tri 3

I am writing this in the last few days (or hours, who knows?!) before labor, but I wanted to jot down some details about the third trimester because I am sure it will be so far from my mind once baby is in my arms.

The third trimester has a reputation for being uncomfortable, and I noticed too that at around week 30, things started to become noticeably more difficult. This is when baby grows the most and the belly suddenly pops way out. I could feel the expansion of my uterus and the skin stretching, like things inside of me were exploding but in very very slow motion. The growing weight put pressure on my hips and legs, so I began to walk slower and become more out of breath when walking up the stairs. I could feel that there was a larger volume of blood now, and I even got my first nosebleed while in the shower. Until my stomach dropped (around week 37), at times I ran into breathing problems as the uterus now pushed up on my diaphragm. Constantly feeling like there is not enough air in my lungs, coupled with constantly stretching skin and internal explosion is what made this period, what they call in very vague terms, "uncomfortable."

Other common complaints are bladder and sleep issues, which haven't been too bad for me. That is, until the stomach dropped, and then I suddenly had to pee every 5 minutes. I sleep on my side ok, though sometimes I do find myself slightly rolling onto the stomach to my pre-pregnancy usual sleep position. Sorry, baby, if I squished you in any way!

I thought carrying a child was some mysterious process where it is somewhere in there. But turns out, it's not that far away, it's actually right there, under only a few layers of skin and muscle. Growing baby means growing movement and a stomach that goes crazy with rolling bumps and flattening valleys. It's fun and crazy and fascinating and sometimes inconvenient but also usually very amusing.

I've had enough energy throughout, although there are days I just have to lie down for a bit or flat-out nap. I'm continuing to work and the week before my due date, suddenly, everyone wanted me to accomplish all these projects! The differences in maternity leave and overall work vs. family balance are stark between Russia and the US. I will have to make it a conversation for another time.

At week 35, I took some professional pictures to document my body. It just so happened that I ended up with two photo sessions. The first one was by a fancy professional studio photographer who was looking for pregnant women for an exhibition she is organizing in June. I had never been a model in a studio before, and this gave me the chance to showcase my body in a novel way.

Then J expressed interest in doing something together, to document our growing family, not just my body. The second photographer, also very talented, does her sessions in a more photojournalistic style outside of a studio. We walked around the city and tried to capture moments of togetherness and anticipation. I felt a bit disappointed that I had to wear a coat outside (it was the middle of March; as you can see, there is still ice in the canals), so I am not even sure how much my pregnant belly, or baby, shows up in these, although I guess it does enough.

The official due date was April 20, but on April 17, J presented a paper at a conference here in St. Petersburg. Baby and I had an understanding of waiting until after the 17, although preferably with a few days of giving us time to rest and recuperate from my last-minute work stress and J's last-minute conference. The 20th is also Hitler's birthday so I was rooting for even a later date. The 22 is Lenin's birthday, so if it happens then, I'll take a socialist revolutionary baby any time.

prep and expectations

Not that you can really truly prepare for what labor will be like the first time, but I am really trying not to freak myself out here. It's just that I grew up in such a culture--both family-wise and overall--where labor has been portrayed as a very horrible, painful, worst-thing-you-can-go-through event. Both my grandmothers and my mother did not have a fun time with labor and so I did not grow up surrounded by inspirational stories of the amazing miracle of life. Their experience could be due to the time during the Soviet Union when medicine was not comfortable or customer-service oriented and there was little information or preparation for what women go through. Maybe this topic wasn't even discussed much; it was just something women resigned to silently suffer through in order to bring children into the world. So I am scared that if genetics play a part in this, I am indeed screwed into a horrible frenzy of an experience. But I am also trying to gather some level of preparation, mastery, and confidence in the fact that my body and I will get through it.

I know things rarely go according to plan or expectations, but I am trying hard to cling to the idea that I can prepare myself and at least ease some of the shock. I am going to prenatal yoga to theoretically stretch and strengthen my crotch muscles. I am trying to do oil massages in the crotch area to help stretch and lubricate the skin there. I am practicing breathing exercises, especially during times I feel especially panicky. I am going through classes and learning about stages of labor and visualizing possible scenarios. AND YET. You just never know, and that is the scary thing.

About a month to go. 

turn on, tune in, and drop out

Every parent has their own parenting trip: The part of their approach to parenting that is beyond a set of beliefs and standards. To talk them out of it would be like telling someone to stop tripping on mushrooms. Why would you waste your time like that?

I just love this description of parenting as a prolonged acid trip. Because yes, yes, and yes: you don't know how the trip will go, how long it will last, what types of experiences you will encounter during it. Every trip is different, every drug that gives you a trip acts a bit differently, every person reacts to every drug and every trip in their own unique way. No matter how much you prepare or think you know or ask for advice, the trip will mostly likely be something visceral and personal, based on your past, incorporating the present, and changing everything you thought about life.

Full disclosure: I have never actually done psychedelics, but the metaphor still makes perfect sense. So the next time I feel a tacit urge to judge a parent, I'll have to remember: we all just be trippin' here.

tri 2

I arrived in Russia toward the end of the first trimester and began the hectic journey of starting a new job and also setting up prenatal care. Socialized healthcare, for what it's worth, is still amazing to me. Sure, some aspects of it may be less fancy than private care (for example, I have to bring my own towel/sheet to put down on the exam table because they would rather not spend money on those disposable paper towel things, and frankly, I think this way is more eco-friendly and not a huge hassle anyway), but the quality, in my experience, has still always been up to standard. Dealing with insurance issues in the US has been so stressful and everything medical was so expensive and completely unaffordable to even the average middle class person like myself, let alone others, that I honestly breathed a huge sigh of relief when I could get checkups and vitamins and ultrasounds and all the tests without paying a dime (well, except through taxes).

