"Stay Strong In the Middle!"
Pretend You're Good at Self Care. Or Life Advice From a Stranger on a Lake.
Hi, it’s me, and it’s HOT outside. Seattle is approaching 90 degrees almost every day this week (32 celsius), and before somebody from Arizona, Texas, or Florida calls me a whiner, know this: the majority of Seattle homes don’t have air conditioning! We’re all paralyzed by heat lethargy, complaining about our underboob sweat, and looking for the nearest body of water to swim in.
What’s that, you say? The nearest lake is closed due to its annual toxic algae bloom? Wonderful timing!
Seattle used to be a mild climate where it didn’t get too hot or too cold, but for the last few years we’ve seen hard freezes in the winter and highs between 90 - 100 degrees in the summer. Our only relief is that temps usually drop back down to the 60s at night so we can pump the cool air back into the house with window fans.
On a less complainy note, the garden has given us figs!
This is one of many baskets we’ve picked, and we’re having a hard time keeping up. Thankfully, figs can be frozen whole, so that’s what I’m doing until I can make fig jam at some point in the future when my kitchen isn’t 100 degrees.
By the way, if you want a dose of Daily Jen, I’m pretty active on Instagram. I mostly post garden content and share funny memes in my Stories (like this image of Chewbacca in the 5th grade).
Until next time,
Jen
“Stay Strong in the Middle!”
For most of this year, everything in my body hurt. I could barely get up and down the stairs, I could only spend about an hour in the garden before my hip and back pain was unbearable, and I couldn’t get comfortable standing or sitting at my up-and-down desk. I couldn’t focus on anything but the pain, and I was only comfortable while laying down.
It was miserable.
With Bryan’s cancer diagnosis (February), recovering from surgery (April), and the side effects of chemo (since May), I’ve been at a weird intersection of Doing All The Things, trying to not complain, and deeply missing all the physical activities that relieve my stress and bring calm to my mental health.
I remember being in pain as far back as 2017 or 2018 – though not to the degree I’ve been this year. Back then I couldn’t bend my left knee all the way, which I still couldn’t do up until about a month ago. This is a problem for stairs, and for getting up and down from the floor, or crawling around in my garden chasing weeds. The knee pain caused me to walk awkwardly, which impacted my hip and lower back. Eventually the tension spread to my middle and upper back, my shoulders, and in general I just felt crappy.
Last year I finally went to get an x-ray, and it was confirmed that I have arthritis in my left knee - the inner part of my joint is bone on bone, basically. I got a steroid shot and cut sugar out of my diet, which helped. I saw a physical therapist who gave me exercises to strengthen the muscles supporting my knee. This felt good, until I stopped going.
After Bryan’s diagnosis, we numbed ourselves with carbs, and cocktails, and single slices of coconut cream pie I discovered on the far side of a refrigerated dessert case in the Safeway bakery. In all the years I’ve shopped here, I never saw that side of the dessert case. I didn’t even know single slices of pie existed in a grocery store setting. But grief and fear beckoned me with its toasted flakes and creamy filling. I have no idea how many pies I ate, one slice at a time, on that midnight train to Georgia….
Oh sorry, the imagery got away from me.
All that sugar rushing through my body again after a year without it caused all my joints to swell and all my facia to throb. My finger joints ached, and my shoulders, and both my hips. I began to wonder if I had fibromyalgia — a diagnosis that was out of my control and had nothing to do with what I was inflicting on my own body.
I was spiraling, physically. Despite my efforts to not stress Bryan out with my discomfort, he was concerned. At 51, I was feeling old. Very, very old. I dreaded the possibility of feeling this terrible for the next twenty-something years, so I stopped feeling sorry for myself and finally started trying to fix it.
Cue the training montage.
I visited a new physical therapist named Carol. She was a little woo-woo and hovered her hand around my forehead to “feel the energy,” and would barely touch a spot on my body that somehow loosened up another part of my body to move freely again without pain. It was magical. The most normal thing she did was recommend a pair of trail running shoes that changed my life.
I cried the first time I saw Carol, because she’s a gentle caregiver in her tone and touch, and because I was carrying so much stress and an extra twenty pounds and none of my clothes fit and my husband was sick and I couldn’t do anything about it.
“Am I hurting you?” she asked. “No,” I said through silent tears. And we just kept going with a deep unspoken understanding that I was in the right place at the right time.
