Despite my myriad of blessings, I’ve been finding myself in quite a funk of late. I don’t particularly care for labels and I personally try to avoid seeking them in any and all healthcare settings (this is not a recommendation, just my tendency).

I have no doubt that I could get labeled if I were to seek such a thing, but the mere thought of it has my brow furrowed, eyes narrowed and jaw locked. It puts my whole body in a defensive stance ready to strike back with some sort of, “I don’t have problems~ YOU have problems!!” to anyone foolish enough to try to help with a diagnosis 

Clearly, that’s a ridiculous response that lacks any sort of wit or intelligence, so I just avoid the situation.

But, if I were to give a label or two to what I’ve been feeling in the last few weeks, I might guess it would fall somewhere in the categories of depression and or anxiety. 

Everything, ok maybe not every single thing, but so many things just seemed so. Freaking. Hard. Not only was the effort required exhausting, but a good deal of the time, it all felt somewhat pointless as well.

I tried hard to hang on to my smile and see the light, but truth be told, it was feeling pretty dang dark.
Whatever you call it, it really sucked and was kicking my arse for more than a couple of days.

I’m what some people would consider a woman of extreme moods, and I do feel things intensely~ whatever it is, joy or grief, I’m typically all in. 

So, this wasn’t an entirely new experience for me, and I tried throwing all the things that I know might help at it~ time in nature, moving my body, vitamins, rest, laughter in the form of mindless comedy, talking with friends, etc. 

One thing that came to me as semi-ironic, but in a sad way, is that we’re told that when we’re feeling really down, we should tell someone.

There’s been a big shift in focus to remove the stigma around mental health in recent years, which is great because if we’re being honest, we’re all at least a little crazy.

But the thing you need to be prepared for is that when you tell someone, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to feel any better. 

You might even feel worse because our friends are probably not trained in how to deal with our wacko emotions. There might be an awkward silence or wide-eyed stares of what looks a bit like horror~ and it’s aimed at you.

If you just opened up some vulnerable part of yourself, you might feel awfully exposed and then think you need to start explaining to make it so you don’t look or sound like such a nut job. That might not make it better at all, but could feel like you’re digging a hole, which you’re at the bottom of, too weak to get out, while everyone who now knows can peer down at you in sadness.

You can’t fault anyone for not knowing what to do with you when you don’t even know what to do with yourself, and I agree it's better to tell someone than to hold it all in.

But, it’s also good to know that it might not be the quick fix you’re hoping for. We humans are more complex than that.

A few times, I looked up from my own wallowing, and saw friends dealing with waaaaaaaay heavier stuff than what I was juggling, much of which was quite frankly in my own head, although that didn’t make it feel any less sucky. This both put my own situation in perspective, as well as made me feel a bit more like a whiner~ good with the not so good, I guess.

Anywhoo, I’m very grateful for the friends who did hear my rambling “Whoa is me with my first world problems” and ate, drank and / or lamented life with me.

Now that I’m on the upside of the extreme funk, I’m also starting to more clearly see the things that actually were the most helpful in pointing me back towards the light. It’s more than I can pull together at the moment so I’ll be sharing them in a post later this month. 

I know that extreme blues are something a lot of us deal with from time to time, so it's worth talking about.

For today though, I’ll be enjoying this Labor Day being grateful for paid holidays and floating in the pool while it still feels good, because eventually, it actually will be feeling too “Brrrr” around here for that, and I’ll be lamenting the lack of sun.

I'm turning my towards thoughts of autumn and harvest, which at this moment includes a whole lotta tomatoes growing in the raised garden beds I put over my suburban front lawn. Most of them were mystery volunteers that popped up from past plantings and have thankfully asked very little of me in return for their fruit. Harvesting blessings, indeed.

And when it’s too oppressive to be in the sun, I’ll be inside sewing like a madwoman to finish the details on my collection for the Redding Fashion Week Gala coming up this Friday. 
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I’m going with a Vintage inspired theme based on several generations of fabrics and trims I was gifted earlier this year. 

Let me tell you~ sewing is hard! I have such an appreciation for how very hard fine tailoring techniques are ~ and so much gratitude that my pieces will be seen on a runway and not getting inspected up close under the seams. 

There’s a whole lotta yikes in the finishing details of these garments, but I’m proud that I’m actually doing it and learning as I go. I know what the seams should look like, and I know that I haven’t quite achieved the skill level to make it happen, but I am pulling off a collection nonetheless.

