body-mind balance

Agility Test

Evelyn Herwitz · September 20, 2016 · 6 Comments

It’s getting harder and harder to keep a positive attitude these days. This past weekend’s bombings in NYC and New Jersey, the stabbing in Minnesota, the hateful, cynical rhetoric of this presidential election campaign—I’ve had more than my share of insomnia recently. One day last week I had trouble focusing on my work. I know I need to turn off the news, but I can’t seem to break away from it all. My fight or flight instincts are on overdrive—not a good state of mind, with real potential to impact my health.

So I was glad for a great diversion on Monday that gave some renewed perspective. I took the day off from work to drive up to New Hampshire (even as I was listening to updates on the NYC bomber manhunt) for the Bearded Collie Club of America’s National Specialty Agility Trial. A good friend of mine has two beardies—bright, exuberant, long-haired dogs with herding instincts and personality plus—and she is seriously involved in championship competitions.

I’ve never been to a dog competition, let alone one in agility, which involves leading the beardie through a course of hurdles, fabric tunnels, bridges, obstacles and teeter-totters. The rules and scoring are complicated. Preparation requires hours and hours of practice and an ocean of patience. The dogs are very smart and clearly have minds of their own. While they can run with amazing speed and precision, they can also zoom around in circles, run off to the side of the arena to explore, sniff the judge standing in the middle of the course, jump up on hind legs in excitement and bark like crazy.

Such was my friend’s experience when she ran her dog, Mac, through his first event. Despite many perfect practice sessions in recent months, as well as past successes on the ladder to championship ranking, this morning Mac decided to create his own version of the course. He ran this way and that, refused to run the course in order, skipped some of the hurdles, all the while jumping and barking his commentary. A discouraging experience, to say the least.

Plenty of the other dogs did their own thing, too. “How do you get another creature to do what you want?” I mused. “When I figure that one out, I’ll let you know,” quipped my friend. Watching everyone else’s mishaps—even at the national championship level, these dogs are a challenge to control and can be quite comical—we had some good laughs, and she regained her sense of humor and perspective.

And, I’m happy to report, Mac redeemed himself. Later in the afternoon, he ran an event that involved jumping over a lot of hurdles, running over a teeter-totter and threading through a “weaving” obstacle (running back and forth through a row of poles, like a slalom, but on level ground) so perfectly that he took the blue ribbon.

Clearly, we agreed, he could do it if he wanted to. It was all a matter of focus and his emotional reaction to the situation at hand.

It’s no wonder that the dog-trainer relationship is such an intimate partnership. We have so much in common.

On my drive home, as I caught up with the latest political news, I thought about how the narrative we tell ourselves has such an impact on our ability to stay on track and handle life’s many hurdles and obstacles. It’s all so easy to fall prey to the doomsaying that dominates the news media. There are real, substantive reasons for concern and even worry about what’s happening and what will happen next. But the future, by definition, is always an unknown.

We can choose to believe the worst and let our fears run us in circles. Or we can choose to believe that whatever comes, we will confront it with focus, courage and commitment to stay the course of living a life true to our values and all we hold dear.

I’m going to do my best to remember that as Election Day approaches.

Evelyn Herwitz blogs weekly about living fully with chronic disease, the inside of baseballs, turtles and frogs, J.S. Bach, the meaning of life and whatever else she happens to be thinking about at livingwithscleroderma.com.

Flights of Fancy

Evelyn Herwitz · September 6, 2016 · Leave a Comment

What better way to mark the official end of summer this Labor Day than to surround yourself with butterflies? That’s what Emily and I decided to do Monday afternoon after a hectic weekend of social events that included hosting a large, agreeable dog for a young couple who were getting married, friends of Mindi, who was home for the festivities and a big move to a new apartment.

The fall transition is most certainly upon us. But inside The Butterfly Place in Westford, Mass., it was a precious ahhh moment. Enjoy, Dear Reader . . .

