Lisa Find Love

Out the window to my left, palm trees bent in the breeze from the South China Sea; to my right, green fields stretched in the distance. As our tour van headed south on a bumpy road near Nha Trang, I kept reminding myself, This is Vietnam. I even tried superimposing scenes from Platoon and Full Metal Jacket on the landscape, but they wouldn’t stick. Everything was too peaceful.

I had come to Vietnam to solve a mystery: What had happened to my father here? My father, Sgt. Jimmy Godwin of the U.S. Army Special Forces, married my mother in 1968, just before he’d shipped out for Vietnam. When he’d returned, he was “messed up”—that’s what my mother said, though I’d never understood what that meant. She and Jimmy divorced when I was a baby.

After my mom remarried, Jimmy signed papers so that my stepfather—the man I call Dad—could adopt me. I grew up in a loving house, but we never talked much about Jimmy; we didn’t know how.

That left me curious, confused, and even angry at my parents—all three of them—because I wanted the truth about the man who had once been my father and why he had chosen not to be. But at age 23, I needed more than a handful of facts; I felt like I had to have the context to understand them. That’s why I went to Vietnam.

In 1994, I joined a group of volunteers on a goodwill project that was organized by the Friendship Foundation of American Vietnamese, a nonprofit based in Ohio. As our group of twentysomethings explored Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) and the coastal city of Nha Trang, I felt a little like a detective returning to the scene of a crime, only I wasn’t finding any clues. The country seemed to have moved on in the 25 years since my father’s time. My trip there felt like a vacation, complete with lush scenery, amazing food, and friendly people.

The foundation had arranged for us to build a playground in Nha Trang, but soon after we’d arrived, the government withdrew its consent, which was a painful disappointment. As a plan B, our tour organizers set up a visit to a nearby orphanage. I almost stayed at our hotel that day because I worried it would be depressing. Plus, what did I have to offer Vietnamese orphans?

About a dozen of us piled into a van to go to the orphanage. On the way there, I thought about Jimmy. By then, he and I had met face-to-face, and we were still trying to figure out what our relationship was or would be. Jimmy hadn’t said much about his time in Vietnam, though I knew he’d come to Nha Trang once between battles and spent an afternoon on the beach.

Content continues below ad

Our van eventually pulled up to a cinder block building. A middle-aged Catholic priest emerged and greeted us in English. He summoned the children and assigned each of us our own pint-size tour guide.

Mine was a little boy named Duy, who looked about six. I’m six foot three, and when Duy came up to me, he had to arch his neck like he was looking at a skyscraper. He said something to me in Vietnamese. I smiled awkwardly; I was embarrassed that I didn’t even know how to say “Hi, what’s your name?” I asked the priest to translate.

“He says you are very big.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. I crouched until my eyes were just below the level of Duy’s. “Very small.”

The little boy chuckled. Duy took my hand and led me inside to a large room filled with bunk beds. He pointed to his own, a top bunk with an inch-thick layer of woven straw as a mattress, no blanket or pillow. He seemed to like showing it to me, as if he were proud of it.

“Nice,” I said. I picked Duy up and I sat him on his bed to equalize our heights. I tried to think of what to say or to ask. Would Duy have some sort of bedtime ritual? I wondered. It’s a Catholic orphanage, so would he say prayers? And what would he pray for?

I asked the priest to translate this. As they spoke, I listened for a tone that suggested the priest might be coaching Duy, but I didn’t hear any.

“He does pray,” the priest said, “but in the morning.”

“What do you pray for?”

“Pray for?”

I looked at Duy as I spoke. “What do you ask God to do for you or to give you?”

Duy smiled a little when the question was translated. He paused; it seemed like he was answering this question for the first time.

“He says he prays for his parents who are in heaven. He prays for his sister because he doesn’t know where she is and hopes she will be OK. He prays for God to help him be good that day.” And here the priest said something to Duy that sounded like a slight admonition. “And sometimes he prays for a toy or something like that.”

“Really? Is that all?”

“That’s all he said.”

“He doesn’t pray to be adopted? To go home with a family?”

The priest asked Duy, who answered in a bored-kid voice, as if this weren’t a very interesting subject.

“He said he, of course, would like to have a family to live with, but he knows that most children his age don’t get chosen for a family. And if they do get chosen, often it’s a family that needs someone to work. So he says he likes his life here. ‘This is my family now,’ he said.”

This is my family now.

Content continues below ad

I glanced around the room. This place was spare but clean. Most of the kids were smiling. They looked thin, but healthy. Their clothes weren’t new, but they weren’t rags. Two of the boys who weren’t hosting foreigners were goofing around with a ball.

Duy studied me. His expression seemed to say, What do you think, Big Foreign Fella?

I smiled at him as if I had a secret.

He made a face and looked playful. I grabbed him around the waist and planted his belly on my shoulder. Then I wrapped a hand around his calf so he’d know that I wouldn’t let him fall. I carried him outside and spun him around until he laughed.

This is my family now.

I knew that I wasn’t getting a complete picture of Duy’s thoughts or experience. I knew his feelings about his life, his fate, and his place in the world likely were—or might one day be—complicated.

I hoped that he would never wonder if it was his own fault that he’d lost his parents. I hoped he’d never think he was flawed in some mysterious, fundamental way and that their absence was the evidence. And yet, Duy shamed me.

This little boy had gone through so much by the age of six, but he’d just declared that the people at the orphanage were his family. I had questions about my own family that I wanted answered, and someday, I might get those answers, but what right did I have to self-pity? After all, I had been, as the priest had put it, chosen for a family.

The other kids made a circle around us, and they clamored for me to lift them too. I gave each of them a ride on Foreigner Mountain, spinning and spinning until I almost fell over.

I wished that I had a toy to give Duy. Or that I could build him a playground. Instead I offered him turn after turn on my shoulders, more than anyone else, and I also spun him longer than anyone else.

I wanted Duy, in this one little way, to feel chosen.

Lieutenant Wes McIntosh of the U.S. Coast Guard was watching Sunday Night Football with his seven-person flight crew on October 29, 2012. Around 9:30 p.m., his phone rang. It was the Coast Guard command center, alerting him that they’d received a call from the owner of a ship that was floundering in a ferocious storm off the coast of North Carolina. It was taking on water, having generator problems, and requesting assistance. By 11 p.m., McIntosh and crew were airborne in their turboprop plane, heading east.

Locating the ship on radar would be impossible in such rough weather, so McIntosh and his copilot, Mike Myers, pulled on night-vision goggles. The skies were clear for the moment, a full moon fixed above, but directly ahead, McIntosh could see a sharp wall of dark clouds rising from the surface of the water to 7,000 feet.

They approached just above the clouds but were unable to see down to the ocean’s surface. Hoping for visual contact, McIntosh lowered the plane into the storm. The plane lurched and shook violently. Hard rain pelted the windshield. McIntosh wrestled the controls, guiding the plane lower until the clouds shredded and revealed a churning black ocean. They circled, holding at the lowest point they could.

“Anything?” McIntosh asked.

“Yeah,” said Myers. “There’s a pirate ship in the middle of a hurricane.”

HMS Bounty was one of the most recognizable ships anywhere in the world. Built in 1960 for the MGM film Mutiny on the Bounty, it was a scaled-up replica of the original on which Fletcher Christian led the revolt against Captain William Bligh in 1789. The modern Bounty was a classic tall ship. Its three masts rose more than 100 feet, supporting 10,000 square feet of sailcloth and laced with more than two miles of line. It was 120 feet long—30 feet longer than the original—and built of hand-hewn Douglas fir and white oak.

In recent years, however, the ship had fallen into disrepair; it was plagued with dry rot and leaks, and its owner had struggled to keep up with the expensive maintenance. Tired and sagging from 50 years of sailing and dock tours, the ship was now en route from New London, Connecticut, to St. Petersburg, Florida, to entice possible buyers, give dockside tours, and host an event for a nonprofit organization supporting kids with Down syndrome.

The crew of 16 ranged from first-time volunteers to career mariners. Among the most recent to join up was Claudene Christian, 42, a professional singer and a beauty queen from California who claimed to be a descendent of Fletcher Christian himself.

The captain was Robin Walbridge. Soft-spoken and gravel-voiced, he wore wire-rimmed glasses and hearing aids, and bound his flyaway gray hair in a short ponytail. The Bounty’s owner, New York businessman Robert Hansen, had hired Walbridge in 1995, and Walbridge had since helmed hundreds of voyages on the Bounty up and down the Atlantic coast, in all kinds of weather. Walbridge was considered a good sailor, but he also had the reputation for being something of a cowboy. A few weeks prior to setting sail, he’d told an interviewer, “We chase hurricanes … You can get a good ride out of them.”

