Brain health?

I laugh when I see ads for navel gazing seminars on things like 'Women's Mental and Brain Health'.  I think of my Mother, who would never in a million years have  entertained any such notion.  Her recipe for "brain health" was getting breakfast, lunch and dinner on the table every day.

A money-maker if ever there was one.

She didn't use words like "narcissistic", but that's what she would have thought of such gatherings.  The most practical, commonsense woman I have ever known -- except for her two sisters, who were exactly the same -- Lillian did things, she made stuff happen.  She didn't ponder.

She shopped, she cooked, she played in a neighbourhood mixed bridge club, she hosted cocktail parties and ladies' dessert bridge parties, she sewed, she mended, she canned fruit and made preserves, she celebrated every feast day with an elaborate family lunch, she faithfully went to church every Sunday, she took me to the funeral parlour from the age of four to teach me to not be afraid of dead bodies and to pay my respects when an acquaintance died, she played tennis, she did laundry, she ironed everything -- and taught me to iron, starting with my Father's hankies, she was part of a community daycare cooperative, she made sure my Brownie and Girl Guide uniforms were clean and sharp, she enrolled me in ballet lessons and a thousand other things I can't even remember. 

As I said, she did things.  I once asked her what was wrong with Mrs. So-and-so down the street, who it was said, had had a nervous breakdown, and she replied -- without looking up from peeling carrots, "She just took a notion, dear."

And that was that.  No discussion, no analysis.  Nothing.  Kind of the perfect answer.  I asked my scientist father the same question and he said, "It's caused by a lack of sleep."  That was it from him too and when I think about it, both explanations make sense.

To the psychiatrists making millions off nervous breakdowns, I am sure you are not amused, but breakfast, lunch and dinner had to happen, regardless of how you "felt".  Feelings were also a verboten topic in our house.  I never once heard either of my parents express their feelings.  I mean, everyone had them and no one needed to talk, or care, about yours.  

Cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead once said that civilization happens when a society had a reliable source of food.  If you have time for brain health seminars, you are overly-civilized.