U-N-I-T-Y

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I’m compelled to publish this last blog entry today before I go online shopping. I offer it as a disclaimer because in the coming days I’m going to report on what I learned at the NAMI-New York State educational conference.

My high school art teacher taught us the concept of “unity with diversity” in composition.

Michelle T. Johnson, the author of The Diversity Code, tells us that the ideal is the goal of “viewing diversity as the highest form of honoring individualism.”

I want to talk about this as I head into talking about what I learned at the educational conference.

Anyone who reads this blog will realize I have strong views. Yet what I believe is not any more valid than what another person thinks. More so, I’m not going to use my belief to justify discrimination.

I strive to treat everyone with dignity in the same open compassionate way. This to me is what’s missing from dialogue that often devolves into flame-throwing.

Johnson talks about the peril of how a person will counter another person’s belief with their own opinion as if their belief is valid and the original comment is not.

The cross of this matter is that no one is willing to work to find common ground, so that attacking your opposition has become the norm.

The beauty of living in America is that each of us can freely express ourselves. Fear of reprisal shouldn’t stop us from speaking out.

I listen to people, and I understand them. We’re all in this together. It’s precisely because I remember the past that I understand where consumers are coming from in what they say.

Yet I’ve always been more hopeful. Still it’s not “my way or the highway.” Not at all. I welcome unity with diversity. Queen Latifah sang a song “U-N-I-T-Y” in the 1990s. Remember that?

Like I said my new focus in this blog will be on right here right now. My contention is that we each of us need to move forward into the future, not remain stuck on crucifying the psychiatry of the past.

Today is right here right now the day to shift the needle.

I respect that leaders in the field and ordinary peers are evolving the dialogue at the NAMI-New York State educational conference.

The love is palpable there because we are all NAMI-New York State family. And family sticks together.

I just wanted to say this before I present my views of what I learned.

Fight Like a Girl–or Guy

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In her article the woman said she was upset that others talk about fighting their disability. She claimed the disability was part of who she was and that she fought discrimination instead.

This illustrates that for too long we’ve has to fight for our rights: for the rights other people take for granted that they have.

Normal people think nothing of having a home of their own and working at a job they love. Yet when you have a diagnosis you often have to fight to be taken seriously in your goal of living independently and having a career you love.

I’m willing to stand up for my rights and other people’s rights to live a life of dignity where we’re accorded kindness and compassion.

I say this because for too long our focus was misplaced. We often spend the earliest years of our recovery fighting the diagnosis and giving it power over us. Yet what you resist persists.

The moral of this story is: fight like a girl–or a guy. Stand tall. Walk proud.

In this regard: The Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act in the House of Representatives was marked up and kept intact with every provision. Call or e-mail your congressperson to urge him or her to vote yes on making this bill the law.

A contingent of Democrats tried to water-down this bill so that in effect it wouldn’t help those of us with a chronic form of schizophrenia who need evidence-based treatment. Shame on you, whoever those Democrats were.

The Act has bipartisan support. Fighting for the right of individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia to get effective treatment is one way to fight.

Right now I’m fighting against having to do the work of 10 guys in my Toms shoes to paraphrase the lyrics to a J. Lo song about her YSL stilettos.

My point is: nothing is going to change unless more of us have the courage to speak out against the crap: the crap that management covers up on the job; the crap we’re given in how others treat us; and the crap in terms of mental health treatment.

Gild it in gold: make it gold-plated on the outside: crap is still crap.

Demanding Excellence

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I’m sending this blog entry through one day early because I will be going to sell copies of Left of the Dial soon.

This is where I differ: my stance is that we should demand excellence: from ourselves, from our treatment providers, and from others in society in how they treat us.

Each of us has the choice: the free will to decide what we want to do and how we want to live.

I make the case though for striving to bring your A Game to the challenges you face.

We don’t have to do well everything we do. Yet doing well what’s important and what we value doing well can boost our confidence.

It’s not always easy to feel good when we’ve made a mistake or not performed well. Yet learning from a mistake and giving ourselves a pat on the back for trying is what will give us the confidence to try again.

My contention is: for too long people with disabilities were discouraged from setting goals and achieving them like other people in society do routinely. Other people take for granted going to school to get a degree and having a job and living in their own homes.