The most annoying part about the second trimester for me has been everyone saying how this is the "honeymoon" phase. All the exclamations of "Enjoy it now! You're going to feel great! All this energy! Finally no nausea!" were mostly irrelevant, so I tried to ignore them without being too bothered although this was very hard.

As an aside, I am noticing a theme here though, that I get easily annoyed at people's unsolicited advice, warnings, experience-sharing, etc. I know I have to work on this, as it's about to get so much worse with an actual child that everyone has an opinion about. I just can't be bothered listening to things that are usually irrelevant to me, especially when I have generally thought about my situation already and made a decision or formed my own opinion. Seriously, I am not stupid and I am good at thinking, deciphering, intuiting, comparing-contrasting, and concluding, dammit! I am in charge of my own life and everything related to it (my body, my pregnancy, etc.), so let me be the master of it. I understand that the argument is that people just want to "share" or "relate," not disempower, but honestly, I still find all of it unnecessary and invasive. I've got to find a way to let it roll right off of me though, and that is currently my struggle.

But back to the honeymoon. Because my first trimester was not traumatic and did not include much morning sickness, it did not feel like an immediate relief to enter the second. In fact, the nausea started to peak around weeks 14-18, and I even did puke once some time in that timeframe (I was also feeling under the weather and weak all around then, so the puking did not come out of the blue completely). My energy did not pick up in the second trimester either. I spent a lot of time running around (while being exhausted) and stressing out about getting hired for the job though, so that might've also taken it out of me. That whole situation was rather ridiculous; plus, now I needed to tell my new boss about the pregnancy and I wasn't even hired officially yet!

But growing a baby still takes a toll on your body, no matter what trimester you're in. For example, I knew I was losing a lot of calcium to bone formation when one morning my tooth chipped. I picked up on my calcium intake and also on iron, which are the two ingredients they really watch for here. Suddenly my diet included a lot of dairy products, sesame oil and seeds, liver, and pomegranates. Good thing it was winter and pomegranates were in season. And good thing I love me some cheese, sour cream, cottage cheese, and milk forever and ever.

My stomach wasn't super visible yet, but I could feel it expanding. The sensation was like feeling bloated, like I ate too much and now all the space inside was filled beyond capacity. Except that feeling never lessened after a bit of time. I still tried to wear clothes that would hide any possible bump, partly due to needing time to adjust to my changing body and partly due to wanting to avoid people's stares, guesses, and again, unsolicited advice.

I struggled against this imposed (patriarchal) image of a pregnant woman: the glowing and life-giving goddess who radiates with maternal calmness and happiness over impending motherhood. This image is a very tight corset to fit into, one that does not allow for fears and unhappiness and thoughts about anything other than motherhood and disconnection from your changing body. But reality is complex. I was equally stressed, worried about my job, focused on non-motherhood-related projects, and trying to save money by fitting into my regular clothing as long as possible, for example, as I was marveling that there was a new life steadily forming inside of me. The marveling wasn't constant, but it was intimate and genuine, something that I think brought me to an authentic connection with baby and my body, not one forced through narrow stereotypes.

the weight of fear

My biggest impending-parenthood fear is something irrational, I realize, and something stemming from my own childhood. It may be a common fear even, but it's not about whether I will screw up my kid (I know I will make mistakes and I'm allowing for the possibility that our personalities may not mesh, and besides, a little therapy never hurt anyone) or the loss of my previously spontaneous independent life (I am a generally flexible person who has withstood many changes in her day and does not hold on to any one way to live life anymore). My biggest fear, though, is that my child won't love me.

It's a fear. Of course I understand that it could happen, but that terrifies me.

I am cautious about where this line of thinking could lead me. I grew up with someone who unconsciously and instinctually feared abandonment to the point of requiring me to comply with their wishes before they'd comply with mine (that's the definition of conditional love). But acknowledging the fear is the first step in understanding it and keeping it from screwing everything up in the future.

I know that ultimately it is not the kid's job to love the parent, but the parents' job to love their kid. I know that the child is an autonomous human being who in the end owes me nothing. I know that the definition of parenthood is me taking care of someone else's needs without asking for anything in return. And if my child decides that they don't love me, well, they must have the freedom to make that choice.

But I'm afraid that this fear will somehow keep me from bonding with my child in those crucial newborn stages. That I will interpret their cries and assertion of needs and later, their attempts to individuate, as a personal insult of rejection. I hope I won't become overly upset at the thanklessness of this job (if it does indeed prove thankless) to the point of putting undue pressure on my kid to provide me with something in return (the definition of role reversal and parentification). I hope I will share whatever burdens with my partner and get support. I hope I will be a good-enough mother.

feels like the other side of the moon

Because I have been going through pregnancy outside of the US, but still experience US pregnancy/parenting-related culture online, mostly through various blog posts people share on social media, I have been meaning to write down about the differences that I encounter. Full disclosure: overall, I find the US parenting culture personally oppressive. I don't know, maybe because I don't belong to any particular niche, maybe because I feel the pressure to conform from all different sides, maybe because it's more vocal and aggressive in pushing its opinions on others. But I have found it demanding and classist, anxiety-producing and not supportive, rigid and vaguely sexist, overall. This is the culture I tried to escape while starting out on my own parenting journey because I really could not even imagine learning how to do this whole parenting thing while getting to know and bonding with my child while also navigating the demands of the outside world coming from every direction. But those are just some of my own personal hangups.

