Time to talk about taboo

By Virginia Winder

I'm going talk about something that's been taboo for too long. 

This is an issue that silence has made worse. 

Right now we're using the words happy, jolly and merry as wishes for all those we care about.

But for many the festive season is the hardest time of year.

Not for me - I love Christmas - yet it's hell for others because of a wide range of reasons.  

Loneliness and loss, poverty and pain - mental and physical - can make life just too tough. 

In fact, now is when a whole bunch of people hit rock bottom and think about taking their lives. 

Yes, I'm going to talk about suicide. 

I make no apology for writing this on a bright sky day dotted with blooming pohutukawa. 

I want to look at this heart-breaking subject from two sides - that of the distressed person and the supporters. 

This post isn't about me this time; it's for the despairing right now. The first part is for you. 

Some suggestions:

1.       If you're feeling suicidal, chances are your thoughts will be unhealthy. Your inner voice will be telling you stuff like "everyone would be better off without me", "the depression will never end" or "I'm worthless". 

These are all thoughts and thoughts are not facts. When you're so down your thoughts can be illogical. It's damn hard to think straight when you feel so low, especially when the hideous "I want to die" mantra kicks in. So…

2.       Tell a trusted person how you're feeling. Be honest. Sit with them and share your despair because those who care will always be there. 

3.       Ask for help. Call your local crisis team, contact a support worker if you have one, go to your GP or visit the emergency department. Phone a clinical psychologist or counsellor. Ring a helpline or reach out on social media. 

It may sound dire but your local mental health ward is a safe place to be in times of acute mental unwellness. 

4.       Reach out to your circle of family and friends. Be honest about your safety and, if possible, ask people to be on a roster to ensure you aren't alone. Believe me, people are more than willing to step up and step in. 

5.       Know you aren't alone. Even though it's not always apparent, many people, undoubtedly some in your circle, will be feeling or have felt the same as you. I know I have and I could count a dozen friends who have been to that "life is not worth living" place. Talk to us because we know and care. We hold you. 

6.       Pray or meditate, practice yoga, go for a beach walk, write… There is likely to be something that helps just a little bit. Chances are you won't feel like doing it, but give it a go anyway. It may be as simple as getting up and having a shower. 

7.       This is a hard one, but I need to tell you it will get better. Maybe tomorrow, next week or next month. There is always, always hope. 

8.       Finally, if depression is your Achilles heel or you live with experience of bipolar or another mental illness, or you know there are times that get excruciatingly bad, make a suicide prevention plan when you're well. That may sound desperate but it could save your life. 

This needs to include your safeguards or the reasons for staying alive. It could be pledges made to spouses, children, other family members or dear friends. It could be your religion or rules you write yourself. 

For the supporters:

1.       Ask questions and listen. Yes, you've got to ask the tough ones: "Are you suicidal?", "are you thinking of killing yourself?", "are you safe?" 

Then it gets tougher.  You need to ask: "Have you got a plan to kill yourself?" If the answer is yes, you must ask: "What is it?"

2.       With help from the unwell person, remove the means for them to harm themselves. 

3.       If you're deeply concerned, call your local crisis team or take the person to the emergency department. As a last resort - but never to be written off - call 111 and the police will help. 

4.       Set up a vigil. Call on the person's close friends and trusted family members to be with the person round the clock. Don't let them be alone. Don't try to fix the person, but ask questions and talk about other things to break the cycle of inward thinking. 

5.       Be wary if a depressed person suddenly becomes happy or starts sending goodbye messages. This could be a sign they have made up their mind to end it all. That's when you must be vigilant and ask questions. Some suicidal people detach from reality, so if they've been extremely low and suddenly become distant, please watch them carefully, this could be a danger time. 

6.       Don't take it all on your shoulders. Ask for help yourself. And never blame yourself if someone takes their life - it is their decision and sadly there are situations where you can't do a damn thing. That's because some distressed people act on impulse. It can be a rash decision at a time of great hardship and you may not see it coming. 

