A pause in the overwhelm

“The best way to spread Christmas Cheer, is singing loud for all to hear.”

-Buddy in the movie Elf

  

A hectic week behind me and another one ahead. Or so it seems when I think of all that I have to do. I remind myself that I don’t have to do everything at once, and it will all get done eventually. Right?

Larry and I spent some time outside the Land of Overwhelm Sunday. We got out the trees (one large and one small) and decorated the large one that we put in the den. Here’s a photo taken with my phone:

 

We still need to add the finishing touches, including the tree skirt.

While we decorated, we watched the movie Elf. My blogger friend Keith Wynn of Musings of An Unapologetic Dreamer recommended the movie as one of his favorites, and he recently sprinkled Facebook with quotes from it.

We enjoyed Elf. It made us laugh and feel a bit more lighthearted about the holidays.

As we go through this week, let’s find ways to take a break from the work and stress and enjoy the moment.

Chase Bird isn't sure what he thinks of the intrusion of the tree. His expression says it all.

What is your favorite holiday movie?

A movie, hope, a soaring bird and joy

Larry and I saw the movie “Gravity” this weekend. This post is not a review of the movie, and I won’t include any spoilers for those of you who haven’t seen the movie but want to see it.

I will say that it profoundly affected both of us.

We talked about it later. I asked Larry what he thought the meaning of the movie was. He thought about it and said, “Don’t lose hope.”

I agreed.

And, I added, my favorite line was when Sandra Bullock’s character said something to the effect that she may live or she may die, but either way, it was going to be one hell of a ride.

Her statement was a strong one, especially since she had, up to that point in the movie, been hiding from life, not quite wanting to die, not quite wanting to live.

This movie reminded me that whatever life handed me, I wanted to live with hope and joy. To live fully and die gracefully.

So that’s the movie part of this post. The soaring bird? I saw him on Sunday. I went out into the yard to get some photos. I haven’t meandered around like that in nature since we lost Sam almost two weeks ago.

The temperature was perfect, the sky was blue, the sun was bright. We still have a lot of green left on the trees, but I saw some changes in the leaves.

When I take photos, I try to remind myself to look up, look down, turn around and look behind me—see the different perspectives.

I looked up and saw a large bird sailing through the sky.

I lost sight of it, but then when I was filling up the bird bath, a shadow crossed over me. I looked up and saw the bird again. Then another.

I thought I was seeing a pair of hawks, though I realized later they were vultures.

I snapped photo after photo. I walked around with my neck bent backwards, focused on the sky, trying to follow the lovely path of these birds.

The birds, the sky, the sun, the trees—they are all so much bigger than me. Nature is so much bigger than me. God is so much bigger than me.

It all pooled together: the movie, the hope, the bird, the joy.

I wanted to cry from that joy.

What is something that has given you joy lately? And if you’ve seen “Gravity,” what did you think of it?

More mental health in pop culture: “Call Me Crazy: A Five Film”

What is it like to have an illness that might take away all your dreams? What is it like to have others look at you as weak and a burden because of your illness? What is it like to be a family member of someone with an illness that makes him or her different, that might even make them embarrassing to be around?

“Call Me Crazy: A Five Film,” a Lifetime Movie, explored these and other aspects of mental illness.

It aired Saturday night, and as I watched it and thought about it afterwards, I felt hope: hope that lots of people are working against stigma surrounding mental illness and renewed hope that people can live full and happy lives despite having a mental illness.

Thanks to Sunny at 71 degrees and Sunny, I knew about the film beforehand and planned my viewing accordingly.

The stories

The film is made up of five intertwining stories focusing on four people suffering from a mental illness and their family and friends.

“Lucy” is about Lucy, a law student who has schizophrenia. At the beginning of her story, she has stopped her medication and ends up in a mental hospital for treatment.

Lucy doesn’t have much hope for a normal life. She doesn’t think she can finish law school and help others, like she had planned.

Her doctor tells her to prove others wrong and go for her dreams.

In “Allison,” we meet a 19-year-old woman visiting home from college with her boyfriend. She’s upset when she learns that her older sister, Lucy, will be returning home from the mental hospital.

