The psychotherapist’s view

Sky Garden Thoughts

/ Laura Lee Carter / Leave a comment

The past few weeks since my brother John left, have been quite trying. First I got bronchitis, then our kitty Charlie died, and now Mike has bronchitis. When it rains, it pours! Then yesterday I took a bad fall onto concrete directly on my knee. These kinds of experiences leave me wondering “What’s next?” but in a bad way…

Neither Mike nor I had ever had to euthanize a pet before. We couldn’t believe what was happening at the time, but Charlie was suffering so much with no solution but death. And yes, Mike had to bury Charlie himself down below our home. It seems we have started our own pet graveyard.

The thought that stuck with me after watching our cat first get a shot to help him relax, and then one to help him let go of life, was exactly how close we all are to death at any moment of our life. It hit me with radical clarity how we spend our whole life misunderstanding and fearing that moment of death, and then it is over so quickly. The line is truly fine and gloriously final.

Then my mind continued to the thought: Most of our conceptions at the beginning of life were quite haphazard. How many of our deaths will be the same?

That is why I love spending time in my garden right now. The silence except for the bird calls, the morning chill, the bright flowers that pop up one morning and leave just as suddenly. This is the natural cycle of life and death on planet earth. This is what we signed up for when we were conceived. We come, we experience and we go.

“We’re all just walking each other home…” – Ram Das

The BIG Decision: Retirement Options

/ Laura Lee Carter / 8 Comments

Should I stay or I should I go? — The Clash

For many, the decision of how to handle the freedom from having a specific job in a specific place can be daunting. For one thing, most of us have never faced such freedom. Most of us have lived where our job was for decades and made do. Perhaps we came to love our home, our neighbors or our general situation. Perhaps we dislike major life changes. That wasn’t us. Mike and I had been thinking about getting out of the city for decades when the opportunity arose to do just that.

Home Sweet Home before the move

That is not to say the choice was simple. There are so many factors to consider. Closeness to family and friends, expenses, how much we like or dislike the unhealthy aspects of city life. Besides the unhealthy air for someone with COPD, I discovered as we thought about it, that I did not want to spend another minute sitting at stoplights when I had so little life left. I hate wasting time! Yes, the decision probably won’t be easy, but it must be made either way.

My own uncertainty five years ago at this time, as we prepared our lovely suburban home for sale, did create great stress in my life. About this time the end of May 2014 we had a buyer set up for mid-June, but no place to move to in Walsenburg! Yikes! Remember, once you make that tough decision, you need to accept all the major stressors that come your way after that. And we were also preparing to build a new home in a rural area where good workers are hard to find.

Our view today!

Yes, I remember it all just like it was yesterday. At the time it often felt like too much to bear. And yet, the rewards have been so worth it. Now I’m certain we made the right choice for us, but there were many times I doubted every decision we made. So much easier to stay in the same home and hope for the best, but then you will never know the rewards of moving on and choosing something completely different!

In the summer of 2014, Mike and I sold our nice house in Fort Collins to move temporarily into an old miner’s home in Walsenburg, while constructing a passive solar home near the top of Navajo Ranch Estates west of Walsenburg Colorado. To learn more about downsizing to a tiny town and then living in the Colorado countryside, consider reading my book: A Memoir of Retirement: From Suburbia to Solar in Southern Colorado available from Amazon or directly from me at: MidlifeCrisisQueen@gmail.com

Photography by Laura Lee!

/ Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

Let me begin by saying, I never thought of myself as a “photographer.” What does that even mean? We all write but few of us are “writers.” When I began writing professionally I had no definition of “writer.” Then I read an article in a writing magazine that said, a writer is someone who sits down everyday and writes. That was me.

Now I find I am constantly taking photos from our foothills ridge simply because they need to be taken.


I mean how can you watch scenes like these everyday and not want to preserve them for others to see?

Since I started taking photos like this, I have posted quite a few on my Facebook page. Yes, everyone seems to love them, and a few have encouraged me to begin selling them so others can enjoy…


the views we enjoy everyday.

So here I am, launching myself into a whole new area of endeavor. I have so much to learn about lens and filters and everything else, I’ll admit that.