That said, of course I realize that there are always pros and cons to anything anywhere. What we have here in Russia is far from perfect and certainly less comfortable--because life overall includes less comforts here--than what we'd have in the US. In any case, here are some of the differences that have come to mind so far:

• No one touches my belly here. It's just not done and although in general personal space between people is smaller (just imagine crowded metros during rush hour or people in line breathing down each other's necks and stepping on each other's heals), physical boundaries seem more enforced. People don't hug as readily as in the US and it would be pretty bonkers for someone to just reach out to randomly touch my body. 
• Also people don't ask me details about my pregnancy and don't offer any needless advice. The most I've gotten is "how are you feeling?" and I have been very grateful for both their concern and to be left alone without needing to explain anything. If I have a specific question or actually need advice, I will ask.
• At the beginning I thought everyone was looking at and noticing my big protruding belly, but then I realized that no, no one is looking and no one really cares. I mean both people on the street or in stores and people who know me. But since people don't even give up their seats on crowded public transportation, I don't think anyone cares about my condition. This, for me personally, has been annoying at times but also somewhat freeing. I guess I don't like people being all up in my business unless I specifically invite them.
• The foods I am supposed to eat and not eat are different here. For example, I eat cold cuts and sushi and lots of cheese and dairy (what else are you not supposed to eat in the US?). I also sometimes end up eating eggs that are a little undercooked because I like them soft boiled. I forget what other items are forbidden in the US. The sushi here doesn't really use super raw fish anyway; it's generally at least somewhat salted and/or cured in some way. I also try--it's the effort that counts, right?--not to eat fried things, but rather boiled, steamed or stewed. Fried oil and carcinogens are considered truly evil here, which they probably are. I don't really drink carbonated beverages, even non-caffeinated ones, whereas I think I remember ginger ale being a pregnancy thing in the US. 
• However, food consumption is fairly strict here, and they really watch your weight closely at every doctor's appointment. There is a lot of talk against the notion of "you're eating for two" and the concept of pregnancy cravings is not culturally supported. Yes, they say, of course you have to increase your intake of certain things used to build another body: calcium, iron, vitamins, etc. But none of this whole pickles-and-ice cream rhetoric. 
• Overall there are less choices here (which, no doubt, can be both good and bad) so at least I feel less pressure to defend my choices. For example, you give birth in a governmental birth center in the presence of doctors, midwives, and nurses. You don't have to debate the home vs. hospital birth scenario. The doctors consider themselves experts and professionals, and although you are welcome to converse with them beforehand, they will still do what they feel is best (again, potential for good and bad) and the expectation is that you will trust them. You are welcome to choose a doctor whose what-they-think-is-best matches what you think is best, but there is none of the whole let-me-be-a-lay-person-who-has-never-witnessed-or-experienced-the-birthing-process-dictate-my-own-birth-plan thing. From my experience though, part of the doctors' expertise is to trust women's bodies and not do anything unnecessary. Inductions, epidurals, and c-sections seem to be done only when absolutely medically indicated. But let's see how it actually works out when I do give birth. 

I hope this goes without saying that I am not condemning any US-resident's choices or experiences (with birthing plans or eating how they want, etc.) I really am just speaking to my own experience of the things that have stuck out cross-culturally.

There have been other things that, being pregnant here, I simply cannot relate to when I come across discussions in US media or whatever people post on social sites. For example:

• Babymoons. What the what?
• Gender revealing parties. Because a) it would be a sex revealing party, you fools. Gender is a social construct that your child will identify with throughout life; sex pertains to the anatomical reproductive parts you saw on the ultrasound. And b) can we take the boy-girl dichotomy to any greater and more consumeristic heights?
• Speaking of consumerism, whoo-boy, US culture sure is the queen of that, especially when it's playing off of the anxiety of new parents. I just can't with the maternity clothes marketing, baby stuff marketing, postpartum clothes marketing, people getting competitive over nursery decorating. Yes, I even said "I can't." Here I personally find it a pro that there is such a scarcity of products, space, money, and opportunity, that I'll be happy if we can fit an old cradle in our room next to our bed and put a clean child in it. Expectations are lowered to, what I find, a more reasonable degree. Your child is clothed? Great! They have a place to live, parents that pay attention to them, and some toys to play with? Congratulations, you are parenting right! Forget the color-coordinated wallpaper-to-curtains separate nursery room, based on baby's sex, of course. 
• Finally, I may be old-school, but I'll admit that I don't quite understand the recent trend of naming your unborn child and using that name widely to refer to them before they are born. I get thinking about and narrowing down possible names and whatnot, but for pete's sake, wait until the child is a born human being in the world before referring to them by name. Again, it's just something I personally don't understand, rather than wholly condemn. Maybe because here in Russia you don't name the child in the hospital but rather when submitting various paperwork to have them registered as a citizen (generally a few weeks to a month after birth). So there is really no rush on the name, and people tend to take a much more "let's wait until everything turns out ok and there is a living, breathing baby on our hands" approach before getting too deep into it.

leaping into the unknown: tri 1

The first month of pregnancy for me involved mostly waiting, wondering, not knowing, and desperately listening to my body for signs. Generally speaking, there are at least about 2 weeks between the time the body is most fertile (and ovulating) and when you'd expect the period to come. And most home pregnancy tests say to wait about another week for the period to be late before taking one. So those first 3-4 weeks I spent trying to decipher: are my nipples sore or is it just a pre-menstrual symptom, is my uterus cramping because it's expanding or because it is shedding its lining, am I bloated because I just went out with co-workers for crap lunch food or are my hormone levels elevating? A whole month of this is a strange time to wait, silently of course, before finally taking the test to confirm.

I bought the test at a local pharmacy and peed on it the morning of August 17, 2014. It was a hectic time: we were one week away from moving to another continent, I was trying to finish my job but was coerced asked to stay until the end of August due to an impending trip to the UN (I ended up moving to said continent a month later than expected). There was a lot of packing and moving and people coming and going, helping with boxes, saying good-bye. I could barely find the privacy to discreetly hide away in the bathroom long enough to pee on the stick. Then I got a fat yes-you're-pregnant line. Then I freaked out for a moment, and went back to my hectic schedule and life.

