Sly Speaks + Fat Friday + Friday Flashback: Diet Culture Rhetoric Is Not Poetry

This poignant gem was originally published on 17 January 2010 on my now-retired poetry blog.

life It would be far easier to diet if I didn't like food.

This, apparently, was the entire-ass poem.

A year later, I would finally take the long-needed step of ditching diet culture for good.

That is a terrible statement, let alone being a terrible poem. 

It isn't even a poem, it's a blurb. A very stupid and brainwashed blurb. It's a tweet that shouldn't have been tweeted. It is a lot of things, none of them good. A poem it is not. 

The Chili Bean Tanka is a better poem, and it is not a good poem. In fact, it is close to Vogon poetry in its poetic injustice.

It goes a little bit something like this.

I ate the chili

between the beans and the spice

digestive horror

beneath the cover of night

noxious eruptions take place

As I mentioned previously, I struggled over the holidays. My abusive partner ED (Eating Disorder) reared his ugly head and I relapsed into my old restrictive eating and self-loathing patterns. Which, by the way, never made me thin, they just fucked my metabolism over and made me hate myself even more. 

However, reading this micro-poem that should not be, I could see where I'd been myopic in my criticism of a poet whose book I reviewed recently. I gave the book overall high praise, but I stated that her "poem" which read as follows, and I quote:

love ends but calories are forever

was not so much a poem as unfortunate diet culture rhetoric, and I wouldn't want to read it as a tweet, let alone in a book of poetry.

Given the unseemly evidence above, that critique was hypocritical of me.

However, there is a lesson to be learned.

Next time you think publishing a pithy pearl of poignant perspicacity such as this...

Go to the kitchen and grab yourself a snack. Or at least have something to drink. Your blood sugar may be low because if you think that's worth publishing, you obviously haven't been thinking clearly. Step out for a breath of air and clear your head of the Diet Culture nonsense. You've obviously bitten off more of it than you can chew.

That being said, Words Written in the Dark is, overall, a thoughtful and thought-provoking volume of modern poetry, and I recommend it highly.

Fat and Ornery

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About Me Monday + Inspire Me Monday + Inner Champion Workbook Chapter 8: Try New Things

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Something new I want to learn about or try:

I discovered the vegan recipe book by Chef Allyn Raifstanger through the Online Book Club. I have been wanting to start incorporating more vegetarian meals into my meal plans for years. I would never be able to be a vegan. I like cheese and omelets too much. It is also unlikely that I will ever be completely vegetarian. However, I would like to eventually eat more plant-based than meat-based meals.

I can cook, but the truth is, I'm a lazy cook without a lot of patience. Also, most vegan recipes leave me flat when it comes to flavor and hungry an hour later.

The person who reviewed this recipe book via Online Book Club tried some of the recipes. When she said that the "chicken" recipe she tried tasted like chicken and the author wasn't preachy about health or veganism, I knew I needed to give the book a look. I don't abide preachiness, and I don't need anyone triggering my abusive partner ED (Eating Disorder) to resurface.

My plan:

I am going to write down the ingredients I need and try the recipes in the book. I am also going to try the Every Plate delivery service. The ingredients come in the box with enough for two people and I don't have to go shopping for them. As I told you, I'm lazy. However, not all of it is laziness. I do have real problems with fatigue.

Every Plate is a lot less expensive than other boxed meal plans, making it a good option for families on a budget, which is pretty much everyone these days!

A routine or habit that I need to change:
My all-or-nothing thinking. My worst habit is to immediately tell myself how something will NOT work, and it always spirals into telling myself what a garbage excuse for a human being I am.

How I will replace the negative routine or habit with a positive one:
I don't know if I ever will entirely. However, I have to continue combating this thinking by telling my lousy inner critic to take a long walk off a short pier with raw steaks tied to them into a lake of hungry sharks and offering counter-points to her negative arguments.

