Cancer, Photography, PTSD, Thoughts

A New Lens on Life

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Sometimes the numb sneaks up on me and settles in under my awareness leaving disconnection, isolation, and feelinglessness in place of life. I trudge on through days or weeks (sometimes years) without knowing I’m disconnected from deep emotion. Then suddenly it passes and I am flooded with the disconnected emotion returning. Like a couple of days ago when I found myself wanting to cry when I should have been relieved.

Yesterday I took a new (to me) camera lens out for a test spin. As so often happens, focusing on something else which requires me to be completely present and in the world let my subconscious work. As I wandered about learning just how shallow of a depth of field an 85mm f/1.8 camera lens has, things started to shift into place.

Earlier this year, in the middle of realizing we were going to need to move across the country, I found out I likely have thyroid cancer. Apparently, there hasn’t been enough trauma in my life, so the universe added the big “C” to my story.

It started simply enough in January at my annual physical. My doctor felt something on one lobe of my thyroid, and so out of an abundance of caution she sent me to have an ultrasound. It came back suspicious. Which prompted an FNA (Fine Needle Aspiration) biopsy. Which came back as very suspicious. A sample was sent for further testing, which came back as likely cancer… but not completely positive. I was for a few moments, very appropiately freaked out, but soon slid into numbness as it became too much. Dysfunctional coping skills learned in childhood to live with repeated trauma resurfaced to help me avoid feeling this too.

The next step is a Surgical Biopsy, which is a misnomer since it means actually taking out that half of the thyroid. So while my life is turning over, I consult with a surgeon and set a date for surgery in Atlanta after we are set to move to Chicago. It’s the only real step I can take, so blind and numb, I accept it. Then a few weeks later after we switch our move destination to California. I manage to wrangle a consult with a surgeon in the Bay Area.

The day after our one-way trip to SFO, I meet my new surgeon. We set August 14th as my new surgery date. Already overloaded with the move, there is only a twinge of feeling. Then nothing.

The surgery came and went, along with my whole thyroid since a rapid pathology check during the surgery finally confirmed cancer. So my “surgical biopsy” became a Thyroidectomy. Post surgical pathology confirmed good margins all around the spots of cancer, but also that it has spread to an adjacent lymph node.

That bit in a lymph node raised my risk. So, I was sent for a RAI (RadioActive Iodine) scan to check for further spread and assess for the need of RAI therapy. The 90 minutes I spent having to lie perfectly still in that machine while sensors looked for gamma rays emitted by the I-123 absorbed by any thyroid remnants and possible spots of cancer gave me a chance to use another of my childhood survival skills – disconnecting from the current moment by dissociation. The followup consult with the nuclear medicine doctor brought good news. Besides the expected thyroid remnants, there was nothing. No further spread.

I should have been relieved, joyous, happy; a weight lifted off my shoulders. Instead for the last two days, all I’ve felt is scared. All I’ve wanted to do is cry. I can feel it just under the surface, ready to spill forth, but it hasn’t yet. I’m not quite unstuck from numb.

Walking around yesterday with my new camera lens, I was getting frustrated at taking so many out of focus shots. As I fiddled and adjusted, I found that a higher f-stop gave me clear subjects. Then I discovered things further away were in better focus even when the lens was wide open. By the end of my walk I was getting several keepers. I wasn’t creating art yet, but I was figuring out how with extra care and attention I could create beauty with this lens.

Later in the evening as I was sorting photos and discarding (so, so many) bad ones, I could more clearly see on the larger display of my computer what had been happening. Taking photos with the lens wide open at a distance of about 6 feet, the depth of field (the range of what is in focus) is only about 1.5 inches. Everything closer or further away than that thin slice of space 6 feet away is fuzzy –out of focus. A breeze moving a flower back and forth pushes the bloom out of the small range which is in focus. One petal might be sharp, but the rest of them would be blurry.

I nailed the focus in this shot… on the leaf just below the flower and the petal closest to it.

This lens, as glorious as it is, has a very narrow window of tolerance for focus. So it appears do I.

Faced with something overwhelming, such as cancer, and then topped with the possibility of metastasis, I flew out of my narrow window of tolerance for feeling emotion. I dropped right back to my long-practiced coping mechanism of numb. Getting diagnosed with cancer is a traumatic event. It leaves no control over what will happen. It leads to pain, to suffering, and possibly even to death. These experiences are literally the very things which cause PTSD. A traumatic childhood set me up to deal with future trauma reflexively in the way I always had.