Now is the time for individuals living with chronic conditions to act like we’re hot shit. Demanding excellence signals to other people that we won’t accept being kicked to the gutter while others enter the banquet hall and feast at the table.

It’s a choice. I realize a lot of people are perfectly content to have an ordinary average life.

I’m simply giving out another possible option: setting our sights higher for what we can do and how we expect others to treat us.

I’m all for demanding excellence.

Risking Change

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I talked in the Left of the Dial blog–or was it here–about having a sustainable life.

Eating everything in sight–the see food–diet wasn’t sustainable for me. Buttoning up my individuality by working in office jobs at insurance firms wasn’t sustainable.

It takes courage to admit failure and take off in a new direction. A person can live in denial only so long before the lid pops off and we’re forced to confront things.

Denial is a coping mechanism we use when the truth is too painful to deal with. Yet make no mistake: we’re aware of the truth about what’s going on. We just keep stuffing it down. Then one day the lid pops off.

I met Lori Schiller at a book talk she gave at the Learning Annex circa 1994 when her schizophrenia memoir The Quiet Room was first published. Lori was the first person who told the audience that we can’t keep stuffing things down.

Stuffing things down causes ill health. I’m convinced it can cause illness.

I’m merely taking what Lori said and running with it because it’s so true.

We need to have the courage to risk doing something new. We need to have the courage to back up and take another route when the road we’re on is a dead end.

In the end and at the end of the day living true to ourselves is the only via option for having a full and robust life.

I might be the oddball in this regard because I choose to see the humor in life. I know that working at a buttoned-up job turned out to be a mistake. It’s better to figure this out later than not ever.

IMHO a job shouldn’t make you ill. And if you have schizophrenia, you shouldn’t be shunted into a job with narrowly defined duties and no chance of breaking out of that blind responsibility.

That’s precisely why I prefer working in a creative field: I like the customers and treat them with dignity. The library is a third place in the community that opens its doors to everyone.

Once a guy came up and I asked: “How can I help you?” “I need a psychiatrist,” he deadpanned. “Do you want a natural treatment or medication?” I followed along.

“I’ll have what  you’re having,” he continued the joke. And he was joking because in no way did he come to me for help finding a shrink. After this quirky banter he did tell me what he was there for.

A numbers cruncher I’m not. And I still can’t do long division. I got a 66 in my trigonometry Regents so I barely squeaked by. How you could rightly ask could someone like me think working in business was the ticket out for her? Wearing suits and having a steel demeanor. With no opportunity to joke around or banter with customers.

It took me seven years to figure out that the road I was on was a dead-end.

The moral of this story is that risking change is better than continuing to be in denial that you’ve gone down the wrong path. It’s better to risk change later in life than not to risk change at all.

With nutrition, with fitness, with a career: it’s better later than not ever to make positive changes.

Greenmarket Loot

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Greenmarket Loot:

broccoli, carrots, and Brussels sprouts

fresh mozzarella and Jersey beefsteak tomatoes

zucchini

organic whole wheat bread and a chocolate croissant.

tomato sauce

Total cost: $36. What it covers: two lunches and two dinners and sauce for a third pasta dinner. This seems to be a viable expense and saner than buying $36 worth of meat.

If you’re eating mostly a vegetarian diet you can afford to buy organic food simply because you’re not spending money on meat and potatoes.

I remember months ago Gwyneth Paltrow was given $200/for two weeks and asked to buy what an ordinary person collecting food stamps would buy to cook with.

You could get only two or three meals for only one or two people for $200.

It is unconscionable that the SNAP–food stamps program–benefits are being cut down drastically.

I see a person begging for change on October 30 and think: “It’s the end of the month. They must be waiting on a November SSI check.”

No one in America should have to go to bed hungry. No one in America should be discarded and left to fend for themselves.

In New York you can use food stamps to buy food at a Greenmarket. A significant number of food stamp dollars are spent at our Greenmarkets. If I remember upwards of over $500,000 is spent at Greenmarkets with food stamps in New York. I heartily endorse doing this along with using a food pantry if you have to.

No one wants to beg for change. No one wants to be poor. No one wants others to judge them because of this.

Who gives a shit if a poor person buys food at a Greenmarket. They deserve to be healthy too.

