Write In The Flow | Deborah Horton Writing

Endorphins & Mental Health

21 Mar 2021 Leave a comment

by Deborah Horton in Write In The Flow Tags: emotional health, health, make yourself happier, mental health, smile more, writing communty

BY DESTINY HARRIS

Whenever my dogs play, go outside, go for a walk, or do anything physical, afterward, they’re ALL smiles.

Do you know why? Because endorphinsmake you SMILE, feel good, enhance your mental health, and also help decrease the pain you might be experiencing in your life mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

The world could be a little bit happier, a little bit more smiley, and feel a little bit more cheerful inside if they released more endorphins every day.

With depression and mental illness growing rampant, releasing endorphins is one sure way you can help combat negative feelings, states of beings, and moods. It does take some effort on your part, but you always feel better once you complete an endorphin-releasing activity.

Smile More & Be Grateful

We shouldn’t be freaked out by people who often smile; instead, we should ask them what they have to smile about. Next, we should ask ourselves:

What can I smile about?
What can I be grateful for?
What do I get to do today that I might be taking for granted?

Being grateful can be transformative to your mental health.

Endorphin Releasing Ideas

Here are some easy ways to release endorphins:

Dance to some catchy a** music.
Complete a goal.
Take a walk first thing in the morning.
Laugh (very underrated).
Workout with a friend.
Stretch and focus on your breathing.
Have a stimulating conversation.
Complete an easter egg hunt.
Go ziplining.
Play ball with your dogs (one of my dogs is OBSESSED w/ playing fetch 24/7).

The way to release endorphins doesn’t have to be in the form of a traditional workout. Get creative. Do something fun. Stimulate your mind, body, and soul. Try something you’ve never experienced before.

Walking

One of my favorite ways to release endorphins, help with any pain I feel in my body at times, and de-stress is to walk. The more I walk, the better I feel — holistically. When I consistently take walks, I notice multiple areas (e.g., work, mood, spiritual health, and mental clarity, to name a few.) of my life improve. Walking is also one of the easiest ways to feel better — immediately.

There are so many benefits of walking:

Increase in mental clarity
De-stress
Gather new ideas
De-escalate anger and anxiety
Increase mobility
Maintain a healthy weight

Closing Thoughts

Remember to laugh. Remember to smile. Remember to release more endorphins.

Life can take its toll on you when you forget to enjoy it. Your body, spirit, and overall health will thank you for consistently releasing more endorphins.

Take Action: What can you start doing more of to release endorphins starting today?

And here’s one last thing picture to hopefully make you smile. Cheers!

Thank you for taking the time to #elevate your life with this quick read. Grab your free books here — Destiny S. Harris’ Free Amazon Book Page. Wanna keep in touch online? Connect with me on Instagram, Facebook, or my Website.

Worn Out

28 Feb 2021 Leave a comment

by Deborah Horton in February 2021, Write In The Flow Tags: climate change, poem, poery, poet, worn out, writing poetry

BY LIAM FLANAGAN

Get me off this planet!

Dammit

I’ve had enough

I must make friends with Elon Musk

He has the gear to get me out of here

I’ll take my chances on Mars

At least I’ll know there is no chance of contracting Sars

Cars

Are producing carbon emissions like there is no tomorrow

I keep seeing single magpies an indication of sorrow

So even if this virus goes away

We will still have to deal with the earth getting warmer every single day

Trying to carve out an opportunity to get out of this mess

Dreaming of a trip to Barbados to find some redress

Inner Peace

28 Feb 2021 Leave a comment

by Deborah Horton in February 2021, Write In The Flow Tags: inner peace, mindfulness, poem, poet, poetry, writing poetry

BY LIAM FLANAGAN

Peace is such a hard thing to find

Especially when it comes to peace of the mind

Inner turmoil often the order of the day

Sometimes the only thing left is the avoidance of decay

A constant state of unease and distraction

Where one is crying out for some kind of action

A sensation of fluctuation and change

A hope one day to wake up without feeling strange

The search for inner peace goes on

A wish some day all the pain and suffering will be gone

Trying to carve out a more meaningful existence

Where hurt and anguish are no longer so persistent

Chance

21 Feb 2021 Leave a comment

by Deborah Horton in February 2021, Write In The Flow Tags: creative writing, flash fiction, short fiction, writing, writing community

A small fiction

The busy streets are filled with noise. Colors whizzing by mechanical and humanoid. Indistinct conversations and the smell of exhaust. Chance finds me here waiting for what I think is a bus. But chance has other plans this day.

