Mary Holtrop

Finding Happiness

I work at my local library in administration. In November when we had to close our doors again due to the increase in the COVID cases, the director and myself discussed bringing back our monthly book discussion via Zoom. We have some new staff at the library who do not have book club experience and we thought this would give the new staff an opportunity to take over some of the book clubs before we re-open. The second book we read was called Dept of Speculation by Jenny Offill. This is a very short book of a portrait of a marriage. It is also a beguiling rumination on the mysteries of intimacy, trust, faith, knowledge, and the condition of universal shipwreck that unites us all. The staff leader of the discussion who picked out the book stated “you will either love it or hate it.”

During the discussion, which I agree, most of us either loved it or hated it, with one person staying neutrally in the middle, the discussion leader started to talk about happiness. This discussion lead into a deeper discussion on whether we thought the main character was happy. Before I proceed, I want to share that this staff person is a very happy person. At least she seems to be. She is enthusiastic, energetic, and always smiling. I wasn’t surprised that she asked this question about the main character being happy. After we discussed whether we thought the main character was happy, the staff leader asked if we can remember three times in our lives that we were very happy. She is referring to being joyful, over the moon happy.

And I froze.

This was the moment like in grammar school when I hope the teacher did not call on me to answer. I couldn’t. Suddenly I am nervous and wracking my brain to think of an answer in case she or someone else asks. And I couldn’t. But here’s the thing. I knew I was not going to be able to answer this question. It’s not that in my heart I don’t feel joy because I do. And it’s not that I am a negative person who always see’s the bad in any moment. I just can’t reflect on a time when I felt so over the moon happy.

Others mentioned their wedding day, birth of their children, a move to another state or a job. I found this interesting because they all said the same thing; Wedding, children, a vacation with their spouse. I wanted to ask them “besides that, when were you truly happy?” I will be honest, I was not happy on my wedding day. I was scared and thinking how was I going to get out of this. Even just before we walked down the aisle my father said “are you sure?” I wasn’t sure. But I was scared of what people would think of me if I backed out. I felt corned and trapped and I knew this was not going to be good. And it wasn’t. I have three children and the birth of my first was an emergency caesarian which meant the second two were going to be cesareans as well. I loved my children and I cried when they were born. I felt a deep love for them. But my marriage was so bad, I was afraid all the time. I was afraid to feel happy because I knew the rug was going to get pulled out from under me.

Going forward, it was all about survival. There have been times over the years where I felt happy for my children, and happy for others but I cannot say I have felt happy. Good things have happened over the years but I honestly worry, because if something is good, it’s going to go bad. I think I have always had this fear which has just prevented me from letting go, and feeling complete joy. I know this. And it makes me sad. I see people like the staff book leader who as just so happy and I envy it. I just wish I could. I also think this has prevented me from establishing some deep friendships. I care about people, and I want friends, but I just don’t believe or trust that people really care about me.

My walk buddy often talks about these long-term friendships she has with friends from elementary school or high school. I admire this. I always wanted this. It’s just I never believed I mattered much to others. So, I think about this a lot. I went through old pictures looking for ones where I looked happy.

So thinking about this article, what to write and what to share. I wonder, when have others felt truly and completely happy? What would you say to someone like me? What brings you joy, what makes you smile? I am not a fan of journaling but for Lent, I decided to spend some time doing this. My goal, is to write down what makes me feel happy. Maybe it will help me find some answers.

About Mary

My name is Mary Holtrop and I am in my mid 60’s. I have been active and exercised my entire life. When I was young my siblings and I were always active, running, playing, and riding bikes everywhere. When I got to my teens I started playing organized sports such as field hockey, basketball and volleyball. I played basketball and volleyball for my high school and college teams. During college I started running and I loved it. But by the time I was 30 I had my first set of knee surgeries. I married, had 3 children all who played organized sports from the time they entered kindergarten. Keeping my family active was important to me. All three of my kids played college level sports and two now run marathons. Meanwhile, I walked, biked and did exercise videos all the way up to this day. I exercise daily, mostly walking, biking, yoga and classical stretch/essentrics. I strongly believe that exercise is good for your mind and your body. I work as a business manager for a public library. I have worked in libraries for 17 years all in administrative capacity. I live in a small town about 70 miles west of Chicago and I am happy there are bike trails close by for me to explore.

