Our Common Thread

The blog title is the title of the June/July 2020 Vogue. It is a special issue on Creativity in a Time of Crisis.

I want to quote from two people whose photos and quotes grace the magazine.

I use the quotes to encourage readers to buy Vogue.

____________________

Cynthia Erivo – Atlanta:

“I’m still picking outfits that make me feel good–even if I’m just going downstairs,” says the actor. “I’m still getting up and doing my little facial and skin care regimen. I’m still wearing my jewelry because I love that, and it’s a part of who I am…So that stuff hasn’t fallen by the wayside yet. I would say I’m staying fashionably cozy.”

Alessandro Michele – Rome:

“I’ve rediscovered knitting and the sacredness of manual work. Knitting is my way of praying,” says the Gucci creative director. “I’m also learning how to play my classical guitar, feeling the connection with my dad’s love for music. I’m aware of the privilege I have–I can slow down, while lots of other people are working tirelessly to help each and every one of us make it through these agonizing times.

We would not be here thinking about what this pandemic is teaching us without their priceless effort. From my windows I can hear the birds singing as I’ve never heard before; seawater in Venice is clear once again.

These are the little signs we need to look at once we go back to inhabiting this fragile world.”

______________________

What I have to add to the dialog:

Be grateful for what you have. You have everything right inside you that you need to succeed. Respect the natural world and the human beings living alongside you on this green and glorious earth.

Each of us gets only this life to live on this one planet. Live for today and focus on the present moment before it’s gone.

Today is the greatest day. Only today matters.

The past had an expiration date–it ended. The future isn’t guaranteed.

Today is a gift to open and rejoice in.

Pay attention to the birds singing on your fire escape. Listen to the song of life.

______________________

Living through this terrible and tragic pandemic I’ve decided not to play it safe when returning outdoors.

What I wrote in here years ago:

There’s no safety in playing it safe. The path of least resistance leads to a dead end.

Dare beautiful readers–dare to be yourselves and strive to make a difference.

More than ever the world needs us to band together for the common cause of humanity.

Self-Acceptance

Years ago a Nike print ad featured athletes with the tag line “Make Yourself.”

In the end, that’s what a person does in recovery: you have the chance to make yourself into who you want to be.

You don’t have to get a J.D. or M.D. You don’t have to do what I do.

You just have to be the kind of person that it gives you joy to be (regardless of the number on the bathroom scale).

Surprise–I think about the beauty and benefit of “self-acceptance” as a mantra in recovery.

If you’re not happy being you, ask yourself why exactly you’d rather be someone else. Change what you can of what you don’t like, and live with and forget the things you can’t change.

I’m 52–next week I will write about my 25th anniversary of being in remission.

Here now I want to write about self-acceptance because it’s the secret to feeling good about yourself. It could help to define what makes you a true original.

I would say my personality is “creative-kinetic.” Like the athletes in the Nike ad, I understand that there’s a power in creating yourself.

What I’m possessed with right now is a Deborah Harry quote. In a magazine, she said that all artists go “inching and crawling” towards their situation.

That sums up recovery: it too often involves going “inching and crawling” toward each goal; each milestone; each victory.

I will write more about recovery in here in my own inimitable way in the coming weeks–because it needs to be said what I have to say.

I’ll end here with this prelude: if you’re an artist, you cannot ever not do your art.

If you’re in recovery, you have to be true to yourself.

A good first step to embracing who you are is to remember that a mental health diagnosis is simply a tool for getting the treatment you need. It’s not who you are.

I call using your diagnosis to define yourself–I call this an “identity straitjacket.”

The beauty of living in recovery is that you get to decide how you want to describe yourself. That’s how I hit on my own two-word statement.

Try out your own self-definition. Meet me here next week when I talk about how I’ve been in remission for 25 years.

Rebel Rebel

bowie-cover

I’ve installed David Bowie’s song “Rebel Rebel” on my iPod and set the alarm clock to wake me to this song.

Ordinary people in the world aren’t kind to those of us who rebel.

Early on in my life I rebelled the role of “mental patient.”

Thirty years later I tell you readers that living a counterfeit life is a mistake.

It comes down to being okay with not conforming to what has been designated as the norm in society.

Yet why do people think they have the right to brand others as–at worst “crazy”–and at best not normal? This intrigues me that most people fall in line to wanting to be normal or have a normal life–and expect others to follow suit.

