How Many More need to DIE? ~~ You Don’t Know “JACK” About Mental & Emotional Illness!.
This is a great blog on dealing with mental illness and strategies to overcome. Catherine not only discusses her struggles but profiles others in the battle, bringing light to a taboo subject. She is an incredibly strong woman whom I’m proud to call Friend.
The Vanities of Aging
Confronting Our Mid-Life Challenges
Ecclesiastes 1:2
Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
Three years ago I experienced the thrill of turning 50. For me any birthday with a zero behind it was a special occasion. Each new decade signaled a new chapter in my life, a new beginning of sorts. I remembered when I turned 40 my Aunt Helen lovingly expressing to me the old adage, “Life begins at 40!” For me it really did. My 40s were a decade of singular accomplishments. I earned my B.A. at age 43; I reached a high level on the earning ladder at my then workplace; I was at my physical and sexual peak as a woman; and I had a new sassiness and vibe that enabled me to reach new heights on that climb to success.
My 50th birthday was exciting with friends taking me out to dinner, a beautiful birthday cake, balloons, flowers; but after the celebration was over a certain uneasiness set in. “Wow. I’ve lived over half my life.” The career I had carefully developed had hit a brick wall. In fact I seemed to hit a plateau in terms of career success. Then came “The Change”. I was not prepared. For puberty my mother and I had “The Talk”. However as I entered menopause my mother was long since gone on to her Heavenly reward and during this frightening period of my life my last link to the past, my beloved Aunt Helen passed away. I missed my Mom and my aunts terribly. Then horrible things were happening to my body that I did not understand. I sought explanations and some assistance from various GYNs. Their answers usually involved some sort of hormonal treatments which I instantly rejected since both my parents died from cancer. I decided I would just endure the deluge of sweat that engulfed my body day and night, drenching my clothes and making sleep impossible.
Of course I tried all types of holistic treatments. I do believe I’ve been through every herb and natural juices offered in the health food store. Nothing. No effect at all. I’ve decided it’s best to stay near the A.C., turn the fan on at night and keep bottled water with me at all times.
Menopause is an evil creature. She brought along her friends high blood pressure and arthritis to add to my daily pain and discomfort. Yes, this certainly was a ‘Change of Life’. Everything changed in my life, my diet, my ability to go up and down stairs without stopping for breath, the increased popping and cracking in my joints. I kind of felt like a human Rice Krispies, “Snap, Crackle, & Pop.” My mind was just as sharp and creative as it was at age 25 but I could not get my body in agreement with my mental desires.
But I told myself that I still had my good looks. Thanks to a fantastic gene pool and being a dark skinned African American Woman the saying, “Black don’t crack” is really true. Mind you this proverb only works if you took care of yourself when you were in your 20s, 30s and early 40s. I never smoked, did not do drugs, and only drank socially. I also exercised albeit moderately which kept me in fairly good physical condition. I’m also lucky that most of my family tend to be small people so I’ll never gain an extreme amount of weight.
However specific physical changes cannot be avoided. By the time I was 52 all my hair had turned white, seemingly overnight. Finally one day when I overheard a co-worker described me as the African-American lady with the white hair I knew I had to do something. The bubble burst. Reality set in. Oh My God! I look old! This would never do.
After conferencing with several women co-workers I decided upon L’Oreal Feria. First I started out brown because I had read that going back to my original color of black would just make me look hard and emphasize any lines my face might have. Finally I went red, no not Kool-Aid red like some of the pop stars but a spicy Fire Engine Red that matched my fiery personality. This was the time of my life to really experiment. After 40 more of the free spirit in me came out. I got tattoos on a yearly basis. Sometime after I turned fifty I had my belly button pierced but then my belly played a trick on me and I developed that menopausal belly bulge that comes to nearly all 50+ women.
Was this a chase after lost youth? No because I’ve always been a non-conformist. My parents were Free-Thinkers and they brought me up to be my own person. I remember when I decided to spike my hair back when I was in my 20s. My Dad thought I looked so wonderful that he took pictures of me and had them blown up to poster size. My parents support and encouragement fostered in me a self confidence that has enabled me to survive a multitude of challenges. It has given me a sustaining power. My mother and father always encouraged my creativity and insisted that I think for myself not just follow the script handed to us by society in general.