Content continues below ad

Before they left port, Walbridge informed the crew that there was a large storm off the coast. He believed they could safely skirt it, but they’d likely be encountering rough seas along the way. Anyone who wasn’t comfortable with this was free to leave, no questions asked.

On Thursday, October 25, the Bounty departed with clear skies, light winds, and all 16 crew members on board.

As darkness fell on Sunday evening, the Bounty sailed straight into one of the worst storms ever recorded in the Atlantic. Dubbed Superstorm Sandy, it stretched almost 1,000 miles across, covering an area nearly twice the size of Texas. Out at sea off the coast of North Carolina, winds gusted up to 90 miles per hour. Earlier that day, a gust had ripped the ship’s forecourse, one of its 16 sails, which is crucial for maintaining stability in storms.

As daylight faded, conditions deteriorated. Four feet of water sloshed around the engine room, overloading the pumps. The cabin’s overhead lights flickered until the generators and engines gave out entirely, leaving only the ghostly glow of the emergency lights.

Below decks, Walbridge made his way to the communications room. He moved gingerly; earlier, a powerful wave had thrown him across the cabin into a bolted table, severely injuring his back. He took a seat near the communications console with Doug Faunt, 66, a volunteer who worked as the ship’s electrician. The storm had rendered their cell and satellite phones useless. Walbridge and Faunt were attempting to e-mail the Coast Guard to alert it to the grim situation.

Walbridge had instructed anyone who wasn’t on watch or tending to a crisis to hunker down and, if possible, try to rest. It was going to be a long night. Another crew member, Adam Prokosh, 27, had also been injured, breaking three ribs, separating his shoulder, and suffering trauma to his head and back when the ship was rolled by a wave. Several other people were severely seasick. In the dim communications room, Walbridge and Faunt hunched over a makeshift transmitter, tapping out an e-mail message with their coordinates, praying it would reach someone on shore.

In the skies above, McIntosh banked hard, looking down at a sight unlike anything he’d ever seen. Below was the Bounty’s hulking black shadow, its giant masts listing at 45 degrees. From the aircraft, the mission system officer radioed down on the emergency channel.

The response was instantaneous: “This is HMS Bounty. We read you loud and clear!” It was John Svendsen, 41, the first mate. He explained that the Bounty was still taking on water at the rate of a foot an hour, but he felt they could hang on until daylight.

McIntosh had hoped to drop backup pumps to the vessel, but conditions were too dangerous to get close enough. His flight crew had been taking a severe beating too. Several were airsick.

Content continues below ad

As the early hours of Monday morning dragged on, Walbridge positioned himself at the Bounty’s helm, leaving Svendsen to communicate with the Coast Guard plane. Svendsen told McIntosh that they were planning an evacuation at daybreak. Around 3 a.m., Walbridge and Svendsen directed the crew members to the stern and briefed them on the plan.

“No one panicked,” Dan Cleveland, the third mate, recalled later. “The mood was calm, professional. I was really impressed.”

For the next hour, the crew members tended to tasks—gathering their “Gumby suits” (bright red neoprene survival suits) and assembling supplies for the life rafts—or tried to find a place to rest, survival suits at the ready. Claudene Christian took care of the injured Adam Prokosh, helping him move to the high side of the ship.

By 4 a.m., Walbridge told the crew to put on the suits. They would depart from the rear of the ship at first light. The water was coming in faster, at around two feet per hour, and the bow was now submerged. It was too rough to stand up on deck, so the crew crawled along the boards on their hands and knees. Those who didn’t have a particular task preparing supplies simply clung to fixed objects. Doug Faunt wedged himself against the deck rail firmly enough that he briefly dozed off.

Around 4:30 that morning, the Bounty was broadsided by a massive wave that rolled it a full 90 degrees. A few people screamed. Several crew members were tossed through the air and into the sea. Some slid across the soaked deck, hitting the low rail and toppling into the water. Others, fearing the ship was capsizing completely, jumped from their perches into the ocean. The Bounty now lay on its side, masts in the water, surrounded by a web of tangled rigging.

John Svendsen was near the radio and grabbed the handset. “We’re abandoning ship!” he shouted into the mic. “We’re abandoning ship now!”

The urgent message crackled over the intercom on board the Coast Guard plane, still circling above. The plane’s radio operator repeatedly called back but received no reply. McIntosh flew down again toward the water. He could see the Bounty foundering and lights in the water: the strobes attached to the survival suits.

The flight crew called sector command, informing them that the Bounty’s crew had abandoned the sinking ship.

McIntosh circled again, though the plane was running urgently low on fuel. Despite their battered, airsick condition, the crew members, clipped into safety harnesses, opened the rear door and dropped two rafts down into the hammering wind. They could only hope they would land close enough to the ship to be of use.

No sooner had they deployed the rafts than the aircraft’s fuel light flashed on the dash, indicating they had to head back to base right away. McIntosh veered away from the ship while his radio operator continued to try to hail the Bounty. There was no response.

Content continues below ad

Treading in frothing water, John Svendsen floated amid the wreckage next to the ship. The Bounty was lost, and he needed to get away from the sinking carcass as fast as possible.

The water surrounding the ship was now a deadly mess of rigging, loose boards, and other detritus. With each wave pulse, the masts would lurch back up to 45 degrees. Then they would crash back into the water, sink under the surface, and repeat the cycle.

In the chaos, deckhand Josh Scornavacchi, 28, grabbed hold of a mast as it was rising. As he was carried above the water, he heard a voice tell him to jump, and he did. Where the voice came from, he’s not sure. His crewmates don’t remember calling out to him, but he’s certain the move saved his life.

The entire crew was now in the water, swimming and thrashing amid the huge swells and breaking waves. As the ship slowly sank, everything around it was pulled down, too, so the only safe course was to try to get away from the wreck. The emergency suits made every maneuver difficult. Water leaked inside and filled the boots, weighing them down. Dan Cleveland tried to grab a raft that was floating past him, but he couldn’t reach it. The gloves built in to the suits had no grip, so the safety line attached to the raft slid right through his palm.

Not far away, second mate Matt Sanders, 37, clung to a wooden grate with six other survivors. One of the Coast Guard rafts drifted nearby, but they couldn’t catch it. Soon, however, they found a life raft canister and inflated it. It looked like a large kiddie pool with a tent over it. They clambered inside, pushing and pulling one another till they were all aboard.

Six more crew members sat inside a second raft. Meanwhile, Svendsen was drifting out to sea, clinging to a floating signal beacon. Later, he would credit Walbridge for saving his life; it had been the captain’s idea to pack the buoys as standard equipment. But where was Walbridge himself? And where was Claudene Christian, last seen on deck as the ship tipped into the sea?

Dawn’s light filtered into the eastern sky as four Coast Guard helicopters arrived on the scene. Rescue swimmer Randy Haba was lowered from a hovering chopper into the towering waves. After a short swim, he reached Svendsen, who had now drifted a half mile from the wreckage. The first mate was battered and exhausted; he’d smashed his right hand on the ship, rendering it useless. He had also involuntarily gulped down a dangerous amount of seawater polluted with diesel fuel.

Haba slung Svendsen into a harness and got him safely on board one chopper. Then the rescue crew moved to the first raft, the one containing Sanders and company. The Bounty survivors had heard the rotors above and realized help was at hand. But it was still a shock when Haba’s head popped through the raft door. “I bet you guys are ready to get out of here,” said the swimmer, flashing a smile.

Content continues below ad

As Haba worked with the first raft, a second rescue swimmer, Dan Todd, helped survivors from the other raft board a second helicopter. It was dicey work. At one point, Haba got smacked hard enough by a breaking wave that his goggles and snorkel were ripped away.

In all, 14 survivors—Adam Prokosh, Doug Faunt, John Jones, Jessica Black, Mark Warner, Josh Scornavacchi, Chris Barksdale, Jessica Hewitt, Laura Groves, Drew Salapatek, Anna Sprague, Dan Cleveland, Matt Sanders, and John Svendsen, ranging in age from 20 to 66, staggered off the choppers onto the tarmac at the Elizabeth City, North Carolina, air base—shaken but alive. A scrum of reporters waited for them, along with some bad news: Another rescue crew had found Claudene Christian, unconscious, floating about nine miles away from the ship. Despite heroic efforts to revive her, she didn’t survive.

Sandy had battered towns from Maine to Florida, causing 147 deaths and widespread flooding. During the next three days, after the waters calmed, the search continued for Walbridge. Coast Guard personnel covered roughly 1,500 square nautical miles, but no sign of the captain was ever found.

