Thursday, March 29, 2018

Sex and Cancer--Why We Need This Book

Dr. Saketh Guntupalli and Maryann Karinch have given us a gift. And this may be a gift that you want to give to yourself or to a friend who is dealing with cancer or who is the caregiver of a partner with cancer.

I've written about "Sex and Cancer" before but I wanted to share it again and to also show this brief Youtube video of Dr. Guntupalli talking about why he wrote this book. He leads with the sad but true story that is more common than we realize about how lives are saved but relationships lost because no one talks about sex.

It's a crime.

As a cancer caregiver--and newlywed wife--I had to fight fiercely to save both John's life and the marriage.

And thank goodness I got mad--the result was crazy, sexy advocacy and this blog and a lot of community education. I was determined that no couple would feel as alone as we did the first time we asked, "So what about sex?" and the oncologist said "Have a nice day" and walked out of the room.

I think today I'd be more bold and follow him down the hall and say, "Hey, buddy, I asked you about sex not suicide.:)))

So years later, hundreds of blog posts, many talks and workshops and panels later, here's the book I wish I'd had back then.

Give a click below to listen to this short Youtube video with Dr. Saketh Guntupalli:

https://youtu.be/Fniygu7ZIGIhttps://youtu.be/Fniygu7ZIGI

Sunday, February 25, 2018

Please Don't Tell Me I Look Tired


Maybe you are trying to be kind. Maybe you are trying to be supportive. Maybe you are trying to validate the challenging experience of a friend who is a family caregiver.  But believe me, when you tell a caregiver that they look tired, you are doing none of those things.

In fact, it’s just the opposite.

You say something like, “Oh honey, you look tired.” Or, “Are you OK? You look a little tired.”

Not helpful.
Not a compliment
Not going to fix anything.

Think about it: What exactly are you saying when you tell a friend that they look tired?

It usually means one or more of the following: dark shadows under the eyes, red eyes, sallow skin, poor posture, saggy facial tone, slumped shoulders, bad or melting makeup, dirty hair, not smiling, low energy, tension in the face or shoulders.

Does any of those things signify attractiveness? No.

So what you are doing when you say, “You look tired” is to say to your friend, “You look unattractive today.”

Is that what you meant as helpful?

Now I get it: You run into your friend who is a family caregiver. You know she is having a hard time and maybe you even know that she’s been tired.

Wouldn’t it be more helpful to say, “You look wonderful today.” Or “I love that color on you.” Or the best: “How are you feeling today?”
And let her tell you the status of her energy.

Because what if—and this happens a lot—she’s having a day full of hope, and it’s one of her better days, and maybe she is feeling the best she has felt in weeks, and secretly hoping she looks good today.

And then there you are, full of well-intended (we hope) compassion, heartily jabbing your caring needle-- “Oh dear, you look tired” --in her balloon.

Don’t do that. There’s no need. There are so many other ways to be kind to a family caregiver.

Wednesday, February 14, 2018

It's Valentine's Day in CancerLand

So, you are in CancerLand on Valentine’s Day?

Yep, that sucks. It’s awful. I know; I’ve been there. 

But you do not have to surrender to 5FU and all her crazy chemo cousins.

You can have Valentine’s Day and romance and cancer. Here’s how: 

Remember how Valentine’s Day worked before cancer.

Shed one tear remembering that, and then laugh. Find something to laugh about. Call up your true love and reminisce together. 

Make a Valentine. If you can get out, buy a pretty one. If you can’t get out (friggin’ 5FU) then make one: paper doilies, red Sharpie, tear a story form the newspaper, write on a playing card (yes you can ruin a deck of cards by taking out the King or Queen of hearts).

 Drop your expectations. Like a hot potato—drop them. This is Valentine’s Day in a new country: CancerLand.

Think about love, and email love and text that love. There is so much love in CancerLand and with your partner, state it clearly. You have seen and felt love so grand and so different than people who have never visited CancerLand. Claim and celebrate that love. Explicitly.

People around you may be afraid to ask, “What are you guys doing for Valentine’s Day?” like they are asking other couples. Shame on them—announce what you are doing. Stare down their fear. 

Things to keep: affection, conversation, chocolate, cards, flowers, bad poetry, good poetry, and romantic comedies (TV listing are crammed with romantic movies tonight.)

Things to lose: expectations and projections

Things to negotiate: a good meal, gifts and sex. (be creative and open-minded with that last word.)

Refuse to surrender: your relationship, your coupledom, your happiness. 

