Do what you can and the rest Can

 This was the philosophy of people mostly during the Great Depression and World War II where you just stuffed everything that you couldn't deal with right now. My mother said this is the way it always was for her growing up. However, it is true that she talked about not being able to afford metal hinges for their doors and using leather hinges instead and having to grow up with a 50 gallon barrel converted into a wood stove to survive winters in Seattle. So, I greatly respected my mother having to survive all this. Then her father left her mother and took off when my mother was 18 years old leaving my mother to financially support her mother which she dutifully did until she met and married my father in 1946 when she was 27 years old.

But, what scared me the most about Texas was being confronted with this same attitude that I had tried hard to overcome during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s and almost died because or this "Stuffing" attitude. And when I saw this "Tough STance" engrained in people Texas where feelings are stuffed way down this sort of horrified me as a Coastal California growing mostly up in San Diego and Los Angeles areas. I had struggled hard to overcome this way of thinking and it's one of the many reasons I have survived to be 76 presently. So, seeing people still doing this "stuffing" to that level sort of horrified me because it showed me just how many people wouldn't survive in Texas that might survive in California because stuffing everything shortens people's lives and reduces their sanity too.

And because this stuffing thing almost snuffed my young life out too between 21 and 25 I was hard pressed to process what I saw engrained in the Texas Culture.

ON one level it's great to be "tough" and I lived this way too a lot here in California. But, when you can you find counselors and people to talk to so you can stay alive and sane too.

It's when people don't reach out for help that need it that problems are going to arrive including death and insanity before their time in people's lives.

I suppose because I studied to be a psychologist in my 20s that this was all so obvious to me but still horrifying to see in person.