“Losing two people was tough, but when we saw the survivors getting out of the helicopter on TV, we were overjoyed,” recalls Wes McIntosh. “When we had to leave the Bounty that morning, we didn’t know if anyone had survived. And even though we didn’t meet any of the crew personally, you go through something like that together, and it feels like they’re family. We were out there with them that night for a long time.”

It was supposed to be our secret. My hairdresser claimed to possess a special elixir that could subtly, naturally, almost undetectably “blend away” gray hair, which, at 45, I had a touch of. Sitting before the mirror in her chair, uncertain whether to start the masquerade, I examined my head in a way I shied away from when I was alone at home without support. I looked at myself from angles I wasn’t used to, discovering that the gray was more extensive than I’d been willing to admit.

Instead of threading its way between the darker hairs, it had consumed whole sectors of my head, especially on the sides and in the back. It was advancing the way frost does, or mold.

“I suggest we leave some in,” my hairdresser said. “Just enough to make you look distinguished.” I nodded, but that last word did not sit well with me. It sounded exactly like what it was: another way of saying “old.”

Every month for seven years, this conversation, or some version of it, was repeated. The world moved along, the seasons changed, but my hair stayed the same or approximately the same. Toward the end of each color cycle, my natural color—or lack of it—would reassert itself, a bit more conspicuously each time, forcing me deeper and deeper into fraudulence.

My girlfriend at the time, now my wife, began to argue—mildly at first but increasingly emphatically—that gray hair looked terrific on men my age. For evidence, she pointed to various luminaries who looked terrific no matter what. George Clooney. Anderson Cooper. They were the silver all-stars, and I hated them. I hated them not for their age-defying male beauty but for their ability to accept themselves.

In the short story “The Mask” by French writer Guy de Maupassant, a rakish man about town who loves the nightlife collapses at a dance. While attempting to revive him, a doctor notices that his patient is wearing a lifelike youthful mask. The doctor cuts it off with scissors, revealing the man’s white hair and wrinkled face.

I’d read this story when I was young, along with similar tales of postponed decrepitude such as The Picture of Dorian Gray. Their gloomy common message seemed to be that when it comes to signs of aging, you can run but you cannot hide—and that the longer you attempt to run, the worse the final reckoning will be.

My hairdresser seemed to disagree: Her faith in modern products was that strong. And so was mine, until six months ago, when my hairdresser tried a stronger potion, convinced that the old one would no longer suffice.

The results were disastrous. Denying that your hair is gray gets easier, but denying that it’s green is difficult. I managed the feat anyway, temporarily. The bathroom mirror told me something was wrong, which I decided was its—the mirror’s—fault.

I avoided it.

What I couldn’t avoid was the mirror in the makeup room of a late-night TV show I appeared on. My hair had become the color of an Army uniform. The makeup woman said nothing. She only frowned, but my teenage daughter was not so kind. “Your hair is all weird,” she said one afternoon, in the pitiless light of 4 p.m.

Content continues below ad

My wife broke her diplomatic silence then. “It’s green,” she said. “And not a subtle green.” As if there could be such a thing. I’d hoped there was.

The process of coming out as a gray was not, in fact, a process but an event, a little like a first weigh-in at a diet clinic after a decade spent eating chili cheeseburgers. While walking the streets one moody evening, I decided to stop at a beauty shop on a random block in downtown Missoula, Montana, where I was teaching. I walked into the shop and stood beside the chair of a gray-haired cosmetician with a pompadour. I let my head tell the story; I didn’t speak.

He showed me with a gesture to a sofa by the men’s room, where I sat for an hour, awaiting emergency treatment. When the time came, I said, “Don’t try to save it. Shave it.”

Day by day and week by week, my new old hair grew in and grew longer, obliging me to confront, with awful clarity, a general grayness that startled even me. Time had accelerated under the mask, just as the great writers had said it would. Worse, I began to detect in those around me changes in how they viewed me, treated me. My students in the graduate-school writing program at the University of Montana asked me about authors of 40 years ago as though I might have known them personally. My wife ran her fingers through my hair more often, almost as though she were checking if it would stay on.

One morning, my teenage daughter asked me to change a black T-shirt that I’d obtained at a rock concert that month for a light blue oxford button-down she had spied hanging in my closet. Grumpily, beaten down, I put it on. “That looks a lot more appropriate,” she said.

The keenest humiliation of all, the one that at last compelled me to accept myself, occurred at a New York City sandwich shop. After taking my order, one of the girls behind the counter asked if she could ask me something. Being asked if you’re willing to be asked a thing is always a bad sign; I instantly stiffened.

“What?” I grunted.

The girl, who appeared to be 18 or so, followed with something like: “It’s not that I think you look old or anything, but when was doo-wop? Do you remember? Doo-wop music? When was that? The ’60s? The ’50s?” It just got worse. “The ’40s?”

“Late ’50s, early ’60s,” I said coolly, wondering if I was being paranoid. Did the girl really think that I’d been on the scene then, or did she merely find me professorial, a man who appeared to be rich in general knowledge?

“That must have been so cool,” she said. “Walking around hearing singing on all the corners!”

I’ve grown into my gray hair since then. I’ve had to. The celebrity “silver foxes” (to use my wife’s term) don’t irritate me as profoundly as they used to. On my good days, I even count myself as one of them, convinced that my color shift has revealed in me a certain mischievous élan that was veiled before. When asked by my juniors about the distant past—about doo-wop and the like or whether I ever met Flannery O’Connor—I reply with an overemphatic cheerfulness, as though the questions are patently absurd but I am too seasoned and comfortable with myself to take offense, at anything.

The hard part is when I’m alone, out on the street, and glimpse a male stranger who looks fully as old as I once pretended not to be. Is that how I appear to others now? I try not to think about it. I let it go.

I let my old hairdresser go too. I avoid her now—I still can’t face her. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been seeing other scissors, or perhaps it’s because I don’t want to embarrass her. In the highest tradition of her profession, she attempted to do the impossible and failed.

But she’s young. She’ll get over it. I won’t even try.

Retailers have savvy tricks for making you think you’re saving money, but you’re better off passing up these Black Friday sales.

Factory workers wearing traditional leaf hats mend fishing nets in the coastal city of Bac Liêu, Vietnam. The workers knit speedily, says photographer Ly Hoang Long, and employ tiny needles to weave nets tight enough to catch the various species of shrimp, fish, and crabs that keep the local economy afloat. As they work, heaps of netting mound behind them, like the waves in which they’ll soon be deployed.

Which film made the list from yours?

Being a pushover can have a negative effect on your own life. Here’s how to stand up for yourself.

If you say them loud enough, you'll always sound precocious!

Frigid temps and whipping winds may sound like a prescription for itchy, dry, cracked skin. But winter doesn’t have to be the season of your skin’s discontent. Just take this easy-to-follow advice from top dermatologists and your dermis will look great no matter what the calendar says.

One in four women experience some form of physical, emotional, sexual, or financial domestic violence each year in the United States. Three professionals debunk myths about domestic abuse and explain the best course of action to get out of abusive relationships.

Sir Ken Robinson, the author of The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, describes the difference between being seen as a loner and being seen as a philosopher, pointing out that perspective makes all the difference. And yet, perspective isn’t solely relegated to how others perceive us; it’s mired heavily in how we see ourselves and the behavior that results. Similarly, Eileen Bailey and Michael G. Wetter, authors of What Went Right: Reframe Your Thinking for a Happier Now, tell us that what we often focus on is not what events went well, but rather, what isn’t working or hasn’t worked in the past.

We may feel that because we didn’t get the job we interviewed for, we will never get a job, or that because our friend hasn’t yet arrived for dinner, none of our friends like us. We can focus on one negative event and allow it to color our perception of everything in our lives. We can let our emotions regulate our thinking to the point where anytime we feel nervous, we are certain we will be fired, abandoned, or rejected. We can also jump to conclusions the minute something doesn’t go well and instantly spiral into a catastrophic — if unlikely — version of our lives. All of these ways of thinking and acting are examples of the many problematic thought patterns that contribute to an unhealthy self-image.

Bailey and Wetter tell us that self-image, which weighs heavily on our self-esteem, is what we reflect back to ourselves about ourselves, and often determines our life path. If we find ourselves apologizing often, seeing the glass as half-empty, having difficulty forgiving and forgetting, criticizing ourselves frequently, or worrying constantly, we could be struggling with low self-esteem. We could also be trying to compensate for negative early experiences by constantly seeking the approval and affection of others.