7.       Be kind to people. Always. That shop assistant may be low or that  service station attendant may be lonely or that homeless person could be on the edge. That also means not trolling on social media. You never know what's behind someone's real or virtual persona. Kindness is one of the greatest virtues of all. 

8.       Out of crisis time, support Lifeline or another helpline or, in our region, the upcoming Taranaki Retreat, which will be a sanctuary for people on the edge. It's all about suicide prevention and led by Jamie Allen, a man with a pure heart. He's sharing the love - let's do the same. 

Arohanui, 

Virginia 

HELPLINES:

·         In Taranaki, phone 06 753 6139 and ask for the Crisis Team or free dial direct on 0508 277 478.

·         Lifeline: 0800 543 354 - Provides 24 hour telephone counselling.

·         Youthline: 0800 376 633 or free text 234 - Provides 24 hour telephone and text counselling services for young people.

·         Samaritans: 0800 726 666 - Provides 24 hour telephone counselling.

·         Tautoko: 0508 828 865 - provides support, information and resources to people at risk of suicide, and their family, whānau and friends.

·         Whatsup: 0800 942 8787 (noon to 11pm).

·         Kidsline: 0800 543 754 (4pm - 6pm weekdays).

·         The Lowdown: thelowdown.co.nz  - website for young people ages 12 to 19.

·         National Depression Initiative - depression.org.nz (for adults), 0800 111 757 - 24-hour service.

·         If it is an emergency or you feel you or someone you know is at risk, please call 111.

·         For information about suicide prevention, see http://www.spinz.org.nz. 

Pain behind the petals

By Virginia Winder

I hide behind flower photographs. 

Each day I post a new bloom on Facebook and do my best to brighten the world. Just a bit. 

But really, it's me who benefits the most because I am forced to look beyond myself at something beautiful. 

Behind the flowers there's been a lot of pain lately - physically and mentally. 

But I survived, obviously, because of friends, whanau, strong drugs, mindfulness and our free health service. 

But mainly it was the people dear to me, who got me through. 

In September, I hurt my back, again, and ended up with a prolapsed disc. 

Some days I was relatively mobile, while others I felt like fire-heated nails were embedded in the nerves of my lower back, shooting pains right down my legs. 

Many times I was bed-ridden and forced to lie on my right side willing the pain away with mindfulness meditations. 

I walked with crutches, a Zimmer frame or on the arm of a loved one. 

This injury led to five visits to the emergency department, four hospital stays, three MRIs (sung to the 12 days of Christmas), two injuries, finishing with one spinal surgery (my third in 15 months). It was successful. 

During that time I was taking long-acting and short-acting morphine. It barely took the edge off. 

But what I learnt is there is a much better way of getting total pain relief - listening to friends. 

It's bloody boring living in a pain-scape and even worse focusing on that pain. 

Ah, but people and their stories, their lives,  are a guaranteed remedy to take the pain away. 

"Talk to me," I'd say slightly frantically. "I'm over me."

And they would invite me into their worlds and I would be soothed. 

Friends and family also helped me through even tougher times in November. 

I began having sleep spasms that woke me screaming with a half-body slam of nerve-crushing cramp. For 10 nights I lived in a twilight world of half sleep. 

After just two days of this, I plummeted. 

My mood, which had been  as steadfast as my damn-the-pain attitude, hit zero. Danger zone. 

I knew I couldn't be left alone. 

It's embarrassing to ask for help from kind hearts but necessary when your life is on the line. 

I had a promise to keep to my children and husband, so we sought help from the mental health service and a member of the brief care team visited me daily. But to keep me out of the mental health ward I needed a round-the-clock roster of people to be with me. 

My friends and family came en force.

Some made lunch for me, others sat with me and talked about what was going on in their lives and I learnt that their stories worked just as well for mental pain. 

