and all this time, thought I was in control, but fate she held her own

Friday, 10/13/17, 7:21pm

Oi. Well, yesterday afternoon/evening and today evening have both turned out to be not so good. Honestly, I'd had quite a streak of good days, even longer with only a few "meh" days mixed in, but days since a true depressive episode... it's been like 2.5 weeks. I had to check my mood tracking app- Daylio- to figure out when it was, because I couldn't remember. Oh and since the beginning of September, I'd only been having one bad day at a time. It's been awhile- over a month- since having this happen two days in a row.

Although, I should take a step back. It hasn't been all bad days today and yesterday. Yesterday I had a really good morning/early afternoon with friends, helping one of our friends get ready for a full year of traveling with her family (woah!!), and the bad mood didn't hit until later in the afternoon, after a large argument with the kids. I lost my patience with them, I reneged on our plan to go outside because I felt like they weren't listening to me (big surprise there right, with kids? though at the time I just felt like a complete failure because I haven't done much parenting in awhile- between treatment[s] and lots of depression, etc), then it just felt like a big screaming match with a bunch of crying in between. Finally I gave up, let them watch a show, and hid upstairs in my bedroom to cry more and feel like a terrible parent/person.

This evening isn't nearly as bad as yesterday's big big depressive episode. That hit... hard. Really hard. And it lasted pretty much the entire evening and I only got slightly better before going to bed, although I still wouldn't call it a recovery by any means. And maybe some of it being so bad was the fact that it had been awhile. I was certainly being really hard on myself with the parenting stuff, but it's also hard not to be when I haven't been doing it regularly.

Today during the day was pretty good. Kids had off, as did all their cousins, and we went with most of them to the science museum in Denver, which was fun, but fairly crowded. I actually think I did rather well, parenting wise, today with lots of stubbornness at various points from both kids, but especially from TK. But then at TK's soccer game, I mentioned to Nasser that I think really packed days might not be the best thing for me right now, like I think I'm having trouble handling that and really need more me time during the days. I was feeling more on edge, although not triggered truly yet. What really felt triggering, after dinner, was an argument with Nasser. Obviously, I hate arguing with him, and thinking about it now, after spending time typing away, I feel much more relaxed and think I could probably talk much more calmly about things with him. But before starting the blog tonight, I told him "I'm done, I'm going upstairs."

I am worried though. I'm worried I really can't handle busy days. I'm worried because my next treatment is on Monday, and the doctor had warned to watch out for any major deterioration the 3-4 days before treatment, and now of course I have these bad afternoon/evenings suddenly exactly 3 and 4 days before treatment. I'm worried about Nasser's business trip next Wednesday and Thursday. I'm worried about my parenting skills. I'm worried that the only reason it feels like I've "gotten better" is because I've been so hands off with parenting for so long. I'm worried about my ability to handle anything really, including just generally... my life.

There's all these things I want to improve about me, about my life, about my parenting skills, and really we own a bunch of specific books that address many of these things I want to improve (at least like 4 or 5 or so that have been on my list for some time). And yet I still haven't gotten myself to sit and read. Maybe one issue is I don't really know where to start. And I'm still afraid of my cognitive ability to actually do it. Then I have treatment on Monday and I did notice with my last treatment that I had some of the short term memory loss again in the days surrounding treatment, so I feel like I need to be careful with that as well. It's... hard... really hard. It's hard to not be able to do all the things I want to do, many of the things that I feel would help. I mean there's the whole exercise thing too, right? I'm so completely out of shape right now, that everything I attempt feels really hard and really... just... confidence bursting.

Maybe it seems like I'm just coming up with excuses. And maybe I am doing that because I'm currently in a bit of a hole. It's not like I want to be here. But, sadly, my depression isn't completely gone, despite however much better I have gotten. It's hard to be hit with it again after quite some time, and to feel, I dunno, really shocked by it happening again or something.

If this does last the next two days, then it will be a big thing to talk about with the doctor in terms of treatment frequency. We'll figure it out, and clearly he mentioned it as a possibility, so clearly this is something that happens to people. I shouldn't (and I will try not to) feel bad about this happening. It's just... I hate to feel like we're taking steps backwards. I really don't want that.

I will briefly note that today is Friday the 13th. Unfortunately, it's no longer something I can get excited about in any way over the creepiness or whatever of this day. Adam was killed on a Friday the 13th. So it's forever going to feel sad, bad, and ominous (but real ominous, not silly ominous).

