Time has gotten away from me during another busy holiday season! A few links worth mentioning:
I did a Barnes & Noble crafting event for our latest book, Microcrafts!
Speaking of Barnes & Noble, their crochet book/kit I contributed to, Yummy Crochet, finally hit stores and is already in a 2nd printing.
I surpassed 2200 sales in my Etsy Shop!
I have a list of 6 blog posts I want/need to write, but the one that actually has a self-imposed deadline is my birthday post; I’m turning 30 next week, on November 2! Last year, when I had my colon taken out in December, I did the math for the other two surgeries that would be required. I knew there was a relatively good chance of being in the hospital when my birthday rolled around, especially as I nailed down short-term jobs and I realized that with the book coming out in my favorite month (October) and my business getting really busy towards the holidays (mid-November-January), I was even more sure that a birthday hospitalization was highly likely. Except for the part where I’ll be in pain, dazed, and unable to eat anything for many days (no cake! no ice cream! no champagne!), I’ll still get to be surrounded by friends and family, surrounded by balloons, wearing a party hat, looking out the window, thinking about the years that came before, and hopefully the years that are ahead of me.
And when I think about it, this could be the best cause for celebration ever, a chance to regain health and the ability to live the life (or lives, as I attempt to be multiple people) I want. I will get rid of this ostomy bag after 11 months, 11 months of emptying a bag of poop that hangs at my side, too many times a day for me to want to count. I will not be looking at my small intestine poking out of my skin and into this bag. I will go the bathroom the “normal” way! It’s a pretty exciting time. 
To make up for not spending my favorite holiday (Halloween) or my birthday doing what I’d prefer to do (ya know, not getting my guts rearranged), I packed it in during October, my favorite month. At some point, I will write all about that here. For now, I want to share with you an essay I wrote for a book that my friend Nancy put together, entitled, How Much Remains. It’s a compilation of essays about turning 30, all by women who share 1981 as their birth year. (You can buy it if you click on that link!) It is very related to what I mentioned above, and sums up way more articulately than I’m doing right now, how I feel about this milestone birthday.
“When is this tree’s birthday?” he asked, gently patting its rough base.
An image of trees celebrating with helium balloons and sheet cakes and silly games flashes across my mind, as I add this question to the always-growing list of reasons I am profoundly captivated by children.
I know what he is asking, that he is being perfectly literal, but I answer with a perfunctory adult response anyway: “Um…do you mean, how old is this tree?”
“No, I mean, when is his birthday?” he reiterates, a little agitated, as if I am misunderstanding entirely.
I answer again, with a teacher response: “You know what, I’m not sure. We wouldn’t do this, but if we cut it down and looked at the tree’s trunk, there would be all these rings. And if we counted them, we’d know how many years old it was. So if there were 4 rings, this tree is 4 years old, just like you.”
The teacher never wants to utter the words, “I don’t know” to a child who genuinely wants to know, and in this case, I don’t want to admit that, in all likelihood, no one knows when this tree’s birthday is.
“I think he’s older than me. He’s really big,” tipping his head back, as if a little more scrutinizing will successfully lead him to an answer—a day, a month, a year.
“He’s probably older than me even. How old do you think I am?”
He ponders for a good thirty seconds, looking around at the other kids and adults on the playground, and shivering a little because it is early spring in New York City: “A hundred?”
“Nope! A lot younger than that. I’m 22.”
As if continuing on from his original question, he says, “Because if we knew his birthday, we could have a party for him.”
“I know, I was thinking the same thing. Okay, give me your hand, we gotta go.”
********
“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear….” My body quivers and stiffens as I hear this being sung to a patient down the hall the moment I am staring out the hospital window at a row of evergreen trees. When is this tree’s birthday? Where is that little boy now, seven year later? The heartbreaking reality of working at a daycare center is the never-ending string of goodbyes, to children you spend months teaching how to tie shoelaces and wash hands. Because if we knew his birthday…. The song ends.
I stop looking at the trees and instead watch the slow drip of the IV bag, that mesmerizing regular movement of liquid emptying into my bloodstream by way of my hand. What is it I always think but rarely say to describe these grueling hospitalizations? For all that is being pumped into me gradually, and at other times, rapidly, my spirit’s lifeblood is gradually, and at other times, rapidly, draining right out of me. Physically, I make it out alive, but mentally is another story.