But I was terrified of sleeping until one creative friend, in a burst of brilliance, noticed how strong foam was used to position patients for x-rays. She thought a foam wedge may help my back. It did and stopped the spasms! 

When sleep returned, so did my sanity. 

In high spirits, I visited a garden for a feature interview and injured myself further. Then a one-crutch wander around another garden and then the hospital turned me into a crippled mess. 

On a Monday morning I was taken to hospital by ambulance, learnt ACC had approved surgery, was admitted into Ward 3B where the nurses were wonderful (I think I was a bit cantankerous) and on Friday, December 2, had successful spinal surgery on my lower back. 

Now I'm slowly repairing and slowly repaying the kindness of many. 

So, there you go, the persona someone presents on Facebook may be at odds with what's truly going on behind the scenes. 

And the best thing you can do for another person is to share your story. 

This is mine for you - and it has a happy ending!

The back story - lessons from a wilful spine

By Virginia Winder

Izzy the smoocher, caused me to trip.

Each time I’ve had a back injury, I’ve been taught a lesson.

The first time last August after a slip on the back deck and an injury that threatened bladder control, I learnt about trust.

I had to hand myself over to the medical people – the nurses, ED doctors, air ambulance folk and neurosurgeons. They fixed me up fine and sent me home, my water works intact.

During a non-painful recovery period I learnt about patience, about the importance of inner core exercises and the wonders of pelvic floor workouts. I rested. I read. I recuperated and I also worked. I was determined this incident would have little or no impact on my output.

Then on January 28, I hurt my back again. This time in a Pilates class and, as the days went by, the pain from a compressed sciatic nerve became worse and worse.

Once again my patience was tested. But more than that, so was my endurance. This event led to three-and-a-half months of pain that sometimes hit the 10 out of 10 mark. I survived. I can even say I thrived.

Again, I was able to work, to write lying down, do many interviews standing up and I just gritted my teeth and got on with it. We don’t know what we can handle until it’s handed to us.

I had to rest a lot because lying down eased the pressure on the nerve. As a result of that, and repetitively doing mindfulness meditations, I became extremely laid back. The opiates I was on probably helped too.

When I recovered, after another surgery in Wellington, I still felt laid back. Life was good and I was just cruising along. But there was something missing – adrenalin.

Instead of being hyped up by deadlines, I was meeting them with ease and still felt as laid back as a hippy on holiday in Hawaii (I do love alliteration). I just had no urgency, and weirdly, stories were proving ridiculously easy to write.

Then I went to a writer’s group and one of my mentors gently, subtly pointed out that maybe I was a little off my game. I didn’t get upset (too laid back for that), I went away and reflected. I knew I was lacking something. Some edge. The ability to lose myself so totally in words that nothing else exists.

The rogue washing basket I shouldn't have carried.

Then last Tuesday I was carrying a heavy washing basket down the hallway when I tripped on the cat. I shouldn’t have been carrying the washing basket anyway, but obviously, there was more for me to learn. I went to bed feeling a little troubled because my back didn’t feel so good.

In the middle of the night I got up to the loo and I felt pains shoot down my right leg. “Oh shit,” I thought, memories of those months of pain flooding back in an instant.

The next afternoon I hung out at the Ozone Bean Store with a couple of photographer mates. We shot the breeze and I felt increasingly uncomfortable – not because of them, but because of my back. They left and after doing some work, I hobbled for the door.

I started walking up nearby stairs and could barely lift each leg because my back was going into spasm. Half way to the car, I was hit by pain so bad I thought I was going to pass out. An embarrassing mental image of being tended to by ambulance officers in public, pushed me on. Through white face and gritted teeth I limped to the car.

At home, I staggered inside, lay on the bed and called my husband to come home. “You need to take me to A&E.”

I went straight in and put on a bed. Great service, I must say. There, the doctor from Florida decided – rightly – that this injury was muscular. Yes, it did have some of the same symptoms as my previous incidents, but this felt different.