So here I am with a new lens on my life. I have to handle things very carefully. I can still create art, make a life worth living, and feel my feelings, but it takes great attention and skill when even the slightest breeze can blow me out the window into numb.

PTSD, Thoughts

Golden Dream

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For over a year my life has been frozen. I’ve been wading through a world trying to not only erase who I am but drive me into the shadows. Every day seemed to bring a new effort to shrink my existence and take away my rights, Being a childhood trauma survivor, the effect is multiplied, pushing me back into anxiety, fear, and disconnection. I’ve been wandering through life mildly triggered and disconnected, once again questioning whether I can have a meaningful life in this world which feels so unsafe.

There are three typical reactions to a traumatic situation. The first two, fight or flight are colloquial knowledge. The third, the freeze , is less well known outside of the psychological and mental health professions. It can be a precursor to fight or flight as the body prepares to take one action or the other. It can also be a defense mechanism in and of itself, like the snow hare who freezes against the backdrop of the white, drift covered forest floor when the arctic fox trots by. As a trauma survivor, I often get caught in a freeze like that hare when there is no clear path to safety.

As a queer woman in The South married to another queer woman, we stood out. As a married girl couple holding hands or kissing or just being together we were intensely visible even in our small queer friendly town. At first it was validating to be seen, but as the culture war on queer folk turned to a legislative attacks being seen made us a visible target.

“Don’t Say Gay,” Drag Bans, Bathroom Bills, and other laws passed around us in Florida, Alabama, and Tennessee. I disconnected from knowing more.

I had grown up in hot, humid central Florida, where Disney World visits were just part of life. Every major holiday, visit by a family member, or significant life event seemed to call for a trip to Disney. The joyful escape into a world of fantasy had become woven into the fabric of my life. As an adult I continued to find joy in its embrace, first with my son, then later with my wife. But suddenly Florida was a culture-warrior on the front lines of battle. The state of my long adopted hometown was feeling less safe. My days got fuzzier. I vacillated between compulsively checking the news and actively avoiding it in competing efforts to be informed and to avoid obsessive immersion.

Cinderella Castle at Walt Disney World just before Enchantment, my happy place.

Then on a trip to Disney World we stopped for gas in Gainesville, FL. As I stood pumping gas into the car, my wife opened the passenger door and held out a bag. “Hey, Babe – could you put this in the trash can for me?” with synchronized precision, three other customers around us all turned and stared at me, at us. It had suddenly become personal and intensely uncomfortable. We flew to Orlando on our next trip.

Just wishing things would get better, that the world would come to its senses, seemed hopeless. So, filled with helplessness and unsure of a path forward, I slipped into a traumatic freeze. Falling back into the coping skills I’d learned as a child, unable to protect myself or run away from what was happening, I became stuck – frozen. My home, my career, my life was in a place which was becoming increasingly unsafe and unwelcoming. Suddenly, intrusive memories from my past were coming up unbidden again. I was going backwards. I struggled to enjoy or even live my life because I felt unsafe most of the time. My little progressive book loving town no longer felt safe enough anymore.

Then early this year, my own state joined in legislative culture war with 14 anti-LGBT bills during the legislative session and a ban on DEI in higher education where my day job is. Sure the ban was disguised as protecting academic freedom, but shortly after it was enacted anything with diversity in the title was canceled or cut. Somehow the threat getting so close, right on my own doorstep, helped get me unstuck. I caught up to where my wife had been for a while. It was time to leave before things got worse, before something bad happened to us, before we got trapped and couldn’t go.

Even though I had been stuck over the preceding year, we’d managed to explore places we could move to. Travel helped keep my mind from falling into the darkest places, so we checked out Albuquerque, Denver, Albany NY, Southern California, and Chicago. They all had their charms and challenges, but Chicago seemed to fit us best. It was the city of my young childhood and my beloved Cubbies. I’d always loved it. The towering skyscrapers, the expansive lake, affordable homes, great restaurants, and lots of culture just felt right. So as the need for action unfroze me some, we started planning a move by looking at houses and jobs. It seemed destiny was showing us a path forward, and things were working out. We were going to the Windy City and the safety of its warm midwestern charm.

The Windy City is alive.

And yet, fate still wasn’t done with me, I just didn’t know it. We flew to Chicago for a long weekend and picked the suburb we were going to live in. We met the Realtor we were going to buy through. We explored and got comfortable. Out of the blue, I got a call for an interview in San Francisco…then a followup interview.

