CoffeeJitters » Sanity

Letting go of the illusion of control

Judy Schwartz Haley — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 06:00:54 +0000

I like to think of myself as having superpowers. My favorite superpower is the ability to make things go away by not believing they are true. I’ve had a lot of practice using this superpower; I was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer while I was still breastfeeding my baby.

That was practice using this superpower, but no success.

One of the first things that hits you over the head with a cancer diagnosis, after confronting your mortality, is the understanding that you are not in control. Control is an illusion. This is a very difficult concept around which to wrap your brain.

We’re constantly bombarded with messages about how we are in control. Make a plan and execute it. Just do it. We are the product of our own choices. Metaphors abound: in the drivers seat, steer the ship, drive to success, master of your domain (giggle, snort – if you got this Seinfeld reference, you’re old like me).

There is a lot of truth in these ideas. We are the product of our own choices – to an extent. But there is so much we can not control. The child with neuroblastoma did nothing to deserve that disease. They did not earn it. Neither did I.

For all this time we spend juggling – super-moms with all their balls in the air at the same time – we also live with this fear that one dropped ball will bring them all down. If we miss a ball, a deadline, a dental appointment, 50,000-mile maintenance check, the world will keep on spinning whether we pick up the peices and run to rejoin the party, or throw our hands up in the air in defeat.

Some of the balls are going to drop.

I worried so much after my diagnosis: How am I going to effectively parent my child, keep up the house, finish my degree, and battle this disease? I realized that I could not keep all those balls in the air. I made a choice. I decided that parenting and health were my priorities, housekeeping would get attention as I had any to spare, and I took a leave of absence from school. A year later my daughter is happy and healthy as she enters her twos, I’m nearly done with treatment though still battling fatigue, my hair is starting to grow back, and in January I returned to school full time. But, my house is still a mess.

I’m still making choices about my priorities. My house still isn’t winning.

Martha Stewart has a large staff of well paid employees that help her pull off all that magic. I don’t have to be Martha Stewart, and most of us have no hope of having a large, well paid staff to make us look good. What you see is what you get. It’s just me, Baby. Lovable. Imperfect. Flawed. With mutant genes running amok.

I don’t want to give you the impression that I’ve got this fatalist attitude where there’s not much sense in trying because there is no hope of success. I don’t believe that at all. I try. I work my butt off. I pour blood, sweat, and tears into motherhood, and everything else I do. But I’m learning to distinguish between the things I can control, and the things I can’t.

I can control whether I provide a quiet time and space for my daughter to take a nap
I can not control whether she goes to sleep

I can control the amount and quality of the food that I eat, and I can control the amount and quality of my exercize.
I can not control my weight

I can control my own reactions to my toddler’s behavior, and I can control whether she has been fed, and provided ample opportunity to play and rest.
I can not control whether she has a meltdown in public

I can provide sufficient towels and a bath mat
I can not control whether my husband soaks the bathroom floor when he gets out of the shower

I can fight like hell, do everything prescribed, and more
I can not control whether this cancer comes back

Life got so much easier when I stopped trying to unbelieve what I didn’t want to be true. I can’t control whether or not I have cancer, I can only control my reaction to that fact. A huge burden lifted when I stopped trying to control things over which I had no control. I can’t control everything. I don’t need to control everything. The fact that I don’t control everything doesn’t make me less of a person, less of a woman, less of a mother. It makes me human. It makes me vulnerable. It makes me brave and scared at the same time. It makes me real. And it makes me more empathetic to everyone else around me.

Sometimes, the best things in life are unplanned. Usually, the worst things in life are unplanned. Either way, survival, thriving, requires the ability to adapt. In order to incorporate this new reality into my life, I’ve got to accept it. The more time I spend thinking it just can’t be true, trying to control the uncontrollable, the longer it takes to find a way to make the best of the situation.

I used to work for a cruise/tour company that was smaller, and a bit more intimate than most. This gave us the flexibility to chase rabbit trails, and make impromptu itinerary changes to take advantage of opportunities as mother nature provided. The director used to say “we have an itinerary so we have something from which to deviate.” That’s a little closer to the way I live my life these days. I make plans and set goals, I work towards them, but I try to stay flexible enough to change as necessary. That helps with crisis management; it also makes it possible to savor rainbows, and jump on opportunities as they arise as well.

This week, the girls at SITS are discussing perfection and the art of letting go. Join the conversation (Linky included). We’re also using #SITSLettingGo on Twitter.