This isn't the same as jumping into a potentially life-altering situation feet first without examining the potential repercussions. It simply means not telling myself that I'm trash for considering something in the first place.

How will this change make me a stronger and happier person?
Getting the Inner Jackwagon to shut up more often than not would help give me the confidence to make potentially positive changes. Believing in myself a little more couldn't hurt.

Also, regardless of what the rest of you may feel about reincarnation, it's something I consider to be a possibility. I don't want to drag all this negativity about myself into another lifetime! Talk about hauling around a psychic ball and chain.

Like the tattoo on my left outer calf says, born to lose, live to win. Thank you, Lemmy!

Before anyone decides that this is an appropriate moment to pop off about how much you hate tattoos, allow me to shut that nonsense down before it starts. I'm not forcing you to get a tattoo. This is my leg upon which I voluntarily got a tattoo that has personal meaning for me. I was 51 years old when I got this tattoo, thus, well and away old enough to decide whether such a thing was appropriate FOR ME.

You are welcome to not like or want tattoos. You are not welcome to tell me what I should or shouldn't like or want.

Seriously, I've had people start railing about their dislike of tattoos on a post where I was sharing a picture of a tattoo I had done in honor of a person who was terminally ill and who has since passed on. It was my first tattoo, and I was (and still am) quite proud of it. The person who felt it necessary to display their rudeness was, no doubt, trying to show everyone how stainless and pure they were by not having any of those icky tattoos. From my standpoint, they only managed to show their backside. Don't be that person.

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The Crazy Creatives Cheerleading Camp Come As You Are Party + Inner Champion Workbook Chapter 7: Find Your Why

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Five things that make me happy:

1. My son

2. Writing

3. Doing crafts, i.e. loom knitting

4. Exploring nature

5. Learning new things

Identify why each of the above makes you happy. For example, if vacations make you happy, ask yourself why. Are they relaxing? Are they a hassle or expensive, but worth every penny because of what you learn about the world? Is it the time spent with loved ones?

Why these things bring my happiness:

1. My son is simply one of those people who was born with a desire to be kind. He wants to make the world a better place. He doesn't care about being showy or flashy. He just wants to be able to do his own thing. He is very good at working with his hands and has a great artistic eye. 

At times, I have not been as supportive of him as I should have because I misunderstood him. My parents also misunderstood him and scolded him for not "trying harder" when he would withdraw. 

Neither my son nor I were aware until he was an adult that he is on the autism spectrum. He hid a lot of his distress from overstimulation. He was born in 1990, and at that time, most people believed that autism was identified by the pronounced behaviors in people who are more severely affected, i.e. rocking and screaming. Most people believed that everyone with autism is non-verbal.

My son has since been able to reveal such characteristics as extreme sensitivity to sounds. He turns on rain sounds because otherwise, the humming from his phone charger disturbs him. I can't hear the phone charger at all. He is very aware of the sounds of water running through pipes. One time when the washing machine hose was dripping and causing water to run down the laundry room wall into the basement, he heard it all the way up on the second floor of the house and went to check it out. I was completely unaware of the problem.

I first started to suspect that my son might be autistic when he would turn the air conditioner in his room down to the coldest level while he was sleeping in order to be able to sleep under his heavy comforter even in the hottest days of summer. Weighted blankets have been shown to be very helpful in calming people with autism. Fortunately, at this point, the knowledge about the condition has increased exponentially.

However, society is often very slow to catch up. People with autism still tend to be treated as if they are retarded. People with autism are intellectually diverse. Some have severe intellectual disabilities while some have higher than average intellectual capabilities. People with autism are often pigeonholed as having lower than average intelligence because they tend not to learn well using traditional methods. 

My son, for instance, has trouble learning anything at all from a textbook. He does not have problems reading long novels that hold his interest. The best way for him to learn a new skill, however, is by observing and doing, not by reading a boring textbook and attempting to answer a long roster of meaningless questions. For instance, when he was in the EMS program, he would become extremely frustrated by trying to read and answer questions in the textbook. It did not matter if I read the text to him, he didn't absorb it and trying to just upset him. However, he took a lot away from his clinical experiences, and he did well with the medical terminology and even the pharmacy calculations which were always a sticking point for me.

