Category / health and wellness

by Cila Warncke

10 Sex Affirmative Books for English Language Arts

Following on from my previous post on the importance of affirmative sex education, here are 10 books English Language Arts teachers can reach for to open conversations about love, relationships, gender and sexuality.

These works were chosen because they treat sex with the openness, thoughtfulness, honesty and sensitivity it merits.

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

This brief, moving book touches an many aspects of life: education, self-discovery, solitude, family relationships, etc. but Rilke’s comments about love and sex shine. Don’t be satisfied with conventional definitions of what a relationship ‘should’ look like, he advises. Instead, seek to develop yourself as an individual so you can truly respect and cherish the individuality of another person. It is humane, wise, timely wisdom framed in sublime prose.

Get it here

Frankly In Love by David Yoon

This YA novel centers on Frank Li, the teenage son of Korean immigrants, who finds himself trying to navigate the challenges of new love while wrestling with contradictory cultural expectations. Fast, good-humored and, well, frank, it highlights the importance of being honest with oneself and others — in life and in love.

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Cool for the Summer by Dahlia Adler

With a nod to Demi Lovato, this novel explores how issues of class and privilege complicate the already complicated issues of love and sexual identity. Are Lara and Jasmine really falling in love, or are they just cool for the summer? And what happens if Lara chases the hunky Chase…? A touch frothy, but heartfelt and affirmative of love, wherever one finds it.

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Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison

This Bildungsroman set in a well-to-do Pacific Northwest community hit home with me (though the community I grew up in wasn’t quite so well-to-do). In addition to being a welcome, thoughtful discussion of class, poverty and family tension, it has a romantic twist that is sure to get students talking.

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A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Smith’s beloved coming-of-age tale set in early 20th century Brooklyn is refreshingly forthright about sex. It handles both positive and negative aspects of love and sexuality (including an attempted sexual assault) with a calm directness that can set the tone for open, non-judgmental classroom conversations.

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Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

Baldwin is perhaps my favorite writer on sex; certainly, the rare (American) author who understands and treats sex as the physical act of love. This short novel is appropriate for older teenagers, say 16-18, and explores the tragic consequences of prioritising social conventions over human relationships. To paraphrase Baldwin, the protagonist’s problem isn’t his homosexuality, it’s that his capacity for love has been crippled by his anxiety about what people might think.

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Genderqueer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe

Contemporary writers are creating a robust canon of books about gender identity and nonconformity. I love this graphic memoir for its matter-of-fact tone and authenticity. It highlights that gender identity is fluid and finding one’s path isn’t necessarily a linear journey — nor does it need to be.

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Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return by Marjane Satrapi

Lest you get the wrong impression about the back-to-back graphic memoir recommendations, let me quote one of my students when asked if he liked graphic texts: ‘No!’

He and I share the view that other people’s pictures get in the way of the (superior) moving pictures in our heads.

That notwithstanding, Persepolis 2 is an evocative, eye-level portrait of Satrapi’s struggles with language, culture, love and sexuality after she moved from Iran to Germany. This is a particularly strong choice for children who have immigrated or come from a cultural/familial context that distinguishes them from their classmates.

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Zenobia July by Lisa Bunker

For younger readers, this is a charming, uplifting novel about a trans girl coming into her own. Details like Zenobia stressing out about which restroom to use add verisimilitude and the plot touches on vital issues like deadnaming, cyberbullying and the importance of community without ever feeling preachy.

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When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities by Chen Chen

Sometimes, I read a book and think, wow, that was brilliant.

Sometimes, I read a book and think, wow, that was brilliant and I really want to be friends with the author.

When I Grow Up… is in the latter category. His poems about growing up as the child of immigrants, cultural tension, sexual identity, homophobia and the search for love are surpassingly deft, raw, funny, tragic, playful and defiant. They also communicate (don’t ask me how) a deep, fundamental good-personness. In a perfect parallel universe, Chen and I would go for drinks.

Get it here

What texts would you add to a literary discussion of love, gender and sexuality? Share in the comments or Tweet @CilaWarncke

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by Cila Warncke

Let’s Talk About Sex Education

Photo by Gaelle Marcel on Unsplash

Last year, for the first time, I taught about gender and sexuality in literature. My kneejerk reaction was, I can’t talk about sex to teenagers. Arrggh!

On reflection, this reaction had everything to do with my hangups (to use a good old-fashioned word) and nothing to do with my students’ needs.

This is a common problem in sex education, with the current brouhaha in the United Kingdom serving as an example.

British prime minister Rishi Sunak has, according to the Guardian, “asked the Department for Education to “ensure schools are not teaching inappropriate or contested content” in the subject of relationships, sex and health education… Sunak confirmed the review… after a Tory MP, Miriam Cates, said children were being exposed to sex education classes that were “age-inappropriate, extreme, sexualising and inaccurate”.”

Numerous Tory MPs are on board, one of their complaints being that young people are being taught about oral sex — a classic case of adult prudishness being prioritized over teen well-being.

Chambers et al. (2004) is quoted by Leung et al., 2019 saying Britain’s “value-led approach [to sex education] merely reflects the interests and principles of stakeholders, while overlooking the actual needs and wellbeing of youths.”

Sex ed in the internet age

Does anyone with two brain cells to rub together think not discussing oral sex, or any other sexual act, proclivity or topic, is going to prevent kids from knowing what it is, discussing it, watching it and even doing it?

Children are handed internet-connected screen devices almost as soon as their chubby baby fingers can hold them, in many cases.

Statista data show that 58% of British children own a smartphone by age 8; by age 12, that jumps to 93%. You can bet the farm they aren’t just using it to watch Sesame Street.

Sexuality isn’t a switch that flips at puberty. Sexual behaviors and curiosity are apparent in early childhood.

This might make grown-ups uncomfortable, but our discomfort isn’t useful. Parents and teachers have a duty to help kids navigate this vital part of life.

If we don’t step up, the internet will.

Student needs versus teacher discomfort

In an op-ed, 25-year-old journalist and editor Sasha Mistlan writes (re: Andrew Tate and the importance of proactive sex education): “My friends and I didn’t get any proper education about sex, consent or relationships until we were 13, by which time we had learned it all from internet porn and lads’ mags.”

How can educators ignore this need?