Correcting self-esteem, the authors contend, begins with restructuring our thoughts, and the internal perceptions we hold. They write, “Your experiences in life influence your feelings and opinions, which in turn influence your thoughts. Sometimes we develop subjective bias when we automatically respond to new situations based on only our feelings and opinions and resist or ignore new information that might change our thinking.” For example, we may not try something new because we have already cataloged everything that could possibly go wrong. Catastrophizing like this means we are overestimating what will happen and underestimating our ability to cope.

But we can also have thought patterns that affect our happiness. Basing self-esteem solely on achievements, which is a form of all-or-nothing thinking, constantly pits our accomplishments against an unreachable standard. When we fall short, we feel like a failure. Thinking that we should or must do things is another way of sidelining self-esteem. Like with perfectionism, we live by unrealistic standards that dictate how we feel about ourselves.

For each of the problematic thought patterns Bailey and Wetter cover, they also offer several useful exercises, challenges, and tips. To break the cycle of mental filtering, for example, they suggest paying attention to everything that goes on around us and keeping track of not just the negatives, but the positives as well. In moving past personalization and blame, the authors advocate looking at situations as a way to grow and learn rather than to blame or take responsibility.

Bailey and Wetter provide the overarching theme of incorporating logic, balanced thinking, and self-monitoring to become more aware and more in control of our thoughts. From there, we can redefine ourselves by becoming more clear on our values, practicing mindfulness, exercising and eating right, taking time for ourselves, finding a passion, creating a support group, and setting goals. Yet here, Bailey and Wetter are careful not to overpromise. They write, “Changing your thinking is hard. But the simple fact is that if you want to be good at something, you must practice.”

When we ask ourselves questions such as, How did I handle what happened today? Was my thinking process healthy or unhealthy? Would I have changed how I responded? we can become more mindful of ourselves, the way we live our lives, and the resulting effect on our self-esteem. But perhaps the most important question we should be asking, the authors intimate, is What went right?

While not peppered with research, What Went Right offers the solid evidence based approach of cognitive behavioral therapy and moves past the theoretical to the practical, providing numerous strategies to demonstrate that when it come to our own perspective, we are in the driver’s seat.

What Went Right: Reframe Your Thinking for a Happier Now
Hazelden Publishing, August 2016
Paperback, 200 Pages
$15.95

Conventional wisdom is that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Is that really true, and if not, why is it so often repeated by nutritionists? Is it possible that conventional wisdom about breakfast is counterproductive for depression?

Let’s explore it. 

Conventional wisdom about breakfast states that eat a healthy breakfast to lose weight and avoid cravings later in the day that lead most people to end up going for the vending machine or some other unhealthy snack that’s in the work lounge or refrigerator. As a result, nutritionists advocate for eating a “healthy” breakfast and therefore feel satisfied, making it less likely you will reach for the nearest sugar-packed processed food. 

It is true that most people don’t plan properly and if they skip breakfast that late morning or lunchtime sugar bomb is not a healthy way to go. 

However, what if the assumption about the midday sugar bomb is wrong, and people actually planned properly to have a healthy nourishing meal at lunch? Is breakfast still important, and by skipping it could you actually help your depression symptoms? 

What if I told you that skipping breakfast, as long as you eat a healthy midday meal, can raise chemicals in your brain that combat depression? Well, it’s true and supported by science. 

The approach I’m talking about is intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting is defined as having a window daily where you do not eat, that includes the sleep hours. Typically this fast involves 12-18 hours. On the flip side, your eating window is about 6 to 12 hours a day. So for example, you eat your last food at 7pm at night, and your next food item at 11am the next day, that’s a 16 hour fast. 

So, what happens to your body and brain during that 16 hour fast, that might help treat depression? 

Two Important physiologic changes.

First, it’s BDNF, or Brain-derived neurotrophic factor. In a study out of Korea, College of Medicine Department of Psychiatry, BDNF is depressed in patients with major depression. Interestingly, treatment with conventional anti-depressant medications can raise BDNF levels. BDNF is vital for the formation and plasticity of neuronal networks, and of course these networks are involved in depression. A study from the Neurobiology of Disease 2007, showed that BDNF can go up between 50 and 400 percent with alternate day fasting. 

The second, is Ghrelin. Ghrelin is the so-called hunger hormone, and this hormone rises when you are hungry, or fasting. High levels of Ghrelin have been associated with elevated mood. In a study published in the Journal Molecular Psychiatry, Ghrelin has found to be a natural antidepressant that promotes neurogenesis, and also that Ghrelin rises during times of fasting. In another a study from the Journal Nutritional Health Aging, calorie restriction resulted in improved mood and depression among men. 

So, I know you are thinking, ok, it can help, but I’m going to starve to death and pass out. The fact is, humans for centuries have fasted. It’s part of many cultures and also part of alternative treatment plans for cancer patients and even many professional athletes. For many people, they do this for weight control, and to increase lean muscle mass to fat ratios. It has been shown also to improve cognitive function and energy levels.

Also, and most importantly, it’s very simple.

An approach I recommend to people, as long as it’s ok by their doctor is the following. For some people, intermittent fasting may result in a feeling of fatigue, especially early on, but if you can get used to it, it may be a magical elixir for your depression and anxiety.

First, make sure you have plenty of water and you should drink water generously during the fasting period. Second, your last meal of the evening should be high protein and also a fair amount of healthy fats. No carbohydrates, no sugary foods. It’s easiet for most people to start with a 14-hour window and gradually increase it to 15-18 hours, once they get used to it. Black coffee or tea is ok. Water is of course required, and should be drunk regularly throughout the fast.

Most people have a paradoxical experience. After the first couple of days, they stop feeling so hungry and get used to the empty feeling in their stomach, but realize they don’t need to eat to keep working or being active. In fact they have more energy! How, because their body uses fat as a fuel, and also, your body is no longer using energy to burn food in your stomach and can focus on its other energy demands. Lastly, there is no sugar crash mid morning from the morning carbohydrate load that most people consume at breakfast.

Now, here is an equally important factor to make intermittent fasting work for your depression. It is important you have a healthy lunch ready to consumer when the fast is over. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. It could be a bowl of Greek yogurt, with blueberries, or a lean meat protein of your choice with pita bread. Even a peanut butter sandwich with some additional nuts is fine. The main thing is to have it nutritiously packed with nutrients that can help fight depression and also prevent sugar spikes and valleys.

Now, back to depression and the impact of fasting on it. There are the physiologic changes that I’ve discussed that can have a positive impact on depression, there is also a psychological one. For so many people food is at the center of their life. What will I eat? What can’t I eat? I’m fat? I need to lose weight? I’m in a rush to work, what can I get to eat on the way to work? All of these questions create a focus on food each day that I think is unhealthy.

We beat ourselves up because of all sorts of issues, and depression compounds this stressful focus on food.

By incorporating intermittent fasting into your lifestyle, all of sudden many people find their focus on food is reduced, the pressure to eat something goes away and the ability to focus on other aspects of your day goes up! Your energy improves, and thus your outlook. It’s empowering! Food is not the enemy but for so many people, their depression uses food to cope, and by intermittent fasting, you allow your body’s natural physiologic changes to help combat the depression, and let your mind feel less stressed about food.

I suggest for my patients to try intermittent fasting 2 days a week to start. After the first couple of weeks, and once they get over the initial “hunger” feeling mid morning, and realize they feel better on days they fast vs days they eat breakfast, they often are eager to make it a 3 day a week lifestyle change. They feel better, often lose weight, and their depression and stress improves.

Thanks for reading and please share this link with others you think may find it of help.

References:

N. M. Hussin, S. Shahar, N. I. Teng, W. Z. Ngah, and S. K. Das, “Efficacy of fasting and calorie restriction (FCR) on mood and depression among ageing men,” The Journal of Nutrition, Health & Aging, vol. 17, no. 8, pp. 674–680, 2013.

Kiecolt-Glaser JK (2010). Stress, food, and inflammation: Psychoneuroimmunology and nutrition at the cutting edge. Psychosomatic Medicine, 72, 365-369. PMC2868080

Zhang, Y., Liu, C., Zhao, Y., Zhang, X., Li, B., & Cui, R. (2015). The Effects of Calorie Restriction in Depression and Potential Mechanisms. Current Neuropharmacology, 13(4), 536–542. http://ift.tt/2dT4lox

I was an anxious child. The night before the first day of elementary school each year, I would sleep on top of my already made bed instead of getting under the covers. That way I wouldn’t have to make my bed in the morning and there would be less chance of me being late for school (I never was). What makes this behavior even more ridiculous is the fact that my home actually abutted the school.