If you’re in this part of NorCal, come see the show! Tickets are available here, and there’s a bunch of other events around town throughout the following week.

And Also Mark Your Calendar~ I’m hosting the last in my series of Moonlight Art Nights at California Street Labs in Redding on Saturday, September 14th! It’s a fun way to experiment with creativity and connection in a great venue. Tickets will be on sale soon!

That’s all for today~

I hope you’re all in a good place and seeing the light! If you’re able to spread the light, even better~ please love and support each other wherever you can.

I'd love to hear what helps you find the light when you're in a dark place, so please share in the comments below, or drop me a personal message.
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Best wishes for a blessed harvest season!
Pamela

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I took the day off work and headed to the mountains with my SweetHeart to avoid the oppressive heat.

We browsed cute shops, and when trying on clothes, I had an epiphany-

Even though I'm physically bigger than I've ever been in my life,
I'm happier with myself and care more about my body now than I ever have in the past.

 In other words, I was nice to myself as I grabbed a bigger size!!!

This is revolutionary stuff, folks!

Next, we went for not one but two hikes, and spotted dozens of late blooming wildflowers.

We not only ate cheese and chocolate, but we delighted in them.

We lounged on a beach and read and I had wine and we would have gone kayaking, but thunderstorms closed the rental shop.

I was OK avoiding electrocution, and besides, we realized the beautiful snowy mountain on the horizon was less than 20 minutes away.
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So, we went up there to play too.

 Within a few days of me feeling all free from worrying about other people though, both of my kiddos texted about navigating upcoming housing changes and issues they'll be dealing with.

And I pretty much forgot that I was no longer stressing about things I couldn't control.

The good news is, I only came up with less than a half dozen "Oh NOOOOO!" scenarios before I remembered that I'm supposed to be in my new chill phase, and realized they were already asking for what they needed and figuring out the rest. 

I'm definitely learning all the time, and the best I can strive for is progress, not perfection, right?
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Anyhoo...Back to my Birthday~
​ I'm only 2 years from 50 and there's so much I'm scheming.
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Society acts like growing older is supposed to suck, but for me, it's been pretty freaking awesome!

​Life is Great at 48!

Here's to another year of living and learning, growing and loving, and exploring this big beautiful world!

If you enjoyed my photos and ramblings, and would like to stay in touch, sign up here:
​I'd love to send goodies your way!

​And wherever you are, I hope you're chasing Joy, too!

Last week, a good man was buried. 

I suppose that around the world as a whole, many people were probably buried, but the one that my heart is thinking of spent more years than I know coaching kids, including my Boy Child for 4 years of basketball.

We didn’t even know Coach was sick until we found out that he’d died. 

From what I understand, he didn’t have much warning either. He was diagnosed with cancer, started treatment and was dead in just a little over a month.

JUST OVER A MONTH.

And he’s gone. 

Just like that.

I still haven’t really wrapped my mind around the brutal speed and sudden ending, but I can easily share how much I appreciated that man’s influence on my Boy Child.

I never would have guessed that I would have a kid who liked sports. 

We’re not in the least bit athletic or sporty people. We don’t watch, play or really give the smallest bit of care towards any of them. 

Except, of course, if my kids are playing. Both of my kids participated in low key community leagues as little kids, mostly so they could burn off some of their crazy wild child energy, or because a friend was playing, but by the time he reached junior high, my son wanted to play in competitive ways with the big boys.

I don’t know why or what happened. Maybe my kid got some long lost recessive genes involving muscle and speed along with some inexplicable desire to compete? I don't think it came from me, that's for sure.

I never figured it out, but like a good deal of parenting, I just tried to point them in the right direction.

We were free ranging homeschoolers at the time, and while local charters could help with classes and books and such, none offered competitive sports. 

Spending life energy and time equivalent to a full-time job in a classroom for a chance to play ball didn’t seem like a worthwhile proposition when we had an otherwise good thing going.

Thankfully, through our homeschool community, we came across a small private school that opened the door by allowing other homeschoolers to participate in their team sports program. 

My Boy spent the next 4 years - spanning 9th through 12th grade - as a part of the basketball team. I was continually amazed by the dedication of the other parents, but most of all, the Coach.

We went to countless games, many of them hours away on winding mountain roads to towns in the middle of nowhere on long and stormy winter nights. Coach never made a big deal or made me feel like a loser if I couldn’t drive because of work and had to send my kid with him or another family.

