Making the Invisible, Visible

Childhood pain was buried.

I was confused as well as repulsed; Cindy, a pretty young woman cut herself. It seemed completely inexplicable to me. Of course I recoiled from her. Interestingly soon after this encounter, one of my daughters broke her foot. Suddenly she attracted people who were eager to help her. I was struck by the contrasting reactions. Two women, both hurting, yet only one garnered sympathy.I finally understood why Cindy cut herself.

Picture these two separate scenes.

In the first vignette, a smiling young woman with a cumbersome backpack, leans with both hands on a walker as she edges towards heavy doors leading to a lecture hall. Before she can even touch the handle, two young men sprint up, open the door and solicitously offer to carry her bag till she is sitting comfortably at her desk. She is an accepted part of the young men’s social group. Her disability, although permanent, does not repulse the other students but elicits empathy.

A diametrically opposed scene focuses on another young, pretty woman but she slouches with her head down. As she struggles weakly with the same heavy doors, an impatient young man sighs, shakes his head at her and roughly yanks the door open . He steps quickly past her after glancing at her sideways because her hands are trembling. She refuses eye contact because she is ill at ease and self conscientious.

The first woman’s physical disability is clearly understood by the male students; they confidently offer the kind of help that she needs. The second woman makes the young guy uncomfortable because it is obvious that she is emotionally or mentally ill but he really does not exactly know why she is ill or how to help her.

Ironically physical illness often has the power to bring people together by calling forth virtues from both the one in pain and those around them. On the other hand, mental pain is harder to bear, even more difficult to help.

I finally understood why a pretty woman like Cindy, in tremendous emotional pain, cut her arms because those visible wounds took her mind off her memories of a childhood tragedy that she never recovered from.  A cut became the visible symbol not only to herselves but to society of her inner illness that until then had been invisible.

There’s a Hole in My Bucket , Dear Liza

Understanding mental Illness with the stress bucket image. 

The stress vulnerability bucket is a way to explain why some people experience anxiety, depression, paranoia or a psychotic episode. I heard this illustration explained at a conference more than 10 years ago and I find that it is still the easiest way to explain how mental illness affects people

Think of each person's ability to handle stress as a bucket with holes in the bottom. Some people from stable home backgrounds with relaxed, cheerful temperaments might have a large bucket to handle stress while others who are high-strung or perhaps wounded from child abuse or unstable home life as children might have a smaller bucket.

Now, imagine stress as water filling up the bucket. If a lot of water comes into the bucket, in other words, if a person experiences a great deal of stress, then the bucket can overflow. People with big buckets, or a low-level of vulnerability, can cope with more stress, and people with small buckets can cope with less stress. Loads of things can stress us all out, like relationship problems, money worries or family problems.

If you manage  stress by using helpful ways of coping, then this gets rid of the stress from the bucket. This is like punching holes in the bottom of the bucket. Helpful coping is things like talking through your problems with someone or getting a good nights sleep, going for a walk, taking a long, hot bath to relax your muscles and best of all is prayer, the kind that leads you into the peace of God.

If you cope by doing unhelpful things, then that could make the stress worse. This is like blocking the holes in your bucket. Unhelpful ways of coping are things like taking drugs, drinking too much alcohol, or keeping your problems to yourself.

 

Really, it is not important if your bucket is large or small . The key to living a balanced, 'sane' life is to keep the holes in the bottom of the bucket open so stress can flow out, Sometimes that means taking medication, especially if you need it to sleep. Some people need eyeglasses to read, diabetics need insulin and some people need help with their serotonin levels..no guilt, no condemnation.

A Quaint, Quirky House

Welcome to our house. We love kids, animals and plants but watch out! Don't trip over the dog laying in the hallway.

The kindest description for the house where we raised our nine children, would be quaint. Picture a sprawling, two-storey house built in 1886, with all sorts of quirks. Three sets of steps converge on the upstairs landing as the result of creative home renovations. A window became a doorway to a hundred-year old addition which then needed its own set of three steps before anyone could get through this new doorway.    

Someone with an odd sense of humour cut a 4 ft 10 inch high doorway to the babyroom, squeezing it under the slanted roof. (When I walked into this room in the pitch dark, I banged my forehead against that door frame every night for the first month after we moved in). 

That doorway needs another set of three steps off the landing to reach the threshold of the bedroom. Logically, the two shortest people in the family shared this bedroom.The most absurd design feature, though, is the fact that there are six doorways leading out of the formal dining room and another six to the outdoors.