After six years of fighting a disease with no cure, it all seems to culminate in this poignant moment of remembering a tree and a child, a moment that feels light-years away from where I am now, physically, mentally: I am going on day five of nothing but clear liquids and day two of nothing but a daily 8-oz glass of water, which I extract with a tiny ridged sponge on the end of a plastic stick, as skinny as a twig. I am waiting to have my large intestine surgically removed so that I don’t die from severe ulcerative colitis or its brutal drug therapies. Or by own hand, for that matter.
Having narrowly missed spending a birthday in the hospital, there existing too many possibilities of doing such, I work out the math for the trio of surgeries required—there is a good chance I will be sung to right here, on my 30th [Day of the Dead] birthday. If I dread this milestone of a birthday, it will be for reasons that involve stretching my pain tolerance to a horrific, nearly unbearable degree. If I look forward to this milestone of a birthday, it will be because I could never face this annual event thinking, yet another year gone, but rather, yet another year, very fortunately, lived.
Four years ago, a woman named Diane Naegel bought a set of my crochet Halloween amigurumi–pumpkin, ghost, candy corn–just a few weeks after I made and listed them on Etsy for the first time. When I saw that the mailing address was a few blocks from my first apartment, I sent her a message to the effect of, “Hey, I live in New York too!” We got to e-conversing, sharing a love of yarn things, Halloween and the 1920′s, so I invited her to an upcoming Crafts and Crumbs. She wanted to come but was setting up some kind of photo shoot for the 1920′s/30′s events she often put on. We continued to correspond, became Flickr and Facebook friends, invited each other to crafty and Jazz Age events over the next few years, but something always happened to prevent our meeting. Life, work, travel, the busy-ness of being New Yorkers, my bad health. Nonetheless, we never lost touch, penpals in our shared city, looking at the same skyline but from different angles.
When I left New York in June of 2010 for health reasons, we both expressed sadness over email at not meeting, but I told her that if all went well health-wise, I’d be back to visit for sure, and “we WILL meet!” A few months later my book Witch Craft came out and I was planning my first trip back to NYC, so I wrote to Diane, only to learn that she had just been diagnosed with breast cancer: “I’m not posting about any of this on FB…I would love to finally meet you in person!” That’s when our writing to each other really picked up, when we were both in the midst of dire health situations. Young, social butterflies, New Yorkers, in love with life each and every day–my heart broke a little and I wanted to do anything and everything for her, 360 miles away.
I’d get teary sometimes reading what she wrote, “Know that you are an inspiration to me with how you deal with your situation and lead an amazing life…so THANK YOU for that!” I told her all about my friend Rose, who lived 15 minutes from me in Brooklyn but it took years to meet after so much writing, because of her cancer, because of my colitis. Before Rose, I didn’t have a young friend who battled something serious like I did, someone who understood the emotional repercussions of dealing with a merciless disease, of trying to put back together the pieces of a shattered life. In regards to Rose, to Diane I said, “she made me want to LIVE and that was hard to want. It’s not always easy, many tears shed of course, but I do believe 100% in the many quotes I turn to, ‘out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.’ It’s hard, but it’s true….” And that began a series of lengthy emails about being sick…
Diane: I’ve cried MANY tears over the last couple of weeks…but most of them are over how touched I am by so many people reaching out to me. I know I’ll never be the same after this experience…and that through these times of suffering, you’re really enlightened to so much and learn to truly and deeply appreciate so much.
Me: Yeah, I always want to fast-forward to the parts where I can just reflect on it and not be IN it, but that’s just not how it goes…I was reading this sociology book “The Wounded Storyteller” WHILE very ill this summer, which was hard…but “comforting” to me at the same time. I feel silly for recommending “a book” to anyone after any diagnosis, but it did really articulate what I was already feeling, ‘The ill person who turns illness into story transforms fate into experience.’ and ‘I would never have chosen to be taught this way but I like the changes in me.’ This last one=so true.
Diane: I wish I could fast forward the tough parts, too…if only! It’s totally sad, but I think knowing that I’ll lose my hair soon is a tough pill to swallow. I’m hoping to rock wigs with tons of glamour, but I know it’ll still hurt, too. But like you said- I think I’ll like the changes in me at the end of it. I’ll totally look into that book!!