Unfortunately, at that point, the community college EMS programs were hell-bent on passing no more than 75% of their participants because they wanted to prove how "tough" their standards were. I was astounded by the amount of information that students were being expected to learn in the space of one semester. I had gone through the EMS program six years prior to when my son was in it, and at the point when he entered the program, the students were expected to learn skills that were previously part of the paramedic program. 

When my son opted to drop out of the program, I fully supported him. I was aghast at the changes that had taken place. It's a damn shame too because I think that my son would have made a good EMT. However, he probably would have opted to work in an emergency room rather than on an ambulance because, like many autistic people, driving is a skill that is problematic for him.

2. Writing has always been my main way to survive. I do not think that I would last long if I didn't write. If I go for several days without writing, I start to become clinically depressed. It helps me work through problems and provides me an escape from a world that I've always found hostile to my very being.

3. Unlike writing, there is no impetus for me to have a certain level of "success" when it comes to my crafts. I just do them because I like to.

4. Exploring takes me out of my everyday environment, away from civilization, to a place that does not judge me. Connecting to the natural world renews the spirit.

5. One should not cease learning simply because one is not in school. Without new knowledge, a person stagnates. Learning because I want to learn just feels good. 

How my goals connect to the things in life that bring me joy:

1. I want to succeed because I want to be able to support my son in his own goals and give him the best life possible. He deserves this.

2. I would like to earn my living writing. However, I doubt this will ever transpire. So, I intend to write as if I were earning my living doing so, but not as if I MUST earn my living doing so. I never want it to be a chore, and I never want it to become a duty or a means to seek acceptance. When I start doing any of those things, I know I'm on the wrong track.

3. I want to be able to have enough money to do my crafts anytime I want and not have to worry that I should be doing something that's earning money instead.

4. I want to have enough money to have the time and resources to explore and take care of nature.

5. Learning is necessary to find new avenues to obtaining my goal of multiple income streams. Also, without learning, life stagnates.

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Blow Your Stack Saturday + Inner Champion Workbook Chapter 6: Don't Give Up

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How can I break this goal into smaller, achievable steps?

With the publishing goal, I'm already doing this.

I think I'm actually already doing it with the Goat Yoga Studio goal as well.

I've also been thinking about purchasing condos in the Denver area (single condos, not an entire building) to use as Air BnB/rental properties. 

I've become better within the past five years about breaking my bigger goals down into smaller, achievable goals. Which would have made me about eighteen when I gained this sage wisdom in my life.

Nah, I'm just messing with you. I'll be 55 in less than two months. I honestly still wasn't very good at breaking things down into smaller goals when I was fifty. Or fifty-one. Or fifty-two. It probably started to sink in when I was 53, although I was still recovering psychologically from the fact that I could no longer do the kinds of physically demanding work that I had done all my life.

Okay, I really didn't learn the lesson until this year. I'm kind of slow on the uptake sometimes.

How will I celebrate my accomplishments along the way?

With my son. Other than him, my family has never been supportive of my dreams. I could count my real friends on one hand if you chopped off half that hand. None of them live close to me and I've never met any of them in person.

Who will I turn to for help and encouragement?

See above.

If my first attempt does not work, what is the next approach I will try?

I'll just keep going at it with the publishing. However, as I previously mentioned, I'm not doing that to try and become The Next Big Thing. I'm just doing it because I want to.

With the goat yoga studio, if the property across the way is sold, I'll switch gears and move the idea to the fall-back property, which currently has a decaying structure on the land. The basic premise is the same but the execution is somewhat different.

The Air BnB/rentals in Denver thing is something that I've been considering and doing research on for a while now. It isn't a burning desire, so if it doesn't happen it doesn't happen. It's a potential income stream, but I have to be careful not to fall into a money pit.

