Holly Holbrooks

Medicine Woman's Dairy Diaries: orienting to Madison

2008-08-27T03:03:00Z

From America's Dairyland PART 1: Corn... Madison is great. I've been all over town already, scoping out the scene and buying things for the house... I don't have my coffee shop yet, but that will come with time. I've eaten Turkish and Thai food already- yeah, new restaurants! I've got the major streets down, and all the Targets. I explored the Arboretum one day and walked through campus the next. I went to farmers' market today AND the Sun Prairie Sweet Corn Festival- local high school girls in aprons...(read more)

Medicine Woman... Driving

2008-08-05T05:34:00Z

This is my last blog post from Oregon, before the real journey begins- tomorrow. My lord, I just got here but it's been a year. I'm sitting in my empty house, and outside sits the almost full, slightly lopsided, U-HAUL. Wisconsin bound. Heaviest things in front, light things in back. The sadness I feel is complete and deep. Not hysterical, just very real. I know now, (this is the second time I am leaving Bend) that this is home, and will remain so. This year held most-meaningful work, new growth...(read more)

Acceptance

2008-05-15T19:16:00Z

It's May 15, the deadline for an answer from OHSU. I've been waiting for this day for.... ever. OHSU is the medical school I've been dreaming about since 2005 when I decided to strike out on this insane journey to become a doctor. In fact, when I decided I wanted to be a doctor, it was more like I decided I wanted to be an Oregon doctor, delivering Oregon babies in a covered wagon. Or something like that. Otherwise, forget it. For two years as a post-bac student, I planned to apply to one medical...(read more)

Resistance--Love It

2008-05-02T23:53:00Z

I avoided, for months, a phone call to a certain uncle, diagnosed with a horrible and rare disease back in the fall, hospitalized with acute and life-threatening symptoms over the past few weeks. I finally called him. I did not give in to what I’d been resisting. I resisted the urge to give up and give in. And I’m proud of myself. Not for calling him, but for not making up some lame excuse for not calling earlier. I resisted self-criticism, and had faith that maybe he just knows, I was too terrified to call him. Terrified of him, his sedation and excruciating pain. His dying. How can I be a doctor, I think, if I’m afraid of pain?

But then I realized something. It’s not pain that I’m afraid of, it’s phone calls. Specifically the ones that must be made in times of death, divorce, and depression- problems I cannot fix in person, let alone over the phone. I resisted, and I feel freer now, to make other dreaded phone calls, do some spring cleaning and let the air and light back in.

I said a few helpful and unhelpful things, but mostly I let him do the talking. As it turns out, I didn’t need to somehow take his pain away. This mistaken belief had paralyzed me. All he needed was for the phone to ring, for someone to take half an hour of institutional boredom off his shoulders.

My uncle sounded stronger and better than I had imagined. He is stabilized for now, but he’ll deal with a debilitating and painful condition for the rest of his life, however long that may be. He’s planning to write a book. He’s resisting sickness and infection, loneliness and despair.

The last time I saw my uncle, I believe we fought adamantly over our political views. I always hated his views, but loved discussing them with him. He’s an intelligent, highly principled person. My aunt told me that as a result of his illness, he has come to see that many of the things he once cared so deeply about just don’t matter, including anger toward those whose views differ from his. I know confrontation with death can be helpful in dissolving disputes, smoothing rough edges and putting things in perspective. But I also know that the will to fight keeps people alive and kicking.

We often think of resistance as a bad thing, a natural tendency that we try so hard through conscious living to let go of. We try to not try. And sometimes it saves us, when we learn we can just float instead of thrash around in the water.

But I honor resistance. I can fight off a cold. I can say no, though it’s often difficult to do. I can vote, because of resistance and in the spirit of it. I can criticize my government in public without fear of harassment or arrest. I can be an ally to all the men and women who still struggle to secure equal rights in our country. And I can resist the temptation to give up or look the other way, when the right thing to do is resist.

Old Cat, New Tricks

2008-04-02T02:34:00Z

http://www.med.wisc.edu/news/item.php?id=2756

I have a quote on my wall above my computer at home that says "Life is a delicate balance between letting things happen and making things happen." Working in child abuse prevention, I am constantly walking this line, between motivating people and rushing them. People's hearts and minds can move slower than molasses, I think, but the effort is worth it. I can accomplish nothing if I don't practice restraint. Patience. Compassion. In the end and even along the way, change is possible. In the same way that trees can fall in forests even when we're not watching, I believe we can profoundly impact others without ever knowing it. And I refuse to accept people's conviction that things and people do not change. Maybe it comes too little, too late. Or maybe it's a change for the worse! But nothing in this world is stagnant- for every butterfly wing flapped in this world, there is at least another butterfly who feels the breeze.