If my parents went out for the evening, I would often feel intense anxiety, which usually manifested as a stomach ache, until they returned home. It didn’t matter if my older brother was home, if we had a babysitter, or if I was home by myself. Everyone thought I was afraid to be home without my parents, but what I was actually worried about was something bad happening to them (car crash, perhaps?) while they were out together, and I would then be left an orphan.

So the anxiety and even possibly obsessions were there. Thinking back, I remember often cleaning up our apartment while my parents were out. But I don’t think it was a compulsion, as I never felt I had to clean. It was just something else for me to focus on — a way to keep the anxiety from overtaking me — and I always got a big thank you from my mom when she and my dad returned home. They had no idea I cleaned to keep my anxiety at bay.

While I was “thinking back” I also remembered something I hadn’t thought of in almost fifty years. For a time, when I walked up the staircase that led to our apartment, I felt the need to touch a specific spot on the banister. I have no recollection as to how long this went on for. It could have been anywhere from a few times to several months to maybe a year. I have one specific memory of feeling uneasy because I wasn’t sure if I had touched the banister “correctly.” I also remember toying with the idea of going back downstairs and touching it again, but I honestly don’t remember if I did. I am guessing I was about nine years old at the time.

Sure sounds like “beginning OCD,” wouldn’t you say? But that’s as far as it ever went. Instead of developing more obsessions and compulsions, the ones I had actually fizzled out. Don’t get me wrong; I still had my fair share of anxiety. But my obsessive-compulsive tendencies disappeared. Why? My son has OCD. Why don’t I?

Recent research has identified a genetic link to obsessive-compulsive disorder and my guess is I have a genetic predisposition for OCD. Still I never developed the disorder. It is also known that the brain networks of those with OCD often operate differently from the general population. One particular study done at the University of Cambridge expanded to include family members:

Scientists have discovered that people with OCD and their close family members show under-activation of brain areas responsible for stopping habitual behavior.

So why do some of these family members develop OCD and some don’t? While I don’t think anyone has the answers to these questions just yet, I believe researchers and scientists are getting closer. Closer to the answers that just might enlighten us enough to better prevent, fight, or even one day cure obsessive-compulsive disorder.

No Junk Reading
Last year, Mathew Flores, a 12-year-old from Sandy, Utah, approached postal worker Ron Lynch and asked if he had any extra advertisements or random newsletters. The boy explained that he loved to read but couldn’t afford books or even the bus fare to the library, so he would take anything the mailman had. Lynch was floored. “He didn’t want electronics; he didn’t want to sit in front of the TV playing games all day. The kid just wanted to read,” Lynch told deseretnews.com. Lynch asked his Facebook friends for reading material. Soon, Flores was getting books from all over the world—the United States, England, and even India. For his part, Flores said that he plans to read all the books, then share them with other book-starved kids.

You Don’t Learn This in College
When police found Fred Barley, 19, living in a tent on the campus of Gordon State College in Barnesville, Georgia, they were prepared to evict him. Then they heard his story. Barley had ridden six hours from Conyers, Georgia, on his little brother’s bike, carrying all his possessions—a duffel bag, a tent, two gallons of water, and a box of cereal—in order to enroll for his second semester at the school as a biology major. He’d arrived early to look for a job, but no luck. “I’m like, ‘Man, this is crazy,’” Officer Richard Carreker told ABC New York. Moved by Barley’s plight, Carreker and his partner put Barley up at a motel on their own dime. Word spread, and soon people donated clothes, school supplies, funds to cover the rest of his motel stay—he was even given a job at a pizzeria. And then there was Casey Blaney of Barnesville, who started a GoFundMe page for Barley after spending time with him. “I thought, Geez, this kid just rode a 20-inch little boy’s bike six hours in 100-degree weather. He’s determined,” she wrote on her Facebook page. The fund reached $184,000, all of which is going into an educational trust for Barley.

LouAnn’s Last Flight
For 34 years, LouAnn Alexander worked as a flight attendant. But at the age of 58, she received a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. Soon, the vivacious mother of two and grandmother-to-be was making plans for hospice care. Her older brother Rex Ridenoure was flying to see Alexander when he asked the flight attendant—an old colleague of Alexander’s, as it turned out—if he could speak to the passengers. He talked about his sister, even passed his phone around the plane so they could see photos of her. He then handed out napkins and asked if they’d write a little something for Alexander. Ninety-six passengers responded. Some drew pictures. One man and his seatmate created flowers out of napkins and swizzle sticks. But mostly, there were warm words: “Your brother made me love you, and I don’t even know you.” And “My favorite quote from when I had two brain tumors: ‘You’re braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.’” Alexander died in April of this year, but Ridenoure never forgot the compassion shown that day. “I’m just amazed that given the opportunity, even total strangers will reach out and show a lot of empathy and concern,” he said.
Source: Arizona Republic

Content continues below ad

The Donor
Brenda Jones, a 69-year-old great-grandmother, had spent a long year on the donor list waiting to receive a liver. Then, on July 18, a hospital in North Texas called—they had a viable liver for her. Meanwhile, 23-year-old Abigail Flores also needed a liver. Her situation was more urgent than Jones’s. Without a transplant, doctors feared Flores had maybe one more day to live. So they asked Jones to give up her spot so that Flores could get the precious organ. Jones agreed. “In my heart, I wouldn’t have been able to live with the liver if I had let this little girl die,” she told WFAA. Jones was placed back at the top of the donor list and got a new liver days later.

Unflagging Love
In August, Cari and Lauri Ryding came home to find their rainbow flag had been stolen and their house egged. Antihomosexual vandalism wasn’t at all what they expected in their close-knit Natick, Massachusetts, neighborhood. As it turned out, it also wasn’t what their neighbors expected. “We said, ‘Why don’t we all have the flags? They can’t take them from all of us,’” Denis Gaughan told the Boston Globe. Within days, the rainbow flag—the symbol of gay pride—was flying in solidarity with the Rydings on over 40 other homes in this family-friendly area. “One person’s act of fear and maliciousness created such a powerful statement of love,” said Lauri. “Love wins. We win.”

An Anniversary She’ll Never Forget
May 7, 2016, was to have been Yiru Sun’s wedding day. But two months earlier, Sun, a New York City insurance executive, called it off after refusing to sign a prenuptial agreement. Trouble was, she’d put down a nonrefundable deposit on a luxury hall. So, working with nonprofits, she threw a pre-Mother’s Day luncheon for 60 underprivileged kids and their families, none of whom she’d ever met. Sun, outfitted in her wedding dress, mingled and watched kids eat ice pops and have their faces painted. “I cannot be the princess of my wedding day,” she told the New York Post, “but I can give the kids a fairy tale.”

Splitting the Check
Americans donate approximately 2 percent of their disposable income to charity. Then there are Julia Wise and Jeff Kauffman. Since 2008, the couple, now 31 and 30, respectively, have donated half their income to charity, a total of $585,000. “We have what we need, so it makes sense to share with people,” Wise told today.com. Wise, a social worker, and Kauffman, a computer programmer, plan on passing the philanthropy bug to their daughters, two-year-old Lily and six-month-old Anna. “We hope [they’ll] grow up thinking this is a normal part of life,” Wise said.

The Getaway
There was a jailbreak in Parker County, Texas, in June, and a correctional officer is alive because of it. Inmates were awaiting court appearances in a holding cell when the officer watching over them collapsed. The inmates called out for help. When none appeared, they used their collective weight to break down the cell door. Rather than making a run for it, they went to the officer’s aid, still yelling for help. One even tried the officer’s radio. Eventually, guards heard the commotion and came in. After placing the inmates back in their cell, CPR was performed on the stricken officer, saving his life. “It never crossed my mind not to help, whether he’s got a gun or a badge,” inmate Nick Kelton told WFAA. “If he falls down, I’m gonna help.”