I am a literature teacher; the biology of the birds and bees are beyond my remit. But it isn’t the birds and bees that students need to know about.

They need models of relationships and ways of relating that affirm sexuality as an important (but not overwhelming), natural part of adult life, and of sex as a source of joy and connection. They need love stories with happy endings. They need, also, stories that are unhappy or ambiguous; stories that show mistakes and heartbreaks as a navigable part of human sexual experience, not reasons to drink poison.

However awkward I may feel, students need a safe space for curiosity and discussion. Because lord only knows, they are talking about sex outside the classroom.

Sex positive education

Does the phrase ‘sex positive education’ make you a little uncomfortable?

It does me.

But what does the alternative imply? Sex negative education doesn’t prevent young people from having sex.

Data from the worryingly puritanical United States show that even students who promise to abstain from premarital sex… don’t.

Research published by the American Academy of Pediatrics peer-reviewed journal Pediatrics found: “Five years after the pledge [to abstain from sex], 82% of pledgers denied having ever pledged. Pledgers and matched nonpledgers did not differ in premarital sex, sexually transmitted diseases, and anal and oral sex variables. Pledgers… did not differ in lifetime sexual partners and age of first sex. Fewer pledgers than matched nonpledgers used birth control and condoms.”

Scaring teenagers away from sex has never worked; ignoring sex in the hope teenagers won’t notice it is ludicrous.

The best, bravest, least-comfortable option is to say: hey, sex is a huge part of life, however whenever wherever and with whomever you do it (or don’t), and it can be one of the most joyous parts of life, or one of the most damaging. Let’s talk about how to make it joyful, empowering, pleasurable, safe and beautiful.

Affirmative literature

As a literature teacher, I can do my part by teaching texts that articulate the delights and challenges of sexuality and sexual identity, and working with my colleagues in health, science and psychology to create a safe, affirmative atmosphere for conversations about love, sex and gender.

This requires making careful choices about what my students read. Many of the canonical ‘love stories’ of European literature are anything but — think Wuthering Heights or Romeo and Juliet where ‘love’ and violence are inextricably mixed.

The search for affirmative literature requires looking beyond the cano and seeking stories that reflect a variety of experiences, cultures, orientations and gender identities.

Next week, I’ll share a list of powerful literature that treats sex with the openness, thoughtfulness, honesty and sensitivity it merits.

Suggest your favorite teen-appropriate, sex-affirmative story, poem or film in the comments or Tweet @CilaWarncke

by Cila Warncke

You Don’t Have to Be Crazy to Study Humanities But…

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While I cherish the idea of autonomy, life experience and research argue persuasively that my choices are (while still choices) rooted in the bedrock of where I was born, to whom, how I was raised and what it took to get away from all that.

University majors and mental health

“Students who study humanities, social work and counselling were more likely to report childhood adversities, which are strongly associated with poor mental health” according to McLafferty et al. (2022) in the study ‘Variations in psychological disorders, suicidality, and help-seeking behaviour among college students from different academic disciplines‘.

The authors’ findings are not unique: “A large, cross-sectional study spanning 81 American universities found that students studying art and design presented with the highest rates of mental illness. Almost 45% of art and design students reported at least one disorder, followed closely by humanities (39%). Art and humanities students also had the highest rates of suicidal ideation and over one fifth of students from these disciplines reported having engaged in self-injury” (McLafferty et al., 2022).

This seems entirely plausible.

Unfortunately, it also seems like the sort of thing that could be weaponized against already beleaguered arts and humanities courses and practitioners. Touchy-feely BS for people who can’t hack a real job, etc.

McLafferty et al. (2022) note: “Disciplines demonstrating the lowest rates of mental illness included engineering (31%), public health (28%) nursing (28%) and business (27%). Likewise, a recent study conducted reported that students from arts and humanities, social work, and behavioural, and social sciences, were more likely to report emotional and substance use disorders in comparison to their peers from business or engineering disciplines.”

The bottom line

Observed through a certain lens, this suggests that pragmatic, socially desirable subjects attract composed, socially desirable students; with the obvious, if unarticulated, corollary that arts and humanities are for damaged bohemian types who can’t hold it together long enough to learn quadratic equations, or whatever.

I can see why people might think that, and perhaps they’d be right.

Numerous studies find a strong correlation between parental socioeconomic status (SES) and their children’s academic achievement (Saifi & Mahmood, 2011; Azhar et al., 2014; Lam, 2014, etc.)

Academic disciplines such as engineering and health sciences are resource intensive. Ideally, students will have access to high quality labs and IT equipment from primary school onwards. Ideally, they will also have personal tech — laptops, tablets, etc. — that facilitates connection and learning.

Students from families lower on the socioeconomic scale are less likely to have personal technology, reliable home internet, and so forth. They are also more likely to go to underfunded schools where resources are limited.

When I was in school in the 1990s we were lucky to have Bunsen burners and space to mix hydrogen peroxide and baking soda; my teachers wrote exam questions on the board because the school couldn’t afford Xerox paper. My family could stretch to the graphing calculator required for advanced math classes, but I wouldn’t get my first laptop until 1999.

What I did have access to was books. One thing the United States is blessed with an abundance of is libraries (cheers, Mr Carnegie, I’ll try not to think too hard about how you made your money). Even my home town, pop. 4800, had a substantial, well-stocked library with plenty of cozy reading spaces, stacks of periodicals and regular free activities. It was my refuge, my favorite place, a source of endless bounty.

Having a predilection for reading and writing, I also had a space where these were valued and supported. If I’d had a predilection for trigonometry or building radio cars, there would have been no such space or support.

Photo by Mikael Kristenson on Unsplash

Steered by circumstances

The Covid-19 pandemic threw learning inequalities into sharp relief: “Children from families with a low SES are less likely to have access to remote learning (UNESCO, 2021), are less often provided with active learning assistance from their schools (Tomasik et al., 2020), and spend less time on learning (Meeter, 2021) than children from families with a high SES. Moreover, parents with a high SES are more likely to provide greater psychological support for their children (OECD, 2019),” reported Hammerstein et al. (2021).

Take an imaginative leap with me: A fourth or fifth grader has a nascent knack for programming. But they don’t have a computer at home, or they do, but share it with several family members and they can only afford a cheap, shaky internet connection. During the pandemic, this kid was out of school for 12, 18, 24 months, with minimal access to educators or learning materials.

