Day: November 4, 2014

Mandy Meyer-Hill is a massage therapist, she is important to me and to my life. I did not know her four years ago, and before that, I never went to get a message, never saw a massage therapist. I thought it was a strange thing, it seemed too intimate for me to take my clothes off in front of a stranger who would touch me. I was afraid of it, as I was of any kind of intimacy or closeness, physical or emotional.

I see Mandy almost every week now, she is a close friend of mine and one of Maria’s closest friends. Mandy is a healer, before each massage she sits down and talks with me, she gets a sense of who I am at that moment and what I need. I see that I was completely wrong about massage, it is a powerful healing tool, and massage therapists, like social workers, are professional, well-trained and with a keen sense of the body and the soul.

When I went to see Mandy, I brought so much anger and panic with me, so much of it is gone now, perhaps massaged out of me.

A doctor asked me what was the most powerful healing experience I had received after my open heart surgery, and I said without any hesitation that it was the massage and energy work that Mandy did with me in the weeks after the operation. She insisted on coming to the house. I was exhausted and in considerable pain, and I sat in a bit reclining chair. My memory of that time is hazy, and but I was especially exhausted in the afternoons. Mandy would come in and work with my legs, then my arms and chest, she did energy work and I remember falling into the deepest sleep, and the most relaxed and restful state. She was always gone when I woke up, yet the experience of being healed was palpable.

I truly rested in those sessions, healed, felt my energy and sense of self returning, it was the most deeply restful experience of my life, I think, and rest was what I desperately needed.

I am a diabetic, that is a circulation disease, and massage is strongly recommended for diabetics, there is little, apart from exercise, that helps the circulation of one’s body more. Now, with the heart surgery, this is even more important to me. I am going almost every week, Mandy let’s me know when an opening arises, I bring Red. It was Mandy who drove to Virginia with her daughter Marleigh to pick Red up from Dr. Karen Thompson, he practically melts into the ground when he sees her. This is one of the many connections I have with Mandy, who sometimes comes to the farmhouse with soup and salad to sit up into the night and talk with us.

Red lies down on the floor and is still, he enters the spirit of massage, as he enters the spirit of every place he is. Mandy always has a bowl of water for him on the floor.

Mandy is a healer, the kind of healer who works very hard, but doesn’t work for the money, or make a lot of money, I imagine. She is drawn to helping people, soothing body and soul. Massage, I have learned, is a powerful spiritual as well as physical experience. I almost never an more at peace than I am on her heated table, I go to some other place, it is quiet and safe – and yes, healing – there. When I leave, I am rested, at peace, those massages made such an enormous difference to me. I appreciate Mandy’s doing something medical healers rarely get to do anymore – talk to me. We always talk, she always wants to figure out what I need, even when I often do not know.

Today I went to see my nurse practitioner, and she gave me a superhero “Captain America” sticker because I was doing so well with my heart.

But there are, of course, other post-surgery things to deal with. My diabetes is not yet back to normal and under full control, I have issues with fluid and some other things to deal with.  More doctors, more tests, more pills. I will not waver, I will get there. I felt a bit overwhelmed and discouraged, I always think it is over, it is never, of course, over. I came into Mandy’s office and she looked at me and said, “well you look a little overwhelmed today, let’s take care of that, let’s do some massage and energy work.” I started to say I was fine, then dropped it. It is nice to be known by a healer who cares. It is, well, healing.

When the donkeys see us coming, Simon loudly, Fanny (left) and Lulu (right) bray softly, they greet you with their noses, sniffing carefully for applies or treats, sometimes they will turn away in disgust and disinterest, sometimes they will sidle over for some attention and scratching. Either way, it is their idea always, and on their terms, not yours. Donkeys are not dogs, they are not looking to please you, although they might decide to please you, just to keep things on an even keel.

I suppose you can tell a lot about a culture by it’s mottos and slogans, Americans used to adorn their flags with sayings like “Don’t Tread On Me,” or “Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death,” today it seems our national motto is “Abundance of Caution,” a dispiriting and uninspiring theme, at least for me.

I Googled “abundance of caution” this morning and found 1,460,000 entries, a staggering catalogue of closings, regulations, procedures and changes meant to make all of us safer. Do you feel safer?

In New York, the animal rights people say the carriage trade must be shut down in an “abundance of caution,” because one animal death in an accident is too many. I hardly have the heart to tell them that horses have accidents on rescue farms much more frequently than on Manhattan streets, mostly because they are not nearly as well supervised or regulated. It is possible that the people who speak for the rights of animals do not know that horses in the wild have more accidents than horses in stables in New York could possibly have?

A local rescue farm owner tells me her horses have accidents four or five times a year, falling on ice, into holes, slipping in mud, kicking one another, tripping on roots.