Months earlier on a lark, I’d submitted an application to a university in San Francisco — my favorite city on earth. It was someplace I’d always wanted to live, but believed to be forever out of reach. So I never expected my application would amount to anything or that we could actually make a move across the country to one of the highest cost of living regions in America. It was a pleasant fantasy, an effort to escape my fear and pain.

An offer arrived for that university job in San Francisco. After we’d decided to move to Chicago, after we had made plans, told people, gotten comfortable with the idea, and even bought new winter coats. Now the truly unexpected was in front of me.

This offer seemed good enough that we could make it work. My wife’s company even had an office nearby. There would be no frigid, snowy winters. I’d evolved from being stuck, to a hopeful path to Chicago, to having choices. These were not just the choices of desperation, but between things I truly wanted. We decided to follow our dream. After having only visited San Francisco twice in her life, for a total of 5 days, my wife took a leap and jumped aboard for the ride. We would move to the bay area and follow my golden dream.

Six weeks later with all of our belongings in six suitcases and a couple of moving containers plus our car on a transport truck, we left The South on a one-way flight to SFO. That was three months ago at the beginning of this endlessly sunny California summer. Those five-and-a-half hours in the air shifted my life completely from where I was. Here nobody notices the queer girl couple, we are simply part of the cultural tapestry. We see ourselves reflected in many others. The laws work to protect our rights instead of the opposite. As I find my place in our chosen home, it has started to sink in. I am safe here.

Today I sit in a coffee shop with my laptop able to write for the first time in almost a year. I am finally thawing enough in California’s golden sun to find my voice again, to be present in the world. I am alive again. I never want to lose the freedom I have found here.

PTSD

Past becomes present

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It’s taken me many years to realize the past is never truly behind us. No matter how hard I work to process memories, to build coping skills, to make a safe place for myself in the world, to keep grounded in the present, at any moment the past can become my present. Despite all of my work and awareness, it still surprises me that past trauma leaks into the present.

I was traveling recently, spending a few days in Albuquerque with my wife enjoying New Mexican food and time with new friends. Like all travel there were ups and downs. Visiting the Folk Art Museum in Santa Fe and lunch at The Pantry were both definite positives, the altitude, summertime heat, and sparsity of the Albuquerque’s downtown distinct negatives. Yet, as we wound down the last night our trip was leaning into the positive experience column.

Then a cousin reached out to let me know she’d heard my mom was in the hospital in Florida. Her electrolytes were very low and things were serious. It was too late to call anyone on the east coast, so I had to sit with worry until morning when I could call to my mother’s best friend for more info. It was a long night, and fortunately I found the situation had improved overnight and mom was out of danger. Yet I’ve been reeling ever since on an emotional time travel journey I didn’t expect or need.

ABQ as seen from the air

Anxiety has become my almost constant companion. Arms crawling and aching, an ongoing drop in my stomach, fuzzy and disconnected from the world, I have just been getting through each day. Every time I talk to my mother, it throws me further off, to the point my wife takes one glance at me post phone call, and asks what’s wrong. And yet, I still struggle to connect to whatever these feelings are because I am once again the child who could be unsafe at any moment.

For years after my childhood memories came tumbling out of my head, I was completely disconnected from my mother. Interacting with her was too much of a trigger for me. I’d wind up struggling and anxious, yet disconnected from those same emotions. Instead I’d feel flat and numb just like I had been as a child. Which made sense – I’d never been able to deal with what happened to me in the moment. I was a child with no tools and no means of escape, so the experiences and emotions got bottled up and stored in the cellar for another day, or maybe forever.

For a decade, I’ve been operating on the premise that time and work in therapy would lessen the impact of these past experiences and emotions. That they were being processed into manageable chunks. Since the Pandemic, I have slowly, cautiously reconnected with my mother in small ways. Occasional texts, comments on posted photographs, or a card might pass between us, but never real contact. Finally last year we met for dinner on a visit to Florida at a restaurant familiar to both of us. My wife and my mother finally got to meet, and I was OK. Still, we went back to occasional contact, which has been ok until now.

I guess I am learning that there is a difference between playing in the shallow end of the pool next to the stairs where I can easily climb out to walk away and the power of a deep ocean filled with towering waves and tricky rip currents. Suddenly I’ve been tossed into the abyss, with my meager swimming skills from the kiddie pool swamped by the swells. All I can do is keep floating and wait for the current to let me go so I can swim back to shore.

