In These Times

 

 

 

H O P I — Hopi Indian Leader White Eagle commented on the situation we are in...I saw this this morning and knew in my heart and soul to share it!  “This moment that mankind is experiencing now can be seen as either a door or a hole. The decision to fall into the hole or go through the door is yours. If you absorb information 24 hours a day, with negative energy, constantly nervous, and pessimistic, you will fall into this hole.

But if you take the opportunity to look at yourself, use the time to rethink life and death, to care for yourself and others, you are walking through the portal.

Keep your home, keep your body safe. Connect with your spiritual home. When you take care of yourself, you take care of everyone else.

Don't underestimate the spiritual dimension of this crisis. Take the perspective of an eagle that sees everything from above with a broader perspective. There is a social issue in this crisis but also a spiritual issue. They both go hand in hand.

Without the social dimension we fall into bigotry. Without the spiritual dimension, we perish in pessimism and meaninglessness.

you ready to pass this crisis. Pack your toolbox and use all the tools at your disposal.

Learn the resistance from the example of the Indian and African people: We are and still are being threatened, extinct. But we never stopped singing, dancing, building bonfires and having joy.

Don't feel guilty for feeling happy in these difficult times. It doesn't help at all to be sad or angry. Resistance is resistance through joy!

You have every right to be strong and positive. And there's no other way to do this than by adopting a beautiful, cheerful and empathetic attitude.

This has nothing to do with alienation (ignorance of the world) - It's a resistance strategy.

When we enter the door, we are given a new worldview because we have faced our fears and overcome adversity. That's all you can do now:

- Seek solace in the storm

- Keep calm, pray daily

- Make it a habit to meet the Holy everywhere, everyday.

Show resistance through art, joy, trust and love.” 

 

~Hopi Indian Chief White Eagle

Rev. Dr. Paul Luftenegger

www.beekindness.com

Music to heal the world

 

Alcoholism

Answers will never be at the 

bottom of an empty bottle. 

As the child of 2 recovered alcoholic parents, 

I know this all too well.

 

HELP IS OUT THERE....

https://www.aa.org

Everyone is going through something that we can’t see

On November 5th, right after halftime against the Hawks, I had a panic attack.
It came out of nowhere. I’d never had one before. I didn’t even know if they were real. But it was real — as real as a broken hand or a sprained ankle. Since that day, almost everything about the way I think about my mental health has changed.

I’ve never been comfortable sharing much about myself. I turned 29 in September and for pretty much 29 years of my life I have been protective about anything and everything in my inner life. I was comfortable talking about basketball — but that came natural. It was much harder to share personal stuff, and looking back now I know I could have really benefited from having someone to talk to over the years. But I didn’t share — not to my family, not to my best friends, not in public. Today, I’ve realized I need to change that. I want to share some of my thoughts about my panic attack and what’s happened since. If you’re suffering silently like I was, then you know how it can feel like nobody really gets it. Partly, I want to do it for me, but mostly, I want to do it because people don’t talk about mental health enough. And men and boys are probably the farthest behind. 
 
I know it from experience. Growing up, you figure out really quickly how a boy is supposed to act. You learn what it takes to “be a man.” It’s like a playbook: Be strong. Don’t talk about your feelings. Get through it on your own. So for 29 years of my life, I followed that playbook. And look, I’m probably not telling you anything new here. These values about men and toughness are so ordinary that they’re everywhere … and invisible at the same time, surrounding us like air or water. They’re a lot like depression or anxiety in that way.

So for 29 years, I thought about mental health as someone else’s problem. Sure, I knew on some level that some people benefited from asking for help or opening up. I just never thought it was for me. To me, it was form of weakness that could derail my success in sports or make me seem weird or different.
Then came the panic attack.
It happened during a game. 
 
It was November 5th, two months and three days after I turned 29. We were at home against the Hawks — 10th game of the season. A perfect storm of things was about to collide. I was stressed about issues I’d been having with my family. I wasn’t sleeping well. On the court, I think the expectations for the season, combined with our 4–5 start, were weighing on me.

