What, you say bumps? Ah so.

What are the current bumps in your road? Have you managed to get over a major hump recently? Are you facing an extremely bumpy road at the moment? Or do you just like to go bump! bump! on a seven hump Wump?

This month's Scientiae is about how I managed to get over major bumps or humps in the road. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about wumps because frankly, over the last year and a bit, there have been many.

1. My dad died.
2. Issues of his last estate led to a legal embattlement.
3. Hernia operation.
4. Brain tumor.
5. Brain surgery
6. HippieHusband fired from the lab by a power hungry silverback.
7. Complications from brain surgery result in a follow-up surgery.
8. HippieHusband resigns from his job.

Sigh. Yeah, bad shit happens.

But if we think only of the only bad things that happen, then how we live our life is simply reactionary. And when I look around at my colleagues, especially in academia, I see many of us driven by the circumstances of life. We live putting out fires, from one fire to the next, without permission for self-reflection or more importantly, quietude.

I once heard that listening for a theme in your life and steering by that theme is a much more active way to live. Instead of passively existing and thus letting things happen, it's better to look for the connections in the events of our life. These events are connected by a theme. Find the theme and then it's easier to find a voice. If I were to to think about my life to date - I think the theme is transition, movement, and change. Now knowing that, how do I live? I think like this,

Once upon a time, in a village in Japan was living a reputable Buddhist monk.

Next to him lived a family of wealthy merchants who had a beautiful daughter.

One day, what seemed like out of the blue, her parents discovered that she was pregnant. Her father was very angry and pressed her to tell who the father of the child was. At first, she wouldn't tell, but eventually she confessed that he was their neighbor, the Buddhist monk.

The merchant went at once to the Buddhist monk.
"Ah, so desu ka?" was all that the monk said to his angry neighbor.

When the child was born, the merchants gave him to the monk to take care of him, and they told everybody the story of their unfortunate daughter and of the two-faced monk.

The monk had nobody to leave the baby with, and so he carried him everywhere he went. All the villagers who previously had regarded the monk highly were now calling him an immoral man, but he didn't care; he was raising the child with utmost care.

Twelve years passed.

One day, the child mother's became terminally ill; but she did not want to die with a lie so she confessed to her parents that she had lied about the child's father: he was a young man working in the fish market, not the buddhist monk.

They all went at once to the monk to apologize and get the baby back, telling him the truth.

"Ah, so desu ka?" was all that the monk said, returning them the child.

Instead of working hard to resist change, be it negative or positive, I would like to be like the monk in the story and develop an attitude of "ah so." Living without judgement of myself and others.

As a general rule, I am extraordinarily impatient with life. In part, this impatient nature has arisen because I had a certain vision of how I hoped life would turn out, how I would turn out. But, I'm a work-in-progress. After all as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, "Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail."

All in all, it's a pretty good ride. And really, that's the crux of how I get through the difficulties. Attitude

Every night before I go to bed, I try to think of at least one thing that I am grateful for that day. I can't say that it has been easy to figure out why I should be grateful. Sometimes it's only for a moment that I feel generous, but a moment is still a moment.

So to counter the first list here is a second list, this time of things I'm truly grateful for.

1. I am no longer trapped by parental expectations.
2. I didn't die. I have, for the most part, my health.
3. HippieHusband and I have a stronger relationship because of the challenges.
4. I am loved.
5. I have had my eyes opened to the worst possible face of academia.
6. My identity has broadened. I realize that I don't need to find a tenure-track position as an assistant professor. Academia is only one of many options. And it may not be the best option.
7. I am more attune to the political dynamics of an academic workplace.
8. I learned what kind of supervisor I don't want to be and what kind of colleagues I don't want to have.

When I think of these I am full, calm, warm and spacious.

So I leave you with this quote that inspires me during the times when I can't think beyond the hardship,

"May we exist like a lotus,
At home in the muddy water,
Thus I bow to life as it is."