Content continues below ad

Oh, Baby!
Rebekka Garvison could feel the passengers’ eyes rolling as she walked toward her seat carrying her newborn, Rylee. They were flying from Kalamazoo, Michigan, to Fort Rucker, Alabama, where Rebekka’s husband was stationed. Minutes into the flight, Rylee wailed. A nearby couple glared, so Rebekka moved. Rylee was still crying when their seatmate, Nyfesha Miller, asked if she could try holding her. Rylee quickly fell asleep in Miller’s arms and stayed that way throughout the flight. “Nyfesha Miller, you will never understand how happy this act of kindness has made my family,” Rebekka wrote on Facebook. “You could’ve just been irritated like everyone else, but you held Rylee the entire flight and let me get some rest and peace of mind.”
Source: CBS News

A World Away, and Yet So Close
Nigeria is a long way from the Baltimore suburb of Bel Air. Which is why Felicia Ikpum hadn’t seen her son Mike Tersea for four years, ever since he’d left Nigeria on a basketball scholarship to John Carroll School. But with his graduation from John Carroll looming, Tersea’s teachers and classmates thought his mother should be at the ceremony. “We wanted to do something valuable for one of our classmates,” Joe Kyburz, the senior-class president, told the Baltimore Sun. Knowing Ikpum couldn’t afford the plane ticket or hotel, the school raised $1,763 to bring her over. Nigeria can be a dangerous place, and Ikpum traveled 12 hours through terrorist-held land to make the flight. What was her reaction when she laid eyes on her son after four years? “I screamed, I shouted!”

Black and White And Blue
Prayer broke out all over this summer—Walmart aisles, gas stations, roadsides. In a Columbus, Georgia, Walmart, an African American man walked up to a white police officer, and within seconds, the two were holding hands with heads bowed in prayer. In Kentucky, a homeless man and a cop were photographed in a similar position. “They stood this way for about 30 seconds,” said the woman who posted the photograph. In Mississippi, Deputy Sheriff Josh Harmon posted on Facebook: “Had one of the most amazing experiences of my life. [An elderly black woman] comes up to me and says, ‘Your life matters. Can I pray with you?’ And we prayed. And people joined in. They were black, white together. There was no hate. It was just praying.”
Source: goodnewsnetwork.org

Flower Power
When my husband was hospitalized for almost a year, my house was left to fend for itself. One day, I came home from another long day by my husband’s bedside to discover our flower boxes brimming with beautiful flowers. A neighbor did this for me. She wanted me to have something nice to look at when I came home.
Ruth Bilotta, Churchville, Pennsylvania

Paying It Forward—Literally
Thirty years ago, my world almost fell apart. I had surgery, was fired, and was informed by the IRS that my employer had not paid employment taxes. After a few weeks, I saw a flyer about a Japanese festival. Although a physical and emotional wreck, I decided to go. There, I met a Japanese gentleman with whom I chatted for hours. A few months later, I came home to find a bouquet of flowers and a letter at my door. It was from that same friend. Inside the letter was a check for $10,000 to help me through my rough patch. Sixteen year later, I met a family that had been evicted from their home and needed $5,000 to close the escrow on a new house. Without hesitation, I handed them a check for the full amount. They call me their angel, but I remind them that I, too, once had an angel.
Hassmik Mahdessian, Glendale, California

Content continues below ad

Pro Bono Gardening
I am a widow who suffers from allergies and mobility problems, and I don’t have the luxury of having family nearby. Thankfully, I have a kind teenager to do my yard work. One evening, I asked if he’d mind doing some extra work around the house. When I tried to tip him afterward, he refused. “You’re going to spoil me,” I said. Kyle answered, “Somebody needs to.”
Marjorie Ann Smith, Westfield, Indiana

The Heavenly Job Reference
I used to work as a nurse’s aide in a hospital, where I befriended an elderly patient. We shared stories and jokes—I even revealed to her my lifelong dream of being an illustrator. Once, after I told her about my sorrowfully tiny apartment and cheap furniture, she said, “Maybe one day a good leprechaun will come and help you.” Soon after, she passed away. A few days later, there was a knock on my door. It was her son with a truckload of furniture for me. It had belonged to his mother, and she wanted me to have it. And then he handed me this note: “Betty, I promise to put in a good word for you in Heaven so you can get the job you’ve always wanted.” Three months later, I got an illustrating job. My friend had kept her promise.
Betty Tenney, Sterling Heights, Michigan

Sharing in the Rain
I was running through the streets of New York, soaking wet thanks to a sudden storm, when I heard a voice: “Do you need an umbrella?” It was a woman standing in the doorway of a hotel. She grabbed an umbrella and handed it to me, saying, “Now you have at least one more reason to believe there’s humanity in this world.” Continuing on my way, I was now not only protected by an umbrella but also by the kindness that shows up now and then in the world.
Raimo Moysa, North Salem, New York

Dear Strangers,

I remember you. Eighteen months ago, when my cell phone rang, you were walking into Whole Foods prepared to do your grocery shopping, just as I had been only minutes before you. But I had already abandoned my cart full of groceries in the entryway. My brother was on the other end of the line telling me my father had taken his own life early that morning.

I started to cry and scream as my whole body trembled. I fell to the floor, my knees buckling under the weight of what I had just learned. You could have kept on walking, ignoring my cries, but you didn’t. You could have simply stopped and stared at my primal display of pain, but you didn’t. Instead, you surrounded me as I yelled through my sobs, “My father killed himself. He’s dead.”

I remember one of you asked for my phone and whom you should call. What was my password? You needed my husband’s name as you searched through my contacts. I remember that I could hear your words as you tried to reach my husband for me, leaving an urgent message for him to call me. I recall hearing you discuss among yourselves who would drive me home in my car and who would follow that person back to the store. You didn’t even know one another, but it didn’t matter. You encountered me, a stranger, in the worst moment of my life, and you coalesced around me with common purpose—to help.

In my fog, I told you that I had a friend who worked at Whole Foods, and one of you brought her to me. And I even recall as I sat with her, one of you sent over a gift card to Whole Foods; though you didn’t know me, you wanted to let me know that you would be thinking of me. That gift card helped to feed my family when the idea of cooking was so far beyond my emotional reach.

I never saw you after that. But I know this to be true: Because you reached out to help, you offered a ray of light in the bleakest moment I’ve ever endured. You may not remember it. You may not remember me. But I will never, ever forget you.

Cori Salchert of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, sits on a hospital bed parked in the middle of her living room stroking the peach fuzz on top of her newly adopted son’s head. One-year-old Charlie is at ease in his mother’s arms, drifting off to the hum of his ventilator. His mother adopted him knowing that there was a good chance he would not live long.

Serving as foster and adoptive parents did not seem feasible for Cori and her husband, Mark, a few years ago. Both worked, and they already had eight biological children. But Cori had a passion for helping families through difficult times. As a registered nurse and a perinatal bereavement specialist, she helped families cope with the loss of a pregnancy or a newborn child. If parents were too overwhelmed with emotion to hold their sick baby, Cori would cradle the child so “no one had to die alone.”

Such times made Cori think, Wow, I would really like to take those kiddos and care for them. About five years ago, Cori was struck with an autoimmune disorder. The illness left her without a job and feeling hopeless. But it did open up the time for Cori to connect with Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin’s treatment foster-care program and foster hospice infants. Here’s Cori’s story in her own words:

In August of 2012, we received a call from the hospital asking if we would take in a two-week-old baby girl who was nameless and had no one to care for her. The baby was born without the right or left hemisphere of her brain, and doctors said there was no hope for her. She was in a vegetative state—unable to see or hear and responding only to painful stimuli.

She could have died in the hospital, wrapped in a blanket and set to the side because she was being sustained with a feeding pump. But we brought this beautiful baby home to live, and live she did.

Emmalynn lived more in 50 days than a number of folks do in a lifetime. She had not had a family, and now she was suddenly the youngest sibling of nine. We held her constantly and took her everywhere with us.

There came an evening when I knew Emmalynn was beginning to fade. The whole family was home and got to hold her and kiss her. My husband tucked her close with her little head under his chin and sang to her. Eventually, most of the family began to drift off and head to bed, but my daughter Charity and I stayed awake with her.

I was snuggling Emmalynn into my furry, warm bathrobe, holding her on my chest and singing “Jesus Loves Me” to her, when it occurred to me that I had not heard her breathe for a few minutes. I leaned her back and saw that this beautiful creature was gone. She’d left this world hearing my heartbeat. She didn’t suffer, she wasn’t in pain, and she most certainly wasn’t alone.

Two years later, we took in four-month-old Charlie. Charlie has a life-limiting diagnosis but is not necessarily considered terminal. However, children with this type of brain damage typically die by age two. Charlie is already on life support and has been resuscitated at least ten times in the past year. He now has an altered plan of care, and should he code again, we will not resort to doing compressions and using a defibrillator—this time, we will let him go.

As in Emmalynn’s case, we do everything we can to love Charlie, and we take him on adventures with us everywhere we can.

What a gift it is to be a part of these babies’ lives, to have the ability to ease their suffering, to cherish and love them even though they aren’t able to give anything tangible back or even smile in return for our efforts.

We invest deeply, and we ache terribly when these kids die, but our hearts are like stained-glass windows. Those windows are made of broken glass that has been forged back together, and those windows are even stronger and more beautiful for having been broken.

