Writing with Rox WEEKLY—Regulate thyself among others

A dear friend sent me this today... and bow howdy, don't I know it! These days, my daily writing groups—some of which are brand new, some of which started more recently, and some of which have been ongoing for ten plus years—are grounding me in ways I could have never predicted or couldn't possibly explain, ironically, in words. Whenever I consider cutting back on my workload, given this mysterious illness and the rerouting of my life as of late, I remember why that's not an option every time I sit down at the table to write with you. 

So trust me, if you need a limbic boost, come write in community! The proof's in the page, the piano... Enjoy!

Hi Roxy,

I thought of you when I saw this recent research article that talks about the benefits of writing in community (and choir singing).

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201707/arts-based-activities-boost-emotion-regulation-study-finds?collection=1106766

Arts-Based Activities Boost Emotion Regulation, Study Finds

Arts-based groups increase positive emotions for people from all walks of life.

Source: Pixabay/Public Domain

As the father of a 9-year-old, I know that nothing brings my daughter more joy than making art, expressing herself creatively, or performing "Musical.ly" with a group of her peers. Unfortunately, as adults, our participation in arts-based activities generally falls to the bottom of our priority list. Most of us (myself included) probably don't make an effort to participate in creative writing groups or sing in the local choir. But we should, according to a new study which found that choir singing and creative writing enhance emotion regulation for both healthy adults and those suffering from mental health conditions. These findings were published July 18 in the British Journal of Clinical Psychology. 

The researchers found that all study participants who participated in arts-based groups reported a significant increase in positive emotions along with a decrease in negative emotions during and immediately after an arts-based activity. Notably, adults with chronic mental health conditions such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and substance use disorders (SUD) also derived emotional benefits in comparison to a control group of healthy adults. The researchers conclude: "The clear demonstration of positive emotional effects produced through participation in arts-based groups in the community has implications for mental health practice and policy.”

Genevieve Dingle of the University of Queensland School of Psychiatry, who is the lead author of this study, described the findings in a statement: "People with chronic mental health conditions tend to experience difficulties with emotion perception and regulation, which can have a big impact on their social relationships. These symptoms are not well treated with medication or psychotherapy. The findings of this study are exciting because they clearly show the potential for participation in arts-based groups to influence emotions and emotion regulation in positive ways.”

Having an arts-based activity scheduled on the calendar appeared to provide a focal point in the day and was something that study participants looked forward to during the week. Doing something arts related with others as a group also brought hedonic pleasure and eudaimonic reward based on individual achievements and those of the collective.

From a psychophysiology perspective, previous research has found that choir singing benefits the autonomic nervous system by reducing "fight-or-flight" stress responses and increasing vagal tone (VT) of the vagus nerve. More specifically, a 2011 study, “Cardiac and Respiratory Patterns Synchronize between Persons during Choir Singing,” reported that interpersonal oscillatory couplings resulted in phase synchronization in both respiration and increased heart rate variability (HRV) while singing and afterward.

In the July 2017 study, Dingle and colleagues report that art-based groups provided social support. This is consistent with the theoretical concept that distracting someone from negative rumination about his or her life by shifting focus to positive stimuli in a social context can improve emotion regulation in depression. These findings dovetail with the recent trend of "social prescribing" in which a link worker creates a non-medical prescription of community-based activities tailored to fit a person's lifestyle and individual needs.

From a clinical perspective, the latest research suggests that participation in arts-based groups can improve subjective well-being for people from all walks of life. Whether or not you are currently experiencing mental health issues, scheduling time on your weekly calendar to create some type of art in the presence of others is likely to enhance your emotion regulation and boost positive emotions through individual and interpersonal processes. 

To find a community-based writing group in your vicinity, check out this List of Writing Groups by State or Region resource guide. ChoirMeetups provides an international registry of local choirs that sing various genres of music and can help you locate a singing group in your area that fits your preferences. Both of these services are free. 

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—Nostalgia in the making

My son has a keen sense of smell, perhaps dog like, sniffing out the familiar. "I smell Liba! Why does it smell like Liba's house right here?" he'll proclaim at a random spot along the bike path. "And you smell like bananas, Mama!" he'll tell me first thing in the morning when I wake up, or sometimes, if I'm lucky, banana bread. And sometimes he smells other people and places, like suddenly out of the blue—in the mall, in the winter, in a corporate hallway, in the night—"I smell preschool! I smell the beach in San Diego! I smell Granny!"