They are fortunate that their fascination with the logic of computer language applies to English too. They do still have access to books and reading materials, and they’re sharp enough to learn to craft a strong essay or article by imitation.

They get back to school and the language arts teacher notices their progress, encourages them, makes sure they have access to the school library, gives them extra feedback on their writing.

Meanwhile, they’ve dropped behind their well-to-do peers in IT, simply because they haven’t had the tools or training. The IT teacher, like the language arts teacher, focuses their attention on the strongest students and fails to notice the lost potential of this particular kid.

Naturally, the skillset that gets the most care and attention is the one that flourishes. By the time university rolls around, this student is poised for success in the humanities, perhaps never to realize how financial circumstances subtly but ineluctably shaped their academic trajectory.

Self-fulfilling prophecies

It takes courage and gusto to believe in one’s weaknesses. In my head, I’m terrible at maths and mediocre at science (until math gets involved, then I’m terrible at that too).

Photo by Mikael Kristenson on Unsplash

This self-perception solidified to fact in my head over years, following the switch from a pre-med track to English Literature in my second year of university. It was wrenching to give up on a long-held goal, but the hard reality was all my English and History professors were encouraging me to major in one or the other, and I was barely scraping by in science.

Telling myself I “couldn’t” hack the math and science was a self-soothing mechanism. However, like many palliatives, it may not have been entirely benign.

I took Algebra I and II, trigonometry and statistics, geometry, and calculus in high school: straight As (though seasoned with tears of frustration); I also took general science, chemistry, physics and biology: A, A, A and A. This rather complicates the “couldn’t” narrative. Sure, I’ve forgotten it all now, but I did learn it — even excelled — at secondary school.

What broke me was the leap to university level, where chemistry became calculus and physics became flat-out terrifying.

If I’d had access to more challenging high school courses, would I have stayed on the pre-med track?

If I’d had greater self-confidence…?

If I’d been aware of the help available…?

The right decision for the wrong reasons

Am I happier as a writer and educator than I would have been as a cog in the moribund US healthcare system? No doubt.

But I wish I’d made that decision from a position of self-confidence and clarity, not an overwhelming fear of failure.

  • When you grow up poor and see an escape route, you really, really don’t want to miss out.
  • When you feel excluded because of how you dress, where you live, what you can’t afford, you will do most anything to blend in.
  • When your financial situation has never not been precarious, you want to stay safe.

Failing classes, tanking your GPA, needing more time to graduate: these have different consequences for well-to-do students and those scraping by on scholarships, loans and work study jobs.

Links in a chain

Difficult circumstances are not always merely socioeconomic; there are certainly young people from affluent backgrounds who have had adverse childhood experiences. It would be wrong, though, to discount the exacerbating effects of poverty on issues like intimate partner violence, child abuse and neglect, substance misuse, incarceration and mental health difficulties.

There are many ways poverty shapes people’s choices and chances, from birth onwards. My hypothetical scenario is just one of many that could shed light on how socioeconomics influence an individual’s choice of study and mental health.

What are your experiences or observations regarding the relationship between study/career choice, mental health and socioeconomics? Please share your reflections in the comments or Tweet @CilaWarncke

by Cila Warncke

Deprivation versus Education

Photo by Khalil on Unsplash

On Tuesday, around half-past-nine in the morning, my cat jumped onto the sink. An instant after I turned the tap, the power went out. Cue a three-day saga of landlord, electricians and plumbers clumping past my workspace and accusing glares from Teddy, the cat, as he nosed the unyielding tap.

Serendipitously, my three dry days coincided with reading from George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London with my students.

“It is altogether curious, your first contact with poverty,” Orwell writes. “You thought it would be quite simple; it is extraordinarily complicated. You thought it would be terrible; it is merely squalid and boring. It is the peculiar lowness of poverty that you discover first; the shifts that it puts you to, the complicated meanness, the crust-wiping.”

Replace ‘poverty’ with ‘no running water’, ‘no electricity’, ‘no food’ or any other noun phrase related to a basic necessity. The principle stands.

To lack something one requires for survival is complicated, squalid, boring, low, crust-wiping. Whatever one’s other resources, the absence, scarcity or precarity of water, food, shelter, warmth, etc. is destructive.

Deprivation makes education harder to attain. Moreover, it robs whatever education one has acquired of its value.

Attention

In the elegiac opening sentence of ‘On Being Ill’ Virginia Woolf writes, “Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed… it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love, battle, and jealousy among the prime themes of literature.”

For when the lights of health go down, let’s substitute: when you can’t flush the toilet, or wash your hands.

My first unnerved thought, when I realized the water wasn’t returning at the flick of a fuse-switch, was, oh shit.

Literally. I have had severe IBS for over a decade. Proximity to a clean, functioning, private convenience is high on my list of essentials. Higher, in fact, than food. Food, once consumed, rapidly becomes a problem.

Not having water turned the next three days into a pathetic war of attrition with my internal organs, which I’d rather think of as friends than enemies. Boiled white rice became the meal of choice to minimize digestive demands.

Disarranged eating and hygiene stress combined to drag my mind away from classes. And I’m the teacher.

Imagine how much harder it is for students to cope with scarcity, and the fatal effect on attention.

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

Intention

Education helps us learn to make good choices. We learn to think critically, plan, weigh options, critique, etc. (ideally, anyway).

Orwell was well-educated and possessor of a rare mind. He argues, “a man who has gone even a week on bread and margarine is not a man any longer, only a belly with a few accessory organs.”

Science bears out this observation: the brain is around 2% of body weight but hoovers up 20% of the body’s glucose-derived energy (Mergenthaler, et al., 2014). Depriving the body of the energy it requires disproportionately affects the brain; an effect for which the body attempts to compensate by purloining glucose from other vital systems. Nevertheless, subpar nutrition takes a crowbar to cognitive functions (Glucose and The Brain: Improving Mental Performance, 2013).

Other forms of deprivation, such as lack of running water, may not have the same immediate physiological implications, but they swiftly cripple good intentions.