Sunday, February 11, 2018

I Married a Canadian

We were on vacation in Northern Ontario. It was midnight in the little village and no cars had moved for hours. At the crosswalk I step into the intersection and feel a sudden tug on my arm. As Mr. Cameron pulled me back to the curb, I look up to see that the signal says, “Don’t Walk”.  Smiling I stand on the silent sidewalk and wait. When the traffic signal glows its approval to cross we step out carefully and correctly; I laugh. This is the kind of thing that happens in a mixed marriage.  I married a Canadian. 

Hockey, beer, donuts, moose –these stereotypes, all rooted in Canadian reality are funny to  
Americans.

We especially like the accent, the lilting up and down of Canadian speech. In just a few hours in Ontario I am imitating my in-laws, “Will ya go to the lake, eh?” But I also know that the final “eh” on Canadian sentences and obeying traffic signals are related. The Canadian “eh” is not just a conversational tic. That uplifting extra syllable is an invitation to consensus, to agreement, and to keeping the order.

Keeping order is one of the greater aspects of Canada that we Americans-- so nearby-- miss when we think “Canadian”. Canadians –motivated by a concern for a “common good” are more orderly, law abiding and considerate than we. It’s not because they are nicer, but consideration of one’s impact on others is a strong cultural value.  

Speech patterns give more than a clue to this difference. The histories of our nations are echoed in how we use our common language. There are very few declarations in Canadian dialect. Declarations invite challenge. This makes sense when you remember that Canada did not have to struggle for independence as Americans did. Britain approved Canada’s confederation in 1867.  So, you can hear how the inflection, that final “eh” leaves the conversational door open with space for another’s thought.

For example, while visiting we met a young man who was dating a niece. He was not as bright as the family might have liked. But as I was about to blurt, in my American declarative, “He’s an idiot”, my sister-in-law said in her Canadian lilt, “Ya say hello to him and he’s stuck for an answer, eh?” Message delivered; door left ajar.

Americans however are poised for a fight. You can hear it in our speech with its tone of certainty and downward inflection; we are always staking a conversational claim. Even the most pacifist of us hold our opinions –and our right to them—like guns.  This also comes from our past. We arrived here fighting. 

This is also why the gun control issue seems easier to Canadians. Friends in Ontario shake their heads at our debates and say, “Such a big fuss, eh?”  For us the gun question is emotionally charged because at a deep level we remember fighting for our land and freedom. 

It may be around the idea of freedom that our look-alike cultures diverge. My husband and I have a regular debate about freedom. I say Americans have more freedom: We can be and do and say whatever we like. It’s freedom TO. But, says Mr. Cameron, in Canada freedom is seen as freedom FROM. The Canadian consideration for the common good allows Canadians relative freedom from violence, from crime, and from poverty. 

Because Canada is a non-litigious culture Canadians are especially free of the kinds of legal hassles that cost Americans so much time and money.

These differences run deep but they’re obvious when you lay the historic values side by side. We salute “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” There is a win-the-west, win-the-war feel to it. Then picture Canada’s: “Peace, Order and Good Government”. Can’t you just see people cueing up and taking turns, and leaving room in the conversation for the other guy?

Canada is not a land of Boy Scout, do-gooders of course. The very contradictions make you love ‘em, eh? Theirs is a mostly non-violent culture whose national pastime—hockey-- knocks the teeth out of every male over nine years of age. And while living surrounded by natural beauty and wilderness air Canadians smoke themselves to death. We joke that Canadian restaurants offer two seating choices: Smoking and Chain-Smoking.

Married to a Canadian I learned a lot. I learned to care more about the rest of the world as Canadians do and to not run from the room when the world news comes on. I learned that waiting for the walk signal is not passive submission to rules and regs; rather it’s an active expression of community and being part of the common good.


Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Cancer and Sex

So, the silence around sex and cancer was the impetus to this very blog. No one would talk to us. Not a doc or a nurse or a PA...finally a friend got some out of town resources for us, but by then I was so mad, and I started provoking everyone, and I wrote a very mean post about cancer resources folks who think relationships live on the "C" word:  cuddle.

Now there is a little bit more info and I dig for every bit of it and bring it to you right here.

So here is todays offering--a new book, "Sex and Cancer" by Dr. Saketh R. Guntupalli and Maryann Karinch. The link below is to an article in today's New York Times section called Living with Cancer--and Susan Gubar (we love her) writes about the new book.