I told J in the car in the middle of a parking lot later that day when our paths of hecticness briefly intersected. Actually I just showed him the test, which I stuck in my purse lest someone find it at the house. I think he was happy (he says he was) and then we went back to our hectic schedules and lives. Actually we did discuss our feelings about the fact that our lives were changing right then and there.

That's one undeniable vertical line.

Most of the first trimester (the first two months, at least) I spent traveling, moving, and crashing on people's couches. Luckily, there was barely any nausea, only relentless fatigue. That was my big symptom; I really would crash on said couches, taking naps, unable to get up very fast. My brain really did feel a bit mushy, like I could just fall asleep in the middle of a conversation. Also, apparently my breasts got noticeably bigger, which some people remarked. I could still fit into my bras though, even if they were a bit tighter now, so I kept on.

In that second month, my itty-bitty fetus and I visited NYC to give a presentation at the UN, stayed in Boston with friends, returned to LA and crashed with some more friends, had our first ultrasound after my medical insurance ended (I was put on a temporary new-mothers assistance program), drove to SF and crashed with brother-in-law while also visiting friends, in-laws, and my academic advisor, all the while awkwardly saying "no" to copious amounts of California wine.

I was happy that I wasn't very nauseous; that was a blessing. I was still feeling cramping in my uterus as it expanded and soreness in my breasts. I was tired, always very tired, but did not have much of an appetite or cravings.

The first day of my last period was July 14--Bastille Day--which calculated my due date as 4/20. We joked about naming the baby Mary-Jane, if it's a girl, or Herb, if a boy.

breaking arms

I'm terrified.

I'm not usually a risk taker--I refuse to place bets, I wear a helmet on a bicycle, I almost always go the speed limit--and yet I seem live a pretty risky life. I refuse to settle. I go right for the bullseye. I let my heart lead me around the earth. I wish I could say it felt exhilarating--sometimes it does--but right now it feels terrifying.

It's terrifying because I change the consistency of my life. I uproot and get used to my surroundings, in endless cycles. I move from city to city, then from country to country. I encounter a lot of dissent for my decisions. I wish my attitude would allow me not to care, but I'd like to have the support from the people who matter.

I admit, with age, it becomes harder and harder to be a vagabond with convictions and a career. But it also becomes harder and harder to live away from my community. I am pulled toward my homeland, and then toward my husband's homeland. I am pulled and I follow the pull. I don't resist and I hope it works out for the best of everyone. It's still terrifying though, and I am terrified.

sky full of stars

Today for the first time ever, I think, I teared up as the therapist in the therapy room. It's not that I've never been affected by people's stories; I sympathize and empathize with lots of different life experiences on a daily basis. I get sad when told something heartbreaking and I get angry when told something infuriating. But I've never been one of those therapists who openly cries with their clients. There is always a layer of professionalism through which I process and communicate my feelings with clients, when need be.

But today he was telling me about how much it hurt to be forbidden by one parent to have a relationship with the other parent. How much he escaped from the pain into drugs. How much he hated the forbidding parent. How much he longed for the love from the other parent, and how lost he had been all his life without that love. He told me a secret that even after the forbidding parent's death, he wished that parent would come alive just so he could kill them. But instead he was killing himself with destructive substances and behavior.

So I teared up. Without formulated thoughts, I just floated in the moment of our shared emotions. Our lives are not the same, of course; our reactions and consequences are very different indeed. But the level of haunting childhood pain was palpable and personal.

He thanked me at the end, said he found the session especially helpful. And I thanked him later, in my head, for letting me make use of my own seemingly meaningless pain. I hope it will help us both.

on healing.2

This fable--the person on the bridge specifically--pretty much describes the prison of my childhood, and I guess adulthood, until I learn to let go of the rope. But it's not easy. It continues to be heartbreaking and guilt-ridden. I know that it's not fair to be shackled to someone else's happiness, to be responsible for their life and feelings. And I also know the following statement is not necessarily true, but it feels very real: that I can't be happy until they are happy through my own efforts of making them happy. So that's the big question, I think, can I still be happy even if they're unhappy when I stop making them happy?

Theoretically, standing up for our own needs should create safety and peace of mind. Technically, we simply cannot do more to help others than they are willing to do for themselves. But imagine being that person on the bridge, making the choice, ultimately, to cut the rope even if it means killing the person on the other end. Making the choice of freedom and, in some sense, of murder or death. Can the person on the bridge heal from that heart-wrenching choice? Can the person on the bridge live a guilt-free and peaceful life, moving toward their original goal and accomplishing what they've set out to do? Will I need to mourn the absence, unhappiness, symbolic or otherwise death of the person on the other end of the rope in order to move on from the bridge?

I wish I had the social support to deal with all of these changes. I think social isolation and shame are part of the experience for the person on the bridge. There are no bystanders, or the bystanders misunderstand the situation and perpetuate the person holding on to the rope. "Just keep holding on," they shout. "They'll perish without you. You are all they have. Keep holding on!"

The loneliness, the guilt, the sadness and heartbreak are all part of this story.

on healing

I keep meaning to document my journey from experiencing life as a dark brooding storm that can overtake me at any moment to something more pleasant, perhaps as a challenging yet exciting hike through beautiful woods.

One step toward healing has been in labeling certain childhood experiences as trauma. Straight up, no guilt-strings attached, no taking care of other people's feelings but searching the depths of my own emotions, trauma.

I thought that I was just a pessimistic, maybe a little bit sad, maybe a little bit angry, and lot lonely kind of person. I thought I just had a despairing disposition. I thought I was just sensitive and reacting strongly to many of life's challenges. Turns out, I have been experiencing prolonged post-traumatic stress.

