Tag: relationships

Mindfullness

On Saturday, I participated in the program, which was called “Mindfulness in Nature at Leone Beach. The person who led this program was guiding us through the process. We stayed on the lake shore, looking forward at the lake, then looking up close. Then we closed our eyes, listened, and were instructed to think about an experience when we felt “at home” in nature.

There were several other activities, and also, what we thought about, what each of us heard and saw, and which memories came to mind.

At the very end of the program, the Mindfulness Teacher asked each of us to say one or two words that would summarize our feelings of that day. Almost everyone said something about “the end,” meaning that fall is associated with the end of life. And I said: a new beginning.

And it’s not only because fall in nature is strongly associated with mushroom picking, and later with harvesting the wild flowers’ seeds, and then sowing in new places. There is something more fundamental: fall was always a new beginning for me. Everything good started in the fall.

To start, all of my relationships started in the fall, and although not all of my dates were great, it was always the beginning of a new and exciting chapter. My children were born in the fall (well, Vlad and Anna were supposed to :)), and it was in October that I came to the US. And even though I met Boris in the spring, our relationship started at the end of September.

So, that’s for October! My luckiest month ever!

Greeting Cards

I bought several greeting cards at Glenwood Art Fest, and most of them were from http://www.printedcanvas.com. I want to show the one I gave to Boris. What is said on this card is so true that we couldn’t stop laughing. Here it is.

Now we mention it all the time :).

Jennifer

Several weeks have passed since I met Jennifer, a CTA employee who walked with me to the Metra Station when the Red Line was stopped. On the day we walked to the train, she mentioned that she works every weeknight, and that “we may see each other.” Since then, I was looking for her, but I never saw her again, until a week ago. It was Wednesday again, and I was running late. Actually, I was hoping to catch the previous CTA train, not realizing that it had already left. And it was when I ran into the station that I heard Jennifer’s voice from the corner. I yelled Hi, and rushed to the platform, but when I got up, I realized that I was late and had to wait for the next train. I thought of going back down, but then I saw Jennifer walking toward me on the platform.

We hugged, and Jenifer said: I was just telling my co-worker that you were like a ghost – I saw you once, and then you disappeared! We got on a train, sat across from each other, and kept chatting all the way. Jennifer even decided to switch to the Brown line at Fullerton instead of at Belmont. I can only imagine what other passengers could think of us, but we really enjoyed our conversation. At some point, I mentioned my mom and how we try to keep her living independently as long as possible, and I asked her how old her mom was, to which she replied that her mom died when she was nine. “But that’s ok, I had other women in my life,” she added.

I cursed myself for being an idiot and asking such questions, while she continued, “Still, nobody I know lived as long as your mom. All the people around me would pass away in their sixties or seventies.” I won’t describe everything I thought and felt during this conversation; it’s not something new or unknown to me. You just never know when it strikes.

***

Boris turned seventy-five on Thursday, and that was the first time ever that he allowed me to wish him a happy birthday on the social media. And from what I can tell, he liked the result 🙂

***

On Friday, Boris received his passport with the new visa. He received an email last Thursday, and mailed his passport to the embassy immediately, but a week with both US and Finnish holidays delayed the processing. By then, there were additional worries because he had to travel with the EU during the first week of June, and he couldn’t do it without his passport, which was in transit.

Yesterday, we talked for a very long time, and finally admitted that we both were trying to hide from each other the extent to which we were affected by this three-month-long ordeal. We both confessed to each other that at some point, we accepted that this could be a permanent situation, and we couldn’t worry about it anymore.

I guess it’s good that we talked it through. Boris’ optimistic estimation of recovery time is “one more week.” As for me, I am not so sure. He told me that he can see that I still haven’t recovered from my big fight, and it shows in how I function.

As always, I am optimistic, so I hope that things will get better.

TIME Magazine: Questions To Ask Yourself

One more New Year’s article from Time Magazine. I agree with pretty much everything it says. People often don’t believe me when I say I do only those things I want to do, but that’s the driver of my life. When I decide that I “need” to do something, it always means that I “want” to do this to achieve something :). I understand that there is a fine line, but that’s how I think about it, and that’s the most important/ I never think that someone or something “makes” me to do certain things – it’s only me who decides.

I asked myself most of the questions which are listed in this article during the quiet time of the past two weeks, and there are some changes I want to make – because I want some things to change:)

The full text is below.

