fingers along the tangled web of imperfection and decide it is beautiful. It spoke to me instantly. The story of a life that looked nothing like the pretty yellow shell. This shell spoke of troubles and of resilience.

The shell is heavy like a stone in the palm of my hand. Waves come up and and pull away at the sand surrounding my feet. I hold the shell and think of my work of being a therapist. I think of all of the times I sit in wonder, amazement, and inspiration at the capacity of change and growth despite hardships and trauma. I think of all of the times I sit awash in humility and inspiration at the sheer resilience of the human spirit. I hold the stories of hardship, poverty, and trauma with fear and reverence, just as I tenderly hold all the little abrasions in the seashell.

How powerful that capacity is to endure despite the messy web of suffering so many people experience. I run my fingers along the inside of the shell. Smooth and untouched. The clam is not the abrasions. The person is not the trauma nor the suffering. Although affected and often wearing the scars for all to see, we are not our troubles, we are not what happens to us. In the midst of our sufferings, we are imperfect, yet capable of being beautifully strong.

The sun is setting lower now and casting her blanket of golden, late-afternoon glow on the sand and sea. I carry the shell with the tender reverence of someone who has heard a story. A story that means something, a story that matters. I decide I’ll take the shell back to my therapy office. Perhaps this shell can share her story with more than just me.

The Cicada Song: Power through collective efforts

When it’s cicada season you know it the second you step out the door, and sometimes before you have even left the house. This could be in instances when your dog brings various slobbery, dead and half-eaten cicadas into your kitchen, or when the cicada symphony is so loud you can hear it before you even open your front door. That’s the thing about cicadas, they have a presence, a collective presence. 

Until we started foster parenting, I had sort of forgotten that many children are afraid of bugs. Probably because I was the weird kid who would lift up rocks in search of insects for hours. They fascinated me. I would become completely absorbed in their little worlds and always needed multiple prompts to come in for dinner. 

“Ah!” He screeches grabbing me around the waist and hiding behind me. 

“It has a stinger! It’s going to sting me!” He continues pointing at a cicada in the midst of its sloppy, heavy flight. 
I reassure him that they do not sting. “Then what do they do?” He asks. 
“Shhh listen. Hear that?” I say pointing towards the trees and the hissing symphony. “That’s what they do, all together they do that.”

The cicada he’s hiding from comes dive-bombing towards us again and crashes onto the porch. I allow it to crawl onto my finger and show him its fire red eyes and golden transparent wings shining in the sunlight. 

“And this,” I continue, “is where it came from,” I walk over to a tree in our yard and show him the beige brown empty encasing of cicada skin, still clinging to the bark of the tree. 
“See it never used to be able to fly, then it changed and shed its skin,and when it came out, it was really different.” 
“What’s wrong with that one?” He asks, pointing to a cicada that has not yet emerged. 
“Nothing, it just hasn’t come out yet,” I reassure him and he bounds along into the backyard looking for his football. 

Days become weeks and more weeks and each day he checks the not-yet-emerged cicada. It has turned a deep black color and those fire red eyes hiding behind the thin layer of skin have lost their glow. I finally break the news to him and he gives a only slightly defeated shrug. 
I stand there as he walks off and I think about that cicada though. I think about how sometimes we do all we can for a positive change and it doesn’t work. How sometimes you use all the right techniques and the child’s tantrum rages on, how you call 20+ dentists and no one takes his Medicaid card, and sometimes when you reach out to countless workers to advocate you only get met with frustrated “We’ll get to it”s and voicemails you could recite by heart. Foster care is not for the weary, although it can make you that way. 

But as I look at that dead cicada, I still hear the collective song of all of those who did come out of their shells. I instead think of all of the times something did work, all the times someone answered my calls, all of the appointments I was able to schedule, all of the times I have tucked him in at night and he smiles in a way I know he feels safe. I think of all the times I have earned my wings. 

If you focus on the song you can have hope. If you focus on the song, you realize your collective efforts have meaning and make lasting change, despite any dead cicadas along the way. 

I turn back around and see our kiddo on the back porch. A cicada has landed dangerously near him and he lifts a foot as if to squish it. I want to stop him but instead I watch. 
The cicada crawls slowly towards him and he lowers his foot away from the insect. Instead, he squats down and watches the creature dragging its heavy body along. It adjusts its wings and then it flies away. 

Another cicada to join in the song. 

Grounded in Knowing Yourself

If I had to choose a favorite smell it would either be wood-smoke or the smell of the bottom of my dog’s paws. I know, weird right? But sometimes after a long day I’ll press my nose into those warm scratchy black paw pads, nestled in tufts of white husky fur, and just inhale. It smells like the musty scent of dog mixed with the grassy soil smell of fresh earth, and it is amazing. 

