Living the Dream

  • Becoming a Health Coach

    At the end of 2019 I returned to the US and was asked: “So how long will you be staying?” I hadn’t even thought about it, but heard myself answer: “I’ll be here through the end of 2020.”

    Just weeks before returning I had volunteered at a refugee camp in Greece. Everyone in the camp had a cough, and after working there for a week, so did I. I returned to Italy with a fever, which broke after a couple of days, but the cough lasted for six weeks. With that illness on my mind, and knowing that I would be in the US for at least a year, I decided that the time was right to work on my health.

    January 2020 – High Blood Pressure

    The health issue that most concerned me was my blood pressure. High blood pressure has been an issue in my family, so when I saw that mine had crept into the danger zone, it galvanized me to action.

    The one thing that I knew was that I did not want to have to depend on pharmaceutical drugs to bring down the blood pressure. For one thing, the drugs are not a cure, they only provide symptom relief. For another thing, I had seen how the pharmaceutical industry develops new drugs. In a nutshell: they find some natural substance with known healing properties, take it back to the lab and study what it looks like on the molecular level, then they build a synthetic copy. Sometimes the copy works, oftentimes it doesn’t, but in either case, the list of possible side effects is often far worse than the symptoms you’re trying to treat.

    No! I decided that if I couldn’t combat the blood pressure problem naturally, then I would just live with it. The most obvious plan of action was to lose weight. At first I didn’t know how much weight I wanted to lose, only that I needed to get at least 50 pound off.

    Weight is a very strange issue. Most of us have some sort of distorted body image. All my life I had thought that I was fat. In fact, I only got fat in my 40’s. At the same time, like most overweight people, I didn’t have a true idea of just how fat I had become. Over the years, I had gotten really good at choosing clothes that hide problem areas. Now that I’ve lost 70 pounds, I’m surprised every time I see myself in the mirror or pull out smaller clothes to wear. In my mind I still think of myself as the fat girl. It’s messed up, I know. But back to my story:

    So, I had heard about the keto diet, and decided to give it a try. After all, I had done other diets, and they had all left me starving at the end of the day with my calorie budget exhausted. That was the most dangerous time for me to be left hungry, when I had no energy left for fighting the hunger. Keto turned out the be ideal for me in two important ways: first, the emphasis on protein and fat kept the hunger at bay. Second, being low in carbohydrates, it got the sugar monkey off my back. I had had no idea what a sugar addict I had become, but after a few months on keto, I could say no to birthday cake and cookies (both favorites), and sincerely not feel deprived.

    Together with the diet I began daily exercise. I started slowly at first: I took the stairs. At first my knees ached as I approached the second floor landing, but I knew that there was nothing wrong with my knees, so I just went for the stairs every time. Don’t think! Just do it! And before long, I could go two floors up without pain. Then three, then five. I also started to walk in the neighborhood. Where I live is very hilly, so this was also not so easy, starting out. But little by little I was able to walk farther and farther. Walking outside in the fresh air and sunshine was good for me in every way: physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. I saw lots of wildlife: tentative deer, shy black bears, tom turkeys with their harems, and more rabbits than you can even imagine.

    And while following my diet and exercise regime, I also used essential oils (specifically helichrysum) to bring the blood pressure back under control.

    March 2020

    When the pandemic hit, Mom and I went to stay with my brother and his wife. I walked throughout their whole neighborhood: sometimes with them, but also by myself every morning. We had an ideal situation at their house: I stayed on the top floor by myself, which made an ideal situation for studying Health Coaching online; my brother and sister-in-law were on the middle floor, where the kitchen was; and Mom stayed in the basement suite, where she drew lovely pictures of old barns. We got together for meals, which we took turns preparing. Often we would also get together to watch a movie. Sometimes we would get in the car and take a ride around to look at the barn quilts. In Western North Carolina many families put a painted representation of a quilt square on their barn[1]. I don’t know why, but it made for several pleasant afternoon drives. It also gave Mom lots of inspiration for her drawings. Every afternoon we got together for a friendly card game. When other families were suffering and going stir crazy and gaining weight, we were studying, exercising, having fun, and losing weight. Honestly, I hated to leave when the lockdown ended.

    Soon after that, I had my Health Coaching Certification.

    August 2020

    At the end of July I went to Branson, Missouri with friends. It was so not worth it on so many levels. I’m not a big fan of Las Vegas. Branson is like a hillbilly Vegas. It was a long drive for a couple of good shows and a couple of good meals. I should have stayed home. Right after the trip, the couple I rode with informed me that they had tested positive for the vrus[2].

    Since I lived with my elderly Mom, I immediately moved to a hotel and got tested. The test came back negative. I got tested again a few days later. That also came back negative. That’s when I began wondering about the refugee camp cough and got a blood test. The blood test came back positive.

    Anosmia

    Sometime in the midst of all this I lost my sense of smell. I didn’t think anything of it at the time because I didn’t know that it had anything to do with the vrus. Losing my sense of smell didn’t really hurt me. I figure there are a whole lot more bad smelling things than good, so maybe I was better off.

