React. Reaction. Reactivity.

I/we get to choose.

React, reaction, reactivity and the choice of how are this week’s mental favored fidget toys. Words turned over from side to side, pondered, petted, explored. On a recent beach visit, my dear friend, Elizabeth, lovingly gifted me the word “react,” with an gentle added reminder: I get to choose. As in, I get to choose how I react.

Image capture from Saturday morning’s brief exploration of Nashville’s brilliantly executed revitalization of the Neuhoff district into a multi-use region. Once a meat packing plant employing German immigrants at the turn of last century, the old blends with the new and features views of the Cumberland River.

Like most parents on the long-haul journey of higher supports need autism or other involved disabilities or special healthcare diagnoses, life has presented me an all-you-can-eat buffet of reaction opportunities. (Schools, teachers, therapists, mangled Medicaid systems, etc., etc.) Thank you, Grace. I mean that. Thanks to my 30-year-old autistic only child for choosing to be my daughter and teacher. I’m grateful we’ve chosen this epic-length life school lesson together. Thanks, as well, to therapy, coaching, trainings, workshops and conferences and my elder shaman. It was the later who helped me unpack the concepts of hooks.

Fresh-hot off a divorce in 2011, hooks were a newer concept to me. “Hook” is more embedded in the therapy-speak vernacular these days. “There’s the hook.” Meaning, that thing, person, or issue that trips one up into reacting. Until we remember we have a choice on the how we react and also to go back and examine just where that darn crack, pebble, obstacle—or, hook—was that made us trip over ourselves.

This week, I got to “unpack” why I freaked out three times since last Friday: at how our young speech therapist failed to use proper protocol for requesting authorization from Grace’s doctor, requiring his confused office to call us twice for clarification. Secondly, at a most cumbersome Medicaid program “Support Broker” with whom I played telephone tag while I navigated from a conversation with Grace’s behavioral therapist at 8 AM, through a commute from my chiropractor to the compounding pharmacist. And, then, yesterday, the trifecta of me spinning out of control in my nurse practitioner’s office.

While none of these were cool, and all were embarrassing and stressful for all parties, I am now usually able to start slowing down my reactivity and assure the person they are not at fault. I’m the one responsible and losing my cool. That I’m frustrated with (fill in the blank) punitive requirements of the Medicaid system, I’m not well physically (this week), or, BINGO—I’ve hit my capacity.

After three-and-a-half decades of memories of when I inappropriately lost my cool, usually in work settings, but also akin to that one yesterday in the NP’s office, I realized what was going on—thanks to a long sip at the Google re-search bar and a mind that’s incessantly inquisitive. The later is why ADHD, my 2023 surprise-not suprise diagnosis, is no longer referred to as ADD. And also, part of the reason women are getting diagnosed now in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and upward.

Boys received the crown jewel title of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder because they were witnessed as physically hyper. Whereas girls missed out on help and intervention because they were not. Now we know that, for females, the hyperactivity happens primarily in the mind versus the stereotype of little boys running amuck in a classroom or grocery aisle. Another fun fact: deficit is a pestily inaccurate description because one of the many super powers of this form of neurodivergence is the ability to concentrate. It’s not a deficit. Rather it’s an obsessive-like, (and, yes, sometimes problematic) quality to over focus on a topic of interest. (Everyone reading this who knows me may recall an exemplary enthusiastic conversation or two with me on a random topic.)

So, women, as per much of our cultural demands, have shouldered on, multitasking all the things until one day hormones start to rumble. Estrogen levels plummet, taking dopamine levels down the slide. Cortisol (stress) levels soar in the opposite direction, and too often plunge forward, too, as in carrying belly weight like an unbirthed baby. Yep. Got one of those too and I’m past overdue getting rid of it.

Hormones. Culture. Work. Family. Life. Previously undiagnosed female brains are reaching breaking points.