After just three hours (pretty damn fast for A&E), I was sent home with Warren as my nurse. He stayed home to look after me because I couldn’t get out of bed by myself.

But this time, I discovered I couldn’t be laid back any more. The more sedentary I was, the worse I felt.

Also, I had to push myself through two major deadlines on Saturday and Sunday and it felt fantastic. I had adrenalin. I couldn’t lay about; I was active and on to it.

So there it is, the back story is I’ve found my words, my verve, my edge. When I wrote my garden page and stories for another publication, I lost myself in the words. Even this blog is from that “other” place that brings me as much joy as finding flowers to photograph.

My back gets better day by day now.

Now I have a message to my wilful spine – I’ve learnt my lessons thanks. Get back where you belong.

Tell our tales - differently

By Virginia Winder

We are the stories we tell.

That means we have the power to change them.

If your story is getting you down and when you repeat it you feel yuck, stop sharing it or tell a different story.

I did that about the year from April 2013 to April 2014.

It was the worst 12 months, a time filled with anguish and anger, depression and despair, misery and meanness.

When I used to talk about that time, I immersed myself in the woe-is-me story and the gloom would descend again. Even writing these last two sentences has my gut churning.

Then it came to me – I could tell a different story.

So I did. First, I sat down by the sea with a mentor and we talked about what I’d tell people about leaving a job that had seemed like a dream position.

We decided to say that the job just wasn’t for me, that I preferred writing and I wanted a different future. He was a wise man, a good man and he helped me immensely.

In the past few months, I have wiped that time off my CV, Linked In and all social media. I purged it from my past and it made me feel light and free. I realised I had made a mistake in veering off the path of journalism and writing – it literally nearly killed me (more gut churning).

Now I mostly talk about the life I have now, although I have shared aspects of the past with pain and passion – I have done so many wonderful things that make me smile – and of course there are my darling parents.

Along with living in the now (bit of a mindful mantra that), I still dream. The other day, creativity guru Wayne Morris asked a friend thinking of a career change: “What do you want your life to look like?”

That got me pondering.

It’s pretty much what I want, but there could be more creative writing in there (on the faltering novel), more blogging (hence this post), more overseas travel and an uplifting exercise regime. Maybe I could see my sister more and talk to my brother more, because they are my beloved whanau.

All the rest is pretty damn fine. I’ve got great relationships with my amazing-cook teacher husband and our crazy creative grown-up kids. I’m doing lots of art with my friends Cheryl and Jayeta, and on the journalism front, I’m writing about meaningful things – charities, gardens, food, art, the community and mental health.

There are times though, when stories have to be told because they are so close to the heart. They need to get out or you’d burst.

When Mum and Dad died in a car crash in 1999, I wrote about them, at the behest of multi-author David Hill, although I did so publicly. He wrote me a beautiful letter at the time, but I think he meant me to write just for myself. I do tend to be an out-there kind of gal.

I’ve tapped out stories about having bipolar, although I feel like I’ve been in remission since mid-2014. It’s just not a big part of my life, but every hint of feeling down gives me a fright. And when I’ve had six days with crap sleep, like now, I worry about going up. Still steady though.

I’ve also shared a blog post about trying to take my life (more acid in the gut).

Writing about painful events and getting them out can be useful and can help others. But there is a time when that story wears out. You’ll know, because you will have told it again and again, and in doing so you’ll feel crap about life or yourself.

So stop.

Do as Wayne suggests, sit down and write about what you want your life to look like.

Or reword how you tell it. A friend of mine, Shirley Vickery, told me tonight that when she used to tell people she was a secretary, they would switch off.

So she changed her job description. When people asked about her job, she would reply: “I’m the personal assistant for a community activist.”

People would say: “Wow that’s amazing.”

It’s all in the wording and what we tell ourselves.

We write our own stories.