Take a look, and please share this with family
 and friends who are living in CancerLand--You might save a relationship and a life:

https://nyti.ms/2FMqqPP

Saturday, January 13, 2018

Chop Wood, Carry Water


There is an old Zen saying:

Before enlightenment: Chop wood, carry water.
After enlightenment: Chop wood, carry water.

It applies to cancer too:

Before cancer:
Chop wood, carry water, buy groceries, pay bills, make love.

After cancer:
Chop wood, carry water, buy groceries, pay bills, make love.

Before and after cancer there are  bills to pay and water on the sink, socks in the dryer, deadlines, aches, pains, worries, bad TV, great movies, Facebook, missed birthdays, cranky coworkers, amazing friends, too much candy, not enough water...

and a poem to write every day.

Tuesday, January 2, 2018

The Great Divide: Certain Regrets

When interviewed at or after middle age, both men and women have expressed some profound sexual regrets. But, researchers say, what they regret shows how great gender differences can be.

 It is as you might expect: Women regret sexual experiences they had—one-night stands, or sex with the wrong person, while men regret sexual experiences they missed --opportunities passed up, or not attempted.


According to Marty Haselton, professor of social psychology at UCLA, “When men miss a sexual opportunity it may be a costly loss from an evolutionary perspective.” 

Researchers at The University of Texas agree: “Men are genetically hardwired to seek mates and on some level each missed opportunity to have sex is a missed opportunity to reproduce. 

But for women, who invest more in each offspring—pregnancy, breastfeeding, infant care—“the consequences of casual sex are much higher which is likely to have shaped women's emotional reactions to sexual liaisons even today”, according to the findings reported in The Archives of Sexual Behavior. 

So then, here we are in CancerLand and we wonder about regrets here. Do we, should we make an extra special effort to have more sex and keep our sexual lives, well, alive? Or should we acknowledge that being alive (beating cancer) is the ultimate prize, and go have a great chocolate cake and some champagne?

Does a cancer diagnosis, and surviving cancer (and its treatments), change our regrets, or make us wish for—and still try for—more sex?

Tuesday, December 26, 2017

Sometimes Cancer Strikes Twice

Cancer again? Of course that's what you worry about. It's what I worry about. The first time cancer strikes we are just in it--it all happens so fast and it's all new, we just go down those rapids, keeping our feet first and try not to get killed.

Then it's over, or in remission and we take a couple of deep breathes. And then the thought: "What if that happened again?"

So, there are two kinds of "again". One--that same kind of cancer comes back, or Two--you get a new cancer. That's a real bitch, right? Sometimes we have a kind of magical thinking which says, "Well if I got uterine cancer I won't get lung cancer"--as if  there is only so much cancer to go around and if I got my piece, then I get to skip the other variations.

Turns out that is so not true, as completely unfair as that seems.

So what do you do, as a cancer survivor, to keep your odds in shape? Well, according to Jane Brody,
health writer, in today's New York Times, you have to take really good care of your health and be super smart about lifestyle.

Our goal, according to Brody, is twofold--we have to do the same good care as the average Joe or Jane--who never had cancer and we have to be scrupulous about follow-up care, and better than average basic healthcare, because we may have a higher risk.

Her article (the link is below) is very good and worth your time. Of course, if you are a caregiver and you want to share this with your cancer patient/ cancer surviving loved one, tread carefully and choose your timing.

But please, don't use this article to nag your partner. I have been so guilty of that and it's just not cool.

Here's Jane Brody's article called "When Cancer Strikes Twice."

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/25/well/when-cancer-strikes-twice.html?_r=0

Sunday, December 3, 2017

The Glorious Debris


“Every one of us
 is called upon, probably many
 times, to start a new life.
A frightening diagnosis, a
marriage, a move, loss of a job…
And onward full tilt we go,
pitched and wrecked and absurdly
resolute, driven in spite of
everything to make good on a
new shore. To be hopeful, to
embrace one possibility after
another—that surely is the basic
instinct…..Crying out: High tide!
Time to move out into the
glorious debris. Time to take
this life for what it is.”

 --Barbara Kingsolver, from High Tide in Tucson

Saturday, November 18, 2017

Criticism is a Poor Way to Ask for Help


Diane Sawyer was interviewed on Oprah Winfrey’s TV show.

Oprah asked Sawyer about her famously good marriage to Mike Nichols. Sawyer said the best piece of advice she was given for marriage was this: “Criticism is just a very poor way of making a request—so maybe, instead, you could just make the request.”