Anyway. I will try to end with some happier things. Some pictures from our museum trip, again with only most of the cousins. The missing two were next door at the zoo, but we didn't end up seeing them at all today. (PS- after writing and adding the below, I do feel a bit better).

Starting with some fun pictures of the five of them outside the museum...

The three youngest cousins, including TK, playing in the space exhibit play area, and walking together, super cute. TK is the youngest of the three, but he is within 5 and 6 months of the other two.

I got a pic of the five cousins plus my sister and brother, all checking out this satellite table that you can move around to different areas, plus zoom in. So we found all our houses on it.

At the Expo for the Denver Rock n Roll Half Marathon (plus other distances but the people I know are doing the half. I'm not doing it- are you crazy??? We were there for my sister and brother to pick up their packets). This is what happens when you tell five kiddos between the ages of 6 and 9 to "pretend to run". They each have a different interpretation of what that means. Super, super cute.

With the Geico Gecko, because of course. They all got these neck gaiters for free at the expo and then wore them the rest of the time because they all thought they looked super cool.

my actions make me beautiful and dignify the flesh. me. I am free. free.

Friday, 09/15/17, 11:26am, 1:26pm

Hey everyone. I'm taking some time today to watch and re-watch some Brené Brown videos. Do you remember me talking about Brené Brown some time ago? Here, here, and here, just to name a few. She is a research professor/author/public speaker who has done a lot of work with vulnerability, courage, shame, and empathy. Her TED talks are worth a watch if you've never seen them: on vulnerability and on shame are the original two, but she's got a lot more stuff out there these days, and honestly I'm a bit behind on everything she's put out there. I still love the empathy cartoon she narrates... it's short, you can handle the less than 3 minutes to watch it...

When I wrote about how to support someone with a mental illness, back in May of this year, the big, big thing I talked about was empathy. Empathy doesn't just apply to supporting someone with a mental illness, or any illness; it applies EVERYWHERE in our lives. It applies to making a connection with anyone you meet, whether it's through work, or school, or in our neighborhoods. Whatever community you're in, empathy is useful. Anyway, watch the cartoon short if you haven't yet. I mean it. Seriously. Do it now.

I wanted to discuss in a little more depth about vulnerability. Brené talks about how "vulnerability – the willingness to be 'all in' even when you know it can mean failing and hurting – is brave." And this is based on her research.

I've felt decently good since reading Brené's book Daring Greatly about how vulnerable I really am by being so open about my depression and anxiety, about sharing some really shameful feeling things from my life, and deciding to ignore the stigma that's out there and sharing anyway. I'm certainly not as good at daring greatly as plenty of other people out there, but something recently made me feel good about it again. Last week, we had Back To School Night at our kiddos' elementary school. In fact it was the same day as an ECT treatment, which made it rather hard for me considering headache and fatigue and the desperate desire to just be in bed, but I really wanted to be there. Partially since we have a brand new school building as of this school year so I really wanted to see it a bit more, but also because every new school year there's new things to learn from the new teachers, etc, and whatever else. Well, the new PTO president for this school year was speaking, and I was there, thinking, "OMYGOSH, I totally know her, but I can't think of where I know her from, because of all these damn memory problems from ECT. Well SHIT." And at some point, in passing, she even acknowledged me and was like "hey Alisa, how are you?" So, when I had a chance to actually talk to her one on one, I immediately started with, "So I have to tell you something. I'm going through this big medical treatment right now, and one of the major side effects is short term memory loss. So I know I know you, but I can't think where from. I am so sorry." She, of course, was totally empathetic and immediately told me about how her kid so and so is the same grade as RG, etc, etc. I have to say it didn't even occur to me that saying all this to her was being vulnerable until Nasser labeled it as such, but really, being honest and open about ECT IS being vulnerable. It's not that easy all the time to do so, but I definitely find that being this way has more benefit than not being this way. I mean, I'm getting a rather large amount of support from family, and friends, and neighbors, and how would that be possible if I were super secretive about it? And being vulnerable isn't super easy. I mean, I don't get a response from anyone, most of the time. I write my blog and very rarely get likes, or +1's, or comments, or anything. And that definitely used to bother me, a lot. I feel like blogging in the last few weeks (as I've gotten myself doing more regularly for literally the past 3 weeks) has been different in that sense. I don't feel like I've cared about the response from my blog nearly as much as I used to, and I expect that the difference is because I'm nowhere near as depressed as I used to be. But I do know that it's easy to dip back into caring a lot about that stuff, and I'm trying to keep myself out of that.

