The State Of My Mental Health Can Be Seen In The State Of My Toes

I know I’ve made jokes about this in the past, but I could easily get addicted to pedicures.

Now, for you men who are reading this...don’t think this is just a girl thing.  Any guy who has had a pedicure before will tell you he’ll be back for more.  And any woman will tell you...we wish you would get them more often.

That sound of Velcro as your heels hit the sheets is not as endearing as you might think.

Before my husband died, I had had one pedicure in my entire life.  I am usually not embarrassed to say that I’m a late bloomer in most areas, but the fact that I hit my 30s without ever getting my feet buffed and polished is just shameful.  And even after I had that first one...I still don’t think I really got into them until after my husband died.

Once he was gone, if you listened closely, you could hear my tires screech to a halt at the sight of that one, magical word.

Nails.

I’ve often said that I’m surprised that during that first year without him, my toenails didn’t just surrender and fall off.  If I had a spare 45 minutes without my kids, you would find me in a chair, feet soaking, contemplating if I just wanted to vibrate or if the day was bad enough that I needed the back roller.

In fact, I once joked during a speech that you could tell my mental state by the condition of my toes.  If they looked chipped and raggedy, you’d know that I was doing well.  If you could look at my feet and see your reflection, you’d know that my next call would be to my therapist.

I haven’t treated myself to a pedicure in the longest time.  I just haven’t had time.  But today, I finally went.  And with the first whiff of cuticle oil and polish...it suddenly hit me why I was there so often that first year.

Getting a pedicure is a luxury.  It’s not like when you go in to get your hair done...that’s necessary.  It’s not even like when you go in to get a massage because that usually indicates that you have a knot somewhere that won’t go away without some 100 lb. girl putting 200 lbs. of pressure on a spot that will have you biting that headrest you’re smearing your make-up all over.

A pedicure is, in most cases, completely unnecessary.  I used to think that my attraction to getting my feet “did” was because at a time in my life when I couldn’t make any decisions...I could choose a color for my toenails and feel like I’d accomplished something.  And if I didn’t like my decision, I could go back the very next day and get it changed.

There are very few decisions in life that can be changed with a cotton ball and some alcohol.  So that was a big comfort.

But today, after abstaining for way too long...I realized there is more to it than that.

When I walked into the nail salon, I almost teared up.  It was like I had finally made it back to the mothership.  No kids asking me for a cup of ice, no...crushed ice, Mom.  No email pinging.  And, thankfully (and who would ever have thought I would be thankful for this)...not one person in there cared about my day.

In most nail salons, they don’t talk to you.  They don’t ask you how you’re doing and if they do, I don’t think they really expect you to answer.  Any place else you go...the grocery store, the mall, even the hair salon...they’ll ask you how you’re doing and expect the perfunctory “I’m fine” and don’t want to hear, “Well, my dog shit all over my house, the school bus never showed up this morning, and I spent the better part of my day trying to get my dead husband’s name off my caller ID.”   

When you walk into the nail salon, you say what you want to have done, and all they say is “pick a color” while they fill up a warm basin of water.

Ohhhh...the colors.  I know that my dream job would be to write for the Onion some day, but on the weekends I’d like to moonlight as a Polish Namer for O.P.I.  Not-So-Bora-Bor-ing Pink.  I’m Not Really A Waitress.  Baby It’s Coal Outside.

What a risk-taker I feel like when I walk out with toes that have been temporarily named “Hooker in a Red Dress”! 

I feel embarrassed to admit this, but I once quit going to a very nice nail salon because the owners often had their 2-year-old wandering around.

Of anyone, I should understand the need for someone to bring their kid to work.  Seldom does a conference call go by at my house without someone in the back ground screaming, “MOM!  We’re out of toilet paper and I’ve been sitting here for like an hour!  I could’ve drip-dried by now!”

This is when I have to pause the conversation, grab a toilet roll that was completely within the reach of my child, and place it calmly on the roller.

But when I’m out for my 45 minutes of pretending I’m not a mom...actually pretending I’m not much of anybody...I don’t want to have to smile politely as a 2-year-old tries to show me his prize sippy cup.

So I had to make a change, even though my conscious has been bothering me ever since because I’m not helping to fund that child’s college eduation.

Now the place I go to has jewelry for sale everywhere, so I can look around and imagine what necklace would go perfectly with my new toes.  There is a chick-flick on the TV with subtitles so that the sound doesn’t interfere with the 80s music that’s playing.  No one talks to me.  No one even knows my name.  And not one person asks me to explain my current mental state.

Maybe that’s the OPI name I’ll come up with:  “I’m A Widow.  Look At My Toes And You’ll See I’m Fine.”

I’m envisioning electric blue so no one will miss it.