I ask you: Is normal what it’s cracked up to be? I think not.

If you ask me there’s no safety in numbers–you’re just numbing your individuality to please people who won’t accept your true self.

I have thought often about the futility of seeking other people’s approval for who you are and how you live your life.

Way back in the 1970s David Bowie sung about how the girl’s mother didn’t know if she was a boy or a girl.

The lyrics about the torn dress; the face a mess–and how the young girl was there when the dues were counted out– it all reminds me of the story I told in Left of the Dial.

If you ask me “Rebel Rebel” is the perfect anthem for self-expression of bold stripes and of any stripe.

My high school art teacher told us that successful composition requires “unity with diversity.” That’s a great credo for the world right now.

God made us individuals. He thinks we’re divine just the way we are. We aren’t supposed to be mirror images of each other.

“Rebel Rebel” was prophetic in its message:

That you can only be a success if you dare to be yourself.

Tu B’Shevat

tu-bshevat

A friend invited me to celebrate the New Year for Trees.

Today is the New Year for Trees in the Jewish Calendar.

The Torah says: “Man is a Tree of the Field.”

Olives, dates, figs, and pomegranates are the fruits of the trees that are eaten on this day.

The pine tree photo is my creation. Not confident that you can make out that I used glitter on the leaves.

This of course is not my religion because I’m not a member of any organized religion that meets in a church.

How interesting that everyone was painting because in the New York Times yesterday there was a news article about art therapy. Apparently the second lady Karen Pence wife of our vice president has taken an interest in art therapy over the years.

Professional art therapists wonder if Pence echoes her husband’s anti-human rights stance and will try to get art therapists to convert gay people to heterosexuals. Others in the art therapy profession laud the second lady’s attempt to promote their field.

We painted and ate dried fruits and nuts.

Let’s celebrate the New Year for Trees for what it can be:

A reminder that we are human beings and part of the natural world. That when we water the soil our trees bear fruit. We also bear the fruit of our goals when we water and nurture our imagination.

I’ve written about friendship at HealthCentral. I’ll be publishing a Bruni in the City column about friendship in early 2018.

It’s true–and I’ll end here with this–that often those of us with a mental health challenge do best in artistic environments.

A verified significant number of Artist/Creatives have mental health conditions. Far better to encourage these gifts and use them to create things of beauty to share with others.

Sketch, paint, sculpt, write fiction, cut hair, apply makeup, sing, dance, act–it’s all good.

Optimism

optimism

Years ago I wrote in a prior incarnation of this blog about the New York City subway MetroCard fare card that I saved with the word Optimism in black letters on the white back.

Two or three years ago I attended an art class and created the above collage with the word Optimism.

The significance in choosing to make a collage of letters spelling Optimism is this: At the same time I had read the book The Difference by Jean Chatzky that details what financially well-off and wealthy individuals have in common in terms of traits.

It turns out that having optimism is one of the traits shared by people who acquire great fortune in life–and I dare say it helps us emotionally as well as financially to be optimistic.

My great friend has turned around my thinking in this regard. His nonchalance about the turn of events in America has prompted me to want to focus on the positive.

Hence the reproduction of the word Optimism as the banner for this blog entry.

I still think as I’ve always thought that the government can’t solve society’s ills.

Yet each person living in America has the potential to change their lives for the better.

The hypocritical thinking and the inconsistencies in policies that plague Republicans are going to be left by the wayside in this blog even though I’m tempted to reprise exposing them.

Instead I will focus on the positive: you want to amass a ton of money for yourself?–Be an optimist. Optimists live longer too.

When the glass is half full it’s time to drink up.

We should all be so fortunate in America that our only dilemma right now is that our iPhone doesn’t send photos to our e-mail as soon as we upload them.

Thus I went with Plan B: uploading Optimism.

Christmas and Hanukkah arrive in five weeks and Kwanzaa is right around the corner too.

Time to remember those of us who are less fortunate. Time to remember that all things considered it’s still a great time to be living in America.

Time to remember those who are gone and to carry on their legacy.

I’m a big fan of the Kwanzaa principles by the way. One of them is cooperative economics.

We all should be sharing our wealth–and share the wealth of our God-given gifts and the wealth of ideas we have for making the world a better place.

Becoming wealthy in more ways than just financially starts with health: having a fit mind and a strong body.

So in this regard I will start to post on the weekends new blog entries about nutrition and fitness over at the Flourish blog.

