A couple knitting novels

I love to read and I love to knit, so recently I combined the two and read a couple novels about knitting. 

This first one, The Friday Night Knitting Club, by Kate Jacobs, was sent to me by a friend.  We both agreed it is not likely to win a Pulitzer Prize or be studied in English classes (despite the “Readers Guide” at the end of the book).  But . . . it is a very good book.  It is a people book, the sort where you really get to know the characters, and you find yourself caring about their lives.  The primary protagonist is Georgia Walker, a single mom in New York City who owns a knitting shop.  We also get involved in the lives of the women who create the Friday Night Knitting Club, and of the people we meet through them.  We see a slice of their lives, and how they handle love, victories, and defeats.  It is a book about friendship and relationships that matter.  Even though there are sad things, this is a feel-good book, and one I very much enjoyed reading.  Jacobs gives loving descriptions of yarn and the knitting projects of the characters, but they are presented in a way that engages your emotions.

The second book is Death by Cashmere, by Sally Goldenbaum, and as you may have guessed from the title is a mystery book.  It is billed as “A Seaside Knitters Mystery,” so I assume there will be more to come.  Goldenbaum is not quite as good at characterization – we get told a variety of bits and pieces about the characters, but even by the end of the book I did not feel as if I knew them.  However, she handles the mystery very well.  There are enough clues and red herrings to keep you guessing until toward the end of the book, though I had an idea who it was by two-thirds of the way in (just not all the details).  Goldenbaum also gives vivid, dazzling descriptions of the knitting shop, the yarn, and the creations of the knitters, in a way that engages your visual sense.  And it is obvious this is an author who loves food, because meals are not just a setting for scenes, but are lovingly described down to the ingredients and the wine served. 

Publishers tend to be very aware of niche audiences and how to sell more books, and it is obvious they’ve realized knitters will buy more than just books about patterns and how to knit.  I suspect authors such as Stephanie Pearl McPhee (the Yarn Harlot ) gave them a clue about that.  Am sure there are many other knitting novels out there, and I will keep my eyes open for them.   If you have any suggestions, please leave them in the Comments!  Thank you. 

Autumn Equinox tarot spread

Last year I wrote an entry about how I like to celebrate the Autumn Equinox.  This year I wanted to do a tarot spread that addressed the concept of balance (since the Equinox is the balance between dark and light), and to play with the idea of harvest and seed planting.  So I created my own simple tarot spread.

Cards 1-4 are in a horizontal line.

Card 1:  What can I do to restore balance in my life on a Physical level?
Card 2:  What can I do to restore balance in my life on an Emotional level?
Card 3:  What can I do to restore balance in my life on a Mental level?
Card 4:  What can I do to restore balance in my life on a Spiritual level?

Card 5 is above the four previous cards.
Card 5:  What should I be harvesting at this time?

Card 6 is below the first four cards.
Card 6:  What seeds should I be planting?

Cards 1-4 are about helping a person’s life to be more in balance.  Card 5 carries the idea of what is coming to fruition in a person’s life (the results of effort over the past year, several years, or a lifetime).  Card 6 suggests activity over the next few months, the ideas or efforts we need to ponder and begin initial work on, so the project or thought can be ready to grow in the Spring and Summer.

Thanks to my recent lay-off from my job, this spread addressed my desire to regain balance in my life, plus to think about where I’ve been and where my life may be heading.  Turned out half the cards were Major Arcana, which suggests there are psychological issues underlying these changes.  I suspected the question of my thesis would show up with Card 6, and it did:  the Knight of Swords, which (among other things) I associate with energy expended on mental pursuits. 

Curious about the balance in your life?  Give this spread a try, and let me know what you think.

Site link to “The Story of Stuff”

Okay — if you’ve got high speed internet, you really need to watch “The Story of Stuff,” with Annie Leonard. 

http://www.storyofstuff.com/index.html

Annie Leonard is the live action person surrounded by cartoon images, and she explains how stuff is created, consumed, and discarded.  Even more important, she discusses the Real Cost of stuff.  I’ve just discovered the site, but apparently there is a blog that goes with it, and ideas about things we can do.  Check it out!

Good News, Bad News

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this blog entry are from me as an (almost) private citizen.  They do not in any way reflect the views of the (unnamed) agency I have been working for.  There.

