As with all trauma, pain offers the difficult blessing of causing one’s world to become incredibly small. All the details and to-do lists evaporate and life slows to a centered simplicity, as in, “Let’s see if I can manage to lie down without crying.”

One of the most difficult challenges in this being human business is facing what is. This is especially true when what is, sucks. I’m talking about times when life presents you with things you didn’t order and don’t want: like everything in 2020.

It’s been two months since my last communication and I feel compelled to catch up. A lot has happened, the first and most significant of which affected all of us here on the West Coast. No, I’m not talking about the demoralizing implosion of the San Francisco Giants and the subsequent, equally depressing success of the Dodgers

It seems everyone I talk to is dealing with something serious and vexing. Maybe it's life at middle age. Maybe it's living in a toxic and stressful world. Maybe it's just the roll of the dice. I don’t know. But I do know that such levels of suffering provoke some serious contemplation.

I am in the midst of writing my second book, a guide to grief. To this point, I have been referencing my past experiences with grieving as I share thoughts on how to grieve and why it’s so vitally important. It’s been from the vantage point of “I’ve been there and now I can look back and give you the lay of the land” perspective.

A few years ago I spent many weeks overtaken by pain, the result of a bike accident. The pain in my neck and shoulder was intense. I couldn’t find a peaceful placement of the head to relieve it. Sleep nearly disappeared.

Warning: This column has nothing whatsoever to do with Valentine’s, the Lunar New Year, or other such niceties. You may find it helpful, however, if Life has thrown you a few curve balls or wicked sinkers lately, which it has to me.

It’s counter-intuitive to take a blow without doing something, anything, to defend oneself. When your marriage is a mess or your body betrays you or you’re on a financial cliff edge, the tendency is to become two years old again and have a hissy fit.

Adrenal fatigue — the main symptom of which is unremitting and total exhaustion—is rampant in the U.S., especially among middle-aged women. I might have found this fact interesting in and of itself, but a recent and recurring bout with adrenal fatigue has caused me to pause, quite literally, to consider the nature of disease, its meanings, and our role in creating it.

Everyone I know is going through some serious suffering. I’m not talking about the suffering one feels watching a Tom Cruise movie, or hearing the phrase, “I know, right?” I’m talking about suffering chronic illness, staring mortality in the face, losing a loved one, being in dire financial straits: in other words, Hell.

Compromised adrenals are the result of stress. Now, it would appear to any on-looker that I have one of the most peaceful, stress-free lives going. But, as the old adage goes, appearances can be deceiving. To look only at external circumstances and not take into account the internal life — the life of the mind, the achings of the heart, the longings of the spirit — is to leave out most of the pieces of the puzzle.