beautiful monsters

Falling Pigs

Quote of the day

"People do not ‘have’ diseases, which are really descriptive mechanisms created by contemporary medicine. People have stories, and the stories are narratives of their lives, their relationships, and the way they experience an illness."
- Arthur Kleinman.

So far I’ve learnt how to fall over…

I’m really enjoying Aikido classes. Unfortunately, I’m not very good at it. I’m the least experienced person in the class, and I spend most of the time dancing around trying to work out which foot I’m supposed to fall back over, or which hand I am supposed to use to deflect an attack.

But, I kind of figure I’m being useful. See, if someone really good attacks you, even if you don’t do quite the right move they know what they’re supposed to be doing and so they fall in the right direction. If you attack someone really good, you don’t even have to think about which foot goes where, you just fall over. So, what I figure is, that I’m good practice for other people, because if they only practised with really good people it would be too easy. Because I make lots of mistakes, I keep them on their toes. So I’m doing them a wonderful service!

Or something like that.

An interesting side effect of Aikido is that it seems to make me crave cool clean water and good wholesome food. I think it’s a combination of vigorous exercise, and getting in touch with one’s body and spirit. See, when you’re really in touch with your body and spirit, junk food really doesn’t seem that appealing. Fortunately the effect only lasts for a few hours, so by the next morning I’m gulping down the drinking chocolates again.

I’m infatuated with a small grey pig

Olivia is my new hero. She’s fantastic!

"In the morning, after she gets up
and moves the cat

and brushes her teeth
and combs her ears

and moves the cat,

Olivia gets dressed.

She has to try on
everything."

She loves art galleries, but she doesn’t get Jackson Pollock. And at bedtime she bargains until eventually she gets three bedtime stories. She kind of reminds me of my own childhood!

Golly

After I wrote the longest blog entry in the world, I took some bits of it and turned them into a formal letter and sent it to a couple of people, with a cover letter from someone at the women’s health collective. Well, for once people actually took some notice. Today I had a meeting with four people (team leaders or managers) from mental health services. It was a bit daunting, but they were all really friendly, and supportive.

So… to cut a long story short…

They will be talking to the staff member that I had problems with, and she won’t be working in the crisis house any more (though she’ll keep working in another part of the organisation, if she takes on board their comments).

They are going to do some more training around self-harm issues, and take up some of the suggestions I made. They’ve also invited the women’s health collective to take part in some training… for free!

They’re going to ensure that their staff members let clients know that they are available to talk and offer support.

They want me to come along and talk at one of their staff meetings.

They’re going to talk to the police and the emergency department and try and put some better guidelines in place.

They’re going to address the time delays.

They’re going to make sure there’s a stash of soymilk at the house.

And… they bought me a wheat free vegan lunch.

Yay! I feel as though I’ve achieved something. And I got a free lunch.

Posted by Fionnaigh at April 2, 2003 10:57 AM