Feeling Blue?

Feeling down?  Can't figure out how anyone can be walking around with a smile on her face sans assistance from little psychotropic friends?

Look at it this way: You made it through the holidays (I LOVE the holidays!); the post holiday slump (completely normal) and now you're dealing with the residual guilt from the promises of resolutions unkept (so what's new?).  

Fine.  But enough already, it's time to start pulling out of the annual February funk with positive action -- positive thoughts are terrific, but in my experience that route usually involves a detour by a baguette with salted butter which reboots the whole negative cycle.

 

What to do?  My solution is always:  Ask other women what they do.  That's exactly what I set out to discover for us.  In my research I queried 20 French women, again between the ages of 40 and 80, to find out their remedies for the blahs. 

Chocolate, not a surprise in France, and retail therapy were common, recurring themes.  Here follows, in the first of this two-part series, some of their more personal prescriptions for beating the blues:

Jacqueline:  "I pray.  I don't kneel down and actually say prayers, I talk to God in my mind. I've been doing this ever since I was a little girl and it always helps.  It puts my thoughts in order and gives me a perspective on what's bothering me.  It always works. "

Edith:  "I arrange things.  When my morale is in my socks (Ed. Note: Very popular French expression), I take everything out of the kitchen cabinets, the linen closets, my drawers. I dust, clean, rearrange and right in the middle of the project when everything is all over the place I've forgotten whatever it was that was bothering me.  And since I hate arranging my closets more than anything else I can think of I just put everything back where it was before I started.  It's very therapeutic.  And interestingly, I don't even feel the slightest bit depressed that everything is still more or less the mess it was when I started."

Caroline:  "I eat the most expensive chocolate I can find -- and lots of it."

Sophie:  "I take my dog and walk in the Rambouillet forrest for one or two hours.  It depends upon how long it takes until I feel my spirits lifting."

Christine:  "I go to a hammam for three hours.  I take all my products with me, the black soap, the exfoliating gloves, all sorts of creams, shampoo, conditioners and relax, relax, relax.  I always go alone.  The feeling of being clean and pure from your pores to your head is inexplicably wonderful.  You cannot, not forget your cares."

 

Christel:  "I'm studying sophology it gives me a certain wisdom to understand my life.  And, if I don't have the time or the patience to settle down into meditation I make myself a huge -- I mean a mountain -- of pasta with melted Gruyère on top and while I eat it I moan with pleasure. Curiously I don't even feel guilty afterwards."

Danielle:  "I call my best friend and over coffee I complain until I feel better.  It's reciprocal."

Ava:  "I get my hair cut or colored or both.  I think if I change the outside of my head it will change the inside."

Françoise:  "I scrub my bathroom until literally everything shines. Sometimes I take hours

doing it. Then I'm exhausted, I've forgotten my woes and I've done something positive.  The only problem is I don't want anyone to go into the bathroom to splash on all my work." (FYI:  Mr. Clean is called "Mr. Prop" in France.)

Anne-Marie:  "I make an appointment for something special like a manicure, a massage, a haircut, a facial and once I signed up for three classes on how to make dessert sauces.  All the better if the rendezvous is in two weeks so not only do I have the recompense of actually going to my reward, but also I have the pleasure of anticipation."

Again, I would love to hear what you do when you're feeling down.  My French friends would like to know as well.