WELCOME TO OUR BLOG
Welcome to the SevenPonds.com blog – a community-driven extension of SevenPonds.com! I hope you find comfort and community in the resources and stories featured here. I’m always happy to hear from readers and can be reached at suzette@sevenponds.com.
FEATURED
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Rutgers Health Study May Improve End-of-Life Care:
Medicare data analysis finds that people typically follow one of nine paths -
Mary Oliver’s “Heavy” Speaks to the Weight of Grief:
The poet eloquently conveys the dizzying effect of loss -
Did Our Ancestors Leave Behind a Map of the Afterlife?:
Archaeological discoveries suggest link between ancient monuments and burial sites
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Happy Hanukkah from SevenPonds
Wishing you and your loved ones a wonderful, joyful holiday season
Posted in Inside SevenPonds
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“Let winter come and live fully inside you, so that you can retrace the loving path of heartbreak that brought you here.”
- David Whyte
Posted in A Rite of Passage
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Pink Floyd’s Tribute Song to Syd Barrett’s Life “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” Still Shines
A song written to honor the life, mental health struggles and death of former Pink Floyd front man, Syd Barrett
There is no better song to remember a loved one by than the masterpiece send-off that is Pink Floyd’s “Shine on You Crazy Diamond.” The nine-part composition was written by Roger Waters, Richard Wright and David Gilmour and appears on the 1975 album “Wish You Were Here,” which also features a song of the same name. Both “Wish You Were Here” and “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” are songs about death and loss, with the latter explicitly written for former band member Syd Barrett, who struggled with mental illness and later died of pancreatic cancer.
The 26-minute song, broken up into two parts on the album, is primarily instrumental with cosmic undertones and roaring bluesy guitar solos. Starting with a haunting opening built solely on instrumentals, “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” is an out-of-body experience brought forth by a Hammond organ and wineglass harp sounding off in the background.
It is the vocals that really make this classic rock song perfect for a memorial service. The opening lyrics reference the vigor of childhood and the colorful life that has since gone by. The brilliance of the past is now lost to the present, where eyes are likened to black holes in the sky. This specific metaphor might be referencing Syd Barrett’s actual death or his long-term struggle with mental illness.
Remember when you were young?
You shone like the sun
Shine on, you crazy diamondNow there’s a look in your eyes
Like black holes in the sky
Shine on, you crazy diamondYou were caught in the cross fire
Of childhood and stardom
Blown on the steel breezeCome on, you target for faraway laughter
Come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr, and shine!
“Shine on You Crazy Diamond,” like most Pink Floyd songs, is a musical journey. Through sparse words and powerful classic rock melodies, the song shares the story of one man’s mortal habitat, his glories and his pains. It pays tribute to Barrett’s life and death and, in doing so, pays tribute to all of us who live and die and reminds us that even in death, our loved ones can, indeed, shine on.
Posted in Expressive Music
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Scientists Reverse Aging in Cells in Two New Studies
Hyperbaric oxygen treatments and enzyme blocking may hold the key to combatting age-related diseases
Two recent studies have introduced scientific advancements that successfully reversed the aging process in cells. Researchers at Tel Aviv University and Shamir Medical Center in Israel found that hyperbaric oxygen treatments can stop and even reverse aging in blood cells. In a separate study, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology developed a method to renew aged skin cells.
The aging process — and many of the diseases that come with it — are caused in part by the shortening of telomeres (protective caps on chromosomes) and the buildup of old cells. These two processes have been the focus of age-reversal research in the past. However, the methods used in some previous studies were seen to impair tissue regeneration and possibly cause malignant transformation, leading to cancer.
Skin Cells Renewed by Blocking Enzyme
Scientists at KAIST conducted a study using skin fibroblasts (skin cells responsible for healing wounds) and skin-equivalent tissue (bio-engineered tissue used in laboratory research). They targeted molecules involved in cell aging and found that blocking an enzyme called PDK1 allowed non-functioning cells to return to the cell cycle, essentially reversing the aging process. The restored fibroblasts were still able to repair wounds effectively without malignant transformation.