April Scientiae

"We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness, which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world" Marcel Proust

The above quote is one of my favourites and I feel it embodies the essence of April Scientiae, which is about overcoming challenges during one's scientific career. Since my scientific career is still a young one, i.e. I've only had less than a year of a postdoc, I'd have to say that the firey fire for me was getting divorced during my PhD.

I was together with my ex-husband for almost 12 years before things began to disintegrate. When you're with someone that long, it's much much harder to let go. I did get married when I was fairly young and as a result spent most of my young adulthood with this one person. And I rightly thought that 12 years is worth battling for, but I also realized that it was not worth dying over. This was a discovery I made at the start of my third year in the PhD. At the end of that year, I was separated.

The divorce was difficult, of course, what divorce isn't. And SkidRow, my ex, a good guy during our marriage, became angry, desperate, and mean during the divorce. To compound the situation, SkidRow had moved fourth months prior to the separation, to the other side of the country because he had just gotten a tenure track position in the arts. For the first 6 months after we separated, he would call 2-3 times a day. Sometimes he would leave horrible phone messages, other times we would talk and I'd end up huddled in a heap of tears on the floor underneath the table, not really sure if I had made the biggest mistake of my life.

Almost immediately following our official separation, I ended up in very bad rebound relationship, though in retrospect, it was this relationship that gave me the courage to go forward with the divorce. When that didn't work out, I became a complete mess. I bet you're wondering how huddled in a heap on the floor in tears is not a complete mess. Well, it's really amazing how far one can fall. Rock bottom for me was anti-depressants and Buffy reruns.

During that dreadful year of my PhD, I would come into work, sit at my desk and stare at the computer, which more often than not hadn't been turned on. Occasionally, I would flip through a growing pile of to-be-read journal articles slumbering beside my computer. Sometimes, I would wander over to the lab and attempt PCR that never seemed to work. Mostly, I exercised. Actually, I think it's all I did. Yoga, ultimate, running, spin class, pilates, cycling. Anything that kept me moving, I did. I lost 20lbs in the matter of a few months. As you can tell, those were two of the most productive years of my PhD.

The end of a PhD is a written thesis, evidence of work completed, not what and how we, as students struggled with and overcame. The PhD is littered with small and big acomodadors. An acomodador is, as described by Paulo Coelho in his book, The Zahir, "a giving up point...an event in our lives that is responsible for us failing to progress... [it] can make cowards of us and prevent us from moving on." Thanks to much love and care, small packages of kindnesses, wisdom, and play from friends, I found the courage to keep going and finally finish the dissertation.

I learned that science can wait. Sometimes the best thing is to put aside the science and take care of yourself. I did that. Ultimately, the completion of the work of the PhD is a solo effort, but it was clear to me that I had help. I could tell some fabulous stories of the small packages of kindnesses that my friends gave me, but instead I shall share with you a poem I wrote for them at the time:

A woman is weeping as she stands at the edge of the world where invisibly love has dissolved across the lines in her hand.

A procession of scar tissue,
each night
you,
a different sheherazade
sung her tale,
the body remembering
where his hands had been,
what his eyes had found
and how his voice still lingered.

I had a dream of you Memory
of you Song
of you Practice
of you Passion
of you Joy
of you Dance
of you my sisters
who found the pieces of my heart,
laced into the snow beside the tall white birch,
clinging to a wet blade of grass by the seawall,
anchored to the salt of the ocean,
flattened against glass in the apartment,
wedged into the paint of pornographic fruit,
naked in the middle of a party.
You reached for them,
embraced and dried the glistening edges,
then gently kissing each piece
returned them to their owner.

Slowly I looked up and held the gaze of Time.
She clasped my hand and whispered sweetly that this too shall pass.
And I believed Her.

I learned how to be compassionate and kind to myself during that second year. I don't think that this directly impacted my science, but it did make me more aware of the place of science in my life. I am a better scientist because I recognize the importance of a work-life balance. I am a better scientist because I realize that even during the course of really tough times, I still wanted to do science. Most of all, I am a better scientist because I know that I am more than just a scientist.