Instinct and Emotion

I’m a few minutes past 40 and occasionally I look back, playing the hindsight game, and wonder what I might have done differently. Of course, there are lots of little things I would change (hurting other people’s feelings and making a fool of myself float to the top of the list). But one of the bigger choices might be that I would have studied the brain, like the Watson of DNA decoders Watson and Crick. We poorly understand how much (or little) our brains influence human nature, decision-making, and personality.

I can’t help wanting to grasp how our brains influence writing, improv, parenting, relationships, and virtually every other outward expression of our being.

When I struggle with any situation, it’s a swirling battle between my brain and my emotions, but then I think, aren’t my emotions created by my brain? Why such conflict? If our brain is the original source of both, why do they have to battle, why haven’t we evolved to a place where instinct and emotion harmonize, where we respond more like the colony of poorly communicating ants that we are?

This morning I read an article What Can Animals’ Survival Instincts Tell Us About Human Emotion? over at Science Daily about a researcher who is trying to tease out these details.

New York University neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux says that we still don’t understand the complex connection between instinct and emotion and that it will probably be some time before we do. Study in this area is slow. We’ve mapped the human genome and found cures for literally hundreds of diseases, but why do we understand the brain so poorly? It’s because you can’t get a reliable, scientifically verifiable answer out of a guinea pig about how he’s feeling today, and because even us “advanced” humans struggle to accurately interpret our own feelings. Did I freak out about my hubby’s inquiry about money because I was angry? Confused? Afraid? Sad? It was more likely a combination of several of these emotions, and it only took me three days of introspection to think I know.

I’m psyched that scientists who took the path that I did not are working on this, I just hope they solve this great mystery before I’m gone.

Letting Go

Check out my post over at Easy to Love But Hard to Raise today. I write about learning to let go of the dreams of “normal” and the grief that comes with lost dreams.

Gratitude

My family and I just returned from a trip to San Diego, which included a stop at Legoland (also known as 8-year-old boy heaven), the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center, and the lovely beaches of Carlsbad, CA. We got some exercise, synthesized some Vitamin D, and spent a lot of time in the hotel hot tub.

Trips like this remind me to be thankful. Thankful that we have jobs and our health so that we’re able to go on these trips, thankful for my giving, loving hubby and precocious kidlets, thankful for the comfy home I get to come home to. My son Tristan tugged on my sleeve in the airport on the way home saying, “Mom, I love you because you take me to Legoland and Birch Bay Water Slides, but I love my own bed too.”

While in Carlsbad, I also coerced my hubby to take a surfing lesson (Learn to Surf with Heather Pine) so I could experience it vicariously. He sliced it up, despite his numb toes and the 55 degree (F) air temperature. All he could say was, “Wow, that was more of a workout than I expected.”

I started a daily gratitude journal, and will soon help the boys start their own to remind us of all that we have. I also began reading When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron, who had these wise and very relevant words that felt just for me:

“Complete discipline means that at every opportunity, we’re willing to come back, just gently come back to the present moment….We’re willing to sit still, just be there, alone.”

When we were in San Diego I kept trying to pull myself into the present moment, not where we were headed next, not judging what we’d just finished, but where we were right there where we stood. Each time I came into the present moment, I found gratitude. I discovered a thankfulness for all the blessings in my life.

Now all I need to do is practice that some more right here at home. I’ll keep you posted on how that goes.

“Easy to Love…” Book Giveaway!

Have you been excited to read the anthology of parent essays I keep blogging about, Easy to Love But Hard to Raise: Real Parents, Challenging Kids, True Stories, but you haven’t gotten around to buying it? Now’s your chance to win a free copy!

Co-editor Kay Marner is offering three free copies on her blog over at ADDitude Magazine, a publication for families touched by Attention Deficit (ADD) and Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorders (ADHD).

Kay writes about a fictional Everyparent, Eve, who struggles to manage her child who suffers from ADHD. To enter to win a copy of Easy to Love… you only need to comment on her blog with which parts of Eve you most identify.

From her blog:

“Are You Eve? In other words, is your personal experience reflected in this fictional portrayal? What do you identify with, and what doesn’t match your own parenting experience? (Grandparents, teachers, and others are welcome to answer by relating their own perspectives.)

Contest Rules: Answer the above questions in a comment below by 5:00 pm EST on Friday, March 2, 2012 for a chance to win one of three free copies of Easy to Love but Hard to Raise: Real Parents, Challenging Kids, True Stories ($18.95 retail value).”

Don’t let me confuse you into posting your answer here on my blog, but be sure to go to Kay’s and post there. And hey, even if you don’t win a free copy, maybe you’ll find a little catharsis?

Religion and Assisted Reproduction

Although faith wasn’t a consideration for me when I chose to become an egg donor, nor when we chose to use a sperm donor, for some religion can be a major force when contemplating fertility options.

Check out Ellen Painter Dollar’s piece in yesterday’s Huffington Post offering tips to people of faith when they’re considering infertility and assisted reproduction.

Dollar expands on her discussion of tip #2, moral questions, in her blog post, and further in her new book No Easy Choice: A Story of Disability, Parenthood, and Faith in an Age of Advanced Reproduction.

Like many aspects of our lives, the decision on how we become parents can be complex and nuanced, where right and wrong are moving targets that depend on where you’re standing. Dollar is stimulating the discussion and brave to tackle it head on.

Photo courtesy of www.yourspiritualfaith.com.

Bicycling for Social Change

I haven’t spoken much about my love of bicycling here since I injured my knee last year, but today, thanks to bloggers Cathy Belben and Laural Ringler, I got to see this short documentary about How the Dutch Got Their Bike Paths. One might think they’ve always been there, as a part of their culture, but as this doc mentions, the lanes were fought for by the country’s citizens on behalf of their children’s safety.