Blues blow blues away

By Virginia Winder

It’s a dark Friday night with the promise of rain.

All week I’ve been had moments of dipping into gloom. It’s mid-winter and while the sunshine has made a difference this week, nothing have been able to shake the hints of a downward slide.

Juliet McLean and friends play in the basement of Pianoworks

Then I wander down a city back alley and into the basement of Pianoworks.

And I am submerged in live music.

I sit at the back and count all the people in the audience who are friends, people dear to my heart.

They are all here to listen to Juliet McLean and friends play beautiful music.

There’s Hamish Cameron on electric bass and double bass, Matt Herrett on electric and slide guitars, Rob Ju on drums and a guest, named Wellington, on violin.

Juliet sits behind her keyboard singing uplifting and moving songs, many from her EP, The Dance. In this one set, there’s a waltz, a tango, the blues, jazz and songs that soothe my soul.

And that’s exactly what does happen – the blues blow the blues away.

Afterwards I got enough hugs to last me a month, although I’m always keen for more.

What the music did was allow me to be transported, to disappear into a world of words and swirling sound. I was absolutely there, in that moment, and part of an intently listening audience.

This was a pop-up gig and they are so good. They are intimate, welcoming and you can be close to the musicians, to the action and sound.

Renny M at Dee and Dave Pope's house

About a month weeks ago, I went to another great pop-up gig at my friend Dee and Dave Pope’s home. That was starring Renny M. Her music also touched me because of her words of raw honesty and a voice that reminds me a little of Tracy Chapman.

If you’re in Taranaki, there’s a lot of gigs going on. There are concerts at Studio 64 in Inglewood, Singer Songwriters New Plymouth at Little Theatre, shows at the 4^th Wall Theatre and more pop-up performances on the horizon. If you get the chance, say yes and go.

You’ll be among friends, even if you haven’t met them yet.

Today, I’m still feeling nourished by last night’s outing. By singer-songwriters who put themselves out there for little return except to entertain us. By the good will of an audience attentive to every word, every nuance.

But mostly I feel full up with live music and its magical powers of healing.

A heartfelt plea for aroha and tolerance

By Virginia Winder

Florence Winder, my mum

It all began with the mountain and moved on to my mother. 

When I was a baby reporter working at the Taranaki Daily News back in 1984 I was sent to a job in Stratford. 

The Taranaki Maori Trust Board and representatives of mountain users, like trampers and ski folk - and others I can't remember, probably DOC - were meeting about the name of the mountain. 

Should it be Taranaki or Egmont?

On the way there I remember thinking "how ridiculous, our mountain is Egmont".

Then I sat with notepad and pen in a meeting room, leaving all my biases at the door, and I listened. 

What I heard startled me - to the iwi spread around its slopes the mountain was always known as Taranaki and was seen as an ancestor, a living entity. There was a story about how Taranaki fought with Tongariro over the beautiful Pihanga and, being injured, was forced to flee to his present place, led by the rock Rahotu. 

From a colonial point of view, the mountain was named by Captain Cook on January 11, 1770 after John Perceval, 2nd Earl of Egmont, a former First Lord of the Admiralty who had supported the voyage. In other words it was named after a sponsor. 

The impassioned words from these Maori elders touched me deeply, changed me profoundly and from that day forth I never called the mountain Egmont again. 

Mt Taranaki from Fitzroy Beach

But even though the co-name change happened officially in 1986, the newspaper style remained Egmont until 2005 when it became Mt Taranaki under editor Lance Girling-Butcher. 

But for years before that I had been quietly subversive, always referring to the mounga (that's Te Reo o Taranaki's way of spelling it) as "Taranaki's mountain" in my stories. 
Nobody ever changed my wording. 

Next, was a marae visit. I don't know if it was my first - I don't remember that moment; I've always felt at home on a marae. I love the powhiri (welcome), the hongi and the hugs, the waiata and listening to the beauty of te reo Maori even if I can't understand everything that is said. It has always been soothing to my soul being on a marae.