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Not Now

Judy Schwartz Haley — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 23:53:03 +0000

I get so tired of New Age Gurus and other “Experts” telling me I have to focus on the present. My memories are a great source of joy; they also contain the lessons I’ve learned that make me who I am today. The future is my goal, it’s why I endure today.

Because, let’s face it: sometimes NOW sucks. Sometimes it’s downright unbearable.

If I focused only on the present, I wouldn’t endure the hives that come with exercise. If now was all that mattered, I’d eat chocolate all day. I wouldn’t be taking classes required for graduation in subjects that don’t interest me. I wouldn’t have the goal of graduating. I’d never take the potential hangover into consideration when opening, or finishing, a bottle of wine. I’d spend my rent money on airfare to Hawaii, or France, or Greece.

If I lived only for the moment, I wouldn’t have gone through chemotherapy.

If I lived my life in the now, I likely wouldn’t have a family. My marriage started with the idea of the two of us spending the rest of our lives together. You have to look ahead to make those kinds of dreams. I would also be repeating the same mistakes over and over, because learning from those mistakes requires looking back.

I realize that there may be a time at the end of life when now is all I have. I’ll take that when I get there. Until then, I will continue to enjoy my memories, and reach for my goals.

I’m not opposed to embracing the moment. I’ve written about how my daughter gave me the gift of now. It’s important to live in the present, but it has it’s time and place. We need a balance. Each moment of our lives must be informed by our past, and driven by our dreams and goals for the future. Otherwise we’re just stagnant hedonists, and that’s just pathetic.

Dear Gem – Month 23

Judy Schwartz Haley — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 03:42:36 +0000

Today is the one year anniversary of my cancer diagnosis. This is actually a big day for me. It’s the anniversary of the day my life was turned inside out, and it has put me on a wild emotional roller coaster ride. Thinking about this cancerversary has eaten up all my energy and focus lately – right in the middle of midterms for my school and due dates for my other writing projects, as well as finals for daddy’s school, and his preparation for teaching classes next quarter, and all the other urgencies and emergencies we tackle day after day. Here we are less than two weeks away from your second birthday, and I’m just now getting around to writing this letter for your 23rd month. I haven’t even started planning your birthday party.

Don’t go thinking you are being neglected. You are by far the best part of my day – the one I will drop everything for, no matter what.

But it’s important to know that there are times when life is like this. There are times when everything seems to be coming at you from all different directions, right while you’re dealing with an emotionally heavy load, and you just can’t seem to get anything done. Forget everything, it’s hard to accomplish even one thing. It’s hard to focus; when you react to one urgency, 3 more show up right away from other arenas. You bounce from crisis to crisis, putting out fires without ever touching those all important items on your to do list…

Yup, everybody has days like that. It’s part of the human condition.

That is the most important thing to know about this situation. That when you are overwhelmed like this, you are not alone. Everyone else has been there, they know what it feels like. The details may differ, but the everything-all-at-once-ness of it is universal.

Lately, you’ve taken to holding your little hand up, palm out, and telling me to “Stop” when things aren’t going quite the way you think they should. I’m not quite sure where you got that from, it’s not something that I do, but that idea might be right where you need to start in order to get through a situation like this. Well, without the hand gesture. Most grownups don’t respond very well to that particular gesture. But take a minute. Stop everything. You might even need to tell people that unless someone is bleeding or on fire, you need 5, or 10, or 50 uninterrupted minutes to sort things out. Lock yourself in a closet if you have to, and take some time for yourself.

Taking a long walk is also a great option, if you’re in a place where you can do that. An outdoors walk is best. Yoga is also a great option for releasing nervous energy and helping you regain focus.

Then once you’ve expended a good bit of that nervous energy, come back and pull out a notepad and start writing. Write whatever. Anything and everything that comes into your head. Just dump it all. Let it all out. I call this the brain dump. I got the idea from the Artist’s Way, where you start each day with writing time. The idea is that all these little stressful bits and pieces of everything that you’re carrying around with you are keeping you from connecting with your creativity. While I don’t necessarily do pages every day in the morning, I do agree with the general idea. I find that all that crap floating around in my brain gets in the way of my productivity as well. So just empty your brain onto the page. Shred the pages when you’re done if you like, this is for you and no one else. You’re just clearing your head of all the noise and static.

Now you can start writing your to do list and prioritizing items. This whole process could be done in half an hour or less, but would likely be more effective if you invested a little more time.