Lifted straight out of the diagnostic criteria, my experiences have included:

• Somewhat: "recurrent, involuntary, and intrusive distressing memories of the traumatic event"
• Pretty much: "dissociative reactions (e.g., flashbacks) in which the individual feels or acts as if the traumatic event were recurring"
• Definitely: "intense or prolonged psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event"
• Definitely: "marked physiological reactions to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event"
• Definitely: "avoidance of or efforts to avoid distressing memories, thoughts, or feelings about or closely associated with the traumatic event"
• Definitely: "avoidance of or efforts to avoid external reminders (people, places, conversations, activities, objects, situations) that arouse distressing memories, thoughts, or feelings about or closely associated with the traumatic event"
• Definitely: "persistent and exaggerated negative beliefs or expectations about oneself, others, or the world (e.g., 'The world is completely dangerous,' 'My whole nervous system is permanently ruined')"
• Definitely: "persistent, distorted cognitions about the cause or consequences of the traumatic event that lead the individual to blame him/herself or others"
• Definitely: "persistent negative emotional state (e.g., fear, anger, guilt, shame)"
• Somewhat: "feelings of detachment or estrangement from others"
• A little: "persistent inability to experience positive emotions (e.g., inability to experience happiness, satisfaction, or loving feelings)
• Pretty much: "irritable behavior and angry outbursts (with little or no provocation) typically expressed as verbal or physical aggression toward people or objects"
• A little: "hypervigilance and exaggerated startle response"

The list may be overwhelming, but it feels good to point my finger and say, I haven't been crazy or overacting. I have been a victim, I suffered, and in many ways, continue to suffer. But I also actually look forward to leaving many of these experiences in the past now, and rebuilding my private, emotional life in the way I want and deserve for it to be. Setting boundaries around myself and saying that I deserve to live without emotional violence has been one huge step.

No one will live my life for me. My life is exclusively mine; I can do with it whatever I want. And now, finally, I will. I know that I deserve to be free of residual emotional turmoil and I know that I will be.

whatever tomorrow brings, i'll be there

Last week I went to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting as part of my training in mental health. It's really important for us therapists to understand the dynamics of addiction and how 12-step programs offer pretty successful treatment. From my experience, NA meetings are different from AA ones in that they tend to be very diverse: you'll see everyone from crack-dealing prison-tattooed guys to high-society pill poppers. Addiction unites people across classes, genders, place in life, and drugs of choice. It was a speaker's meeting, which meant that one member was invited to share their story. The woman detailed her struggles with various drugs, but her "favorite" was heroin. She described it like this: when you go under anesthesia before surgery they ask you to count backwards from 10, and by 7 or 6 you're usually already out; well, being on heroin is like being at an 8. It's going through life in a sedated haze, free of worries and pain. I've heard someone else describing the heroin high as being wrapped in a blanket of love, feeling protected, warm, and carefree. And man, honestly, being someone who often battles demons of hopelessness, this sounds kind of awesome. Not awesome in a let's-glorify-addiction kinda way, but just… I understand the pull. I really get looking toward something that might help you cope, something that might give you a sense of relief, however momentary.

Then this week, Philip Seymour Hoffman died of heroin addiction, and there have been countless others recently in Hollywood and beyond. Addiction is dangerous and deadly, probably because life never stops being painful, and perhaps becomes more so with the drug involved. The only way to deal with life, it seems, is to increase positive coping mechanisms, increase social support, and confront internal demons turning them into the loving blanket one desires. This has been a startling reminder to keep relying on my own internal strength, even if I don't feel that I have much of it, to battle my daily struggles.

Inhale, exhale, and keep going.

shifting

Two thoughts have come into my mind recently that are making life a bit more bearable, or I should say, manageable. It sounds melodramatic, yes, but somehow this is how I tend to approach life: as a long-long walk through the mud at sea in low tide. There are some beautiful moments, rays of magnificent sunlight streaming through the ominous clouds. But the day-to-day is tedious and there is always the threat of a wave to wash over and engulf all of your efforts. I think I'm in need of a shift in perspective and these are some things that are helping me do that:

1. Life is a Rorschach test. It--that is, life--doesn't actually mean anything in and of itself. Its meaning comes only from the projections we place on it. There are many ways to say this ("you are in control of how you view the world," "your life is what you make of it," etc.), but this is the way it made sense to me. Therapists try to get people to take this perspective all the time, but it is indeed incredibly difficult. We tend to look for meaning externally and make generalizations about it based on our own internal experiences. Sometimes when I am feeling particularly glum and pessimistic about the state of the world, I remember that it is only a Rorschach ink blot. Where I normally see a menacing monster bat, in a different light I might see a butterfly.

Source

It all seems a bit basic and obvious, but it was in fact a deep realization for me. Just the understanding that the way I feel about the world comes from me and not the world itself was particularly freeing.

2. "Accept the things you cannot change" is an expression often used in recovery, but here is how it suddenly became relevant for me. I've been known to go through life angry at how it played out back in the day, when I couldn't give consent or indicate a choice about the things that were happening to me. I'm angry that I was plucked away from my family and dropped into a totally foreign, totally unsupportive world across the ocean. I'm angry that I couldn't keep in touch with my dad, and that I don't really know where home is. I'm angry that I've built something here now, like a traitor, and that with being in this deep, it's hard to leave forever. But you know what: it is what it is. Those things happened to me and they are my past. They brought me to where I am now, but I can't let them control me. This is another one of those easier-said-than-done scenarios, but it's doable. Now I try a different approach. Whenever I feel myself becoming angry and sad about being here, without family, losing touch with my culture, I try to remember to accept those things I cannot change. And focus on the ones I can.