To my left another bench now occupied by a creature so beautiful I dare not look completely for fear of going blind. Glimpses of mahogany shined hair and porcelain skin. Lips the color of cherries. Wrapped in cream.

The sound of the city drowning out my heartbeat but only barely. My hands feel hot even though it is quite cool today. And I try to sit in some sort of cool pose to match the weather and her coolly reflected beauty. I feel I am failing miserably.

Does one start conversations with strangers without a cell phone these days? What would I even say? Hello does not seem to convey the desire I have to hear her voice. Talking about the weather would be so contrived. What does one say to such a thing of beauty?

I imagine that I somehow found the words to begin a conversation and that she turns her body slightly towards me on the bench. Looking wholly on her exquisite face and then into her eyes. I imagine myself falling into them body and soul. I imagine asking her for coffee and that she agrees to go both of us abandoning the bus trip we were here to make.

Lost as I am in this dream I fail to notice that she has gone from the bench to where I know not. Nor is it likely in a city of many millions I will ever know. And my hands are cold.

Guarding The Fishes

14 Feb 2021 Leave a comment

by Deborah Horton in February 2021, Write In The Flow Tags: creative writing, fiction writing, short story, writing, writing community

By A. M. Stein

“the thrum of the lake water, lapping, in hypnotic pulse, at the lakeshore”

I have had a lot of jobs conducive to writing. William Faulkner wrote his gorgeously lyrical novel, As I Lay Dying, in six weeks, while working the night shift, as a security guard, at a power plant. That is what I mean by “conducive to writing.”

I, too, once worked a security guard midnight shift (which, technically, started at 11:30 p.m.) Saturdays through Wednesdays, on a ferry boat dock in Burlington, Vermont, on the shore of Lake Champlain.

I was “guarding the fishes,” as I thought it to myself, but in fact I had been hired to “keep my eyes open.”

“Can you do that?” my soon-to-be boss asked bluntly during my job interview. “Can you keep your eyes open? The last night guard could not do it. She might have had that sleeping disease, whatchamacallit, but if she did, she hadn’t informed us of that up front, so to us the sleeping on the job was pretty much as it seemed to be. Are you with me?”

“Narcolepsy?” I suggested, to show I had been following.

“Yes, that is what she was claiming afterward,” agreed my soon-to-be-boss, “when we found her asleep, among flotation devices, in a storage closet. So, you can understand how I might be interested in your answer to my seemingly over-simple question.”

One midnight shift, around 2 a.m., few months into my employment, a silent alarm must have gone off, because there was a pounding on the glass door of the dock’s modular office building where I was sitting at my work desk drawing in a notebook.

The noise startled me. I was made further insecure, when I went to investigate, by the sight of a serious-faced police officer shining the thick beam of a flashlight at me from the other side of the glass door and rapping it insistently on the glass.

Once I had let the officer inside, she examined my badge. “Are you on duty?” she asked, shining the flashlight directly into my face, scrutinizing my blemishes, as I supposed.

My duties were minimal but I was on them, so I said, “Yes.”

I guessed she was asking why I wasn’t wearing some kind of identifying uniform. I had a good reason, but I didn’t volunteer it. The reason had to do with the money bags I transported from the ferry docks to a nearby commercial bank at the end of each shift.

Next, the officer investigated my work desk where my notebook lay open. I had been drawing a dragon flying over some sort of temple. The dragon was a dragon, but it was also a symbol I was trying to unpack. So, for that matter, was the temple.

Almost immediately, upon beginning my solitary night work on the ferry docks, I had begun having sweeping and specific visions of a monastic grounds near a meadow. Full of waterfalls and haiku insect life. Maintained by a cadre of beatific and begowned monks.

Maybe it was only the thrum of the lake water, lapping, in hypnotic pulse, at the lakeshore, but something had triggered my imagination. I caught brief sightings of unfamiliar (yet, somehow, familiar) persons and places. I frequently heard snatches of phrases and even, long, distinct conversations, riding in on the lake winds.

Part of this was, probably, just the entering, of poetry, into my subconscious.

“You drew this?” the officer asked, of the drawing.

“Yes,” I acknowledged.

“Are you writing a kid’s book?” the officer asked.

I didn’t want to tell the officer I was working out a new, visionary poetic, so I agreed that, yes, I was.

“My kid identifies with Max from Where the Wild Things Are. You know that book? You remember Max? Sailed away from family and home and became king of the Wild Things? Let the wild rumpus begin. Max was the one who said that. My kid says it every day. Every single day she says it to someone.”

