2010 Gratitude #3: Resilience

Our company has the privilege to work with the Oil Spill Distress Helpline right now, and "resilience" is a major theme of any post-disaster work. Humans are naturally resilient, we remind people; there is an organic trend toward recovery and healing in all of us. (And there are great resources available for those times when we need more external assistance to heal.)

2010 was an enormous personal exercise in resilience. There were months where it felt like I couldn't take a breath, where work and personal responsibilities and relationships flooded from one day into the next with no break for air. And yet, I'm still here. And that deserves an enormous YES.



I'm grateful for my own emotional and physical resilience, for the awareness of all that conspires to keep me alive and well, for the tools I have learned that help me make space for breathing.

2010 Gratitude #2: My Birth Family

Three years ago, I moved back to Texas after ten years of living 1,000+ miles away from the specific group of people that I call my birth family, the one I was born into. (I'm lucky to have three layers of family -- the one I married into, and the one I choose by whom I call my friends.)

Especially during this difficult year, it has been a great gift to be within driving distance of these three crazy characters.







I believe that before we're born, we choose our parents and our siblings... for a million reasons, though sometimes I'm sure we can only think of the reasons that make no sense. I'm grateful for being born into this family, and for the love they've poured on me through all the transitions of 2010.

2010 Gratitude #1: My Camera

2010 has been a tough year. At its end, I feel like I have been stretched and expanded and challenged in profound ways, and I'm pretty emotionally exhausted.

Yet it has offered enormous gifts, as does any difficult year (2003? I'm talking about you). With the last 28 days of the year, I want to chronicle my daily gratitude for the 2010 gems I can take with me into 2011.

#1: My Camera



Last Christmas, Chris and our dear friend Mandy coordinated a surprise gift for me -- her storied old Canon Rebel 300D and a 100mm macro lens. Mandy started using the camera around 2003 or 2004 for her gorgeous and distinctive photography. She also used the camera to take photos of our lives when Chris and I were newly in love. She used it to take engagement photos of me and Chris in Central Park in 2005. She used it to take photos on our wedding day.

And now, it's in my hands. 2010 was my first year experimenting with digital SLR photography, and I fell in love immediately. I'm so grateful for the way I was introduced to this craft, and for the stories and love that travel with me when I use this camera.

Throughout this hard, growing year, I've taken comfort in documenting my life with this camera. Even when the things I was documenting were sad, filled with loss and grief, it felt good to mark them, to pay them respect by remembering them. This camera gave me the gift of Project 365, which has challenged me to take at least one photo every day. (I'm up-to-date, though I'm about 40 days behind in processing them.)

Thank you, Mandy and Chris, for this enormous gift of a new way to see the world.

Love Thursday: Superhero Grandma

via 800-273-TALK

Photo Credit: Sacha GoldbergerProving that mental health comes in all shapes, sizes, and flavors: Photographer Sacha Goldberger reached out to his lonely and depressed 91-year-old grandmother and suggested that they do a photo series together. The result is a marvelous photo series that not only cheered up Frederika but also connected her with over 2,000 people around the world who were touched by her photos.

In the suicide prevention field, we talk about "protective factors" a lot -- those skills, strengths, or resources that help people deal well with the difficult things in life and enhance resilience. In my non-clinical mind, protective factors remind me of a magical force field that keeps a person insulated against the shocks and jostles of life. They could include a positive friendship, a hobby you love, your intramural sports league, a stubborn streak, a belief in your own strength despite stress.

Frederika and Sacha's photo series proves that you don't have to be a trained counselor to reach out to someone in mental distress, and that protective factors can inspire not only the person in distress, but a much wider audience, too.

The Page Is All We Get

Yesterday was the half-way point for National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo), the blazingly insane annual novel-writing blitz that challenges participants to write 50,000 words in the month of November. I started participating in 2002, and have joined in every other year since (excluding 2006, when I was still reeling from the work of planning a wedding and getting married). I've won the challenge every year that I've joined in, which means I've got over 150,000 words written toward at least three different novels.





As it stands this year, I'm about 7,000 words "behind," after a fun wedding weekend out of town and no writing at all. This does not worry me. The best part of NaNoWriMo is getting behind, feeling lost, and writing anyway.

One of my favorite NaNoWriMo procrastination tools is the official Forums, where users encourage each other, rant, exult, and cheer when they've gotten the green bar -- when their word counter has filled up to 50,000. I especially love wallowing in the wilds of human creativity in the Reference Desk section. This is where bring your logistical questions that would take too many NaNo hours to research. Instead, fellow NaNo-ers share their knowledge or best guesses. I'm continually amazed by the loose-cannon creativity in these forums, shown by questions like:

"Car charger/cigarette lighter in 1980s A-Team van?"
"What does a cow's liver smell like?"
"What is the male equivalent of pillow fighting in the middle of the night???"
"Colors of alien skies humans could breathe"

I LOVE that there are human beings writing novels that need the answer to these questions! And that other people enjoy brainstorming the answers! The breadth and depth of human creativity inspires me endlessly.

One of my other favorite parts about NaNoWriMo is the pep talks from published authors that they e-mail out every week. Last week, Aimee Bender sent out a pep talk that included this bit:

"You may or may not have an outline, but it doesn't matter—what we hold in our heads before we write is RARELY in sync with what shows up on the page, and if I were standing and saying this in front of you with a megaphone, I would say this next part especially loud and clear: The Page is All We Get. What shows up on the page? Well, that is your writing. The full-blown perfectly-whole concept you may have in your head? Is just thought."

The Page is All We Get.

I wrote this immediately on a scrap of paper and posted it right in front of my eyes.

In previous NaNos, I've plunged straight ahead with a novel idea created just for that year's NaNoWriMo. This year, I'm writing new content toward a novel that I've been cultivating in my mind and somewhat on paper for the last year and a half. So I know all about that Epic Outline in Your Head. It just doesn't matter. What comes out, does.

This is about more than just writing. What we write, what we live, is All We Get. Those plans and ideas and dreams and abstract concepts. Just thoughts.

So even when I'm 7,000 words "behind," I know that I'm way ahead of where I was on October 30th, because I've written 18,000 words that would never have existed otherwise. This is my real writing life.