For me the next 50 years will be a celebration of maturity and individuality with lots of creativity and a little bit of insanity thrown in for good measure.
Please sow into this psychological socially effective ministry
Jephthah’s Daughters.(Click here to read more)
Shall we regard our girl children as Jephthah’s Daughters? How long will we continue to perpetuate the adage, “Women love their sons, but raise the daughters.” Every child deserves the opportunity to succeed in life but success comes through accepting responsibility and learning to be accountable. Any child male or female who constantly lashes out at authority figures in a bid to always be “right” is a child bound for prison or the graveyard. Stop making girls the sacrificial lambs!!
Ladies, let’s love our girl children and stop putting them on the altar in order to save a son who does not wanted to be saved and does not think he needs help or worse some no account man who should not even be a part of our households to begin with. Let us not return to ancient times when girls and women were thought of as little more than chattel or commodities to be bought and sold. (See below for more details on ancient economies)
“One of the unusual things about the Bible is that it preserves some bits of this larger context. … It would seem that the economy of the Hebrew kingdoms, by the time of the prophets, was already beginning to develop the same kind of debt crises that had long been common in Mesopotamia: especially in years of bad harvests, the poor became indebted to rich neighbors or to wealthy moneylenders in the towns, they would begin to lose title to their fields and to become tenants on what had been their own land, and their sons and daughters would be removed to serve as servants in their creditors’ households, or even sold abroad as slaves.
“[This is what the biblical book of Nehemiah is referring to in the passage,] ‘Some of our daughters are brought unto bondage already: neither is it in our power to redeem them.’ One can only imagine what those words meant, emotionally, to a father in a patriarchal society in which a man’s ability to protect the honor of his family was everything. Yet this is what money meant to the majority of people for most of human history: the terrifying prospect of one’s sons and daughters being carried off to the homes of repulsive strangers to clean their pots and provide the occasional sexual services, to be subject to every conceivable form of violence and abuse, possibly for years, conceivably forever, as their parents waited, helpless, avoiding eye contact with their neighbors, who knew exactly what was happening to those they were supposed to have been able to protect. … http://www.delanceyplace.com/view_archives.php?2009
Donations to this Ministry for the Housing Fund can be made in U.S. Funds via money order or bank checks made payable to Rochdale Village Inc. 169-65 137th Avenue, Jamaica, NY 11434, Account No. 083-11G-16924 or directly to deborah.palmer280@gmail.com via Paypal. Thank you and God Bless.
How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads; to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams.
Bram Stoker
Insomnia
Insomnia: the passage to uncharted realms between wakefulness and sleeplessness.
Charon ferries me across the River Styx into disturbed realms. Dimensions where time, space and eternity no longer exist as we know them.
My insomnia is paralyzing. So paralyzing that I find myself drifting. Dissolving into the walls and the furniture. Becoming one with inanimate objects. A force of nature living outside herself. Voyeur to my uncharted dreams. My inner world merged with the world at hand. Imagination gone wild.
Insomnia is God’s younger brother satan sent to torment me.
God’s way to torture sinners and test saints.
Koyaanisqatsi (Hopi) – crazy life, life in turmoil, out of balance, out of sync
I feel disconnected. My life is one where toys do things that toys should not do.
The bane of a troubled mind.
A form of earthly eternal damnation.
Insomnia opens the door to insanity
I’m one of the chosen.
Tonight when Morpheus and Hypnus spread the poppies of
Stardust upon you, the Fallen Angels will render unto me phobias and
Phantasmagoria. I see doors where there were previously no doors. Doors that open to the netherworld of demons with outstretched claws ready to drag you into the abyss.
An uneasy mind dangling off a precipice ready to let go.
Disturbed, deranged, distortions, disorientation becomes a part of everyday reality. Am I living the hallucination or is the hallucination really me?
I lose myself in the madness and surrender to the psychosis.
Life begins to implode.
An implosion shaped hand circles it claws around a jar of Ambien
I fought writhing on the bed all night long with the gods of sleep, dreams and death.