“Max became king of the Wild Things by taming them with the magic trick of staring into all their yellow eyes without blinking once,” I offered.

“That’s right,” the officer agreed. She shined her flashlight beam, once more, around the office. “Might have been a squirrel,” she suggested. “They sometimes trip the alarms. God knows they have nothing better to do.”

Next, she radioed some code to a dispatcher who returned the favor with more code.

“You have a safe rest of your night,” the officer said, departing.

I locked the door behind her. 2:25 a.m.

I sat back down at my work desk.

The drawing meant something, there was no doubt about it. But what? It was crying out for my discernment.

Circus

07 Feb 2021 Leave a comment

by Deborah Horton in February 2021, Write In The Flow Tags: poem, poet, poetry, political poetry, writing community, writing poetry

By Liam Flanagan

Roll Up Roll Up
Boy do we have some entertainment for you today
A ringmaster from Cork
A teacher by trade
No qualification to run the country I’m afraid
A health minister juggling many balls in the air
Trying to convince he is going to get us through this nightmare
The Greens are walking a tightrope
Balancing calamity with messages of hope
Leo is yearning for a night on the town
Realizing now he is surrounded by a bunch of clowns
Mary Lou is doing acrobatics to avoid any blame
Yet the situation up North is to their eternal shame
So spring is here we are all staying home
Like trained animals in our cages
Whilst all around us the virus spreads and rages

Humanity

17 Jan 2021 Leave a comment

by Deborah Horton in January 2021, Write In The Flow Tags: conscience, humanity, poem, poetry, writing poetry

By Liam Flanagan

Photo by Ekaterina Shakharova on Unsplash

Sanity allows us to stay in touch with reality

Sometimes feeling like we are surfing a wave

Other times just a desire to stay in the cave

Each and everyone of us contemplating our existence

We have provided so much resistance

Yet this virus remains unrelenting and persistent

Our conscience is with the vulnerable and the elderly

Incredibly

Something has arrived to put their whole lives in jeopardy

All we can do now is to hope and pray

An effective vaccine will come along to save the day

The Gift Of Giving

20 Dec 2020 Leave a comment

by Deborah Horton in December 2020, Write In The Flow Tags: Christmas, gift giving, gifting, giving, holidays, kindness, mental health

Photo by Porapak Apichodilok on Pexels.com

‘Tis the season of gift giving. Buying, wrapping, giving, and receiving. We spend so much time searching for the perfect gift and so sometimes so much money. But the best gift we can give is the gift of ourselves.

Christmas brings out the spirit of giving, but giving of ourselves is something we can do all year long. Most all of us live in places where there are other people and it provides us with the opportunity to give to others all the time.

The opportunities are endless. Some take a bit more time than others but all give to others. The only cost is your time and a bit of your heart. Here are some possible opportunities to give of yourself. If you do not have these exact things where you live, I am sure there are things that are similar.

* Provide donations at a local food bank or other similar food distribution place. Many people are in need of food all throughout the year in our communities. Help these places to serve them.

* Adopt a family or children through your local family and children’s services or reach out to child protective services. Offer your time to collect and donate clothes, toys, and other items to help kids in need.

* Organize a hat and mitten tree donation through your school district at all the schools. Or just donate hats and mittens to local schools yourself. There are a lot of kids that are in need of these items during the colder months of the year.

* Organize a gift card drive for at risk and homeless students in your schools at various times throughout the year. Or just donate gift cards to local schools yourself. Gift cards for food and clothing as well as personal care items can help so many.

* Organize a coat and sock drive for your local homeless shelter or other homeless adult services. Or just donate coats and socks to local shelters or other services yourself. Having a coat or a good pair of socks can provide much needed warmth and protection.

* Donate items to local assisted living facilities puzzles, coloring supplies, arts and crafts supplies and other items to fill the time. In almost every town there are places like these with elderly people who are alone. And this year they are more alone than ever before.

* Find out what group homes for adolescent and younger children exist in your area and donate items that they might find useful such as puzzles, games, arts and crafts items, coats and hats, toys. These children are often alone at Christmas and even more so this year.

These are a tiny fraction of the opportunities available for giving of yourself. It does not have to be a big thing or an organized thing. It can be one thing done for one person that makes all the difference. And it can be done all year long. Practice the gift of giving of yourself and you will also be given to in gratitude and love.