I was planning to meet up with her that Halloween, but a video interview I did about being a sick creative person took four hours, and thus I missed Diane’s event. She bought my book and said I’d have to autograph it some time. She was halfway through chemo treatments in November when my health was finally taking its definitive turn for the worse. Our usual check-ins with each other, dreaming about crocheting together and not being in and out of hospitals. She tells me her surgery and radiation plans and I write back to her from the hospital in December. She has lost her hair, she’ll lose her breasts, I will soon lose my colon. She sends me a Zelda mag care package while I’m there.
In February I go to Philadelphia, visiting the Mutter Museum. I look at ulcerative colitis in a jar and at the megacolon, buying the postcard of the latter. I look at the photo credit and recognize the name, Don Spiro, Diane’s fiance! What are the chances…. Diane tells me she has had a “complete response” to chemo, meaning that the cancer is gone, but she’ll still lose her breasts in a week. “I was THRILLED. It’s SO good for the prognosis when it responds this well to the chemo. So now I’m way less nervous about it!”
She has the surgery, gives me all the details, how it feels, what her chest looks like, what the plan is for the year. She ends that email with, “Careful hugs to you as well…I’m so glad to have someone to talk to about illness that takes a long time to deal with! It’s such a unique situation!!”
In late June the cancer comes back, which was highly unlikely, so she starts chemo again. She writes: “And you know–you’re so lucky–you’ll be out of that bed ridden state before you know it and on with life!! I’ll be thinking about you leading up to surgery time…and if you ever wanna call or commiserate or whatever, I’m around!
We are both gonna be SO TOUGH after this!!!” I have a spare week in between jobs and my next surgery, so I plan a July 4 trip to NYC. This time around, I am determined to meet Diane, even if it means sitting in Sloan-Kettering with her. We start looking at potential days, our emails getting more giddy at the thought, and we set a dinner date.
She picks Supper Restaurant in the East Village and we text message a lot, as I return from CT that day and she tries to leave work early. “I’m leaving! Where u at??” she writes. “Walking along Bleecker, just got off the 6.” I walk quickly, thinking I am late, and then she calls because she is half a block from where I am, now on 2nd Street. And that is where we finally meet, in front of a community garden on an insanely hot summer day in New York, both of us smiling ear to ear.
We talk for 20 minutes at the restaurant before even looking at the menu, the waiter coming 3 times to the table and we have nothing to tell him. She talks about what she is feeling/thinking, that now the doctors are being careful not to promise anything like they did before, echoing when I was diagnosed with colitis and was handed a prescription and a “you’ll be fine.” We have tears in our eyes. We finally order and talk about everything. I wish I had a tape recording of this, what, 2 hours? I drive her to a subway station on 42nd St, she tells me to stay with her in Astoria next time I’m in town, we’ll have adventures.
That night we write Facebook messages about each other at the exact same minute. July 6, 2011, 11:59pm. I write: “So so glad we finally got to meet. You are even cuter in person!” She writes: “had a lovely dinner with Alicia Kachmar tonight! so wonderful to FINALLY meet my online crafty pal in person! xo.” I mention that we forgot to take a picture of us finally together and she says, “I realized that after I left! D’oh! Next time we will!! ” and I say, “For sure!” Always exclamation points, smiley faces, xoxoxo’s at the end.
I return to Pittsburgh for my 2nd surgery and I have a slew of complications for a month after that send me back and forth to the doctors, to the hospital, to the outpatient wing. She is in the hospital again too with lung issues. I finally get back on my feet in mid-August and go to work on a care package/birthday box for Diane. I bake cookies, crochet her a Nurse Safety Cone, make owl soaps (she loved owls!), and buy little things like grippy socks, stickers, cocktail flavored jelly beans, hand sanitizer, pretty tissues. “i just got your package….you are SO dear!!! my mom and her friend are going nuts over all of it!! im in the hospital again and had a procedure yesterday to solve my little lung problem. YAY. but this SO made me smile and thank you so, so much for thinking of me!!! xoxoxox”
She was always encouraging and upbeat, she seemed to have a similar approach to illness: she took it seriously, was ready to fight, but didn’t lose her sense of humor or desire to live every day to the fullest. She wore her red lipstick and black eyeliner in the hospital, just like I meticulously painted my nails in there. Those things matter more than you would think, those small bits of control, trying to feel beautiful in the midst of so much ugliness. She was surrounded by her “medical team” of stuffed animals like I was. Diane was an accessories designer for OshKosh B-gosh, the editor and founder of Zelda Magazine, the owner of Lulette, involved in burlesque acts, and the organizer of many costume/vintage/cocktail/Jazz Age parties and events. She did everything with style and class and excitement and love. She lived. She really lived. She was truly one of the finest people I have ever known.
