I’ve shared before about my struggles with depression in this post, and it seemed that acknowledging it “publicly” was the catalyst I needed to actually do something about it.  A good friend recommended a medical doctor in Tulsa who uses a natural approach, which is exactly what I’ve been hoping to find.  I’ve been stubbornly against a pharmaceutical drug because of the long-term effects it can have on your system.  Lukus recently told me about an NPR interview with a physician who explained that synthetic drugs end up working against your system.  As with any foreign entity in your body, your body’s system goes to fight the foreign element, which turns out one of two ways:  your body will become dependent on the drug and not be able to produce it’s own hormones anymore, or your body will defeat the drug rendering it useless.  But I haven’t had much luck with naturopaths either, who have offered wonky solutions like “sniffing flower essences daily and going to bed and rising with the sun.”  Sorry, but I’m not a farmer and that’s just not going to happen.

Seeing a specialist provided a lot of mixed emotions though.  On the one hand, it seemed a little insulting that my unique set of troubles that have partly defined who I am just might be merely chemical.  And what about those dark days that have brought out the artist in me and produced some of the works I’m most proud of?  Were they simply the result of a chemical imbalance rather than an authentic outpouring of my soul?  On the other hand, I wanted some legitimacy to my “issues”.  I needed to know that those mornings that I’ve lied in bed crying were not just because I’m a self-indulgent wimp who perversely enjoys feeling sorry for myself.  Basically, I wanted to be told that I was dealing with a chemical imbalance which could be easily leveled out so that I could fully be there for my family and friends, AND I wanted to be told that everything I’ve felt in the past was real and not a just a hormonal version of an acid trip.

Which turned out to be essentially what the doctor told me.  Unlike using an anti-depressant drug, using a natural approach to dealing with a chemical imbalance is less about changing how I feel and more about changing my ability to handle those feelings. After blood, urine and saliva testing, as well as keeping a journal of mood and physical fluctuations, if it turned out that there was an imbalance, specific supplements, vitamins, and perhaps certain hormones would be used to help my body rebalance itself so that the supplements would (hopefully) become unnecessary.  Along with proper sleep, diet and exercise, my God-given personality could continue to exist without the drastic roller coaster of emotions.

I’m simultaneously excited, and scared that it won’t work.  I’m anxious to get the doctor’s recommendations, and nervous that I won’t be able to follow through.  I’m terrified of continuing to share this journey with you all, and yet feel as though I need to, for my own benefit as well as the benefit of someone else out there who may be going through the same thing.  I hope too, somehow, this makes a difference in helping people understand their loved ones who deal with depression.  And most of all, if I can be so candidly selfish, I want to come back here soon and simply write that I’m truly, consistently at peace in my soul for the first time since I was seven years old.

…Scary proof.  Yup, that’s me, sporting some of my most flattering headgear, if you ask me.

This weekend, my husband and I and a few of our friends, competed in The Warrior Dash, a 3.24 mile trail run with 12 or so obstacles, the slogan of which is “The Craziest Frickin’ Day of Your Life.”  Well, I’m not so sure about that part – I am a stay-at-home mom after all, and things get puh-ret-y crazy around here.  Maybe if some of the obstacles had included running up some stairs with a two-year-old on your hip while a 5-year-old kept trying to trip you, or a dark tunnel (reminiscent of 3 a.m. in a baby’s room) where you are trying to avoid stepping on open poopy diapers…but all in all, it was definitely a super-fun, challenging, memorable day.

See, I’ve never done anything like this before.  Never went to youth camp and done a ropes course.  Never been to boot camp.  Never participated in a presidential fitness competition.  Even rope climbing in my high school P.E. class had been banned.  But I do love an adventure, and I figure everyone needs to crawl under barbed wire and hop over some walls every now and then.