Allison believes that Lucy has stolen a normal family life from her because of her schizophrenia. She is also very angry because in the past, while hallucinating, Lucy tried to choke her.

Allison and Lucy have some honest conversations. While no grand resolution is reached, they both come to understand each other better.

“Grace” focuses on the young daughter of a woman who has bipolar. Grace feels responsible for taking care of her mom, whether she is lost in depression or acting recklessly during her manic periods.

Grace’s mother stops her medication and goes on a wild adventure with Grace and her friends, eventually scaring them with her daredevil driving.

After Grace proclaims that she is done with her mother and that she only wants to move far away from her, her mother seeks help.

Later Grace, writing an essay as part of a college application, calls her mother her hero because of the strength she shows in fighting her disease.

“Eddie” focuses on depression. Eddie is a stand-up comic who can make people laugh. After the show, though, he wants to be alone and sleep away the time until he has to go on stage again.

His wife notices that his humor has gotten darker and seems to center around suicide. When she discovers that Eddie has stopped seeing his therapist and has planned his own suicide, she is devastated.

Eddie comes home and finds that his wife has discovered his secretes. She goes with him to his therapist’s office, seeking help for his depression.

 “Maggie” is about a woman returning home from war, suffering from PTSD after being repeatedly raped by her commanding officer, who was later killed in war.

She loses custody of her son after she attacks her father during a flashback, thinking that he is the commanding officer.

Lucy, now out of law school and working as an attorney, takes on Maggie’s case. Maggie is without hope. Lucy tells Maggie her own story of mental illness and triumph, and reminds Maggie that there is always hope.

She goes to court with her, arguing for help for Maggie so that she can once again become productive in society.

My take

I found all of these stories refreshingly honest. While everyone’s problems are not solved in the course of the stories, everyone does gain a little hope. They seek help, they get help, and they begin the journey of getting better.

Some of them were hard to watch. It’s not easy to watch someone in the depths of despair, wanting only to die. It’s not easy to watch someone held captive by voices that tell her it’s time to die. It’s not easy to see a young girl trying to control her out-of-control mother.

I could particularly relate to Eddie’s story, especially his sense of hopelessness and the inertia that he feels.

I also related to Lucy’s sense that her recovery depends on multiple things, not just taking her medication as prescribed.

I applaud the actors, writers and directors and all of those involved in putting together “Call Me Crazy.” I think the portrayals of mental illness, and its effects on family and friends, will only help the cause of removing the stigma surrounding mental illness.

If you watched “Call Me Crazy,” what did you think of its portrayal of mental illness? And in general, how important is a sense of hope when facing obstacles in life?

Needed: A move forward

As I write this, I’m listening to “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” play on the TV in the next room. I watched the movie Saturday, but I had missed the beginning. When the movie started again this evening, I watched the beginning, and then left it on in the background.

It’s a really good movie. It’s about a group of British people who retire to India to a hotel that doesn’t quite meet their expectations. In fact, the whole country and culture of India doesn’t meet the expectations of some in the group, and the movie follows their individual efforts at adapting and learning to enjoy their new world.

I enjoy movies like this, that show people learning to make peace with their age, becoming invigorated by new experiences, finding lives that makes them feel whole and content.

I want to feel like that: whole and content. But I have some work to do first.

It has been a quiet weekend, a quiet few days. I missed work Thursday because of a bad cold and cough, and then was off work Friday for the Good Friday holiday. I’ve spent much of the past few days asleep, knocked out by the cold itself and the cough medicine.

I find myself this Sunday evening feeling out of sorts and a bit depressed. I know some of that comes from feeling physically under the weather. But some of it is coming from a sense of dissatisfaction with myself.

In “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” there is one character that refuses to try to enjoy her new country. She stays in the hotel and complains incessantly about what others see as challenges and opportunities to experience new beauty.

I wonder, would I be that character if I were in her position? Would I refuse to leave the hotel, refuse to experience new things, and refuse to love my new life?

I hope not. But here I am on a Sunday night, dreading Monday and its work, fearing the routine that starts anew.

I’ve made commitments to live a full life despite my OCD and depression. I have a vision and mission to live a certain way. Why, then, am I still mired down in the day-to-day fears? Why am I not living intentionally? Why am I not moving forward?