There's this Brené Brown book that I started some time ago, but haven't gotten all that far into, and as it turns out, I'm pretty sure I have to simply re-start it because of the memory problems. Here it is:

Isn't that, um, perfect for what I was just talking about? I think this one is going to have a profound effect on me, but, with the treatment, it's been difficult to get myself to get into this book since it feels so self-helpy and all. But, I have to remind myself: this is Brené Brown, I'm going to love it. AND, it will probably help me A TON. Because usually when I'm feeling depressed, it's because I DON'T feel like I'm enough. It's a pretty shitty feeling.

Here was my "start my day off well" activity while at my sister and brother-in-law's house (since my bro-in-law works from home so he can be my 24/7 person pretty easily many days).

I know, I know, I've shared a picture of this mug before, but I still love it so much. And I have to recommend this book to everyone. It's wonderful, and this author uses amazing animal pictures to tell his stories. So great. So so great. I'll share one page from the book:

Heeheehee.

Not that I was having a blue day, really, at all, but that book and mug just put me in an even better mood, which I could always use, right?

I thought up a lot of things I want to do this weekend and put them as possibilities in my calendar. The intent here is to hopefully avoid some of the depression I've been having on weekends by creating some schedule or routine to the weekend, as that was one thought we had as to why this was happening. But I'm aware that if I don't do these, I may end up with more guilt, and therefore, more depression. That's why I'm trying to set the expectation up that all of these are possibilities. We'll see how well I follow that idea.

My next ECT treatment is on Monday, which makes it 12 days (woohoo!). Making progress, at least slowly. Unfortunately, and I didn't even realize this until this week, Monday is also a day off from school for my kids, BUT we are getting loads of help from lots of different family that day to make it all work. Although, really, even if I didn't have treatment on Monday, I'd still need help with my kids because the 24/7 thing makes it so I can't be in charge of my kids on my own anyway. So oh well.

I'm trying to be as brave and accepting of myself as I can be as I go into this weekend. Well, really I guess I'm trying to come up with as many ideas as I can to not be depressed, but maybe what I should be doing is coming up with ideas for if I DO get depressed. Hmmm. Like maybe put some activities on my calendar for "what to do if you're feeling shitty". FYI, I might just have to type that out here, because I am currently blogging and all, so it's kinda the natural thing to do, right?

For when I get depressed, down, or feel bad in any way:

• Take a deep breath, or 100
• Try a downward dog pose, or any other yoga pose (in the safety of my home or with people in a class, but only if I want to)
• Eat a piece of dark chocolate (because dark chocolate can stimulate neurogenesis you know)
• Do jumping jacks for 1 minute, then close eyes and breathe deeply for 10 seconds
• Hug Nasser, RG, and TK
• Lay in the hammock, with some ice cold water, and maybe a book
• Read The Blue Day Book
• Take a short nap, or a long nap, or just lay in bed for a half hour
• Take a sniff of lemon oil because "lemon oil is calming in nature and therefore helps in removing mental fatigue, exhaustion, dizziness, anxiety, nervousness and nervous tension. It has the ability to refresh the mind by creating a positive mindset and eliminating negative emotions." (that's from here)
• Watch a favorite movie, like "The Princess Bride" or one of "Lord of the Rings" or "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" or "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" or "Finding Nemo" or "Toy Story" or something else that I can't think of right now
• Watch a favorite TV show, like "Doctor Who" or "Friends" or "The Magic School Bus" or some nature-y show on Netflix or "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" or again, something else that I can't think of right now
• Do whatever the hell I want to do

I'll add to the list when I come up with more, but that's a decent start for now. Hopefully it helps if any of that depression comes up this weekend. Wish me luck, all.

to the mountains, I can rest there, to the rivers, I will be strong, to the forest, I'll find peace there, to the wild country, where I belong

Saturday, 07/29/17, 8:14am, 9:55am, 10:47am

Well, it's been quite some time since my last blog post and I am now finally getting around to doing my Alaska post... I wrote up a summary of Alaska the morning I started electro-convulsive therapy (ECT), but that post has yet to be completed. Here we are, 5 weeks later, finally. Sigh.

