What Would Narayan Say?

Here is a photo that Lulu took today outside the studio building. Our studio building is right on the water but in a "bad" neighborhood. It is a fantastic neighborhood and work space. Urban, gritty.

I drove back from the Cape and met Lulu and Lynn at 10am for our Friday collage session. It felt so good to be back in my regular space, at the regular time, with the regular crew (although who shows up varies from week to week). We have finished 185 collages to date. Still not even 25%. But it is going well. Today was as good as could be expected (for me). I am really struggling to maintain my equipoise. With every phone call from Mark, I get a little relieved with some piece of something positive, to then be thrown into fear with the next call, and into dread with the next. This is extremely challenging. I know that this [unfortunately] is not an isolated disaster. It happens in way too many families.

Lynn posed the question to me today: what would Narayan say? What we came to is that to ride the highs and lows is exhausting and not very helpful. Lynn suggested that I swim with the currents instead of reacting to everything that happens (or might happen, or I wish would/could happen).

It looks like Michael will get discharged Sunday. The hospital is not sure what else they can do for him at this point. That perhaps he would do better in a community setting. Lynn told us about a place in western Massachusetts, a therapeutic farm. Michael, if accepted, would live on a working farm with lots of other young people in the same situation. It is a facility licensed by the Department of Mental Health, but the family pays. The hope is that he will engage in the daily rhythm of the farm, learn some skills and prepare for the next phase of his life.

What makes this so hard is not knowing what is the right thing to do. (There are so many hard aspects, this is just one of them.) We have fairly limited choices, but even so it feels so heavy to decide for someone else.

I continue my strong metta practice towards Michael. It has helped me open my heart towards him even more. It's also easy to send metta to other families facing this heartbreaking set of issues. Metta to us all.