I put the link above because I like it when medical science and the art of living intersect and support eachother, rather than cowering in their respective corners. I am growing so tired of the divisions between fields of study and schools of thought. Why is it so hard for people to work together? It seems like once people become semi-knowledgeable in something, they forget how little they know! Anyway, according to this study, empathy circuits in your brain are reinforced by practice, just like recognition or memory. So it makes sense that change can be slow, methodical even. And so I must practice empathy, for myself, for others, and for my frustration with others who aren't so quick to jump on my express train to fantasy land. But honestly- if we don't hope, we are hopeless! What's the point of living if we don't think tomorrow can be better than today? Seriously, people.

Here's my latest hope fest. Is hope the same thing as stubbornness? My two foster cats have folded themselves into the corner of my bathroom behind the toilet. They scamper across the room only in the middle of the night, because the food bowl is a little less full each morning. But they have not moved voluntarily in my presence, once. Not to eat, not to stretch, not even to go to the bathroom. After I cut a clump of *** from the long-haired's tail, I just slumped against the wall of the bathroom, my head on the toilet, and started to lose hope. These guys deserve to stretch and yawn in the sunlight like my own cats, not live compressed in a corner, afraid to live.

But I slapped myself out of hopelessness, because I am determined to bring these kitties back to life. I don't know what horrors their pasts hold, or if there is any future for them. But I take tiny victories as they come. On Day 2, they stopped immediately defecating when I approached them. And on Day 3, the most terrified of the two began to purr when I rubbed behind his ear. If I can't make these cats adoptable, no one can. It's now Day 10, and although they could still pass for cat-shaped doorstops, they watch me when I go, and stretch out a little to let me rub their bellies better. Now, I'm really not in the habit of comparing animals with children, but this does remind me of the time I volunteered years ago in a small experimental "school" and the overwhelmed "teacher" told me to "take the kindergarteners and do math, or something."

This teacher's idea of teaching was to scream and yell and accomplish absolutely nothing, including have any hopes or expectations at all for any of her students. So when I got the tiny mathphobes in a classroom and told them what we'd be doing, and half of them immediately hid under the table while the other half cried, I had to circle my emotional wagons and devise a plan, immediately.

So it went like this: I didn't even utter the word "math" again until each tiny person was given a turn to stand up and tell a story to their classmates. If anyone interrrupted, the storyteller got to start all over again. After each story, we clapped and thanked the storyteller for sharing his or her amazing story. This took approximately 45 minutes. I then launched an elaborate math game with point systems and motivational speeches for almost two hours, having them do jumping jacks (which they found hilarious) every time the tears threatened to flow. Which was about every 15 minutes. The toughest nut to crack, a minute little boy with sweatshirt sleeves barely past his elbows and a persistent downward stare and trembling lip, was on the brink of a breakthrough when the "teacher" burst in to check and see if they were "doing anything", then announced to us all that I shouldn't worry about him, he just "had issues because his mother abandoned him." So have you! I wanted to say. Oh, and can you please jump off a bridge.

Needless to say, all four 5 year-olds finished that sheet of math AND understood it, although the extra time it took interfered with the teacher's "lesson plan." All those little brains needed in order to learn were patience and compassion. So maybe I can still learn new tricks too. Like practicing more patience and compassion with people like that teacher. And standing up to them because I don't just hope, but believe, that they can change. Then maybe I really can make a difference in this world.

Medicine Woman Walking- Around the Ranch

2008-02-24T02:35:00Z

Since my last blog post (a month ago), I've caught spring in action on several occasions. She's shy, but I was able to get just close enough to take some really amazing pictures. This farm photo shoot was my first spring activity of the year, not counting my awkward scramble up the icy side of Pilot Butte the day before. This hour I spent with the animals in the sun, and captured on camera, warmed me from the inside out. (see My Photos in the VTH Galleries)

They were shy around me at first, because I'm afraid they hadn't actually seen me since before November, when I began to hibernate in my house and it was too cold to venture out to the barn. My dad is there every day, snow or sleet, but for three months I stayed inside with my two cats and house bunny, rescued from the barn just days before real winter set in. At night I would look out through my glowing kitchen window at the woolly sheep, huddled together and frosted with snow. They would look back at me blankly, with what looked like either dumb apathy or soul-deadening rage. I tried to make them understand that if I end up going to medical school in Wisconsin, which is looking likeliest, I will share in their pain. But they didn't seem to take comfort in my words.