And just for some perspective, we'll include the intro part of that post I wrote, for my pre-ECT thoughts...

"Holy crap, I start ECT today! 3 seizures a week time, for the next 2-6 weeks, right??? And Nasser is "24-7'ing" me since I require that amount of supervision.

I'm scared (in many different ways), I'm excited (in many different ways), I'm hopeful (for so many different things), and I'm anxious and overwhelmed. Last night Nasser sat with me, while I dictated to him this massive list of things to-do that were floating around in my head over the past several days. Including organizational things around the house, etc. Sigh.

I plan to blog as much as I can, but more importantly I plan to journal and use my daily app to keep track of things that I'm likely to forget, with the short term memory loss thing. I want to "remember" or be able to look back on this time as much as I'm able."

That was the intro part I wanted to include, but before we jump into Alaska stuff, I want to say that I have NOT been good about journaling so far, blogging has been rather infrequent, but I've been decent about using my daily mood app... there have been several missed days, but that daily app has been the most useful so far. About 2-3 weeks in to ECT, we started seeing some improvement, and now, 5 weeks in, I can more confidently say, we *think* it's working. Rather incredible thing, in fact. I actually didn't have treatment at all last week since we're starting to spread them out more. It was 3x a week for about 4 weeks, which meant that the cognitive side effects were kind of tough for awhile there, but have improved significantly this past week. Hence, I'm getting around to this blog post.

Anyway, let's go back a bunch of weeks, I guess it's about two months now... to the start of the Alaska trip. Our family flew to Seattle late the night of Wednesday, May 31st, along with my one sister and her family, a week after the boys got out of school.

We were only in Seattle until Friday morning before taking the Amtrak up to Vancouver on Friday, with the cruise leaving from Vancouver on Saturday afternoon. In Seattle, we visited with some friends of ours who have a new baby boy, we played in the pool at the hotel for the boys' sake (plus some of the other family started arriving soon after us too), but we also had to run some errands- we bought a new suitcase from Target since the one we brought broke- the handle wouldn't go into the suitcase- and I bought a new swimsuit from Kohl's since I didn't have something I was super comfortable with.

The Amtrak train ride was a great choice with the kids. We chose not to let the kids have screens, really, on the train ride, other than bits of RG reading The Hobbit on Nasser's phone and TK playing short spurts of brain-y games on my phone... a game called "Brain It On" which has you solve puzzle-type games and some "Solitaire". It was good, avoiding screens for most of the ride, since it meant that we saw lots of bald eagles along the way, we used the dining car to get some snacks for a portion of the trip, and the kids really seemed to enjoy the train ride and looking out the window. I spotted a couple sea lions in the water, at one point, on my way to the bathroom, which was pretty cool too.

Despite the nice train ride, though, I think we were all tired, grumpy, and likely hungry when we got to Vancouver. We had been hoping to meet up with another group of friends who live in Vancouver who also had a new baby we wanted to visit, this time a girl, but the kids were just too grumpy the rest of the afternoon in Vancouver, so we had to save that visit for Saturday morning, just before getting on the cruise. These friends also had several pets, which the boys really enjoyed visiting with, especially RG.

When we were done with our visit with our friends, we rushed onto the cruise and through check-in, a bit on the later side. But it meant that we had no lines, whatsoever, which we were pretty excited about, as were the kids.

Now, let's talk about the cruise a little bit... it was awesome. I mean, of course, there was lots and lots of eating; beyond the first night, we split up into a kids table and an adult table. Our group had 16 of us- there were my parents and 7 other adults between the siblings and spouses, and 7 kiddos amongst all the grandkids. Have I mentioned that amongst my parents' grandkids, there are only boys? Haha, yeah... so they really enjoyed having their own kids' table at every dinner.

The first full day on the cruise was at sea, but then our first stop was in Ketchikan, AK (06/05/17), where it, unfortunately, rained for most of the day. Some of us checked out a nearby wildlife type center where we could learn a little bit, in the safety of the indoors, before heading back to the boat.

There's our ship in the dreary rain...

See? It really was cold and wet...

RG, on the right, was especially upset about the rain...

We ran into my brother, sister, and brother-in-law going for a run in the rain!

I liked walking through this miniature park with flowers.