Not knowing when the water would be back, I couldn’t plan dinner, much less anything in the more distant future. Clothes and dishes needed washing, cat bowls needed refilling, plants needed watering, but it couldn’t be done nor anticipated. I learned to live in the moment, in the worst possible way.

Interaction

Working from home, my attire tends more towards casual than smart. But there is a huge difference between informal and clean and plan dirty.

I take the ability to be clean, and therefore socially appropriate, for granted; fortunate am I.

Day one was tolerable but by day two the BO was bothering me. The morning of day three there were some unavoidable errands. After slathering on deodorant and shoving my grimy body into clean clothes I skulked out, coat zipped to the chin and masked. During the brief exchanges that followed, I stood as far away as courtesy allowed, marrow curling with self-consciousness.

I need to start donating to clean water projects, I thought. Then thought of all the people who live in places clean water projects don’t touch: places like Spain, the United States or the UK. In developed countries, broad access to running water, hygiene products, etc. masks — and no doubt exacerbates — the trauma of those who cannot access these fundamental resources.

Not being able to wash and groom adequately is uncomfortable on a personal level. I was hyperconscious of my bodily fluids and functions. But it is fatal to the ability to interact with clean human beings on an equal footing.

If I were a student who couldn’t wash, stuck in a roomful of freshly-scrubbed peers, I’d want to crawl under the floorboards. Or maybe I’d act out, to distract from my discomfort. I was fortunate to not have the precise experience as a kid, but I can imagine.

One thing is for sure: my mind would not be on my studies. I’d be counting the minutes till I could flee.

______________________________

Thursday night, the kitchen tap spluttered to life. Borderline delirious, I pulled on the Marigolds and scrubbed the dishes piled in the sink, wiped the counters, refilled the cat bowls. After a long, hot shower I put on clean pajamas, sat on the sofa and stared at the unlit furnace, unsure what to do.

The tiredness that gripped me wasn’t ordinary, end-of-the-week stuff. My energy and volition were sapped, like I’d run a marathon.

The argument of Mani, et al. (2013) that “poverty itself reduces cognitive capacity… because poverty-related concerns consume mental resources, leaving less for other tasks” made perfect sense.

Education is wonderful thing. There isn’t much I’d rather do than teach and learn. But deprivation is its undoing.

As a teacher, and an individual, I have a responsibility to work towards a more equitable society where people have the resources they need to benefit from education.

How can educators support a more equitable society? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments or Tweet @CilaWarncke

by Cila Warncke

40 – Dodging the Magic Bullet

A version of this piece was published in Transition, a Canadian magazine on mental health.

Photo by Ross Sneddon on Unsplash

In 1980, the year I was born, the board of directors of the American Psychiatric Association voted to allow pharmaceutical companies to offer paid symposiums at its annual conference. Thirty years later I was sitting on coarse beige upholstery in a doctor’s surgery in Glasgow. “Are you sure the results are normal?”

He sighed and repeated that my blood, hormones, iron level and thyroid were all fine.

Disappointment lodged in my oesophagus. Please tell me something’s wrong: hypothyroidism, Vitamin D, anaemia, hormone imbalance, anything.

I had moved to the rain-wracked west coast of Scotland to do a Master’s degree in writing but, after a few weeks, I could barely read. Obsessive thoughts snarled and snapped: you’re stupid, you’re hopeless, you’re a failure. Glasses leapt from my hands at my part-time waitress job. Burns crept up my arms as my reflexes slowed. My boss reprimanded me for being “snappish”. I craved sugar, wolfing my flatmate’s ice cream and cereal then slinking out the next morning to replace them. I slept 12, 15 hours a day, exhausted by the weight of my body.

One more test. The doctor gave me a single sheet of paper. I tend to score well on tests; this was no exception. The Beck Depression Inventory1 is a common screening for depression, intended to “identify [its] presence and severity”2. He skimmed my responses about sadness, guilt, irritability, hopelessness, sleep disturbances, and suicidal thoughts.

“I’ll write you a prescription.”

“Is there someone I can talk to?”

Referral in hand, I walked to another basement office.

That doctor cut me off after ten seconds: “Do you want a prescription?”

He huffed audibly. “If you want to talk to someone go to the counselling service. All the other American students are on meds.”

***

In Anatomy of an Epidemic award-winning journalist Robert Whitaker describes how the “notion that [pharmaceutical] ‘magic bullets’… would bring miracle cures”3 became psychiatric dogma — despite the fact no one fully understands the organic processes of mental illness. Do psychotropic “bullets” hit their target? If so, what happens? No responsible physician would prescribe thyroid and hormone treatment without a lab test. But nobody checked my serotonin or dopamine levels. My doctor had never seen me before. He knew nothing of my family, temperament, or situation, but on the basis of 21 questions offered a drug that would dramatically, maybe irreversibly, alter my brain chemistry.

Photo by Aliane Schwartzhaupt on Unsplash

The most common antidepressants are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI)4 like Prozac. As it happens, I spent several years toying with a fast-acting antidepressant. Methyl​enedioxy​methamphetamine, like SSRIs, boosts serotonin levels in the brain. It obliterates unhappiness in a rush of euphoria, confidence, clarity and empathy. Everything is better: music, lights, colour, conversation, friendship, sex, and cigarettes.

Until the comedown.

“Suicide Tuesday” was a semi-serious joke among club kids. We compared notes on nightmares, hallucinations, and memory loss. We counted the days till jaws stopped aching and appetites returned.

Prozac is legal but brain chemistry is no respecter of legislation. Trials on SSRIs show that “rats fed high doses… ended up with neurons that were swollen and twisted like corkscrews”5. The human evidence is compelling: the Food and Drug Administration received 39,000 complaints about Prozac in the nine years following its approval, including reports of suicidal and homicidal outbursts, “psychotic depression, mania, abnormal thinking, hallucinations, hostility, confusion, amnesia, convulsions, tremors and sexual dysfunction.”6

***

Instead of antidepressants I took the second doctor’s advice and went to the student counselling service. Every Friday afternoon between three and four (after dark, for most of those moths) I went to a basement room where a white-faced, gold-rimmed Seth Thomas clock sat in a disused fireplace. A tiny glass pitcher and two small glasses stood on the hearth beside a box of Tork tissues. I had fold them in half to blow my nose.

“I’m scared.”

“Of what?”