Of course this wont make all those emergencies go away. But it will help you dodge, parry, duck, or deal with all the crap that comes flying at you.

I went through that process myself today, and as a result, I’ve decided that your birthday party is not going to happen in March. And since I have a conference and finals in April, it might even be later. I suppose we could just cancel the party altogether, but I do love getting all our friends and family together, and it doesn’t happen very often. I have also been looking forward to using your birthday party as an opportunity to say thank you to all the people who have been so supportive of us through this entire cancer ordeal (and I can’t bear the thought of missing one of your birthday parties). I still don’t know what I’m going to do as far as that is concerned. I just know I’m not going to put the time and energy into a party for this month.

I have already started rounding up and just telling people you are two years old. There’s a part of me that resists this still, but you are behaving like a two year old. Yes, the temper tantrums, and the back arching, and the constant testing of boundaries, but also a more sophisticated sense of humor, you can count to ten, know all of the letters, and draw these amazing little smiley faces.

We’ve had a rough, and very busy month. You even had your first Emergency Room visit with a significant fever and cold. But we got through it all, and we had a lot of laughs, too.

You bring so much joy to our lives. I’ve had a very difficult year, but there has not been one day since you were born where you did not brighten and improve my day.

I love you so much.

Mommy

Get Your Ducks In A Row

Judy Schwartz Haley — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 07:57:47 +0000

Every single one of my New Years Resolutions have already been derailed, in the first six weeks of the year.

My resolutions weren’t anything revolutionary or out of the ordinary. Not even all that difficult really, with the exception of that 33 grams of fat thing (multiple sources recommending this as a means of preventing a cancer re-run). That one is REALLY difficult.

Exercise daily
Become skilled at yoga
Keep daily fat intake under 33 grams per day
Eat 7-9 servings of vegetables per day
Take at least one picture every day
Get my house organized, and keep it looking nice

So what’s going on? Why can’t I stay on track with these relatively simple and straightforward changes? Well, aside from the fact that I’m a full time student, and I have a toddler that climbs on me like a monkey all her waking hours, and I’m still recovering from 2nd degree radiation burns over half my torso, I’ve had a few writing gigs lately as well as some other opportunities to learn and gain experience doing exactly what I want to do for a living. Mama’s been a little busy. Maybe, for starters, I over-committed myself. Maybe I need to give myself a break.

So what to cut? Most of the items on the list above are recommended to prevent a recurrence; the house, well that just needs to get done. Obviously I can drop the picture a day idea, but that leaves 5 things – major changes for a 15-hours-a-day-on-the-computer-while-eating-junk-food type of girl like me. Bear in mind that the vast majority of the computer time is spent on school.

I read a wonderful article a few weeks ago about creating sustainable change in our everyday lives. I really wish I could remember where I read it; I would give the author some link love here. The article stated that in order to make a real and lasting change, we need to make one change at a time, make it really stick, before adding the next change. Over the course of the year, devoting 6 weeks or more to each individual change, we can create sustainable change in several areas with a much higher degree of success than the “I’m going to change everything all at once” approach.

Change is not something you do once and then get on with your life. It takes practice. You fall down and then you get back up again. Over and over and over and over again.

So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to decide to make a change, but I’m not going to change everything at once. I’m starting with the eating 7-9 servings of vegetables per day, and if I don’t hit my goal one day, I’ll keep trying the next day. Once I’ve built a practice of eating vegetables, I’ll add working out every day. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to exercise between now and when I start working on that resolution, it just means that the focus on habit building for that particular change will be delayed.

I’m still a bit overwhelmed by the amount of kitchen time eating that many vegetables will take. I’m now accepting applications for volunteer prep cooks if you’re interested in chopping vegetables.

Cancer and Marriage

Judy Schwartz Haley — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 01:19:19 +0000

A marriage takes a lot of work; so does keeping a day job (or going to school), maintaining a home, and raising children. When you have cancer, there are times when the fight for your life takes more work than all of the above combined.

Since my diagnosis, I have been reaching out to women with cancer, both in the real world and online. One of the things that has surprised me the most is the number of relationships that have dissolved post diagnosis. It’s not one or two, it’s a lot.

Cancer adds a lot of stress to a marriage.

Every story is different. In some cases it was the person with cancer who left; in others, it was the co-survivor (what we call the spouse or partner of the person with cancer). They are all wildly different stories, and come from people leading different lives: from all different parts of the world, rich, poor, educated, uneducated, religious, non-religious. It’s tempting to be judgmental, but only the people in that relationship truly know their story. Let’s not pass judgment.