Continue reading “TIME Magazine: Questions To Ask Yourself” →

What Makes One’s Life A Happy One?

I wrote this post three months ago, and meant to write a follow-up since then. I am not dismissing the importance of “magical moments” in our lives; they are important for happiness. And I agree that they can be very “uneventful.” For example, one of my most treasured memories is a moment when Boris was waiting for me outside the Orchestra Hall in Saint Petersburg, and when he saw me (it was still time when his vision was good enough to recognize me from a distance), his facial expression and body language were such that an older lady standing by him waiting for her party smiled. Or the one when we walked down the street in Moscow, and a man walking in the opposite direction said loudly: Look how much she loves you! I also understand that anybody would be happy with a surprise gift or a lovely message but I do not understand why these things might be more important than everything else, and I understand even less why the absence of something might be “magical.”

I think that the best thing that happened in my life was that for the past thirty-six years, I was with one person, and we shared all aspects of our lives and no matter how many differences we had and still have, we are there for each other.

Boris says there must be some cultural and historical context for my mom’s beliefs, and I tend to agree with him. I remember that as a teen and young adult, I loved the concept of a “have to be a strong woman.” One of the “bard” songs that I loved ended with the following verse:

You paint the sky blue, and you paint the rocks grey,

and then you paint men always strong, and women for sure weak.

But the sky is blue only sometimes, and those that are gey are not rocks,

so you have to be strong while you long to be weak.

I mentioned in this blog multiple times that it was commonplace for a man to exhibit some grand gestures to win a woman’s heart, and it’s not cool to accept somebody’s courting until such grand gestures are made. “A woman should be treated with respect” included opening and holding the door, helping with getting in and out of the outdoor coat, pulling the chair, carrying anything heavier than a purse, and all other things that meant a woman was “treated like a princess.” At the same time, within the same mind frame, it was assumed that when you are married, you have to take care of all your husband’s needs; you cook and clean, wash and iron the clothes, and do most of the shopping. I want to reiterate that men didn’t refuse: we just never thought about asking for help, at least my married friends and I.

Possibly, it was something like, “You will never be treated like royalty after you are married, so make sure you are treated like this once in your life.” Or, it was a weird mixture of the pre-revolutionary upper-class and lower-class household patterns.
I am left with the question, why did we believe we were “treated with respect.” We were not; presuming you are weak and must be assisted is not a sign of respect. Why did we rush to get married? Why did we rush to divorce? Why was a display of something more important than having actual feelings or help

It took me years to understand how wrong I was and even more years to internalize these ideas. And now, I need to come to terms with the fact that my mom is forever frozen in that historical mindset and not try to change it. Honestly, it might be OK with my mom, but when I hear the same nonsense from people my age or younger, I don’t know how to comment!

More On Breaking Stereotypes And Old Patterns

Last weekend, when we talked with Lena about breaking the eating habits, she touched upon breaking away from other things we were taught froman early age. She told me: since I do not remember how early in my life, my grandmother used to tell me that when I have a family, I should attend to my husband’s needs first, then to kid’s needs, and then to my own. And I can second her – that was a universal idea.

In addition, even though we had the same access to higher education and theoretically the same access to jobs, all of us – all female I knew – regarded their love life being more important than professional career, more than anything, Marriage was definitely the first priority since our early teens, and none of us could ever possibly imagine a happy life without marriage. At the same time, most of us thought that a woman should follow her husband whever life moves him, and that sacrificing all our personal desires, for “what he needs” was in our books of “being a noble person.” We despised those women who “chose their comfort over sharing their husband’s hardships.” That’s why my extremely gifted friend, who for some reason, didn’t consider herself a “marriage material,” got married right before graduation and moved with her husband to Baikonur (where her first child died in birth). That’s why we had a had time understanding what was so heroic in the decision of the Decembrists’ wives to follow their husbands to Siberia.

Actually, I think that we just spend too much time on our personal life and relationships (and who woud’ve thought I would say that!). That was another thing we talked about with Lena, and she seconds me. The funniest part is that my current high professional status is in a strange way a result of me being focused on love and relationships too much in my earlier life – this triggered a long sequence of events which resulted in me being where I am.

Life is the strangest thing. And I am not free from stereotypes, although I try :). My kids are better 🙂

TIME Magazine: Sharing a Bed

There is one thing I don’t understand about that: people are willing to invest tons of money for the sake of sleeping in one bed as if they are in two separate beds. What’s the problem in actually sleeping in two separate beds, at least sometimes? And nobody knows about it anyway :).