Inner Champion Workbook Chapter 5: Take the First Step (Fat Friday Edition)

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Fair warning that I am having a dark day despite it being bright and sunny outside. In fact, the bright sunniness makes the inner darkness worse. I hate when people say things like "how can you be depressed when it's so beautiful outside?" Please, if you say that sort of thing to someone who tells you they're feeling depressed, STOP! It doesn't help.

And now, on with the show.

An important goal that I’m going to achieve:

I don't know if this will happen or not, but there is an empty building across the street from my home which is zoned for commercial use. I will be able to access my 401K without penalty at 59, in other words, about four years from now. If the building is still available at that point, I am thinking about investing in it and bringing my idea to life.

"It won't be available then, Cie," you are probably saying. "Real estate goes fast!"

In the city, yes. Not out in the middle of nowhere. The house I'm currently living in had been empty since 2013.

"Well, what the hell do you think you're going to do with a building in the middle of nowhere, Cie?" you say now. 

I am thinking about opening a goat yoga studio.

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"Goat yoga?" you sniff. "Who the hell is going to drive to your stupid goat yoga studio in the middle of nowhere?"

As my son observed when I postulated that I could probably pull in a few yuppies from Denver to drive out to Podunk on weekends for a goat yoga session:

"Denver? You mean Boulder."

He's right.

"Oh, and are you going to teach yoga, you disabled lardass? Who would want to take a class from you?"

No, I'm not, because I don't know the first thing about teaching yoga. I plan to put out a call for volunteer instructors, who would be allowed to record their sessions, pass out business cards, recruit people to sign up for their regular classes, and have a tip jar available.

By the way, a big rule at my studio will be this:

NO BODY SHAMING!

No fat-shaming.

No thin praising.

No encouragement of weight loss. No selling weight loss programs.

I want to provide an encouraging environment for every body. I want my studio to operate with a Health at Every Size (and every ability) approach.

Why this goal is important to me:

Most yoga classes shame larger students, behaving as if a literal monster just walked into the room when a big person comes in. It is also difficult for disabled students to find a class. I want the classes at my studio to encourage EVERY BODY, regardless of size or physical ability.

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Why goat yoga?

Well, for those who have never heard of it, goat yoga is actually a thing. The presence of the goats is shown to have a calming and encouraging effect on those participating in the class. The goats won't have to learn the yoga poses. They'll be free to wander in and out of the classroom. And if a participant spends the entire session just playing with the goats, that's perfectly fine! Basically, the goats are therapy animals.

What has been preventing me from taking the first step?
Lack of access to funds.

How can I remove these obstacles or work around them?

Currently, I'm just waiting for four years and hoping nobody buys the place in the meantime. I also have a potential secondary site in mind.

The first step I am going to take toward achieving my goal:

I am currently making micro-investments with my small and undependable pay. I am hoping these will start generating passive income. I am also trying to promote my freelance literary services, as well as continuing to do reviews. I am going to apply to Kirkus Reviews at the beginning of next year in the hopes of bringing in another income stream.

For support and accountability, I am going to share my goal with:
My son knows, and now you all do too.

I feel better after writing this post. Sending positive energy to Lauren for the gift of her workbook, to Linda for the gift of Health at Every Size which helped me break out of the diet mindset almost 10 years ago, and to Caroline for the encouragement not to fall back into that limiting mindset.

Here are a couple more books to help you say FUCK YOU to diet culture and instead concentrate on REAL health, both mental and physical.

About Me Monday + Inner Champion Workbook: Chapter 2: Changes

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Greetings, fellow Crazy Creatives, and others. Today I am continuing my shared journey with the Inner Champion Workbook, which is an adjunct to the above autobiography by bodybuilder Lauren Powers. As I said in yesterday's post, this is a book that came as a complete surprise. I kept putting it to the bottom of my list of books for review because I thought it was a workout book. It isn't.