Gold Standard

Evelyn Herwitz · August 16, 2016 · 2 Comments

All those perfect bodies. It’s impossible to watch the Olympics without marveling. Sculpted muscles, tight abs, toned thighs—these premier athletes look every bit like the marble statues we saw everywhere in Italy this summer—except, of course, they are living, breathing humans who accomplish seemingly superhuman feats of strength, coordination, balance, speed, grace.

The Summer Olympics, especially, always set me daydreaming—what would it have been like if I’d had the ability and training to compete as a gymnast when I was that young and healthy? What does it feel like to be Simone Biles, dancing, bounding and twirling through the air, always landing soundly on her feet?

The gold medalists, especially those who’ve distinguished themselves as Biles has in gymnastics with her extraordinary athletic prowess, are walking Rorschach tests for our imaginations—as well as our biases.

There has been plenty of press regarding the ignorant comments by NBC sportscaster Al Trautwig about Biles’s parents—her biological grandparents, who adopted Simone and her sister when they were very young. “They may be mom and dad but they are NOT her parents,” he tweeted last Sunday. Those comments raised a huge furor, rightly so. As an adoptive parent of our older daughter, I found the initial reporting offensive and appalling. I was very glad that Trautwig not only retracted his statements eventually, but also apologized. Shared DNA is not the defining ingredient of parenthood.

But there is another bias projected onto Biles that has not been flagged—and that involves how she is described in terms of height. Like many female gymnasts, Simone Biles is petite. She stands 4-feet-8-inches tall.

For some reason, however, the sportscasters are compelled to describe her as a “4-foot-8-inch giant.” This is intended as high praise—small in stature, but a huge presence. I get it.

However, my younger daughter stands 4-feet-7-inches tall, and over many years, we have discussed the challenges of living in a society that tends to be dismissive of individuals who are shorter than average. Short stature is associated with being childlike, being “cute” (as in not taken seriously), being less capable of leadership. It’s an insidious stereotype that has no more to do with what an individual is capable of than the color of her skin, religion, gender identity, physical limitations or any other distinguishing characteristic.

By describing Biles as a giant, the sports world is underscoring the perceived irony of such a small woman looming so large over other gymnasts. The implied assumption: better-than equals bigger-than. But why isn’t it enough for Simone Biles to be the world’s greatest female gymnast—period? Why does her height have to figure into her sobriquet? Does anyone dwell on swimmer Michael Phelps’s height when describing his amazing 23 gold medal record? Of course not. He’s 6-feet-4-inches tall.

The Olympics are all about achieving athletic perfection. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if those who set the bar for how we talk about these breathtaking accomplishments strived to set a gold-medal standard for appreciating the precious uniqueness of each individual—rather than marveling at how they’ve defied expectations based on stereotypes. Imagine how that might shift dialogue and perception far beyond two weeks every other Olympic year.

Image Credit: Oliver Gruener

Forgetful

Evelyn Herwitz · August 9, 2016 · Leave a Comment

It was 9:30 this morning when I suddenly realized that I’d forgotten to write my blog for today. This has only happened a few times in the four-and-a-half years that I’ve been posting, and those other times, I caught it earlier in the morning so there was no apparent lapse.

I’m getting older. And memory lapses are becoming more frequent.

I’m well past the stage when it felt novel to walk into a room and not recall what I was trying to find. The only reason I can locate my keys before I leave the house is that I force myself to put them in my purse or on the kitchen table when I come home—and I don’t always remember to do so.

Last Friday I went grocery shopping and wandered around the parking lot for what felt like a good 10 minutes before I located my car. For a fleeting few seconds, I wondered if it had been stolen.

I’m getting worse at recalling names—occasionally, even of people I know well. It’s as if a curtain goes down in my brain, hiding the information. The more I strain to remember so as not to embarrass myself, the thicker the curtain becomes. Over the weekend I read an article that explained why our brains aren’t wired to remember names as well as faces—which provided some relief, or, at least, a good excuse.

