Hello, readers!
Welcome to this week’s installment of First Sentence Friday!
North Carolina in the 1860s was remote and vastly rural. From a source I use for research comes this quote, “Few farms in North Carolina were the great plantations we see in movies, and even plantation life was not always so grand as it may seem.”
And here we have Joetta McBride, on one of these remote and distant farms in Nash County, NC, carrying a heavy load on her shoulders, literally, and metaphorically. She has the upkeep of the farm which involves hard labor. The chores her husband and eldest son Henry used to do are now up to her and eleven year old Robert. In addition, she has her usual daily work, all necessary to take care of her family. Cooking, cleaning, washing, gathering eggs, milking the cow, and sewing. Oh, and making butter, and bread or biscuits, and I’m sure I’m leaving plenty out. She is the woman of the home, a wife and mother, so therefore, she has to push through her days as if everything is all right, feigning positivity and strength.
Can you imagine the physical and mental stress? It takes a toll, and can seem unbearable when there’s no end in sight.
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CHAPTER 8
Joetta wearily sorted through vegetables she had picked from the garden, and tossed them into a wooden bowl, their dull thump alternating with the pounding of her head.
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FREE BOOK FRIDAY!!!
For a chance to win a signed copy of The Moonshiner’s Daughter, tell me, how do you handle stress? (I take about an hour to go for a walk, or bike ride, and then at night, hello tub, epsom salts, and a book. ???? ) Winner will be announced Monday morning!
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PRE-ORDERS
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Pre-order links for your convenience:
Kensington Publishing Corporation
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I read to escape the grasp of daily stress! ????
AMEN to that!
To relax and destress I go for a walk and try to close my rings each day. Then at night when I go to bed, I listen to a sleep meditation and try to shut my brain off.
That’s interesting – when you say you go for a walk and “try to close my rings each day.” Can you tell me more about that?
Not sure if I’m replying in the correct place, but here goes. I wear an Iwatch. On my watch are 3 rings that reflect moving, standing, and exercising. Once you fill your ring with whichever activity, you get a firework type reward. I’m also recovering from my second knee replacement, so now that I’m able to be more active, I’m trying hard to lose the weight that I packed on while avoiding knee surgery. I found out being more active helps with my stress levels too. I guess that’s a win/win.
ohhh! Okay – us non-Apple folk, we don’t get the rings. ????
I will either go for a walk with our pup, or I will go and sit on our patio swing and listen to birds singing and chirping and sometimes read. I will also listen to music. Have a great weekend.
So many ways to disengage from it, and all of these sound perfect. You have a great weekend, too.
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That works for me, sometimes!
I go to water therapy twice a week at Therasport. It helps me so much!! ????
I ho to water therapy at Therasport twice a week. It helps me so much! ????
One of the ways I used to manage stress was through running. Because of my health, I can’t do that any more and I miss it. I wish my little town had something like that – I’d definitely do it.
It depends on the stress. Exercise does help as does going to a yoga class, nut I also find that doing puzzles (crossword, sudoku) or playing a game like online mahjongg or solitaire can help. Reading does too but sometimes it takes a while to be captivated by a book. Anything that helps me to stop ruminating helps!
This is true – stress is different. There’s typical daily stress. There’s unexpected stress (like those medical ones – ugh), etc. I have found that aside from the physical outlets, I do the same thing. Play a game on my phone. I’m amazed by this, but it’s true that it helps.
How I handle stress. Well, there are two types that creep up on me: emotional, and mental, and sometimes they are not distinguishable from one another. When they are, for the emotional, I seem to intuitively dive into something that puts me in the zone, like cooking, cleaning, or gardening. For the mental stress, I have to disconnect and stop thinking, therefore do something physical: sex w/ my partner, kayaking, walking, physical therapy, getting a massage, or cooking, cleaning and gardening.
The emotional stress is the most difficult to soothe. Sitting still like in a bathtub just doesn’t work. Meditation is more aggravating. I have to pick, prod, or fix something, make something pretty or create something. Organizing or diving into a long-term project like genealogy research sometimes helps too.
The emotional and mental often are inseparable and entwine together to make a stress ball. In a nutshell, stress is something to be released and worked out. A good night’s sleep helps too, which is a topics we’ve already covered in this blog at the beginning, if I remember correctly.
Lots of the same things work is what I’m getting from folks, and how it’s handled definitely dependent on the type of stress. For me, unexpected stress is the worst. Like when I’m going along and boom. Something out of the blue happens – could be as simple as a wreck on the route I’m taking that makes me late for an appointment, or an unexpected serious outcome/result when I thought otherwise. If the news is really bad, what I’ve learned is I have to know EVERYTHING up front, all the details and what it means. Like, give me the worst of it. I think it helps me process the matter.