“Our research opens the door for a new generation that perceives aging as a reversible biological phenomenon,” said KAIST’s Professor Kwang-Hyun Cho in an article on the institute’s website. The researchers believe that the study may even have implications for cancer research, as the gene for PDK1 is overexpressed in some cancers.
High-Pressure Oxygen Reverses Aging in Blood Cells
Researchers at Tel Aviv University and the Shamir Medical Center used hyperbaric oxygen treatments to reverse aging in blood cells. The study was conducted on 35 healthy participants aged 64 or older over a period of three months, with each participant receiving 60 treatments. Blood samples taken before, during, and after the treatments showed that two of the major processes behind aging were reversed: The telomeres actually lengthened, and the aged cell buildup decreased significantly.
Hyperbaric oxygen treatments involve delivering pure oxygen at high pressure, which causes tissues to absorb more oxygen than normal. Previous studies have examined other effects of hyperbaric oxygen treatments, such as cognitive enhancement and stem cell proliferation, but the TAU study is the first to look at its implications for reversing the aging process.
Achieving age reversal on a cellular level is still a far cry from stopping or slowing that process for an entire body. Still, these recent advances point to an encouraging future for the science of aging. These studies have brought us closer to understanding the processes behind our physical and mental deterioration as we age.
Posted in Science of Us
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My Mother Died When I Was Seven
Her bowling ball was all I had to remind me of her, so why did I leave it in the desert?
This is the story of Cara as written by her. Our “Opening Our Hearts” stories are based on people’s real-life experiences. By sharing these experiences publicly, we hope to help our readers feel less alone in their grief and, ultimately, to aid them in their healing process. In this post, Cara writes about some of what she knows — and doesn’t know — about her mother, Jo Ann, who died when Cara was 7 years old.
My mother died when I was 7. I didn’t know she killed herself until much later, but that’s another story. This wasn’t her first attempt, and she didn’t want to die. She just didn’t want it to hurt anymore. That’s all any of us wants, when you get down to it.
I grew up not knowing much about her. My dad told stories about things they did together, but he didn’t tell me about her personality, her sense of humor, her reasons for loving her favorite things. I haven’t asked him why he didn’t (yet). Probably some version of “it hurt too much.”
But I always knew a few details. My mother was a nurse, and a good one. She loved horses and loved to draw. She liked to eat the pith on oranges. When my dad and his brother set up target practice in the backyard, she was a remarkably good shot even her first time firing a rifle.
Her custom bowling ball taught me I have the same hands she did … My two fingers and thumb fit the 12 pounds of marbled plastic like they were mine.
But, for years I didn’t know she loved to sing, or that she was deeply uncomfortable having her picture taken. I didn’t know that she was shorter than me; she was my sister’s height, actually. I had no idea she was funny — or a thousand other things.
Her custom bowling ball taught me I have the same hands she did. I started borrowing it while dating my high school boyfriend; sometimes we went bowling with his friends, who became my friends. My two fingers and thumb fit the twelve pounds of marbled plastic like they were mine.
Before I was born, my parents bowled enough that they bought custom bowling balls, their initials engraved near the holes. His was blue and hers was brown, like their eyes. A young married couple in the late 1970s, spending Saturday night at the lanes — my dad told this story occasionally. Then they had kids, and at some point the bowling balls went in the closet, and life went on — until my mother died, and it didn’t anymore.
I don’t bowl; I’m not a bowler. Or rather, I have bowled, and I’m a shitty bowler who can’t break a hundred. I tolerate bowling when my friends want to go. But even as a casual bowler, I understood a perfectly fitting bowling ball is something more meaningful than just a novelty. My mother’s bowling ball fit my hand so well that even though I don’t bowl, after college I got my dad’s permission to drag it with me to the other side of Ohio, just in case my friends there went bowling.
But I didn’t ask my dad if I could take the bowling ball 1,500 miles further away to grad school in New Mexico. He hadn’t said I couldn’t, so I didn’t ask. Anyway, it seemed foolish to put it back in the closet in our basement rec room.
But in New Mexico, none of my friends bowled, so for three years the ball sat in my own closet. When I graduated and got the hell out of the desert (though I love the desert — but that’s another story), I left my mother’s bowling ball behind. My friend Carrie inherited it when she moved into my adobe apartment, along with the free couch I’d also dragged from Ohio, my sagging bed, and all my jewel-cased CDs.