I’m a big fan of frequenting a Greenmarket. This is because I don’t take this for granted.

I remember living in a residence and having only $70 to spend for one week in 1989 to buy groceries for two people. No wonder some of us existed on hot dogs and Velveeta shells-and-cheese.

My contention is that there’s no shame if you have to use the service of a food pantry to obtain food.

The U.S. government is doing absolutely nothing to help average Americans exist on wages that have been stagnant for decades and haven’t kept up with the cost of living. No kidding.

As this is true I make the case for eating mostly vegetarian food.

Shopping at a Greenmarket and obtaining staples from a food pantry?

Yes. Yes. And Yes.

Gnocchi Recipe

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Readers: I failed. At the gnocchi recipe. It was a total disaster.

I burned the inside bottom of the saucepan and had to throw out the saucepan.

It was a recipe I found in the Audrey at Home cookbook written by Luca Dotti–Audrey Hepburn’s younger son.

This experiment convinced me to not want to try to make the gnocchi again. Not at all. The food I’ve cooked from recipes comes out great. Not so with the gnocchi. It was a total disaster.

Wind-up:

I’m tearing through a KMart stocking up on items to the tune of $55. I bought a turquoise baking dish along with the replacement saucepan and other sundries.

You can get household items at KMart on the cheap. Though I didn’t relish having to spend the big bucks to buy another saucepan.

This gnocchi failure seems like the perfect metaphor for recovery and for life:

If at first you don’t succeed, consider Plan B. Figure out your next move when continuing down the same path isn’t an option.

A person is often forced to reinvent themselves when Plan A doesn’t go as planned.

This requires having a sense of humor. Laughter can be the best medicine as an adjunct to SZ medication. I want to tell amusing stories more so than to focus on the hell.

Now not all of our foiled efforts are as laughably raucous as a gnocchi recipe.

Yet IMHO the lesson here is that sometimes a mistake is just a mistake. The option we choose at the time (like going into a gray flannel career when you’re a creative madwoman) seems like the right one.

It’s only in retrospect that we realize: “What was I thinking?” It starts out innocuous. It seems like a good idea. Like wanting to try out a gnocchi recipe. Then you’re full-tilt into a mistake.

Recognizing the need to change direction in our lives is necessary.

That’s the moral of the gnocchi story.

I’ll talk about this in the coming blog entries: taking risks and risking change.

Failure

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Failure helps us get one step closer to victory.

Yet sometimes it’s not advisable to keep trying to do something over and over. My great light bulb that went off in my head was that if a person has to try too hard to make something work, it might be time to give up trying.

This was evident when I had jobs in the gray flannel insurance field. It was also clear when I made the gnocchi recipe: it turned out just to be doughy and forgettable. I won’t attempt to try the gnocchi recipe again.

Failure is the cost of trying. I’m found of the Michael Jordan quote: “Don’t be afraid to fail. Be afraid not to try.”

A corollary is the idea that a lot of woman make mistakes with makeup. It can take us years to settle on the colors and shades that we look good in.

A person can also spend a lot of time trying to figure out the life path they want to go down. Taking a detour happens to a lot of us. I’m confident when I tell readers that the whole of life lies in seeing. Seeing the possibilities and being open to choosing what we think is the best one right now is the way to go.

A woman I met said most people make excuses for why they can’t do something. Thus they remain stuck because they’re not willing to try something new or to consider doing something that is a stretch.

Yet no one gets it right the first time they do something. My failure with the gnocchi recipe is a concrete example of taking a risk that didn’t work out. In life as with gnocchi I’m a firm fan of taking risks to grow as a person.

I say: risk change.

The famous Linda Ellerbee quote tells us:

“Change is one form of hope. To risk change is to believe in tomorrow.”

I say: believe.

Beyond the Mediterranean Diet

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Layne Lieberman’s Beyond the Mediterranean Diet is my new number-one favorite nutrition book. Buy it or check it out of the library to see the changes you can make in how and what you eat to promote optimal mental and physical health.

The author is an international expert on nutrition who deserves to be viewed as an international expert. She is one expert whose wisdom I can totally parrot unlike that of other alleged “experts” who hang out a shingle and are taken seriously because of their toxic mouthfeel they spew out that doesn’t help anyone at all.