So when Lukus told me about The Warrior Dash, I was thrilled.  I started training right away, and by “training”, I mean working out so hard on Monday mornings that I was too wiped out to work-out again until the following Monday.  But in between work-outs, I made sure to eat a lot of protein – I highly recommend chocolate-peanut butter pretzels.  And over all, I completely avoided learning anything about what the obstacles would be, knowing that I function better going into challenges totally blind (child-birthing for example:  we quit going to labor classes after one visit and I decided that what would happen would happen and I’d just follow directions.  It just works for me.)  I was prepared to be unprepared.

Except there was one thing I wasn’t prepared to be unprepared for – my good friend Hannah running with me.  See, Hannah’s tough as nails.  She’s in great shape and she’s very competitive (in a fun sort of way, not a jerk sort of way).  But she was signed up for a later heat than I was.  So I was very surprised and kinda nervous when all of a sudden, Hannah ran up to the starting line right next to me, and said she was going to run with me.  Oh dear, I knew I could never keep up with her, and I really didn’t want to kill myself trying, so I warned her that she might have to run without me.

When the flames burst to signal “Go!” Hannah shot ahead, and I started at what I like to call a “Zen warm-up pace”.  In other words, I’m slow.  Oh Lord, I was a hundred yards into the trail and I thought I might keel over.  People were passing me at disturbing rates.  I was sure they’d all have heart attacks and it would turn out to be a “tortoise versus the hare” victory.  Unfortunately, none of them did, and I dispelled the myth that “slow and steady wins the race.”  But that’s okay, because all I really cared about was finishing (hopefully NOT last).

I found Hannah cheerfully waiting for me at the first obstacle: 4-foot walls to hop over, intermittent with barbed wire to duck under.  Huh, not bad.  Next were a bunch of hanging tires to squeeze through.  Simple enough.  Then came a carpet of tires to knee-high through, followed by wrecked cars covered in mud to climb over.  I was still truckin’.  A smooth wood wall sloped against the hillside awaited us with a rope to climb up.  Fortunately, it wasn’t a very steep incline, so getting up the wall wasn’t a problem.  I was starting to feel like this was a little too easy.

But on the other side of that wall came the hills of Turkey Mountain.  Steep, rocky climbs that kept climbing and climbing and climbing.  Finally, we reached the half-way point which was commemorated with a horizontal cargo net crawl.  Then more hills.  I’m pretty good at just keeping on putting one foot in front of the other, but even these hills were making my legs feel like they were no longer attached to my body and I was simply dragging them behind me.  I began an internal chant of “My legs have to do, what I tell them to do.  My legs have to do, what I tell them to do” – part of my zen-ness (so long as you ignore the hyperventilating).

When the trail leveled out, there was a big, dirty pond waiting for us with several logs to somehow get over.  Hannah and I got into the chilly water together and discovered that it was quite refreshing after those sweaty climbs.  We fumbled around with the slippery, rolling logs, but we did get over them, and my big contribution to Hannah was yelling at her to keep her mouth shut when I noticed her spitting muddy water out of her mouth.  It’s all about the teamwork, folks.  When we pulled ourselves out, the mud in our tennis shoes felt like cement, and the cold water had tightened my muscles.  Immediately, there was a cargo net to climb over and down, and then IT was there:  the big rope climb.

The first rope climb wall had been at only a slight slope.  But this sheer wall was at about a 45 degree angle with only a rope to pull yourself up with.  Anyone who knows me knows that I have the upper body strength of Raggedy Ann, but my legs could probably snap the neck of a horse.  Okay, that second part is an exaggeration, but not the first.  I managed to get myself up the rope in spite of my slippery, muddy shoes, but the way I was holding the rope, I could not pull myself over the wall.  Hannah was already on the other side yelling “You can do it!”, but my hands were slipping.  She made it over to me and a very dramatic movie moment ensued:  I was gripping the rope with all my might, but my hands were slipping by the inch.  Hannah slammed her hand on the wooden beam to show me that I just needed to get my hand there.  I got my fingers to that spot, but it wasn’t enough to pull me up.  By now, Hannah was yelling, “Take my hand!  Take my hand!”  and I was shaking my head saying, “I can’t do it!  I can’t do it!”  I think I remember people looking at us thinking we were auditioning for some adventure film.  But I couldn’t hold on any longer, and I told Hannah I was going down to try again.  I held on to the rope and slid the 18 or so feet back down.  I got a good running start, made it high enough that Hannah grabbed my hand and flung me to the top of the wall.  Oh sweet victory!  That’s teamwork for ya: one person flings you over the wall when your strength is out and spares you the humiliation of not completing the race, and you tell the other person to keep their mouth shut so they don’t swallow mud – it was like Band of Brothers out there, I’m tellin’ ya.

