Inspiration Across the Nation

This summer, I am undertaking the administrative task of getting inspired. 

Some people find their inspiration with a paintbrush or in a yoga pose. I find it in writing. Whether on a keyboard or with pen and paper, my best thinking happens as I write. I journal and list and jot and scrawl my way through life, because if I didn't I would have no clue what was happening next. And it is my job, both as a Mom and professionally, to always know what's happening next.

I have spent the last 10 years working as my Dad's administrative assistant, helping him craft his communications. He provides the voice; I provide the words; and together, we say what Southwood needs to say. It's actually been quite the bonding experience for us, most of the time.

With the farm & market, I'm finding my own voice, and am ready to start determining the right words. Hence this summer's project: the Farm & Market Idea Books. We're essentially going to compile the pictures, information and notes that we've amassed over several years of inspiration-gathering. My goal is to present a coherent collection of information that we can flip through, mark up and discuss as we launch into the major step of designing the farm & market facilities this fall.

And of course, we'll continue to seek inspiration this summer, starting with a family vacation to Los Angeles and Disneyland!

Not everything that works in California would work in Oklahoma, of course. But the west coast is so far ahead of us on some of the concepts I'm trying to tap into, I think it'll be beneficial. Plus, I get to take my kids to Disneyland! And Disney has practically trademarked inspiration, so really, I owe it to my work to go there.

This will most likely be my last blog post before I head west. Planning and executing a vacation for a family of four can be an adventure in itself, especially when flights and car rentals and 3-day park hopper passes are involved. Next time you hear from me, I will be several pairs of Mickey ears and  many exciting ideas richer.

Yodeling and Planning

Like any good retailer, we at Southwood take frequent and thoughtful looks at our sales numbers. These numbers apparently used to be handwritten into ledgers, but nowadays they come in multi-colored graphs and charts. One such document found in our email inboxes (because we're trying to go green and not print as much) is the Three Year Sales Average.

If you were looking at this graph without trying to read the numbers, which are in an approximiately 4-point font, it would resemble a picture of a very tall mountain peak with a shorter and more rounded hill beside it. Those are Mt. Spring Season and Fall-Plus-Christmas-Decor Hill. If a driving rain or big storm has wiped out a spring weekend, Mt. Spring Season has multiple peaks. The higher the peak, the happier we are, but the more we feel like we have just climbed a mountain when the season is finished.

If one were to make awesome use of those graphs, and add a yodeling mountain climber a-la "The Price is Right" Cliffhanger Game, he would be on his way downhill right now, having traversed the ascent and peak. Summer is a quiet time at Southwood, when we catch our breath, water the plants and assess the all-important spring season in the Garden Center. It's also when we launch into the tasks we hope to accomplish before we circle around and start climbing the mountain again.

Every year, in early June, we pull out our strategic plans, to-do lists and goals spreadsheets (those would be Ginny's) and decide what projects to tackle. This year, I'm all about the market. Joe and I have set up an office there, hauled some of the kids' toys there, and otherwise prepared ourselves to camp out there this summer. Our intent is to take care of the garden, generate data for the vegetable trails and define our vision for the project. I have already labeled four binders: Programs, Marketing, Infrastructure and Farms/Techniques. By the time school starts, I hope to have them filled.

We have visited - and will continue to visit - farms, markets, museums, zoos, restaurants and retailers. We have amassed a bin full of the papers they distribute. We have taken hundreds of pictures of fencing, roofs, animal pens, vegetable gardens, store displays, marketing pieces, bee hives, hay bale mazes, and everything in between. In fact, if you've seen something awesome that you think we should put in those notebooks, Email Them To Me!

So here's what the place looks like in May 2012. Let the changing begin.

First crops of tomatoes, peppers, onions and herbs are in the ground and starting to produce.

The house has been remodeled as an education center with a demonstration kitchen.
It occurs to me that I should take some pictures of the inside, too. I'll get right on that.

The farm is pretty and green, a blank slate to create something that will serve the community while preserving its beauty.

And last but not least, Audrey and Catherine running towards me on our front lawn.
They are so healthy and fit. I hope this project will keep them that way forever.

Make Your Neuroses Work For You!

The great thing about having a mental illness is that you get to go to spend a lot of time with psychologists. It's a sometimes thin silver lining, I'll admit, but talk therapy is actually a very healing process. It requires a lot of work on the part of the patient, up to and including a full-on lifestyle change. But any type of therapy is more difficult than a pharmaceutical approach, and it is more often than not the key to recovery.

Unfortunately, there is still a huge stigma here in middle America against mental illness. People don't talk about clinical depression, or bipolar disorder, or obsessive compulsive disorder, openly in public. They don't have 5K runs or benefit fundraisers for anxiety research. As a result, people are considerably less aware of the mental health problem consuming our country right now.

It's an illness - just like cancer, or diabetes, or heart disease. The chemistry of your brain literally changes, causing short circuits in normal thought processes. And it is often lethal. People who commit suicide or homicide, or who overdose while self-medicating, often have undiagnosed or untreated mental illness.

Even those deaths are stigmatized, assumed to be the result of a character flaw or personal failing. Yes, bad choices are involved. But the same could be said for a 30-year smoker who dies of lung cancer or the 400 lb. man who collapses from cardiac arrest. And sometimes, there are no apparent bad choices - a person who eats right and exercises and makes great choices gets cancer and dies. The same is true of mental illness and its fatalities. Sometimes all the therapy and medicine in the world can't make it better.

I can't explain what it's like to be in the depths of a depressive episode, any more than a person with cancer could explain the experience to someone who hasn't been there. It is debilitating. I have lost years of my life to depression, and my physical health has suffered tremendously as well.

Unlike cancer, there is no accepted definition of remission from mental illnesses like anxiety or depression. It's more like heart disease or diabetes. Once you have it, you always have to control it, and the best way to do that is with genuine lifestyle changes. Pills can mask the symptoms, and get your neurons firing the right direction again, but if you really want to make yourself better, your whole program has to change.

What that entails is looking at yourself and acknowledging your bad habits. And then, instead of beating yourself up over them and using them as an excuse to quit trying, you have to go through the physical process of  replacing those bad habits with good habits. I am somewhere in the middle of that process.

And that, to make a long story longer, is why I'm building this farm and market. My goal is to make it a place where good habits come to thrive. And hopefully, in the process, I can contribute to the greater good of addressing the awfulness that is mental illness. And cancer. And diabetes. And heart disease.

 And to Dr. Miramar Garcia Cohn: You saved my life. Thanks.