I shipped my boxes of books and my wooden trunk full of family stories to my next city, but beyond that I only brought what fit in my car. The bowling ball was twelve pounds of dead weight, and it didn’t make the cut. I told Carrie that anything in the apartment she didn’t want could go to the thrift store. I figure that’s where the bowling ball ended up, but maybe Carrie just threw it away. I’ve never asked her (yet).
My mother died and became algebra I did with variables. She equals me minus my dad plus X, times Y. Knowing my mother is solving for X. I don’t know if Y is a whole number or a fraction.
A few years after grad school, I started trying seriously to write about my mother, for the first time ever. It was confounding to realize I couldn’t. I was trying to write a short story — fiction, just making things up — with a main character based on her, but I couldn’t imagine what that character would do or say. She was silent, inert. Her character didn’t do anything. When things happened to her, she didn’t react.
But I kept trying to write about that character. I shifted to poetry (on the advice of a poet, go figure), and the poems I wrote about her turned into math. My mother died and became algebra I did with variables. She equals me minus my dad plus X, times Y. Knowing my mother is solving for X. I don’t know if Y is a whole number or a fraction.
Sometimes, during those years of writing, I thought about how I hadn’t told my dad I left his beloved wife’s bowling ball in the desert. Who does a bowling ball belong to, when the woman it was custom-made for has died? Right or wrong (or both), I didn’t see the ball as my dad’s. But I always made sure never to tell him it was gone. As a family, we’re a little too good at not telling.
My dad never said the bowling ball mattered to him — not in words. Words are my thing; they’re how I understand best. But words ain’t my dad’s thing. He says things in other ways (I’m learning to understand this better now), like keeping his wife’s bowling ball next to his in the closet for years and years.
But my dad tries to use words. He does his best. Every now and then, he says he thinks about my mother every day. He’s said this my whole life. He doesn’t say more, but those few words ain’t nothing. My poet friend would tell me to think of it like a poem: a few words holding so much meaning.
I didn’t start thinking about my mother every day until my 30s because I had no idea who she was or what I was missing. (How sad would it make my dad to know that?) I didn’t start using her name, Jo Ann, with any regularity until recently. I only started calling her my mom this year.
I was only 7 when Jo Ann died, but I do remember her, a little, in stills and two-second clips. Trailing her skirt down the aisle at the art supplies store. Crying at her newly permed hair. Wiping her kiss off my face (I don’t remember the kiss itself) and her saying, “But the love is still there.” But I don’t remember her voice.
I remember when I was 3 or 4 and my sister was just born: I walked in on my mom naked on the toilet. She lifted a breast and squirted milk at me, and I fled. This is hilarious. But until this year, it never occurred to me that she probably thought it was hilarious too. My dad never told me my mom was funny. He just didn’t have the words.
I think more and more about what Jo Ann might have shown me, if she’d been able to survive. Who she is. Who I am … I have so many questions now.
I’m funny too. Now I wonder all the time how much I’m like my mom. It’s a deep comfort to look at someone else and see yourself — my parents did that for each other. That’s why my dad loves Jo Ann so much, still. These days I think more and more about what Jo Ann might have shown me, if she’d been able to survive. Who she is. Who I am. How to talk and listen, in words and other ways.
My mother died over 30 years ago, and now, finally, I think about her every day.
I have so many questions now. About everything, anything. Even little things, like — did Jo Ann think it was funny that her husband’s bowling ball was blue? I have never, ever heard my dad say fart or boobs — it ain’t his thing — but did Jo Ann think it was hilarious to give him shit about his big blue ball?
It’s been over a decade since I left my mother’s bowling ball in the desert. I remember packing my car in the dirt lot behind my little adobe apartment, deciding what would make the cut. I remember looking at that bowling ball for a long time. I knew if I left it behind, I’d never again put my fingers into a bowling ball that fit my hand perfectly. But I was okay with that. I don’t go bowling.
