ode to ignatia

Ignatia amara is the name of a homeopathic remedy often given to those that grieve. I wrote this piece a while back as a student… My apologies to those that have read this before.

Oh healer of closet weeping,
bulging doors
holding at bay suppressed avalanches
issuing forth
at inopportune moments
burying recipients in old sorrows.

Shaking trees of endless anguish,
rooted deep in the dry, crystallized earth
shattering time forever.

Oh Sire of desired loneliness,
choking back pain
pretending ease of speech
while bearing apple-sized lumps in throat.

Cloaker of sadness heavy and long,
Oh that You should be needless
disappointment ailing none
death
mere figment in the minds of men.

miles

It was the middle name that he dutifully carried like a good son for 22 years. Not an easy task when the namesake you bear lived life as mythical character, as in Herculean sized standards. Named for Dad's mentor--a bald, little spitfire of a guy wielding Bible verses on street corners, holding a small college together by the seams, inspiring many even into his 80th year. The shoes were definitely big.

We needed for him to be epic. To back up the carrying on of the family name after a decidedly long line of X chromosomes. The even longer line of five older siblings claiming niches in life complicated matters for my brother. He needed to be epic and distinct. We needed a knight.

Did our needs and expectations somehow contribute to the creation of the epic adventures? To the creation of this Bipolar Disease as foe? No. But sometimes my mind wanders there. To the place where guilt and shame and blame throttle you and wrestle you to the ground.

In particular, I wonder sometimes at how mania made him larger than life. How the mania granted the opportunity to be epic. Grandiose. O Fortuna. It was the mania that birthed the Knight, or the Phantom of the Opera, or the Prophet, or Jason Bourne and his identity crisis. It was the mania that made him invisible as he danced around the block on the run from the government conspiracy.

The Knight.

I'm not sure he ever knew that the Latin word for Knight is Miles.

And he'll never know that my medical practice names him as it treats mental health patients.

Miles.

His namesake. Favored piece on the chess board, L mover, plunderer of Queens and Kings alike. Good at chess, because he knew how to use the knight to such advantage. And because he studied to the point of obsession.

Miles. Suggestive of a journey. Travels. Epic. Knight. Brother.

What's in a name?

A memory. History. The boy that never ages finally reaching knighthood.

how the story goes

I spend a lot of time hearing stories. Leaning back in my chair, I listen for clues of emotive content steeping beneath the surface--the song beneath the song. Waiting for the pieces that make sense of it all. The pieces that tie all the lines on the face together, wrinkling seamlessly into one another. The pieces that make my patient’s choice seem, the most logical thing of all to do. The point in the story, where I think I might have done the same thing, responded in some similar way, that place where I’m caught up in the moment of the story and thoughts of what-to-have-for-dinner, or if-I’ll-make-it-to-the-bank-before-closing, recede into the background. The place where I stop having to say, tell me more about that, because the story spills out like the yolk of an egg, my patient and I seemingly second string teammates on the sideline, watching the game. Almost as if the story breathing a life of its own, flows like current toward the falls.

This is the place, I intuitively struggle towards. The place where all the psychologists say good blending occurs and one manages to catch understanding. For me the moment is about finding the features that fit an appropriate homeopathic medicine.

But I’d be amiss to say that the moment is only about finding the most appropriate medicine. In many ways, the moment is part of the medicine.

Telling your story is powerful.

Most of my patients tell me so and mental health literature bears this idea out. Many of them tell me, I've never told anyone this... Much of the time, they feel better just telling the story out loud. If the story is particularly dark or messy, the telling of it seems to be even more valuable.

Indeed, telling your story is powerful.

A good friend of mine recently wrote on her blog about the act of writing, itself. Wondering aloud on the feed, she asked,  why do I  write, anyway? Not ready to quit her day job, and not really wanting to she blogs her own unique story. She doesn't think she's all that good at writing. Incidentally, she is--but that isn't why her story is so powerful. I think her story is powerful precisely because she writes to sort out the messiness of life on the page. To process honestly, sometimes painfully, the details of a struggling daughter or an elderly, Alzheimer toting adult with erased memories.    