Emotional Time Travel has been part of my experience before, but it’s never been so pervasive as this, lasting for weeks. If I am so affected by interacting with someone who was adjacent to my childhood experiences what will it be like if I reconnect with someone who experienced them with me? Or worse, how could I cope with running into an abuser from my past? I fear I will be lost at sea.

Art, PTSD

One Way

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The life of a trauma survivor doesn’t feel like a straight line, but rather like those geometric shapes I used to draw as a child with a spirograph. You’d put the tip of your pen in a hole inside a small clear plastic gear, which sat inside of a ring gear on a sheet of paper. You’d loop the pen around and around with the line surfing away from a central point, but always, eventually looping back to that same starting point now matter how much you’d loop and swirl.

Examples of spirograph drawings

It would look like maybe you were going someplace new, but however interesting the path, you always looped back through that same groove to the starting point. It’s pretty to look at, but you don’t really get anywhere.

Going through life with childhood trauma mirrors that looping experience. You start heading away from the trauma, getting on with your life. Until something happens which reminds you. Something big, like the death of an abuser, or something small like unexpected the smell of bleach.

Congratulations, you’ve hit the apex of your arc, no longer soaring through the blankness of possibility, looping away from your past. Inexorably the gravity of trauma pulls you — back down crashing into the singularity. After a while in the black hole, you gather yourself, breathe and start to move away again. Over, and over and over the cycle runs.

Lately I’ve been wondering if the point of trauma therapy is about making those loops taller and taller, about expanding the ring gear which keeps you cycling through the same past. And maybe, just maybe that ring expands so much that it thins out to the breaking point. Instead of constraining the arc the ring fractures, and suddenly you are free. Having reached escape velocity, you can make a one way departure from your past. The original trauma isn’t erased, you’re just no longer doomed to spend your life circling it.

But you’re not constantly looping back, down into the darkness, where do we go from here? There is only one way to go. Forward. Before the past can pull you back in again.

And so I turn my face into the wind and start moving into my future. I choose to live my life, for me. I’ve lost so much to trauma in the early years, and then decades more trapped in the after effects, unaware trauma was keeping me stuck, unable to live. So now when I feel free of the pull of darkness, I choose to do hard things just to prove I can, to remind me how strong I really am. To push myself to stretch that loop to the breaking point, and finally beyond. I choose to tell my story because it needs to be told, and maybe it will help somebody somewhere make sense of their their own story.

PTSD

Rain Crashes Down

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For the last several weeks I’ve been battling The Numb. It’s spread over my life insidiously, filling the lows like rain does puddles, and shaving off the highs of my days leaving me flat and disconnected from feeling. The world around me seems slightly distant, as seen through a window from inside. It’s clearly out there but sensory input is muted by glass and walls insulating me from feeling.

I have coping mechanisms, but they aren’t working as well as I wish they would. My go-to methods of pushing back the numb seem blunted lately. Walking outside works while I’m moving. Footfalls literally ground me with each step. Once I’m done though, things turn flat again. Music will sometimes catch a feeling for the length of a song if I’m lucky, but then it too fades into the background. Even photography, walking with my camera to see intently and capture beauty I can feel in the world around me is fleeting, lasting not much longer than the click of the shutter.

I’ve been in this place before. In between the flood of memories, I would go flat, my sensory limit reached, my receptors for feeling overloaded. Eventually they would calm and reset, allowing me to feel again. Like now, I crave getting feelings back, reentering the world of color and variety. I know I should know the feelings will return, the numb will fade and I will return to balance, but in the middle of emotional doldrums, that’s a challenging thing to hold on to.

So I reach for the expedient thing – distraction. Reading the news, following blogs on my favorite topics (Disney, photography, travel, etc), and training for a 10 mile race in April are ways to fill time that pull my attention away from the numb even if they don’t bring much feeling back.

But then I wonder if some of the things I’m reading in the news about the state of the world I live in — war, strife, and hate — are part of the cause and the news is becoming less of a coping mechanism. The world feels less safe lately with the war in the Ukraine and numerous legislative attacks on LGBT people and our right to exist. It’s all suddenly become more personal, and I’m starting to suspect that is eliciting an old protective response.