All of this is a work in progress, with the hope that progress leads to a more peaceful life.

hopelessness

A few events this week brought up some thoughts on what it is that I am trained to do here... As a therapist in training, pain and hopelessness are part of my job. Sometimes, I am the only one holding on to any hope for the lives of the people I work with. Sometimes, even this hope is not enough. Sometimes the hopelessness gets overwhelming.

Spring is the season for suicides, though I thought by May we would be more in the clear. And yet just this week:

1. The mom of my colleague who committed suicide 2 years ago is doing the San Francisco overnight Out of the Darkness walk in June. The walk is sponsored by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and happens at night so that you finish walking at dawn, thus symbolically coming out of the darkness about this issue. A link was sent around to support the mom who, of course, is walking in her daughter's name. The walkers do this thing where they light candles in paper bags along the path, and these lanterns have the names of the people the walkers are honoring written on them. I hope that this experience is reparative for the mom and her team; I hope that they find a sense of community and compassion from others. This reminder though made me remember, again, how there we were in class just a few days before, talking about psychology things. While we contemplated what brings about changes in people, she secretly couldn't imagine the dark days getting any better. 
2. Today I also found out that two days ago, a UC Berkeley student jumped from a 6th floor story of his dorm, about 1 mile from where we live. The report says that they are still investigating whether this was truly a suicide, but the air on campus makes it seem that it was. After all, this student's last Facebook update was: RIP [student's name] 11/18/91 – 5/8/12.
3. Finally, there's this. A person I didn't know at all, but someone who is still touching the hearts of internet friends and acquaintances. This is tragic because, all existential crises aside, the act of giving up on life so completely is jarring. The ripples of grief are broad and it's difficult to wrap my mind around an act so counterintuitive to the survival and adaptivity of human beings. No matter what explanations are offered to me–it's the circle of life, we are all regenerated energy, everybody dies eventually–being confronted with someone giving up on a fight against their pain can feel as if any hope that things can look up for people is sucked right out of me. 

Suicide is an act of hopelessness. In their suicide notes, people often say things like, "I tried, I really tried everything I could think of, and yet nothing helped to take the pain away." I can't speak for everyone's experience, maybe there are situations in which nothing really truly can help, but I have to hold on to the thought that there is hope, that there is quite often, most of the time, some way out. Life is not a steady line of happiness or unhappiness. Downs exist, really really lows exist, they may even exist most of the time for some people. But ups, even really pale ups, some subjective versions of better, they also exist, they have to, for everyone. But in those dissociated states at the moment of suicide, people cannot fathom the alternatives to pain. It's my job, then, to not drown in the hopelessness, and to believe in the possibility of better.

surviving the flames

Remember that time I decided it would be a wonderfully stimulating adventure to go to grad school? That time when I didn't realize that grad school = professional hazing where they make you jump through flaming hoops to advance from level to level until you are deemed worthy enough of holding a title that's supposed to mean something? Luckily, I'm not the only one sitting with these feelings, and others have even written about the experience:

  26 Fun Facts About Grad School « Thought Catalog

Right now I am living in a world of #16, #17, #22, and #24. This week though is a bit of a lull (read: tonight I only need to add another preliminary analysis to my dissertation proposal before sending out to my committee, write a few essays for a scholarship application, and finish updating my CV; see #16 above) before the giant storm (oral proposal for said dissertation, oral clinical competency exam) that will be the end of this month.

So tonight, as I wasted some time and thought about the ridiculousness of this grad school circus, I decided that hey, while doing all those dog-and-pony shows over the years, I may have even learned something! Here are a few of those things:

• How to say no
• How to say yes
• How to ask for what I need
• How to manage my time
• How to have fun on a budget 
• That public speaking and group/team work are not my strengths
• That individual interactions, deep critical thinking, and writing are my strengths
• To go between my Russian and US identities more fluidly
• How to delegate tasks and manage the work of others
• That I am good at statistics and ok at math in general
• How to talk about my interests in an engaging manner
• That, despite the debt, I have many more career options than I realized
• That I can persevere, even under a lot of criticism and with few rewards
• How to call out microaggressions
• How to stop apologizing for having a voice
• Enough to understand and find this blog funny

so far

I wish I could write here more. I think I will write here more after May 21, when I better pass my clinical proficiency exam and also successfully propose my dissertation orals.

For now I will say that whoever sent in this postsecret knows a thing or two about advanced degree education. Just replace the words "law school" with "grad school" and you will approximate my experience in the last several years.

P.S. Have I mentioned that my dream in life is to be a Russian-style Frida? I already have my garb in place, now all I need is freedom.

twenty twelve minus one

Just now, less than 10 seconds ago, I decided: eff my principles. The semester has started (my last, my last one on campus!) and I am now permanently in a grumpy hole. I am so worn out and sick of "working on deficits," "improving," and "articulating challenging areas in my professional development" that I became completely against all things self-improvement. Including resolutions, goals, and promises.

I just wanted all of the world's expectations to seriously let me BE.

But you know, reflecting on the good of my life, as is traditional at the start of a new year (even if it's already February), isn't a bad idea. I could use a reminder or ten that last year was not lived in vain, and that it had its purposes of bringing me here, wherever I am now.

So here are the 11 goods I want to remember about 2011:

1. I spent New Year's with my husband, my paternal grandparents, my dad, my dad's wife, and my little sister. This was the epitome of my family's gathering, filled with noise, laughter, Lady Ga Ga impressions, and my sister endlessly playing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" on the piano. I wanted to stay in that moment forever.