But I didn’t understand that putting my fingers in those holes was as close as I’ll ever get to holding my mom’s hand. Now I know. (If I put my hand in my father’s, is the fit familiar to him? I haven’t asked him yet. But I can.)
But — it’s also a bowling ball. Twelve pounds of dead weight. A metaphor in real life. And I didn’t want to drag it another 1,500 miles just to shove it in another closet.
Since I left New Mexico, the bowling ball’s absence has ballooned. Now it’s bigger than the ball itself ever could be. Losing it holds so much meaning. These days I want as much of Jo Ann as I can get, and I wish I could put my fingers in that bowling ball one more time. My mom is a hole I want to fit perfectly into — and I don’t, but I love every difference between us too. And while my grief at her absence grows every day, it’s not heavy. It doesn’t drag me. My mother died, and it hurts. But unlike a bowling ball, this pain is weightless.
How happy would it make my dad to know I love Jo Ann more and more every day?
My mother’s bowling ball. I don’t want it back. If it were here, it would be 12 pounds of plastic in the closet of a shitty bowler. But now it’s a story I tell. I’m a good storyteller. I love stories.
But I still don’t bowl. Ain’t my thing.
Posted in Opening our Hearts
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“Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir” by Natasha Trethewey
A renowned poet explores the loss of her mother to domestic violence
The terrain of grief and loss is challenging enough on its own. But when a loved one’s death is shrouded in trauma, these emotional regions can remain long unexplored, as though obscured by thick fog. In “Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir,” former U.S. poet laureate Natasha Trethewey revisits memories of her mother, who was murdered by her stepfather in Atlanta when Trethewey was 19 years old. And to do so, she must part the clouds of forgetfulness that have protected her all these years:
Even when I was trying to bury the past, there were moments from those lost years that kept coming back, rising to mind unbidden. Those memories – some intrusive, some lovely – now seem to have grander significance, like signposts on a path. It’s a path I can see now only because I have followed it backward.”
“Memorial Drive” begins with an exploration of Trethewey’s racial background as the daughter of a Black mother and white father growing up in Mississippi, along with all the tension that entailed. After her parents divorced, Trethewey and her mother moved to Atlanta, where her mother met and married a character named Joel, whom Trethewey referred to as “Big Joe.” Trethewey knew from the beginning that Big Joe was trouble — a sense that, as time went on, morphed into reality:
I can’t help asking myself whether her death was the price of my inexplicable silence. I remember believing that I was a good child, that I was good because I did not complain, that I could suffer through my own trials and protect my mother from the difficult knowledge of how her life with a new husband was affecting me.
“Memorial Drive” Reclaims Time Lost to Forgetfulness
Trethewey’s mother stayed with Joel for 10 years, during which Trethewey suffered ongoing emotional abuse in addition to her mother’s regular beatings. After Trethewey’s mother left Joel, he tried to kill her and was imprisoned. But as soon as he was released, Joel vowed to finish the job. The district attorney caught him making threats on tape and issued an arrest warrant, but due to a failure of police protection, he entered Trethewey’s mother’s apartment, shooting her twice in the face and neck.
The story is both uniquely tragic and far too common; the patterns of Joel’s behavior, unsettlingly predictable. The sense of emotional distance that predominates throughout the narrative — perhaps, the only way to tell such a story — collapses when an assistant district attorney recognizes Trethewey as an adult and hands over the file of evidence in her mother’s case — including a diary and telephone transcripts. He had been the first policeman on the murder scene, and he breaks down weeping in a restaurant — one of the few expressions of raw emotion in a story in which the characters depended on stoicism and repression to survive. Later, when Trethewey manages to go through the boxes, she has her own emotional breakthrough, collapsing on the floor and wailing in anguish.
Trethewey’s memoir may be helpful for those who have yet to face their own trauma or come to terms with a challenging aspect of their past. Even those who have not suffered so dramatically are likely to have experienced some childhood trauma — 61% percent of U.S. adults report at least one adverse childhood experience, potentially contributing to major health issues in adulthood. It’s possible that those who’ve recently suffered a traumatic loss could find themselves retraumatized by “Memorial Drive.” But for those who are ready, it may offer just the right combination of inspiration, courage and hope.
Posted in Lending Insight
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