As a child I lived in an unsafe world where bad things could happen at any moment, and even people I should be able to trust might hurt me. My world *was* unsafe, and there was nothing I could do about it. I was powerless in the face of repeated trauma. Even those who should protect me were part of it. A child can’t stand up to or get away from parents and caregivers who abuse. So I coped by finding a way to not know most of the time and by disconnecting from my feelings.

This feels a lot like the world outside my window right now. So perhaps it makes sense I’m disconnecting and numb so much, that I’m falling back to what has worked in the past.

But then suddenly today out of the blue came the most powerful grounding tool I can use. While driving to pick up my wife, rain came crashing down.

Rain Crashes Down

Heavy pelting rain is a whole body, multi-sensory experience for me. The sound of the rain fills my ears, if it’s heavy enough (like tonight) I can even feel the sound. The smell of the air changes as it becomes heavy touching my skin in a cool, humid caress. The water in the air absorbs other sound, and so the rest of the world goes quiet. The light dims and diffuses, giving my tired eyes relief.

That brief, unexpected rainstorm picked me up and slammed me into the ground. I sat and watched the water run in rivulets down the car windows as I waited for my wife. Drops would form into beads, which would merge together and gathering critical mass course down the glass. They washed away for a while my overload. The numb parted and I can feel again.

I hope it rains tomorrow.

Photography, PTSD

A Photo a Day to Keep the Numb Away

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Normally I don’t notice how numb I can be throughout the day. Time slips by as I go about my daily tasks and routine. I’m usually without awareness of disconnection from my emotional experience. It’s not until I encounter something which elicits a strong emotion that my general numbness becomes apparent. Those strong feelings are bold, scalding coffee cutting through my foggy emotional morning. When I’m paying attention, and attuned to my internal emotional state, I find I crave strong emotions much as night owls jones for their morning coffee.

Mug lined with the remains of a Latte

I’ve written often about my emotional numbness before. You can find mention of it in “The Bridge” and other posts here, yet I still have trouble holding on to the knowledge that numbness is a symptom of PTSD. When I know I’m overwhelmed and numb, I have various tools to help me come back to the world of feeling – cold glass on my face, a walk outside, a cup of hot coffee or tea, snuggling with Thurman or one of my stuffed animals. These all help most when I’m overwhelmed, but none truly gets me unnumb.

Early on working through my returning childhood memories, I found journaling the most effective way to process my experiences. Peeking into my life back then you’d find me in a coffee shop with my headphones on writing in my journal. Unknowingly I was using my two secret weapons to climb out of the pit of unfeeling into the world of color, emotion, and light — music and creative pursuits.

Four Old Bullet Journals
A collection of old journals. Did you notice I like Teal?!

Music is a constant in my world. It not only keeps me present, but it brings emotion to the surface on its own. I’ve discovered some artists and music types work better for me than others to elicit an emotional response. If I’m writing, ambient chill and non-vocal trance open the floodgates without disturbing the flow of words onto the page. If I’m drawing or taking camera walks, my playlist expands to include electronic pop and vocal trance. So there is often music playing in my headphones as I walk, or at my desk as I work to write. Playlists are like the handle of a lumberjack’s favorite axe there’s a well worn groove that fits me perfectly.

And yet, I am numb and disconnected from my emotional experience more than I want. I crave connection with my feelings, and to keep the numb at bay. So, this year I’m going to try something a bit different. I’m going to lean into one of my creative pursuits in a new way.

Leaning purple flowers
Even the flowers say I should lean into photography…

I’m going to do a 365 photography challenge — posting a photo a day on Instagram. Taking photographs forces me to see the world in a different way. In order to capture a photo that has meaning, I have to pay attention and feel whatever my subject is. If I don’t feel I can’t make a good picture. Seems like a challenge for someone who is numb right?

Fortunately, there is some untold magic for me in holding a camera and trying to find the image I want, in trying to feel the emotion I want to capture. When working to see strongly, to be open to the world of light, the numbness begins to thaw. I’m unaware it’s happening until the tingle of presence washes over me. The process reminds me of Arthur Dent learning to fly in “So Long and Thanks for All the Fish.” He forgot to hit the ground when he was falling, and so started flying. When looking for an image that speaks to me, I forget to bump into the numbness and instead soar into fervor and sentiment.

So every day that I can this year, I will focus on finding at least one image that sparks a reaction in me. I’ll capture and share it with the world in hopes that this repeated action over time of finding feeling will make it a habit. Perhaps a photo a day will keep the numb away.