Then it was on to a couple more climbs, some barbed wire crawling, and mud pool wading.  At last, there were two small fire jumps and the finish line, where Hannah linked her arm with mine and we crossed the line just under 57 minutes.  I had finished, I had finished under an hour, I had finished as not the last person, and I had managed to keep my viking helmet on the whole time too.  Sweet, muddy victory never tasted so good.  Especially since there were bananas at the end.

I must say, I highly recommend attempting something you’ve never done before without preparing for it whatsoever.  You might amaze yourself.  Just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and it helps to have a friend who can fling you over walls and remind you to keep your mouth shut (even if mud isn’t involved).

This morning I woke up on my closet floor, nearly suffocating and mangled in the most bizarre position as I peeled a pink stiletto shoe off my cheek and pulled my feet out from among a pile of dirty clothes.  I pulled off the Toy Story beach towel that had served as my blanket (because no matter how hot I am, I cannot sleep without being covered up) and had to explain to my 4-year-old (who had awoken from a bad dream) why Mommy was sleeping on the floor of our master bedroom closet.  I sent her to my bed to snuggle next to her completely zonked dad while I returned to my stuffy cave among gym clothes, a fire extinguisher, and a basket of clean towels (minus the Toy Story one).

My body is a rebellious thing, and this dang Oklahoma heat tsunami is stirring an all-out revolt.  Whenever it’s this hot, it makes me sleepy everywhere I go – I’m sleepy when I’m driving, I’m sleepy when I’m sitting in the inadequately air-conditioned cafe, I’m even sleepy while swimming in the bath water that was once our cool, refreshing pool.  I’m sleepy all the way up until I get into bed, and then suddenly, I’m too hot to sleep.  Our central air-conditioning can’t keep up with this many consecutive days of +100 degree heat, and not even the secondary portable a/c unit, nor the two fans blowing on “high” accomplish anything more than keeping us alive – alive, but perpetually sticky.

Fed up as I was, I grabbed a book (The Reading Promise, in case you were wondering), and headed to the closet with my pillow to read for a bit, so as not to disturb Lukus with the light.  You have no idea how generous this was of me, considering how I begin to feel angry and vindictive toward my blissfully unaware husband who goes to sleep within five minutes of closing his eyes every. single. night.  It requires every cell in my body to cooperate to not kick him square in the back so he can suffer with me.  Misery loves company, after all.

It was even stuffier in the closet, but for some reason, the change of environment made it not quite as frustrating.  Trying to sleep when you’re bone-tired, but unable to take the plunge into dreamland is enough to drive anyone looney, which is why sleep deprivation is one of the most popular torture methods used by “civilized” nations.  Besides, like I said, my body is a rebel (a CAT-scan of my internal organs would surely display piercings, blue hair, and an anarchy tattoo across my pancreas), so I decided to stay awake, which of course, FINALLY, put me to sleep.

Which is how my daughter, and later my husband, came to find me curled up on the floor with a big, grinning Woody (from Toy Story, remember, you foul-minded heathens?).  I don’t have a section on my blog titled “Healthy Bodies” because I have all kinds of clever tips on how to stay healthy, and by proxy, happy.  I have a section on my blog titled “Healthy Bodies” because I’m a sucker for ironic humor, and because this blog is about me learning, not me teaching.

