I remember in August of 2004 when I had my first miscarriage, I learned something new. Alright, so this Blog offers more than a few painful big-life events. Good news is that it ain’t over to the fat lady sings and fortunately since I’m a touch plump these days and known to warble on occasion in the shower, maybe the bad-ol-days are nearly over. For now it feels like a completely new life to me.
But what I learned that miscarriage summer was about emotional intelligence. Distracting myself from the intensity of experiencing a miscarriage, I focused on completing my masters thesis instead. Yes, I had been researching for a while, but I finished writing the 140 page petite book in two months. When the woman who was my partner at the time, plus her newborn daughter, and her other nine-year-old daughter returned from their annual summer stay in Germany where they were visiting grandmother, I was ecstatic to see them again. A few days later, I worked from the afternoon and long into the night finishing last minute details on the thesis.
The next morning I woke the family up and we all drove to Hayward, CA first to drop off my finished thesis and then continuing to Monterey to visit my parents. Felt great to complete that project! I was hired one week later at the Art Institute of California, San Francisco and have been teaching there plus DeVry University ever since, cobbling together a pretty decent salary since combined I’m working at least full-time–usually a little more.
And I remember running across Daniel Goleman’s book titled Emotional Intelligence (1995) as one of my research sources. How ecstatic I was to read in that book that the Dali Lama and a well-known scientist collaboratively agreed that previous brain research no longer stood up. Before, the brain was perceived as static, providing each human only so many brain cells to work with. Do the math. Aging means trouble for anyone if this perception were true. Turns out, though, that the brain actually develops new brain cells all along and these are flexible to new learning. Welcome neuroplasticity onto the scene. How powerful I thought to witness anyone change a life simply by learning something new or by changing behavior. Either activity potentially creates different–even new–neurons.
The argument in my thesis essay was simply that students experiencing considerable life challenges before they arrive to a writing classroom, might benefit more from a class integrating assignments linked to the community–sometimes called service-learning. Perhaps old neurons would fire up and maybe even change when challenged by a familiar environment–urban life–while trying to advance at a relatively new skill–writing. Completing the thesis was incredibly fun and hard–kicked my butt and yet I finished. Pregnant again two months later, my second miscarriage kicked in and that had me scrambling emotionally. But I had learned enough while writing the thesis to recognize how my old emotions could change in the future.
Right now I’m engaging in the awesome book Shift Your Mood by Rik Isensee. I write engaging because although the text is only one-dimensional, the words on the the page are interactive. He provides step-by-step guiding tips in each chapter for redesigning yourself experiments. They work! Right now I’m working on letting my guard dog out more often from the kennel where I’ve had her chained for a long, long while. She was created in response to all kinds of life events since I was two-years-old until today where having a guard dog was incredibly useful to stay safe. But today my life is abundantly safe, meaning good ‘ol Fido there can take a hike. Or at least stroll down the block more often. And this is possible because “neurologists have discovered that the brain is capable of far more change than we originally thought. This neuroplasticity–the ability of neurons to create new pathways–suggests that our emotional reactions are not limited to previous patterns, so we can expand our range of responses” (Isensee 4). I’m inspired by the new research and my truly authentic second chance here. For example, this weekend I’m dipping into those cold Pacific Ocean waters because I have always dreamed of learning how to surf.
Posted by karolinawrites 