“I feel like I’ve lost control.” I threw another fistful of sodden tissues in the bin. “You know the Rolling Stones’ ‘Paint It Black’? It feels like that.”

Words that come to mind now are no less true for being clichéd. Nouns: storm, cloud, void, chasm, maelstrom, black hole. Verbs: choke, crush, frighten, smother, horrify. Adjectives: miserable, catatonic, helpless, damaged, trapped, angry, sad, frustrated, lost.

***

In 1988 the United States Food and Drug Association green-lighted Prozac and America’s National Institutes of Mental Health set up the Depression Awareness Recognition and Treatment (DART) program. Its mission was to promote “greater acceptance of depression as a disorder” and, perhaps not incidentally, spread the word that “antidepressants produced recovery rates of ‘70% to 80% in comparison with 20% to 40% for placebo.”7 Eli Lilly, which held the patent on Prozac, helped pay for eight million DART brochures that highlighted the merits of serotonin-boosting pharmaceuticals.

***

Photo by Wherda Arsianto on Unsplash

If you’re trying to dodge the magic bullet you need other weapons. I’ve been running since age 13, hooked on the peace and clarity that follows the effort. In Glasgow I got up at 5:30AM, pulled on ski socks, leggings, sweatshirt, jacket, hat, gloves and battered Sauconys then ran for an hour. I swapped my restaurant job for a coffee shop and found comfort in the routine of making espresso, toasting sandwiches, and gossiping with the regulars. At home I baked caraway rye bread, bagels, and lemon cookies to combat the chill seeping through the single-glazed windows. I bought kilos of oranges and taught myself to make marmalade; experimented with vegan mac-and-cheese and coconut milk smoothies. On black afternoons I tiptoed up the ice-slick hill to the gym and did squats, bench presses and seated rows. I used holiday photos for bookmarks and saved quotes on index cards: “A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside you,” wrote Kafka.

***

“In a [1998] World Health Organization study of the merits of screening for depression,” writes Whitaker: “Those diagnosed and treated with psychiatric medications fared worse – in terms of their depressive symptoms and their general health – over a one-year period than those who weren’t exposed to the drugs.”

***

One year is 365 days of wondering why am I still breathing? It’s a long time to resist the temptation to drag the tip of a knife down your arm just to see how it feels. I scurried and feinted but depression was a patient cat to my mouse. There were still tears in writing workshops, still mornings huddled beneath the espresso machine gnawing my fingers, still cake binges followed by penitent cups of vegetable broth.

Depression is a black-hearted octopus tenderly, insistently probing for weakness. Resistance is the only secret to survival; fight the beast with every cheap, inadequate weapon at your disposal. Work and running were my best allies. I got better at snatching pleasure and being selfish about delight. When insomnia chipped at my fragile defences, I went to the doctor for sleeping pills. At the end of the year I left Glasgow, bruised but stronger. A magic bullet might have been swift relief. But the grit, patience, and humility I learned on my way are side-effects worth having.

Photo by Nathalie Désirée Mottet on Unsplash
by Cila Warncke

24 – Vegan Eating for Runners

This originally appeared in Trail Runner magazine.

Photo by Fil Mazzarino on Unsplash

Intro

Matt Frazier was an average runner who ate an average, albeit healthy, American diet and had average runner’s aches and pains Then he stopped eating meat for ethical reasons. Chicken and fish went next, and he didn’t miss them much. When he quit eggs and dairy something unexpected happened: Matt found he could run longer and harder than ever. Within a few months of becoming a vegan he ran two 50-mile races, shed some stubborn pounds, and felt fleet and fit. Inquisitive and communicative by nature, Matt started the “No Meat Athlete” blog to share his experiences.

Running on plants has taken Matt places he never imagined. This year he completed his first 100-miler, the Burning River Endurance Run, and published his first book: “No Meat Athlete: Run on Plants and Discover Your Fittest, Fastest, Happiest Self”. Co-authored by Matt Ruscigno, MPH, RD, a vegan dietician, ultra-marathoner and endurance cyclist. The book is an engaging guide to plant-based diets for runners, running for vegans, and all interested parties in-between.

Photo by Anna Pelzer on Unsplash

Why ‘No Meat’?

Removing meat, poultry, fish, dairy and eggs from your diet is a major lifestyle change but Frazier cites three compelling reasons to do so: health, the environment, and ethics.

Fitter & Faster

Studies showing that vegetarians have lower rates of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, etc are as common as mud in March, but what are the specific benefits to runners? “The most common change I hear about is faster recovery,” says Frazier. “This means less injury because it reduces your chance of over-training and getting hurt. It lets serious runners do more hard workouts.”

Scientists have yet to pinpoint why runners may recover faster on a veggie diet but there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to say they do, with world-beating vegans like Scott Jurek, Brendan Brazier, and Catra Corbett attesting to the efficacy of plant-powered running. Monique Ryan, MS, RD, author of Sports Nutrition for Endurance Athletes, says the benefit may be down to the anti-inflammatory properties of plant foods. “Exercise increases the level of free radicals in your body, which causes inflammation,” she explains. Anti-oxidants in fruits and vegetables are anti-inflammatory and protect your body from physiological stress.

Food: Environment & Ethics

Losing yourself in nature is one of the great pleasures of trail running, and eating plants is a great way to protect the environment you love. Raising livestock is a leading cause of deforestation, soil erosion, destruction of grasslands, and water contamination, worldwide, according to UN Food and Agriculture Organization research; and creates more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transport combined. Meat is also an inefficient food source. For example, it takes 20 pounds of grain to produce a pound of steak.

Animal cruelty is a clear argument for veganism but the human cost of meat is, if anything, greater. Meat-packing is notoriously one of America’s most dangerous jobs. Globally, the demand for meat means two-thirds of arable land is used to grow animal feed versus just eight percent to produce food for direct human consumption. This drives up food prices and put swathes of the world’s population at risk of hunger.

Photo by Ella Olsson on Unsplash

How to Make it Work: Calories – The Burning Issue

You might be surprised to hear that when it comes to food quantity is as important as quality. “Under-fuelling is a common problem,” says Ingrid Skoog, RD, chair of the Sports, Cardiovascular, and Wellness Nutrition (SCAN) group of Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. “Between intense training, the appetite suppressant effect of exercise, and hectic lives, a lot of runners don’t eat enough.” You can get by on reserves for a while but a consistent calorie deficit puts you at risk of fatigue, excessive weight loss and sub-par training. “Nutrition is non-negotiable,” notes Skoog. “Regardless of the diet you choose, your body’s needs don’t change.”

