HOLY YES!

Resiliance on Shasta Place

By Jai Reed, Editor

Girr is a cat
He recently joined my household when his owner Jason joined my daughter Renae as they returned from his home in North Dakota to our home here in Port Townsend. Girr graduated to his new outdoor haven, the dense sala of our backyard woods. After his first explorations in the Pacific Northwest, Girr started each day with a persistent, progressive, and rather annoying meowing for freedom at the first hint of dawn.

I know how Jason felt, those too early mornings. But, ya, it’s just no use trying to ignore those persistent, progressive, and rather annoying messages of the body. This is a major tenet of wellness care - listen to your body! Those first mewings from your mind, your body, and/or your spirit tip us to the fact that something is out of balance.

If you are like me, you like to put the pillow over your head, shout “be quiet!” and go back to sleep. Like Girr in the morning, these messages are not to be ignored. This is for good reason because they are the precursors to disease. Your body is your best friend.

This is where natural medicine comes into it’s indispensable excellence. An acupuncturist, listening deeply to your pulses, can read the subtleties of inbalances throughout your body and correct them through acupuncture and Chinese herbs. A Naturopathic Physician gathers a lengthy history, is trained as a keen observer and interviewer, and knows the signals of these messages and the resultant pattern of symptoms. A Counselor is similar, they listen for what goes unsaid, the drop of eye contact, where we hold tension, parts of the body that are collapsed and they draw forth the emotional and thought patterns and messages that need to be heard.

Ask yourself, “what would Girr do?”
During Girr’s first week here, he would frolic, hide, jump, and play in the bushes occasionally running back to the sliding glass door to make sure we were still there, that he was indeed home. This cat was happy and not afraid to show his glee.

Several weeks ago, Girr was shot while out playing in the woods behind our home. Probably a ricochet from a .22 rifle, the bullet shattered the upper bones of his left leg and lodged in his muscle. After a specialist determined it to be inoperable, Girr was sent home to heal. In a crate. In a crate where he was supposed to be contained for a month.

Girr had a different plan for his healing and objected with a persistent, progressive, and rather annoying howling to get out. Two weeks later, bleary eyed and exhausted, Jason and Renae gave in and let him out into their closed bedroom. One day I walked in and stood in the doorway. Girr, remembering his great passion bolted, dodged my best block, galloped on three legs down the stairs, through the kitchen, out the back slider, off the deck and to the bushes as the three of us gave a fumbling chase. We found him smiling bigger than the Cheshire cat, hunkered down onto his earth. Girr is a cat that can’t be contained.

“Freedom at any price,” he whispered to me as Jason slung him over his shoulder to carry him back into the house.

In psychology, resilience is the positive capacity of people to cope with stress and catastrophe. The term first surfaced in studies of children, youth and adults who had experienced early childhood trauma. Some individuals showed amazing abilities to ‘bounce back’ and developed happy, fulfilling lives. Recently, with the rise of Humanistic Psychology, research on happiness has identified the quality of resilience to be a major indicator of happiness and life satisfaction. Resilience also includes the ability to bounce back to homeostasis (balance) after a disruption. Resilient people have thinking and adapting strategies that enable them to do this. After brief processing times, resilient people look for the positive growth from a hardship. ‘What can I learn?” “How can I help others?” There’s a personality trait that instead of cowering and avoiding (“Oh, no, not this again...”), compels them to action to rise to the challenge and keep moving. There is an entire mindset that we can learn to practice to cultivate resilience and hope.

By taking care of your body through massage and bodywork, you naturally cultivate your resilience. Through working with a therapist or counselor, you can learn to actively retrain your thinking about the past and your reaction to stress to build resilience.

Girr taught me that sometimes you got to get up and run for it in spite of your wounds. If that door you long for opens, no matter what, you gotta go for it.

Bella is a dog
Bella is a two year old, gray, black and white smallish Austrailian Shepherd obsessively keyed to her owner Taylor. She is very submissive, shy, and nervous by nature.

Bella is blind on the right side and is found of prancing in small circles, always to the left. It has taken time but she has begun to trust and bond to me, staying at my side or by my feet when Taylor is away. Bella escorts me up the stairs, waits by the door to the room and leads me down the stairs, stopping if I am more than a few steps behind her. Right now, she is laying behind my chair on guard lest something disturb my writing.

My old dog Shoshi is a rooted, patient dog who learned to recite “this too shall pass” during my kids’ antics dressing her up or trying to lasso her. Bella, slow to trust, runs at the first sign of trouble. One night Jason and Renae returned from the carnival with two inflated vinyl hammers. Shoshi took one look and said “This too shall pass,” as they gently bopped her with them. I called Bella who came running to me, and gave her a bop. She gave me a cutting glance with her good eye and bolted up the steps to Taylor’s room.

