Top Artifact 3
Reflecting on what makes you happy provides you with an opportunity to be grateful. Looking back at the different things that have brought me joy through the years was an emotionally overwhelming, but much needed review of my life. When I was young going to the park with my daughter and going out dancing with my friends brought me so much joy. During my married life family dinners were the culmination of everything we worked towards. These days it is hard to find the time to have those family dinners, so they are rare. I find joy in the small things like standing in the grass barefoot with my dog, drinking coffee and watching the sunrise, having a bonfire with the kids under the stars. These are the things that have brought me the most joy this year. I do hope to get back to those family dinners though.
Health and happiness, I believe have a very interdependent relationship. I do believe the culture we live in in the United States requires a certain level of SES to be happy. It has become harder and harder to maintain the fundamental and basic needs of an individual or a family in our culture. We live in an individualistic society that refuses to accept we will grow old, we do not have the family support from generations before us and it is harder to experience a sense of community support. This calls to mind Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory. If you have the stability and comfort of knowing the basic fundamental needs of food and shelter are able to be consistently met, it is easier to be both happy and healthy. Sadly, it is getting much more challenging to do that in our world and more and more people live below the poverty line and cannot get the basic food, clothing and shelter needs met with consistency. It is a sad truth for many, many people. If they cannot take care of their basic needs they do not have the ability to focus on the higher needs of self-discovery, community and joy.
Since health and happiness have this interdependent relationship it is not surprising how many people have health issues who are in the low SES demographic. The added stress of insecure housing and food leads to many immunosuppressing hormones being consistently released and inflammation in the cardiovascular system as well. Not having the education or the time to focus on simple self-care activities to reduce stress creates a very negative cycle. This activity reminded me to be grateful my children have had consistency and I am still able to maintain our basic needs on my own.
The picture I selected is one of me preparing a meal for my family. I am like the Italian grandmother whose love language is to feed her tribe, “manga”!
Top Artifact Two
In the Module 7 Archive item we were asked to revisit events or happy situations and determine if these were socially engaged or disengaged. These events were all events I remember bringing me great joy. They were all socially engaged and looking back it provided me great comfort during various times of challenge in my life. The Yoga Retreat particularly was a life changing experience, teaching me about my own self-realization and making time for my needs, whatever they may be. It catapulted me into finding the courage within myself to leave my abusive marriage. Each of these events are remembered as happy events, and at the time they were actually a lifeline.
This activity was my favorite because it taught me something beautiful about myself, that at the core, I believe is true of all humankind. We need authentic social engagement with a tribe of people we love and trust. In each of these situations, I was struggling terribly with my own inner peace and what I was trying to get out of life. I did not remember the challenges, only the joy I felt during these experiences, which did not just distract me from my discomfort, but gave me the strength and courage to persevere.
The visual images I chose because they represent things I am passionate about, art and spiritual healing. These are pictures of me performing those tasks with people I love.
Module 7 Archive
The five happy episodes I selected were as follows:
Leadership/Team Building Event at the 4-H Center in Warren County, VA
Yoga Retreat at Yogaville, VA
Reiki Training in Clarkesville, TN
Hiking with Bryan & Connor Lebanon Church, VA
Paint Nite with family & friends, Front Royal, VA
The yoga retreat might be the only event I would consider socially disengaged and that would be because of the meditation portion of what I did. But even there, among my classmates, I felt a deep emotional connection to the ladies I shared a dorm room with. Only during my meditation, where I felt more connected to the divine, was it more socially disengaged because I was opening myself up privately. The meditation was all about my personal, individual needs.
During paint nite with my mother it was about being engaged and encouraging each other’s creativity. We offered each other words of appreciation not just about the painting, but we discussed life events, building each other up. We left feeling rejuvenated by our connection and love for each other.
Top Artifact One
The selection of the M6 Archive item was an easy choice for Top Artifact One. The assignment uses a modality I love to utilize for my own self-care. Receiving a prompt to create a drawing, painting or any piece of art and seeing where it takes me has always both fascinated and inspired me. It is a tool I will use both personally and professionally as my journey in the Psychology field continues.
The prompt and inspiration behind my drawing is beyond timely since Michael, my younger brother, will have a birthday on February 6th in heaven, also the date the assignment is due. This is the first artwork I have done in a long time. I am reminded of the importance of this aspect of my self-care. I never took an art class, my family always considered Michael more of an artist because he was very talented. I merely create for my own satisfaction, though I do display my better work.
The drawing illustrates to me far more than can be seen. It depicts the moments in my childhood I hold most dear, the ones I wanted to keep forever. Those are the ones I have made sure I passed on to my children and include gardening, foraging, and working hard to respect the Earth. My home gardening and knowledge of medicinal herbs all began in my childhood. Sitting in a sandbox underneath that tree making magical spells out of twigs and leaves we found while playing. It carried into my adulthood when I created special cookbooks for my brother so he could eat a nutritionally dense diet during his battle with cancer. My children still help me plant, harvest, collect seeds, can and cook all the things we grow in our environmentally friendly and sustainable little family garden.
Part of my culture includes spirituality and the beliefs my family shares with regards to the Divine. These are firmly rooted to the Earth since I come from both Irish and American Indian descendants. The most profound discoveries accomplished by humanity have always been inspired by what already exists in nature. My family and I have always avoided traditional organized religion and prefer to communicate with the Divine using methods witnessed in the simple everyday miraculous occurrences seen in Nature. We follow the moon cycle for planting, harvesting, and healing. We commune in nature through all the seasons but are awestruck by the vastness we can witness on a cold, clear, winter, night sky here in the Shenandoah Valley. It had never occurred to me these traditions were part of our culture until I thought about the methods we use to survive.
I am now inspired to create a blog of recipes consisting of native herbs and vegetables scheduled using in season produce. This exercise would be one done with healing intent and love. I have posted such things in the summer, which is easier to do. The challenge will come in the winter months when the fresh produce is a bit scarcer in our cold climate, but it is a challenge I am up for. The picture I chose for my Top Artifact One is of a dish I created and shared on Facebook. Zucchini is easy to grow and produces an abundance of food for your family during the summer months. Pictured is my “Stuffed Zucchini” I had posted step by step instructions for on Facebook last summer. Zucchini has a way of hiding under the canopy of leaves and getting too large, this is a wonderful way to use overgrown zucchini and I enjoy it as much, if not more, than I do stuffed peppers.
M6 Archive
I drew a picture of the backyard where I grew up when we moved to Linden, VA in the early 1980’s. It is a very rural mountain community there. We had three acres adjacent to the Appalachian trail. We always put in a garden and one of my only playmates was my brother Michael. Living in the mountains made our community pretty self-sufficient. We grew, foraged, hunted or trapped for most of our food. When someone on the mountain needed help, the community made sure they were taken care of. We bartered with our neighbors for various different items and it has stuck with me through the years. Knowing how to appreciate the things nature provides, not to waste, to build relationships with folks I can barter with and maintain my ties to Earth. Most of our Modern Western culture does not appreciate the profound beauty of nature anymore. There are people today who will live their entire life not knowing where their food actually comes from. I have passed the passion for growing herbs and vegetables to my children. I have also taught them to appreciate the health benefits to eating produce based on the season it grows in our climate. Many of these items and the herbs used to season them are filled with vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients designed to maintain our health during the more difficult seasons we experience in the Appalachian region of the Mid-Atlantic.