At 23, I feel like my life mantra is taken straight from Pocahontas: "You'll learn things you never knew you never knew." I love that statement. No matter how much I know, learn, or experience, there will always be things I do not know, but also there is so much to life that I will never even fathom. Like, my mind is barely able to keep from exploding as I try to think of something that I do not even know exists. Maybe the head ache is from trying to do the impossible.
All this being said, I do not think anyone, myself included, should ever underestimate the knowledge and life experience they do have. We each have already done the hardest thing we have ever done to date. Yeah, think that through. Imagine the hardest, deepest, saddest, loneliest, most soul crushing moment of your life, and then take a deep breath. That moment has already passed. You survived it. Now, do not misread me and think that I am saying nothing worse than those moments will ever happen, because they will, and they just might knock you off your feet. Just remember everything you have learned up to this point and let all that life carry you through the next chapter.
Introduction finished and background knowledge now activated I would like to share with you a gem I have gained and relearned over and over again. You ready for this? Never let anyone let their pain belittle your pain and make you feel guilty for having feelings. Profound? Maybe. Ground breaking? Not really. But let us talk our way through that statement.
Pretend something bad has happened to you, so you feel grief. It is your right, as a human being, to feel that grief. Grief is a very personal experience and it is yours to experience. However, when something bad happens it rarely happens to only one person. The ripple affect of tragedy knows no end. That is something to keep in mind while you grieve; there are still other people grieving. And an unfortunate step of grief is anger. You have the right to be angry and so do others.
Anger is a fickle thing isn't it? Anger is full of passion and drive. It has motives and plans of attack. No one ever sat idly by while being truly angry. And for that reason, many people ride the anger train in the journey of grief for all it is worth. Have you ever been so angry you see red or taste metal? I remember once during one of my later semesters of college getting so angry while studying for a physiology test that I could name and picture every reaction happening in my body; from the change in hormone levels, the muscle tissue contraction, and my change in blood pressure all leading to a 'fight' reaction (it was a very effective study technique).
Anger makes ugly things happen. Ugly, seemingly unforgivable, things happen. People, in their grief, will do horrible things out of pure selfish anger. These things can make you feel like crap. Your grief will multiply and become harder to bare, because those who share your pain would rather tear you down than grieve with you. And worst case scenario, they make you feel guilty for feeling bad. That is truly the worst feeling in the world. Feeling horrible, than feeling guilty, than trying to hide your pain is a sucky situation. You are being forced out of your stages of grief. You will never heal if you cannot freely grieve.
I cannot tell you how many times this has happened to me. I am one who internalizes EVERYTHING. I feel everyone's emotions right along with them. When I was younger I would have to leave the room when something embarrassing or sad happened on T.V. because I was feeling all the same things as the character. It is something about me that I treasure because I am able to be empathetic towards others. On the flip side, it often times makes me more vulnerable. I have had to learn, and continually re-learn, that it is okay to feel bad. It is okay to cry, scream, laugh, curl up into a ball and close off to the world for an hour, and even eat a pint of ice cream, because I am not a robot. If others try to belittle my pain, or mock me for my tears it is okay because they do not get to dictate how I feel. Only I can decide how I feel, and I have every right to feel my feelings!!!
Please, please, do not let other people drag you down further. If you are sad, cry. If you are exhausted, take a mid-day nap. If you are elated, sing at the top of your lungs. If you are angry, scream until you are blue in the face. You are entitled to feelings. Have I said that enough yet? Just one more time to be clear. You are a human being and it is only normal to have feelings and you should embrace them!
But a moment to address the antithesis of all of this. You do not have any right, ever, to deride someone else's pain. I am not saying you are required to take ownership of anyone's pain. In fact, unless you have directly caused the personal injury to that person, you should not ever take ownership or feel responsible for anyone's pain. If you and someone you know have suffered some terrible tragedy, do not make the mistake of thinking that your grief is greater. It is not your place to rank hardships.
Remember the words of Sis. Marjorie Hinckley: "Be kind. Everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."
I love you all.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Friday, October 18, 2013
Cadavers, Museums and Bones, oh my!
*As originally published in 2011*
So even though I say I have an idea for a new blog in my last blog doesn't actually mean I will ever do any of those posts. Like today I think I will blog a little bit about cadavers, museums and bones. Believe it or not, these are some of my favorite subjects. I am about to finish up a degree in Anthropology and I would love nothing more than to work in a museum someday and specialize in human remains. I have about three years experience in museums as well as osteological (human bones), mummified, and cadaver experience. I understand that this is an odd set of skills and experiences to put on a resume, but hey, someone has to do it!