For more blogs and articles from other widow(er) writers, join us at www.theWiddahood.com!  


© Catherine Tidd 2011

Hey! Where's the Fire?

Whew.  What a day yesterday. 

I hadn’t slept well the night before so I was pretty much operating in a fog anyway.  My kids had gone to stay with my parents the day before so that I could get some work done (they’re on spring break).  After finally falling asleep at 3 AM on Wednesday night, I was looking forward to picking up the kids and just spending a quiet day at home on Thursday.

That wasn’t meant to be. 

First of all, after the kids got home, I noticed a really strange man I’d never seen before, wandering around the neighborhood.  He was wearing a backpack and carrying a small camera and kept wandering around the streets around my house, stopping every once in awhile in someone’s driveway, looking, and then walking on.

If I didn’t know better, I would have sworn he was casing the neighborhood.

I talked to my neighbor across the street who was having a garage sale.  She said she hadn’t noticed him, but as we were talking, he came up the street again.  Her son said hi to him, but he didn’t make eye contact and just kept walking

I made the grown-up decision to call the non-emergency line at the police department and have them come out and take a look.

About 15 minutes after that, my neighbor called me and said, “You should step outside.  Do you smell smoke?”

I had noticed the faint smell when I was out talking with her a little earlier, but this time when I walked out...I could barely breathe.  It was obvious that it was blowing in from somewhere as the street kept getting foggier and foggier.

But from where?

She decided to pack up her garage sale and go drive around to see if she could find the source.  In the meantime, I got online to see if there was something going on around me.

Nothing.

About 10 minutes later, my neighbor called to inform me that a grass fire had broken out in the (very) dry land just to the south of our neighborhood.  She said that once she drove to the edge of the area...she couldn’t see anything through the smoke.  I wasn’t panicking quite yet because I kept thinking, “If we’re really in danger, surely they’ll do a reverse 911 or something.”

That changed when she told me the police had barricaded the entrance to the neighborhood and weren’t letting anyone come back in.

Screw the reverse 911.  I’m outta here.

I told the kids to dump the bags they had had packed the night before and put 3 days worth of clothes in them.  It was then that I really started to notice how full of smoke the inside of my house was.  I ran around and grabbed my computer (because it has pictures on it), my video camera bag (because it had the tapes in it), and my photo album of my husband that I keep next to my bed.  I threw clothes in a bag and pets in the car and we were bolting out of our house within about 10 minutes.

As we started getting out of our neighborhood, cars were flooding the main road, packed with dogs and boxes.  There was a line of cars trying to get in and the flashing emergency lights looked unusually bright through the fog of smoke.

And like a 5-year-old...I ran to my parents’ house.

By the time we got there, the news was reporting on the 5:00 news that the fire had burned 120 acres.

By the 6:00 news it had burned over 1200 acres. 

Forty mile an hour winds and hardly any moisture this winter has made the state of Colorado the ideal place for a beginner fire to really show what it’s made of.  I watched in utter disbelief, the live shots of the area surrounding my neighborhood turn black and charred.  I watched as the flames barreled through the dry grass to within feet of a home...where a firefighter would be spraying it down to spare it.

No homes were destroyed in this fire.  Unbelievable.

The news crews showed shots of it snowing...yes, snowing...because the fire had gotten so hot, it was like it was creating its own weather system.  I wanted to hug the meteorologist through the TV when she said the winds had shifted and would start dying down within the next few hours.

What happened yesterday has been a fear of mine since my husband died.  I mean a fire...it’s a very real fear for everyone.  But I always wondered what would happen if I was ever faced with an emergency like that.  I am one adult taking responsibility for three kids and, if I can manage it in an emergency situation, two pets.  I’ve always wondered if I had it in me to do what needed to be done.

As with many things in widowhood, we get tested and, most of the time, we exceed our own expectations.  Once the moment of panic is gone, there is usually a moment where we just feel...well...proud of ourselves for doing what needed to be done and stepping up to the challenge.  We all know that life can change in an instant and as I drove away from my house yesterday, I knew that if it should all go up in smoke...I would make sure that we would still be okay.

Today, I went to the ridge at the southern border of my neighborhood and took in the black landscape where a few spots are still smoking (the fire is 95% contained).  Until I saw it, about 2 miles from my house, I don’t think I realized how close to the “edge” we really were.  As scary as it was to look at, I took a deep breath of the smoky air and knew that I had done it.  The question “what would you pack if you only had 5 minutes to get out of your house?” had been asked and answered.

And as my 5-year-old reached for my hand in the dark last night while we fell asleep at my parents’ house...I knew I had gotten everything that I needed.

For more blogs and articles from other widow(er) writers, join us at www.theWiddahood.com!  