I loved that. How many times have I lobbed a critical remark instead of asking for what I wanted? Have you ever done that?

Saying, “You are selfish and lazy” is just a very poor way to ask: “Can you help me?”

And, “You never listen” is often a chicken’s way to say, “Could you sit with me and listen to me for five minutes?”

It’s also in the realm of not expecting the one we love to be a mind reader. And, by now we know that “He should know…” is for teenagers and we are grown-ups in relationships that we chose.

Don’t you think Diane Sawyers marriage advice is great? 

“Criticism is just a poor way of making a request.” So, maybe, just make the request.

Thursday, November 9, 2017

Holiday Gift Ideas to Brighten the Season for Caregivers

This week we welcome Beverly Nelson from StandUpforCaregivers.org with suggestions to make nicer holidays for family caregivers:  


Caregivers are the unsung heroes of families and the healthcare industry.  They carry a heavy burden when it comes to the care and tending of others. If you have someone on your shopping list who is a caregiver, consider giving an especially meaningful gift this holiday season.  

 Who are the caregivers?  Most of us will be caregivers at some point in our lives.  In 2012, over a third of the American population gave unpaid care to someone with a chronic health condition.  According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, that percentage will steadily increase as the population ages.  Most of those people providing care also hold down other jobs.  

 Caregiver stress.  Caregiving is physically and mentally demanding.  As time goes on, those performing the role of caregiver often experience negative effects from the burden of their duties, developing what is termed “caregiver stress.”  Symptoms include depression, anxiety, a weakened immune system, increased risk for chronic disease, obesity, and an inability to concentrate.  

 Gifts for caregivers.  Because being a caregiver is such a stressful role, consider a gift of self-care.  Encourage any caregivers you know to do something indulgent and good for their mental health.  Experts at The SeniorList recommend gifts “that help the caregivers in your life feel recognized, appreciated and pampered.”  Here are some great suggestions:

Give them a break.  According to some experts, the best gift you could give is an experience or service.  Do their shopping or housecleaning, prepare a meal and deliver it to them, or give them a respite for a day or overnight.

Create gift certificates.  Think through what this caregiver might really need and make gift certificates “redeemable upon demand.”  The Washington Post suggests you could make six certificates for 29 venting sessions.  You can make gift certificates for delivering meals, housekeeping, or that overnight respite, too.

Create a personal treasure.  The Caregiver Space suggests creating a keepsake such as a scrapbook or memory album.  Make it especially sentimental and if the person in care is still able, interview him or her and include the information.  

Photo collage.  Put memories on the wall in a photo collage.  You can always include some handwritten notes in the collage along with the photos.

Food delivery.  Your caregiver might really appreciate a monthly or weekly food delivery service.  Join a food club and make the caregiver the recipient.  The Adventurous Writer recommends clubs that offer baked goods, fruit and cheese, coffee or chocolate.

Spa day.  Consider an outing at a local spa, complete with massage, pedicure and facial.

Two tickets and a certificate.  Give two tickets to an event your caregiver will enjoy, along with a certificate for you to give respite while the caregiver goes out with a friend or significant other.

Aromatherapy.  Put together some candles, room sprays, oils and lotions in a relaxing scent like lavender.  

Gourmet gift basket.  Assemble favorite coffees or teas along with chocolates, shortbread, spreads, and dried fruits and nuts.  

Organizer or calendar.  Select an organizer with a luxurious cover or a calendar with inspiring, hopeful quotes.  Make sure there is plenty of room for writing notes.

Periodical subscription.  Periodicals can be set down and returned to as the caregiver’s time permits.  Consider a magazine relating to a favorite hobby, such as birdwatching or cars.

DVR subscription.  Give the opportunity to record the shows your caregiver is missing.  He or she will enjoy catching up when things settle down.

Journal.  Many caregivers find journaling helpful for reducing stress.  Find a special journal and include a luxurious pen.  

 Celebrate caregivers!  
 Caregivers carry a heavy load and can easily become run down physically and mentally.  Show the caregivers in your life they are appreciated during this holiday season.  Give them gifts that pamper them and are meaningful.

by: Beverly Nelson of StandUpForCaregivers.org

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Gratitude Poem

When I write the word “Gratitude”
I think recovery.
I don’t think “cancer”.
I think gratitude for him
for me, for this
     --surely not this?
We are grateful or we are not.
We say Yes! and Thank you!
All around me well-meaning
friends say,
“You can say ‘No’!”
But I say Yes
I don’t No.
Who knew…
“It’s like a relationship on steroids” I
told a friend and
then I realized
that was no metaphor.

