Sonia Connolly

Relaxation is surrender, not to someone else, but to our present truth.
Content Note: brief child rape example.
Relax For Your Life

With US Thanksgiving and Chanukah at the end of this month, and more holidays next month, remember that you can Choose Your Traditions.

New book responses at Curious, Healing. Have you read these? Comments welcome!
"The Mood Cure" by Julia Ross
"The Body Has a Mind of Its Own" by Sandra Blakeslee and Matthew Blakeslee

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Curious, Healing is a blog, and you're welcome to comment there or here about the books. The articles don't have a comment section. You're welcome to comment here or send me email with any thoughts.

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On my evening walk, a half-grown sleek black cat with one white paw and half a white nose came running toward me, tail vertical. Sometimes cats run right past me, intent on their own business, but this one stopped in front of me with an imperious high pitched mew. I squatted down and extended a friendly fist. She walked around behind me - and leaped lightly onto my back, purring warmly in my ear. I cautiously stood up, and she stayed up there, not even digging in with her claws.

I got her down and took a look at her collar. "Frannie" and I hung out a bit longer and she jumped up on my back again, draping herself around my neck. We parted ways when a couple of pedestrians approached with a dog. I didn't want her startled with claws in close proximity to my head.

I walked back up that way later, but didn't see her. I might just walk down that block again at evening time, looking around hopefully for the most sociable cat to strangers I've ever met.

It's suddenly rainy season in Portland, so I'm suddenly wearing a long raincoat when I get a ride with someone. I stuck my cell phone in my pocket. When I got home, I noticed the outer screen (yes, I still have a flip phone) was partly blank, partly cracked under the outer covering, and still working over in one corner. The inside works fine. I stared at it for a while, and then remembered ever so gently shutting the car door on a corner of my coat, and then readjusting.

Oops. Never done that before, in nearly 15 years of cell phone ownership! (Maybe it helps not to have owned a car for 11 of those years.)

Turns out I can get a newer version of the same phone for $15 from Consumer Cellular. Yay. Seems like a small price to pay for that mistake! I thought about upgrading to something with easier texting, but it's not worth $100 to me for an Android phone. Sounds like too much work to have another computer to maintain.

Pretty amazing that the phone still works and only the outer screen is (mostly) non-functional.

Cumbrian sheep scoring numbers. You're welcome!

(via Amy Bennett)

Anyone know where the title quote comes from? I've seen it attributed as a Hopi prayer and more generally as a Native American prayer, but not from an original source.

I reach for that phrase when it seems like all support has frayed away yet again.

I've been feeling overwhelmed by my garden for a while now. Plants grow in Portland. Butterfly "bushes" I didn't plant taking over half the back yard. A smoke "bush" I did plant turning enthusiastically into a smoke tree in the front yard. Both are beautiful, but are crowding out other beautiful plants.

I had the butterfly trees taken out a few weeks ago. I've been fretting about what to do with the smoke tree. Today while I was out weeding, I ended up chatting with a man passing by pushing a lawn mower. Walter grew up in the neighborhood, moved away, moved back, and now he's doing some landscaping for some of the elderly folks around. He came back by later on an electric scooter with pedals (how cool!).

As the conversation went along I mentioned my smoke tree dilemma, and he kindly lopped off all the big branches with my loppers, for which I happily paid him. Yay! Help unknown was on the way. Maybe he can also help with some of the other overwhelming tasks.

It hasn't rained in Portland for 6 weeks. Yesterday I planted snap peas, snow peas, kale, mustard greens, and dill in the big raised bed. Then I put all my gardening tools away.

This morning I was about to go out and water everything, when I realized it was raining. Yay! The seeds got a nice gentle soaking, the rest of the garden also got watered, and it was all timed just right.

This evening I was less happy with the rain during an organized bike ride in the west hills. I'm out of the habit of bringing rain pants everywhere! But it let up after a bit and it wasn't too cold and the ride was lovely. Views, trees, elegant houses.

Maybe I'll try to motivate myself to do it more often. It's a half-hour of riding across town in gritchy traffic before I get to the peaceful gentle climb, but my body does so love biking uphill. Yummy endorphins. I think I need to balance three solid days of programming at the computer with more movement.

George Zimmerman was acquitted. I am honestly surprised. And sick to my stomach.

ETA: I've been seeing around, "If you're surprised, you're not paying attention." I knew it was bad, I just didn't know it was this bad. Maybe I'm not paying enough attention.

Survivors of sexual assault face denial, hostility, and pressure to consider themselves less important than the perpetrator.
Effects of Sexual Assault

New book responses at Curious, Healing. Have you read these? Comments welcome!
"Waking" by Matthew Sanford
"The Trauma Spectrum" by Robert Scaer

Curious, Healing is a blog, and you're welcome to comment there or here about the books. The articles don't have a comment section. You're welcome to comment here or send me email with any thoughts.

If you want the monthly newsletter in your inbox, along with news about my practice, you can subscribe here.

I've been thinking about pretty privilege. I feel like I've somewhat abruptly lost whatever part I had, gaining weight on top of achieving middle age and looking at people crookedly out of one eye.

I'm paying attention to how I use "ugly." "The fight got ugly." "An ugly solution." "Ugly behavior." None of those are about a lack of visible pulchritude. They speak to our culture's pervasive idea that badness is monstrous and monsters are ugly. I veered away from it in a last-minute revision a while back in an article title, "Apologies: Good, Bad, and Abusive." Now I'm trying to excise that usage more thoroughly from my speech and thoughts.

Visual ugliness can arise from genes; from a lack of time, energy, or skill for socially approved grooming; from external or internal scars; from years lived; from the unaccustomed eye of the beholder. Ugliness is in part a lack of symmetry and in part a social construct. None of those tell you anything about a person's ethics or accomplishments.

"Beautiful" can be a problem, too. "Beautifully done," sounds like an innocent synonym for "Well done," but it reinforces our idea that beauty and goodness and skill go together.

Some of the most dangerous badly-behaved people are very pleasant to look at, and can demonstrate excellent manners when it suits them.

Good-bye sweetness, little cat, Balkan vocal coach, buttery-purr, plush fur, head-butting, snuggly, deaf, loving, stubborn companion of my heart.