I knew something was wrong almost right after tip-off.
I was winded within the first few possessions. That was strange. And my game was just off. I played 15 minutes of the first half and made one basket and two free throws.
After halftime, it all hit the fan. Coach Lue called a timeout in the third quarter. When I got to the bench, I felt my heart racing faster than usual. Then I was having trouble catching my breath. It’s hard to describe, but everything was spinning, like my brain was trying to climb out of my head. The air felt thick and heavy. My mouth was like chalk. I remember our assistant coach yelling something about a defensive set. I nodded, but I didn’t hear much of what he said. By that point, I was freaking out. When I got up to walk out of the huddle, I knew I couldn’t reenter the game — like, literally couldn’t do it physically.
Coach Lue came up to me. I think he could sense something was wrong. I blurted something like, “I’ll be right back,” and I ran back to the locker room. I was running from room to room, like I was looking for something I couldn’t find. Really I was just hoping my heart would stop racing. It was like my body was trying to say to me, You’re about to die. I ended up on the floor in the training room, lying on my back, trying to get enough air to breathe. 
 
The next part was a blur. Someone from the Cavs accompanied me to the Cleveland Clinic. They ran a bunch of tests. Everything seemed to check out, which was a relief. But I remember leaving the hospital thinking, Wait … then what the hell just happened?

I was back for our next game against the Bucks two days later. We won, and I had 32. I remember how relieved I was to be back on the court and feeling more like myself. But I distinctly remember being more relieved than anything that nobody had found out why I had left the game against Atlanta. A few people in the organization knew, sure, but most people didn’t and no one had written about it.
A few more days passed. Things were going great on the court, but something was weighing on me. 
 
Why was I so concerned with people finding out?

It was a wake-up call, that moment. I’d thought the hardest part was over after I had the panic attack. It was the opposite. Now I was left wondering why it happened — and why I didn’t want to talk about it.
Call it a stigma or call it fear or insecurity — you can call it a number of things — but what I was worried about wasn’t just my own inner struggles but how difficult it was to talk about them. I didn’t want people to perceive me as somehow less reliable as a teammate, and it all went back to the playbook I’d learned growing up.
This was new territory for me, and it was pretty confusing. But I was certain about one thing: I couldn’t bury what had happened and try to move forward. As much as part of me wanted to, I couldn’t allow myself to dismiss the panic attack and everything underneath it. I didn’t want to have to deal with everything sometime in the future, when it might be worse. I knew that much.

So I did one seemingly little thing that turned out to be a big thing. The Cavs helped me find a therapist, and I set up an appointment. I gotta stop right here and just say: I’m the last person who’d have thought I’d be seeing a therapist. I remember when I was two or three years into the league, a friend asked me why NBA players didn’t see therapists. I scoffed at the idea. No way any of us is gonna talk to someone. I was 20 or 21 years old, and I’d grown up around basketball. And on basketball teams? Nobody talked about what they were struggling with on the inside. I remember thinking, What are my problems? I’m healthy. I play basketball for a living. What do I have to worry about? I’d never heard of any pro athlete talking about mental health, and I didn’t want to be the only one. I didn’t want to look weak. Honestly, I just didn’t think I needed it. It’s like the playbook said — figure it out on your own, like everyone else around me always had.

But it’s kind of strange when you think about it. In the NBA, you have trained professionals to fine-tune your life in so many areas. Coaches, trainers and nutritionists have had a presence in my life for years. But none of those people could help me in the way I needed when I was lying on the floor struggling to breathe.
Still, I went to my first appointment with the therapist with some skepticism. I had one foot out the door. But he surprised me. For one thing, basketball wasn’t the main focus. He had a sense that the NBA wasn’t the main reason I was there that day, which turned out to be refreshing. Instead, we talked about a range of non-basketball things, and I realized how many issues come from places that you may not realize until you really look into them. I think it’s easy to assume we know ourselves, but once you peel back the layers it’s amazing how much there is to still discover.

Since then, we’ve met up whenever I was back in town, probably a few times each month. One of the biggest breakthroughs happened one day in December when we got to talking about my Grandma Carol.