James Pennebaker wrote a book entitled, Opening Up: the Healing Power of Confiding in Others. In it he discusses research demonstrating that talking about your problems—or not talking about them as the case may be—can have profound effects on your physical health. That’s right—physical health. According to Pennebaker, talking, even writing about our problems, our struggles, our traumas heals us.  And conversely, not talking about our junk harms—not merely psychologically—but physically. Of course, we know it's all connected, anyway. Chronic inhibition and suppression of our emotions and feelings, in particular anger, leads to increased risk of all sorts of physical diseases—heart attacks, hypertension, cardiovascular problems, asthma, diabetes, and cancer.  

For some of us, letting go and telling our story is more difficult. Parading our shadowy sides scares us. Climbing into the boat and letting the current take us places, makes us feel vulnerable. What if my friends think I’m complaining? What if I’m labeled “whiny?” What if they think I have a mental illness? What if my children don’t like who I really am?

And so we bind ourselves up. Thinking somehow, that we are protecting ourselves from the inevitable isolation of rejection. Telling ourselves that it’s the good, Christian thing to do. Telling ourselves we’re becoming better people by hiding our struggles, our griefs, the badness of our story wrought with flaws.

The truth is we do manage to protect ourselves. We do manage to cut ourselves off from venues of possible rejection. We do manage to protect ourselves from something that might get out of control--something that might take on a life of its own--sticky, messy, and difficult. In not sharing our story, we effectively cut ourselves off from the larger communal story, with its unique power to transform and shape our own story into something more. And that's how the story goes.

dear mental illness

I don’t need you

to help me be smart

or creative, thank you.

I don’t need you

ensuring that people

treat me

and my kind

any differently than they already do.

your stigma carries enough

shit

on its own, thank you.

I’ve had to battle

uphill for decades.

with families

abandoning

well enough on their own

without

your damn stigma

pushing further,

after learning

of habits

living under bridges and what not.

I don’t need you

guaranteeing

people assume violence,

or that I push a shopping cart, full of haphazard piles of random conspiracy laden stuff,

my M.O.

I don’t need you

telling your classmates

at community college

that

I’m not smart enough to finish anything.

assumptions happen anyhow

without your damn influence.

I struggle enough
trying to be normal without instructor's help,

or extra time

to make it through my 3 classes

on my own,

tutors smutors,

only make for more-what’s-up-with-him-attention?

that I don't need, ghostwriter.

I can do this.

without your damn stigma.

take your

false pity

elsewhere.

I may preach

on the street

of hell

fire

and brimstone

but

maybe I’m just trying to survive like anybody else.

they,

might expect me ready

to shoot up

youth in Norway or Tuscon.

maybe,

I’m dangerous

and

turning my apartment complex

into a luxury condos for high flalutin college students

with rich dads or moms

is obviously

a grand idea.

but
i must say,

its different when you’re the one left

moving  

to another part of town

for the umpteenth time.

because

you,

aren’t good enough

for borrowing

that cup of sugar for that gluten-free birthday cake.

on superheroes and villains

Sometimes I feel caught between two worlds. Stranger to both. I think I missed the memo from Madeline about how best to wrinkle between worlds. I suppose not being sucked into either vortex could be advantageous. Namely, the advantage of perspective on both.

To hear the naturopathic community and all its appendages, drugs are mostly evil. Look at how those Kryptonite laden Pharmaceutical companies are in bed with Lois Lane, MD! Existing to torment individuals on the planet, these toxic poisoning agents of some Lex Luther character in the sky, bring down the Clark Kents of this world, which conveniently happens to be an herb-toting, birkenstocked, crunchy doctor. Treat the cause, the root of the problem. We like roots and all in naturopathic medicine.