Today's chapter addresses changes. Let's get to it!

"Whether we’ve embraced it or not, we’ve all faced changes in our lives. In this chapter, identify some of the changes that you’ve experienced in your life. First, think of a change that happened to you that was out of your control. Then, think of a change that you actively made. How have these changes altered your journey? How can they be seen as contributing positively to your identity?"

Change that I made:

I no longer work for anyone else. I am not an employee or contractor. I am strictly a freelancer.

The reason I made the change:

Mostly out of necessity. My physical health took a few critical hits, and then I ended up moving to a remote location which is 50 miles from the nearest city. I do not have the strength or stamina to make 100-mile round trips to a job several times a week. I no longer have the strength to work the types of physically demanding night shift jobs that defined me for many years. Most clerical jobs are on the day shift, and I become severely depressed working day shifts because of my lifelong difficulty regulating my sleep. 

The impact it had on my life:

I am more stable emotionally, although I worry about my low income. However, I am not allowed to make more than $1100 a month or I lose Medicaid. Isn't that the stupidest thing you ever heard of? People outside of the United States often express their shock about our health care system. As someone who has been a victim of this system for a lifetime, I'm not shocked by it but remain appalled. A for-profit health care system exists to help nobody except for institutions gouging the ill and infirm.

Change that happened to me:

In 2017, my life changed forever. I was fired from my job after falling into a very deep sleep while sitting with a patient on the night shift. It is my contention that I had a TIA (transient ischemic attack). I was very sick with a severe respiratory infection that I had contracted from this patient. The coordinator insisted that I go to the job anyway, reasoning that I could not reinfect the patient because I had contracted the infection from him. The coordinator also used guilt, stating that "the family really needs you." 

A bit of further background to this story. My diabetes was becoming worse at this point. I wasn't yet using insulin but knew the day was coming soon when I would have to. I was working 60 hour weeks. I was afraid to say anything to my coordinator because he kept telling me that they were going to replace the primary nurse on the case with me since she had lupus and this meant that she called off sick a fair amount to manage her condition. So I kept my own health issues to myself, fearing that I would lose work if the company realized that my health was infirm.

After being fired from this job I picked up more shifts with a company where I was working one night once a month with a patient I'd worked with previously. I lost $4 per hour but ended up being able to go back to full time fairly quickly. However, this patient's condition declined, and he ended up in the hospital. The agency never got me another job.

I went to work delivering food for Uber Eats. I was actually losing money doing this job. I found work with a company called GoPuff, which is a subsidiary of GrubHub, delivering groceries. The onsite managers were great but GrubHub does not give a flying fuck about either its employees or its contractors. 

Many nights, one manager was left in the warehouse running around like a chicken with her head cut off to pack the orders while the other two managers switched over to driving. The drivers were given ridiculously large numbers of orders and GrubHub customer service couldn't be arsed to call the customers and tell them about the delays. The customers were always angry and took it out on the drivers. 

As many of the deliveries were in downtown Denver, I often had to park several blocks from the location and carry heavy loads, sometimes up several flights of stairs in buildings with no elevator. On one occasion, I almost fell through the rotting boards on a porch. 

I started noticing tingling and numbness in the fingers on my left hand but ignored it. The tingling progressed to mild and then moderate pain running from shoulder to fingertips and then transitioned to pain so severe that I was having trouble sitting up for more than about 45 minutes before I had to lie on the arm to try and numb it. I ended up quitting the job. I had to wait for two weeks before Medicaid kicked back in. The pain was so severe that I considered committing suicide. I may well have done so if not for the fact that I knew I would be able to get physical therapy once Medicaid kicked back in. That was my only hope.

Fortunately, physical therapy helped greatly. My arm went from being in constant severe pain to being in moderate pain with some bouts of severe pain. It progressed to being in mild pain with bouts of moderate pain and then, to my joy, to feeling like a lump of clay with bouts of mild pain. 