She’s 14 now, a turbulent age. Everyone warned us. There will be times when she’s still your little girl, they said. And there will be other times when she lashes out with such fury, you will wonder where everything went wrong. Everyone warned us, and we believed them. We had planning sessions about the future, talks about patience and openness and firmness when needed.

We were ready.

We weren’t ready.

Elite athletes will tell you that in their first professional game, everything moves so impossibly fast that there is no possible way to prepare for the speed and fury and violence of it all.

We were ready.

We weren’t ready.

She gets into the car. It is nighttime, and I’m picking her up from an activity, and she is happy. She used to always be happy. Now it’s a 50-50 proposition. She shows me a picture she wants to post on Instagram of her and a friend. She asks if it’s OK. I tell her it’s OK. I don’t know if it’s OK; I’m trying hard to keep up with the rules. She is happy.

We sit in the car, and we are stuck at a red light because of the indecision of the car in front of us. I growl at this car. She laughs and growls too. I remember when she was a baby and would make these funny growling sounds. We once took her to a spring-training baseball game in Florida. It was unseasonably cold, and we had her bundled up in this baby blanket. Every now and again from the blanket there would be a loud “Rahhhhrrrrrrr,” and people in the few rows in front of us would look back to see who or what was making that sound.

The light turns green. We talk about nothing. It is pleasing for a moment not to be asking her about school or homework or friends, and pleasing for her for a moment not to be talking about any of it. The air is cool and perfect, and the windows are cracked; “Video Killed the Radio Star” plays on the radio. “I like this song,” she says. I tell her that years ago, I made lists with my friends Tommy and Chuck of our favorite hundred songs, and this was on it.

“Would it be now?” she asks.

She’s in a curious mood. She used to be curious all the time. “Tell me a story of when you were a little boy,” she’d say. She does not say that much now. Curiosity for a teen is a sign of vulnerability, a too-eager admission that there are things she doesn’t know. I remember that feeling. She yells sometimes, “I don’t need your help!” I remember that. She yells, “Get away from me! You don’t understand!” I remember that. She yells, “It doesn’t matter. I’m going to fail anyway.” I remember that most of all.

Content continues below ad

She has little interest in remembering. For her, the clock moves forward, and she wants to look forward—there’s so much out there. In a year, she will be in high school. In two years, she will be able to drive. In three years, she will start looking hard at colleges. In four years, she will be a senior in high school. Forward. Always forward.

And I look back. Always back. I am carrying her, her tiny head on my shoulder, and I’m singing “Here Comes the Sun,” trying to get her to fall asleep. I am walking with her through the gift shop at Harry Potter World as she goes back and forth between wanting a stuffed owl or a Gryffindor bag. I am helping her with her math homework when the problems were easy enough that I could figure the answers in my head. I am watching The Princess Bride with her for the first time, and I hear her say in her squeaky voice, “Have fun storming the castle!”

“Hey, Dad,” she asks, “can I have your phone? Can I play some music?”

“Sure,” I tell her. She punches a few buttons, the song begins, and immediately I know. It’s her favorite song.

I once knew a girl

In the years of my youth

With eyes like the summer

All beauty and truth

In the morning I fled

Left a note and it read

Someday. You will. Be loved.

I introduced her to it a while ago. “What kind of music would I like?” she had asked. “Why don’t we try some Death Cab for Cutie?” I had said. She was smitten.

She is smitten now. She sings along to every word. I do too.

You may feel alone when you’re falling asleep

And every time tears roll down your cheeks

But I know your heart belongs to someone you’ve yet to meet.

Someday. You will. Be loved.

She looks up at me and smiles. Her teeth are straight; the braces are gone. She leans closer and says, “Don’t you love this song, Daddy?”

I hear her say “Daddy” and think back to a time when she raced over to me at the airport after I returned from a trip, hugged me, and wouldn’t let go. She’s 14, a turbulent age. Tomorrow, she may look right through me. But now, in the coolness of the evening, she smiles at me and holds my hand, and we sing along with Death Cab for Cutie. We are off-key. We are off-key together.

As a counselor, it is unfortunate that I wasn’t provided any formal education to prepare me to use mindfulness in a clinical setting, but after becoming personally aware of mindfulness and its theories, I realized that throughout my time with clients I was naturally using mindfulness techniques!

Historically, the arrival of mindfulness to the US is attributed to Jon Kabat-Zinn. Kabat-Zinn is Professor of Medicine Emeritus and creator of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Kabat-Zinn was first introduced to the philosophy of Buddhism while he was a student at MIT. Later, in 1979, he founded the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where he adapted Buddhist teachings on mindfulness and developed the Stress Reduction and Relaxation Program. He later renamed the program “Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction” (MBSR), removing the Buddhist framework and eventually downplayed any connection between mindfulness and Buddhism, instead putting MBSR in a scientific context. To this day Kabat-Zinn downplays the connection of mindfulness to Buddhism, yet I feel his downplaying of Buddhism is a means of bringing mindfulness into the mainstream of clinical practice; which has recently occurred.

In 2013 Kabat-Zinn wrote this definition: “Mindfulness is the psychological process of bringing one’s attention to the internal and external experiences occurring in the present moment, which can be developed through the practice of meditation and other training.” According to Robert Sharf, “the Buddhist term translated into English as ‘mindfulness’ originates in the Pali term sati and in its Sanskrit counterpart smṛti. Smṛti originally meant ‘to remember’, ‘to recollect’, ‘to bear in mind’. … [S]ati is an awareness of things in relation to things, and hence an awareness of their relative value. Sati is what causes the practitioner of yoga to ‘remember’ that any feeling he may experience exists in relation to a whole variety or world of feelings that may be skillful or unskillful, with faults or faultless, relatively inferior or refined, dark or pure.”

If we compare the above understanding of Sati to another, earlier, definition of mindfulness from Kabat-Zinn we find the influence of Buddhism in Kabat-Zinn’s thoughts. He describes mindfulness as “a means of paying attention in a particular way; on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.”

Recent interest has emerged for studying the effects of mindfulness on the brain using neuroimaging techniques, physiological measures and behavioral tests. A recent Harvard study showed that through meditation, a mainstay of mindfulness, the brain was able to create new gray matter. Increased gray-matter density in the hippocampus, known to be important for learning and memory, and in structures associated with self-awareness, compassion, and introspection was discovered in this study. “It is fascinating to see the brain’s plasticity and that, by practicing meditation, we can play an active role in changing the brain and can increase our well-being and quality of life,” says Britta Hölzel, first author of the paper and a research fellow at MGH and Giessen University in Germany. “Other studies in different patient populations have shown that meditation can make significant improvements in a variety of symptoms, and we are now investigating the underlying mechanisms in the brain that facilitate this change.”

The Harvard study is but one of many studies and research on mindfulness and its effectiveness in clinical settings. Research data not only proves efficacy, but shows that mindfulness is not a fad. Centuries ago Buddhists understood the transforming power of mindfulness; and today, through scientific research, we confirm that the Buddhists were correct.

How does the study of mindfulness translate into daily practice, or even as something important in my life? A bit over 5 years ago I made a significant job change which “forced” me, as a type A person, to slow down. At the time I wasn’t yet consciously aware that I was beginning to live mindfully. As I slowed myself internally and externally, I focused my thoughts and attention to the present moment. No longer was I dwelling on my past nor anxious about my future. This was quite the change for me as I used to be the king of anxiety and worry!

It was during this time I’m my life when I discovered Jon Kabat-Zinn’s definition of mindfulness I mentioned above: “a means of paying attention in a particular way; on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.” Personally, the two key phrases in this definition which I feel are important are “on purpose” and “nonjudgmentally”. To find our inner-peace we need to consciously make the choice to spend time every day focusing our attention on what is happening around us and within us. Our focus is not meant to judge what is happening, just to notice it, to experience it. As we become aware of our surroundings and inner self, we become aware of life’s joys and potential. In this state of focused awareness we are enabled to discover solutions and so feel a sense of hope.

The goal of mindfulness is for us to slow down enough to fully experience life. Mindfulness is not a means to avoid negative aspects of life, but to fully live those experiences so as to learn how to cope with them in a healthy way. Many of us try to avoid negativity, yet discover that we may be successful at avoidance for a time, but once again discover we are hit with that which we were avoiding. Mindfulness asks us to be aware of all of our emotions, to feel everything, even the negativity. In so doing, we end up coping with what we at first wanted to avoid. Coping teaches us skills for dealing with future negativity in our lives.