The next stop was Juneau, AK, and our little family split off and did our own thing that day- a quick trip to Mendenhall Glacier (where we saw a porcupine! I missed the picture of that one)

RG and TK posing by a bear in Juneau...

Mendenhall Glacier. 06/06/17

and whale watching (all these pics are credit to Nasser since my phone ran out of battery by the time we got on the little whale watching boat for that). Before I show you the whale watching pictures from Nasser, I'm going to include a picture he took of us at Mendenhall Glacier that day...

And he got a nice shot of a whale's back and one of a tail from the whale watching I'll share...

whale watching, 06/06/17

So then the next day was in Skagway, AK, where we took the famous White Pass Railroad. It had gorgeous views along the whole train ride.

These are the glacier pools at the top of the White Pass Railroad, before we headed back down the mountain, 06/07/17.

These are the 3 youngest kiddos, TK at right, is within 5 and 6 months of age of the other 2.

So Skagway was the last cruise stop, and the last two days of the cruise were cruising through Glacier Bay and College Fjords, lots of gorgeous, gorgeous viewing. Here are some pretty highlights from my pictures.

Above 4 shots from Glacier Bay, 06/08/17

At left: my boys hanging out on the pool deck; at right: some glaciers in College Fjords, 06/09/17

At left: RG being silly in front of glaciers; at right: more glaciers in College Fjords, 06/0917

and more beautiful glaciers in College Fjords, 06/09/17

Then the next day, 06/10/17, we had to get off the cruise, after a really nice week. I'll tell the story through pictures mostly, although, I have to mention, I had some serious "land sickness" after getting off the boat, so the travel that day was a bit tough for me.

At left: TK with some cousins as we're making our way off the boat;  at right: last shot of our cruiseship

Pictures from the tunnel between Whittier, where our cruise ended, and Anchorage.

Pictures from the bus ride to Anchorage, still 06/10/17.

More pictures from the bus ride to Anchorage.

I had to include this picture of my one nephew, AS, who has celiac disease. He's finishing up his bowl of full size pho at the Vietnamese restaurant we found in Anchorage. It's like when he finds something gluten free at a restaurant, he just gobbles it up. :)

We rented cars in Anchorage, three for our group, and made our way up to Denali National Park, where we had rooms rented at the Denali Touch of Wilderness Bed and Breakfast Inn, a really great place to stay at, and they accommodated my gluten free nephew at breakfast really well.

The next day, 06/11/17, we all went on an amazing 6.5 hour bus ride through Denali National Park. With even just the start, in the parking lot at the entrance of the park where you pick up the bus ride, we got to see a huge, huge moose and its calf, picture with the calf courtesy of Nasser.

And here's a bunch of animal pictures from the bus ride. Man, oh man, it was amazing. One of the coolest things we saw was a huge grizzly bear, on top of the caribou kill that it had apparently stolen from 3 wolves, and we got to see one of the wolves running away with a piece of meat from the kill.

grizzly bear on top of the caribou kill.

2 pictures above: wolf running away with some meat.

4 pictures above: mom and 2 older cub grizzlies we saw on the side of the road, the cubs made their way in the road to play fight. Super, super cool.

At the visitor's center in the park, we played around with the caribou antlers...

and then just some shots of my kiddos being silly...

and the 8 year old cousins in some footprints...

And then we have some bus shots...

my nephew, DS, fell asleep towards the end of that 6.5 hour ride.

Then we have some pictures from the dinner after Denali. We had some good portable, travel game things to entertain the kids while we were waiting for food.

Then, the next day, the very last day of the trip, 06/12/17, we had to leave the Bed and Breakfast and make our way back to Anchorage. I took a few pictures of kids in the car I was in, with the 3 youngest of the cousins. In the first shot, the 2 kids on the right were just pretending to sleep along with their cousin on the left who actually had fallen asleep, and in the second shot, TK was the only one still awake.

then at the end, they were all awake and happy and snacking.

and I had to share, we got a flat tire on the way back to Anchorage, and RG decided he had to help.

Several of us flew home that night, a red-eye to Denver. Funny little story: I got pulled aside in security and the TSA agent who searched my stuff knew the story of the wolves and the caribou kill, but he had heard from people on an earlier bus ride who only knew about the kill. I got to fill in the part of the story about the grizzly who stole the kill.

And to finish it up, I have a picture from the airport in Anchorage, sometime after 11pm... so crazy.