Autumn Anxiety

Mental Health

When asked most people will tell you that Autumn is their favorite time of year. It’s hard to dispute this because the colors are so vibrant, the sky seems bluer and most of the colors in our flowers are at their brightest. Some people will tell you they love fall because the hot days of summer are over and the cooler temperatures are what they enjoy.

I absolutely cannot dispute any of these things. I love walking and biking in the fall. The bike trails by me are just stunning. I love the sound of the leaves under the tires of my bicycle. On my early morning walks that take me past ponds, the browns, golds and dark greens are so beautiful. I love the tall ornamental grasses in the fall. Their tall stems blowing gold in the breeze. And mums, one of my favorite flowers are so colorful.

But for me anxiety starts to sink in. I read an article recently called Autumn Anxiety. It talks about mood changes as the days get shorter, the dread of winter blues and the affects of SAD (seasonal affective disorder). I never realized that I could possibly have SAD. I honestly never took things like this very seriously. They say this Autumn Anxiety can stem from spending less time outside, shorter days, cooler weather or even the possible stress of the upcoming holidays.

I supposed as you get older and life slows down you come to realize things about yourself that maybe were there all along. But life is so busy with work, family, kids, activities that often we plug along and don’t even realize some things like Autumn Anxiety is real for us. I think my first realization was in February of 2012. It was 4:30 a.m. and I was walking my dog. There had been a lot of ice that year and I had fallen several times in our early morning walks. One morning it was almost 5:00 and I noticed that the sun was just beginning to wake up. I remember saying to my dog that soon our early morning walks will have sunlight. I was so excited about this. It was the following June on the longest day of the year that I started to get a little depressed. It was because I knew that the days were going to get shorter. It seems silly to worry about this in June but I thought about this and I also realized that on the shortest day of the year I feel so hopeful because I know the days are starting to get longer. As early as December 22, we start to move forward to more daylight.

I know now I do experience Autumn Anxiety. I love so many things about fall but I dread the shorter days, how darkness comes so early, and those winter blues. I crave sunlight. I love to be outside doing anything. Sitting inside for me just brings on depression. I was discussing this with my walk buddy and she was suggesting some ways for me rise above this dread. She did remind me that the past 10 years I have held part time jobs on top of my full-time job that kept me busy in the evenings. And right now, due to COVID most of these jobs have dried up. In addition, we talked about volunteerism or finding ways to help others. But unfortunately, for now these opportunities are not available. My walk buddy gave me some good suggestions. But being a nay-sayer, I just found fault in all of them.

It doesn’t help that living in the Midwest, winters can go on forever. It feels like we turn our heat and drag out those winter coats and they are with us for up to 6 months. My neighbor said to me the other day “I am changing my attitude this year. I am going to find some joy in winter.” I thought maybe I should do that too. That sitting around thinking about how long, dark and cold winter won’t help me. My first step will be my monthly goal setting journal. I will write down ways to do and stay positive during the upcoming months. I will do and say kinder things and little things each day that make me feel better about myself. I will check back and give you an update. Until then, stay well.

Finding My Answer

Mental Health

One of the favorite things I enjoy doing is walking. One of my second favorite things to do is reading. Almost daily, sometimes twice per day, I walk and I listen to books. It was during an early morning walk a few weeks ago when a character in my book opened my eyes to something I did 10 years ago. I could not understand back then how my situation went south, quickly. And for 10 years I kept feeling like I had been blindsided and treated badly. But in this book, the reader is describing how this character is turning off this man from being a part of her life. This man had liked this character for years and suddenly he can’t find a quick way to get rid of her. What the man shares in his reflections is the character is needy, negative, clingy and she believes others should fix her life for her. It was instantaneous that I thought back to 10 years ago and my situation. I turned off my book and walked awhile thinking about this. But then I started to wonder why I had to waste 10 years thinking one way and a paragraph in a book brought me the insight I needed to understand.