    November 2020 – Parosmia

    The week of Thanksgiving my sense of smell came back—in a really bad way. The first thing I noticed was that coffee smelled like rancid gasoline. Lots of things smelled like rancid gasoline. At first it was the only thing I could smell. After a while I was able to identify that anything with a fat or alcohol content (hand sanitizer!) smelled like rancid gasoline. And any food that had been warmed up smelled like rancid gasoline. I ate a single bite of turkey, out of politeness to my sister-in-law, but just couldn’t bring myself to touch anything else.

    At first I would only eat cold foods, subsisting almost exclusively on granny smith apples and celery. But honestly, I just had no appetite.

    Then I read an article[3] that you could retrain your sense of smell, using essential oils. So I followed the protocols that the article recommended: each day, several times a day sniffing rose (floral), lemon (citrus), clove (spicy), and eucalyptus (resinous). Very soon I could correctly smell the eucalyptus. It was a wonderful moment for me! The clove followed a few days later. Lemon took a little while longer, but today, I still can’t smell any floral smells at all. Perhaps they’re just too subtle. In any case, retraining my sense of smell worked for the most part. Heated things still smelled mostly bad to me, like coffee, smelled bad for a long time. It’s finally gotten to where coffee doesn’t smell bad now, but it doesn’t smell good. It just sort of smells off.

    June 2022 – Essential Tremors

    I thought I was mostly done with dealing with the effects of the vrus, but now there’s something else: internal tremors. At the end of June I noticed that every night it felt like my bed was vibrating. I looked up earthquake trackers in the area, but the time of day was wrong for the only one that I might have felt. Then I learned that it’s a long-term after effect of having had the vrus. Perhaps the reason it hasn’t been so bad for me is because I only eat healthy, organic, non-gmo, natural foods, and more vegetables than meats. I don’t have it as bad as some of the people I’ve read about. Some people have the tremors so bad that it feels like a cell phone on vibrate in their chest and disturbs their sleep.

    Conclusion

    I believe that my distrust of traditional western medicine came about at exactly the right time to prevent me from putting my faith into an experimental j@b. The things that could be fixed naturally (high blood pressure) were successfully fixed without the use of synthetic drugs. The things that couldn’t be helped by any means have not been complicated with toxic side effects.

    Don’t blindly believe everything you’ve been told about the vrus. If you follow the money, you’ll see the truth that they are hiding.

    [1] https://www.carolinacountry.com/carolina-adventures/travel-guide/2019-travel-guide/explore-nc-s-barn-quilt-trail.

    [2] In this age of cancel culture, I have abbreviated a few words that might cause my blog to be flagged by the algorithm. Your patient indulgence is appreciated.

    [3] https://www.euphoricherbals.com/blogs/news/using-essential-oils-for-smell-therapy-after-covid-19.

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  • Discovering your Dream

    Discovering your dream is absolutely key to eventually living your dream. Most of us coast along in life, doing the things that are necessary to get us through day-to-day living. Then at the end of such a life, we die, never having had our dreams come true. I know because that’s the kind of life I was living when I suddenly found the audacity to ask myself what was the desire of my heart[1]. I had never asked myself that question, so of course, I wasn’t living the life of my dreams.

    It’s not that the desire wasn’t there. It’s that I had never articulated my desire. And having never put my desire into words, I had never set any goals for myself. I have come to understand that the only truly impossible goals are the ones never set.

    So I stated my desire: to live in Europe. And once that desire was stated, I began doing whatever I could to move myself in that direction. As a housewife in rural Connecticut at the time, there wasn’t much that I could do, but I did what I could: I prayed. And I didn’t just pray, I prayed, using Bible verses to ignite my desire. The first was the verse that had set this all in motion, Psalm 37:4:

    Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you your heart’s desires.

    Every day as I read the Bible, I found more and more verses to add to my prayer initiative. And I prayed with conviction, believing that this was God’s invitation, so He had every intention of making it happen.

    That’s an important element of dreams: if your dream is achievable without God’s assistance, you would have already done it.

    But it still felt like I needed to do something else, so I started taking language classes. I took German. I didn’t end up in Germany, and I never got beyond a few phrases in German, but I have spent time in Germany, Austria, and the German-speaking part of Switzerland. I had guessed wrong, but God didn’t count that against me—not at all. I believe that it was my willingness to stretch myself and learn another language that worked in my favor.

    Beyond naming the dream, in Life Coaching we learn to honor our discontent. Now, I can’t say that I was terribly discontented. My life in Connecticut was actually pretty good in almost all aspects. I was a Sunday School teacher, a leader of Children’s Church, Storytime reader at the local library, and a volunteer librarian at my son’s elementary school. I also served as a substitute teacher at the local Christian school. All that made me kind of a celebrity among the town’s children. Why would I want to give that up?