Diane passed away suddenly on Sunday from complications related to breast cancer. I cried until my eyes were swollen shut and drank wine until my mind shut down. Never once in this year-long battle did I think we’d lose her because it simply seemed too unthinkable, a world without this wonderful woman. From the looks of her Facebook page, she has touched so many people in addition to myself. I don’t think I even realized how much we wrote to each other over the years or commented on Facebook posts until I went through all of it last night, reading everything again and again, trying to remember our single night out together, what we talked about, what she was wearing, etc. I wish we had taken that photo of us we talked about, but I will always have our words and memories.
Diane’s memorial service will be so true to who she was: “Vintage attire is not required but is encouraged. To all those who knew and loved her, she would want you to be strong, enjoy every bit of life, and be happy celebrating her memory.” As she said in an email to me so many years ago in regards to a regular 1920′s/30′s costume dance party she helped out with, “It’s nice to have a great excuse to really dress up every now and then ”
When learning of her death, I was asked if we were “close” and I hesitated to answer because it didn’t seem quite right to claim closeness when we had two hours in person together, like we didn’t earn that word. But now when I read the above and think about all the emails, just a few fragments of which are above, I realize I shouldn’t have hesitated. I am missing her beyond what words can accurately express. xoxoxo
Yes, it’s true! It’s entitled Microcrafts and you can buy it on Amazon now, or just wait a few more weeks until it starts popping up in stores! I feel so lucky to be part of yet another craft book published by Quirk Books in Philly. Remember Witch Craft: Wicked Accessories, Creepy-Cute Toys, Magical Treats, and More!
This is the second book I helped compile and edit, starting out with the fun search for projects, then corresponding with contributors of those projects, tweaking these projects, editing the content, compiling bios, assisting with photo shoot, editing editing editing editing editing, and finally here in the present I am again corresponding with all the contributors regarding book events and promotion! It’s really amazing what goes into this whole book process, especially in this internety age, and I still only know a smidgen of how this publishing world operates.
This whole process was about a year long in Microcrafts’ case, and as many of you know, it’s been one hell of a year for me. When I signed on to do this book, I had recently and abruptly moved back to Pittsburgh, Witch Craft had just been published and I was coming off of a couple of really long and bad hospitalizations, with the somewhat surreal feeling of knowing that my health was declining to the point where I was out of options. I wasn’t sure I was going to make it through all these months of surgeries and recoveries and complications, to see this book in its physical completeness, in my hands and in a bookstore, but I worked on it all these months hoping I would. Suffice it to say, I am feeling proud to hold both of these books in my hands, knowing that my fractured little body and weary mind helped bring them into existence!
Anyway, I will post more soon, but really I just wanted to show off what my dad made above: micro versions of our Microcrafts book!!! I can’t stop looking at this picture. My dad is actually IN the book with a project that he originally created when I was just a little kid. His book project is tiny…and cute…and you’ll have to buy the book to find out what it is!
(I can’t quite figure out how to post these on the side of my blog but not within a post like I’m doing! Help?)
Sooooo, I crocheted (no, not knitted) a giant red cardigan for the Mister Rogers statue on the North Shore, by request of Outpost Journal, a “biannual, non-profit print publication on innovative art, design and community action from cities that have been traditionally underexposed beyond their local contexts.” It focuses on one city per issue and the debut issue is Pittsburgh! Manya K. Rubinstein and Pete Oyler of Outpost were on the lookout for a crocheter/knitter for this undertaking earlier this year. I “applied” for the job, having felt that I was pretty much born to do it. More pics after the jump…
Drawing courtesy of my awesome friend Julia Durgee
Those Bruises That Will Heal? Well, they did heal. About 6 weeks after the December surgery, for the first time in 6 years, I felt healthy-ish. WHOA!!!!!!!!!!!!! The -ish b/c I have temporary “plumbing” that is not at all normal. But I was no longer sick. No longer on steroids or medications. In those ways, I was the Alicia pre-2004, a “me” I barely remember. I sleep through the night. I sleep more than 4 hours a night. I wake up in the morning and can walk right out the door. I can drink coffee on the go. I can eat breakfast in the car. I can go to a restaurant or a park or a mall or someone’s house and not have to investigate the bathroom situation, a process that involved figuring out: how many there are, how many feet away, instantly doing the math of people-to-bathroom ratio, all the while keeping my fingers crossed that I wouldn’t have to use the adult diaper I had on. That was my life and suddenly it wasn’t. All those milestones listed above were so earth-shattering to me, but I experienced their meaningfulness quietly, for they probably mean nothing to the average person. Eating in the car or leaving your house before 11am? Big deal, Alicia! But really, big deal, Alicia.