A few days later, a different book, a different character, it happened again. The character helped me learn a little something about myself. The story was about a teen who didn’t belong, and who was an outsider at his school. Another character in this book suggested the teen start a blog and reach out to the net to find his group; the people which he believes fits into his life. In the book the character did start this blog and the people who read it and responded brought him a lot of positive relationships. He blogs that his family have faced a lot of hardships. The mother who works two jobs and does her best to raise a family on a very meager salary, is always ever optimistic saying “we will find a way”, “we will get through this” and yet just managing to keep everyone in her family happy and stable. But bad things continue to happen. In the blog the teen ask why his family are losers and they can never get a break in life?

I shut off my book and spent half of my walk reflecting on this asking myself the same question. I made a choice 18 years ago to protect my children and myself. After many years, when it finally came time, the choice was not hard. All the pieces and implementation was hard but the choice was not. Yet I feel ever since that day, when I finally said enough, life has whipped lemons at me. Trees and trees of lemons. All along the way I have believed myself to be strong and brave and made decisions that ultimately guided my children to good places in their life. But there are more trees and more lemons. When I turned off this book to think on my walk, I totally get what this teen was feeling.

I asked myself can I do this. Can I blog and find people who would accept me? Will all these lemons go away? Will it ever get better?

This morning I am listening to a book. In this book the character talks about years of feeling shamed, isolated, unlike, and bullied due to her being overweight. This book addresses social media and how quickly your life can turn around either bad or good with one hashtag. This character is, in my opinion, way too connected and dependent to social media. And I believe she went from one dependency of confirming to others thinking, to another of being dependent on social media, positive comments and likes to build up her self-esteem. I don’t know what part of all this affected me, but I know it did. I am not on social media and honestly I really don’t like it. I realized it was this characters reflection of herself that made me understand exactly how she was feeling; that she felt lonely, isolated, unliked, and how desperate she felt to believe she is a strong person but others did not see her the same way.

This was another light bulb for me. Isee myself a certain way and mostly it’s good stuff.

But people’s response to me, or what I believe as their response to me, makes me feel differently about myself.

My thinking becomes immediately negative. Then I wonder what is wrong with me? I spent the remainder of my walk this morning wondering why I am suddenly coming up with these enlighten thoughts. Why is my head, my brain and my heart hearing these messages now? I decided to blog about it because I don’t have the answers. It’s a lot to take in and reflect on and wonder, why now? What is the message here? Then this morning I found this, “No matter who we are or what we do, we each have an opportunity, even a responsibility, to lift others up.”

“No matter who we are or what we do, we each have an opportunity, even a responsibility, to lift others up.”

I decided no matter what. To help myself and help others, I need to find a way to do this.

Perception

Mental Health, Occupational Health

At my employment we returned to work in mid-May. I remained on site due to the nature of my job and the fact that we had building projects happening while we were closed and I oversaw these projects. The Director and the rest of the Department heads and some staff returned to work at least part time in mid-May. While we were preparing to re-open our building to the public in a Phase in process it was clear there was tension, differences of opinions, and strong feedback on what we should and should not do. Emotions were high. Employees were tense, uptight and stressed out. To be honest, part of me was a little confused by these feelings since these employees have been working from home, part time, since March. And where as I didn’t mind coming in I have to admit I was slightly confused by their comments of needing a break, wanting a vacation, need to take time off and other comments similar to this. Part of me was thinking “Didn’t you just have that?” But I tried to put these negative thoughts behind me.

Since mid-May we have opened our building and so far things are going pretty well. Outside of a few reminders and clarifications about our safety guidelines, most people are happy we are open and happy to be out and about. And I am genially glad about this. But I wonder about the 2 months of disagreements, people snapping at each other, and what I perceived as me often being the lone logical manager in the building. I believed while working through the details as a group we often overthought issues. We didn’t plan well. Too much was left for the last minute. And our leader was not leading us. I didn’t feel supported. In fact, I felt just the opposite. In heated discussions often the votes would be 6-1 with me being the 1. I felt some of our conversations almost verged on paranoid. I kept asking “if we are this concerned, why are we opening.” This has left me, the one who I felt at least had their priorities straight, now feeling very emotional and stressed out. The rest of the managers are all very happy. But they truly put me through the winger. There was no real right or wrong on what we were discussing. Mostly it was about safety measures. I kept saying “we can do everything we possibly can, but if we open our doors, the COVID is going to get in some way somehow.