I love to cycle, and vastly prefer it over car travel, but I don’t do it as often as I’d like because many of the places I need to go in my moderate-sized progressive town do not offer a safe route for me when my children are in tow.

I think we’re heading in the right direction with alternative transportation, however slowly. So even when that thoughtless cyclist cuts you off in traffic, crosses three lanes without signaling, or makes you late for your appointment, remember to support cyclists for what they do for our community. They conserve oil and protect our air quality, they improve the physical health of our community and decrease traffic, and they are safer for our children than vehicles. Lobby for safe biking. There are many ways to get there and cars are only one. Let’s think bigger, together.

More Online Support of Sensory Processing Disorder

Check out my most recent blog post over at Easy to Love But Hard to Raise about new Facebook pages dedicated to supporting individuals and families dealing with Sensory Processing Disorder.

The editors of Easy to Love… have also announced a call for submissions for their next book, Easy to Love But Hard to Teach. Do you have something to share?

Truly Modern Family = Three Parents?

Approaching the stuff of science fiction novels, a January 20 article in UK’s Mail Online by Tamara Cohen reported that a new in vitro Fertilization (IVF) technique could produce embryos within the next two years that are made up of genetic material from three parents.

Graphic from Dawn of the Designer Babies with Three Parents and No Hereditary Diseases by Fiona Macrae, Mail Online, 15 April, 2010.

The article emphasizes that this new approach is meant to help couples conceive without the risk of incurable diseases like muscular dystrophy, but laws in some countries prohibit the use of this technique for ethical reasons.

As a scientist, I find ground-breaking research that can eliminate genetic disease worthy of Nobel consideration. This article reminds me of how we felt when cloning and stem cell research first entered the public consciousness. At first rare and practiced only in controlled settings, these techniques are no longer so mysterious and mystical, but instead something that a good doctor or scientist can learn and do after a few weeks of training. The article rightly focuses on long-term ethical regulation of the technique.

Exactly where is the line and are we even getting close to it? I surely don’t know. We used to call them test-tube babies. We used to think of sex selection as something only done in sci-fi novels, and yet now every fertility specialist in the U.S. has access to these techniques. Right or wrong depends a lot on your point of view. Is it such a leap to think that 30 years from now, we’ll be making TV-ready intellectual super-babies, free of predispositions to diseases and possessing the optimal genetics of Olympic athletes?

Luckily I found this article by Genetic Counselor Allie Janson Hazell from last week, The Myth of the Designer Baby, that made me feel a little better. She, like me, hopes that we’ll never learn to manipulate genes at that level and that even if we do, we won’t actually use the technology in that way.

Of course, knowing how and actually taking the steps are two very different things, but without regulation and the potential for this to become a money-making venture, we can’t be sure some trippy version of this fantasy won’t happen someday.

I’m sure someone out there, as I write this, is working on this as the plot of their new novel. Hmmm, maybe I should be! But how will their novel end?

Let’s hope it ends with the world getting population growth under control, and all the money saved on treatment and management of genetic disease is rerouted toward environmental preservation and restoration. Why not? A girl can dream, right?

 

Now This is How to Do a Book Tour

In this ever-changing world of publishing, with self-publishing, e-readers, and on-line purchasing rising astronomically, we also hear this: “How can an author tell if a book tour sells books?”

Despite Amazon ratings and on-line review scores, it’s very hard to tell how many books have actually been sold. One friend had read that a person must hear about a book three times before they buy it. Everything I read and hear says that an author doesn’t know how many books they’ve sold until the check arrives in the mail from their agent.

My friend Kim Kircher is in the middle of her first book tour, selling her memoir about how her life as a ski patroller, EMT, and explosives specialist helped her through her husband’s liver cancer and transplant, The Next Fifteen Minutes. Kim is wisely doing readings at ski resorts all over the country, with a few ski shops and other venues thrown in. Her recent blog post seems to be saying that she’s accepted the not knowing and is thankful to ski at each of the beautiful mountains to which she’s schlepping her books.

Another friend, Royce Buckingham, just returned from a reading of his Demonkeeper series of middle grade fantasy books in Napa, CA. I hope he soaked up a little extra sun for all of us pasty Pacific Northwesters.

So while the verdict is still out about whether book tours still sell books, my friends are making the most of it by going to places they enjoy and sharing their love for the written word with whomever is there to listen.

Please check out their books and tell anyone you know that might be interested. Maybe book tours do sell books, just not in the direct way we were thinking.

Portlandia is Speaking to Me

Anyone else out there seem to be hearing about Portlandia at every turn? It’s a comedy show on the Independent Film Channel (IFC) that seems to be in its own genre. Saturday Night Live’s Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, a member of Olympia, WA punk band Sleater Kinney, play a variety of characters that are quintessentially Pacific Northwest. The show is impressively written and directed by Jonathan Krisel.

Their writing is clever and reminds me of stand up comedy in that they make fun of everyday human experiences, but with a strong sense of silliness. I especially like their characters that are parents of a 5-year old. In short scenes we see these parents absurd attempts to get their child into the best private preschool, and then listen to their wall-banging love-making in celebration when their little guy is admitted.

It took me a couple of episodes to get used to the format because it is not a common approach, but by the third episode I was hooked.

Their river rafting characters particularly speak to me as a sometimes serious rafter, but what makes it special is that they take their ridiculousness one level further than you’d ever imagine.

I especially admire the writing on the show and connecting to the program makes me think I might want to try my hand at comedy writing someday.

If you haven’t given Portlandia a try yet, please do, and might I be so bold as to suggest you start with the episode, Mixology.