She was the pillar of our family. Growing up, she lived with us, and in a lot of ways she was like another parent to me and my brother and sister. She was the woman who had a shrine to each of her grandkids in her room — pictures, awards, letters pinned up on the wall. And she was someone with simple values that I admired. It was funny, I once gave her a random pair of new Nikes, and she was so blown away that she called me to say thank you a handful of times over the year that followed.
When I made the NBA, she was getting older, and I didn’t see her as often as I used to. During my sixth year with the T-Wolves, Grandma Carol made plans to visit me in Minnesota for Thanksgiving. Then right before the trip, she was hospitalized for an issue with her arteries. She had to cancel her trip. Then her condition got worse quickly, and she fell into a coma. A few days later, she was gone.
I was devastated for a long time. But I hadn’t really ever talked about it. Telling a stranger about my grandma made me see how much pain it was still causing me. Digging into it, I realized that what hurt most was not being able to say a proper goodbye. I’d never had a chance to really grieve, and I felt terrible that I hadn’t been in better touch with her in her last years. But I had buried those emotions since her passing and said to myself, I have to focus on basketball. I’ll deal with it later. Be a man.

The reason I’m telling you about my grandma isn’t really even about her. I still miss her a ton and I’m probably still grieving in a way, but I wanted to share that story because of how eye-opening it was to talk about it. In the short time I’ve been meeting with the therapist, I’ve seen the power of saying things out loud in a setting like that. And it’s not some magical process. It’s terrifying and awkward and hard, at least in my experience so far. I know you don’t just get rid of problems by talking about them, but I’ve learned that over time maybe you can better understand them and make them more manageable. Look, I’m not saying, Everyone go see a therapist. The biggest lesson for me since November wasn’t about a therapist — it was about confronting the fact that I needed help.

One of the reasons I wanted to write this comes from reading DeMar’s comments last week about depression. I’ve played against DeMar for years, but I never could’ve guessed that he was struggling with anything. It really makes you think about how we are all walking around with experiences and struggles — all kinds of things — and we sometimes think we’re the only ones going through them. The reality is that we probably have a lot in common with what our friends and colleagues and neighbors are dealing with. So I’m not saying everyone should share all their deepest secrets — not everything should be public and it’s every person’s choice. But creating a better environment for talking about mental health … that’s where we need to get to.
Because just by sharing what he shared, DeMar probably helped some people — and maybe a lot more people than we know — feel like they aren’t crazy or weird to be struggling with depression. His comments helped take some power away from that stigma, and I think that’s where the hope is. 
 
I want to make it clear that I don’t have things figured out about all of this. I’m just starting to do the hard work of getting to know myself. For 29 years, I avoided that. Now, I’m trying to be truthful with myself. I’m trying to be good to the people in my life. I’m trying to face the uncomfortable stuff in life while also enjoying, and being grateful for, the good stuff. I’m trying to embrace it all, the good, bad and ugly.
I want to end with something I’m trying to remind myself about these days: 

Everyone is going through something that we can’t see. 
 
I want to write that again: Everyone is going through something that we can’t see.
The thing is, because we can’t see it, we don’t know who’s going through what and we don’t know when and we don’t always know why. Mental health is an invisible thing, but it touches all of us at some point or another. It’s part of life. Like DeMar said, “You never know what that person is going through.”
Mental health isn’t just an athlete thing. What you do for a living doesn’t have to define who you are. This is an everyone thing. No matter what our circumstances, we’re all carrying around things that hurt — and they can hurt us if we keep them buried inside. Not talking about our inner lives robs us of really getting to know ourselves and robs us of the chance to reach out to others in need. So if you’re reading this and you’re having a hard time, no matter how big or small it seems to you, I want to remind you that you’re not weird or different for sharing what you’re going through. 
 
Just the opposite. It could be the most important thing you do. It was for me.

https://www.theplayerstribune.com/en-us/articles/kevin-love-everyone-is-going-through-something

Lightbub Moment .....

Me thinking.... 

WOW, what a lightbulb moment. 

 Not quite the word I would 

actually use... 'tragedy', 

still... it hits home for me.

Keeping His Mother's Memory Alive

 

Back when I was a child, I thought everyone's Dad baked.   I can't exactly recall
my age when it dawned on me that my Dad was an exception when it came to a
guy baking,  I would have to guess I was in my teen years before I figured that out.

I knew from an early age what Dad was a baker in the Air Force.
He used to speak of recipes that called for massive amounts of ingredients. 
40 some eggs, pounds of flour per recipe.   He even had a hard bound book of
those recipes.  