Ruscigno concurs: “One of the biggest factors in good nutrition is getting enough food. People are concerned about protein in vegan diets but if you eat enough total calories it is almost impossible to not get enough protein.” When you cut out meat, dairy and eggs make sure to compensate with calorie-dense plant foods like nuts and nut butters, avocados, and coconut oil.

Micro-nutrients – Less is More

Decades of meat and dairy industry marketing have created the perception that you need meat for iron and dairy for calcium. But animal products are not the only option. A balanced vegan diet provides iron from a range of foods such as whole grains, leafy greens and legumes. Eating mini-portions of protein is actually more efficient than eating a steak, explains Ruscigno, because your body absorbs nutrients better in small doses.

Calcium absorption also improves on a plant-based diet because animal protein increases the amount of calcium you excrete (thus drinking milk is a paradoxical pursuit). Getting calcium from fortified plant milks, leafy greens and legumes means you can eat less total calcium but your body will retain more. Ruth Heidrich, a 78-year-old raw vegan marathoner and Ironman triathlete, who holds a PhD in nutrition and exercise physiology reports her bone density increased on an all-plant diet, despite a family history of osteoporosis.

The one essential supplement for vegans is vitamin B12, which is helps form DNA and red blood cells, and supports brain function. “You need to get some every day,” Ruscigno recommends. You can take a B12 supplement or multi-vitamin, or eat fortified foods like bread, cereal, plant milks and nutritional yeast.

Think Addition, Not Just Subtraction

Vegan or meat-eater, nutrition experts agree that what you add to your diet is more important than what you subtract. Nell Stephenson, a Paleo diet consultant and lifestyle coach who competes in Ironman Triathlons and ultra-marathons, says the key to health is eating more vegetables. “Even with the Paleo diet [which advocates eating meat] you should get 40-50% of your calories from vegetables and fruit. That gives you all the vitamins, minerals and fiber you need and nothing you don’t.”

“Not everyone is going to be a vegan,” says Ruscigno. “But if you eat like one, by consuming more fruit and vegetables, you will gain a lot of the benefits.”

Photo by Camila Cordeiro on Unsplash

Conclusion

Running on plants can have a powerful, positive effect on your performance and lifestyle as long as you are mindful and properly fuel your training. “Historically, the healthiest societies ate low-meat diets. It’s how we thrive,” says Frazier. “Becoming vegan gave me an indescribable sense of well-being. It felt whole, complete and right. It’s a force for happiness.”

‘No Meat Athlete: Run on Plants and Discover Your Fittest, Fastest, Happiest Self’ is published by Fair Winds Press. For more information and Matt’s book tour dates visit www.nomeatathlete.com.

by Cila Warncke

23 – Sober Life in Ibiza

The following profile, written around 2014, was commissioned but wound up not being published.

Photo: Cila Warncke

Late February, Agrotourism Morna, Sant Carles, Ibiza. The succulent smell of roast pork and chicken wafts across the terrace. White plates nestle against the whiter cloth covering a long wooden table shaded by gnarled almond branches. Guests chat over glasses of red wine while their children attack colouring books and bowls of tomato-clad pasta. Dogs romp. Halfway through the starter, proprietor and chef Simon Johnson pops out of the kitchen and realises he needs five more place settings.

A volunteer goes in search of chairs. Someone else conjures a fistful of cutlery. Folks squeeze closer. By the time platters of carved meat and heaping bowls of succulent veg arrive at the table there is space for everyone. More bottles appear. Glasses are raised. Here’s to long lunches with friends, overlooking verdant fields and inhaling the faint honey of almond blossoms.

This idyllic afternoon in the campo belies the winding road that brought Simon to Morna, and his pressured quest to turn a time-worn agrotourismo (the local name for a rustic bed-and-breakfast) into a homey country retreat.

Photo: Cila Warncke

In November the Agro, as it is affectionately known, resembled a cyclone landfall. The pool was half-full of brackish black water. The terraces were strewn with broken furniture, old mattresses, rubbish, and piles of broken concrete. Inside, mildew crept up the white walls and cobwebs laced together the corners of the high ceilings. The garden was mud, weeds and a welter of dead grape vines. Beneath grey winter skies it had a chill air of decay.

Admittedly, all Ibiza tourist accommodation is worse for wear off-season. Two things made Agrotourismo Morna different: 1) its new manager Simon had never run a hotel before and 2) he had no money. Not in the way some perfectly solvent folk claim to have no money, but literally. Simon was broke, impoverished; in the Cockney rhyming slang of his youth, brassic. Nobody, including him, knew exactly how or where he was going to magic up the money and people-power to renovate Morna. Putative business partners flailed and bailed, neighbours eyeballed the scene and wished him luck, the owner of the land chewed his cigar and muttered.

Yet Simon was eerily calm. Cigarette in hand, West Ham matches burbling in the background, he pieced things together. He hosted a curry dinner to raise rent money, haggled for curios at Sant Jordi market, and sourced furniture from Facebook. He bartered home-made Scotch eggs for advertising space. He hired a gardener then sweet-talked him into emptying the pool, one bucket of sludge at a time.

Photo: Cila Warncke

Making do is a talent Simon has cultivated since boyhood. “I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to be when I grew up, I just got on with it.” Getting on with it may as well be the family motto. “We’re all self-employed,” he muses. “Quite an entrepreneurial bunch.” His grandparents ran pie and mash shops in London’s East End and a greengrocers (“that’s where I got my love of food”). Dyslexia hampered him in academics but he was savvy and good at making friends.

Bonhomie became his ticket to the world. After brief stints working in the stock market and as a chef, in London, Simon took off and spent years in Asia. He made a living selling “a bit of land, anything really” while absorbing the cultures and cuisines. Eventually he settled in Barcelona, still working in sales. He got married and divorced. Made some money. And drank. “I was always a heavy drinker, always doing things I didn’t want to do.” He pauses, foot bouncing, looking for the right words. “You can get to a point drinking or taking drugs, that you don’t actually want to be doing it, but you continue. You don’t understand why, you just have to. It happened a few times and I managed to pull it back, but three years ago I crossed a line.”