I found out that Coach actually lived over an hour from where the kids practiced, and in the mountains where it snowed, so he was doing many times as much driving as any of the rest of us and often in unpleasant conditions. 

But he was always there. Even in the offseason, he had open gym nights so the kids could still gather and work on their skills.

I can’t imagine he was getting rich off of this endeavor, as our fees were really reasonable, even for a single mom. All I could figure was that kids getting to play sports really mattered to him.

He apparently had been doing it for decades, and from what I saw, he was unique and different from a lot of other coaches out there.

He yelled, of course, but not in a berating way like I saw other coaches do.

He was actually a good sport, which I noticed is often missing in organized athletics. I never saw him throw a giant man fit or encourage dirty play, which I witnessed more than once from other men coaching other teams. 

I sometimes took the opportunity to mom-style shame those bad sport / awful role model coaches because it seemed like someone needed to point out their awful behavior, and I’m OK being that person.  But, that’s another story.

Our coach treated the kids, refs, and parents with respect. He called the boys out on nonsense, had high expectations and consistently pointed them towards the importance of having a positive character. I guess those are all the things you'd want in a coach.

While he also wanted to win, you could feel the focus on the boys growing into good men.

And, grow they did- both as players who won enough of the time to make it entertaining and as young men who were refreshingly nice to be around. 

We watched the team develop from being so polite they practically handed the ball to the other team and moved out the way so they could shoot, to becoming a competitive force that went a ways into the finals by my son’s Senior year.

The first season was bizarre. I’d spent 13 years telling my son to be gentle, and I suddenly found myself screaming, “Take the freaking ball!!!!”

The time when the Coach came into our lives was right around the time of my divorce. My son was in full-on early teen boy mode, and his dad was out of the country, so I was especially grateful for the male role models we had. 

The private school that sponsored the team was a really conservative religious one, and I wondered in the beginning if we'd be accepted at all or be deemed unworthy sinners and my son cast out because his mother is an “unmarried woman with children” who also happens to enjoy margaritas, occasional drops and F bomb and even though I consider my self a Christian, (or perhaps because) I had to alter the statement of faith before I could sign it so that it matched my actual beliefs. 

While my personal understanding of Jesus is that he hung out with, supported and defended a lot of diverse people, encouraging us to be nice to each other, rather than judgey like Pharisees, I’m well aware that not everyone sees it that way. In some circles, not everyone is welcome.

For the first couple of years, in the back of my head, I felt maybe we’d somehow slipped through the cracks and would be outed from the team for not being appropriately religious (because that thing seems to happen) but my worry was for nothing.

The wonderful thing is that we never had any issues. The other families were kind and Coach seemed to stay focused on the thing at hand- playing basketball, with character.

Despite 4 years of games, I never really grasped all the rules and was often confused about what actually constituted a foul or why the refs were or were not blowing whistles, which often felt inconsistent to my untrained eyes. 

I did learn that I was very wrong in thinking basketball is a non-contact sport, and that gangly boys will grow into giant-sized young men full of testosterone and bravado who smash into each other at high speeds. 

I had to pop homeopathic calming tablets whenever I remembered to bring them and was thankful that I have naturally low blood pressure, because I may have otherwise had a heart attack watching the intensity of some games. 

During the last game of the finals, a sweet old grandmother sitting next to me in the stands suggested that I might do better with Valium, which I found hilarious for several reasons. One, you can never tell who might recommend prescription sedatives, and two- maybe my relaxation methods weren’t working as well as I’d hoped.

Anyhoo, the main thing for me was that it was always a safe place where I felt like my kid could go and be with other young men being mentored by older men, and that’s something that’s missing for a lot of kids.

He got discipline in working his body and his character.

What Coach offered was something that I could not have provided for my son in other ways, and for that, I’ll always be grateful.

I only knew him in the capacity of coach, so that's all I can really speak for, but he sure seemed to be the kind of man who actually acted like the Jesus he worshipped.

That in and of itself felt kind of revolutionary to me.

I don’t know what will happen with the sports program now, whether someone else will step up, or whether it will end with him.

I do know that we were really lucky to have had those 4 years with him.

Coach showed me a nice side of both sports and conservative religion. 

I tried and can only hope I was able to express it while he was alive, but thanks, Coach! Your steadiness, dedication, and commitment to the kids made more of a difference than you could probably imagine and you will be missed.

Aside from the kids, you helped make my intro into being a sporty team mom as smooth as it could be for a rogue non-player like myself.