To hear the allopathic community and some of its quackwatch appendages, the naturopathic medicines I prescribe daily are either placebo or toxic agents bordering on the realm of negligence and my practice of medicine and admiration of the genius of Hahnemann harbors some similarity to following a cult leader. Hahnemann and his minions were some crusading characters insanely bent on--Like cures Like fighting the "dark aged" Regulars. 

And yet Naturopathic world misses the point. Fish the telephone pole out of your own eye. Isn't Clark Kent, ND in bed with Nutraceutical Company? How is that relevantly different from Lois and Pharma? Can't we admit that vaccines are rather naturopathic and save lives? Can't we acknowledge that Allopathic medicine does certain things like Emergency Medicine, amazingly well?

And yet Allopathic world also misses the point. Fish the telephone pole out of your own eye. Can't you see how the history of human kind is all about the history of human mistakes and the process of detecting and overcoming those errors in thinking? Isn't it possible that in waging this war against those that think differently from you, you've missed the point? If you aim to squelch the position that balances out your own, you burn the bridge to future growth and banish yourself to an island of your own idiosyncratic thinking?

Can't both worlds ingest a dose of humility? And, no I don't mean a homeopathic dose. Can't both acknowlege that extremism and polarization help no-one?

Unfortunately, all of medicine merely seems to mimic the culture at large. We live in culture of extremist sound bites. A culture that needs the boxing ring to keep the viewers interested. How will we ever get our message into the limelight without an evil villain character? Who is the foil? And so we polarize. We spin. We push the gap between two ideals wider and wider. In the name of spin or viewers or "ideals" we feature our opponent's ideal in a crossbow on a website or pronounce a democracy focused camp, a "Hitler Youth Camp." Really? Accuracy doesn't seem to matter so much as capturing that emotionally reactive content, placing our message center stage at Carnegie Hall.

In the meantime, outside polarized TV world, boys sucked into the story, show up with guns at grocery stores in Tuscon or youth camps in Norway, and blow up evil villain characters for ideals.

Taking our lessons from culture at large, maybe its time for medicine to back away from extremist-superhero-naturo-or-allo positions, acknowledging that at least some portion might be spin designed to harness emotionally reactive content. Our voice as medical moderates might not be as glamorous, might not take sweeps week, or win us roles on Jerry Springer Live, but it will be heroic nonetheless. For it will be our voice acknowledging that many of our fiercest idealistic battles are not waged in order to contend with some evil villain force outside ourselves. Rather, those battles are often waged when we can't aknowledge  the villain within who gathers strength precisely as we feed our superhero counterpart.

dallas divide

NAMI

I attended my first NAMI meeting tonight. I have no idea why I haven't been to a meeting until now. Per the confidentiality agreement I’m not allowed to talk about stated meeting. But I suppose I can talk about NAMI in general and my own personal response.

NAMI is a beautiful organization. The acronym stands for National Alliance on Mental Illness. They support people and families with mental illness. Aiming to reduce the stigma of mental illness, they structure support in a gazillion different ways, perhaps too many to count. Support groups, educational classes for families, community wide fund raisers to increase awareness, and more are all part of the NAMI package.

Of course, in going to such a meeting I couldn’t help but ruminate on my brother. I couldn’t help but dwell on the fact that I found a beautiful organization, six years too late. I couldn’t help but feel guilty for not finding these people--committed to plugging some of the holes in the treatment and service to the mentally ill after his death.

But that is not the point of NAMI. NAMI is not so much about wallowing in your guilt over what you should have done, or would have done, or maybe could have done to help someone. NAMI is about holding all of these should of, would of, and could ofs and deciding to walk forward anyways. Its about recognizing your own limitations, your own humanity, your own shortcomings, and still getting up in the morning to put your shoes on. And so I shall.


In case you are interested in checking NAMI out, here's the national website.

http://nami.org/