Dealing with Stress

Source: Pixabay free photostock

The last 20 months have been exceedingly stressful for many people on the planet. We have been going through a Pandemic, the likes of which has not been experienced since the Spanish Flu in 2018-20.

My own family was touched by Spanish Flu as my great grandmother passed away while her last [9th] baby was very young [my maternal grandfather]. After so many pregnancies and raising the family she was at great risk from a new communicable disease and that is what happened.

My grandfather never knew her. His father remarried but before he did do so, one of his sisters helped him a great deal with the younger children and household. She eventually married my great grandfather’s brother in-law [brother of his deceased wife].

But this post is not supposed to be about my family history [& there is lots more to that story]. Today, after another long pause blogging, I want to give a snippet of support for those dealing with stress. I have come to know stress all too well over the years and the last 20 months has been mind-bogglingly hard. I live in the world’s most locked down city – Melbourne, Australia.

Today, as I type, there are two large protests going on in and around our CBD. One against the Government’s actions in the last 18 months and the Bill they are trying to get passed and one protesting the protesters. But it is all a bit conflated due to infiltration [as all protests are] by a small percentage of people with unpalatable agendas.

Source: Pixabay free photoxtock

How to Meditate

Make it a daily habit. To do that is not so hard – it takes 21 days to develop a habit.

Meditation does not need to be complicated, especially if you are a beginner or somewhat stressed.
Keep it simple.:

Sit in a quiet spot. Do not stress if you can’t find ‘silence’. The idea is to train your focus so that you can adapt to keeping noise and distractions at bay. Focus on the here and now.

Use a position or spot that you can sit in for some time without discomfort. If you are unable to sit, laying down is okay. You do not have to sit cross-legged – be comfortable so that you can focus.

Next, focus on your breath – breath in for a count to 5 and the breathe out for a count to five with a pause in between. If your focus drifts, bring it back to your breath. Don’t stress about straying focus, just re-focus. Long, slow and deep breaths will help you focus.

You can do this for as little as five minutes if that is all you have. Ideally, aim for a regular, longer session, especially as you get more adept at it. As a habitual daily practice, I suggest 20-30 minutes in one sitting. there will be days you miss out or have to break it up. Don’t stress over that.

When you have finished, slowly open your eyes and focus on your surroundings and how you are now feeling. Take as long as you need to re-engage in your routine and what you need to do next to continue your day.

You may feel the impacts quickly or slowly – there are no rules. Once you realise you have been doing this for a while, you will realise how empowered and refreshed you feel.

Let me know how it goes for you!

Unintended Hiatus! Sort of …

Oh my! How ARE you you doing?

It’s been so long since we had a chat & so much has happened … not just in my little life & family but in the world. Illness, Deaths, new life, plans for new ventures taking ages to get anywhere, more illnesses and diagnostics. Emergencies. Some of those things happened while trying to deal with a Pandemic ruling how life had to become procedural in my city.

Speaking of the Pandemic – we had two lockdowns. How about you? How have you coped?

Behind all that is the issue of dealing with tech – not my skill! New computer [not this one] which I don’t use, obtained so the kids can do magical digital art. Forgetting about logins, getting caught up in day-to-day life when you have so few hours of energy [spoons].

Then Pandemic sales surfaced – got them some professional software [Affinity by Serif]. We had Photo but got the other two plus some brushes.

O-M-G digital art gets so complicated.

Investing in WordPress.org! Will I transfer this over? Not sure.

Do you have a soundtrack backing you up trying to get through a day? What is it? Perhaps yours is talkback radio or a TV [or streaming] … my mum would have the TV on. My dad would have ABC Radio or MBS on or a CD if he was not in meetings or consulting clients.

I used to have 3XY, then another station that only lasted a couple of years, then Triple M, then nothing for about 10-12 years and for the last almost 13 years it has been PBS FM 106.7.

Hahaha – what a ramble!

Til next time,

Be well! x

Home School Regulation Review in Victoria

Hey there!

The Victorian Government is reviewing the Education and Training Regulations 2007.
Anyone wishing to submit a comment must do so by 17th June, 2016.

At this stage, simple comments only will suffice unless you need to bring attention to  any issue you have had in dealing with the regulations.

How to submit [the following information was supplied from the Home Education Network]:
Submissions should be lodged at  det.regulation.review@edumail.vic.gov.au or by mail to:

Department of Education and Training
Regulation Review
GPO Box 4367, Melbourne, 3001

To make a submission:

• Firstly, make sure you are familiar with the relevant current Regulations.
• Note that the review covers the Regulations, not the Education Act.
• No information is available about any changes the department is considering so you can only give feedback on the current regulations,object to increased regulation in general terms and request consultation on any changes under consideration.
• Your submission needs to state that it relates to the home education regulations.
• Please give careful consideration to your submission.
• There is no rush.
• Make sure your submission is well expressed and proofread for spelling & grammar.
• Submissions are not required to be made.

Invisible illness Awareness Week

Jeez, I meant to do this post about a week ago before I.I.A. week started ….. better late than never! By the way – it is now about the middle of I.I.A. week (28/9-4/10).

Before I give my spiel, please go have a look at what I.I.A. week is all about here –
http://invisibleillnessweek.com/
The sad fact is that Invisible Illnesses are aplenty.