Poppies on a Northern California hillside
Perhaps this can be the first catch-up photo of the day!
PTSD, Writing

Writing Roadblock

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Over the last several months I’ve found myself stuck whenever I try to work on a few of the short memoir pieces I’ve started. It’s a repeating pattern. An idea, then great first line hook, a couple of paragraphs which flow out easily onto the page, and then a long slow coast to stuckness, followed by lament. My in-progress folder is now littered with a quartet of these.

Then suddenly in the middle of this writing roadblock, a complete flash piece pours out. I tweak it, get feedback, revise a bit and it’s ready for its next stage. All while the others still languish unfinished. Hoping the energy from completing something (anything!) will energize my efforts, I turn back to one of the languishers. Fizzle.

I think I missed this sign when starting on the road to make sense of traumatic experiences through memoir.

My work in therapy has also been at something of a standstill since the pandemic started. First being disconnected from a safe place ground work to a halt. Then working though every day challenges and finding a path forward for life in this changed world took over my sessions. When bits and pieces of traumatic memories come up from time to time, they are only worked with until they can be packaged and put on a shelf safely for later. Whenever that might be.

Earlier this week I was digging into a memory about a reflections book I’d used a decade ago. I was trying to make sense of what had happened to it, where it had gone. When my memory failed I turned to my journal. Sure enough I found the answer of when I’d used it and with prompting recalled why I’d stopped. Once I’d solved that puzzle I continued on to skim through a bunch of old entries, finding myself coalescing around the summer when memories of my childhood trauma started flooding back to me.

Field of Blue FLowers
So much was fuzzy during that summer of forgotten memories. I could only focus on one at a time, but each and every one got their moment in the sun before fading into the background.

My writing from that time brought back the mad, headlong rush to get down everything I was remembering – before I forgot it all again. In rereading, I found memories I’d forgotten again, and felt the bite of re-remembering horrors I’d not wanted to know. Now though, I can turn the page and move on, the memories contained for the time being in those pages. However the next next (likely disquieting) memory is just a page or two later. As I read through those raw memories of unprocessed trauma I experienced that summer, something tugged at a corner of my mind. I couldn’t quite see it, but I knew it was there just beneath the surface.

A few days later I recounted this experience to my therapist from the safety of the couch in her plant and book lined office. As so often happens in therapy for me, talking about my experiences allows the lines connecting parts of my past to take on sharp relief, becoming suddenly visible. In a moment I saw my writing roadblock in a new way – why some pieces sat unfinished, untouchable, and why others were essentially completed in a single sitting.

Every piece I’d finished was about my experiences since I’d started therapy, since I’d taken control of my life and started working to live in the light of the present. The others? They were all from the shadows of the past, the before times. They were filled with the raw emotions and and unexplained experiences which pulled me to write about my childhood, to find meaning. This pull was also my downfall. I was writing about unprocessed traumatic events which pushed me out of my window of tolerance and straight into the floundering fields of numbness.

Window
Staying in my window of tolerance means working with things one drop at a time.

To write about my childhood experiences, I am going to have to do work in therapy with them. The memories I want to make sense of need to be processed, bit and piece at a time in a safe place. Some can be processed on the page, perhaps in my journal, and eventually as memoir, but much of my work will be done on that couch. I will explore with someone to guide me, to help pull me back, to give perspective. What I am writing about will guide my work processing trauma, and the work in therapy will help me to write. Interweaving the two means having a way finder to help me see the roadblocks, to point the path to through or around so I can make progress in both healing and writing. Because I now see for me, healing and writing are one and the same.

My road ahead is full of twists and turns to work through and around writing roadblocks- there is no map, but I have a guide.
Disney, Photography

Flowers of Disney

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Growing up on the Space Coast of Florida near the Port Canaveral home of Disney Cruise Line and just an hour from Walt Disney World, it was probably inevitable I’d become a bit of a Disney fan. Being so close, I’m sure I went to the parks at least a dozen times before I graduated from high school. When I moved away after finishing college, there was at least a dozen year gap before I returned with my six year old son, and could rediscover the parks through his eyes. From the rides, to the parades, to the hidden mickeys to the deep theming, I watched him find joy for himself as I had. Sharing in his experiences I found happiness there too. In high school, I never expected I’d be visiting Disney world as an adult much focusing on the flowers of Disney World.