I read a blog our director posted last week and I was surprised because my perception of how she lead us is completely different from hers. She talked about how she guided us with self-care activities; how she was anxious to open our building; how we are all doing much better now that we are open; how she gave her best of everything to her staff and to her job, and how she helped us during the times of differences of opinions, disagreements and confusion.

I guess I just didn’t see what she saw and I didn’t experience what she said she did to help us. And again there is no real right or wrong here but I can say that I didn’t feel supported or guided. I didn’t feel she lead us with care and concern. I felt the situation was toxic with managers often being rude and disrespectful and sometimes snapping at each other. I am sure if we come together a few months down the road to discuss this our different perception of the last few months will be apparent. But this I do know, their behavior, her lack of response to what was happening impacted me.

I sought out support through EAP which I can’t say is really helping me. I am using my own tools to try and stay mentally strong and healthy. But I am not sure I can ever feel contentment, happiness or joy at work again. I feel I cannot trust them to handle a crises and to come together as a team to address the needs of our staff and our building. Part of me wants to discuss this with our leader and part of me tells me to let it go. Will my feedback open her eyes? Will she learn from this? Or is this me needing to accept the things I cannot change.

Finding My Way

Mental Health, Occupational Health

I started this article several different times and each time as I got towards the end I ditched it. I suspect the reason is that everything for me right now, sounds so negative. I want to write something uplifting, positive, encouraging, and supportive. But every corner I turn, every direction I take, next thing I know I am down a negative road. If writing the article was going to make me feel doom and gloom then any reader will feel doom and gloom as well.

These are the times we live in right now. Most of us are trying to do positive things in our lives to make us feel better. We are planting gardens, walking our dogs, baking bread, teaching our children crafts, reading books we have been meaning to read for years, cleaning closets, basements, attics and attacking our homes with ideas from Home Depot to Target; anything to give us some feeling of hope and help keep our faith that things will get better. And I truly believe that back last March most of believed that this would be a three month thing. By summer this COVID thing will be gone from our lives and we will be back to normal. I even think those who were saying “it will be months or years” partially wanted to believe that it was only going to be three months.

So four months later here we are in summer and the summer and the heat didn’t kill it. And while our first two months of isolation, working from home, home deliveries and mostly carry out seemed to have slowed the spreading down, we wanted our normal back and with that came more COVID. But what did not come with this more COVID is those feelings of hope and faith that we had if we continued to isolate, decorate sidewalks, take long walks, bake bread, garden, walk our dogs etc. etc. What came instead is anger, finger pointing, rights vs doing the right thing, feelings of irritation, depression, “cover your nose and your mouth”, “you did what and went where?”, “I can see my family, friends, neighbors because we are all 6 feet apart”, “it’s the protestors fault”, “it’s the Democrats, no it’s the Republican’s” and so on.

This is happening in my workplace. While my work was closed and I remained at work due to the nature of my job, everyone else worked from home. I say that lightly but ok, they did. But when they returned what they brought to my nice quiet space and building is COVID shaming. And with COVID shaming came arguments on what to do before re-opening. We have discussed and analyzed every single possible scenario we could possibly come up with. Common sense left us in March and has not returned. What has replaced common sense is shaming. I strongly believe in keeping our work place safe and healthy for our staff. But, realistically, based on what we know, no matter what we do, what parameters we put in place, that bugger COVID just might sneak in the back door. Yet if one patron might ask that one question or make that one request we have to be “prepared.” All this has turned me into that person who has lost all patience, kindness, hope, faith and solutions to rise above this. That I am better than this COVID. But it has bested me.