I’m learning how to use reverse psychology on my toddler body that throws temper tantrums whenever it wants Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, or doesn’t want to go to bed at bedtime.  I’m learning how to assert my will and do whatever it takes so that my body will conform to what’s best and not merely what it wants.  We are twain beings, each part dueling for preeminence over the other – it’s the whole Romans 8 thing at play.  So on top of it all, I’m learning to use scripture (“He (or she) shall lie down, and her sleep shall be sweet,” Proverbs 3:24) and meditation to effect change in my spirit, which will change my mind, which will change my brain, which will (hopefully) change my body and it’s chemistry.  That’s no Tom Cruise-ism – whether anyone wants to acknowledge that it’s a biblical source or not, spiritual meditation is becoming more and more scientifically accepted as having massive health benefits.

So I’ve had this list of little things I can do to move toward a more healthy life.  I’ll share it with you all in coming posts, but at first, it didn’t include first addressing my spirit or my mind.  In fact, the first priority I had listed toward promoting my health was “Get some good sleep every night”.  Ha!  The irony strikes again.  With irony being one of the hallmarks of my life, I’m quite confident that as I attempt more time in my “prayer & meditation closet”, I’ll probably be waking up with pink stilettos stuck to my face a lot more often.  Oh well, a girl’s gotta sleep somehow.

So tell me, are you using any meditative techniques in your life?  Does it seem to work?  Where is the weirdest place you’ve ever woken up?

One of the most difficult things about being a mom, in my opinion, is feeling tied to the house all the time and wondering if you’ll ever see another grown-up or piece of civilization again.  After a while, as awful as it sounds, staying at home with the kids starts feeling like a prison sentence.

But the other most difficult things for a mom is finding the time and motivation to work-out.  This week, I decided to kill two birds with one stone and so I joined the Y.  Getting up at 6 a.m. to work-out to a video in my living room isn’t all that enticing, BUT getting up at 6 a.m. to get-out-of-this-dang-house-and-cross-paths-with-live-human-adults-and-a-view-of-an-awakening-city is MUCH more motivating.

I’ve had a membership with the Y before, and I’ve always been the most successful at working out when I belong to a good gym, versus doing at-home work-outs.  But each time I’ve ended up quitting my membership after several months because I start thinking that I can save that money and work-out at home.  Ha!  That’s a laugh and a half.  Obviously I’m getting older because it takes getting older to finally realize what drives you on the inside.  I’ve finally come to the conclusion that the membership costs are worth it.  So I finally bit the bullet, signed up last night, and awoke bright and early for my work-out this morning.

But it was so much more than just a work-out.  The heat during the day here in Oklahoma has been absolutely oppressive – even our pool feels like bath water.  But at 6 a.m., it’s not so bad.  I’ve missed seeing the big blue sky as I stand over the floor vents in my house, curtains all closed up, just to stay cool.  Our Downtown Y is pretty nice – all modern architecture with great big windows looking out toward a nice part of the city, greenbelts in the foreground – it’s a very aesthetically pleasing place to go first thing in the morning.  And my morning drive was quiet; no “Mama, hi!  Mama, hi!  Mama, hi!  Mama, hi!”  I’ve counted before, and Eisley has literally repeated the same phrase to me 27 consecutive times before she starts on a new phrase.  Oh the sweet quiet inside my car with only the hum of pavement going by!  This I can do.

With all of my big plans for getting in back in shape, I’ve just never paid enough attention before to what actually works for me.  But I’m figuring it out now, and my body, soul, and even my family are thanking me because I come back home ready to tackle the day and have some fun with my wee ones.

What works for you?  Jogging with a friend?  Attending a boot camp?  As long as you’ve got some good jams in your Ipod you’re ready for anything?  Is the only way you’ll ever work-out if you have at-home DVD’s?  When are you most successful at staying active and healthy?