In June I went to see an orthopedic surgeon about my knee. She was light, and hopeful, and empathetic, and somebody I wanted to invite to our weekly fire nights and ask what her favorite cuss word is because I bet it’s a doozy. She listened to me, and I felt cared for. I needed somebody to tell me what to do, and she had a plan.
Friends, I feel like a new woman!
I’ve had another cortisone shot, got new shoes to support my overpronation, and I cut sugar out of my diet again to reduce joint inflammation. I’ve been seeing a new physical therapist who works my ass off for forty-five minutes every week, and all the days in between are leg days and core days. I do all the leg lifts and all the squats now. My core is coring. My quads are quading. I have energy! I’m getting shit done! And more importantly, no more pain! I can bend my left knee again! Exclamation point!
I think the most exciting sign of my improved health is that I was able to stand up on my new paddle board for the first time. All the work I’ve done to build up my core, strengthen my leg muscles, and reduce the swelling in my knee so I can bend it again has led to a genuinely good time out on the water, as well as in my garden.
I’m having so much fun! WHY do I wait so long to take care of myself?!
The first time I stood up on my paddle board, I shouted across the lake at a random stranger who was also on a paddle board.
“First time!” I yelled with excitement, wobbling a bit as I tried to stay balanced.
“Stay strong in the middle!” she said in the sweetest, clearest, most encouraging voice.
I nearly fell off again, but managed to stick it.
“Stay strong in the middle!” she said again, patting her tummy and slightly bending her knees to show me.
Her voice echoed in my head. After months of working on my core muscles and talking about my core muscles and needing good core muscles to hold my posture, her choice of words, “in the middle,” stood out to me, like really hearing 80s pop song lyrics for the first time when covered by a simple guitar and quiet voice.
Stay strong in the middle.
The middle sucks. There are too many unknowns in the middle. I hate the middle. Is this going to be a drama, comedy, or tragedy? Who knows! We’re still in the middle! It’s like the scene when Han Solo is frozen in carbonite, and I’m thinking to myself, “How the hell did I get to Cloud City in the first place?!”
But the reality is, every story has a beginning, and a middle, and an end. It’s not always going to be this way. I forget this sometimes and live with the dread that it’s always going to be this way. Like, is it always going to be hotter than the face of the sun? I just assume yes and lay down in the street. It’s my cute but toxic Eeyore trait.
But in the thick of a crappy diagnosis and sugar rushes and self-care avoidance, we can be strong in the middle until we come out the other side.
(Or maybe we can’t. Falling apart’s cool, too. That’s why we have friends and therapists and physicians and coconut cream pie to hold us up in the middle until we’re stronger.)
Thank you, Encouraging Lady on Green Lake. YOU stay strong in the middle, too, where ever you find yourself.
Talk to me, Goose!
How’s your summer going. Is it hot where you are? Do you have air conditioning? Is climate change drastically altering your quality of life in a way that keeps you up at night staring at the ceiling? (I’m sorry, this was supposed to be the easy question, but I ruined it.)
Do you have a story about being in the middle and not knowing the way through? How did you cope (or not)?
I am now reminded of a They Might Be Giants song off their children’s album that goes, “Don’t cross the street in the middle in the middle in the middle in the middle in the middle of the block!” And Paul Simon sings about being “soft in the middle, now. Why am I soft in the middle? The rest of my life is so hard…” Do you know any other songs about being in the middle? (This is the new easy question.)
News + Notes 🌼
I wrote about our first time on SUPs this summer (July 2023):
🌼 🌼 🌼
My friend Jana is on Substack! She’s a visual artist and writer who just moved her mailing list over from Mailchimp, and I’m so excited. She’s a wonderful soul. Here’s an excerpt from her first post:
I don’t see Jen often, but there are big moments in my life associated with Jen and her husband Bryan—like a beautiful night talking about musical moments and being introverts on their rooftop patio shortly after I moved to Seattle. Also, completely falling apart on their sofa the night after the day I got laid off from my dream job about a year after that. There is no small talk with some people. There are just stepping stones of words floating above the canyon of personhood and lived experience and connection.
Read more and subscribe here, she writes about the importance of showing up:
I’m a member of Cloud Sangha, an online community for people looking for meditation groups and discussion groups. Each month had a new theme. For August it is “the middle way.” Clearly you knew this even if you didn’t know.
The middle! The struggle of Gen X!!