Since that first return, I’ve been back at least another dozen times with my son. Now he is grown, and I continue visit, but now with my wife. On good days it is a place for us to escape the pressures of daily life. It is somewhere to be present without worrying about what comes next and to feel joy without judgement. However as a survivor of childhood trauma who lives with PTSD, the crowds can overwhelm, the enclosed queues can make me feel trapped, and frustrated parents yelling at their children can trigger me.

Fresh Orchids grace the lobby of the Contemporary Hotel at Walt Disney World.

I’ve found my typical coping techniques can sometimes work in these situations, but not always. Fortunately, I’ve discovered a very specific distraction which I’m currently enjoying. I pay extra attention to the flowers of Disney. I find if I slow down a bit and try to notice, the detailed landscaping becomes more visible. I wander the parks with my camera handy in my backpack looking for flowers, and find they are everywhere.

Snapdragons almost under my feet in the hub as I wait for the Festival of Fantasy parade.

They offer calm in the middle of the maelstrom. They are indifferent to the lives of those around them. They only car about sun, water and soil. For years, I missed the thousands of blooms present in the parks every day. Then I started to look. Now I find planters everywhere full of common varieties – well tended greenery crowned with color.

Impatients covered with dew in the town square.

Sometimes I find something a bit more exotic. In either case, I pull my camera out and search for what catch my eye, for bursts of color which make me feel something. Then I carefully frame and capture them as closely to how I experience them as I can. I soak in the beauty around me which others walking by a few feet away miss. The calm focus helps keep me present.

Hostas along a path outside the entrance of Disney Hollywood Studios

I breathe, I absorb the calm, and feel better, ready for the next thing, able to be fully present. As my collection of photos grows, I’ve wondered – why not share them with others? So here some from my last trip, and hopefully there will be more to come. I want to share both my calm and my joy es expressed by nature’s fireworks close to the ground.

A bed of flowers in the Magic Kingdom.
Photography, PTSD

Spring Forward

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It’s the time of year when the world is warming and brightening in fits and starts. Grey skies follow sun warmed blooming flowers, both trailed by frost – it makes the senses spin and the wardrobe catapult back and forth from sweaters to shorts. This is a bitter sweet time of year for me as winter gives way to spring, with a promise of the summer so full of reminders of the things I don’t want to remember.

Sunset in late winter.

I love the edge seasons, the in-between, the becoming. Fall and Spring are my home in the quarters of the year. Perhaps because change fits me like the old sweater I wore just last week, or because like the capris of a couple days ago, they are the harbinger of things to come. Spring and Fall keep me on my toes wondering what is next. Perhaps it’s because they are neither too hot or too cold – extremes I no longer seem to enjoy much. Deep inside, I know long, hot summer days connect to things just below awareness, bringing floating fragments to the surface, a tingly crawling to my arms, and a shake to my hands. So I’ll linger in spring as long as I can in the momentary embrace of a safe season. Sometimes I’d rather not spring forward.

A wall of purple life in the brown of winter.

Last week the three giant Japanese Magnolia trees at the park next to our house were beginning their yearly display. Driving home I saw them blossoming forth through the misty overcast evening. Disappointed at the poor light of the late hour, and determined to capture some decent photos this year, I made a mental note to head out the next day with my camera when the sun was right and the weather favorable.

It actually took for days for everything to align, but I found myself stomping up and down the little hillside with camera in hand trying to do justice to the sea of buds just set to open. While I searched, a neighbor I’d not yet met saw me and wandered over to introduce himself. It turns out he organizes a local photography meetup group. His card in my pocket, I went back to what I was focused on, intent on capturing an image which would convey the feeling of facing a flood of color. I found myself working hard to stay in this moment for as long as possible even after I was sure I had what I’d originally come for.

Japanese Magnolia tree covered in buds

Then I walked with the camera for a bit to find another moment, but as the evening wore on, I wasn’t seeing much to capture eye and heart, so I headed home. My thoughts were wandering too far from the serenity of the blooms. I felt their pull to darker places, and without something to keep my attention I decided it best to be home if an unpleasant memory or flashback popped up.

Stepping back in the house, done for the evening, I set my camera on the table and headed to the back porch to check out the sinking sun. I found something unexpected in one of my wind chimes.

I love wind chimes, their sound, their look, their delicate swaying presence. I have a special spot in my soul for geode chimes specifically. I’m sure I’ll write about them some day and dredge up a picture of my first geode – the one I picked from a pile at a roadside stand outside of Yellowstone then handed to an overalled man who cut it in two on his diamond bladed saw. The idea of prehistoric gas bubbles trapped in rock was already up the alley of this budding science geek, but then when I looked inside… there were crystals – geologic art hidden inside a boring grey rock. I was hooked.