Let’s start with the Bad News.  Actually, you already know the basis for the Bad News — the U.S. economy is not doing well.  That means there are a lot of people out of work, or barely making enough money to get by, and that creates stress.  Stress is a factor in depression, anxiety, and pretty much all forms of mental illness.  These barely-getting-by people can’t afford private therapy, so they go to public agencies for help.  Unfortunately, thanks to various political administrations (you know who they are, on the federal and state level), funds for health care are lacking.  So you’ve got more people seeking help, and less money to support the services to help them.  An equation that spells disaster.

The agency I work for (at the moment) has made some hard choices, because the money isn’t there.  They are laying off 6+ people.  The focus is shifting to working with clients in groups, and to crisis management.  While drop-in services will still be available during working hours, they will no longer be able to offer one-on-one long-term therapy.  This is Bad News for some clients.  The groups they offer are very good, and am happy that option exists.  They’ve been making a real difference in the lives of many clients.  However, not all clients are ready to trust, or they need more individual work, and that is going to be difficult to provide on a drop-in, see-whomever-is-available basis.  I hope I’m wrong.  But I suspect the changes are Bad News for some of the clients.

It’s also Bad News for most of the people who continue to work for the agency.  There will be fewer coworkers to help with clients.  They’ve had to discharge clients that some of them have worked with for many months.  You don’t get into the mental health field because you want to make money or wield power (well, at least not public health on the working-with-clients level).  You do it because you genuinely care about people, and you want to help them make a success of their life.  You build healing relationships with them.  And now that is ending for many before there is a real sense of resolution.  Also, the shift to crisis management is stressful.  There is pressure to find solutions for the clients on a local level within tight parameters.  So this change is Bad News for the people who continue to work there.

And it’s Bad News for most of the people who are being laid off.  Even if they are able to find new jobs, there is the stress of change, and money problems, and the sleepless nights of wondering how all this will turn out.  Even though you are told “it’s not personal,” losing your job IS very personal, because so often our jobs are tied up with our self-worth. 

Imagine by now you are wondering, Where is the Good News?  Hey, the Good News is I am one of the people being laid off!  I won’t be one of the mental health workers struggling under impossible constraints.  I’m not (yet!) one of the clients no longer able to get the personalized assistance I need.  And I have a significant other who can still support me (though things will get a little tight).   I’ve written before about needing to complete my thesis, and figure this is a kick-in-the-pants from the Universe to go ahead and do that.  I will finally have time for housework and yardwork, and more time for knitting, blogging, reading, and watching movies.  Being out of work will be temporary for me, but for now it is not a bad thing.  Inconvenient, yes.  And I will very much miss my clients.    But all things considered, I think I got the better end of the deal.

Anger management workbooks

Many of my clients come in with anger problems (and even depression is often anger turned inward), so I’ve been doing some research on healthy ways of dealing with anger.  While there may be other fine workbooks on anger out there, the two I stumbled across and am very impressed with are The Pathways to Peace Management Workbook by William Fleeman (2003) and The Anger Workbook For Women by Laura J. Petracek (2004).

 The Pathways to Peace Anger Management Workbook was developed by William Fleeman based on twelve step programs for addictions.  Fleeman has an anger problem of his own (as with other addictions, anger is something you control, not eliminate), and devised this system as a way to overcome his anger addiction.  However, these techniques have been “road tested” with a variety of people, and is beyond the “if it worked for me it can work for you” variety of self-help book.  It includes some very practical, cognitive based exercises that are simple to follow and apt to be effective.  I was very impressed with his technique for controlling memory cues, and find myself wondering if they will also work on triggers for other strong emotions, such as the reactions experienced by people with PTSD.  Am toying with reworking some of his exercises to use with symptoms of depression and anxiety.  Fleeman has borrowed ideas from other areas, and brought them together in a workbook that is readable and understandable.  I’ve used his chapter on being assertive versus being aggressive with clients.  Apparently there are also Pathways to Peace anger management groups based on his workbook (much like Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous), but when I checked their web site, I could find none in California or Oregon.  Fleeman seems to be based on the East Coast, so am guessing they may be more prevalent there.

The second book I found and have been using is The Anger Workbook For Women.  Petracek suggests the triggers for women’s anger may be different than those for men (often more relationship oriented).  Also, women are often socialized to believe anger is not appropriate, so they stuff it inside (depression) or manifest it in a more passive-aggressive manner, or feel guilt over expressing it outwardly.  Women are just as apt to get angry as men, but often don’t even realize it.  Petracek has chapters on boundaries, self-esteem, anger and our children, abuse, and the positive functions of anger.  I am especially impressed with her chapters on communication and self talk (the latter dealing with cognitive distortions), and have used them to help clients gain better communication skills and awareness of how their thoughts control their emotions. 