I’ve only been married for 6 years. I’ve only been married once. I’m not a marriage counselor. I don’t profess to have any special knowledge that would help others prevent or reverse marriage trouble, but I’ve witnessed a few things, experienced a few things, and had a few thoughts.

National statistics tell us that roughly half of all marriages in this country end in divorce. Those statistics are silent on the issue of cancer. Every relationship has its issues, and cancer doesn’t make those issues go away. In fact, there are times when cancer amplifies them. Cancer has a way of amplifying everything.

The one thing that has helped me maintain my sanity and perspective throughout this cancer ordeal is membership in a support group. I belong to the Young Survival Coalition which provides support for young women with breast cancer.

Our discussions in group are confidential, but I can tell you that at times they deal with issues in our relationships. A phrase came out at one of the meetings, and we’ve all been loving it and using it since: “You don’t go to the hardware store to get bread.” That one little phrase has been of immense help to me.

I love my husband. He is one of the most amazing people I have ever met. But I don’t expect him to be my everything. I have other people in my life: my daughter, my family, my friends, my support group. They all fill different roles, and provide support in different ways. And when I don’t expect my husband to fill the role of one of my girl friends, we get along much better. One of my friends in the support group told me: “We’ll be your bakery.”

When I unload in the group (where it is expected and appropriate) instead of unloading on my husband, we get along much better. That’s not to say I don’t tell my husband everything. He pretty much hears it all, but it’s not all at once. It’s not a deluge of problems and issues that I dump in his lap the moment he walks in the door. It’s not a bitch and whine session. It’s not constant complaining. I’ve already gotten that out of my system – dumped on the support group that completely understands what I’m going through. I already got my bread, so when I tell my husband what’s going through my head, or through my body, I can say things without that whiny tone in my voice or unrealistic expectations.

Does this have anything at all to do with the relationships that broke up? Maybe. Maybe not. I have no idea. Every relationship is different. Every person is different. This is just what helped me. Having a support group helps me be a better partner in our relationship. Believe it or not, I think practicing jiu-jitsu helps my husband be a better partner in our relationship. I’m sure other people have completely different activities that help them approach their relationship with more patience, compassion, and understanding.

I wish love, patience, compassion, and understanding could make a marriage bulletproof.

A cancer diagnosis teaches you not to take things for granted: your life, your health, your breasts, your hair. I’m adding relationships to that list.

For a more encouraging look at marriage and cancer, read my post The Promise.

Box of Colors

Judy Schwartz Haley — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 01:37:55 +0000

Today is 10/10/10 and I spent a good portion of it coloring.

With crayons.

In a coloring book.

It surprised me how much I enjoy coloring.

It is so calming to spend a few minutes moving a crayon across the paper. I especially love coloring books; I don’t even have to think of what to draw, I just relax and turn off my brain for a few minutes. And I’m so happy afterward.

I really need to do this more often.

What brings you joy?

P.S. I still think that white crayon is mostly useless.

Imperfect is the new perfect

Judy Schwartz Haley — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:26:54 +0000

Reflections of Motherhood

For all you moms and future moms out there, this clip is amazing. Worth taking the 4 minutes to watch.

If you could go back to right before the birth of your first child, what would you tell yourself?

Walkthrough of chemo day for a cancer patient

Judy Schwartz Haley — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 23:53:20 +0000

Ever wondered what a day of chemotherapy was like for a cancer patient? I thought I’d bring you along today, and give you a snapshot of what cancer treatment looks like. I hope its helpful to the newly diagnosed. Obvious disclaimer: of course, every patient’s treatment is different, and each cancer treatment center is different.

6:00 AM
Alarm goes off. I’m supposed to get up and take my pills. I’m on a new type of chemo that requires me to take a pill 12 hours, 6 hours, and 1 hour before the chemo infusion starts (the first pill was taken care of last night). I hit the snooze button.

Again.

And again.

7:00 AM
Actually get out of bed and take the pill. Oops. Time to get the baby and myself ready to go.

7:45 AM
Mom shows up to take us in for treatment. She even packed me a lunch for my long day. Thanks Mom.

