Leaves on a stream, Montana and taking deep breaths…

(For my love).

“Shhh….” My love wrapped his arms around me, my heart hammering and breath fighting to get down to my lungs. “Imagine a canoe, gliding through the water, no sound, other than the water of the river. Drops drip off the paddle, look around and just see everything with wonder….”

After he’d described this to me a few times, I felt my body begin to settle, my muscles gradually aching with an unwinding from being tensed up due to CP and anxiety. I couldn’t feel each heartbeat any more, which was good, because I was calming. My love just continued to hold tight, and the grace he gave stunned me – I’d never known a love like this one and never will again. It is the closest I can imagine to the love of God, which I know was God’s very plan for marriage. Still, if I am honest with you, it is tough to feel worthy of this much love and grace, from both Husband AND the God of the Universe….and both seem to lavish it on me over and over.

This river is a long, unintentionally cultivated image between us, born out of many things. It is my favorite, most calming imagery when my emotion brain has highjacked my system, when my thoughts race and I can’t seem to slow them down; when I am triggered by, something. Anxiety among those with CP is very common, but we know that those without CP are also greatly impacted. The numbers of those diagnosed with anxiety has sky-rocketed in the last 5-7 years.

I hear it over and over in counseling sessions: the moments of flight, fight or freeze when something alarming sends a signal to our amygdala to release cortisol and adrenaline (emotion brain). In the same instant, our ability to access logic and thought, problem solving and sometimes the “obvious” reaction (logic brain), is rendered useless until something calms that overworked amygdala.

For nearly as long as I have been a licensed MSW and practicing counseling, this concept has been an important part of my sessions, at least once a day; but often, more than that. It is, along with both/and, the most important concept that I teach. It is not uncommon to have a laugh with clients who after a few times hearing it, are lovingly complaining that once I teach it, they can’t unhear it. Believe me, I get it! I even eyeroll myself at times when I just want to rant and engage in emotion brain, but instead, the words in my head are, “deep breaths, smell the flowers, blow out the candles.”

I use so many analogies with clients, some funny, others poignant and others downright silly, but I don’t know….maybe we all do better if we have a picture in our heads along with an important concept. I often ask them if they remember old cartoons when someone is panicking and breathing into a brown paper bag? While we giggle about the images, this is how it is with our amygdala: they just need AIR…slow quiet breaths in order to get back to a “normal level of stress,” turn off the flood of adrenaline and cortisol and return to logic brain.

For me, there are a couple instant images when I think about managing anxiety: anxiety floating like leaves on a river and Montana.

When I was an MSW intern at our local Hospice, I soaked up as much knowledge as possible from my gifted supervisor and the entire team, a multitude of disciplines and so many books on death, dying and the grieving process. One such book that left a lifelong impact is Dying Well by Ira Byock. It is a book filled with the truth as I and so many others have have lived it in regards to death and dying. While that entire year spent at Hospice was life-changing, I think the book normalized and encouraged the lens that was already developing for me, the lens of value, dignity, respect and normalcy in all areas of life, not approaching death or grief as a taboo subjects but instead, striving to be with our friends, family, neighbors, communities and even acquaintances in this stage of life. It was another layer of not wanting the assumptions, not about someone dying, their thoughts, needs or purpose. “We needn’t wait till death is knocking at our door to realize that the treasures in our lives are the people we love or have loved,” says Byock.

The book has a way of showing how the pace of slowing, how the being with one another IS the gift, even in end of life moments. It is the vision of release, slowing drifting as the river carries the leaves: our fears, pain, desire to fix, our deep grief in the loss of ones we love. All of these images have become the very fabric of my being. Acknowledging, processing, grieving and being at peace.

I drank up every sentence in that book. At that time, Dr. Byock’s blurb in the back pages said that he lived and worked in Missoula, Montana. And at the time, that was my only frame of reference for Montana. One day, after a long work/internship day and evening classes toward my MSW, I told my boyfriend (now husband,) “I think we should just run away to Montana. I want to go work with Dr. Byock.” He looked at me quizzically and I explained, Dying Well, my admiration for Dr. Byock and how the holiness of Hospice work was seeping into my bones. He hugged me tight and said, “I’ll go to Montana with you….” (there is a reason he is husband.) From then on, when I had a particularly rough day or a very inspiring one, I would somehow insert or inquire about going to Montana. And he always says the same thing: “I’ll go to Montana with you…”

We’ve been together for nearly 23 years and all along the way, Montana has remained a dream. Kids, homes, dogs, life, required our finances and to be honest, the time has just not been right. Though I now sometimes surf VRBO and Airbnb when I have a day and dream of Montana, hint shamelessly and somedays, just threaten to book our vacation, we have not YET. When we watched the series, Longmire, a few years ago, I even decided on the river I wanted to find…then found out is ACTUALLY in New Mexico! Still there are rivers waiting in many places…and watching Yellowstone has stoked our desire to go, in all new ways….

But we haven’t yet…

I think the dream of Montana and it’s calming power is actually in the imagining. Not that I don’t want to go! But I think if the idea of the river, log cabin, canoe and horseback riding can instantly calm me, then perhaps I am afraid to change the dream with the real live experience…

Do you know what I mean? Have you ever hoped for a thing and then it FINALLY arrived and the luster wore off way too soon? Then it was just over….. I would be heartbroken if these images that have been so steadfast and comforting, the splash of the river and the drips from the canoe somehow changed in real – life. And…we really do want to go find my Longmire River. I KNOW deep down that Montana’s beauty will be unparalleled. And…I really want to go sit on the bank and thank Jesus for the majestic landscape, to hold my love’s hand and say, “I’m so glad…we finally came to Montana.”

I pray you have ones that will hold you during moments of inspiration, fear, anxiety and everything in between. I pray all the dreams and hopes that God has placed within you will be realized, ten-fold. I pray that you can see him everywhere from the beaches in Michigan, fields of Ohio, the evergreens of Portland, the crashing surf of Hawaii and wherever your place is….

I pray you are inspired by leaders in your field, that hope and dignity abound and that we all can one day not need images to calm us, but that God’s presence instead floods every inch of our beings.

I pray for the richness of living well and when the time comes that grace and mercy usher us to the feet of Jesus, the arms of God the Father hold tight with peace; and HIS gentle murmur, all shall be well.

Both/And

1 Peter 5:7

xoxo