As someone who has had MANY flu viruses in my life, because I have been unable to get flu vaccines for decades, and also as one who has lived in Southeast Asia and China quite a bit, I cannot help but wonder whether the millions of antibodies I now carry might provide some protection from the novel coronavirus.

“A novel coronavirus is a new coronavirus that has not been previously identified. The virus causing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), is not the same as the coronaviruses that commonly circulate among humans and cause mild illness, like the common cold.” -CDC Coronavirus

As a medical researcher in my past life as a librarian, I thought I could get some idea of what present research says about this important question. My most memorable experience with flu virus was in 1968 when I caught the Hong Kong flu (H3N2). I was severely ill with this to the point of passing out and delirium. A woman on the next block from us died from it.

In an article in Science Daily from February 4th 2020 I found this:

“A team [of] UCLA and Arizona scientists reported in 2016 that exposure to influenza viruses during childhood gives people partial protection for the rest of their lives against distantly related influenza viruses. Biologists call the idea that past exposure to the flu virus determines a person’s future response to infections “immunological imprinting.”

This research helped overturn a commonly held belief that previous exposure to a flu virus conferred little or no immunological protection against strains that can jump from animals into humans, such as those causing the strains known as swine flu or bird flu. Those strains, which have caused hundreds of spillover cases of severe illness and death in humans, are of global concern because they could gain mutations that allow them to readily jump not only from animal populations to humans, but also to spread rapidly from person to person.

This is not to say you should make any assumptions about your own antibodies and risk exposure to this present pandemic. I just wish new antibody tests were much more dependable and available at this point!

As I think back, my relationship with nature has been mixed over the sum total of my 65 years here on earth. Most of that can be attributed to being raised in towns and cities.

My guess is that the bigger the city you live in, the less time you will spend outside enjoying nature, mostly because there are less natural areas to enjoy…

The early years of my life were spent in small towns in Iowa and Kansas. The fact I was raised by a botanist, a naturalist and budding environmentalist certainly influenced my early education and my tendency to be drawn to nature. My Dad was outside every chance he got, collecting plants, bird watching and teaching us about the wonders of nature constantly, much like being raised by Sir David Attenbourough. But this early training only blossomed inside of me later in life, when I spent enough time to stop and consider what I am naturally drawn to and what I now love to do.

As we all know, when you are younger you need to go where the jobs are and that is often cities. In my case it was universities as I was an academic librarian for 25 years.

But I always found ways to retreat to nature, like the many week-long river trips I took while working at my first job at the University of Utah. On a serious river trip there is no way to go home. You will be on the river until the trip is over! And no, there are no motels along the way. You must wash in the river…

I also developed a budding interest in plants and gardening along the way, as I moved from place to place to change jobs or learn Chinese. The worst year of my life was spent in Taipei, Taiwan where there was no natural beauty, except on our bus trips down to Kenting at the southern tip of the island. I had never lived in such a horribly polluted place in my life! There were days when I couldn’t even see across the street the air pollution was so bad.

After Taipei I ended up in Boulder Colorado, a virtual garden spot compared to Taipei, but I soon realized the air pollution was plenty bad there too! Then I moved to Fort Collins which I thought would be better, as I was suffering from terrible bouts of bronchitis every winter. Fort Collins turned out to be no better.

I know, most of you might think that places like Boulder and Fort Collins are quite clean compared to other cities, but no. The traffic is terrible there and the air there can be just as dirty as Denver. My test is if you can see and taste the air, you are in trouble!

Thank goodness and my husband Mike’s better instincts, we moved to a beautiful natural part of Colorado in the summer of 2014.

Since moving here I have re-gained my LOVE of the natural rhythms of the earth. Living in silence surrounded by nature’s glory is the only way to go for me now. I did not discover until we moved here that I now have difficulty breathing at this elevation but so what!