2. Sometime in February or March, I decided to leave my exhausting work at midday, told my husband to come pick me up in the car, bring the dog, and take us to a forest. We got a yummy lunch, hiked, and rented a motel room for the night, cheaply. I went to a nearby REI and bought myself a new shirt (on sale) to change into for work the next day. We bought wine and some take-out food, and brought them to the motel. I took a bath, we watched some funny shows, ate the food, drank the wine, and gave each other massages. The next morning, my husband dropped me off at work again. I wore the new shirt, was well-rested, and no one suspected anything. Living spontaneously gave me hope that life can truly have zest and meaning.

The view from our hike in Marin County, CA.

3. I was invited to teach an extra course in the spring semester, which was overwhelming and affirming.
4. My friend and I got together for sushi a lot, which meant that a Jewish gay boy and a Russian tattooed feminist girl took over a tiny quiet Japanese restaurant. We laughed a lot. This sushi place also gave complementary fried shrimp on a stick with frighteningly exploding eyes. Our dates kept me sane and got me through the year.

It sees you. It sees your mouth approaching. It dares you to eat it.

5. My mom visited me and then I visited my mom. We survived both visits, which confirmed for me that people and relationships can change, often for the better.
6. My advisor called me a genius (not to my face)(but a jealous friend confided), about which I kind of have mixed feelings. Mostly happy ones, but also sort of embarrassingly blushing ones. Because not that someone else's opinion of me should define my worth, but coming from a woman I respect and admire, it was still a proud moment. I'd like to remember it during all those other times I am told to improve on my weaknesses.
7. I took a horse riding lesson and briefly joined a rowing team, at least until the fall semester began (I wish I'd still be rowing right now).
8. I went to a few Giants games, participated in Occupy protests, and canoed down the Russian River on my birthday in August. I can't believe I found time to be out, but it felt good.
9. I saw the Foo Fighters in concert, and crossed one of, like, two items on my bucket list (for my opinion on bucket lists, see my current thoughts on goals and resolutions above)(the second item on the list is to drink a pint of Guinness in Dublin).

Dave Grohl, in all his musical glory. I can't believe my little dumbphone took this good of a picture.

10. Friends visited me and I felt unforgotten.
11. I failed at things, I succeeded in things. I persevered, I survived. I understood what it meant to walk through the middle of life's darkness and see a light ahead.

on being a therapist

Therapy is a mysterious process. Something unique happens when two souls meet in a circumscribed safe space. They affect each other in ways that are hard to describe to the outside world. Many people wonder what makes therapy special and what exactly produces results. When people hear about my training, they start asking me questions, or they make comments about therapy that are wrought with their own assumptions. Usually it's people who haven't experienced therapy for themselves.

I've been thinking about my answers to some of these common questions or comments, so here are my attempts to clear up some misconceptions:

Therapists get paid to be supportive and automatically like the people they work with.
Ethical therapists don't lie to their clients, ever. Sure, we receive some training on how to evade certain questions we feel would be harmful to answer, and we don't disclose too much personal information. But other than that, everything we say is truly what we think and how we feel. We are genuinely amazed by people, their survival and their abilities. We don't love our clients blindly and automatically, without any consideration of who they are, just because it's our job. We don't even necessarily love all aspects of our clients all the time. There are usually things we don't like as well, and when the time is right and the relationship is strong enough, your therapist will probably point those out. But therapy wouldn't be what it is if we didn't find beauty in all of our clients' souls. People, in their struggles, in their vulnerabilities, in pain, in perseverance, are pretty amazing. And this includes every person I have worked with up to now and will work with in the future.

What's the point of therapy; can't you just complain to your friends?
Therapy and friendship are similar and different. Both therapists and friends see people during painful and vulnerable points in their lives, and both like those people despite their faults and mistakes. However, therapists are trained to listen with a different ear. They open up a door in their hearts and take on pieces of people's struggles. Therapists listen to their clients, and they listen to themselves. Therapists listen to the tone in the room. Therapists listen for patterns, for significant motifs, for contexts. Therapists don't even really have any stakes in what you say; they just care about what it means to you. They care about how you're feeling now, and how you felt then. They care about your process through tough times, and they rejoice with you in happy times. So the next time you have an issue that you can't talk to your friends about or a feeling so unbearable it keeps you up at night – great! Talk to a therapist; that's what we're here for.

All people do in therapy is complain in the presence of another person, who just gets paid to listen.
Many people tell me that therapy is just about people whining. They ask me how I can choose to sit and listen to people's endless complaining. What they should be asking me is how I chose a profession that is actually one emotional mind-twist. We function on a completely different level than simply "tolerating whininess" and nodding our heads in automatic agreement. Through tuning in to people's emotions, we actually alter their experiences. Consider this hypothetical scenario: a man comes to therapy after growing up with an aggressive father and an absent mother. He has a general disposition of feeling angry, hurt, helpless, ineffectual, undermined, unappreciated. The female therapist, in her position of caretaking and authority, triggers those feelings, and he is usually angry at her in their sessions. But she, unlike his parents, recognizes those feelings, absorbs his anger without retaliating, and also appreciates and empowers him. Over time, he becomes less self-depricating and explosive, and gains a clearer and healthier sense of self. In other words, the process of therapy actually changes his internal experience. So the whining and the complaining is only the tip of the iceberg of everything that is bound to happen in therapy.

Life sucks, get over it. Everyone has issues, move on.
Occasionally I get the "what's the point of therapy; people just need to learn to suck it up" comment. Incidentally, this is a philosophical question that I (and I assure you, many other therapists) have asked myself as well: if therapy is a relatively new field and people have gone on living in tough circumstances and with painful emotions, then why change it all now and advocate that people get help and feel better? The answer is complex, but for me it boils down to these points: a) people have always sought the help of various healers, for emotional, relationship, sexual, existential, etc. issues; b) our knowledge of ourselves continues to grow, how can we not use it to help ourselves (see: medicine); and c) just because people "sucked it up" before, doesn't mean that they didn't suffer all their lives from emotional ailments that we now know are very preventable and healable. Who knows what was getting people through life before (wizards, tight communities, shorter lifespans, rigid social roles, religions?), now we have this tool that anyone can use to find healing and purpose. And I think everyone should give it a try.