Unfortunately, Medicaid only pays for 12 sessions of physical therapy for any given issue. My arm remained in the "lump of clay" mode for about a year. It has since progressed to low-grade numbness and tingling, which is where it will probably remain for the rest of my life. I have to be careful about lifting too much with this arm.

Once I was able to return to work, I delivered food for Cluster Truck, a delivery-only restaurant, from December 2017 until June 2019, when I found the wonderful Grover Hotel and my son decided that this building was our best hope for having a place to live for life. As I said, Grover is 50 miles from anywhere, which is why I made the decision that given my health issues, it was best to work from home rather than attempting to find a position working for someone who would be flexible regarding my health issues.

The impact it had on my life:

For the most part, I really like what I do. I wish I could have/would have made this decision sooner. I have always hated working for other people. In spite of the fact that I liked the patients I cared for, I was extremely burned out on health care, and my body was badly compromised from years of neglecting to take care of myself while devoting myself to caring for others as well as from the health issues which are due to faults in my DNA, i.e., my trash fire endocrine system.

One positive aspect or life lesson from the event:

I have been able to get adequate rest for the first time in something on the order of 40 years. I was always the "I'll sleep when I'm dead" kind of person. I often don't sleep well at night, and even though I'm a night owl, the night shift will mess your body up. I was always in a fog. 

I never respected my body and always told myself to shut up and quit whining. While I don't think I will ever be able to "love" myself (that concept is completely foreign to me) I have learned to respect myself and to be better about not letting people walk all over me.

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The Crazy Creatives Cheerleading Camp's Come As You Are Party + Inner Champion Workbook: Chapter 1

Every now and then in the course of reviewing books, I discover a book that genuinely surprises me. This book has been on my list of potential reviews for a while now and I kept shuffling it down the list because I thought it was a workout book. I finally read the description and discovered that it was a biography written by a person who has dealt with a fair number of challenges, so I thought I would give it a read.

The book surprised me again, as I discovered that there is a downloadable workbook to accompany the ebook. I am doing the exercises in the workbook and will share them with you along the way.

The first chapter requests that we recall two major events that influenced us during childhood and then poses these questions:

What is the lasting effect? Is that effect helping or hindering you? If it has hindered you, how can

you leave it in the past and move forward? If it has helped you, how can you tap into that source

of wisdom and strength during difficult times?

Childhood Event 1:

This may seem like a very "nothing" event to most people, but it reveals what an alien I was very early on. While my father (RIP) and I were walking on a rainy day when I was three years old, I saw a dead butterfly on the sidewalk. I don't remember having ever seen anything dead before. My father tried to explain to me about death and I was very upset. To my naive and stupid three-year-old mind, it was impossible to conceive that butterflies, which I loved so much, could die.

When we got home, my grandmother (RIP) was on the phone and my mother handed the phone to me to say hello. I wailed "poor butterfly!" in the poor woman's ear and ran to my bedroom to cry. I don't know when I stopped crying. I don't know if I ever accepted the fact that butterflies die. I became stoic about it because there was nothing that I could do to change it. 

What is the lasting effect?

My reaction to negative events that I have no power to change is stoicism.

Is that effect helping or hindering you?

It hurts me in the long run, but it helps me continue functioning. If I acknowledge my pain, it will break me. I do not think that there is a way to leave it in the past. It isn't like I have a lot of support. I have to do what I have to do.

Childhood event 2:

Again, this may seem like a "nothing" event to those who are made of sterner stuff. There was a group of kids that I played with when my family moved from New Mexico into the faculty housing at the School of Mines in Colorado where my father obtained his job as a professor. I really liked them and I wanted so much for them to like me back. One day as I was running down the hill from my house to see if they wanted to play, I saw them walking up to the old gravel pits behind the housing development without me.

I took a shortcut and got to the pits first. They found me sitting in one of the pits and asked what I was doing there. I said I'd been coming to see if they wanted to play, but I now knew that they weren't really my friends, and I got up and left.

