TOUGH TIMES TOOLBOX Jan. 24, 2022

We have all experienced tough times, the garden variety: divorce, broken hearts, grief over loss of loved ones, house burning down, trouble with kids, and so many more. Those were just the kind that my friends and I have faced over the years, oh yes and there is ill health and aging. Recently the topic came up of what tools to use to overcome getting stuck in the trough of despond when tough times lay us low. I was on a mission yesterday with a couple of friends to deliver winter clothes to a volunteer who distributes them to homeless people. We were talking about what we have done to pull ourselves out of despair. At present, all three of us are in pretty good condition although one of us has had a loss to death and one had several serious falls and injuries to contend with a couple of years back. We came up with some ideas that I wrote down and then I talked or, actually texted with a few other friends, one of whom in December lost her best friend to auto-immune disease.

There are some things these two friends and I do regularly, WE WALK! The two friends still hike in the woods, but as I have had some knee problems over the past couple of years, I only walk two miles EVERY DAY with my dog. By the way, adopting my dog was somethng I did to pull mysself out of grief over losing first my father, then his dog whom I had adopted. The dog I recently adopted was a problem dog, an overactive, large Husky/Lab mix with no manners from an abusive and exploitive home who had been abandoned after she was used to breed puppies for sale. Let me tell you, she was a tough project. She was so difficult that I was in tears and in fear for my safety when I walked her as she had some awful and unexpected bad habits like rising up on her hind legs and diving to get away to fight other dogs we passed. She knocked me down a few times. I was forced to hire not one dog trainer, but, after that expense and effort, yet another dog trainer. I can fast forward to the end of that story right now and tell you that although she isn't 100 percent yet, she is well on her way and I LOVE her! Friends had advised me to get rid of her, Take Her Back!, but I said I had made a vow to give her a home forever, and I would stick through the struggle. She may not have been the dog I needed but she definitely needed me. It has worked and she is a grateful and loving companion now. She is dozing beside me on the sofa as I type.

Fifty years ago my first efforts at saving myself took me towards Zen Buddhism. Having realized, fortunately, at a relatively early age that most trouble was in my thinking not in the outside world, I looked for ways to adjust my thinking. I remember pondering the notion that we make the world with our thoughts. Surely, I thought, there is an objective world out there that is not composed of our thoughts, so how can that be true? But over time I read many books on Buddhism starting with Alan Watts and then Zen Mind Beginner's Mind by Suzuki. The one I still have and have bought over and over is Baba Ram Dass' book Be Here Now. That one literally saved me and every day at some point that mantra lights up on the front of my mind like a neon sign and a radio advertising voice booms out "Be Here Now" and stops me from meandering down negative and unproductive lanes.

My best guru, however, is Pema Chodrin, a monk who is now head of a monasery in New Brunswick and I have read every book she has ever written, and most of them more than once. They have titles that get right to the point, like "When Things Fall Apart." I found Pema Chodrin in a very painful period of anxiety in my life when my daughter, age 18, had quit college and run off to California. I was devastated. A college education had been the biggest solution/gift/lifeboat in my own life and I was devoted to the idea of providing that for her so I wouuld know she would be okay in the future. Also, there she was going off to California to be a movie star!! It was the route to exploitation in so many narratives of disaster. I couldn't sleep. I was a boiling cauldron of anxiety every day. I burst into tears. I was assailed by hideous fantasies of serial killers kidnapping my naive daughter and her disappearing and me never knowing what happened to her. To save myself, I bought a dozen Pema Chodrin meditation CDs and since I had a five cd changer player, I put on five at a time when I went to bed at night and listened to them until I fell asleep and after I fell asleep, hopefully, they were still working on my unconscious mind. They saved me.

In my fifties, After a set of disabling accidents, I was feeling old and broken and facing a future of crippled solitude. I decided to pick myself up by joining The Outdoor Club of New Jersey. I bought winter hiking clothes and got into the woods. Also at that time, three other teachers and I decided to try to fix our weak and failing bodies by joining a gym together. The gym offered a group discount. I took to it and lost 50 pounds and became stronger and fitter than I have ever been at any age. It also strengthened and healed my mind.

So, yesterday, my two friends and I took our bags of sweaters and hats and scarves, gloves and socks and coats to the home of the helper who is assisting Mr. Piscitelli who distributes these items to the homeless in the tent encampments in Camden City NS Kensington. We felt good about that and decided that Helping Others was definitely on the tool list.

1. Get outside - go walking, in the park, in the woods, in the neighborhood.

2. Rescue a dog who needs a home and will go walking with you but oly if you will are for the dog. They need a lot of love and attention.

3. Help others. Be a volunteer or just donate whatever you can spare.

4. Change your thinking patterns: Read Zen Buddhism, or listen to cd's, A great magazine is Shambala, which you can buy at Barnes and Noble. A great guru who speaks to our everyday lives is Pema Chodrin. Some people have found help in Eckart Tolle. Others love Thich Nhat Hahn.

5. Join a gym - Planet Fitness has a ten dollar a month membership and Golden Sneakers lets you go for free! Sometimes when you strengthen your body, you strengthen your mind.

6. Distraction: Read a really good series of mysteries - I recommend Anne Cleeves' Vera and Shetland series, Louise Penny's Three Pines series, and recently I am working my way through the Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear.

7. Meditation: Learn to meditate, use meditation tapes or cd's or apps on your phone or just practice sitting quietly letting your mind clear.

8. Science has shown through m.r.i. that practicing the gratitudes can change your brain. Every day counter negative thoughts by reciting five things for which you are grateful.

9. Creative Journaling: For fifty years, I have kept journals. Tell your troubles to your journal, list your accomplishments, write your gratitudes, cut and paste from magazines - it is your book! Draw in it, let it evolve.

10. Reading - Self Help Books actually can help. All kinds of reading can help. Reading for distraction, reading for solutions.

11. When you can't read because you are too down in the dumps-listen. You can get a free library app called Hoopla. At the library a young woman behind the counter put the app on my phone and showed me how to use it. You can borrow several books or cd's a month. I listen to audio-books when I can't sleep and I listen to cd music at the gym.

Personally, I beieve that physical maintenance and emotional maintenance are as or more important than household maintenance and automobile maintenance. Just as you wouldn't allow laundry to pile up, or dishes in the sink, it is a good idea to sort out the piles gathered in your mind and straighten it out. It goes without saying that as with serious illness, thinking and will power are not enough if you have serious mental or emotional disability in which case you need to see a professional and possibly get medication, but all the tools in the toolbox are useful as well and for most of us, they can keep things rolling in a healthful and satisfying way!

Happy Trails!

Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com