Sunday, October 15, 2017

Caregiving and Your Spiritual Life

Oh, we pray a lot as caregivers. You may be saying traditional, memorized prayers. You may be talking to whatever is bigger than you (I call that your “Bigger”) in a direct and sometimes desperate way. Or maybe your prayer just sounds a lot like cursing, “Jesus Christ!” and “For God’s sake, come on!” But those also count as prayers.

I’ve been a spiritual director and a spiritual coach for many years. Almost as long as I have been a caregiver. For years I had to explain and explain and almost apologize, “No, not religious”, “Nope, not Catholic,” and “No, I’m not part of a church”…and I got used to the baffled looks.

Now, more and more people understand the difference between religion and spirituality, between believing in God and wanting to connect with something bigger and outside of themselves. And as we get older our need to make sense of life and to clarify our values and beliefs presses on us.

So, I was so happy to see that Dr. Jeff Kane, author of the book, “Healing Healthcare” includes a chapter on spiritual support as an essential component in the healthcare system. In chapter 18, “Help is on the Way” Kane writes about all of the kinds of help a patient and the caregiver need to make the medical experience complete and successful.

He writes about one hospital chaplain, David Swetman, who distributes a flyer to all patients and families in the local hospital that includes this statement: 

You think. You feel. You communicate. You have relationships. You have a style, a sense of humor, and attitude and an approach to life. Perhaps you feel deep religious beliefs or a strong connection to God; perhaps you have none. It is all of these non-physical parts of you that make up your spiritual self.”

Kane points out that while illness may cause pain to the physical body, it is in those non-physical parts that suffering resides, and that suffering also requires treatment.

And so, as caregivers we need to give time, attention and resources to our spiritual health as well. 

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Caregivers: The Invisible Patients

At a cocktail party last week, the conversation turned to healthcare. Of course, these days, the conversation might also turn to healthcare at the gas station, yoga class, or PTA meeting. We’re all concerned about what changes are coming to healthcare.

But we residents of CancerLand have special concerns—we worry about what will happen to preexisting conditions, the cost of tests and screening, and possible limitations on certain treatments. Patients surely don’t need that extra fear, and as caregivers we take an extra twist in our healthcare worry: we put off our own care.

So often we caregivers forget that we are patients too. We are the “invisible patients.” That’s the term I’ve  
been chewing on this week after reading the book, “Healing Healthcare –How Doctors and Patients Can Heal Our Sick System” by Jeff Kane, MD.

That cocktail party conversation turned out to be a valuable one because one of the people I was chatting with insisted that I get—and read—Kane’s book. And he was so adamant that I ordered one right away and dug in. 

I was expecting economic analysis or demographics or maybe operating room stories but I had a great surprise: Kane’s specialty is compassion. Yes, compassion as a best practice in healthcare and measuring the impact of compassion as a practice in hospital and home care. Yes, wow!

You’ll be pleased too to see how Kane writes about the importance of family caregivers—and he uses the term, “the invisible patient”. He’s a strong advocate for doctors and nurses being trained to include the caregiver in exam, discussion, treatment planning and aftercare—and most radical, he believes that the primary patient cannot get well if the caregiver’s needs are not addressed. And by “addressed” he does not mean a long soulful look and “How’s it going Bob?” moment before the couple leaves his office. He means taking the caregiver’s blood pressure, talking about their sleep and diet, and finding out how much help they have at home.

Kane documents why this is so crucial: the incidence of depression and anxiety in caregivers, how those problems bloom into physical disorders such as high blood pressure, decreased immunity, and cardiovascular disease. If you are a caregiver or are around some you’re not surprised to read this. But look at this from Kane: “Spousal caregivers age 66 or older have a 63 percent higher mortality rate than non-caregivers the same age.”

This smart doc knows that one patient will turn into two very quickly when giving care to a loved one with cancer or other serious, chronic illness.

Kane’s book is well worth a read: for all caregivers, for family members around the caregiver, for healthcare staff too. An idea: Be bold and buy a copy ($1 or $2 for a used copy) and hand one to your doc and mark the pages about caregivers. A little education and honest conversation can go a long way.

Monday, September 18, 2017

When a Woman Writes About Her Life

“If a woman writes about herself, she’s a narcissist. If a man does the same thing, he’s describing the human condition.”
--Emily Gould

Emily Gould’s book, “And the Heart Says Whatever” is a collection of essays about what it’s like to be her—and by showing us her one life we learn a lot about –not just other lives, but about how to, maybe, think about our own lives.