During his sodden slide towards that demarcation Simon decided to move to Ibiza. If you can call it a decision. “Ibiza was a whim. I was drinking a lot and at a loose end. I didn’t really have a reason to do anything.” He arrived and started doing barbecues for a friend’s villa rental business. This blossomed into his own catering company, Cook Ibiza, and let him to slip into a routine of “drinking, earning money and continuing drinking.”

Ibiza didn’t drive him to drink, he is quick to add, but didn’t stop him either. “Wherever I was in the world at that time, I would have been drinking. But it gave me an excuse to shut a door and drink all day. You can disappear here.”

Parties were, paradoxically, an occasion for restraint, something to grin and bear until he could slip away to drink alone. “Don Simon was my poison,” he says, naming the cheap cardboard-carton plonk beloved of teenage holiday-makers. “At my worst I was drinking six or seven litres a day.” Simon struggled to maintain a social façade but that level of intake damages a man’s impulse control. He was arrested on a drunk driving warrant while trying to check into Es Vive and marched out of the self-styled party hotel in handcuffs. He went on a ten-day binge. “People were scared of what I was doing. I was scared. I had to admit I was really in the shit. I’m an alcoholic.”

Photo: Cila Warncke

Agro Morna’s first overnight guests are due in forty hours. The gardener and handyman pump last week’s rainwater out of the pool, bragging like schoolboys about Amsterdam red light district exploits as they work. A painter wanders out of the house, brush in hand, to bum a smoke. An interior designer who has taken on Morna as a labour of love, scurries past with an armload of sodden sheets and jumpers. Her kids shriek over a DVD. A trio of dogs get noisily underfoot. Simon and his cousin appear laden with the spoils of a last-minute shopping expedition. Unspoken questions crackle in the air: Will everything be ready? Can he pull it off? Is this really happening?

Five days later Simon and I perch on a white outdoor sofa marked with only a few paw prints. Simon’s puppy, Potter, lies alert but sedate at our feet. Sun peeks through a smothering sea fog. The pool gleams David Hockney blue. Guests loll on the terrace, savouring a home-cooked lunch. It is as abrupt and unlikely a transformation as the denoument of a fairytale.

Fourteen months earlier, Simon was in a Bedfordshire rehab clinic, doped on Valium, not sure he intended to stay sober. “I was with a lot of people who didn’t want to be there. All they did was plot how they were going to go drinking when they got out.” A counsellor took him aside and asked if he was going to join that gang, or take his life seriously. He’d already lost half a kidney due to drinking. Alcohol would kill him, probably sooner than later.

Simon wanted to get on with things, but how? In rehab counsellors advised him to take a year off work and concentrate on sobriety. But faced with the option of living in a hostel in London or returning to Ibiza, Simon took a chance on the island: “I thought, it’s time to get on with life.” A catering job at Pikes Hotel was a chance test the waters. It went well. He wasn’t tempted to drink. So he took the plunge and moved. “I didn’t have any expectations. I was happy to be back but it was very day-to-day, work-wise, and going to as many AA meetings as I possibly could.”

Alcoholics Anonymous is the world’s most recognisable anti-addiction brand but sticking with the programme in Ibiza has its challenges. Simon faced practical ones, like getting to meetings despite being banned from driving, and psychological ones, like maintaining a semblance of anonymity on a gossipy little island, but he is adamant about its value. “AA is an amazing fellowship. Anyone who’s in any doubt should get into a room. It’s a lifesaver for me.”

Photo: Cila Warncke

Motivated by sobriety and the family ethos of getting on with it, Simon busied himself with Cook Ibiza. Then a friend invited him to see a house near the northern village of Sant Carles. He went along and surprised himself by signing a 10-year lease to renovate and manage Morna. “I wasn’t looking for it,” he says with a shake of the head. “And couldn’t afford it, but there was something welcoming about the place. It was peaceful.”

Simon is voicing a consensus. Everyone who visits, even those who saw the Agro at its scruffiest, falls in love. It has – along with quantifiable Ibiza charms like olive and almond trees, sublime sunsets, and rustic architecture – an intangible allure. People feel at home. Kids and pets thrive. Its first guests paid it the compliment of immediately booking another visit.

Things are, touch wood, going well but Simon approaches each day knowing the future depends on his resolution. “Sobriety hasn’t been easy. I have to focus on staying sober and knowing that if I do good things will happen.”

This means changing old habits and holding himself to a high standard. “The biggest difference in my life now is trying to do the right thing every day, trying to be as honest and clear as possible. I probably get it about fifty percent right at the moment. There’re some bills I haven’t paid. I’ve been late on things, forgotten things. But it doesn’t sit right with me any more if I’m creating enemies or problems. Whereas before, that’s what I’d do.”

What advice would he give himself if he could go back in time a year?

Simon thinks for a long moment: “I wouldn’t know what to change. Every single thing, every mishap has been part of the jigsaw coming into this. I’m very, very lucky.”

Photo: Cila Warncke
by Cila Warncke

16 – Letting Go of Emotional Baggage

Gradually, my writing moved beyond all music, all the time. There is a heart of darkness in Ibiza’s club world; the shadows got long. It was time to look at things differently. This piece was written for Tiny Buddha. You can read the full article here.

Photo by Waldemar Brandt on Unsplash

“Sometimes the past should be abandoned, yes. Life is a journey and you can’t carry everything with you. Only the usable baggage.” ~Ha Jin

You’ve probably heard of the fear of missing out but what about the fear of letting go?

My father was volatile and mentally unstable. Criticism was his preferred method of communication. As a child and teenager, I learned to keep my thoughts and feelings locked away and became an expert at deflecting personal questions.

Without realizing it, I carried this habit into adulthood, avoiding any talk about my feelings or turning them into a joke. When a friend finally called me on it, the shock of self-recognition quickly turned to resistance. This is who I am, I thought. Why should I change?

I plodded on, working as hard as ever to keep my fortress intact. It wasn’t making me happy yet I wasn’t ready to change.

As I struggled with my desire to cling to hurtful memories and self-defeating behaviors, it dawned on me that I was afraid to let go because defensiveness was part of my identity.

