Hitting That Wall

@frances007 I just subscribed to the newsletter you posted about. I love your response to @colleenyoung's question bout your art and creative process. It is spurring me on to take a look again at my creative process and be gentle on myself as I navigate these days. Thank you for being open about what is going on in your life! You have brought me hope.
Ginger

Hi Sarah 82,
This is from Anne who wrote to Andy, "In that way you are lucky."

I think what you posted about the afterlife and attempts to get there is very true!

I got a wall plaque from my mom that says, "Count your blessings." When I am feeling blue, I try to think of good things in my life. I have an incurable, progressively debilitating, painful disease. Some days, it gets really hard to find a "blessing" that is bigger than my health problems. But ya gotta keep trying.

I was trying to help Andy find a "blessing" based on what he posted. I do think that a person who has someone to love and be loved by IS lucky.

I'm sorry that you were bugged by my post. Nobody needs any more irritation in life, right? : )

Have a good day!

Wow, that makes my day. Thank you so much.
It's all about that creative flow and letting go of trying to control what you are doing. Maybe I need to start a Zoom class to get everyone started. Free of charge of course.
Good luck. I will try to post some photos later today.

I just came across something else, a website. I am facing a difficult decision about something, and went online to read about how to know when one is faced with making the right decision. This looks like a great site and offers free online counselors for support who need them. I would post more, but I am in the midst of baking bread with artichoke hearts. An experiment, and if it turns out I will pass if off to my sister when she comes over today. I am trying to get her interested in this platform, so will show her today how it works. Maybe she will connect with someone else who is dealing with a husband she has been married to for 50 years and is on a downward spiral with dementia. While she laughed it off last week when she told me he told her to move out of their new home, I know that deep inside she struggles. We were all raised to be stoic, that stiff upper lip thing. LOL. This past summer I actually submitted a DNA kit to Ancestry because I am so different than my sisters, and I was so sure I had a different father than my two sisters. No such luck. However, the fact that my mother went into deep depression after I was born, and I was passed around to the other women in the neighborhood, probably was the most contributing factor why I turned out so different, and for the better.
https://www.7cups.com/

Interesting about that rubber ball as I do the same thing outside on my patio, and it drives my neighbor nuts. However, if is a very good way to relieve stress, and also exercise at the same time, especially my non-dominant hand. My former doctor, now a friend has also been involved in a study involving dancing and joy. I dance around my apartment quite often, and since reading Rita Moreno's story in Brain Life magazine, I even pretend I am conducting some times, as she does now after losing her ability to dance. For anyone looking for a good read, Brain Life magazine is a free publication. Just go online and subscribe and I think the magazine is published bi-monthly. Very good and articles on a variety of issues.

Frances,
Sounds like alotta fun! Thanks for sharing.

For those of you who are creative, I recently read an interesting book, The Vintage Years:Finding Your Inner Artist (Writer, Musician, Visual Artist) After 60, by Francine Toder PhD. She talks about how one's brain changes post age 60 when time allows for more creative flow and things of that nature. For example, one patient who had always been creative wanted to try a different endeavor such as pottery. She took a class and became very involved in pottery, creating beautiful things. Others began playing instruments at age 90, something they had longed to do, but never tried. It was after reading this book that I realized that my current art project of pressing and drying flowers and leaves to make cards has become my "go to" art. In fact, I will be selling them (hopefully) at a private craft fair next month at my sister's upper class over 55 gated community. I anticipate that I will have much interest from others in what I am making, as I have been unable to find anything like my cards online. People I have shown my cards to seem to like the fact that they are from "nature." Sometimes I have to be careful when I am out collecting flowers and leaves because I usually end up having more than what I can press, even though I have made 20 flower presses myself.
In any event, the book is very good.

Acute depression, or grief which doesn't heal, can't usually be solved by just a common sense attitude adjustment. Depression can indeed lead to suicide. Suicide is not prevented by fears of an afterlife, concerns for others, or ordinary emotional responsibilities. It can really only be helped by medical intervention. So please--if you find yourself in despair--get some formal help ASAP. A psychiatrist, medication, talking therapy, and lifestyle adjustments can help. Get your thyroid checked, and metabolic panel. I have been impacted by suicide in my family, and know others who have been too. It is like diabetes--a good attitude will not control it. This needs medical diagnosis and support.

Hi Andy.
Hugs for you and the burden you carry.

I don't know the answer/s. I am encouraged to know you have a best friend and I hope you are/continue to be encouraged by that relationship.

I don't have a best friend, but know that I am fortunate in very many ways, but that doesn't make me feel better, or feel "seen". I'm stuck, and may never really find a way to live that doesn't provide yet another source of pain from somewhere new.

To act otherwise (with others saying: "be positive!", "the glass is half full!") is too disingenuous to me. Though no one knows (or can know) our own particular pain, I live for the neverending hope that there are people, places, things I might discover, though the likelihood should seem even more remote as I age and continue to not find these safe spaces, people or outlets.

That is why I am here on Mayo Clinic Connect, and keep coming back: I see similar needs in the others who visit and post, and I am strengthened by the nonjudgmental, purely supportive posts of the Mayo Clinic Connect volunteer mentors.

I wish the same for you on your journey. Peace.

@thisismarilynb - you have given me hope that one can live on one's own terms, independent, caring, speaking one's own mind, and knowing what does and does not work for you, at any age.

I can only hope that I will retain my alertness, conscientiousness, awareness of and respect for others, and ability to manage and enjoy my own home independently as I grow in years. My privacy and personal space are highly important to me, even though I do find myself seeking, easily engaging with and energized by being around others for periods of time. Increasingly, I need time to regroup after that (nothing obvious to others, but seems to be even more important as I go along in life).

Maybe not surprisingly, (though at times it has been surprising and frustrating to me!), I have never been married, nor found a person who wanted that with me, other than 1 or 2 who were just going through the motions. So, no children, pretty much by intention, and happy that way. I guess I continue to be struggling in my internal life - all my life - because of what I have only recently been able to pin down as basic early-life needs not being met (though again you would NEVER know it to meet me, and I come from what others would deem a most successful, respectable and 'close' family).

Well, it's a trying day, even though it's sunny outside (and NO, I do not want to take a walk outside!