The Last Twelve Months

I have wanted to post here on many occasions over the last year, but life has come between me and my writing. I apologize. You have all been so patient. A lot has happened and I hardly know where to start.

My online therapy practice launched, and I now have a second clinical practice in Northampton, Massachusetts in addition to my Watertown office. Life is busy and rewarding. The website is still being fine tuned, with encrypted email coming soon. I would also like to add streaming video at some point. The photograph there was a "placeholder" until my web designer could post a new one. That still hasn't happened, hence posting my photo here as I'm a firm believer in truth in advertising.

My father died in June, after a long slow hospitalization in a hospital in Gloucester, England. I'm not going to go into details about that in this post, but I have had many insights into grief and loss since his death. My life has changed and the impact on my family has been monumental. To say that he was not a kind man would be a serious understatement. On the contrary, he was a cruel, mean-spirited, narcissistic tyrant who terrorized his wife and children. But to watch a person slowly disintegrate before your eyes, lose life force and die is a life-changing event. I will write more on this in the months ahead.

Probably the most profound event of the last twelve months was relocating my home. Seeking a lifestyle more in keeping with my politics, and philosophy of life, I moved to the countryside. Having spent my life living in claustrophobic urban environments, where my house was separated from the next door neighbor by a car's width, I'm now living on nearly 20 acres of beautiful farmland in an 18th century house with my spouse and our dog, Ziggy. With two and a half miles to the only general store in town, I pass 2 houses on my way to it and other than that, it's us and the sheep, and the Llamas used by local farmers to guard their herds from murderous coyotes.

I believe that our access to fossil fuels is about to take a dive and when that happens life as we have known it will change irrevocably, making access to food and all other life-sustaining needs, difficult if not in some circumstances impossible. I wanted my family to be in a position to live a simple and sustainable lifestyle. I carefully picked the area I moved to based on input from, and conversations with, a dear friend who was already living in the town. Check out her blog at Peak Oil Blues. The Peak Shrink has written about the impact of diminishing oil reserves on our physical and psychological lives far more eloquently than I ever could - why reinvent the wheel?

The town I moved to is small, friendly and supportive. And, most importantly, they are already working on ways to simplify life, including exploring renewable energy and a commitment to eating locally grown foods. In the last few months, we have been planting tree crops and vegetables, making our house as weather-tight as possible, looking into raising chickens and goats (coming next Spring) and tripling the size of the existing vegetable garden. This stuff does not come easily to me and neither do I enjoy it much. I'm great with houseplants, but mulch, manure and garden gloves are alien to me. I am somebody who likes my eggs to come pre-washed and neatly arranged in a rectangular cardboard carton. The idea of fishing around in hay for my breakfast egg was initially less than appealing. But I notice myself changing. Slowly and surely, I'm increasingly relishing the prospect of carrying eggs in from the chicken coop every morning.

As you can imagine, acclimatizing to a very rural life has not been without its challenges. For instance, we have to drive for 30 minutes before we reach a gas station, so our cars have to be gassed up at all times. The same is true of food and other supplies. No quick trips into town for us. Everything has to be carefully planned and shopped for ahead of time. Like every small town, gossip travels fast. One example of this is that my car was thumped by a pick-up truck in the gas station. As soon as I had finished exchanging information with the other driver, I called my mechanic a mile or so away. "Oh, I know why you're calling," he said before I had even begun to explain my predicament, "and I know that you're going to need an auto body shop!" It turns out that a customer of his on the way to the garage had seen the accident. I'm the only very old, red Saab convertible in town so the mechanic had put two and two together.

Then there's the wildlife. And the bugs. Bears steal the bird feeders off the windows, rummage through compost and have been known to help themselves to the content of the refrigerator. (A neighbor's, not ours, thankfully.) This year, we have had a literal plague of ladybugs. Not just 50 or 60 of them, but thousands of them - they throw themselves against the windows and doors, desperate to get in before the cold weather comes. We vacuumed solidly for two hours the other day to get rid of the ones that had actually made it into the house. Yes, I know it sounds harsh. But one or two lady bugs are sweet and pretty. Hundreds of them dive-bombing the table, crawling into your bed, landing on the coats hanging by the door so thickly you can barely tell what color the fabric is? That's definitely a plague.

On the other hand, when catastrophe strikes, the town hears of it quickly and people are quick to offer help, support and sympathy. There are no street lights and there's almost no cell phone coverage here. But at night, with almost no light pollution from towns and cities, the stars are brilliant and clear, appearing to hang low enough to touch. While there are few stores, there have been garden delights that more than make up for this. I've made apple sauce from our own apples, Portuguese Kale soup with vegetables from our garden and we ate blueberries, raspberries and blackberries daily until the season finally ended. The crime rate is almost non-existent and when you are sitting on your front step staring out at the fields, everybody who drives by waves hello.

There is so much to say about this change in lifestyle. It has affected everything about my life, which includes a change in the way I think about my role as a therapist. I'll be writing more on this in the coming months.