8:15 AM
I arrive at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. Mom takes the baby with her for the day. Check in for Port Access. (Instead of having an IV put in every time I go in, I have a port that is installed under the skin near my left collarbone. I know a lot of people hate having the port, but I love it. It’s so much nicer than the IVs and for some reason, getting an IV going on me is really difficult.) After the port access is installed I go around for the rest of the day with these tubes dangling from my chest.

Break into moms lunch while I’m waiting.

9:30 AM
Blood draw for MUGA scan (Multi Gated Acquisition Scan). They take my blood, make it radioactive, and later they will return it to me, then they can track the blood as it makes its way through my heart to determine it’s efficiency. Several of the agents in my chemo are known to cause some heart damage to a small percentage of patients. This scan is scheduled periodically to determine how well my heart is handling the chemo, and whether we need to make any adjustments. This isn’t part of my normal chemo routine.

waiting . . .

10:05 AM
The machine that does the MUGA scan is a long narrow bed (generous term) with an arm holding a 2″x2″ tablet that looks something like a small film holder for an x-ray machine. When I lay down, the radiologist attached leads and wires to my abdomen and chest, then another tech came in and they both verified that the blood they are giving back to me, now radioactive, actually belongs to me. The the treated blood goes back in through the port. Then she covered me up with a warmed blanket, they have blanket warmers all over the place here and they are really good about making sure you don’t catch a chill. After covering me up, she help up a wide vinyl loop to stick my arms through so I could relax them and wouldn’t have to hold them in the air at my side throughout the test. Seriously, when I say a long narrow bed, I mean maybe a foot and a half wide, not enough room to rest your arms at your side. The radiologist positions the tablet just above, but not touching, my chest. Then it’s a matter of just laying still for a long time, repositioning the tablet to get another angle, repeat… you get the picture. No pain, just boring laying there and trying not to move – plus I had a bit of a cough, and it was really frustrating trying not to cough.

10:50
Stop by the pharmacy to pick up a prescription – to be honest, it’s a refill of the pills I’m supposed to take 1 hour before chemo because I forgot them at home. I’m really on a roll today. I’m blaming it on chemo brain.

11:00 AM
Take the pills and meet with my Oncologist’s nurse, Martha. I usually meet with either the nurse or the doctor before each infusion. We discuss my symptoms and any questions I might have. I confess I took my pill late this morning, she said it’s no problem at all, I just needed to get the pill in the general time frame. She also said that my blood counts are awesome (yay me!), and my heart is operating well within normal parameters. That’s what I like to hear.

11:30 AM
Check in for my chemo infusion. They give me a pager like the kind you get at restaurants while you’re waiting for a table.

11:50 AM
Pager goes off and I head back to my chemo room (Bay 39 this time) and get settled in. I follow my nurse around, so the bay I’m in depends on the section she’s working in. Joy is so awesome I’d happily sit on a speed bump in the parking lot if that’s what it took to have her do my infusions. Joy orders my meds and then we compare notes on our babies while we wait for the meds to show up (ok, not the whole time, she did check on her other patients).

12:30 PM
Start Herceptin infusion through the port.

Today’s lineup:

12:45 PM
The husband finally arrives. Yay! He tries to be here with me for most of this stuff, but he had a critical class this morning, and I really prefer that he not miss his classes.

2:20 PM
Benadryl and Zantac, pill form. Zofran pushed into the line in the port by hand. These are premeds to help prevent nausea and help prevent an allergic reaction. Now we are getting ready start the real chemo: Taxol. Another nurse came in to verify that the meds and the patient both match the Doctor’s orders. They don’t do this for every single medication, just the really big guns. The nurse also puts on a plastic apron, with full length sleeves and wrist cuffs, before handling these really harsh meds.

2:50 PM
Sent The Husband to procure treats from the Infusion Unit kitchen: specifically mac’n'cheese, and chocolate ice cream. Please no lectures on health food, it’s chemo day.

nearly 3:00 PM
The Husband returned with the ice cream and tortellini with pesto, they were out of the mac’n'cheese. Totally appropriate substitution.

play around online for several hours . . .

6:45 PM
Zoladex: this is a little pellet that is inserted into my abdomen with a needle. The lidocaine shot they give me before hand hurts more than this shot. Then the port is removed and I get a little bandage, and we head out of the building where mom and the baby have arrived to give us a ride home.