She refused to accept my apology or talk to me until the next day when after much pleading, she crawled to me and licked my face, believing me that I would never do that again. Some relationships are worth changing for.

When Taylor isn’t feeling well, Bella lays by the couch and guards her like a tiger. One night when Taylor had a very high fever, Bella was hypervigilant. The front door ajar, a loud noise came from the street, Bella charged
- unstoppable, protective, ferocious. I was transfixed at her personality change. Bella has taught me love is fearless.

Like Bella, we need to protect our wellbeing. Take the teachings about nutrition, alcohol, sugar, and fast foods seriously, ferociously, on your own charge to health. Guard your mind from overexposure to stress and negative messages, protect your spirit through your spiritual practices. Be vigilant.

Cowgirl boots are in
It was my first formal date in about 15 years. My daughter Renae stood looking at me in my blue jeans and top frowning. “Mom, it’s a date..he’s taking you for a nice dinner and then dancing. What about a dress? Let’s see if we can find a way for you to match your cowboy.” And so the dress-up party began and after rifling her closet, I stood in a short sunflower print dress, brown leggings, and a pair of tawny orange knee high boots with heels. “Let me see you come down the stairs.” Donning the cowboy hat that he had left the night before, I paraded down the stairs like I was in a pageant. “Mom, do you even know how to walk in heels?” We laughed at the obvious answer.

As we returned up the stairs, suddenly Renae choked and sprayed her drink of water across my back in a sudden burst of laughter. “Mom, you better take the $5.99 Goodwill price tag stickers off the heels of your boots before you go out.” We rolled on the floor laughing just as Taylor got home and flew up the stairs. “What did I miss? What did I miss?”

After editing the outfit, Taylor returned with a pair of leather Justin cowgirl boots, size 7. REAL cowgirl boots. Not only could I walk in these boots, I was ready for dancing. The doorbell went off. “He’s here! He’s here!” they exclaimed running out of the room.

After positioning him at the foot of the stairs, they called up to me. Watching his face as I came down the landing, Taylor clapped her hands, jumped up and down, and turned round and round in a circle to the left, with Bella barking and encircling her, both exclaiming “EEEeeeee!”

Taylor is a girl
Taylor, who is 22 years old tomorrow, and I met in group three years ago. Kindred spirits despite the thirty year age gap, we’ve developed a unique best-friendness that I cherish. It was a God-thing when my rental room opened up and she needed a place to make a home.

Taylor has a natural exuberance for life and doing as much of it as she can in one day brings her great joy. She is the kind of girl who will never put a drop of alcohol or a drug in her body. Her room is a whirlwind of tops, skirts, and dresses. Taylor cleans her room by gathering her piles of clothes and bringing them to the laundry room. By the time those loads of clothes are done, its time for her to clean her room again. The floor of her bedroom remains a great mystery to her roomates.

Like her dog, she can tell if something is not right with you and suddenly drops everything to enter a loving space of deep listening and relating. Other than that, try as Bella might, Taylor won’t sit still. Sometimes this gets to be a problem.

Taylor has cancer and like Girr’s calling, it is persistent, progressive, and rather annoying. After finally overcoming a ten year struggle with eating disorders, the cancer diagnosis was hard to take. Following a tough year of western medical cancer treatment, she was cancer free but six months later, a routine medical procedure led to a dangerous blood infection. Taylor was given a 20% survival rate. I can testify by the loads of laundry in the utility room that she is alive and well.

When she told me that the cancer had returned we laughed and cried. For whatever reason, her resilience is being honed and tested. I call her my warrior girl and we think now that perhaps all this is to prepare her for a fabulous career in natural medicine. Taylor had her first session with a Naturopath, working now with Dr. Molly Force. Having seen her share of specialists, she remarked, “That was the BEST doctor I have ever talked to. I feel so much hope! And we’re going to have so much fun following my anti-inflammatory diet together. Here’s our foods list!” “I’m in,” I replied.

Last week Taylor came into the kitchen carrying a box with this “Can I keep them?” look in her eyes. “They’re baby pheasants! Aren’t they cute?” Last week Cenex gave Taylor a baby duck that they didn’t expect to live the night. Taylor took it home and waves of grief finally found their way out. She held that little guy between her hands and against her heart all night long. The duck made it and the next morning, the pheasants leapt up and awkwardly started to alternate between flying and plummeting. Like with my friend, the flying will win.

When Taylor returned home from class later that day, the pheasants had escaped their box. She found them across the room in the box with the baby duck who now thinks he’s a pheasant.

Taylor has inside of her a holy “YES!” that is perhaps the most contagious force on earth.

It’s inside all of us. It’s in the doors that won’t stay shut, the lids that won’t stay put, the computer program that won’t shut down, the inappropriate laugh that can’t be suppressed, the hearts that can’t help but love again, the grace that returns again and again.
Holy YES!