Dad could NEVER have baked alone without the assistance of my Mom.  
The credit seemed to fall to Dad, but without Mom at his side it would have
never worked.
They baked for every holiday and I can say for certain that I never ever had
a store bought Birthday cake.  

Christmas was HIS time of the year and to say baking at that time was an
obsession would be an understatement. !!!

The baking started the day after Thanksgiving. 
The first thing was his ~ Fruitcake ~.  

In a recipe book that my Uncle Rollin and Auntie Anne Rothacker compiled in 
2005, Dad added his ‘Williamsburg Style White Fruitcake’ recipe.  
Dad footnoted it saying….
“This recipe came from the Cleveland Plain Dealer in 1964. 
I have made it every year the weekend after Thanksgiving to be able
to use on Christmas eve”.

Margaret Rothacker Posted on our Family Web Site - November 30, 2003

Gil made his annual Fruit Cake yesterday,   He has been making it for 41 yrs.
He makes it on the Sat. following Thanksgiving. It usually weighs about 18 lbs.  
He wraps it in cheese cloth soaked in Harvey Bristol Cream (sherry) until Christmas.  
It costs just about $25.00 to make.  
When he first started making it in 1962 it cost about $14.00 to make.  
Prices have really gone up!!!!!,   Once we get the fruit cake done we start
on cookies. We make 15 different kinds of cookies and 2 different kinds of fudge.  
Gil mixes them all and I bake them.

I guess as long as Gil can stand up, we'll make the cookies.  

The only thing I do to make the fruit cake is I cut a lining out for the Angel Food
cake pan.   Cut it from a brown grocery bag and grease it on both sides.
We line the whole pan, tube and all.   We make up about 15 plates of cookies
and give away.   Everyone looks forward to getting them each year.  
We only give the fruit cake to   special people. The Holidays are almost here.

I don't do Christmas shopping anymore, give the our kids money and they buy
for themselves and then they go out shopping for the Grandchildren,
except the 3 older ones, they shop for themselves.
They wrap everything for the Grandkids and bring it all here for Christmas Eve.
It will be here before we know it  !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We don't know what we'll do for Vinny, we don't have an address for him
and it is too late to send a care package for him to have it by Christmas.  
Guess we'll just send a package whenever we get an address.  
I really feel bad for him.   A heck of a Christmas he'll have....
Being away from home, and not getting anything.......  
He knows our love and prayers are with him.....

(Vincent had arrived in Iraq just a few days before Mom wrote this)
In her note, Mom said 1962 and Dad wrote he got the recipe out of the paper in 1964.
I’m not certain, but maybe he made a different fruitcake in 1962 – 63. 

Dad kept yearly hand written lists of the Christmas holiday cookies they made. In 2007 when Dad was 77 and Mom 75 they baked 97.3 dozen – 1168 total cookies. The season of 2008 was the last year Dad would bake.    In that year they did make the choice to cut back.    They baked 80.9 dozen – 971 cookies.

 Mother and I talked often about his holiday baking mania.   In their later years it really took a huge physical toll on both of them.   STILL they baked. !!!

 With Dad’s passing in early November of 2009 he did not have to live knowing he had failed his baking traditions.   For as long as he could HE DID IT. !!!!

I had warned my Dad many years in advance that I would not be carrying on his Fruitcake tradition.    It was only in later years that I even ate a bite of it.    My hubby Michael and children are not huge fans of fruitcake.   My sister in law BethAnn had gotten Dad’s fruitcake recipe from him in advance of his passing.    HE KNEW it would LIVE ON !!!!   Last Christmas eve, Dad would have been bursting with pride at BethAnn’s fruitcake !!!

 Mom and I decided last year that neither of us felt like doing any Christmas cookies. We agreed for the Christmas of 2010 we would work together and make some of the family favorites.   God had other plans, and Mom joined Dad when she passed on February 20, 2010.

In the afternoon of November 30^th, I had been at Mom and Dad’s house with Brian
and Nicole.   The kids had come over with me to help me set up some furniture to
stage the home.   It’s surreal for me to be in their house.   I can hear the laughter
of family gatherings, and as I turn corners I expect to see or hear them.
While driving away, I was thinking to myself … ‘WHY was Dad so driven about
his Christmas baking’ ?      THEN it came to me ….. 