Symptoms: The first evening of chemo I usually feel great. The meds they have been giving me to combat nausea are awesome, almost no nausea at all. The biggest side effect for me has been fatigue. It’s just really hard to stay awake sometimes, or to get off the couch at any time. It sounds counter-intuitive, but exercise does help with fatigue. Generally the symptoms accumulate through the course of the week. Tuesday is more foggy than Monday: Thursday and Friday I’m much more exhausted than Wednesday. It’s interesting that there is such a long (several days) delay between getting the chemo and when the symptoms hit their peak. I’m curious to see how my symptoms will change with the Taxol. Many people I’ve met say the Taxol was easier for them to tolerate than the AC I was on before, although there were a few that had a more difficult time. I’ll report back next week with an update.

And for those of you who have been anxious to see a picture of my bald head:

If you have any questions about cancer, treatment, symptoms, side effects, or how I’m dealing with it all, please feel free to ask in the comments. I’m happy to answer questions.

And if there is anyone out there who has just been diagnosed with cancer, I hope this post will be helpful for you. Hang in there. Bear in mind that every treatment plan is different, and everyone experiences and tolerates their treatment different. I found that most of the worst case scenarios my imagination conjured up were much worse than the reality when I finally faced it. I hope the same is true for you. Best Wishes.

Update

Retail Therapy: “I’m a little teapot…”

Judy Schwartz Haley — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 08:06:33 +0000

I ran away to the mall a couple days ago. Everything was coming at me from every direction and I was in need of some retail therapy. Problem is, I have neither time nor money at the moment. Then I somehow silenced the nagging “you don’t have time for this…” long enough to find myself at a part of the mall populated by baby stores.

I’ve been trying very hard to avoid spending my money on baby stuff. I know the time will come when I have no choice, but now is not the time. We’re moving and we’re broke. If I’m going to spend any money I need to spend it on things we really need, like a stroller or diapers or one of those blue bulb thingies you shove up the baby’s nose to get the snot out.

This is not the kind of thing I need to be spending my money on:

I don’t believe I’ve mentioned this before, but I collect teapots – but a $79 teapot lamp… It took my breath away. I stopped to take a picture of it in the store and I don’t do that. I just sat there and looked at it for quite a while. It’s so impractical. But I love it.

Finally I tore myself away and poked around a little longer until I found the one thing that there was no way I would be able to leave the store without.

A stuffed teapot. On sale. $5.

I foresee a future full of tea parties.

This is my contribution to Candid Carrie’s Friday Foto Finish Fiesta

Gifts and Stuff

Judy Schwartz Haley — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 15:12:46 +0000

We’re in the middle of packing up our apartment to move. (Yes, we’ll be moving in the middle of my third trimester. I suspect whichever highly paid university administrator that came up with the ‘pregnant students must move from married housing to family housing in the third trimester’ policy has not actually been pregnant.)

Being in the middle of packing to move makes one take close look at all the accumulated stuff. A lot of this stuff was received as gifts. Gifts are a funny thing. We spend a lot of time and money trying to figure out what the perfect gift is for someone else but our ability to hit the mark with a good gift depends largely on how well we know the person, and how well we are able to get over our assumptions about that person to really see what they really want or need. Ever received a gift from someone you’ve known and loved and felt like you needed to go reintroduce yourself?

I’ve also had several holiday seasons where I’ve been able to pin down the perfect gift for several on my list, yet got down to the wire for other people on my list and ended up just giving them whatever I could find. Sucks for me as the giver, and then the receiver is left holding on to something that their not sure if it’s ok if they just throw it away because, ew, not so much something I want, but thanks anyways. This is of course after you paid too much money for it in the first place and then paid to ship it across the country.

Gah! Gift giving can be frustrating at times. It’s even more frustrating when you don’t have any money. Well actually in that case, you can just not give anything to anyone. But half the fun of Christmas is picking out that perfect gift. I love the feeling when you find the perfect gift for someone. But you can’t give a gift to just one family member and then just leave everyone else hanging. Still frustrating.

My husband and I have been giving each other non-tangible gifts for years; one year it was a whale watching trip, another a day on a sailboat…. There is quite a large Waste Free Holiday movement here in the Seattle area, many vendors even offer discounts for their non-tangible gifts. There are a lot of great ideas including: dance lessons, sporting events, cinematography classes, spa days, concerts and dinners out. Unfortunately, these are not cheap gifts; a ride in a hot air balloon can run $200 per person, and while I can give a certificate for an eye brow wax for $18, that’s not exactly an appropriate gift for most on my list.

So what about you? Have you come up with any ideas for inexpensive gifts that will be actually useful and valued rather than just an accumulation of stuff?