Both these workbooks are inexpensive, and both can be used without being part of a group or in therapy (though it may help to have someone to talk with while completing some of the exercises).  If you suspect you may have a problem with anger, whether it is controlling it or learning to express it in a healthy way, one or both of these books may be of help.

Looking for some past life or life between lives help?

Last November I wrote about my experiences with past life and life between lives readings based on the work of Michael Newton (click here).  I mentioned working with a good friend in Arcata, Judy Wohlberg.  Judy has a web site now, called Guided Soul Journey .  Judy has a real affinity for guiding people through hypnosis, and I found it easier to “stay under” with her than with any other hypnotist I’ve worked with.  Being a therapist, she is also very good at linking what you learn in the sessions to issues you may currently be dealing with, and offering ideas about how to make the information more helpful in your every day life.   I am excited we have someone of Judy’s caliber here in our remote corner of Northern California, and now have better access to the information past life and life between lives sessions can offer.

“40 Days and 40 Nights,” by Ilene Segalove

 

  Late in July my husband and I took a trip, and about 200 miles from home I discovered I’d left my drivers license at home.  Turning around and going back for it would have eaten up too much of our trip time, and I had my photo ID from work, so we continued on.  However, it meant he would have to do all the driving.

I imagine I’m not the only person who feels this way, but this episode reminded me how important the ability to drive is to my sense of self.  I’ve had my own car since I was 17, and at some point I realized how grounding that is to my feeling of self-determination.  If I lived in an area that was more bicycle friendly or had better mass transit, having a vehicle might not be quite so essential. 

Being unable to drive on this trip was the shake-up I needed to acknowlege other changes in my life.  At the time, I just knew I felt uneasy and couldn’t quite put my finger on what was wrong.   As it happened, we were at Barnes and Noble a couple hours after I’d discovered I’d forgotten my license.  I was looking at the blank journals and found 40 Days and 40 Nights: Taking Time Out For Self-Discovery, by Ilene Segalove.  I enjoy journaling, and the book looked interesting, so I bought it.  Now I’m pretty sure it was my Higher Self or intuition nudging me in the right direction.  I began reading it during the trip, but didn’t do anything with it until after we returned home.

Segalove presents a scenario where she has arrived at a point where she thinks she wants to make a change in her life.  She goes to a therapist who advises her to take time out from her life to better understand herself and what she wants.  So she commits herself to 40 days and 40 nights of taking time out, even though she can only be solitary for a week.  And it works.  She doesn’t obsess about the change she is considering, but instead makes time to think about what is important in her life and to make room for the possibility of change.  At the end of the 40 days, she knows what she wants to do.

Segalove recognizes the huge percentage of us cannot take 40 days and 40 nights out of our lives to contemplate.  Her book guides you to set an intention (what you hope to accomplish), and then offers ideas and questions to help you get in touch with who you are and what you want out of life.  The exercises are simple (one of them is to just sit in a dark room at night, with your eyes open).  Since this is a guided journal, she asks questions, and then gives you blank pages in which to answer.  (I prefered to use my own journal.)   The journal prompts range from simple (“What would you do if you had more free time?”) to more difficult (“Who has called you the most critical and dismissive names, and what were they?”).  Reading the daily exercises and doing the journaling can take as little as 10 minutes to as much as an hour, depending on what you want to say and how much time you have.  I suspect the more you invest in the process, the more you will get out of it.

The job I began back in early May has brought me into contact with a wide range of people with a wider range of values than I’ve dealt with before.  It’s caused me to question my own values — what do I believe, and why do I believe the way I do?   So I wrote, “I intend to rediscover who I am, and to organize my life to be more supportive of who I am.”  Segalove points out that intentions can be practical (“Clean up the garage”), spiritual, and/or vague. 

Every day I’ve journaled, and spent a bit of time on self-exploration.  Today my exercise is to avoid looking at the clock, though it could be breaking any other habit.  Segalove also includes prompts to have you consider whether the work you’re doing with the book has had an impact on your intention, such as changing it.  So far my intention has been strengthened.

A person could argue that they could do all this on their own without buying a book.  That is true.  However, as a counselor I am aware of the importance of a safe “container” in which to do this sort of work.  When you talk with a therapist about difficult things, the room and the relationship between the two of you provides a safe place in which to talk about things that hurt or are scary.  You know you will not be judged, so you can look at things honestly, and the potential for learning and change is great.  Segalove’s book provides a sort of safe container to explore ideas and grow as a person.  I consider it a good investment.

What would you like to change/accomplish in your life?