This might actually be a bit of a rant today because I am extremely pissed at the medical community as a whole. You see, in anthropology/archaeology, we are taught and drilled over and over how to respectfully study and document human remains. There are rules for handling the remains, documenting/photographing/drawing remains, and storing remains. If you name it, there is a rule, whether written or not, somewhere out there in the anthropological world for human remains. And, of course, this is the way it should be. The remains are actual people who deserve actual respect regardless if they are individuals who donated their body's to science or if they are 5000 year old individuals happened upon during a hike in the Alps (more on the Kenniwick man in a later post).
On the flip side, in the medical community students are taught that cadavers are empty shells who are used for practice. Rather make a mistake on a dead guy than one who would like to wake up when you finish with them. Even thought this reasoning is valid, it still really bothers me. The other day when I was working in a cadaver lab, my lab instructor came in and dropped her book on one of the cadavers as if it were a table under the body bag and not a person. I was mortified! Then she continued to mix up the skulls and mandibles until reuniting the correct skull with the correct mandible was next to impossible. By the time my lab time was finished I was through the roof. Her behavior was unquestionable wrong, not to mention the fact that she only behaved this way because that is how she was taught by her lab instructor.
I really feel very strongly about the need for a more anthropological approach to medicine. If we cannot understand a persons culture and appreciate their worth as an individual (even after death) then I feel all is lost. We cannot remove the humanistic side to studying humans with out grave affects.
I do understand that some people have a hard time with human remains. I have also know several people who cannot deal with remains unless they emotionally and (arguably) humanisticly detach themselves from the remains. But these types of jobs are not for everyone because of this.
I am not going to lie. The first time I worked with human remains was in a museum setting and when I was done I went home and cried for hours. It was a small child and I was simply performing a routine check to make sure nothing had gone wrong with the remains while in a transitioning stage at the museum. I laid in bed and sobbed for this child. This child was removed from her original resting place, was removed from her parents and family, and this child had died so young. The next morning I went into the museum with a prayer in my heart and faced the remains again. This time I did not have such an emotional reaction but rather I was able to work and still keep the realization that this was a person who lived a life and had people who loved them and I should show them all the respect I would want for myself and my loved ones.
Your first time is hard, but you learn to handle each situation handed to you. For those who cannot do so should seriously consider another profession.
So even though I say I have an idea for a new blog in my last blog doesn't actually mean I will ever do any of those posts. Like today I think I will blog a little bit about cadavers, museums and bones. Believe it or not, these are some of my favorite subjects. I am about to finish up a degree in Anthropology and I would love nothing more than to work in a museum someday and specialize in human remains. I have about three years experience in museums as well as osteological (human bones), mummified, and cadaver experience. I understand that this is an odd set of skills and experiences to put on a resume, but hey, someone has to do it!
This might actually be a bit of a rant today because I am extremely pissed at the medical community as a whole. You see, in anthropology/archaeology, we are taught and drilled over and over how to respectfully study and document human remains. There are rules for handling the remains, documenting/photographing/drawing remains, and storing remains. If you name it, there is a rule, whether written or not, somewhere out there in the anthropological world for human remains. And, of course, this is the way it should be. The remains are actual people who deserve actual respect regardless if they are individuals who donated their body's to science or if they are 5000 year old individuals happened upon during a hike in the Alps (more on the Kenniwick man in a later post).
On the flip side, in the medical community students are taught that cadavers are empty shells who are used for practice. Rather make a mistake on a dead guy than one who would like to wake up when you finish with them. Even thought this reasoning is valid, it still really bothers me. The other day when I was working in a cadaver lab, my lab instructor came in and dropped her book on one of the cadavers as if it were a table under the body bag and not a person. I was mortified! Then she continued to mix up the skulls and mandibles until reuniting the correct skull with the correct mandible was next to impossible. By the time my lab time was finished I was through the roof. Her behavior was unquestionable wrong, not to mention the fact that she only behaved this way because that is how she was taught by her lab instructor.
I really feel very strongly about the need for a more anthropological approach to medicine. If we cannot understand a persons culture and appreciate their worth as an individual (even after death) then I feel all is lost. We cannot remove the humanistic side to studying humans with out grave affects.
I do understand that some people have a hard time with human remains. I have also know several people who cannot deal with remains unless they emotionally and (arguably) humanisticly detach themselves from the remains. But these types of jobs are not for everyone because of this.