Morpheus, Oneiroi, Icelus, and Phantaso surged forward over me along with the attendants of Hypnos.
They all had their way with me and once stated I smell the dusky layer lilies over my nose. The smell of jasmine sharp in my left hand. The prickly pain of red roses in my right hand. Sheaves of vanilla spread out over both my legs.
Life begins to implode. HYPNOS, Give me the sleep inducing opium straight from the poppy that birthed it.
A hand shaped implosion grabs for a bottle of Ambien.
I fought writhing on the bed all night long with the gods of sleep, dreams and death.
Morpheus, Oneiroi, Icelus, and Phantaso surged forward over me along with the attendants of Hypnos.
They all had their way with me and once stated I smell the dusky layer lilies over my nose. The smell of jasmine sharp in my left hand. The prickly pain of red roses in my right hand. Sheaves of vanilla spread out over both my legs.
Pamperation for the Queen of Slumberland
I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.
Henry David Thoreau
The Midnight Marauder once again prowls the airwaves. Oh Blessed Sleep where are you? And why do you continue to deny me the rest I so deeply need?
Wish I could wind down. I always seem to be wound up!! Where’s my off switch?
No Sleep. Only the sound of my own thoughts ticking in the night, like the hands of a clock going around the dial and never resting.
Crickets?
I’ve been banished from Tranquility Base. Tried listening to some soft quiet music but I’m still awake. Looks like the gods of sleep have cursed me. Almost time to get up for work anyway. Too bad I didn’t have some Valium, Demerol, Percocet or Xanax. Then I could get some much needed sleep! Should be a fun day at work today. Guess I’ll just be in Zombie mode all day.
Sleep thou elusive bird of paradise why dost thou no longer grace my bedroom door? Alas the night has past and day begun and the time for work is now at hand.
Matrix – The Red pill/Blue pill
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arcJksDgCOU&feature=colike
Addiction – some habit usually unhealthy that takes over your life, an activity over which you have no control. For those lost in the throes of prescription addiction there is no escape from the horrors of the mind except via medications freely doled out by more than willing physicians and pharmacists. Drug induced hallucinations for those possessed by insecurities, depression, psychosis and various types of mental illness open previously closed doors in the mind. The addict seeking to escape earthly pain often unwisely even unknowingly opens portals to new cerebral dimensions, portals that eventually lead to the gateway to Hades.
I find myself walking through Bedlam calmly and quietly observing the poor wretches imprisoned within the only separation of safety between me and they glass with reinforced steel bars. Until I come to a long hallway on either side a series of rooms each secured with double bolt thick steel doors the only openings a slot in which to slide a plastic meal tray and a small window used by roaming psychotherapists who occasionally looked in upon the inmates deciding which mental miracle drug to dispense to these unsuspecting unfortunates. Compelled to stop in front of one particular door I peer through the small grimy window only to be shocked yet not too surprised to find my gaze met by my doppelganger. There I stand frozen to the spot my extremities taking root and branching out seeking crevices with which to penetrate the unyielding door that separates me from myself.
Jesus explained the dilemma of mind altering drugs the best in Luke 11:24-26
New International Version (NIV)
24 “When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ 25 When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. 26 Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first.”
Sherlock Holmes is one of the most celebrated fictional drug addicts known to most Americans. As played by the late Jeremy Brett, Brett’s Holmes captures the true brilliance of a man possessed by a troubled mind. He is the quintessential eccentric elitist, misanthrope and misogynist. In between cases Holmes uses cocaine to escape from the commonplaces of existence. Subject to long bouts of depression his drugs of choice morphine and cocaine, hence the 7% solution in his reasoning clarified and stimulated the mind. Often this is the case with talented, gifted genius level individuals. They abhor boredom and stagnation; craving constant mental exultation whether through industry, work, artistic, musical or literary projects. When the normal stimulants’ of challenging work are unavailable the well respected and recognized addict resorts to any number of remedies to recreate and/or achieve the same high gotten from recreational pursuits.
Holmes is the atypical functional drug addict. This is not to glorify or elevate prescription drug use above the use of common street drugs; the results from both are about the same. Both types of addicts experience dependence, cravings, reliance, and slavery to substances that destroy mind, body and spirit, eventually leading to death.