And the truth is, sometimes I wonder if the time will come when he says "I smell Mama," perhaps years down the line, when he has kids of his own, grandkids even, if he will still have the innocence to proclaim such things with loving authority—for to stop for a moment of your busy life, pausing to smell and identify, to link the moment with memory, is to love.

Perhaps walking in the woods, in the middle of a dance class learning to Lindy Hop or Hip Hop, perhaps sitting in meditation or in Warrior 1 Pose,  swimming in the ocean, or singing loudly in the car, or perhaps when I'm long gone, in and among the many things and places we've together traversed over the years, he'll suddenly smell me in the trees—"I smell Mama!"—a wordless knowing, like bananas, like love and longing, like childhood.

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—Thoughts I wish I wasn't thinking: (Voice of Innocence)

It won't get better
The PT is wrong, just like the other one
You don't know how lucky you are riding your bike on this golden day
Why does that person over there smoking and yelling at people get to walk when I can't?
You've got nothing to complain about: your broken ankle will heal
I have nothing to complain about: look at the guy over there
Why can't I run, too?
You'll probably end up like that guy over there at this rate
Maybe not knowing is a good thing
Good things don't happen to me
I'm getting fat from lack of exercise
The yoga is wearing off
I should've never stayed in reclined bhada konasana for so long: that's what did it
Should I test for MS?
Should I test for Lyme?
7 months of this; it's not getting better
I'd give anything to go for a walk
I'd give anything to walk fast
Will I ever have faith in my leg again
or the ground beneath it?
Will I forget how to trust my own body?
What's the use in being back in your body if it's not safe right now?
Breath work worked for her, but not me
Can I cut out the nerve? Kill it?
Why does no one have any fucking clue why this is happening?
What they say online is true: I'm fucked
I'd be completely fucked without my friends and family
Am I going to end up in a nursing home?
Will I ever drive again?
Do I have to go? I don't want them seeing me with a cane.
Don't look at me like that.
So many people have it so much worse
Why did I ever complain about anything ever?
It's Sunday and everyone else is out enjoying it: walking, running, hiking, standing, biking: I'm sitting here getting fat and taking two hours to get down stairs and back up again, carrying one thing at a time
You're lucky Too Cute will carry your purse
It's not fair
Why is that guy walking his dog so grumpy looking? He can walk: doesn't he realize that's all that matters?
A lot of people would kill for the excuse to not be able to walk to avoid exercise
I should handle the pain better
This good mood will leave as soon as I stand up
I would get so much more out of this lovely moment if I could also look forward to hiking later on
Why can I walk and run and hike in my dreams so easily?
How will this end?
When will my voice of experience come back?

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—Testing

Soon there will be testing at my son's school. Serious testing. So begins the life of serious tests, serious waiting, the serious relationship to the results. The serious, serious results. The not knowing. The life-of-its own life form that not knowing becomes, a fungus, but not always the good kind unless you're the further-along-the-path kind of Buddhist where not knowing is all there is.

 I'm not very Buddha about not knowing these days. I'm retaking the test for enlightenment every day and I'm failing. What does Ram Dass say? "If you think you're enlightened, spend a weekend at home with your parents"... is that it? Well, you ought to know by now, Rami, that the proper rebuttal to an assumed state of enlightenment is "then spend a weekend with a serious disability." But I suppose both are true and not too long ago, Ma was in town, so you can imagine how that went. Nope. A being of enlightenment I am not.  A being of enlightenment does not more or less tell their insurance company to fuck off. Downright uncouth, I am.

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—Hardware

Because cleaning and shopping are what I can control

I'd rather truck to Home Depot even though I hate the place can hardly walk from the paint aisle to the flooring department where anti fatigue matts cost less than

                   at the smaller quaint hardware stores owned by well intended families
where the dogs roam the aisles and they charge way too much and follow you around and want to be helpful and know all the everything of your hardware plans that are never well thought out so you're forced to come up with one on the spot

but this is how it is now and where I must go in a pinch

for a little distraction and little daydream about fixing up the house and home improving and

occasionally an impulsive need for a sharp tool strikes.... "oh, and where are the paint scrapers?" because I realize if I could only scrape the shit out of something, crucify the lingering grime, break open some rotten cork, pulverize a centipede, dislodge the tile, obliterate the old paint, scrape, scrape, scrape, scrape, scrape  scrape  scrape  scrape  scrape scrape scrape scrape scrape, scrape...off out over away... anything really...

"Sure, right this way, Mam..."

Dear god, Just tell me where they are—

I don't need an escort... just tell me what aisle... oh shit, the dog is coming now too... "okay, thanks very much. okay this is good, thanks"

What size are you looking for?