The bathroom, added in 1949 when a local farmer installed electricity, is so tiny that the tub is not even 4 ft. long. I must have a sadistic streak because the times I have laughed the hardest concern my husband and this bathtub. Once I stumbled upon him wedged in the tub with his knees drawn up, trying to keep water off the floor as he rinsed his hair with a princess shower head. I laughed so hard that I ended up on the floor. My husband did not even smile.

Laughter is usually my weapon of choice against the irritations life throws at me but is difficult to laugh at our shallow well which dries up continuously, forcing us to get a truck load of water from the neighbouring farmer. The toilet water pump is in the barn, surrounded by hay bales but still manages to freeze in the winter. We employ ingenious methods to thaw that pump but when it doesn't work we pail in water from an old fashioned pump ourside.

I simply must whine about one more irritation. If you plug two appliances in at the same time in the kitchen, the power shuts off and I resort to sending a kid running down to the cellar to turn the power back on. (I do mean a cellar, with huge oak beams and 2 ft, thick stone walls). That cellar is home to three freezers stocked with our home raised meat and vegetables are kept in the cold storage room. The kitchen pantry is tucked in under the stairs with shelves and old-fashioned hooks to hang aprons and cloth bags of flour, rice and sugar.

The decorating theme of this unusual house is Early Childhood Art and it is everywhere, on the fridge, on cupboards and walls. Too many plants add to the sense of colour the eclectic combination of furniture is at least comfortable. Generations of former owner, who were all full-time farmers, believed in 4 inch spikes for building barns as well as hanging pictures, So those 4 inch spikes dictate where mirrors and pictures hang because they refused to come out of the old plaster.

The list of quirks is even longer long but it all adds up either to frustration or comedy and we choose to laugh. Yet we also love this quirky house with its thick, pine plank floors, wide wood wainscotting, original door knobs and engraved hinges and stained-glass window.

Now into this absurd house, picture eleven people living in five bedrooms with bunk beds, 13 dressers and huge trunks because half the bedrooms have old-fashioned hooks on the wall but no closets and there is no linen closet. Organizing the clothes and belongings of eleven people is not an easy task without proper storage. I should not have to explain further except to remark that I once lost a grade one reading book for three months in a dress-up bin. You can surely picture the chaos as I madly flung socks about in a 3 foot high wicker basket full of unpaired socks, trying to find a pair or two to throw over the banister to a child rushing to pull a coat and backpack on before running down our long lane to catch the schoolbus.

This is the scene for all sorts of mix-ups, and mayhem, many of them cause by the house itself. I reacted the only way possible,I laughed. Our laughing transformed that house into a very, very fine house with two cats in the most comfortable chair, a dog that tripped visitors by the door, goldfish on the counter and a guinea pig that squeaked for food every time the fridge opened.

My Son has Irlen Syndrome or SSS

10-13% of the population has Iren Syndrome or SSS (Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome) and are functionally illiterate, most are never diagnosed.

I published this article on BrooWaha in September 2012. However, I am adamant that the public become aware of a reading disability that affects 11-13% of the population and is usually never detected.

Quite by accident, we discovered why our 11-year-old son could not read

I was gathering books to return to friends one day when the book Reading by Colors by Carol Irlen caught my eye. As I was skimming through it, 11 year-old Daniel looked over my shoulder and said in a surprised voice, "Gee, those words look nice."

I turned to him and said, "What do you mean NICE?"

Daniel explained, "The words are flat with the page and they're not moving."

I sputtered, "What do you mean not moving?"

Daniel shrugged his shoulders and said, "You know, the letters aren't shaking and they're not high off the page."

I shook my head, "No, I don't know what you mean."

This particular page was grey with blue letters. I quickly turned the page to a white one with black letters.Daniel wrinkled his forehead and described what he saw when he looked at the printed page.

Everything clicked into place as I did research into Irlen Syndrome or SSS (Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome); I realized that Daniel had every symptom. SSS is a learning disability that causes difficulties with reading as well as encoding and decoding verbal information. Unbelievably many eye specialists refuse to acknowledge Irlen syndrome, probably because a normal educator, teaching illiterate adults in California discovered the problem and the solution, not a scientist.

We struggled for years to teach our intelligent son how to read. It was sheer agony. Daniel couldn't sit still, he'd lose his place, forget what he had read 30 seconds after he had read it. After ten minutes of struggling, he would start rubbing his forehead, complain that his head hurt and he felt sick. This kid had perfect eyesight, was smart as a whip, especially in Math but he could barely read.

No one in the school system knew anything about this handicap. I finally a found a private screener in Ottawa, Adel Francis. She discovered that Daniel had not one but five different distortions, each one corrected with a different coloured lens. Within two hours of testing, after Adele had pointed out a few complicated words, Daniel read smoothly and flawlessly at a grade NINE level. We came to tears because we had pushed and badgered our son for years, when he just couldn't see the way most other people do.