I hope this time of introspection will lead to more action on my part. To help ensure that, I’m planning on doing the following over the next few days:

*Meditate and pray

*Write: journaling, listing, planning

*Read

*Spend time with nature

I hope to report positive things soon.

Do you ever feel stuck, like you’re not moving forward? How do you handle it?

Mental illness in pop culture: “Silver Linings Playbook”

Larry and I recently went to see the movie “Silver Linings Playbook.” I had heard that the movie dealt with mental illness, and I was anxious to see how it was portrayed.

In the movie, Bradley Cooper plays Pat, a man newly released from a mental treatment hospital where he has been a patient for eight months.

Pat had undiagnosed bipolar disorder when he arrived home from work one day to find his wife, Nikki, in the shower with another man. Pat beat the man almost to death, and as part of a plea agreement, he entered the mental hospital.

At the time of his release, Pat resists taking his medication, and he insists that having a positive attitude, getting in shape and becoming a different person will win back his wife and his old life.

This doesn’t seem too likely because Nikki has a restraining order against him, and Pat is allowed no contact with her.

Meanwhile, Pat’s father, played by Robert De Niro, has lost his job and his pension and is bookmaking in order to make enough money to start a restaurant. He is consumed by the Philadelphia Eagles and how well they perform. He’s insistent that Pat being back home is going to bring him good luck with the games.

Pat meets a friend’s sister-in-law, Tiffany, played by Jennifer Lawrence. Tiffany is a recent widow. She hints at suffering from depression before her husband died, and after he died, she chose some very self-destructive behaviors.

Pat and Tiffany begin a friendship. Both are broken in their own way, and they understand each other in ways that others don’t. But they have their moments, such as when Tiffany senses that Pat thinks she’s “crazier” than he is.

Eventually, Pat asks Tiffany to give Nikki a letter from him, and Tiffany agrees to do it provided Pat participates in a dance competition with her.

I won’t give away any more of the plot. But we see Pat and Tiffany both make changes in their lives, and they come to understand themselves and their families better.

I thought the movie portrayed the hardships of mental illness very well. We see the confusion, worry and helplessness Pat’s family experiences as they learn to live with their son again.

We see the pain that Pat has as he faces his friends and acquaintances after having spent time in a mental hospital.

I don’t have bipolar disorder and I’m certainly not an expert. But I was impressed with Cooper’s portrayal of a man who seems captive to his emotions, who can’t seem to stay focused.

I especially liked how the movie portrayed the changes in Pat. He begins to take his medication, without fanfare, but with commitment. He goes to therapy. He exercises. He practices dancing, which he admits helps his focus and his discipline.

We see him improve over the course of the movie, and it’s due to all of those things as well as the relationships that he forges with family and friends.

The only quibble I had about the movie’s portrayal of mental illness was the way OCD was handled. Twice, Pat refers to his father’s superstitions and rituals about football games as “OCD.” I don’t know if De Niro’s character had OCD or not—it’s hard to tell. But those rituals were front and center in a lot of the storyline, and his problem seemed glossed over in the plot.

I recommend “Silver Linings Playbook” as a good movie in its own right, and a realistic portrayal of a person suffering from a mental illness.

Have you seen “Silver Linings Playbook”? If so, what did you think of the way it portrayed mental illness? If not, how do you think pop culture in general portrays mental illness? What needs to be improved?

Update on the foot

Thank you for all the kind wishes, thoughts and prayers that you sent my way for the healing of my foot!

I saw the orthopedic doctor on Monday. He told me that the break started out as a stress fracture but is now something called a Jones fracture.

He said it’s going to take a long time to heal because it’s in an area of the foot that doesn’t have a good blood supply, and one of the ligaments in the foot pulls across the fractured area.

Sometimes this type of fracture doesn’t heal, and surgery has to be performed to insert a screw.

For the next three weeks I need to continue wearing the boot and I need to keep weight off of it as much as I can. I’m struggling to use crutches. It’s exhausting to get around on those things!

I go back to see him in three weeks, and he’s hoping to see some new bone growth.

Let’s hope I won’t need surgery!