And I blow up in my nurse practitioner’s office. I’m there because since Covid infection number two, the Omicron variant of year 2022 apparently changed the way my sinuses drain. (Fun reading. Sorry.) One day I wake up with a third jaw because all the drainage from spring’s offending grass pollen has landed and swollen into a hardened salivary gland on the lower left half of my face. Nice. And. Ouch.

Overall I managed calmly with this extra chomper. Normally I shy away from modern medicine and prefer elder, natural remedies that have proven their chops (no pun intended) for four decades of my life. But, in more emergency situations, am grateful for ibuprofen and antibiotics when the herbs and homeopathics no longer worked and my body goes askew. What I lost my cool over was conceiving the upcoming circuitous routes of navigating a radiology lab’s $2K bill, the doctor’s missed orders, and my insurance. In short, the someone misread the NP’s orders and went straight to a diagnostic mammogram and United is failing to cover it as an annual wellness procedure. Ka-Ching! Growl.

Murder is not okay. I didn’t join in the collective cheering crowd. But the name Luigi Mangione also runs on repeat in my brain this week.

In the last week, I’ve received multiple letters weekly from Grace’s Medicare and Medicaid on coverage gone awry necessitating the maddening bureaucratic loop of calls and filling out duplicate forms…yada. I love my job as a paperpusher! NOT!

I lost it at the thought of repeating the procedure for myself with United. I’d hit the wall of capacity.

My friend, Google, told me last week that women with ADHD mask and cope until they reach capacity and burnout happens. I’m at the year-and-a-half mark of burnout recovery from about a decade of mangled Medicaid system’s management for Grace. Each time my memory searches for the genesis of these blow up episodes, I see I’d reached my capacity. The spinning plates toppled, crashed along with my capacity and reactions. I was unknowingly masking. I was peddling hard and fast. And one more thing equaled an impending crash.

”I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It’s not you. Please don’t take this personally. It’s this punitive system I’m navigating for 30 years now as I’m half-way into my 60s. It’s too much.”

The background on repeat sound track accompanying the melodic Italian name of the infamous United Healthcare executive murderer, is “Everything is Broken” by one hot Sheryl Crow and Jason Isbell performing at the 2019 Newport Folk Festival. Oh, Bob (Dylan), did you ever nail it when you penned that one in 1989. And it’s all ever more broken now. So, so….So very, very so….

Stream of conscious writing is a tad dangerous. And often bloody vulnerable. At the start here, I began talking about the topic of how I can choose to react. A noble topic. And I am serious about it. But, the theme morphed into how I chose in a state of overwhelm this last week. At least I’m conscious of choice, of reactivity.

I took to my frazzled swollen jawed self to the sofa the rest of the afternoon and into the evening with a local magazine, Edible, which profiled a rural Nashville off-shoot community’s hardware store/restaurant combo (my Insta tribute from 2023 here,) and a copy of Nashville Scene. This week, our local (quality) rag on “Nashvegas” culture profiled the stunning mixed-use redo of Germantown Nashville’s turn of last century’s Neuhoff meat-packing plant. I just happened to visit there last Saturday and had already created this reel when I read the Scene’s coverage.

In happy-reaction news, the Doves decided to build a new nest atop our fence. The species mate for life and sometimes their offspring return to the site of their birth. I like to think that family number four in two years, are multigenerational natives to my #LizettesGarden

Once again. That’s my cue. Look to nature for instructions on how to be. At least be in nature for the natural chill-pill effect. (Or, after the grass has finished pollinating itself.) The allergen level is probably still high. I haven’t checked. But, my sinuses are beginning to swell in the appropriate places now as I wrap up writing this. A trip to an ENT is in the plans as to why this weird thing keeps happening.

Dear Covid, You left your mark in so many ways, not in the least my/our bodies. Phew.

Be well. And help a writer-gal out—? Your little heart-like emojis matter. As do “restacks,” shares, comments. It’s the modern age, aye? Like it or not, for us writers and artists, algorithms drive the day. Thanks for reading at whatever rate—free or paid. Writers just wanna be read. —xxL