"Oooh, I don't know.... but I'm good, this is good. I'll just browse. This is great. Nice selection. Thanks so much."

What do you need it for?


What do I need it for? What do I need it for?        Is that really something you want to know?

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—In hindsight (voice of experience)

My massage therapist telling me, "Your feet are fucking tired! You are on your last lifetime!"

My left foot going funny in triangle pose

My right hip not dropping in triangle pose

My yoga teacher walking toward me upside down, funny face, saying, "are you aware that you are balancing on the side of your head not the crown? 

I am?

You better come down

The legs and feet aching so much I have to hold myself up over the sink using my core muscles when doing the dishes

the times i thought I stepped on glass in the kitchen, in the bathroom, in the hallway, in my bedroom, wondering how I possibly managed to litter chunks of glass that I couldn't find

the many many ways I could always blame fibromyalgia and take more Ibuprofen

darn those flat, flat, fallen feet

my podiatrist, years ago warming me to never ever go barefoot or wear flats, no matter how comfortable it was: ditto my podiatrist last year

screaming pain in the Prius, left side back, but only in the Prius

the vaginal cyst

the emergency c-section

the warning labels
you're being a woos; stop complaining
you are not in pain
your relatives suffered a lot worse
no, you do not have to go to the bathroom again; we're not stopping

the invincibility
the up all night crushing raw pelvic pain (Were you sexually abused? Hmmm... I don't think so)

the bulimia

the trip to the er in my early 20s for crippling calf pain

the time my dad had to carry me and my skis down the Mammoth Mountain hill cause of the calf pain

Calf pain
         calf pain
                       calf pain
                                      calf pain: calf pain calf pain calf pain calf pain calf pain calf pain calf pain calf pain calf pain calf pain calf pain calf pain calf pain
calf pain calf pain calf pain calf pain calf pain                                      calf paincalf paincalf paincalf

posterior tibial something or another
                                                            plantar fasciitis, broken bones

born blue

and the every day gratitude for being able to walk, to dance, to run, to bike...

 because I didn't know what I'd ever do if I lost my ability to walk

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—What is the title of your summer?

Today in Wednesday Writers, we happened upon (as we Wednesday Writers tend to do: happen upon) this prompt.

Here are a (paraphrased) few, given my memory these days, which could prompt another title for my summer: "When Spinal Stenosis Steals Your Memory":

"Hobbling Around in Paris"

"In Hindsight, it was Pretty Nice"

"Hurry Up and Wait"

"Disappointment"

and a few I wish I could remember that went something like

Blank Blank about Gardening
Something Something about kids and outside in nature
Something sparkly about traveling....

all loaded with delicious prompts and a heck of a lot of fun besides. Thank you Wednesday Writers, which you would think, after all these years, might deserve a better title like the "Wednesday Wacko Writers" at the very least.

Anyway, try the summer titles prompt. It's juicy. Like a good orange. Like summer.

Writing with Rox WEEKLY- Thank you Mom

While waiting for my transforaminal epidural spinal injection, a  woman wheeled herself to the back of the waiting room single handedly, cell phone pressed to her ear with the other hand. "Hello Mama? I'm about to get a procedure done and I was wondering if you might want to pray with me before I go in."

They must have had a bad connection.

"Hello Mama? I was wondering if you...I'm about to have a procedure done and wondered if you would pray with me before I go in."

The woman wasn't much older than me. I heard her trying to explain her procedure,  what was going on, something with her digestion. There would be tubes. I wondered where her mother was and pictured her somewhere far, far away, maybe on a farm.  

And then they called my name and I gave a little wave. She walked over, helped me gather my crutches, my stuff because these days that's what it takes. 

 "And this is my mom," I said, "she's here all the way from California. Can she come in with me? Please?" 

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—The irony of lyrical words

Foraminal

Claudication 

Neurogenic

aren't they pretty, oh so pretty?

lumbar
stenosis
epidural
neurologist

it' not what they mean, but how they sound: delicious

laminectomy 
laminectimous 
laminectar

if only their melody could raise the bamboo trees

nurse its kindling back to reaching

neurogenic stenosis
pool
limp
nerve block
neurogenic
surgery
fusion
neurology
Mayo
vertigo (oh, that's super poetic and a cool kind of pretty)

add them up and they make a song, make a village

                  and my leg will rise again

wake up Maggie, wake up



What are your favorite lyrical words that mean something uh oh?