I choose to live where the natural beauty I am surrounded by everyday far surpasses the ugliness of this great pandemic. I can hardly wait to welcome a new season of beauty into my sky garden! For me, now, living close to nature is the only way!

BEAUTY IS THE GARDEN WHERE HOPE GROWS!

“All great changes are preceded by chaos.” – Deepak Chopra

These are certainly trying times for most of us. Many have never faced such strong feelings of fear and uncertainty before. I believe the point though is not to run away and hide your head in easy distractions, but stop and spend some time seeing what you might learn from your fears at this moment in time. Perhaps you have been considering some major life changes up until this point. This is the crisis that might help you decide that this is time to move forward with those changes.

The fact is, most of us will not begin to change anything until we become uncomfortable enough to admit defeat. Most of us need to be absolutely convinced that the “plan” we’ve had for life up until now is simply not working. The way this usually comes about is through a crisis that demands our complete attention. Divorce, serious illness, the death of a loved one, and long-term unemployment seem to be the most common events that lead to the end of our naïve belief that we have control over everything that happens in our lives. These unforeseen and often unforeseeable occurrences can inform us in no uncertain terms that changes in our plan are now in order.

We may first try to defend against the onset of pain and confusion by denying or ignoring this sudden lack of certainty or security in our lives. We may seek to escape into any number of easy distractions, as we defend against our need to feel more secure.

Eventually we may discover that, even though it seems completely counter-intuitive at this tough spot, accepting and embracing the chaos and uncertainty we feel surrounded by is our first, best step towards peace. Stop, sit down and be quiet for a while. Begin to feel the enormity of this crisis of fear and uncertainty. But this may also be one of your most important opportunities to trust in the power of your own psyche to survive and thrive in the future.

Know that this is the beginning of your own personal rite of passage into full adulthood. This is the natural, normal stage of human development studied by psychologists since Carl Jung, when he experienced it himself. Recognize that you are not the first to feel chaos and uncertainty in your middle years. You are in a well-documented transition period of personal change, growth, and human evolution. And the best way to move through this life stage smoothly is to embrace the new information and knowledge you will be given.

By allowing this in, you have the ability to access the unique instruction this moment has for you. Instead of attempting to run from it, embrace the uncertainty.

Begin to believe this moment is giving you access to your own unique brand of power, one you may have never known or acknowledged before. Begin to see: You alone know, somewhere inside, what needs to happen next.

Spend the time necessary to listen to the small, still voice within, the one you may have been ignoring for decades. Recognize this voice—perhaps for the first time—as your inner guide, brimming with accumulated information and wisdom. This source knows where you need to go next. It will instruct you in how you must change, grow, and evolve into your best self in this moment. The sooner you begin to believe in its power and trust this valuable inner resource, the sooner you will follow its instructions and find more structure, certainty, and peace in your life.

This is a short excerpt from my book: Find Your Reason To Be Here: The Search For Meaning in Midlife. Please contact me if you would like to purchase your own copy: MidlifeCrisisQueen@Gmail.com

E-book and some paperback versions are available through Amazon

First my Dad dies, then I get a horrible case of hives, and now this! What the hell? I am reminded of Monty Python’s:

“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!”

A friend of mine had just moved her Mom to independent living in a nursing home in Fort Collins when this hit. Now she isn’t allowed to visit her! Thank goodness my Dad died before we would have been in the same boat…

The only thing good about all this for us is that we truly do now live in the middle of nowhere. Still no virus in our county, probably because we hardly ever see our neighbors. I didn’t know it, but we have been self-quarantining for years!

One local friend stopped allowing others into his home. You have to speak to him through his front glass door now! But on a trip to Safeway last Saturday I found everyone more friendly and helpful than ever. Of course the lines were longer than I’ve ever seen here, but I got a kick out of the pure kindness of strangers in Walsenburg. Now all the tiny restaurants are closed here and a few will certainly go out of business.