In the 1980s, I was sent out to cover an educational programme at Owae Marae in Waitara. 
A bunch of street kids had been brought down from Auckland and a man of mana called Sonny Waru was there to teach them about who they were and where they came from. 

On that first day, these teenagers, homeless and many tagged with the glue-sniffer label, were a bedraggled lot who stood with their heads down, mistrustful of the world. 

I went back a week later and these kids were totally different. They stood tall. They looked proud and alert, strong and confident, all because they had learnt their whakapapa, had been immersed in their culture and knew who they were. 

Again, I was profoundly moved by the importance of knowledge, of understanding one's own culture and of aroha. 

Then it was my mother's turn to change. 

It happened in the early 1990s when she and my husband, Warren Smart (of Ngati Porou

Warren Smart, my husband 

descent), went to night classes to learn te reo. I was working nights so couldn't attend. 

Mum, a stridently passionate woman, fell in love with Maori language and the culture. She took to answering the phone in te reo, asking how you were in Maori and expecting you to reply in the same language, correcting your pronunciation if need be. 

Mum - Florence (she hated Flo) - read avidly about Maori current affairs and would get furious at any injustices. 

One day I visited to find her feeling frustrated and constrained. 

"Oh, I wish was a Maori," she declared. 

"Why mum?" I was perplexed. 

"Because then I could protest at Moutoa Gardens," she said, of the 1995 occupation of the land by iwi in Whanganui. 

She also used to practice writing in te reo by penning letters to her dear friend Gail in the US, who didn't understand Maori language at all. Mum thought she was hilarious.

Howard Winder, my dad

Dad was another story. He was an Egmont man, although he wasn't staunch about it. He was a man of great humour, whose skin turned the colour of mahogany in summer. An old Maori man from across the road, Mr Butler, came to visit one day and said: "Look at you, you should be the Maori not me."

Dad used to love telling that story, taking pride in his dark skin. 

He also supported mum's passion for all things Maori. But dad was more of a detached observer than participant, until a weekend wananga at Parihaka, the place of passive resistance in coastal Taranaki.

My sister, husband and I were all there with mum and dad that weekend, when the stories of Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kakahi, of the plunder on November 5, 1881, of the imprisonments and also the meaning of the mounga were shared by the mesmerising Te Ru Wharehoka. 

At the end of the weekend, we all shared what we got from that weekend and dad said, with great emotion: "I'll never call the mountain anything but Taranaki again."

I teared up with pride. 

My own journey continued with books like Ask That Mountain by Dick Scott and Days of Darkness by Hazel Riseborough. 

But then I had the privilege of being employed by Puke Ariki to write stories about Taranaki. It was like being immersed in the past, learning about the Parihaka prophets, and others, including Sir Maui Pomare and Te Rangi Hiroa (Sir Peter Buck) and history like the land wars, the Peka Peka Block and Te Atiawa chief Wiremu Kingi Te Rangitaake. 

I learnt from the archives, from books, from historians and best of all from the people, who passed down the knowledge - Te Miringa Hohaia, Wharehoka Wano and Miria Pomare and many more. 

I was unbelievably privileged to learn by doing what I love best - telling stories. 

But the point of this blog is to share with you about how change takes place in a person. 

Mum, meeting one her greatest heroines, Dame Whina Cooper.

How learning about other cultures, especially of our tangata whenua, the people of this land, doesn't make you radical (well, perhaps mum was a bit); it makes you less fearful, more enriched, more understanding, more tolerant. And kinder, much kinder. 

Like Mayor Andrew Judd, once there is understanding of the past, acknowledgment of the gross injustices by our British colonial forefathers, there is no going back.

You can't un-know what you now know. 

I will always stand up for what I believe is right, opting for equity before true equality can come. 

I am my mother's daughter, one who stands with fierce love in my heart for all people.