A geode holds our star in its core.

Here, perfectly aligned with the setting sun on my back porch, one of my geode chimes held our star in its crystals. The universe once again is reminding me to stay present, to pay attention, to see the wonders in front of me, and not to give echos of the past too much sway.

PTSD, Travel

Goodbye Colorado

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Colorado, so often you have been my escape from an overwhelming life. You have been a place to dwell when the current moment becomes too much, somewhere the darkness cannot follow. For years you have been where I go to be safe, if only in my mind. Now, I’m afraid I need to say Goodbye to you Colorado. I’m afraid I might not need you again.

I will miss your summers with the river burbling softly through downtown Breckenridge past the coffeeshop. I will miss being covered by a sky ringed with your mountains. I will miss the inky nights glistening with stars. I will miss your blazing aspens of fall. I will miss the safe solitude of your Rockies. You are my place to hide when the world around me is unsafe on the worst days.

Blazing fall Aspen over the mountains surrounding Breckenridge, Colorado.

During the summer of a decade past, the thin air of your mountains stole the breath of someone I’d been trapped in a relationship with. Your altitude defeated their body’s lungs, and so they were sent down, banished from your high country never to return. You opened your doors to me yet kept them out, an experience I’d seldom known. You showed me I could find a place safe from them and escape the trap of my life. You gave me a space where they could not follow, where I could be free. So, I used that freedom to build an escape I could use anytime.

In younger years before your summer gift, and long before memories fell out of their hiding place deep in my head, I visited you many times. I walked among your spiking, soaring, snowcapped mountains which filled me with awe. I found tranquility meandering your meadows on the roof of the continent. You lifted my heart to the sky and gave me hope. I was never sure why I needed your hope, but I found my heart grew less heavy when held in your embrace.

Mountian towering over the town of Frisco, Colorado in Summit Country.

Over the years following that freeing summer visit, I often returned to days spent with you in Breckenridge, seeking once again the calm and comfort I’d experienced. I used simple reminders to pull me back to you: a hat I’d purchased to support historic preservation in town, photos of your landscapes, and the intense memories of how it felt to be there with you. Any of these could take me back in an instant to your comfort and safety of that brief summer visit,

You became the first of a series of was bookmarks in the weather app on my phone: Breckenridge, Disneyland, Vancouver, San Francisco, and Seattle. Places I learned to hold for myself, to recall safety. All a means of escape. Yet you are my first and best momentary refuge from the world around me. Checking your weather in Breckenridge gave me stolen moments of snowy streets, cool summer days, and everything in between nestled amongst the peaks of the Colorado Rockies… a moment of safe disconnection from my current overwhelming experiences.

A fence post overlooking the Front Range across the dry fall meadows of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge.

Not long ago the thought of never seeing you again, of never being in your safe embrace, would have been an inconsolable loss. And yet, now I can live with the possibility. Something has changed.

This fall I had the opportunity to visit you again, this time with my wife. It was our first real trip to a distant land since the pandemic changed our world in so many ways. It was her first time into the depths of the peaks of your Rockies.

A rock in the middle of the Colorado Rocky Mountains.

On the morning of our second day, my wife awoke long before dawn with signs of altitude sickness. Most of a lifetime spent away from her birthplace on the edge of the southern rockies had dulled her acclimation to altitude. We faced a choice. We could wait out her sickness and hope she recovered before we had to leave in just over another day, or descend. Despite the pull of your spiring stone, your sky, and your newly fallen snow, without hesitation I told her we needed to descend. The thought of her misery outweighed any sense of joy I might feel in your arms.

Not long after dawn we descended through your mountains making a few stops- one for tea and two for photos. As we descended she felt better, and incongruously, so did I.

I felt content, even whole. I was comfortable with descending from my safe place within you.

Mountian peaks reflected in the Dillon reservoir in Summit County Colorado.

For so long Colorado, I’ve needed you to survive, but now I’ve found that a peace dwells within me. I’ve found safety in the person I share my life with. Bit by bit I am discovering myself. I am no longer trapped by my past and so I no longer need you to get through each day. Now, I look forward to seeing you again soon to enjoy your embrace, instead of needing you to be able to escape my past just to survive this moment.

Sunset behind the Colorado Rockies Front Range with a contrail high above.

Goodbye Colorado, and thank you.