Chicago Architecture Tour

Summer turns to fall, the weather moderates, and quick get-aways for families or delightful girls’ days out are on the schedule. One of my favorites is the Chicago Architecture Foundation river tour.

Chicago River Walk

The boats are not lush; they are what you’d expect. The seats are molded plastic lawn chairs, and after the two hour cruise, your fanny is flatter. There is no shade, so bring a big hat, sunscreen, water, and a camera. Choose a moderate day, and you’ll be fine.

Docent steps up on the River Tour

The sound quality is excellent - you will hear every word from anywhere on the boat. Every seat has a perfect view. Once the docent (tour guide) steps up and the crew shoves off, worries about comfort disappear. The trip is mesmerizing.

The star of the show is, of course, Chicago’s architecture. The real prize in choosing the Architecture Foundation’s cruise, as opposed to some of the others in the City, is that the docents are thoroughly trained and personally involved in architecture.

Chicago reflected in architectural glass

I was astonished, for some reason, at how much the buildings - their style, look, and constructions techniques - have changed over the years. The tour made me realize that no city is static.

Chicago's Marina City

In our gorgeous city, everyone from Wright and van der Rohe to The Donald have had a hand in sculpting the skyline. There are new residential hideaways hidden away along the river. This is a soothing way to soak up culture and get to know a great city. You can follow up with other tours on foot, via trolley, or by car.

The Chicago Architecture Foundation boat tour runs daily and on some holidays. $28 to $32. Break out this fall and take a day trip to Chicago for the Architectural Boat Tour. Well worth your time.

Dock is at the southeast corner of the Michigan Avenue bridge at Wacker Dr. A blue awning marks the stairway entrance - be warned, there are a lot of stairs to and from the boat.

My sister, Bonnie, got all fired up about a new book, actually a series of books, called Eat This Not That. These little books are one sneaky way for you to change your nutrition, and I am not kidding. I bought one of the books in the Eat This Not That series about a month ago and witnessed a miracle.
I bought Eat This Not That! Supermarket Survival Guide: The No-Diet Weight Loss Solution by David Zinczenko and Matt Goulding (Paperback - Dec 30, 2008). I spent a couple of hours reading it and found it amusing, informative and motivational. I wanted to go out and do what they recommended. So I did.

At the end of the book, which is a quick reading volume full of lists, bullets and quick tips, there is a one-week menu plan that covers lunches and dinners. It has a shopping list and recipes. Anything that makes one of my chores simpler is high on my list of yes items.

I copied the menu. Did the shopping - spent 30% less than I would generally spend. I followed the menus about 85% for a week. And I made my picky, finicky, nose-turned-up-at-anything-remotely-healthy spouse eat the food. I mean, what choice did he have?

So. He raved about every single meal. There’s the miracle. The menu plan is based on doing a bunch of prepping and cooking on Sunday, then combining planned left overs and fresh ingredients into new dishes all week. We went out to dinner twice during the week - moderate meals, both. He preferred the stuff I was making at home.

End result — he lost a couple of pounds without even being aware of it. I lost three. No sweat, no thinking, no obsessing. We ate great food, spent less money and enjoyed reading the book out loud at lunch each day.

It sneaked up on us and made some little, pleasant adjustments to how we eat. I’m headed out to the store to do yet another week of ideas from this series. My sister has passed the book to me, my son, her daughter and several friends. It’s almost a pandemic. And it’s very cool.

As empowerers of women, we’re interested in how PTSD recovery, or any health outcome, may be in our own hands. My family is intimately familiar with PTSD - Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Some of our readers understand the condition, too, especially among the many military families following this column. Michele Rosenthal is an empathetic, informed, caring professional with excellent thoughts for us.

Healing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: 5 Tips for Empowering Your Recovery

By Michele Rosenthal, Heal My PTSD

Let’s just get to the problem straight up: The single most challenging component of trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is that horrible experience of powerlessness. During you trauma you feel it, and then for weeks or months or years afterward your PTSD struggle reinforces in every moment the idea that you are powerless to overcome. But is that really true?

Survivors are tough. They have, after all, survived something challenging. This means they have courage, determination, creativity and resources. The problem is that in the PTSD fog it’s easy to forget the innate capabilities you have to heal.

While all traumas are individual the PTSD experience is universal. Whether you survived a theater of war, violent sexual assault, childhood abuse, domestic violence, freak accident or medical drama the aftermath is the same: Functionally debilitating flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, insomnia, anxiety, rage, hyperarousal, hypervigilance and emotional numbing.

The good news is you are not destined to live this way forever. It is fundamentally possible to heal PTSD and go on to live a joyful, productive life. First, however, you need to take back your power. Healing begins and ends with your own ascension back to the powerdome. In healing this means taking control of the healing process, participating in it and being responsible for it.

The following five tips will jumpstart any mental health recovery process. As they focus on taking back your power both in your communication and connection with yourself and with those around you, these five actions will move you from a position of powerless to powerful.

1 - Intention: You can’t heal if your focus is scattered. It’s time to be very specific about your healing desire. This means approaching the healing journey methodically and with well planned outcomes. The more you imagine and plan your success the more you will become able to achieve it. What do you want? Be very specific in how you visualize the end result of your healing, plus each step you plan to take. Make a plan, follow through. Healing is like any other goal, it must be worked at with deliberate dedication.

2 - Education: Knowledge is power. The more you know about what ails you the more intentional you can be in fixing it. Understanding PTSD symptoms, how and why they function, plus what and when you need for healing helps you devise a better gameplan for action.

3 - Connection: Support during healing is key. PTSD recovery is a tough goal and you’ll need the support of yourself and others you can depend on. Building a support network can be a critical element in the healing process. This includes family, friends, colleagues and practitioners who are devoted to helping you evolve. You are strong, yes, and it’s always nice to have extra reserves of strength from those around you.

4 - Communication: Part of healing means being able to tell yourself and others what is wrong, why it is wrong, when it all went wrong, who was involved and how you feel. It’s tough to talk about trauma but healing begins and reaches deeper levels when you develop language and vocabulary. Communicating allows you to pinpoint what part of the PTSD process is really driving you; from there you can develop a plan for healing that is direct and effective.

5 - Commitment: PTSD healing doesn’t happen overnight. Despite the difficulties that ensue and the challenges that arise you must give 100% of yourself and never waver. There will be good days and bad ones but your oath to heal at all costs must remain strong. Doubt has no place in healing. You must commit to the idea and then follow through despite all obstacles.

The major crux of healing any mental illness lies in your ability to imagine a better self and then work hard to get there. By empowering your recovery with these easy steps you begin the process of placing the strategy and resources for healing squarely in your own lap - exactly where it should be. The brain likes to learn. Give it options. It wants new things to think and see and contemplate. Feed it with self-empowered healing thoughts and actions and you will heal, one day at a time.

Michele Rosenthal is a PTSD healing coach and the founder of Heal My PTSD, LLC, (www.healmyptsd.com), an organization that advocates for PTSD awareness, education, treatment and self-empowered healing. She is a licensed practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

(photo was provided)