I can only hope more people get the kind of positive experience with sports and adolescence that we did.

I know your family and community have expressed their faith in what comes after death, and my wish is just that your heart is happy and that maybe you can play ball again.

Thanks Again Coach. You were a true mentor and a good man. I hope you know that the world is a better place for the work you did here.

For those of you who are alive to read this, if you happen to coach kids, thank you so much for that! Please be nice and focus on character too.

And, if you're a parent whose kids have a coach, please thank them. No matter what you do for your day job, coaching kids is work that matters. 

Thank God for people like you!

Rest in Peace Coach Rust.

Last month, I had the most human-infested nature experience in my life. 
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It was amazing and awe inspiring~ full of ooohs and aaahs.

It was also full of more time sitting in traffic than I'd spent in 2019 altogether up to that point. 

Anyone who has been to Yosemite... and also been to other places where you can actually experience the natural world without a bazillion other people next to you, well, you can probably understand what I'm talking about.

Yosemite is like one of the Disneylands of the National Parks.

Most of the time, nature is my retreat from peopling, but in going to Yosemite, I knew the two of them would be intertwined quite deeply.

I'd found a pre-season deal on Travel Zoo for a cabin just outside of the park and chosen the last weekend it was available, hoping that the weather wouldn't be freezing and that some combination of our combined offspring could join us.

We scored on beautiful weather and two out of six kids were available.

I'd only been through Yosemite once, my Partner hadn't been in years, and the kids had never gone.

I LOVE exploring new places, and was pleasantly surprised that the kids were excited to spend a weekend adventuring with us, despite the known likelihood of spotty wifi.

My previous trip went around the valley rather than into it, and while I thought that it was pretty and all, I live near beautiful mountains, so I didn't really grasp what the big deal was. 

This time, I got it~ Holy Cow~ those valley views were spectacular.

I can only imagine how wondrous it must have been to gaze at all the granite and water before all the people and cars and buses invaded.

Speaking of which, if you hear that it's a good idea to go early in the day and take the shuttle buses, it's no joke. 

For real- driving there was lame.

The number of cars trying to navigate the village area was absurd. We were literally stuck in traffic for probably 2 hours to go less than 5 miles. Thank Goodness my SweetHeart is a patient man and he was driving, so no one had to endure my Road Rage.
Also, we had snacks, and the views were lovely.

I got out several times to walk ahead and move my legs since my butt was falling asleep.
I've never really experienced "nature" in such a way where I could actually get around 10 times faster on foot because there were bumper to bumper cars.
But, being surrounded by gorgeousness made it better, at least

Had there been some sort of natural disaster where we needed to move quickly though,
say a wildfire or Zombie Apocalypse,
well, it would be mayhem and most people would be toast.

These scenarios in my mind always give me a moment of gratitude and hope that the early homeschooling years of playing with swords and bows & arrows all day instead of sitting in classrooms would give our pack an advantage, but who knows...

Anyhoo, seriously, if you go to Yosemite, for the love of all things holy,
take the freaking bus.

You'll be really glad you did. 

It’s also great to see other companies (fashion and otherwise) making choices to do business in cleaner and less destructive ways.

Like this Dutch company that has come up with a way to dye fabrics without using water which could save millions of gallons of water and a whole lotta energy each year. 

There’s also more technology being developed to recycle used fabrics in new ways~ like this project in Australia that repurposes used commercial textiles giving new life to old hotel sheets, towels and more by reducing them to their raw components and making them into new fabrics.

Zero Waste Daniel is a designer who makes one of a kind pieces using scraps from factories that would otherwise end up in the dump.

I also found this awesome creative re-use store in a rural Northern California town that is inspiring creativity and has diverted over 17 tons of usable materials from the waste stream last year! 17 tons!!!! That’s crazy huge! It's also a lot of fun, and I found goodies for hatmaking, trims and all kinds of fun stuff there for my own studio. 

They’re all inspirational and the best part is, there’s so many more ideas, people and companies who’ve realized we don’t have to be so destructive just to get dressed. 
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​I hope you’ll check them out and find a few things you can implement into your life. Whether you let your kids make costumes from your old clothes, shop at a thrift store, make yourself new skirt from an old tablecloth, buy something from a small handmade sewer, or, just buy less altogether, it all adds up, and it all feels pretty good too.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below, and as always, please share with a friend!
Hope you had a Happy Earth Month. Until next time~