She also said--and I love this, “When women are honest about their experiences, it’s destabilizing.”

 Right? 

As I continue to write about cancer and caregiving and love and sex, and about work and clothes and money and fear, I swing between trying to be helpful and being both destabilized and destabilizing. 
So, I also ask: Am I writing one woman’s story or am I describing the human condition?

In some ways, I think it’s not my job to decide, but rather that is yours to discern. As we learn from Alanon, “Take what you like and leave the rest.” My hope—and my prayer—is that by writing about my fears and flaws I can offer you a way to deal here in CancerLand.

Wednesday, September 6, 2017

The Literature of Caregiving: Tom Lubbock and Marion Coultis

It is not often that we have both patient and caregiver as extraordinary writers. And while often sad and hard stories we learn so much by being able to see both sides of a cancer story. Even a story unto death. 

This month I read a pair of memoirs that give us this perspective and some new language and eyes into a cancer patient and cancer caregiver with books by Tom Lubbock who was Chief Art Critic for London’s Independent newspaper. Tom was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2008 and died in 2011. His book, the chronicle of those three years until days before he
died, is “Until Further Notice, I am Alive.”

His wife, the artist and writer, Marion Coutts, wrote her book, “The Iceberg” through and after that same time period. Hers is the parallel story of the diagnosis, surgeries, hospitalizations and, for both of them, the heartbreaking complication of raising their baby son, Eugene.

What many of us who love words, reading, books, and arguing our point is the injustice and indignity of Tom’s particular cancer which was situated in the language center of his brain. The wonder and strange thrill of his book is reading him as he is articulating what language means and what it means when a writer is losing language. You would think: “too morbid”. But no.

These books, Tom’s and Marion’s, are slim and carefully crafted. These two are such fine
writers so I encourage you to read both, together and side by side. Do you see how each one describes the same day? What does it look like to him? To her? How they see the world includes what they see, as they see each other, even how they see death.

From Marion: “A palliative nurse came to see us at home in the autumn of 2010. She said, ‘On a scale of one to seven, how would you rate your quality of life?’ There was a long pause while we digested this madness. Tom, slightly absent, lightly bored, said thoughtfully, ‘That’s a ridiculous question. Obviously we go—“Oh God” all the time, at all the stuff to be done. But generally it is wonderful. We are interested.”

From Tom: “Mortal. We occupy a limited patch of space for a limited patch of time. Like the art of realistic paintings: pictures hold an equivalent in the confined areas which they enframe, and the brief narratives they represent…We know the deal. We’re bodies. We are not in our own hands.”

Marion’s life continues. Tom’s life does not. But these books do. And what they “enframe” for us is wisdom, self-compassion and love. And this thing that we all do until death—we try to put life into words.

Saturday, September 2, 2017

Grow Your Own Mother

Last week on vacation I read, “Will I Ever Be Good Enough?” by Karyl McBride, PhD. It is about healing and growth for daughters of narcissistic mothers. McBride writes about the persistent feeling of never being good enough and the invisibility that accrue to women whose mothers were on the continuum from self-absorbed to full-blown narcissist.

Part of the recovery that McBride suggests is developing an internal mother who is all the things that one’s real mother was not able to be. 


So, at the beach I began to envision what that new mother of mine might be like. I began to imagine borrowing parts of other women—and some men—to grow my own mother.

To be fair I did include many of the great qualities of my own real Mom: passion, curiosity, charity, physical energy and humor. But, as I walked the beach, I began to name the people who I would include as I grow my internal mother.

I added in bits of Georgia O’Keefe, May Sarton, parts of some good friends whom I’d want to have as part of my eternal mom-in-me. I also added in my two grandmothers: Josephine and Sophia. I never met them, but I knew of them.

But could I pass up a grandmother named Sophia—wisdom—in building my inner mother? And Josephine, my maternal grandmother) who was a professional a poker player and the neighborhood “reproductive health advocate” (she helped women in poverty to limit the size of their families.)  As I walked the beach I wrote the names of these woman in the sand, physically co-signing the new mother-in-me.

I picture this mom-in-me growing kind of like one of those pills you drop in water to delight a child. After soaking up lots of water the foamy pill blossoms into a seahorse or dragon. Now, soaked in lots of saltwater—both ocean and tears--I am growing my own mother.