I walk each day, sometimes twice. I listen to books on my phone and enjoy the early morning sunrise. I started picking up newspapers at the end of folk’s driveway and putting them on their doorstep. Just a little something that might make someone smile. I don’t even know these people and they don’t know me. I am the mystery person who gets their newspaper out of the rain. Last week I was half way through my walk and I yanked out my ear buds and started to pray. While I love to walk, I love to read. And I love my books. It’s hard for me to walk 4-5 miles without listening to anything. But last week, I started to pray. And the next day, I did the same. And now almost every walk I spend at least half my walk in prayer. And while I do yoga I am not much into meditation. Last week I sat in front of my TV and did meditation every day. I cannot fight COVID and I am so tired of fighting with my co-workers, and I am tired of not sleeping and feeling anxious and stressed. I called our EAP and set up an appointment. I just feel for me, I have to find a way to get through this that is bigger than the garden, the bread, the clean basement and the healthy dog. COVID is not going to win. I will find my way.

COVID is not going to win. I will find my way.

Mary

In Search Of Patience

Mental Health, Occupational Health

I work in administration at a public library. My library is in a town of about 18,000 people and we have 25 employees. Since mid-March our library has been closed due to COVID-19. My responsibilities in the library include finance, human resources and building maintenance and contracts. When we first began to discuss the COVID-19 virus we talked about what we were going to do in regards to our staff. Of course at the time, we had no idea that almost two months later we would still be closed. We are now beginning to plan re-opening in a phased approached. During this closure we have paid our employees. The expectation was employees were to work at least half the hours they are normally scheduled to work in a week. This work includes planning and implementing online programs, story times, crafts, collection development, attending training and webinars. I have been in our building working every day Monday-Friday since we closed. Some much needed building projects were addressed. I tackled some long planned records disposal and organizing files. I have updated essential paper work and created some long needed databases. All this including supervising a window replacement project in one of our buildings, paying bills, paying employees and assisting in updating policies we will have to implement when we open.

Today the department heads had a long overdue meeting to begin discussing our phased in approach to re-opening the library. This week of each month is my busiest week. I have to coordinate the paying of bills, library reports, paying employees, reconciling bank statements, putting together our board packet and on top of this our fiscal year ended last Thursday. I started suggesting in mid-April to begin these phased in approach conversations, but my suggestions fell on deaf ears. Now here we are, possibly a week away from either accepting checked out materials or doing drive up service, and I am sitting in this 5 hour meeting trying not to be angry, frustrated, or talk myself into walking out of the meeting.

These are difficult times as we all know and are experiencing. What I am experiencing is nothing compared to those who have lost income and attempting to file unemployment, get loans for their small businesses, or front line health care workers trying to save patients. I am fortunate that I am getting paid, I am healthy and I am still working. But for many reasons I am in search of patience. I have learned that in crises we all respond differently. We all perceive this pandemic in a different manner. We have people who are angry, protesting, and want their lives back. We have businesses who are trying to stay afloat and find innovative ways to sell their goods and services. We have families who are struggling to keep children safe and happy and well educated. We also have couples who are finding their love again. We have dogs who have been walked more in the past two months than in the past year. And it’s so good to see children outside and playing again. The sidewalk chalk art makes me smile.

Yet, during this meeting today I found I was barely holding myself together. I could not understand my feelings of anger and frustration. I sat in this meeting trying to find patience. What was making me feel so anxious, uncomfortable and frustrated? I had my phone and started to search for meditation and phrases that could bring me back. I contributed about how we should all feel fortunate and blessed. But all the while my anxiety level continued to rise. A co-worker saw this and sent me encouraging statements, some pictures of her beautiful children and offered to get me coffee. I decided during this meeting I needed to do something to turn me around. My goal for the month of April was to do yoga daily. I achieved this goal about 2/3 of the month. In conversations I have had with others we talk about people we see at the stores and some who are so helpful, friendly and encouraging and others are so angry and rude. The positive experiences uplift me but the negative bring me down immensely.

During the meeting today I decided I have to dedicate May to finding patience and serenity. I cannot continue to view the world as I have in the past two months. I want to believe we are better and stronger than this virus. I can try to be part of the solution and I can help myself. I will let you know in June how I do.

Mary Holtrop

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