So what do you do when there’s nowhere to go? We’ll do what we always do, hang out and hope for the best. Mike likes to watch the blow by blow on the news. I find it just makes me itch! I’m only watching shows that help me escape like “Too Cute!”

Relax. We will all get through this and freaking out will not help a bit.

My sister and her husband John have been providing my parents with the BEST of care since they helped them move up to Denver a few years ago. My sister knows her stuff when it comes to medical care of the elderly. She is a nationally known leader in the field!

But we received a unique and surprising lesson in compassion from my brother John this week. As we gathered around my Dad to help him transition from this life to who knows what is next, I felt honored to observe my brother show his soft and gentle side, rubbing my Dad’s useless legs while quietly thanking him for all that he has done for all of us. My Dad is pretty confused and, of course uncertain how to respond to this stage of his life. I watched my brother soothe him and make it all easier for him.

The person who comes to understand his parents, can forgive the world. 

This brought up for me, the lessons we all may learn about compassion on deeper and deeper levels as we age. The ironies aren’t lost on me. I was raised in a fairly competitive and critical family. We knew we could always do better and never stopped striving for excellence. Unfortunately this way of seeing life includes quite a bit of comparison between ourselves and others. It also includes the belief that love and compassion must be earned. Therefore, my Dad could not fully comprehend all the human compassion he received when he first was moved to a nursing home. He kept saying,

“These people don’t even know me and yet they are so good and kind to me!”

In my thirties I started learning more about compassion from a wonderful therapist I saw for four or five years. Her beliefs included a hint of Buddhist and Asian influence. Then I received an education in transpersonal counseling psychology at the Naropa Institute in Boulder in the 1990s. All of this training taught me that compassion definitely starts at home. Self-compassion and personal generosity is your shortest path to being able to offer love and compassion to others.

I still struggle with comparing myself to others. I have to tell myself over and over again that we are all on schedule on our spiritual journey. We are all gloriously different in our paths. I have also had to learn to practice more generosity with my love, compliments and support, switching away from the shortage mentality I was raised with.

Now I find, we are all enough. We are all walking each other home...

Postscript: My father passed away peacefully the afternoon of March 10th. I saw him in our marvelous sunset last night, and hope to always see him there...

“I’ve experienced many terrible things in my life, a few of which actually happened.” – Mark Twain

Being retired allows so much more time to think. Lately I’ve been watching an old HBO series about people in their 20s and 30s, which serves to remind me how complex relationships used to seem, and how easily happy I am now. It sometimes seems all we hear about are the disadvantages of being older. What about the supreme advantages? What feels good about finally being an elder? Here’s a list of a few of the good things for me:

1. I’m finally finished “doing” all the things I felt I had to do to be happy, like degrees, jobs and finding healthy relationships.
2. I have greatly narrowed down who I want to spend my time with.
3. I’ve stopped my irritating habit of over analyzing every little thing that happens or happened in my past. Analysis paralysis is a thing of the past!
4. Put most simply: I’m older and smarter! Is that wisdom?

When I think about my life now words like relaxed and yes, mellow come to mind. Sometimes I fall back into my bad habit of what I call “worry shopping”, but then I respond to myself with: “WHO CARES?” Life will continue to be exactly the way it is and I will somehow be OK with that. I find this so liberating and freeing. I find it easier to focus on the good in the world and with some new-found mind discipline, I now generally choose my own thoughts.

I learned years ago: Don’t believe everything you think!

Our minds are such amazing tools for good or evil. As a young person in my 20s I was far too self-centered, oversensitive, over analytical, and completely self-conscious. So glad to be far past all of that! Yes, I am still thoughtful and caring, but I now fully accept all that I do not control, especially when it comes to other people and their opinions of me. I know myself better than anyone else and I feel good about that.

These days, this phrase best describes my feelings about my interactions with others:

You cannot control how other people receive your energy. Anything you do or say gets filtered through the lens of whatever they are going through at the moment, which is NOT ABOUT YOU.