Last weekend, the sun seemed to finally break through the clouds, and I ventured out with my camera to make peace with the animals I had forsaken. Mostly because I wanted to see the three week-old piglets, and I needed to get some fresh hay for the bunny. The mama pig did not like it a bit when I crawled over her fence to where her babies practiced uprooting grubs in the dirt. The horses and sheep scattered when I approached, the llama lowered his ears, and I knew I had a lot of explaining to do. So I sat on a flat rock as close to the nursing piglets as I could, and after just a minute or two, mama pig forgot all about me, and her snuffly babies stumbled right over to me to proudly show off their filthy snouts. They clearly didn't hold a grudge about the fact that I had been sleeping on a pillowtop bed instead of a bed of wood chips and frost. So it was tempting to just hang out with them all day, and keep avoiding the glaring bulls and skittish sheep, but eventually my heart filled to the brim with cute piglet warmth, and I was ready for my confrontation.

I would have to earn their affection. They wouldn't give it to me senselessly and amateurishly like the baby pigs. But standing in the middle of the menagerie, they eventually warmed to my presence too. The goat stopped head-butting me when I scratched his forehead. The most outgoing of the baby bulls peeked out from behind his tree and licked an eye for me. He had mellowed since the summer, when I tried to herd him back into his pasture from the front lawn and he chased me back to the front door. In hindsight, it was pretty cute for him to try to be a bull, pawing the ground and charging. But at the time it was heart-stopping, seeing as he weighed about 700 pounds at birth.

Anyway, the highlight of my animal adventure, other than the frolicking piglets, was my time with the rooster, following him around while the turkey followed me, no more than a foot or two behind. The red-headed rooster would wait just long enough for me to get close enough for a picture, then turn and walk away. My favorite image is the one where he is turning the corner of the hen house, through the open gate. Somehow, this picture says a lot to me. First of all, there is no sense in chasing a chicken if he doesn't want to be caught. I think I could probably learn to apply this to situations in my own life.

But after half an hour of slowly following this very dignified creature around several acres, I really came to respect him in a new way. Just like any other being on this earth, we cannot know where another is headed, or what they are looking for. We can only admire the walk they are on. And if they are clearly enjoying it, it would be wrong to get in their way or to hurry them up. And following on this rooster's path, I enjoyed it as much as he did. Had I gone out for a walk on my own, I probably would have taken a very rational and boring path, either a circle around the whole ranch, or a straight line out to the barn and back, maybe pausing for a minute to admire the view of the mountains. But behind the lens of the camera, I could take it all in, rooster style. And the best part is that no one, chicken or woman, had ever or will ever again follow the exact path we took that day.

It reminds me of how parents describe those moments when their child allows them to see the world in a totally new way. When you see what is on the level of a three year-old, you're amazed that you had never noticed it before. Well, for me right now, it's a rooster and a protective mama pig. And I am grateful for the things only they could show me, when I finally ventured out to let them.

Medicine Woman Walking- Jan. 23

2008-01-23T21:28:00Z

Strong at the broken places.

That’s what we all hope to be... and I think I am. But these big things that tear down our walls and build them back up again, don’t come around too often. What I wonder about more is whether I’m strong in all the little nooks and crannies of my soul- the chronically tested, water-tortured places in me that, rather than breaking, simply ache.

To get in good physical shape, you have to wake up sore every day until, one day, you wake up feeling great. No pain. Your bone marrow feels strong and clean. I sort of remember feeling that fit, and I would like to again one day. But these days, I’m more inclined to everyday opportunities to use my muscles, like insisting on carrying my own heavy bags even when my very helpful little brother offers to take them. I believe this keeps me strong. It had better, because I'm certainly not out running marathons.

When it comes to emotions, I tend to be a sprinter. Now and then, I launch excitedly into one thing, or free myself from another. When this happens, I do things like stay up late cleaning out my refrigerator. Then things settle and I feel rested, then restless. I begin searching for a new emotional project. I remember when I opened my first acceptance letter to medical school, then the second. Oh, to be wanted! Subsequent rejections couldn't even begin to dampen my high spirits. What did, though? Time. Just as time sculpts grief into nostalgia, exhilaration is replaced with… anticlimax. A month or so later, it has begun to settle in. I got into medical school. That means I'm actually going to medical school. The anxiety I associate with this is my biggest problem. How frustrating is that?