They followed me because they didn't want to get in trouble with their parents for ditching me. They told me that they (the brother and sister pair) just wanted to play as a family. I pointed out that "Marty" wasn't part of their family. The brother said, "yes, but he lives next door, so he's like family. But we want to play with you now."

I really wanted to believe them, but after a short time, they said they wanted to go watch TV. I said I wanted to come too. The brother said that they wanted to watch a show that I wouldn't like.

I said I bet I would like it. He replied: "No, you wouldn't. It's called 'mentally retarded.'"

He then repeated the words "mentally retarded" very slowly and pointedly.

I realized at that moment that my friends were not my friends. 

I was bullied and ostracized at school as well.

What is the lasting effect? 

I don't trust people. In fact, I tend to push them away before they can hurt me.

Is that effect helping or hindering you? 

It has hindered me and has destroyed relationships.

If it has hindered you, how can you leave it in the past and move forward?

I probably can't. I tend to form only very superficial relationships with people so they can't hurt me. Whenever I like someone, I always expect that they're going to hurt me eventually.

Well, that was certainly cheerful! But it illustrates how you can use this book to help you along your path. 

If you pick up a copy of Behind the Muscle through the link above, I earn a small commission from Amazon.

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Ornery Reviews: Of Zots and Xoodles

Genre:
Absurdist/Humor/Science Fiction

Rating:
Four out of Four stars for Online Book Club
Five out of Five stars for Amazon

Disclosure:
I received a free copy of this book for review purposes.
This is a duplicate of my review of this product on Amazon.
If readers purchase a copy of the book through the link at the bottom of the post, I will receive a small commission from Amazon.

Click here to read my exclusive Online Book Club review for Of Zots and Xoodles.

I am head over heels in love with this weird and wonderful book. As someone with a brain that doesn't play "normally," I enjoyed the postulations about a Universe that doesn't play "normally" either. I now realize that I am not a native of the world in which I reside: I come from Theodil's Universe.

If you wonder what happened to Douglas Adams after he passed into the Great Beyond, he has clearly been hanging out with Theodil and Dr. Seuss. For those of us who miss Douglas Adams' writing, of Zots and Xoodles has a similar absurdist style. 

If you like the strange, the surreal, the odd and wonderfully nonsensical, pick up a copy of this book. You will not be disappointed.

~Cie the Ornery Old Lady~

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Ornery Reviews: Happy Healing and a Testimony

Genre:

Nonfiction/Health/Alternative Medicine

Rating:

Four out of Four Stars for Online Book Club

Disclosure:

I received a free copy of this book for review purposes.

If readers purchase a copy of the book through the above preview link, I earn a small commission from Amazon.

Click here to read my exclusive review for Online Book Club.

As I explain in my Online Book Club review, this book does not fall into the category of mysticism or metaphysics. Although the author occasionally suggests what might be interpreted as prayer, the techniques outlined in Happy Healing are self-hypnosis. Self-hypnosis is not a new treatment, but the approaches offered in the book are novel.

In my review, I offer a story of how the techniques in Happy Healing helped me come to peace with the injury which led to my being unable to continue working at my job delivering groceries and alcoholic beverages.

Two years ago, I worked for a company called GoPuff, which is a subsidiary of GrubHub. I advise that no-one work for any subsidiary of GrubHub because they do not care one iota about the well-being of either their employees or their contractors. They never had enough drivers on the schedule on weekend nights. They would have four managers in the warehouse. Three of the managers would switch over to driving, leaving one manager running around like a chicken with her head cut off. I have nothing bad to say about any of the onsite managers. They worked very hard. GrubHub, however, gets no love from me.