Link to the article: How to share a bed.

Frank Thewes is used to hearing from people who wake up on the wrong side of bed because of their partner’s sleeping habits—but who don’t want to move into separate rooms. He was one of them, once. “It can be highly symbolic for somebody to consider a sleep divorce,” says Thewes, a couples therapist in Princeton, N.J. “For a lot of people, that’s scary territory, so they want to avoid it.”

Snoozing apart—for even just one or two nights of the week—often ends up being the best decision for a couple. But it’s not the only solution. Thewes has transformed his own sleep life thanks to a variety of new technologies (plus buying the biggest bed he could find), and now he and his wife both enjoy sleeping next to each other. “A heavily-equipped couple is a couple that can have great sleep without a sleep divorce,” he says. “You don’t have to wake up resenting your partner.”

The first step to figuring out a way to make it work is understanding that sleep is highly individualized: we all need a different amount and prefer different hours, says Jeff Kahn, CEO of the sleep tracker app Rise Science. If one person wants to go to bed at 9 p.m. and their partner would rather turn in at 1 a.m., there’s nothing wrong with either of them. “It’s a genetic thing, not a behavioral trait,” he says—and treating it as such can improve relationships. Your wife likes to sleep in until 10 a.m.? She’s not lazy; she needs it, Kahn says. Approaching conversations with that in mind can help you have more empathy for each other and talk out ways to coexist without sacrificing either of your zzzs, he adds.

With that goal in mind, we asked experts how couples can turn a few nightmare scenarios into sweet dreams.

Try a vibrating alarm
Couples who rise together, stay together? Not exactly. Plenty of people who share a bed go to sleep and get up at different times—and it’s important to have a conversation about how it’s working out, says Cali Bahrenfuss, a clinical sleep health educator who owns Delta Sleep Coaching in Sioux Falls, S.D. Ask your partner: “If I come to bed at 11, am I waking you up? Should I come in a little earlier, or a little later?” “A lot of people don’t have that conversation, and making a few small changes can go a long way,” she says.

For example: If one of you gets up way earlier than the other, ditch the screeching loud alarm clock. Instead, opt for a vibrating alarm, advises Shelby Harris, a clinical associate professor of neurology and psychology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. If you wear a smartwatch to bed, you could configure it there; you could also test out the Shake-N-Wake Vibrating Alarm Clock, or one of many similar options available online. Vibrating alarms are typically designed to slide underneath your pillow, and they’re popular among people who are hard-of-hearing, as well as early risers who don’t want to disturb their partner. “They’re really useful for some people,” says Harris, who’s the author of The Women’s Guide to Overcoming Insomnia. “I try to get people away from regular clocks if the other person is really sensitive.”

Buy more pillows than you think you need
If your partner is creating light that bothers you, it’s time to build a pillow wall. Everyone should have at least two comfortable pillows, so that couples aren’t fighting over who gets the best one, Thewes says. Then invest in extras that can line the space between the two of you. “If you’re trying to go to sleep and your partner is watching their devices, it’s like a tiny wall there, because you can’t see over it,” he says.

Test out an eye mask
These days, they come in many different styles, Bahrenfuss points out. Some are marketed as “blackout” masks and designed to block all light; others are made out of silk or are weighted. “Smart masks” are equipped with features like bluetooth headphones and even soothing heat and vibration, taking the eyemask experience to the next level.

Change the temperature of your bed
Thewes runs cool, while his wife tends to be warmer. So who gets the final say on the thermostat? It turns out it doesn’t matter: The couple invested in a dual-zone temperature system for their bed. A variety of companies offer contraptions that pump warm or cool into the bed, allowing each person to choose whatever temperature they like best for their own side. BedJet’s system, for example, can blast air that’s between 66°F and 104°F—at the same time. “It’s brilliant,” Thewes says. “You can’t feel the other person’s [settings] at all. I go on vacation now, and it doesn’t matter how nice the bed is, I’m like, ‘I’m missing the ability to control the temperature.’”

Buy two duvets
If you’d rather stay low tech, consider the Scandinavian sleep method—a fancy term for using two separate duvets (or other covers). That way, you can choose the fabric and weight you like best, or even shake the blanket off altogether. And no one will get mad at their bedmate for hogging the covers. “With two separate blankets, we get to be together in the bed and have individualized control over the sleep experience,” Thewes says. “A blanket is not designed for two opposing styles—‘I roll this way and you roll that way.’ The people don’t have the shortcomings; the blanket does.”