You see it was not the Air Force that gave my Father his love of baking.   It was
his Mother – Laura Cowles Rothacker.    I was 4 years old that June of 1962
when my  Grandmother died.  Grandma was 58.   My Dad was 32 that June.  
Sometime before that Christmas season in 1962 Mom transcribed
Grandma Laura’s recipes and typed them out on large index cards.  

WHY IT NEVER HIT ME SO FULLY UNTIL THIS YEAR I DON’T KNOW !

It was my Dad keeping his Mother’s memory alive !!!!!   

That's the reason he was so driven about the baking.  

That next day, I scanned over 30 pages of holiday recipes to share with the family.

On that afternoon of the 30^th I also decided that I was going to CELEBRATE these
coming holidays.    It’s what Mom and Dad would both want.  !!!

Dad's last Fruitcake - Photo taken Christmas eve 2008.

Sending Love and Light

Some of you reading this post do know Hallie and family personally.   If you are like me, you 'know' Hallie and her family through the World Wide Web. 

I first 'met' Hallie back in 2007 when she joined the Air Force Parents online support group.
  Others reading this have come to know her through her blog, The Wonderful World of Wieners.

Back in 2007 Hallie shared with the AF group that she 'started her blog before CJ left to keep him updated on us and everyone else updated on him'.

Certainly that she did !!  Her open sharing of her family life with John, CJ, Connor, Danielle (CJ's fiancee) and the Wieners has endeared hundreds of followers.

On April 15th, with CJ's suicide, their world went dark.   Word started to spead that CJ had died.  On the AF support group, on Face Book.    It would be 3 weeks after that Hallie publicly stated on her Face Book page......        "The song was wrong, suicide is not painless".

Hallie has shared the raw and agonizing emotions of a Mothers loss of her son.   People who know her in person, and hundreds of online friends have been there with words of support.   Messages posted to her personal blog, messages shared on her Face Book page, messages posted on the Air Force group, private emails, candle sites, several memorial sites.

Speaking as an online friend, I would like to describe how CJ's passing has affected me.    My heart has felt like a huge hand went right through my chest and grabbed a hold of my heart.   I have pictured any of my children in the same place.   I know I am not alone with this gut wrenching helpless feeling.   

Every person who knows of CJ's death has felt it too.


Thursday night, I had a HUGE REVELATION.        I was watching TV, got up from the couch, grabbed a pen and paper and started to write . . . . . .



"We're draining Hallie"     -----    We need to empower her.   

The horror and dread is being re-lived and sent back to Hallie.   We are using our imagination to put ourselves in her place, and by doing so, instead of sending Hallie and family OUR LOVE AND GOOD ENERGY, we are unintentionally sending them our pain.

"What we need to do is find a positive affirmation that can be repeated by everyone when a thought of CJ, Hallie, John, Connor, Danielle and their family comes into our mind."

I located a blog post by Mark Anthony .....    The Circle of Light.

From the post...   The Circle of Light ~

A Circle of Light occurs when spiritual people gather together to pray and meditate to achieve a positive result. This is a means of raising your vibrational energy in harmony with like minded individuals in order to create a whole greater than the sum of the parts.....

From the beginning of time people have utilized the power of a Circle of Light. A Circle of Light occurs whenever people join to pray for peace, healing or devotional purposes. Hindus collectively chant the names of God. Buddhists meditate as a group. Catholics pray the rosary in unison. Christian prayer rings. Muslims praying together five times a day. All of these form a Circle of Light.

Every one of us who cares about Hallie and her family has the ability
to BE a..............


  * POINT OF HEALING LIGHT IN THIS CIRCLE *

PLEASE do grab this graphic.    Print it out and find some place you can
display it as a reminder.........   Share it on your blog, share it on Face Book. 

*  A very special THANK YOU to Mark Anthony for his permission to share his words. 

On Mother’s Day, Hallie, John and Connor, as a family, made the decision to participate in the “Out of the Darkness Overnight.” This
is a walk sponsored by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
that they learned about through Hallie’s brother, David. After hearing
about this walk, they made the decision to take this journey, together,
as a family. Over the course of the last week, with the Twomey family’s blessing, the team has grown to include some of Hallie and John’s family as well as some of their closest friends.
They are NEAR their team goal of $20,000.