I don’t know when I allowed myself to realize what my favorite smells really were. It wasn’t long ago though. 

But we all do that. We get caught up and day’s slip away and our routine becomes numbing. Before we know it, we don’t even know little things about ourselves because we have no time for even minimal amounts of self discovery and validation. 

When we know who we are and we accept it though, that’s when we become grounded. We become anchored with enough security to reach out and learn about, connect, and feel for others too. 

When you take advantage of opportunities to understand yourself, you will get to know your limitations too. It’s like looking out into the ocean before you go swimming and knowing there are sharks somewhere out there, you just want to forget that part. And we can get really good at forgetting.

 I have discovered that, for me, compassion is like a fuel tank. It’s not consistent. Sometimes it’s full and I greet the day with a golden glow and an invisible super hero cape flowing behind me. I want to save the world and absolutely everything and everyone in it. I stop on the sidewalk to pick up worms drying in the sun. I pack extra granola bars and tiny oranges, just in case I run into homeless people. Those are the days when my compassion tank is full. 

Then there are the days when I leave the worms, I avoid eye contact in the check out lanes, I choose the car lane furthest from the man with the cardboard sign on the corner. There are days where my soul feels like a storm is coming. I can’t see rolling black clouds, but I know I’ve used up all of my sunshine. 
Maybe we all have those days. 

But maybe something as simple as remembering and honoring those quirky things about ourselves matters more than I often give it credit for. Maybe validating our own existence and limitations is a start to validate that of others, even, well, the earth worms. Maybe honoring limitations doesn’t make us weak, it just makes us human. 
And maybe, just maybe, one day I will make a candle of dog-must and earth, even if I’m the only one who buys it. 

Peace crystals and tough love: A foster care moment

“Look I found a real live crystal!” His voice bubbling over with the elated joy one usually can only truly experience in childhood. He lifts the stone to the sky and the late afternoon sun fills the stone, exuding a warm pink glow. 

I am sitting on the back porch thumbing through paperwork and setting appointments in my calendar. Becoming a foster parent forced me to change my scattered artist ways and become at least a bit more organized and parent-like. 

He brings the crystal to me. I am surprised he found it. A small piece of rose quartz I had bought years ago from the Native American craft store, Spirit Wind. I am still unsure how the quartz wound up in the backyard. 

“And here’s another one!” He bounds up onto the back porch holding yet another piece of rose quartz laced with bits of topsoil trapped in the cracks and crevices. 
“You keep one and I’ll keep one,” he states decisively as he hands me the dirtier quartz. A late spring breeze blows and expands his oversized t-shirt he insisted on wearing today, and yesterday. 

I smile, as I carefully take the quartz from his hand. “Thank you so much. I will keep it in my room and whenever I see it, I will think of you.” 

“Yes! We both have our special crystals!” He exclaims reaching his stone for the sky in a Power Ranger pose. 

“Let me tell you something else about these crystals bud,” I say bending down at his eye level. “These are really special crystals they are called rose quartz and they are known as the crystals of peace and love.” I rub some of the soil off of the stone and turn in in ways to catch the light. 

“Yes! This is the greatest!” He squeals as he sprints into the house and starts washing the rock with dish soap. He wraps it in paper towels with the gentlest precision, as if he is wrapping an egg. 

I smile as I watch him bring the stone to his room. But as I turn to walk back outside, I hear him say in the softest voice, as if whispering it to the quartz, “Now that I have this, nothing bad will ever happen.” 

My stomach sinks and my soul shrivels. I step away to breathe and gather my words. If only there were a rock like that, I think. 

“Hey buddy,” I knock on his door and I see he’s holding and inspecting the rock under his bedside lamp. “I have to tell you something about this crystal,” I gently take the stone and hold it up eye level. 
“I already know it’s a special..” 

I interject, “No, it’s not a magic rock. It’s just a rock. Bad things will still happen sometimes. Life is full of good things and bad things too. Most of the time we can’t stop them from happening.” 

His smile fades and his chest deflates as his shoulders sink into a slump. He runs his fingers over the crevices and bumps of the pink crystal, the magic, gone. 

“But this rock. Well it is special though,” I say rising my voice on the hopes of age appropriate honesty. “See this rock, well it is a rock of peace and love. Every time you see it, it reminds you that you can make choices out of peace and love, no matter what happens, even when bad things happen.” 

Still slightly slumped, he sighs and says nothing, he is holding the quartz near his heart. “But still…put yours in your room,” he says gently as I close his door. 

I place mine on my windowsill, just like I said I would. The milky pink glow emanates from the stone as the setting sun sheds its last bit of light for the day. I think of him and journey we are on now together, a journey full of good and bad things. I keep looking at that crystal as the sun goes down. 

Who knows, maybe it will end up being a little more magical than I gave it credit for.