Another sad fact is that all too often, the people that have them are dehumanised, belittled, discriminated against, ignored, locked up in mental institutions/old age institutions and even on occasion, jails.

An even sadder fact – a small but significant percentage of sufferers decide to take their own life because of such discriminations and the complete despair and lack of hope for sufficient medical  care or assistance to make life bearable.

Have I ever been in that fundamentally despondent state? You betcha! What got me through? Telling myself things like “tomorrow is another day”, “This phase of your illness will pass in X days/weeks” (I often use this one when I get herbicide reactions), “You have an appointment with X on dd/mm, so that will help”.

In the last 13 years, I have been fortunate enough that I have had a partner in my life and in the last almost 12 years, a child in my life (now two children). It is them that I live for, that I continue on through difficult times.

As I have Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) as one of my main “invisible illnesses”, it is darn hard to stop that impacting those who are in my life as it requires such far-reaching co-operation. This has meant on may occasions I have lost contact with so-called friends – it is too hard for them to observe my needs it seems.
This has also happened with family, and closely related family at that!

While I do not wish to belittle any chronic illness or disability, MCS and any other involving sensory disabilities, are the most difficult for those around us to deal with because people are inherently selfish and discriminatory. People are relatively happy to accommodate special needs of people in wheelchairs or those with similar obvious physical access restrictions but not when it comes to “invisible” issues.

Mental illness sufferers are another very poorly treated group in the community. People are often told to “just get over it already!”, “move on”, “see a therapist”, “deal with it” and the like. Many actually do see therapists. Many actually have medications. Sadly, the medications can often be worse than the illness (& and this is a common issue for all invisible & chronic illness sufferers!).

Just because one cannot relate to someone else’s issue/s does not give one the right to ignore/cut off/exclude/refuse access/refuse to treat/refuse to employ such an individual.

So, before you begin to judge someone (whether due to the fact they have some sort of weirdo illness you have never heard of or heard is total BS), stop yourself. Take a moment to ponder – what if You had to deal with some strange medical issue that everyone seemed to think was baloney. One’s world rapidly becomes a hell-hole if one does not have a handful of people who can offer support and understanding and unconditional love.

While I am not religious – please – do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Thanks for reading,

Miriam.

International Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Awareness Day – 12th May, 2015

I always wondered why awareness day was on the 12th May, annually.

Thanks to www.may12th.org I now know it is because the date was the birthday of Florence Nightingale.

Originally it started out as Awareness Day for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome but it is now an awareness campaign day and week for several inter-related Chronic Immunological and Neurological Diseases (CIND). The diseases included in CIND include Myalgic Encephalomyelitis(ME) Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), Fibromyalgia (FM), Gulf War Syndrome(GWS), Lyme and Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS).

Different colours are used to represent the different conditions.
Blue – Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) sometimes shown as ME/CFS
Purple – Fibromyalgia (FM)
Green – Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) or Lyme

For links to all the different online happenings in relation to the 23rd annual International CIND Day see the google doc here https://docs.google.com/document/d/10Gi4ZR_2DMv6TxlQOMBdYpCHDbRwTCVHmVilZnk9naM/edit

Please check out all the relevant happenings and links. Pass them on to family and friends. There is still way too much stigma attached to the conditions and the people that suffer from them. Sadly, we are often treated like the lepers were and often still are treated.

Until next time,

be well

Miriam.

What Am I Trying to Say in This Blog?

I have a couple of blogs for my business activities. While I post some somewhat personal content there at times, I wanted to have a more personal blog space covering home schooling, permaculture and healthy living. As the title suggests, I live a fairly natural lifestyle, as much as living in a first world capital city allows, and I have kids. You can see a description on my about page too.

As well as those obvious aspects, I am pretty severely hampered (disabled; challenged) by health issues relating to Environmental Illnesses. What are environmental illnesses? Hmmmm, well, for me it is a combination chronic fatigue (CFS), multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS), fibromyalgia (FMS) (now considered another form of arthritis), electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS), and some arthritis. I may also have EDS – Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. I recently had some genetic testing done. This shows I have an MTHFR mutation. Most likely, all my health issues are due to expressed genetic mutations that are out of control. So, I guess, part of what I will write about is “getting the gene genie back in its bag”.

I hope what I do end up writing about will be of help and interest to others either seeking information for themselves or a family member or friend or just plain old “public education”. I look forward to having you join in – let’s have a conversation and see where it takes us!

Cheers,
Miriam,
The Natural Healing Mama.

G’day!

Well, this is not my first blog. But even so, I am not a master of the craft. I just wanted another space to write more general musings about life from my perspective.
Which brings me to more of the why. My perspective is very specific but also broad. You see, I suffer very badly with “Environmental Illnesses” – Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, Electromagnetic Radiation Hyper-Sensitivity. I am also a greenie and a trained Permaculturalist, I Home School my two daughters via Natural Learning and Unschooling and I am a nutrition student.
Currently, life is topsy turvy as my husband had a near fatal medical emergency 4 weeks ago. It required urgent major surgery. By far that Valentine’s Day has been my most stressful day ever.
Feel free to say hi below – I look forward to meeting you here in wordpress cyberspace!

Cheers from
The Natural Healing Mama.