In Silent Night Of Christmas

20 Dec 2020 Leave a comment

by Deborah Horton in December 2020, Write In The Flow Tags: Christmas, Christmas poem, holidays, poem, poetry, writing poetry

By Robin McNamara

The silent night crisped the air
With white stillness.
Although; this Christmas can’t
compare to ones gone before.
The fire awaits and the lights
Are on neighboring houses,
Windows smiling with light.
We tell the story of a Bethlehem
Journey, that we need now
More than ever before.
Silent Night fills the air,
The holidays seem to be the
Only thing we can embrace,
In a time of gloves and masks
And uncertainty of family gatherings.
This Christmas will not compare
To ones to come and ones gone.

The Crown Is Now Too Real

29 Nov 2020 Leave a comment

by Deborah Horton in November 2020, Write In The Flow Tags: British Royal Family, entertainment, netflix, Netflix The Crown, Royal Family, The Crown, writing community

I have long been a student of history and have loved exploring the history of many of the world’s royal families. I have traced my own family lineage back to the year 770, so far. And in this lineage, there is scattered through my own fair share of those with royal and titled ancestry.

I have enjoyed immensely the first three seasons of the Netflix show The Crown. It was steeped in history and the magic of fairy tales with princesses and kings and war and peace. Sweeping stories of historical significance.

Yes, there was also the tragic tales of Princess Margaret never allowed to be happy and the death of the Queen’s father, along with abdication and a monstrous world war. But more so it was the fairy tale with castles, beauty, and magic.

The Queen is famously quoted as saying that the she must be seen to be believed as if without that she is a mythical creature living in a tower imbued with divine rights and far above mere mortals. I think most of us would like to believe that rather than the truth of what being Queen and being a person in a family under that Queen is really like.

Yes, I know that the television show is fictionalized. I know that many of the parts of Season 4 were “added to” for creative license and impact. However, I do believe that the core of all that fiction was the truth. And in the middle of the season and at the end, I felt not entertained, not educated, not in a world of magical fantasy but sad.

I am not so much sad for the people of the royal family as I am for the loss of the magic of my enjoyment of it. They are now people who by birthright or conquest came to be the Windsors and they are prisoners of their own creation. Most of them unhappy in some way and out of touch with reality and real people in so many more ways.

What made me most sad though is that the devastation on the psyche of the members of the family is truly something to be pitied. They can no longer be magical myths when they are or were lacking emotions, bound by enforced duty and directives, depressed, anxious, lacking courage, unfaithful, lonely, with eating disorders, repressed, and sad.

People will say, but it was just made up for television, and parts of it were. However, again, now that we are much closer to current time and there is so much evidence, factual, real evidence, that so much of what was in Season 4 actually occurred just as it was portrayed or even possibly worse than it was portrayed, that is no longer fiction. It is just sad.

The Queen comes from a time in history where duty, doing what one had to do, carrying on no matter how difficult, was a way of life. This was her generations highest belief system. There was no shirking duties, or not doing something because you didn’t want to or didn’t feel like it, or abandoning a marriage or the crown. You just carried on.

This was and I am sure still is her expectation of members of her family. However, times have changed considerably since World War II and if people no longer want to be married or do not love their spouse they expect that they do not have to keep living with them. If people want to give up royal duties and life, they expect that they can do so (as Prince Harry as done). If people want to marry someone outside the expected or arranged they expect that they are able to do so. It must be very hard for the Queen to reconcile these things.

Season 4 of The Crown has brought back for many the very angry feelings they had towards Prince Charles and Camilla regarding Diana. Even to the point of people making very rude comments on posts by the two of them on social media. But all of that is in the past and cannot be changed. And no one, not a single person in the family or outside of it, was innocent in all that happened.

Instead of anger, I think sadness is the emotion not from the television show, as I know that it is fictionalized. But from what I know to be true through the multitude of evidence. I liked to pretend like watching the Royal family in their “dressed up” or “mythical” state could cover all of the things that were just too real and not magical at all.

They are just people with a lot of issues who have a lot of money and big houses who ended up in the right line to the throne. Underneath all the royalty, they are just struggling to be loved and to love, to be happy, to live. Just like the rest of us.

Unfortunately, Princess Diana and Princess Margaret were never able to have those things.

And speaking of Princess Margaret, Helena Bonham-Carter was the one shining light in this sad season. Her portrayal of a woman who was forced to give up the things she wanted most for the good of the one, the crown was heartbreaking and magnificent. Not much about this season was worth praise for me, but her performance was majestic and I do hope she is rewarded with all the awards possible.

In totality however, the show was just too real, too close to the truth and a complete stripping away of the magic, the mystery, the sparkle off the crown. And it just makes me sad.

Deborah Horton Writing