Last week, to get away from this pesky malaise I've been feeling about actually achieving what I set out to do, I baked banana bread and went on a blind date. Those were a great two hours, eating that banana bread. For a weekend getaway, I drove down to San Francisco, a drive I could do with my eyes closed- I breeze by Melita’s Restaurant, an hour and a half down and 5 and a half to go. I cross Grass Lake and sneak past round old Dorris standing guard at the border. This time, instead of frustratedly flipping through the radio for seven hours, I played a mental montage of as many moments as I could remember. I smiled to myself as lost snapshots came back to me- embarrassing, peaceful, lustful, proud, and all of the above.

This weekend was too short, but it was worth twice the drive. I lounged about with my sister and her six adopted children (the four-legged kind) and enjoyed being a witness to the richness of her life. I had tea with my grandma and saw a few close friends, including the high school English teacher who first got me believing I had something to say.

If someone asks me on my final day what the happiest moments of my life were, it won’t be getting into medical school. It’ll be the way my grandma pronounces asparagus (ASPARA-GRISS) and sandwich (SANG-WICH), and how we can still dance a box-step in our socks in her living room like we did when I four years old. It’s the Sundays I can’t begin to count, when we’ve gone to the Goodwill to get her senior discount. It’s watching my sister’s boyfriend give his hands to her as earmuffs during our cold walk around Lake Merritt.

To be honest, I am looking forward to the next big thing, whether that’s medical school or something else between now and then. But whatever that big thing is, the meaning of it will only become clear against this big backdrop of little things. Sure, they can hurt us, or just bore us. But maybe those little aches and pains are simply there to remind us that we are. I don’t need to be strong in each of these places; I am strong because of them.

Medicine Woman Walking January 2008

2008-01-10T03:39:00Z

This is the first of what we hope will be many blog posts by a new voice on the VTH: Holly Holbrooks. She is an Americorp-HOPE volunteer in Bend, OR and on her way to medical school. She is an inspiration to everyone whose life she touches. I am DELIGHTED that she wants to share her Walk to medical school with all of us--stay tuned for her voice...it's one in a million... Beth, VTH Host

Holly's voice:

This is, in fact, how I feel. I know where I’m going, barring any miraculous twists of fate. But I’m not there yet, and I can’t really conceive of how it will look or feel. Because I'm somewhat terrified about my future, I have resolved to just say yes this year, to all adventures, friends and challenges that come my way, including this very Virtual Teahouse experience. Today is the first time I have ever written in cyberspace. I feel naked and vulnerable. But this is something I feel I must do, kind of like going to prom. I was invited, so I need to come downstairs when the doorbell rings, even if I'm feeling fat and don't really know if I'll have that much to talk about.

In the 20 years I've been able to write full sentences, I have consumed journals like chicken wings- breathlessly gobbling up their pages, chucking the remains into a pile. Writing has always been my safest and most fluent form of expression, exposed only to my own evil eye... which is so evil it makes me go back and edit my journals, for grammar and even content! Example: May 6, 1990, age 10. "I really like Rodney." Weeks later, I decided that these words were neither wholly accurate nor sufficiently dramatic, replacing them with "I truly love Rodney". Lest I forget in my adulthood exactly how I felt about this person.

It's shameful, the self-critics we become. But perhaps I've been writing for an audience all along, honing my people-pleasing ability to simultaneously confess and entertain. Maybe the only audience I should be concerned with is me. But I think there are times when you need to practice the art of laying things out on the line. We all struggle with vulnerability. We have a hard time accepting it in ourselves, and in others. Countless times each day, we walk the line between honesty and silence. And when the big stuff happens, we purge and then regret. Or we repress and then suffer.

Anyhow, seeing as my closets are getting full with my self-indulgent ramblings, here I am. Wailing along with Tammy Wynette as snow blows outside, my sleeping cat's paws tucked under me and a glass of Pepperwood Grove Syrah in hand, I am reveling in my very first Real Literary Moment. I am also feeling thankful for the ability to read and write. There have been times in my life when I have felt so achingly, brimmingly full of joy or sadness that I have been unable to speak about them, even to this day.

My 2008 New Year Resolutions were to ride my exercise bike every morning, and to not have a crush on a 22 year-old. So far I've failed at both, so I have a kernel of doubt about my ability to blog reliably. However, I think someone wise once said that if you never try blogging, you'll regret if for the rest of your life. So, hi. My name is Holly, and I have exactly 8 months left until I leave the cradle of Central Oregon to sleep in my big girl bed- Medical School. I hope to reflect on these precious months, truthfully and out loud, lest I forget in my adulthood exactly how I felt... about being 27, about being a woman, about being me, now. And to you, my first Virtual Teahouse date- don't worry, I'm a pretty good dancer, and I'll try not to overuse metaphors and self-deprecation in an attempt to make you laugh. Thank you for inviting me.