Like many possessed of a tortured brilliance only known by members of the “Talented Tenth” Holmes is an insecure elitist. The luster and sparkle of genius seeks to be delivered from the mundane, the trivial and from the insecurities that threaten to destroy a superior intellect. The trick is to elevate and expand the thought processes and at the same time hoping to eliminate present daily realities of pain and suffering.
Drug addiction is a false cure, a fake hope, phony sanctuary, ever failing to grant rest or repose to its seekers. If the Sherlock Holmes character was updated to these modern times his drug of choice might be Ambien the sleep aid that bridges the gap between conscious and subconscious mind.
Ambien transports ones soul to that place between wakefulness and sleep. It appears to enhance ones innate natural creative abilities. Users of cocaine and speed often make the same claims. These drugs both legal and illegal offer a false escape from the mundane. Substance abusers even leave the natural human sexual relationships in order to experience the multiple mental orgasms they cannot achieve through physical sex with a partner. Reality becomes the bad dream. The user finds her/himself caught up in an almost inescapable quagmire.
In one episode Holmes states that, “There’s no escape from the terrors of the mind.” Many times I secretly wished that life was like Etch A Sketch, that famously popular toy we children of the 60s played with for hours on end. If only life were like that little plastic Neanderthal laptop where with a few vigorous shakes you once again had a clean slate and the ability to start over.
It was a secret desire born out of stress, depression, and hard times to return to a time of innocence and being care free. However I realized that there was no turning back the clock. I had to face my inner demons. I had to ask myself did I want to live the rest of my life in the Twilight Zone when everyone around me constantly telling me I have a gift, a gift that needs to be shared with the world. Also what about my family? What about my beloved autistic brother? Where would he be if I suddenly was not on the planet anymore? In addition how could I ignore the calling I knew God had on my life? The answer is I couldn’t. Never at any time did God give up on me. That in and of itself amazed me. God kept sending people my way to set me back on the path of life. Even when I wanted to let go of this earthly life and move onto another plane, God said not yet. I’m not ready for you yet. You have more work to do on this earth.
No God did not immediately take away all the problems and challenges I’ve been experiencing but He did reveal to me better ways to cope. Through my gift of writing He has opened doors for me that never would have opened had I allowed myself to sink into the substance abuse quicksand. Of course there will continue to be bumps and potholes along the roadway but isn’t life somewhat like an obstacle course where the prize for those of us who esteem intellect the ability to successfully negotiate those obstructions by being quick thinkers and thrill in the victory of being an Overcomer? Enjoy the Treasure Hunt! Enjoy the excitement of the chase while in your right mind because you’ve been given everything that pertains to life and godliness and you are Empowered to Succeed!
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read hebrews 10:35
I am more than breath & bones. I am nectar in waiting.
Inspire, Encourage and Empower
For The Woman Going Places
Photography & Lifestyle Blog
An exploration of writing and reading
Life in Verse, Prose & Visuals
News & Events Info: 212-815-1000
Building Canarsie Strong block-by-block
© Mary French 2010-2025
Here is a blog about the incredible journey of my life!
Connecting the healing qualities of herbs and spices with healthy global recipes!
Transforming Education, and Leadership, Transcending Where We Each Are in Life
From my heart to yours.
Creative Exploration in Words and Pictures
Be nice. Be green. Be kitschig.
Exploring my world with pictures and words.
Makeup Tips, Reviews and Lifestyle | Beauty File | Blog
read hebrews 10:35
I am more than breath & bones. I am nectar in waiting.
Inspire, Encourage and Empower
For The Woman Going Places
Photography & Lifestyle Blog
An exploration of writing and reading
Life in Verse, Prose & Visuals
News & Events Info: 212-815-1000
Building Canarsie Strong block-by-block
© Mary French 2010-2025
Here is a blog about the incredible journey of my life!
Connecting the healing qualities of herbs and spices with healthy global recipes!
Transforming Education, and Leadership, Transcending Where We Each Are in Life
From my heart to yours.
Creative Exploration in Words and Pictures
Be nice. Be green. Be kitschig.
Exploring my world with pictures and words.
Espiritu en Fuego/A Fiery Spirit 