Still here, very here

Though my identity is on hiatus: I can't walk, drive, do yoga, bike, swim, run out of a rain storm, play Frisbee with my boy...

so much of who I am is of the body

and after all these years of coming back into my body, coming home,

I'm ready to leave it again

even though

my writing mind, my voice of experience, is still here

very here

reminding me over and over again that, hey,

 this is the real moment of your memoir

this is what they really write memoirs about

the memoirs you devour and think will never happen to you

but look, here it is happening to you too and are

you going to face it like a writer or an innocent?

a yogi or a plum?

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—When several travel prompts are requested

 First of all, I hope you have an amazing trip and I look forward to hearing all about it ! And feel free to try these prompts at home! It's 100% safe!

There are so many prompts that I can only imagine will show up every moment of your travels; if you stay open to prompts, you will see them everywhere. Notice what energizes you/charges you--for better or worse and all in between--and there you have a loaded prompt. Is it pinwheels? Elevators? Hotel rooms? Hotel lounges or pools? Is is the lone person? The happy couple on their honeymoon? Is it a know-it-all-therapist? Is it jealousy or joy? Cocktail hour? Feeling left out? Feeling acceptance? The jacuzzi? The memories of being here before? The sensory array of blooming things? THe not blooming things? Can a face bloom or not bloom?  Notice what's happening inside and write from there and you cannot go wrong.

Sit. Check in. Look around. Check in. Write. Oh, and what about "checking in"? That there is a great prompt. Especially in therapy-land. Many stories there.

Ditto walking. 

Ditto sitting in a conference hall.

Ditto the carpeting in the hotel conference hall. Oh, the memories and infinite possibilities that live in hotel carpeting.

Which has so many shades and patterns and colors, and really, can take you to drapes, which have many stories you've forgotten you've forgotten, and of course, windows and views outside of windows and.... do you prefer your shades up or down? Is your favorite color blue or red or both? And what are your memories of that color and associations with it? And what if you just write for an hour about lemon yellow? Or lemons? Or table cloth white? Or table cloths? You've got to just trust that when you give it space and time, something magic will show up and have lots to say. Will move through you and thank you dearly.  For that matter, you could write about gratitude. Or grumpiness. Yours. Hers. Theirs. The righteousness you feel when it's some unenlightened else's. 

What you hear at the pool. Or smell. What does chlorine do to you?

And of course the food. What you love. Fear. Won't eat. Can't eat. How you judge what others eat. How you hold back. How you count calories or splurge or compile recipes or tell yourself "well, I'm on vacation..." and what about all that? Or maybe you have a daquiri which you haven't had since you were 21? Or whipped cream? Or try eel sushi? Or skip a meal and write about your hunger. Hunger moves words in a myriad of acrobatic and architectural ways.

And of course... it goes without saying... what you're learning and how it moves you because most of all I think it's good and energizing to attune to what moves you, what works that incredibly receptive life giving muscle to tears, laughter, to happiness, to release, to insight, to friendship, to new beginnings, and possibly new endings... 

and before I say 'write about beginnings or endings' or meetings of all kinds or reunions, I'd better quit now before this gets completely out of hand, but for now, I'll just say "thank YOU for the prompt."

Have a ball! (oh gosh... and who doesn't have ball stories? My first ball was a soccer ball...)

Rox 

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—A simple dream realized

What dreams have you realized lately?

For as long as I can remember, I've watched those wide push brooms with the smiling mouthful of teeth sweep through large vacant spaces either before or after the event or perhaps during sparse attendance—dance halls, cafeterias, bars, yoga studios, lobbies, elementary school hallways, etc— across hardwood floors of all shades; likewise linoleum, marble, 50's style checkered, peel and stick modern, faux wood, etc, always deriving the same pleasure I would, say while watching the big ice machine clear the scuff at the ice rink on Santa Monica Boulevard by the beach, where we cooled off many days of the year, lost in the magic of so much ice in one place, starring trancelike, almost hopeful, into the milky eye of the North. 

So today, I finally got a wide push broom at Home Depot. So inexpensive. So easy. Why had it taken me so long? And I was so excited, even though it's still cold in here, I took out even more tropical colored rugs (one-by-one) from the living room floor and wondered what else I could get rid of in order to waltz this widening open room-broom dance into the night and for the rest of my life. For what could be more gratifying than sweeping an empty space down to its skeleton, raking the debris from its belly and then lying on your back in the soft, open, shine as a newborn ?

Wish I had more time to write about this. Or more time to sweep. Darn. Never enough time to push the broom across the floor or sweep the hand across the page. Someday, perhaps when I am very old, I will realize the dream of endless time to write and sweep. But in the meantime, I've wanted one of those brooms forever. Lucky me.