As an Italian I liked the section on Italy and the Slow Food Movement founded there the best of all the chapters. The book also details the secrets of the Super-Healthy citizens of France and Greece too.

I recommend you buy this book to have on hand to refer to often. It’s a short book and the writing is not dense it’s light and practical.

I’m gathering product boxes up to examine so that I can write about the products I think are good and healthful to consider buying and using.

My contention is that everyone should be cooking most of their own meals. And when you’re too tired to cook you should buy healthier prepared frozen meals instead of Lean Cuisine type meals.

Amy’s Organic company offers low-calorie healthful frozen dinners that weigh in under 650 calories–the average number of calories thought to be acceptable for a meal is 650.

I buy the Amy’s Organic Light-n-Lean black beans-and-quinoa salad; the Amy’s Organic vegetable lasagna; and the Amy’s Organic tofu scramble. One or two nights a week I cook a pasta recipe. Two nights I have fish.

These are the products I wanted to talk about. It appears there are no “natural flavors” in Amy’s Organic. I also cook the Amy’s organic low-sodium lentil soup for lunch once a week.

Progresso Soups and Campbell’s soups have natural flavors so there you go not a healthful option.

I will report back in here next week on two recipes I’m going to create: cream of tomato soup and gnocchi (pasta version not potato).

Buying a Kind bar is not an act of kindness when you read the ingredient label. Using your intelligence to make better decisions about what to eat is the true act of kindness.

I’ll end here by saying that I might be Italian however everyone should cook for themselves not just Italians. You can become a good cook even though you’re not Italian.

In Like a Lady Out Like a Bull

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The last time I had a hot dog was in 1992.

As soon as I read the label and saw a hot dog was 100 calories and 90 calories were fat I thought: this can’t be good.

I used to exist on real poverty food when I lived in the residence: I’d buy Velveeta shells-and-cheese that I marginally improved by mixing broccoli into it.

I rarely eat bagels anymore because I don’t want my belly to resemble a bagel.

The change-over started right when I was about to turn 50. I consciously choose not to drink Snapple and other sugary drinks. Not only not every week: I chose not to drink them at all. I drink only water now and occasionally a 4 oz glass of organic orange juice when the market is out of oranges.

One way to combat the insidious positioning of products in a supermarket is to buy groceries online from FreshDirect in New York City and Philadelphia or from PeaPod elsewhere if it’s available where you live.

The benefit with FreshDirect is that you can simply order on autopilot by logging into your account choosing to submit a new order using a previous order.

You don’t even have to think about it and you can add new items to the order as well. This is great when you don’t have the energy or think you don’t have the time to create a brand new order.

Not needing a car to travel to buy groceries also cuts down on your dependence on foreign oil. It also saves time and saves your sanity.

One woman I met told me about going to a local food market that she “goes in like a lady and comes out like a bull.” Dealing with crowds and waiting on long lines isn’t the way to spend two hours every week.

Years ago too I stopped eating a lot of dairy except for string cheese and drinking the skim milk I use in my cereal. I do eat cheese every so often though only every two or three months or so.

The benefit of watching what you eat is that you’re then free every so often to indulge guilt-free in a chocolate croissant or whatever is heaven to you.

I’m fond of the macarons at a hole-in-the-wall coffee shop that opened up. The owner is a young guy and I’d rather give him the money than Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks.

I’m going to try to scoop products in here in the coming months that I think are better alternatives to the ubiquitous garbage attractively packaged to seduce our eyes and mouths.

Life IS Fair

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I realized yesterday that life IS fair. It’s fair because regardless of what happens to us we have control over how we respond.

It might seem odd that I say this yet it just might be true. My hope is that when people read my memoir they see that I fought to have a better life. This was my response when I was shunted into a second long-term day program.

I will always be averse to having a young person languish in a day program for longer than nine months. I recommend obtaining goal-setting services at an Intensive Psychiatric Rehabilitation Treatment (IPRT) program instead.

The wind-up is that a person can be successful later in life. Where you start is not where you have to remain.

I know a guy who collected a disability check all his life. At 55 he said: “This is it. I want to get a job helping people.” He got a job as a peer advocate and years later was able to retire.

It’s not ever over.

I’ll keep this blog entry short and repeat:

Where you start is not where you have to remain.