Have anything else to add to how therapy works? Anything else left you curious about therapy?

on being an immigrant part 5.2

What I've worked out for myself so far stems in part from (drum roll please for how therapist of me this will sound) Freud's essay, Mourning and Melancholia. Therein he ponders the sources of sadness and effects of loss on people's beings. Reading every sentence of this essay has been like getting hit by a train of realization.

Of course there is no way of telling who I would have become if I hadn't moved away from my home, but I do know that as a kid, pre-immigration, I was happy, imaginative, rambunctious, and a leader of all the other kids in the neighborhood. I had hardships and difficulties, yes, but I also had many people around me for support and I felt a sense of belonging there. Since coming to the U.S., at least, (and it has been close to 15 years now), I have felt a low-grade but ever-present sense of sadness, loneliness, and somewhat emptiness. It's not that I am depressed; I have energy and friends and interests. I have some zest for life. And it's not that I am completely empty either. My life does have purpose; my personal and professional goals give me a sense of meaning. And yet, I go through life feeling sad and lonely, without a heartfelt connection to many things in the world, my existence sometimes seeming futile. Deep down, I'm melancholy.

In his funky and specialized, yet precise and well-thoughtout way, Freud writes this (emphasis is mine):

Mourning is regularly the reaction to the loss of a loved person, or to the loss of some abstraction which has taken the place of one, such as one's country, liberty, an ideal, and so on. In some people the same influences produce melancholia instead of mourning and we consequently suspect them of a pathological disposition. It is also well worth notice that, although mourning involves grave departures from the normal attitude to life, it never occurs to us to regard it as a pathological condition and to refer it to medical treatment. We rely on its being overcome after a certain lapse of time, and we look upon any interference with it as useless or even harmful (p. 243).

The distinguishing mental features of melancholia are a profoundly painful dejection, cessation of interest in the outside world, loss of the capacity to love, inhibition of all activity, and a lowering of the self-regarding feelings to a degree that finds utterance in self-reproaches and self-revilings, and culminates in a delusional expectation of punishment. This picture becomes a little more intelligible when we consider that, with one exception, the same traits are met with in mourning. The disturbance of self-regard is absent in mourning; but otherwise the features are the same. Profound mourning, the reaction to the loss of someone who is loved, contains the same painful frame of mind, the same loss of interest in the outside world—in so far as it does not recall him—the same loss of capacity to adopt any new object of love (which would mean replacing him) and the same turning away from any activity that is not connected with thoughts of him. It is easy to see that this inhibition and circumscription of the ego is the expression of an exclusive devotion to mourning which leaves nothing over for other purposes or other interests (p. 244).

It is evident that melancholia too may be the reaction to the loss of a loved object. The object has not perhaps actually died, but has been lost as an object of love. One feels justified in maintaining the belief that a loss of this kind has occurred, but one cannot see clearly what it is that has been lost, and it is all the more reasonable to suppose that the patient cannot consciously perceive what he has lost either. This, indeed, might be so even if the patient is aware of the loss which has given rise to his melancholia, but only in the sense that he knows whom he has lost but not what he has lost in him. This would suggest that melancholia is in some way related to an object-loss which is withdrawn from consciousness, in contradistinction to mourning, in which there is nothing about the loss that is unconscious (p. 245).

In mourning we found that the inhibition and loss of interest are fully accounted for by the work of mourning in which the ego is absorbed. In melancholia, the unknown loss will result in a similar internal work and will therefore be responsible for the melancholic inhibition. The difference is that the inhibition of the melancholic seems puzzling to us because we cannot see what it is that is absorbing him so entirely. The melancholic displays something else besides which is lacking in mourning—an extraordinary diminution in his self- regard, an impoverishment of his ego on a grand scale. In mourning it is the world which has become poor and empty; in melancholia it is the ego itself (p. 246). 

Even through Freud's jargon, my condition becomes much more clear to me now: I lost a loved object (the country, the city, the home base, the culture, the language, the people, the sense of belonging) and I have not processed the loss in any conscious or tangible way. In a sense, I am stuck in a loop of "pathological" mourning: I am sad and unable to allow myself to love a new object (new country, new language, new culture, new people) that might "replace" the old one. Because I've acculturated well enough--to the outside world, it looks like I fit in with the new environment--the loss is harder to see, and yet, my entire being is in many ways absorbed in this self-depricating confusing loop of pseudo-mourning. When there is nothing outside of myself to put a finger on, it is I, not the world, that becomes empty and dark.

For now, I am thankful for this clarity and new perspective. It doesn't make the pain any easier, yet, but I know that I am moving in a healing direction. All I can do for now is let myself be still, listen to what is going on inside, and be patient with the timing and unfolding of this process.

on being an immigrant 5.1

Everything I write on this topic seems trite. The words in my head fail me miserably. Is there really a way to describe the width and depth of a painful experience?

***

This picture is how I spent my adolescence. And even though I'm an adult now--an adult who doesn't always sit around sulking and who maybe has a better capacity for tolerating emotions--doesn't mean that somewhere inside I don't still look like this.

Source

I often resort to wearing black, and now I know that it's because black actually is the color of my soul. At least for now, because I'm mourning. Turns out, my life has included a lot of unmourned things that require mourning. The best I can promise myself right now is that I will try as best as I can, considering I've had poor examples and little experience truly mourning losses.

***

I roll my eyes at myself and feel sad about meaningful parts of my life all at the same time.