    But there was something, some small thing of discontent in my life: I knew deep in my heart that I had been made for more than this. Also, my marriage wasn’t great. We were comfortably in a truce at that time, but I can’t say that we were happy. Now, what was moving to Europe going to do about that? I had no idea at the time. So instead of dwelling on my discontents, I embraced the dream. With all my strength, I embraced the dream.

    What about you? What’s your dream? Is it one worth embracing with all your might? If not, then you’re probably not dreaming big enough. Many people have lived such small lives that dreaming big is simply too difficult for them to even imagine. In that case, my advice is this: don’t put limits on your dream, on yourself, or on God.

    [1] You can read the whole story in my about page: https://you-can-live-the-dream.com/about/.

  • Struggling with Depression

    Part One

    My first severe bout of depression was in 1990. In reality, I had struggled with depression all my life, but 1990 showed me just how deeply depression can affect someone. Soon after moving to a new state, I had just come back from my first visit to my childhood home. The juxtaposition of my wildly free childhood with my prisonlike life of 1990 in a new home sent me spiraling into a depression like nothing I had ever experienced before.

    For those who have never suffered true depression, let me explain a few things:

    • Telling someone to “snap out of it” or “cheer up” is not only not helpful, it reveals you as a person that is not safe to confide in. Since I was new to the area, I had no friends. My husband took the car to work every day, so I was stuck at home in the woods, with nowhere to go. My friends and family were so distant that they had no idea how bad things were for me—and I simply lacked both the words and the courage to tell them.
    • Beyond that, I also lacked the strength to tell them. You see, depression is exhausting. Every breath feels like a chore—one that you feel ready to stop doing. The pain in your heart isn’t exactly physical, but it’s real nonetheless.
    • Sleep is your only escape from depression, which is why most sufferers seem to sleep their lives away. However, I am of the minority for whom sleep becomes elusive. I was only sleeping about three hours a night. Do I really need to explain what sleep deprivation does to your emotional and cognitive functioning? This is why sleep deprivation is a favorite device of torture: it’s easy, cheap, and very effective in breaking people down.
    • You don’t see a way out of depression—not when you’re in the middle of it. Things that seem obvious to people on the outside are definitely not obvious to the person suffering depression. One evening I was watching America’s Funniest Home Videos with my family. One after another video amused me, but failed to make me laugh. Emotional numbness is a trait of depression. Then there was a video that made me laugh. I laughed so hard that I became hysterical and then began crying and I was crying hysterically. I couldn’t speak, but even if I could have spoken, I couldn’t possibly have explained why laughing had made me cry so hysterically. In that moment, I believed that this was the last time I would ever laugh.
    • Soon after this I began having suicidal hallucinations. I didn’t want to kill myself. I had no intention ever of killing myself. But these things were so real, so visceral, and so sudden that it was like I was living in the worst horror movie ever. It was always one of two very bloody scenarios. I will not describe them beyond simply saying that while I was hallucinating I could feel the cold steel of the knife, but no pain. I could feel the sudden hot gush of blood and smell the coppery-salt smell of hot blood. The hallucinations came while I was doing the most mundane tasks: making the bed, washing dishes, and once while I was bathing the baby. That last one was the most frightening of all because one moment I was holding his hand in one hand and a washcloth in the other and the next moment I was plunging a knife into my heart. When I came back to myself, I screamed for my husband to finish the bath and ran to hide in the closet[1].
    • Therapy helps. Thank God my husband had good insurance through work. Otherwise we probably couldn’t have afforded therapy. I knew that I just needed someone to talk to, so I went to a counselor instead of a psychiatrist. At this point I had been depressed for almost a year. I wanted this to be over. So I went in and started talking right away about everything that was painful in my life. At first I was going once a week, but I told the counselor that for two days leading up to our sessions I started shaking, so I thought we should meet twice a week. Meeting twice a week meant that I was shaking all the time, but I was determined to get it all out. After meeting for two months, I finally began to feel some relief.
    • Medication also helps. Years later, I suffered depression again as my marriage was ending. This time I wasn’t hallucinating, but just was having suicidal thoughts every waking moment of every day. I would look out the window at the barn and wonder if there was a good, strong rope to hang myself with. One day after two years of this I went to the garage and got into the car, leaving the garage door closed. Then I stuck my key in the ignition. It was the only concrete step toward suicide that I took. But instead of turning the key, I took the phone out of my pocket and dialed 911. When I told the operator what I was doing, she told me to go to the county mental health clinic. So that’s what I did, instead. The doctor there prescribed Prozac. Normally, I hate taking pharmaceutical drugs, but it saved my life. Not that it instantly cured the depression—it doesn’t do that. But it gave me just enough of a cushion so that I could begin to think rationally again. And when I could think rationally, I realized that our marriage was never going to get better. It gave me the strength I needed to make the decision to leave.

    It was during this time of horrific depression that I learned the Life Coaching skills that changed my life.

    [1] My husband knew that I was suffering from depression, but knew nothing about the hallucinations.

  • Becoming a Health Coach

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