Push two beds together
Some people perform elaborate gymnastics routines while they’re asleep—tossing and turning like it might earn them a prize. If you’re tired of all that motion, consider pushing two XL twin beds together, Bahrenfuss suggests. You can even use a mattress connector to create a practically king-size bed. “The easiest way to remedy the situation—and also remedy temperature control—is to put two beds together,” Bahrenfuss says. “That way your movement isn’t disrupting your partner, and you have access to your own sheet set and comforter. It’s a better way to be able to move around at night without fear of disrupting your partner.” It often works well, she adds, for people with insomnia who frequently leave the bedroom overnight but feel guilty about annoying whoever is on the other side of the bed. It can also be a solution for those who want to share their bed with a pet, much to their partner’s chagrin.

Another option, Bahrenfuss adds, is costlier: Shop around for mattresses like Tempur-Pedic’s that are designed for motion isolation, which means movement on one part shouldn’t be felt elsewhere. You can check out online reviews to help determine if they live up to their claims. But not everyone can afford a new mattress, Bahrenfuss acknowledges—or want to splurge without knowing it will work well for them.

Silence the snoring
Sharing a bed with someone who snores can be disruptive. But keep in mind that snoring—which is caused by an obstruction in the airway—sometimes signals sleep apnea, in which people repeatedly stop and start breathing while they sleep. If the dull roar of your partner’s snoring is keeping you awake, encourage him or her to see a doctor for a sleep study, Harris advises. Treatment with a CPAP machine could make a world of difference for both of you.

Beyond that, take a cue from Thewes and get acquainted with a pair of foam or silicone earplugs, or noise-canceling headphones. “This is the first line of defense if you have a snorer in the bed or somebody who likes to watch TV,” he says. As headphones get more advanced, they’ve also become more comfortable, he notes; he knows people who sleep in Apple AirPods Max, which slide on over the ears, but there are also lots of smaller, in-ear options that you’ll barely feel overnight.

You might consider, too, enlisting the services of a white noise machine. Thewes has been using one for more than 40 years, since he was 5. It helps create a “neutral sound in the room” that can conceal light snoring and other sounds, he says. Keeping a box fan on can also be helpful—some people find it soothing, he says, and it can drown out a good bit of sound.

Experts agree it’s worth experimenting with a number of options until you figure out what works for you and your partner. “Getting good sleep is a foundational piece of mental health,” Thewes says. “If you can get good sleep and be well-rested, you’re more prepared for internal and external challenges the next day, and that includes being part of a relationship or going to work or being a parent or any other part of your life.”

How My Relationships With My Mom Evolved

My mom definitely punished me at a relatively young age. Even though she didn’t spank me, she would yell at me and give me “citations” but that was pretty much what all parents would do even with their toddlers. Later, she started giving me a sielent treatment.

I am trying to recall when it started, because at the time that I am writing about (when I was ten year old) this was definitely happening on regular basis. She would all of a sudden stop talking to me, stop replying to my questions, won’t tell me what I did wrong, and it would continue until I start to cry unconsolably. She would then keep ignoring me and just periodically say in a very tense voice: don’t you dare to be hysterical around me! By that time, I was extremely emotionally depended on her. It was not like this when I was younger. I would be fine staying at dacha when I was five, or being in the sanatorium when I was six. She told me later that she missed me very much and was looking for excuses to visit me more often. I was happy to see her, but I was not unhappy when she was not around. By the time I was nine or ten, it changed. When she was not around, I felt like an abandoned lover, and when she was around and was upset with me, my life was a living hell. At the time when she was giving me a silent treatment and letting me cry and cry, I thought to myself that it is not possible that she loved me and let me cry. Eventually she would finally tell me what my crime was, and after I admit my crime and ask for forgiveness, she was a loving mother again.

Now I understand that being subjected to this treatment, I learned that it’s OK to hurt a person whom you love. It’s OK to be cruel, and it does not diminish the value of your love. It took me many years to unlearn this, and not without casualties. I do not hold this against her, nor many other things. It’s not about redemption. I just remember about it when she attempts to do something similar, and make sure I am not involving myself in these games. Sometimes, I actually have to yell at her, because it’s the only way to make her take something seriously, and it’s upsetting that that’s the language she understands.

My historical posts are being published in random order. Please refer to the page Hettie’s timeline to find where exactly each post belongs and what was before and after.