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—Was it a beautiful day?

Was it a beautiful day?

In your neighborhood?

Write about any neighborhood you remember or want to: now, then, in between.

Write and see what happens. They may switch around. Your childhood neighborhood might show up in your dreams and spill into yet another neighborhood. 

Enjoy running into old neighbors and expect many surprises. Personally, when we did this yesterday in my monthly Memoir/Creative NonFiction Group, I was delighted to run into my old love, Joe D, whose last name is so dang literary I long to share it, but alas... even my first love with the pompadour and Buddy Holly glasses deserves his privacy. Especially since the writing and running into him yielded some yummy memories and that felt really good to write about; not because I long for him, not because I wish I still lived in my childhood neighborhood in Los Angeles with the lemon trees and Olympic Blvd, with its 12 lanes of traffic. Not even because some of my happiest memories live there and daily beckon me back to the ocean. 

It felt good simply because in the mysterious ways that writing together works its magic, I was full as I could be to unexpectedly remember and write about that pale, aspiring actor, with  his green cardigan and white pick up truck, his face in the jasmine bushes in my front yard, breathing deeply, not a care in the world for that summer moment, despite the gridlock he'd just battled all the way from Carson.

Rise Up: Your Neighborhood

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—Junk Mail Poetry? Old Friend? Does this happen to you? Do you know this hunger too?

Oh how there is endlessness to write about. Am I the only one getting these random messages embedded into my junk mail? Pretty good stuff if you ask me. Is it a decoy? Am I being spammed and robbed of my vowels as I take part in this junk mail cobbler poetry fest for free? And if it was you who sent it, especially if you meant it, well, bless you.

The funny part is I thought, at first, the first time, it was a long lost student. Or friend. Or heck, I don't know. I felt the same kind of excitement I do when I get an envelope in my mailbox with handwriting, even if it turns out to be junk, which is half often the case. Half often. Hmmm. What does it mean? Well, I like how it sounds anyway: Half often. Sort of like "eight-ohleven," which is what Jude said in bed after books, refusing night-night. "But Mumsy. It's only eight ohleven." He's after my own heart, that one.

But the all too obvious confession: I want to keep reading. Discover something in this recurring junkmail that always leaves me hanging with an abrupt ending. Wait. Where'd you go? And  who is you? I don't want to believe you are computer generated  spam: you are smarter than that. Perhaps if I keep reading, maybe there will be something personal in there. Something that would reach me, reach out, over, and in. Someone who would talk about that time we... or... when we... or should have...or... right? Someone who would write themselves write back into the story of your life, blinking right there in the old fangled inbox? Yes... these random emails remind me that there is still that part of me that...what? What? No really. What? You want for this too... don't you?

And this is why we write together. We welcome in the magic. We write around the possibilities that always hover out of reach, that have no definitive answer, whose energy is infinitely gravitational because when we write, we are earth in orbit. 

Oh dear. I think it's contagious. Init? 

"First started seeing my psychiatrist, I was liberty that shadow version of me  tired,  miserable, hiding inside a giant sweater, convinced reno that my body was spreading over the spade length of the couch. I told him pierce that I didnt want to take S.S.R.I.s crop (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors  Prozac, Zoloft, corner etc.) because in the past theyd impeded sable my writing. A decade earlier, Id taken knockout Wellbutrin, a brand name for bupropion, which excessive doesnt target serotonin, and it hadnt affected pale my writing; my , however, had persisted inspiring (and my weight had held steady). In colleen 2013, I agreed to try bupropion again indiana anyway. I was so depressed, I almost gazette didnt care. Id already decided that medication hamper It was a Saturday. 

I ate brunch, genesis the meal of the  class. I alps am not a member of the  recycle class, but I felt luxurious, laughing with contained friends over spicy potatoes. The next day schooling I had to ride in a small turf car to Boston  four hours with evacuation four people . I breezy felt like I was falling in love. approving This was the trial-and-error stage and, as flat my  quickly realized. It became a bit of a chore, burberry chewing food. For the first time in snappy my life, I would forget to have banker lunch, leave burritos half uneaten, find myself jolt unable to finish dessert. It should be packaged reflexive 

I've been to Orta a number of times over the years but tonight really took the cake! Came in with my family for my mothers 57th birthday and everything was... Siam Cuisine is such a gift on The South Shore. When we decided sit at the bar and the bartenders greeted us immediately. They were very....I can sit and watch the glass blower's all day. ..The way the teams work together without words... This place is like a picture out of a holiday magazine or movie. We obviously went during the Christmas season, to see all the lights. "