Rose, keeping me company

  August 30, 2009 – I completely understand why so many people choose not to change. It’s difficult. I’m in the fourth day of a life with pills or medication. It’s exhilarating, and also challenging. Had a couple of rough nights, sleep-wise. I have faith that I will get there, and I’ve come to see this reflexive reaching for some soothing – been taking small amounts of medication for help sleeping for a long time – is a kind of psychological addiction. If you think you can’t sleep without it, you won’t. I am working hard on the natural remedies I am trying, from homeopathic medicine to tapping, visualization and meditation. None are a quick fix, all help. I am touched – a bit surprised – by the messages I get from doctors and nurses urging me to hang in there and supporting the idea that we are sometimes too quick to medicate, and become too dependent on it.
 I understand that some medicines are helpful, and quite appropriate.
 I have only recently come to see that I have an addictive, obsessive personality. Good for writing a lot of books, bad for sleeping without medication. Somebody e-mailed me this week that he believed I was restless. I said that was not a surprise to me or anybody else. My issues have always come in the night, what has been diagnosed as a trauma symptom from childhood. So I am finally dealing with it. Another e-mailer wrote that it takes a long time to become unbalanced in mind and body, and thus is takes a long time to find balance. I am seeing that this is so. I have never been a patient person, but am learning to change my sense of time. I like the idea of the body and mind being in balance, and that will take a lot of work.
  But this is a very important goal of mine, to find a more peaceful place, and to help demystify the process. Like anything else, it takes hard work and a willingness to change. Also a desire to change, which many profess to have but often don’t.
  A book tour may not be the most opportune time to deal with these issues, but I think it’s a good time. Book tours pull you out of yourself, bring you into contact with people, open your ideas to the test of light and response.
 “Soul Of A Dog” is the most exciting book tour yet in that sense, because people are ready to talk about this subject, and eager. And I am finally learning how to do it, in my writing and otherwise.
  Dogs are a mirror of us. We can’t understand them if we don’t look at ourselves. I think of the woman who asked me if her dog would hate her if she crated him until he drank water from a bowl, not just a stream. No, I said, dogs don’t hate. She was actually showing him how to live in our world.
  Every day is an opportunity to tell our stories, to grow, change and learn about ourselves.