Put On Your Own Oxygen Mask First

I think I’m finally ready to start writing again. Where have I been after writing two introductory blog posts and then disappearing for four months?

In mourning. My best friend since high school died, and as I’m sure you can imagine that threw me for a loop.

 

Her name was Ellen. We had known each other since middle school, and we became best friends in high school. We were Maids of Honor in each other’s weddings.

 

We grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. She eventually moved to the East Coast and I moved to Idaho.

 

Four years ago, our two best friends who still live in California flew here to Idaho to pick me up and we all flew to Maryland to visit Ellen and her husband for their wedding anniversary. That was the last time we were all together in real life.

 

My Besties since high school,
the last time we were together in real life.
Top left to bottom right:
Becky, Ellen, Cheri, Me.

The pandemic brought us back together for weekly Zoom calls. And we were lucky to Zoom with her in the hospital right before she died. No, her death was not Covid related.

 

A few days later we attended her funeral via Zoom, due to the pandemic only a few people were allowed to attend in real life. A few days after that my husband and I went on vacation to visit a friend to celebrate our anniversary.

 

I had been reading Tim Larkin’s When Violence is the Answer, but I suddenly lost the ability to understand what I was reading. I thought maybe I couldn’t handle the subject of violence so soon after Ellen’s death, even though her death wasn’t violent. My friend who we were visiting suggested that I read Cache Lake Country by John J. Rowlands while we were at his house. But after reading the first two pages of the book and had no idea what I had just read. The grief had dropped my reading comprehension THAT low.

 

So I decided it was time for a Tactical Retreat, which I is what I sometimes call Self Care. I decided to re-read a book that I’ve read before and really enjoyed, figuring that my familiarity with the story would make any reading comprehension problems irrelevant. I chose the Star Wars New Canon novel Master and Apprentice by Claudia Gray. I’m a geek and yes, it was totally worth re-reading. It's about when Obi-Wan was Qui-Gon's 16 year old Padawan, and Dooku makes some appearances via flashbacks, it's really good.

 

Bringing this to subject of self-defense, self-care is extraordinarily important. First of all, if you can’t believe in your own self-preservation then you can’t defend yourself. Putting that into positive terms: You are worth defending. You need to believe that.

 

So many people are willing to fight to death to protect their loved ones yet they won’t fight to protect their own selves. This is especially true of women, but it’s not strictly gendered.

 

You need to put on your own oxygen mask first. This is what we’re told in every pre-flight safety presentation, put on your own oxygen mask first and then your child’s. It may sound rough because of course you want to take care of your own child before yourself, but if you pass out due to lack of oxygen before you get your child’s mask on then you’re both in trouble. 

So that’s what I’ve been doing the last four months, I’ve been taking a Tactical Retreat to Put On My Own Oxygen Mask First.

 

This is part of the Life Enhancement part of self-defense, the things that we do keep ourselves safer also make our lives better on a daily basis. Understanding that the grief was hurting me allowed me to step back and take a break. I’m not going to lie, it was tough, especially because I had only written two posts and I was so excited get started! But my reading comprehension had dropped so low that I knew I was unable to write anything readable.

 

I’m not sure how well I’m doing now, but I do feel ready to get going again.

 

Here we go!