Support4Change Blog

August 27, 2008
By Arlene Harder, MA, MFT

Unlike practicing perfectionists, recovering perfectionists can set aside time to take care of their bodies without thinking the world will collapse

How Far Are You From Bluff?
Number 1 of the Pictures-on-the-Wall Series

This photo was taken of me and my husband on the beach in Bluff, New Zealand. It is the most southern land we’ve visited. How far south have you been?

You may notice that until I added the article on Meeting a Grandson I Wasn’t Sure I Had, I hadn’t updated the blog for more than a month. I am in awe of bloggers who can create exceedingly rich content on deep and far-reaching subjects in the middle of summer. Don’t their brains ever take a vacation? This summer has been sliding past far too fast for me to give you a well-thought-out blog several times a week, let alone every day.

When I wrote the original blog entry for today, I introduced the Better Tomorrows Program. It is a new Support4Change feature for people who have strained and broken relationships with their adult children, parents, partners, siblings, friends, co-workers, etc. There will be experiential online workshops you can do at your own pace and will be launched early in 2009.

The best-laid plans of mice and men

Now, however, I have learned from an MRI that I’m not going to be able to cure my back with exercises I’ve been doing for the past five or six months and a double lamonectomy will apparently be necessary

I am again reminded of a quote in John Steinbeck’s Mice and Men: “The best-laid plans of mice and men/often go awry.” Of course, he got the idea from Robert Burns, the Scot whose poem To a Mouse says, “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men/Gang aft agley.” However you say it, it is clear that life is what happens when you’re making other plans.

Nevertheless, once I got over the initial disappointment in hearing the diagnosis yesterday, I was pleased that at least now I know I haven’t made up my symptoms to get sympathy. Even more, I have hope that after a few months have gone by, I should be walking normally again and able to tackle a trip to the Galapagos Islands next year (it had originally been planned for this December.)

Surprisingly, now you’ll have more blog entries than I’ve given you previously

Despite the need of this recovering perfectionist to care of herself, I’ve figured out how to make sure you don’t come here day after day and find nothing. Before I head to the hospital, I am assembling blog entries, scheduled to be uploaded approximately every two to three days, that I am calling the “Pictures-on-the-Wall Series … Plus More.” As the name implies, these are photos that I’ve been hanging in my office and guest room this summer as a break from creating the Better Tomorrows Program.

Most are ones I have taken on vacation, though not necessarily this summer. Perhaps they will encourage you to frame photos you’ve taken on your trips (or when sticking around home to beat those gas pump prices) and to hang them where they can remind you of neat things you’ve done and places you’ve seen.

See Pictures-on-the-Wall Series for a complete listing of scheduled pictures and other entries, so if you want to know the kinds of pictures in which I’m currently interested, you can check them out. In the meantime, you may write to me at the comments form below or the Support4Change comments form. Someone will be in the office periodically to take messages and I won’t be entirely out of the loop, just not sitting at my computer.

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