It has been liberating to say the least. When I got down to no naps a day, was no longer in surgery pain and had this new life, I took a trip to Philadelphia to work on the photo shoot for our next book, Microcrafts. I went to NYC and met up with various friends by scheduling meals out. I came back to Pittsburgh and lined up volunteer positions in hospitals because over the last year I developed an interest in going back to school for nursing. I want to see what it’s like to be on the other side, the one not in the hospital bed. And then I started looking for jobs…
I knew my year would be chopped up, just like I would be, chunks of time spent either in the hospital or recovering, so it was no use looking for a normal full-time job. Such a thing isn’t exactly my cup of tea anyway. (See various resumes, available upon request 
) My dad told me I had a “free pass” this year, that I didn’t have to do anything work-wise, to which I responded, “But I don’t want a free pass.” It would be the first time, in 5+ years that I could actually commit to a job where I had to be there at a certain time, where I had to be *reliable* again. I was itching to be that Alicia again.
Of course, I wanted to get back into teaching or childcare, “professions” I had to devastatingly leave behind after I got sick. I interviewed and took a job as a nanny for an adorable and curious 2-year-old adopted from Nepal, who doesn’t yet talk but understands A LOT. Thirty to forty hours a week for 7 weeks in March and April, 5 minutes from where I lived. I was gratefully back in the land of libraries, playgrounds, changing diapers, holding small hands while crossing streets, tending to booboos and executing sleep-training, aka Alicia Bedtime Bootcamp.
Two-and-a-half months after surgery, I could bounce a 2-year old on my stomach and every time this little one giggly sat on my stomach waiting for that bouncing, I thought, Good God, the steps it took to get here, the years, to be able to do this. Good God. During this time I was also editing Microcrafts and crocheting up a storm…. In May, I traveled with the little one and her mom to South Carolina, where mom directed an opera as part of Spoleto and we all lived for a month. A whole new world of libraries, playgrounds and streets to cross, etc.
For those couple of months, where this one little kid took up so many hours of every day, I was on cloud nine, no matter how exhausting or trying. I was doing exactly what I wanted to be doing. And as I got emails about magazine contributions and writing this or that or making this or that, I shut off my laptop and walked out the door, pushing a stroller and looking forward. Trying to care about this other “career,” but not really caring at all. This is nothing new; I can’t even count the things that I (foolishly?) said no to so that I had more time to bike, go out with friends, take road trips, lay in the grass. On the last day in South Carolina, walking around our waterfront neighborhood at sunset, I said to the little one, “I’m gonna miss holding this little hand in mine” and she kissed our holding hands.
I find myself at a loss for words when trying to describe what these months of taking care of this little person meant. Well, they meant…everything. I felt the same speechlessness when I would visit kids I nannied for years after I had to leave them, deep down sort of knowing that what I mean to say but can’t is, “You are making me want to live.”
I returned to Pittsburgh in June after a Nashville detour and almost immediately started teaching at the Mattress Factory, having created a class for 6-8 year-olds on upcycled art and issues of sustainability. Plastic bag fusing, t-shirt bags, newspaper flower pots, toilet paper roll spool knitting. This last one, spool knitting, was insanely popular with the kids. I couldn’t get them to stop! It’s poignant that it’s a toilet paper + yarn project, no? I fondly remember them asking me, “Can we skip snack so we can keep spool-knitting?” OMG! Too many conversations to recount here, so many hugs goodbye at the end of the class. It made my heart hurt, but in a good way.