Is there any animal or human in the real world, I wonder, who lives in a world free of the possibility of accident or injury?

In New Jersey, a governor wished to force Nurse Kaci Hickox into quarantine even thought she was tested and found to be free of Ebola and had no symptoms of any kind.  Even though the government and medical community all said she was safe and free to go home. He eventually conceded she didn’t seem to be sick, but said he had to act out of an “abundance of caution.” The governor of Maine used the same term when he tried to force her back into quarantine there.

In my local health center, a young mother with a cold ended up in an isolation room with a mask because her husband was at an airport recently and he sat next to a health worker returning from West Africa. An “abundance of caution,” said the nurse. Government officials use the term all the time now, to restrict visas, close airports. Schools use the term to lock down or shut down in an “abundance of caution,” two schools in the midwest shut down because a nurse with Ebola flew a couple of hundred miles away to an airport.

Colleges across the country are disinviting speakers, asking researchers who have been to Africa to say home, telling health care workers who have been to West Africa to say away from campus, they have even coined a new term, “overabundance of caution.”

An “abundance of caution” seems to justify government doing whatever it feels like doing to avoid any possible risk to anyone, including  breaking the law and brushing aside rationality, science and medicine. Or tossing out the New York carriage horses while ignoring veterinarians, behaviorists, trainers and animal lovers who know that the horses are safe and well cared for.

In Minnesota, three playgrounds were shut down out of an “abundance of caution” to make sure the kids didn’t fall off the metal slide. The list is astonishing, it goes on and on, and reaches into almost every part of our lives.

There are many threats and dangers in the world, but the land of the free and brave seems to have a new slogan, the land of the anxious and the timid. Our media is not full of stories exploring the ways we can go to Africa and help end the epidemic there, is is full of stories exploring ways in which we can lock up the people who go there, make them feel like selfish criminals, and ban anyone who is there or wants to go there or come  here.

What value does caution have, even in abundance, if there is no reason, perspective, compassion, or freedom? It sometimes seems to me that the people protecting us (and our animals) are as or more dangerous than the things we are supposed to be protected from.

In New York City, the mayor and the animal rights groups insist out of an “abundance of caution” – the term has appeared in several speeches about the carriage trade – that the horses must be banished from the city so they can be saved and taken to places that are demonstrably more dangerous and less supervised.

I think I prefer the land of the free and the brave myself, I don’t care to live in an abundance of caution, I would prefer an abundance of compassion, creativity and calm.

There is no such thing as a “no-kill” life, no human or animal endeavor free of risk or danger or accident. A life filled with an overabundance of caution is, by definition, an isolated, fearful, phobic and angry life. Just look at cable news or the messages on Facebook and Twitter. That much safety is too much for me, the price is too high.

I’ve been quiet about my “Saving Simon” orphans book tour in the past week or so, I guess I have been a bit flummoxed by it. The reviews of the book have been wonderful, the reaction very positive, but I’ve never – not in my whole career – had a book so thoroughly abandoned by a publisher. I’m leaving Random House for Simon & Schuster, and I suppose that’s part of what happened. The other part has been relationship fatigue – I think we were both just sick of one another after 30 years together, a sad thing to say but true. I keep reading that publishers are doing less and less for books, so I guess I’m living it, the money budget for my book tour and the marketing for the book is zero.

And I have it a lot better than most writers, I have my blog.

The message of Simon and his life is to not quit on life, to move forward, and that is what I want to do with my book. I’m organizing a fun and patchwork tour for the book going to the Petersburgh, N.Y., Library at 7 p.m. this Thursday and have plans to go support the Troy, N.Y. Library and speak at the Wilton, Conn., library in the coming weeks. In the Spring, I’m going to Des Moines and Iowa City, getting some other nice offers as well.

And there is good news from my humble little book tour. The book is in its second printing, thanks to the blog and my exciting relationship with Battenkill Books, which has already sold close to 1,000 copies of the book. We’re shooting for 2,000 by Christmas, and the Xmas season is stirring, so I’m resuming my campaign for “Saving Simon: How A Rescue Donkey Taught Me The Meaning Of Compassion.”

Everyone who buys a book at Battenkill Books, my local bookstore, gets a signed photo Simon postcard, we are also giving away coupons for Fromm dog and cat food, notecards, potholders and other stuff, everyone who buys a book from Battenkill is eligible for these give-a-aways as long as the supplies last. You can order the book from Battenkill right here.

Connie Brooks takes Paypal and ships anywhere in the world, you can also call the store at 518 677-2515. I will sign and personalize every book purchased there (within reason, I reserve the right to edit for space and authenticity). So here we go again the big run to Christmas, I think this is a good Xmas book, a lot about compassion and healing, in the Christmas spirit. Thanks for your support, I’m not quitting on my book.