Amidst the flurry of preparations for our recent trip to Italy, I tried doing a load of laundry and was completely bewildered by the fact that our reliable washing machine refused to start properly. Why? Because I was pushing the power button instead of the start button. (This I figured out after I read the trouble-shooting section of the user manual, which, fortunately, I keep on top of the washer.)

Then there is the challenge of taking all my medications on time. I know, I know, I should use a pill minder. I hate them. I don’t know why. Maybe because they are a reminder that I can’t remember. It’s an act of defiance (or sheer ego) to take my pills morning and night without having to rely on some device other than my brain. But there have been far too many times when I can’t recall if I took them or not, and I realize, much as I don’t want to admit it, that timely medications are too important to mess with.

I was discussing this with a friend last week who is also in his early 60s, and we agreed that the real issue is too much multitasking. I forget when I’m not paying attention—to where I left my keys or parked my car, or how many cups of flour I poured into the food processor to start the bread dough, or whether I actually told Al about my schedule or just thought about it, or when I took my pills. So much of the time, I’m doing one task on autopilot while my mind is in a totally different space.

There are apps for that, of course. We can do a lot more these days because we can offload so much to our smartphones—medication reminders, parked car locators, key finders and more. But that requires remembering where the smartphone is. (Try calling it when you’ve forgotten that you left it on silent from the night before.)

The only lasting answer: Slow down, do one thing at a time, be mindful. And, above all, accept the fact that aging is inevitable.

Image Credit: Szilard Gabor Fulop

Declaration of Independence

Evelyn Herwitz · July 5, 2016 · Leave a Comment

Now that the fireworks are over and the grills are stilled, school is out and vacations are in, I want to pause for a few minutes to consider the word at the center of all our July 4th festivities: independence.

Not the politically-charged nuances—that’s for another kind of blog. Rather, I’ve been thinking lately about what it means to be independent as an individual living with a disease that challenges your ability to do for yourself—and whether that really matters as much as it seems.

Independence is certainly central to our nation’s psyche. Our country was born by breaking away from colonial rule under a tyrannical king. The rugged individualist, the cowboy, the inventor, the explorer—these were America’s formative heroes.

Today the self-made entrepreneur, the start-up genius who becomes a multimillionaire is idolized. Star athletes, whose success depend on teammates, are singled out and lauded for exceptional skill; they may credit the team, but their own names become national brands. The mark of adulthood in our culture is making it “on your own.”

But what does that really mean? I’m as driven as the next American to be self-sufficient, to support myself and those I love, to get around on my own in my car, to manage my finances and run my own business.

And yet, none of that would be possible without many, many interconnected relationships with others. There is not one thing that I do all day that does not depend on some form of collaboration—from staying safe on the highway because others around me obey (mostly) the rules of the road, to taking my daily doses of medication because I’ve received good advice from my team of physicians and I can afford the drugs with my husband’s employee health insurance.

Unless you’re a survivalist or a hermit, being independent is really all about holding up your end of the bargain with all the other members of your family, friendship circle, community, nation—and, most broadly, the planet.

It does not mean doing everything yourself, without any help. It doesn’t mean not asking for help when you need it. Indeed, asking for help, which can make you feel childlike or weak or less-than in a culture that so prides itself on the appearance of self-sufficiency, is often an act of courage.

Here is how I think about independence, after more than three decades of living with scleroderma: It mean doing the best you can, within the breadth and limits of your own capabilities, while recognizing—no, honoring—your interdependent connections in the web of life. It means helping others when they need the support that only you can provide. It means standing up for yourself when you need to speak up—and speak out—to set things right, for yourself and others.

Our nation turned 240 years old on Monday. In these tumultuous times, each and every one of us is needed, each has something to offer for the greater good of all. The next time you know you must ask for help, go ahead—there will be more than enough opportunities to extend a hand in return.

Image Credit: Thad Zajdowicz

body-mind balance

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