During this interim, this stretch of months between surgeries, I pretty much did exactly what I wanted: teaching, childcare, creating, traveling. For years I tried to forget how much I loved having the kind of jobs, that no matter how sleep-deprived, over-caffeinated and sometimes underpaid I was, I was so happy to have. And I knew it at the time. There was no “I took it for granted.” I never did. I loved it even when I was falling over from exhaustion or feeling defeated by challenging kids. And I never imagined doing anything else…until I had to.
I have nonchalantly mentioned and thought about “retiring” from crocheting and all this crafty craziness because I now envision returning to what I once did or doing something entirely different. Closing this chapter of my life…because I can. (And I’m collecting responses to this declaration because man is everyone putting their two cents in!) But when I jokingly said, without any context, to the kids in my museum class that I was thinking of retiring from crocheting, they all said, “Noooooo” and “But you bring such joy to the world…and ideas!” It was cute and heartfelt, especially as they only know a small sliver about what I do/make after I brought in a bag of my crocheted things for them to see. They “get it” though, because they are kids.
I am less than 40 sales away from 2,000 on Etsy, which is absolutely crazy! I just received the advanced copy of Microcrafts and I have multiple book contributions in the works, which I will link to in due time! It’s all so overwhelming and amazing, and feels so far off from the day I sat in bed, sick sick sick so many years ago, with an Intro to Crochet book, a crochet hook, a ball of yarn, and the angry said-out-loud words, “If I’m gonna be twiddling my thumbs indefinitely, I’d better as hell have something to show for it.” Looking back, well, I think I have a little something to show for it.
Amidst all this awesome-ness, I am having to gear up for surgery #2, which will be “as bad as or worse than the 1st,” in the words of my surgeon. Lovely, but I do appreciate the honesty. This one is longer in duration and involves a slightly larger cut in the same place, but nothing can be done laparoscopically. There is actual “prep” for it that is identical to any colonoscopy prep, which means a day of starving, downing a nauseating gallon of laxative solution and getting “cleaned out.” And in my case, there will be a lot of vomiting because I have never been able to do colonoscopy prep without throwing up a ton. The length of hospital stay is about the same (a week) and even though the actual surgery is different from the first, the process of healing (many weeks) and the amount of pain (a lot) is also pretty much the same. Fingers crossed I heal a little faster because I am no longer on steroids! Well, and I’m not half-dead this time around.
My surgeon said the 2nd surgery is harder to face psychologically because you’ve had a stretch of “health.” The 1st surgery? You just want it all to end, whether that means embarking on a road to getting better or getting buried in the ground. I feel that even more now, that last year I was so done to the point of not really caring what happened, an odd calmness because I was tired from so many years of fighting a losing battle. Next week will stand in such sharp contrast to this week, and I’m not going to lie, I’m having trouble facing it. But as usual, I am reading my Nietzsche, Rollo May, Tolstoy and Camus to get through it because my coping mechanism is reading, my medication of choice hardcore philosophy.
I don’t feel so apathetic anymore. I think now I actually feel a bit more angry, having had that taste of what my life used to be like, a heart that was so full and a mind that was so stimulated, because of what I did professionally. And because I know I’m not going to have to bear it forever, I’m now feeling the full weight of the burden that was this disease, the massive amount of sadness, so much of which got internalized and went unexpressed.
During last year’s late summer hospitalization, I tried to be so conscious of having the “right” perspective, a positive attitude: when I’d walk down the hall, my IV pole beside me, I’d stare out the floor-to-ceiling window and force myself to think, “I’m looking forward to being out there” instead of “Goddamnit I’m so mad I’m not out there.” But I felt both. Some days, after taking care of the little one or teaching these kids, I had to remind myself to think “Wow I’m so happy to be doing this again” instead of “God I’m so mad I couldn’t do this for so long.” But again, I felt both.
Over time I have realized that feeling both ends of the emotions spectrum is okay, that it’s inevitable. That this “positive attitude” cannot emerge without me privately going through a lot of suffering and sadness and even having a negative attitude. It is not possible to be flat out “happy” about any of this. I’m not sure how else to articulate it than the self-helpish sounding, “feel the feelings.” Feel them, embrace them, try to understand them, work through them, and move on. There is a Chinese proverb that reads, “You cannot prevent the birds of sadness from passing over your head, but you can prevent their making a nest in your hair.” Amen.