The problem wasn’t that I had baggage—everyone has baggage—but that it had come to define me. I didn’t know who I would be without it. At that point it hit me: I had to dig deep, discover the person I wanted to be, and then act on it.

After I identified that I was holding on to the past because it seemed too important to jettison, I discovered that letting go is harder than it sounds. Relaxing a long-held belief isn’t a one-day, one-week, or even a one-year process. However, it is possible.

Read the rest at Tiny Buddha.

by Cila Warncke

The New Barebacking

I had to go to the village today.

maks

Photo by Kate Trifo on Unsplash

On the short drive to the village a couple of cars passed heading the opposite direction, both drivers wore surgical masks.

In the taxi rank in the village a driver leaned against the hood of his car, mask tucked beneath his chin, smoking.

The receptionist and vet wore blue masks.

The middle-aged man with the shock of dark curly hair who passed me on the sidewalk wore a white N95 mask.

The lady carrying two armloads of groceries wore a mask.

The young dude unlocking his car wore a mask.

 

Barefaced and bare-handed, I felt like a lowlife misfit.

Appearing in public sans mask is the new barebacking. Socially irresponsible, verging on reprehensible.

On arriving home, I decided it was time to buy masks (Amazon orders are delivering a month out, so thanksthefuckverymuch Jeff Bezos, I’m off elsewhere).

covid 1

Covid Photo by pixpoetry on Unsplash

Why the previous reluctance?

Because I don’t want to walk around thinking the next breath is going to kill me, or someone else. For the first time, I have an inkling how some men feel about condom use. Yeah, sure fine it’s the most appropriate thing to do but goddamn it, who wants to experience the world through a prophylactic shield?

Cherry blossoms are out, yellow wands of broom, did I mention the walnut trees are leafing? The air is pristine, sharp and Atlantic-cold. Our neighbor trundles up and down the road in an old red tractor, moving wine-sweet hay bales.

I do not want to touch the world with rubber fingers and breathe through layers of activated carbon. Why the hell would I sign up for that? Why not just lock myself in a sterile box and wait to die?

Okay, it’s not that dramatic but something important is being (has been?) lost in all this. Our sense of touch is already degraded from devoting too much of it to digital screens. We rarely breathe as deeply as we should. This stupid cunning virus is robbing us not just of too many lives but, sneakily, of things that make life worth living.

I’ll probably end up like wearing a mask for the common good (assuming I can beg borrow or steal one) but I refuse to think it is a Good Thing, in a larger sense.

We cannot do without enjoyment, wrote to Jack Gilbert. The ordinary sensual pleasures of filling our lungs and encountering the world through touch are not dispensable.

bench

Photo by Chris Murray on Unsplash

 

 

by Cila Warncke

The Future? Don’t Bet on It

Last year, Chris and I spent Easter week with our dear, long-long-long-standing friends
C & R in Yorkshire. On the edge of the moors. Next door, it transpired, to my ex-boyfriend (who, true to form, was smoking on the front porch as I had my first cup of coffee).

Twelve months ago, someone I’d met and dated in Ibiza turning up next-door in a northern English was cause to murmur, small world.

dav

Yorkshire bluebells

Today, proof of the world’s smallness is inescapable and grim. The ticker-tape death toll mounts, the number of official coronavirus cases races towards two million and even the most fortunate of us hunker at home, waiting for a future that might never happen (that’s cribbed from Mavis Gallant, who wrote exquisitely about societies in meltdown and the delusions they cherish on the way to the flames).

There seems to be a split take on COVID-19. Either, it’s going to usher in hitherto unimaginable era of mutual support and higher consciousness or we’re going to be dragged (resisting or not) back into the machine and crushed between the cogs of resurgent capitalism.

The latter argument is ably made by Julio Vincent Gambuto in his viral Medium piece ‘Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting‘ in which he writes, plausibly:

What is about to be unleashed on American society will be the greatest campaign ever created to get you to feel normal again. It will come from brands, it will come from government… the all-out blitz to make you believe you never saw what you saw. The air wasn’t really cleaner; those images were fake. The hospitals weren’t really a war zone; those stories were hyperbole. The numbers were not that high; the press is lying. You didn’t see people in masks standing in the rain risking their lives to vote. Not in America.

On the chirpier side of the fence is Rebecca Solnit who writes in ‘The impossible has already happened: what the coronavirus can teach us about hope‘ (published last week in the Guardian):

When a storm subsides, the air is washed clean of whatever particulate matter has been obscuring the view, and you can often see farther and more sharply than at any other time. When this storm clears, we may, as do people who have survived a serious illness or accident, see where we were and where we should go in a new light. We may feel free to pursue change in ways that seemed impossible while the ice of the status quo was locked up. We may have a profoundly different sense of ourselves, our communities, our systems of production and our future.

(To be fair, Solnit is no Pollyanna. Most of her longform piece details how fucked things are and how stacked the cards are against people trying to unfuck them.)

It says something about my own wiring that I feel compelled to take sides, to argue the case. Coronavirus has turned me into armchair experts. Like a sad gambler, I stare at screens, watch the numbers, argue my interpretation of the stats, have opinions about things I zero right to opine about (South Korea’s testing policy! Sweden’s schools!)

This impulse has  to do with lack of control. I value knowing things, having well-formed and well-informed ideas. In other words, I’m an instant relic; a creature who belongs to the bigger yet more predictable world that existed before January 2020.

Taking sides, prognosticating, surmising and supposing are ways to pass the time but little more. (Aside: I was listening to a TED en Espanol talk about coronavirus from 16 March; it felt like  listening to a historical reenactment.)

If this pestilent mess proves anything, it’s that opinion is pretty much beside the point.

Still, if I had place a few bob on an outcome, my money is on business as usual with a twist. Advertisers will come after what’s left of our bank accounts, governments will wrangle for the remaining shreds of our civil liberties, global warming will heat back up and we will not turn into kinder, gentler, better versions of ourselves.

Nonetheless, we may be more attuned to the ludicrousness of the situation, and quicker to say so, to complain or resist. I hope so, anyway.

Above all, a year from now, I hope to be with friends somewhere, drinking, breathing fresh air, gossiping about some minor coincidence. That would be a happy ending.