I am not going to lie. The first time I worked with human remains was in a museum setting and when I was done I went home and cried for hours. It was a small child and I was simply performing a routine check to make sure nothing had gone wrong with the remains while in a transitioning stage at the museum. I laid in bed and sobbed for this child. This child was removed from her original resting place, was removed from her parents and family, and this child had died so young. The next morning I went into the museum with a prayer in my heart and faced the remains again. This time I did not have such an emotional reaction but rather I was able to work and still keep the realization that this was a person who lived a life and had people who loved them and I should show them all the respect I would want for myself and my loved ones.
Your first time is hard, but you learn to handle each situation handed to you. For those who cannot do so should seriously consider another profession.
The little moments....
So it is currently 11:30 pm, two days before my sister's wedding. We just spent the last two hours putting curlers in her hair and doing a body wrap, a process we will repeat tomorrow night. And it was great.
We have been running around all day since 9 am, and we are slap happy, to say the least. After sufficiently getting all of my sister and the surrounding carpet wet with the squirt bottle I used to do her hair, she was freezing. Unfortunately for her, we needed to do the body wrap, which just so happens to be a rather cold activity.
So, in case you have never done a body wrap, or you have no idea what I am even talking about, let me give you the 'skinny' (horrible pun intended). The jest of it is you use your choice of some witch-doctor lotion/oil/gel and rub it all over your desired body area, in our case her mid-section, and then you wrap said section in plastic wrap as tight as you can, then you follow up with a tight wrap in ace bandages, all of this unpleasantness is then slept in for the night. The point is to make you shed water weight and tighten up the area wrapped. Should I mention I do not really believe this works all that great and I don't support this endeavored for anyone.
Needless to say, rubbing cold jelly on your tummy at roughly 11 pm with wet hair and hardly any clothes on is not the best of experiences. I would also like to remind you all that we are at the end stages of exhaustion flirting with delirium. Put all of these ridiculous factors together and we have one heck of a situation. We got the giggles. Like, tears running down my face, weirdo noises from my sister, no breathing, giggles.
As we tried to regain enough composure to finish the task at hand a wave of melancholy overcame me. She is getting married in two days. My baby sister will no longer be my baby sister. Our ridiculous days are numbered. Our roads are diverging and it is an end of a defining chapter of our lives. While yes, there are so many happy, positive things that lay ahead, saying goodbye to the past is still hard. I love her. We fight like cats and dogs but I love her, because we have all of the little moments that individually mean nothing at all, but has a compilation mean everything. Breakfast chats before work, Dr. Phil after school, baking fails and triumphs, missing scarfs and hairspray, fights over nothing, and late night giggles will no longer define our relationship.
So as I prep and go over my duties as maid of honor for the millionth time I pause for a moment. I pause to say goodbye and to let that little bit of pain surface and be acknowledged so I can truly celebrate in the next couple of days all the good that is going to come.
We have been running around all day since 9 am, and we are slap happy, to say the least. After sufficiently getting all of my sister and the surrounding carpet wet with the squirt bottle I used to do her hair, she was freezing. Unfortunately for her, we needed to do the body wrap, which just so happens to be a rather cold activity.
So, in case you have never done a body wrap, or you have no idea what I am even talking about, let me give you the 'skinny' (horrible pun intended). The jest of it is you use your choice of some witch-doctor lotion/oil/gel and rub it all over your desired body area, in our case her mid-section, and then you wrap said section in plastic wrap as tight as you can, then you follow up with a tight wrap in ace bandages, all of this unpleasantness is then slept in for the night. The point is to make you shed water weight and tighten up the area wrapped. Should I mention I do not really believe this works all that great and I don't support this endeavored for anyone.
Needless to say, rubbing cold jelly on your tummy at roughly 11 pm with wet hair and hardly any clothes on is not the best of experiences. I would also like to remind you all that we are at the end stages of exhaustion flirting with delirium. Put all of these ridiculous factors together and we have one heck of a situation. We got the giggles. Like, tears running down my face, weirdo noises from my sister, no breathing, giggles.
As we tried to regain enough composure to finish the task at hand a wave of melancholy overcame me. She is getting married in two days. My baby sister will no longer be my baby sister. Our ridiculous days are numbered. Our roads are diverging and it is an end of a defining chapter of our lives. While yes, there are so many happy, positive things that lay ahead, saying goodbye to the past is still hard. I love her. We fight like cats and dogs but I love her, because we have all of the little moments that individually mean nothing at all, but has a compilation mean everything. Breakfast chats before work, Dr. Phil after school, baking fails and triumphs, missing scarfs and hairspray, fights over nothing, and late night giggles will no longer define our relationship.
So as I prep and go over my duties as maid of honor for the millionth time I pause for a moment. I pause to say goodbye and to let that little bit of pain surface and be acknowledged so I can truly celebrate in the next couple of days all the good that is going to come.
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