Living mindfully is a daily practice of noticing the little things. For example, one eats mindfully by doing so intentionally, savoring each bite, rather than rushing through a meal without truly tasting the food. During your commute, or rushing from one task to another, one can mindfully (intentionally) notice the details of the flora, buildings, people, cracks in the sidewalk, etc.

How can mindfulness lead us to feeling peaceful? The short answer: mindfulness guides us to live in the moment, for it is only in the moment where we have “control” in our lives. By control, I mean our ability to change our thoughts and perceptions. If I allow my thoughts to remain in either the past or the future, I suffer from stress and anxiety since I have no control over those time periods. All that I can do with the past is learn it’s lessons; in the future, all I can do is prepare, in the present moment, for the unknown which has yet to happen. Therefore, keeping my thoughts focused on the present moment allows me to feel and experience life to its fullest, while choosing the thoughts I wish to think.

Mindfulness has not only been effective for centuries, it is now proven through scientific research as a means of guiding us to finding our inner peace. I’m not just a counselor teaching mindfulness; I’m also a client of mindfulness who now lives in peace.

During this past year, I’ve had three instances of car trouble. Each time these things happened, I was disgusted with the way most people hadn’t bothered to help. One of those times, I was on the side of the road for close to three hours with my friend’s big Jeep. I put signs in the windows, big signs that said NEED A JACK, and offered money. Nothing. Right as I was about to give up and start hitching, a Mexican family in a van pulled over, and the father bounded out.

He sized up the situation and called for his daughter, who spoke English. He conveyed through her that he had a jack but that it was too small for the Jeep, so we would need to brace it. Then he got a saw from the van and cut a section out of a big log on the side of the road. We rolled it over and put his jack on top, and we were in business.

I started taking the wheel off, and then, if you can believe it, I broke his tire iron—snapped the head clean off. No worries: He handed it to his wife, and she was gone in a flash down the road to buy a new tire iron. She was back in 15 minutes. We finished the job, and I was a very happy man.

The two of us were filthy and sweaty. His wife produced a large water jug for us to wash our hands with. I tried to put a $20 bill in the man’s hand, but he wouldn’t take it, so instead I went up to the van and gave it to his wife as quietly as I could. I asked the little girl where they lived. Mexico, she said. They were in Oregon so Mommy and Daddy could pick cherries for the next few weeks. Then they were going to pick peaches, then go home.

After I said my goodbyes and started walking back to the Jeep, the girl called out and asked if I’d had lunch. When I told her no, she ran up and handed me a tamale.

I thanked them again, walked back to my car, and opened the foil on the tamale, and what did I find inside? My $20 bill!

I ran to the van. The father saw the $20 in my hand and just started shaking his head no. With what looked like great concentration, he said in English, “Today you, tomorrow me.”

Get ready for your (small) big-screen debut.

Keep your little turkeys entertained with these fun crafts.

Unstable relationships could come from a legitimate personality disorder.

All vegetables are nutritional superstars—with essential vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals—but these seasonal picks can also help keep your blood sugar in line.

Who can you trust? That’s the gamble, and when it comes to choosing a partner, fidelity is a core aspect most of us require.

Yet the adage, “once a cheater, always a cheater,” isn’t always true. Here are five guidelines you can use right now to make the wisest choice if you find yourself drawn to a partner with a past. 

1.Weigh Their Past

Factually, odds are highest that your sweetie will treat your relationship boundaries like they treated those boundaries in other relationships. In study after study, past behavior is your crystal ball; it’s the single best predictor of how any of us will behave, given similar circumstances. It’s one reason why someone who cheated with you is likely to cheat on you.

Overlook this rule of thumb, and you’ll get hurt again and again. People tend to do what and whom they have done before.

2.Note Their Timing

The recent past is particularly important. How long ago was the affair? A person who cheated last month and says it won’t happen again might be telling the truth.  But the person who had an affair once, ten years ago, and never did it again, is far safer.

Timing also matters in the context of their former relationship. Most people, including people who have had an affair, aren’t willful philanderers. But a statistically small group sees “getting some” — strange as that is — as their right. If they’ve cheated early in the passionate love phase of a relationship–during serious exclusive dating, engagement, or in the honeymoon phase of marriage—that’s a red flag you’re with one of them.  

3.Examine Their Habits

Was their cheating a one-night, one-time thing, or something they turned to often? Repeated acts are likelier to recur; they become habits. And especially in stressful times, people return to their habits. 

All relationships go through stresses. Are you okay with a partner whose default is soothing themselves in another’s arms? 

4.Explore Their Insight

What reasons does your new love give for their past infidelity? Do they offer excuses–or remorse? Do they give themselves a pass–or did they commit to change even if they were never caught, because in their view, affairs are wrong and they don’t want to catch themselves violating their own moral code? Do they accept responsibility for their choices and behavior, or do they pawn it off on their ex’s failings?

It’s a safer bet for you if your would-be mate takes it all on the chin: my fault, my responsibility, and my choices led to this. Remember the saying, the first step to change is knowing you have a problem? Ownership is key. If your date defends, excuses, and finds just cause for their past infidelity, prepare for more. 

Bonus points if they acknowledge a basic moral code of fidelity. A person who uses rough times in the relationship or flaws in their ex as an excuse for infidelity is a person who most likely will be unfaithful again.

5.Consider Yourself

During prep for this article, I heard from many people who basically said, “Even if you gave me all the data on best-cases, I would never again date someone who cheated. A partner was unfaithful to me, and I would always be waiting for the other shoe to drop.” Or, “I trusted someone with a past, and they cheated on me too.”

If that’s you, the psychological strain is just not worth it. Under those circumstances, it’s likely best to avoid everyone with a history of infidelity, no matter what might indicate it wouldn’t recur. Living with constant fear is contrary to loving yourself, and besides, most people have never cheated on anyone. Choose from among them!

So, who can you trust? You can trust everyone–to be who they already are. Take a clear-eyed view of your partner; accept that you aren’t going to change them; weigh the available evidence; and get honest about your own comfort level.  You have the tools you need.

Then—trust accordingly. It’s not a guarantee. Science has few of those. But it’s the way to bet.

Dr. Duana Welch is a relationship coach and the author of Love Factually, the first book that uses science rather than opinion to help men and women put all the odds in their favor for every stage of dating. You can get a free chapter and learn more at http://ift.tt/1tK0ngK

The post Once a Cheater, Always a Cheater? 5 Surprising Truths About Trusting a Partner With a Past appeared first on eHarmony Advice.

Take a look at your mobile device. Do you see oily fingerprints and lint? Dust and crumbs? Is that a hair stuck at the screen’s edge?

We take our electronics into public restrooms, hand them to runny-nosed toddlers, pass them around to share photos, and press them against sweaty skin in gyms. Repeated studies show that what accumulates is germy nastiness worse than what is on the bottom of your shoe. Like your toothbrush, “your mobile device is something you want to clean regularly,” says Dubert Guerrero, MD, an infectious disease specialist at Sanford Health in Fargo, North Dakota. And probably not something you want to pass around the table.

For Basic Sanitation
Cleaning your device can be tricky because you don’t want to damage it and manufacturers don’t give you much guidance. It can be done, however, if you’re conscientious. Health experts advise wiping it down with a moist microfiber cloth at least daily, which is sufficient to eliminate fingerprints and dust. Bacteria like clostridium difficile (which can cause diarrhea and inflammation of the colon) and flu viruses may require a sterilizing agent like bleach or alcohol.

This is a problem, since Apple officially warns against using “window cleaners, household cleaners, aerosol sprays, solvents, alcohol, ammonia, or abrasives” to clean its products.

Nevertheless, disinfectant wipes made for electronics are great at cleaning grime. But it’s far cheaper to make your own solution. To clean his mobile devices, Derek Meister, a technician for Best Buy’s repair and online support service, uses a one-to-one ratio of 70 percent isopropyl alcohol and distilled water, which together cost less than $4 at most stores.

Fill a spray bottle with the diluted alcohol, lightly moisten a lint-free cloth, preferably microfiber (no paper towels), and gently wipe down the screen and case. Never spray directly onto the device. To clean corners and around ports, use lint-free foam swabs rather than cotton swabs.

To Keep It Looking New
Using a can of compressed air to blow around ports and between keys will help maintain the look, performance, and resale value when it’s time to upgrade. This gets rid of dust and particles that can infiltrate and damage electronics. Another option is to buy a specialized air compressor like the DataVac Electric Duster, which lists for $100 and comes with all sorts of little attachments for cleaning out your device’s crevices and seams.

“An air compressor gets things really clean,” says Miroslav Djuric, former chief information architect at ifixit.com, an online do-it-yourself community.