Salut!

Environment and Mental Health

The band Savages sound like Siouxsie and the Banshees.

You can see how I could bomb out of a career in the gray flannel insurance field.

Environment has an impact on mental health and can definitely trigger an MH challenge.

Being cut off and restricted from expressing yourself–living and working in a buttoned-up environment with a power hierarchy–I submit is not the way to go for a lot of creative folk with an MH challenge.

There is a place for you in this world. There is a place for everyone.

Finding the place where you belong is the number-one factor in having a successful recovery if you ask me.

rx-photo

All-American Social Club

July 9, 2016

All-American Social Club

This was my America inside the club:

A dreadlocked Adonis in Nike trainers chatted up a chica.

An Asian woman in Breton striped danced with a lightning-haired guy.

An African American woman in a purple shirt danced magnificent with a white woman to the cover band.

This is the America I know: free souls at the social club choosing to buck the system that divides us.

We keep on rockin’ in the real world.

Tablescapes

House Beautiful magazine features a page devoted to tablescapes with elegant place settings. It’s one of my favorite features of the magazine.

What resonates with me about this is that tablescapes are the perfect living metaphor for artistic expression.

It should come as no surprise that I’m also an Artist/Creative archetype. In the blog over the years I’ve talked about creativity and mental health. I’ve talked about my days as a disc jockey. I’ve talked about fashion and music.

I’ve long wanted to create things of beauty to give others. Those of us who are artists should be supported and encouraged to express ourselves through our chosen medium or media.

Too often artists are told to do what will earn us tons of money regardless of whether we’d be truly unhappy in a blue pinstripe suit life. My contention is that a person can have emotional riches even though they’re not financially well-off.

I want to tell all the artists and creative folk reading this blog that it’s OK to be who you are. Others in society might bow down before Kim Kardashian and people who get famous for being rich and beautiful.

I say: refrain from being snowballed.

According to Caroline Myss anyone with an Artist/Creative archetype will truly be successful in life only when they’re creating their art. So that it doesn’t matter if we have the adoration of millions or just ten followers or only do our art to please our soul.

She rightly states that a lot of Artist/Creatives might not ever get rich or become famous. Something as simple as creating a tablescape or decorating your apartment in style constitutes the true hallmark of this archetype.

I find this all so fascinating about archetypes.

Thus I want to support other artists and say: rock on!

Fall Dinner Party Theme – Missoni

Possibly this will inspire you to host your own elegant soiree.

Archetypes

I titled my memoir Left of the Dial to signal having an organic life where a person’s thoughts and feelings are in synch.

As a disc jockey, I read the VU meter to measure the level of sound intensity of the music. If the needle veered to the right in the red, it was too loud. If it was to the left of the dial the sound was in balance.

So too when your thoughts and feelings are noisy and chaotic–veering into the red–that could signal dis-ease. I co-opted the term left of the dial to connote that you can have a full and robust life doing what gives you joy. And that doing what you love is the way to achieve optimal mental health.

A book I’m reading corroborates what I’ve been writing about all along. The Carolyn Myss book Archetypes lists the features of the 10 primary archetypes. I’m all for honoring and nurturing everyone’s archetype(s) so that each of us can live a happy, healthy life.

Too often we convince ourselves to do or not do something and this could restrict us and make us ill. These are the “myths” the author talks about for each archetype. Failing to live up to your archetype can cause illness and dis-ease.

Not surprisingly I discovered I’m a Fashionista. For this archetype: “beauty and fashion carry projection of your journey of self-empowerment and inner growth to a degree unmatched in any other archetype.”

In Left of the Dial I documented this love of fashion. A couple of reviewers protested this. Yet scratch below the surface and how a person styles herself can be an act of freedom to be our authentic selves.

Myss rightly asserts that discovering your archetype(s) can free you to make the right choices in life–in a career, in a relationship, in how you live and act in the world.

I recommend that you go on the Archtypes website and take the quiz to determine your Top 3. Discovering them and living in tune with them could possibly help shift the needle to the left where everything is in harmony.

It’s a fascinating study and it appears eerily accurate just like the personality type quiz and other self-assessment measurements that are out there on the Internet–like the Kolbe A Index and the CareerMatchmaker I talked about in the Flourish blog.

I’m all for using these kinds of tools that can help a person in recovery live a balanced life of purpose and passion.