When we learn that 11% to 13% of people have SSS, we were appalled. So much potential wasted, so many people frustrated, unfilled, feeling dumb with many ending up in jail.

Everything changed rapidly once Daniel started to wear his miracle lenses. The first night we read together after he started wearing his dark blue, grey glasses, my son moved the page close to his face and then back again. He then turned to me with a puzzled look on his face and asked, "Getting has two t's in it??!"

One night after supper, when the younger children had left the table to play, my oldest daughter laughed and said,

"Hey, I just realized that we don't have to send Daniel away if we want to discuss an adult topic; we'll just take off his glass!"

We all laughed of course.

Then there was the time a friend tried to cut Daniel's hair. He couldn't seem to stop squirming. One of my daughter's, Rachel, suggested, "Why don't you try putting on his glasses?"

Daniel put them on and he sat as still as a stone statue.

"Oh my god, I don't believe it," my friend yelled, "Everyone come see this. Okay,Daniel, take your glasses off and then put them on when I tell you."

The difference was so dramatic and everyone's reaction was so funny that even Daniel started to laugh.

Are You Sure You're My Kid?

this mother cat with her adopted bunnies is a great symbol for how I often look at my offspring.

Where did that talent, personality or characteristic come from?

All my children have the same parents and have lived in the same environment but each child inherited not only different physical genes but different character traits as well.This gene pool is larger than I ever dreamed it could be.The differences between my offspring are mind boggling. Actually the truth is that every person is completely different. My two oldest children are dramatic examples.

My first child, Mark, was and still is serious and contemplative. At eleven or twelve months, he would sit and slowly place household objects in a plastic jug after observing each object careful. He would then dump them out and start all over again, all in silence.When Mark was only four, Michael taught him how to play checkers. Both men would sit in silence, contemplating each move.

When my second child, Jean, was born everything we thought we knew about child development exploded. Where Mark was cautious, she was daring. She was only nine or ten months old, when I walked into the kitchen and found her sitting on the fridge! I froze in shock and yelled for her father to come witness this event.

Michael, my husband, had decided that by four, a child was ready to play checkers. Since Mark picked the game up so quickly, he figured all kids would follow suit. After only ten minutes of playing with his daughter, he was becoming frustrated; Jean was standing up, hopping from foot to foot and jumping checkers backwards and forwards, skipping two, three, four squares at a time.

Finally I intervened and said, “Honey, I don’t think Jean is going to play checkers like Mark; you’re just going to have to let go and go with the flow.”

Although he managed to survive that first checker game with his daughter, Michael didn’t play checkers with Jean for another few years.

Jean? She was happy doing her own thing and glad to leave that particular boring activity to the men in the family.

Every child is unique. I originally believed that everything could be explained in my dog-eared book on child development. My children soon shattered that myth. Of course, general guide lines hold true but ultimately it is up to the parents to intuitively and tentatively discover which approach clicks with each little person.

I just remembered another story.Jean was about fifteen or sixteen months old gleefully picking up worms as we dug up the garden. Mark at three and a half, acting on some deep macho instinct, forced himself to pick up worms too.

Jean had a peaceful sleep that night.

Mark? He woke up screaming with visions of worms dancing in his head.

Canadian Snow Humour

As I sit by the wood stove, with the wind howling all around our old house, I am toasty warm. However our water pipes to the upstairs shower, toilet and laundry room have frozen for the fifth time this year. This has rarely happened in previous years. The temperature is -27 C with the wind chill. So naturally I want to talk about the weather like the good Canadian that I am because it is a proven fact that discussing the weather is a national pastime. This sort of Canadian discussion is typically a combination of complaining and bragging all rolled into one rant!

by melanie jean juneau

When a Fish Wants to Fly

discovering your talents

Crushed by failure,

an ego shattering,

hope defying

defeat?

Judged on the surface, each endevour appears to be executed

by an incompetent ne'er-do-well,

trying yet again and floundering.

The result is a fiasco, debacle, catastrophe, disaster, blunder,

a plain old botch up.

Call it a washout, dead duck or a lead balloon.

By any other name, it is still 

a flop.

Yet, upon further reflection,

this apparent lack of success,

is not a result of a lack of talent,

but like

a fish wanting to fly 

in the air.