I started feeling tingling in my left hand, which I ignored. I was carrying very heavy loads, sometimes over distances of several blocks because the deliveries were often in the middle of downtown Denver and there was no place to park, sometimes up several flights of stairs in buildings where there were no elevators. One time I almost fell through a porch that had rotting wood. Many times, the stoners who would order from us wouldn't answer the door. After pounding on the door for several minutes, I would call the warehouse and the manager would call the customer. There were times when the manager couldn't reach the customer either. I liked those customers better than the ones who would cuss me out because the delivery was made several hours after they ordered it and GrubHub customer service couldn't be bothered to call and tell them it was going to be late.

There was no interim "this is getting worse" with my arm. It went from numbness and tingling in my hand to unbearable pain from shoulder to fingertips. At that point, I had no insurance. I had to quit working so I could get Medicaid back. I couldn't sit up for more than about 45 minutes before the pain in the arm became unbearable and I had to lie down on it to numb it. I have lived most of my life with chronic widespread low-grade to mid-grade pain due to fibromyalgia. Chronic severe pain is a different animal entirely. There were times when I very seriously considered suicide because the pain was so intense. I forced myself to wait until I had Medicaid so I could get physical therapy.

Although I was already sympathetic, I came to a personal realization of exactly how people in chronic pain become addicted to painkillers. When you are in chronic intense pain, the thing you want most is for the pain to stop, and you will do anything to achieve that. If you have never endured intense pain, imagine that someone was whacking your arm repeatedly with a hammer--hard. That's what chronic intense pain is like. Sufferers of chronic intense pain just want relief. How anyone can fail to understand that very simple idea is beyond me. Sanctimoniousness never helped anyone.

Back to my story. The physical therapy helped greatly. My arm went from being in constant severe pain to constant mid-grade pain with flares of severe pain to constant low-grade pain with flares of mid-grade pain to feeling like a lump of clay with flares of low-grade to mid-grade pain. Unfortunately, Medicaid only pays for twelve sessions of physical therapy per injury, so that was where things leveled out, and I was very grateful. Over time, the arm regained enough sensation that it no longer feels like a lump of clay. It is always slightly numb and I do not have a full range of motion in the shoulder area, but it is a vast improvement over being in constant intense pain which makes me consider suicide.

One of the exercises presented in Happy Healing involves giving the body part in pain a name and "talking" to that part. I named my arm Amelia. As I talked to Amelia, I realized that I was still angry with her for betraying me and making it so that I couldn't work physically demanding jobs such as delivering packages anymore. I also realized that Amelia had been trying to warn me that something was going wrong, and I ignored her to my detriment. I apologized to Amelia for blaming her for what happened and promised to listen to her (and the rest of my body) in the future.

As a result of reading and engaging in the exercises outlined in Happy Healing, I have a truce with my body and am no longer as prone to pushing myself to the point of collapse or injury. I appreciate this book and think that it was useful and helpful. The author's approach may seem a bit "goofy" to the more skeptical sorts, but I recommend trying the exercises. I didn't really think I'd get much from them when I started reading the book, but they turned out to be surprisingly beneficial.

~Cie the Ornery Old Lady~

Cie Reviews Books

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The Ornery Old Lady's Reviews: Inspirience: Meditation Unbound

Please check out my exclusive Online Book Club review for Inspirience: Meditation Unbound by Richard L. Haight.

Rating: 
Four out of four stars for Online Book Club
Five out of five stars for Amazon and Audible

The above graphic leads to the Kindle version of the book. I reviewed the audiobook version, which I highly recommend as I find it helpful to listen to the author explaining the meditation techniques and leading the listener through the meditation process.

What I like best about this book:
This wonderful book offers meditation for everybody. One does not need to be an adherent of any particular religion or philosophy. There is no need to be an adept or have special knowledge. One does not need a special space for meditation. One does not need an altar or candles or any other trappings. One does not need to worry that he or she is doing meditation "wrong."

If you think you can't meditate, if you have become discouraged with meditation, let Richard Haight show you that you can meditate and it can be enjoyable and truly enlightening instead of frustrating.

This book has been one of my happiest discoveries this year.

The Real Cie

aka

The Ornery Old Lady