© Catherine Tidd 2011

I'm Not Feeling Like Myself. Guess I'll Go Talk To My...HORSE???

"There is something about the outside of a horse that's good for the inside of a man."

                 ~Winston Churchill

Yesterday the kids and I had a little family time and did something that most people have probably not even heard of.

We received grief therapy.  From a horse.

Well, not directly from a horse.  He didn’t have his diploma framed and mounted in the barn or an overstuffed couch right next to the trough.  He wasn’t like Mr. Ed with a PhD.  He required a little assistance from his buddy, Michael Dawson, a licensed grief therapist here in Colorado.  Michael has been using horses in his therapy for both children and adults for the past 10 years through his organization the Philippi Center.

I heard from Michael a couple of weeks ago after I sent him a letter, informing him that his organization was on the resources list for www.theWiddahood.com.  He sent me an email, asking if I would be willing to come in and talk to him a little bit about what he does.

I felt an instant connection with Michael who admitted that he had never lost a spouse, but agreed with my theory that loss is really losing the life you thought you were going to have...which can mean many things to many people.  He explained to me that he understood that because he has a daughter who is physically limited in ways that most people aren’t. 

And he found a new way to connect with her.  Through horses.

We sat and talked for almost 2 hours about what he does, but that wasn’t enough for me.  I wanted to see it and experience for myself what it was like to have an unbiased and understanding horse, listen to me and take some of my problems away.  Since my kids are on Spring Break this week and I was so anxious to meet with Michael, I asked if my kids could come along as well.  He immediately agreed, telling me that he would structure a demonstration based around my family.

My kids were so excited when I told them we were going to spend the afternoon on a farm.  I told them, “We’re going to go talk to some horses about Daddy.”

Now, most people would give you a strange look if you announced that was going to be their Monday afternoon activity.  But my kids nodded like that was the most normal thing in the world.

Michael started us off slowly, in a room, sitting around in a circle saying our names, ages, and the special person who died.  Of course, since it was just my family, we all know these things about each other, but I had forgotten how powerful it can be just to say these basics out loud.

We then moved out to the ring and met Jazz and Charlie.  Michael seemed to know these horses completely, like they were old friends.

“Now, Charlie’s a worrier,” he said.  “Jazz is more easy-going.  But everyone responds differently to different personalities.”

Boy...you got that right.

We completed different exercises...some talking about feelings, some problem-solving with the horses (how DO you get a horse from point A to point B?).  With the quiet distraction of the horses, we talked about feelings that we have, some good and some bad, and at the end of our short session, we got out the brushes and started grooming the horses.

Now, I’m not a horse person, so I’ve never done this before.  But I hope it’s not the last time I do it.  It’s almost hypnotic and one of the most calming things I’ve ever done. 

“I once had a woman grooming the horse and start talking about her loss,” Michael said.  “By the end of the session, she didn’t even remember all that she had said.”

I can see how that might happen.

And as my oldest daughter and I gently brushed the horse together and talked to Michael about my husband, I could tell that Jazz was feeling it too. 

Because he almost fell asleep.

This was such an amazing and almost spiritual experience...I just can’t keep it to myself.  As we worked through the activities, I talked to Michael about how he would feel if I asked other widows if they could join us for a weekend of Horses Healing Grief this summer.

And he agreed.

In the next week, Michael and I are going to talk about dates for making this happen.  Depending on the interest, we are hoping that we can break this up into 2 different sessions:  One for widow(er)s and one for widow(er)s and their families, for those people who would like to participate with their children and make it a family weekend. 

During the family weekend, activities will be broken out so that widow(er)s will work together...and the kids will be in a separate group.  This gives the widow(er)s a chance to connect with each other (something that we all desperately need) and an opportunity for the kids to talk and chase that word “normal” once again.

I know that many of you have emailed me with your interest in a Widow’s Retreat weekend this summer as well.  And that’s still going to happen.  What we are talking about are three different weekends for you to choose from, depending on where your interest is.  And in the next week, I will be letting you know about the details of all of these weekends, hopefully giving you time to make your summer plans.

We’ve talked about this before...help in widowhood seems to come from unexpected places.  Friends we’ve never considered “close” before have become the people we lean on the most.  Activities that never interested us before become something we look forward to.  And in trying to find anything that might help us fight the Grief Monster, we sometimes have to look in unexpected places.

But I will admit:  I never thought I’d find help, healing, and renewal in a barn.

For more information about this series of Widow’s Retreats, please email catherine@thewiddahood.com  Our goal is to keep these groups small so that we can truly connect, but we will do our best to accommodate all of those who are interested.



For more blogs and articles from other widow(er) writers, join us at www.theWiddahood.com!  


© Catherine Tidd 2011