He will  look like a genuis

when..

he discovers a unique way 

of swimming

in water.

by melanie jean juneau

Images: A Hobby Farm with Messy Kids

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Becoming a Mother Inspite of Myself

Thirty odd years ago, I never could have imagined myself as a mother. I was a 23-year old student at the University of Regina on the Canadian prairies. Having just graduated with an Honours Degree in English Literature, I considered continuing my studies as a graduate student. In fact, I didn't foresee any changes to my life which had flowed smoothly till then. I had grown up with one sister, ballet lessons and a library filled with great fiction and I still enjoyed gardening, painting and drawing, just as I had done as a child. I was content.

Suddenly, my life as I knew it changed dramatically. I met Michael, who was just passing through Regina, Saskatchewan to Prince George, British Columbia. From that first meeting, it felt like the prairie wind swooped down and scattered all my work and plans. Michael describes our initial introduction in much kinder terms; he says that he saw fireworks when he first laid eyes on me. It was instant attraction. Everyone thought I was going to be a nun librarian but, as Michael loves to remind me, he saved me from this fate.

I was not ready for such a dramatic change in my life but it was clear to me that this encounter was a defining moment that I could not ignore. So I baffled fellow students, profs, advisers, friends and family by saying yes to the unexpected. I did not know anything about my newly chosen lifestyle. I did realize that I was completely ignorant and lacked even the most basic skills required to survive.Coming from a family with only two children, it was a culture shock, to put it mildly, when I moved to eastern Ontario and met Michael’s sprawling French-Canadian family of eight boys and two girls.

I became pregnant before our first wedding anniversary. Instantly, I began to panic because I knew, that once again, I was utterly unprepared. I had never even held a newborn! So I got ready in the only way I knew how; I read every book I could find on pregnancy, birth and baby care.

However all this studying did little to equip me to mother a fragile, completely dependent newborn. For example, as I held my baby in a small bathtub for his first bath, I was nervous. It is hilarious to admit now but I actually had a book propped open with one elbow awkwardly holding it open to the right page, while my baby was in a bathtub on the table. The book was my security blanket, I guess.

My new husband, who was the second oldest of ten children and completely relaxed with babies, walked through the kitchen, shook his head in disbelief and said quite wisely,

“Melanie, there are some things you just can't get out of books."

Yet, something did happen to me moments after giving birth to my first child; still in the delivery room, I forgot my exhaustion and pain the moment I held my newborn. A surge of motherly love rose up in my heart combined with a sense of awe at the miracle of creation as I examined tiny, perfectly formed fingers and toes.

There was something about my baby's open, trusting gaze that literally drew love from me. My newborn could see clearly for about 8", just far enough to focus intently on my face. It was almost as if the initiative to bond came from my son first, especially when I consider his fierce hand grip as he clutched my clothing.To ensure that I fed him, he was born with a powerful rooting reflex and a cry that literally triggered the let-down reflex for my milk, soaking my clothes if I did not start nursing quickly enough.My baby did not even have a sense of himself apart from me for the first year, his whole identity was intricately entwined with mine. On a good day that translated into an almost magical relationship of love, the strength of which astounded me; on a bad day it meant little sleep where I was unable to put him down for more than a quick dash to use the toilet or to drag a toothbrush across my teeth.

Somehow, though, this new life, this culture shock, became my daily life.Unbeknownst to me, each successive baby set me free to become more fully who I was called to be, a joyful mother of nine children. If I think about it, I am just as baffled as any outsider when I consider this conundrum.

The Thinking Man’s Winnie-the-Pooh

“Something feels funny. I must be thinking too hard

The bear without a brain was actually quite profound.He tells adult readers to stop, look, listen, and learn from nature, animals and little children. Intellect isn’t as important as heart and intuition.

“

“Yes,” said Piglet,

“Rabbit’s clever.” 

“And he has Brain.” 

“Yes,” said Piglet, “Rabbit has Brain.”

There was a long silence. “I suppose,” said Pooh, “that that’s why he never understands anything

Poetry and Hums aren’t things which you get, they’re things which get you. And all you can do is go where they can find you. 

“Some people talk to animals. Not many listen though. That’s the problem.”

Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again?”

“Well,” said Pooh, “what I like best — ” and then he had to stop and think. Because although eating honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called.”

 

 

 

“I am a bear of very little brain and long words bother me.”

Humourous, Vintage Paintings of Mothers and Children

When I think of a typical hundred year-old painting  of mother with her children, I think of idealized images where everyone has a sombre expression on their faces. Well these painters had a sense of as humour as they capture the moments when a mother is overwhelmed by her children's need to touch her, even when she tries to work. These artists must have been fathers because they are remarkably insightful  into the mother/ child dynamic. .They remind me of the days when I felt like a mauled mother cat, feeling like if one more person touched me that I would scream.