The East Peak through the lilac trees!

But life is for learning, right?

A curious new skill!

/ Laura Lee Carter / 4 Comments

I have written here before about how a traumatic brain injury can shake up our brain to the extend that we may discovery a skill we either never had before or never recognized. For example, I wrote back in 2016 about Melody Gardot’s transformation following her serious brain injury. She’s an American woman who only discovered her unique ability to create and sing music after suffering a serious head and spinal injuries.

Well, just recently I have discovered I have an uncanny ability to recognize the voices of well-known people when they, for example, narrate a program on TV or provide voices for animated movies. I don’t remember ever being so sensitive to voice tones or accents, but I now immediately key into who is behind the voice. It reminds me a bit of that voice and noise recognition software you see on crime shows. Once I hear a voice I feel like I need to keep searching to find out if my hunch is correct. I also notice how similar some voice tones are, for example the voice of Dwayne Johnson (The Rock) is quite similar to Barack Obama.

Would you like to learn more about this strange phenomena? Check out an article on this topic:
https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-02/when-brain-damage-unlocks-genius-within

Let yourself be moved!

/ Laura Lee Carter / Leave a comment

Follow your heart – listen to what you care for – connect with fierce compassion. Lean into what you love – serve what you value – let yourself be moved. Allow guidance from the great fullness of life to inspire your actions.

Gratefulness directs us into the territory of the heart. When we tune into our deepest cares for the world, we are moved to be: Advocate. Friend. Ally. Guardian.

Large or small, notice what you love and take a stand for it. A tree. Oceans. Justice. A child. Humanity. Animals. Diversity. Peace. Life needs us to be protectors. We are with you, ever-grateful for the opportunity to love and serve the world...

Jeff Chemnick’s Aloes in Wonderland in California!

Here’s a man who decided he loved plants, especially all kinds of succulents, including cacti, as well as palm trees, dragon trees (Dracaena draco) and Queensland bottle trees (Brachychiton rupestris). But Jeff’s real specialty is cycads, specifically Mexican cycads. Jeff is now a leading expert in the field and has one the largest private collections.

Choose your own passion and then go for it!

“Mary Poppins Returns” made my week!

/ Laura Lee Carter / 4 Comments

I had such low expectations about watching “Mary Poppins Returns” I almost skipped it. Please don’t! This delightful mix of grim reality and pure, positive fantasy is a not-to-be missed escape into the world of magical musical surprises. The superior performances by Emily Blunt and Lin-Manuel Miranda, plus so many great guest performances by Meryl Streep, Angela Lansbury, Colin Firth and you-know-who, from the first Mary Poppins movie, makes this an elevating experience for those of any age.

With so many delightful new songs, this movie takes off when Mary Poppins magically appears and begins to sing “Can you imagine that?” in the bath tub scene. She certainly convinced me: “Nonsense can be fun!” Then there was the “A cover is not the book, so open it up and take a look!” song, which simultaneously reminded me of my twenty-five years working in libraries, and also my dating service experience. Such great dating advice!

A few words from “Where the lost things go”

There is also a dream sequence called “Where the lost things go” to soothe the children who have lost their mother recently. Although not an easy theme to take on with children, Mary makes the loss a tiny bit less painful because “Nothing’s lost forever only out of place…”

Truth be told, I’ve always loved a good musical, but I wasn’t too enamored with the first Mary Poppins movie from 1964. I guess I had to grow up to finally appreciate a world where the women and children sweep in and save the day for the miserable adults who take life far too seriously. Oh those adults, who “think a great deal too much, of that I am certain.”

Now I see we all do think too much and in that way miss the opportunity to enjoy so many happy coincidences and surprises life can offer us. Don’t we all need a Mary Poppins to sweep down into our lives when things are looking grim and show us the bright side while we somehow solve the adult problems of life?

TODAY OR NEVER!

This fun film supports our favorite childhood fantasy of effortlessly flying away when things get tough, elevating our minds to new levels, while accenting every daily positive. And BTW, this film is wonderful with a little help from my little friend THC, along the same lines as Disney’s Fantasia!