Today, I thanked Anxiety. I asked her if she could step aside, let me deal with it.
“It” was finding myself having to address that person. You know the one. It’s hard to meet their eyes because of the taste that seeps into your cells. You don’t want to remember their existence, but there he is, there she is, alive and secreting the sour mind-stink that makes your mouth turn down and your anxiety turn up.
Sometimes, it’s not so much that person as it is the thing that person represents. Either way, you don’t want to admit them to your world, and you try to look away, to preserve your mental health.
I suppose I did have a choice. But making the choice to avoid him (we’ll say “him” this time around) carried other choices. Sometimes, when a situation is so far awry that addressing it makes you sick, the only way out is through, even when your anxiety tells you NO. Sometimes, you have to say words, you just have to, and he was the one who had to hear what I had to say. (A lot of had to going on, and it was hard.)
So, I breathed.
Lately, it’s happened that a few mindful breaths, now and then, pile up a space of wide, soft air all around me. Anxiety dissipates, and I understand how this meditation thing could work. There really is blue sky above all the clouds, and the clouds are so soft to lie on. They thread and swirl and braid in my easeful fingers.
For a moment today, I found myself up there in the blue sky. And, he was on the other side of my shiny ring of clouds, so blurred and insubstantial I could hardly see him. Fresh, clean air in my mind, and calm, clear certainty radiating from my gut. Lovely.
Anxiety wasn’t so sure I could do it.
She pointed and tensed and crouched, but I could see how small and helpless she was, although ready to fight to the death to protect me. So, I lifted her as gently as I could (claws like a spitting cat), and put her safely outside my shiny ring of clouds.
Thank you, Anxiety. I know how much you want to protect me, and I appreciate it. You’re always there to make sure I know the danger. You’ve done your job well! Now, I’m ready. I can do this on my own.
I did. It was good. Thank you Anxiety – I’ll never forget you! 😉
Today, I am thinking about releasing guilt and making boundaries.
Guilt Needs Some Boundaries Too
Time to think about boundaries, about making boundaries for the surging misbehaving guilt that leaps and nips at me.
It would, given the chance, sink its teeth right in and not let go. It would, if I let it, tear my seams and bedraggle my hems.
I think about the Tibetan Mastiffs I met yesterday. One was much smaller than the other (although still large. Very large.) and he wanted to prove his strength against the world of me and my tote bag. Nibble. Tug. Nibble. Attention finally caught, I looked down at his enormous jaws.
“Szzt,” and a snap of my fingers stopped him, surprised. More importantly: a shut door in my mind between his naughtiness and my tote. His people make no effort to restrain him. Instead, they chuckle and tell me how he tore open their friend’s jeans.
Indeed.
Guilt is like a big unruly dogwho loves you
I find myself wondering, again, why it is that people invite big dogs into the family but do not think it necessary to acquaint them with the rules, to teach them where the boundaries are.
And immediately, I see this giant’s lesson for me, the lesson he held in his drooly teeth when he reached through my debilitated, feeble boundary and nibbled my tote bag.
I will remember this mastiff monkey-monster, and I will call him Guilt.
Yes, Guilt, I’m talking to you. No more tugs on the corners of my soft, struggling new peace; no more nibbles along my almost-fraying edges.
I understand that you have things to tell me, are afraid I haven’t heard the things you tell me. I see your worried eyes following me and your wanting paw upraised. Thank you, but it’s okay. I heard you. It’s time for you to go chase squirrels, Guilt.
Go on.
And shame is the sheep your guilt dog herds!
You’ve done your job, you’ve herded my scattered shame-sheep and brought them out from all their dark mountain caves and hiding spots. I see them, and I speak their sorry names out loud.
[Oh, hello, reader. Join me, if you like. Brene Brown is so right. When you speak Shame’s name, it loses its imposter power.]
So here’s a name for one of my sheep (see the one over there, covering under all her ratty wool?):
I was not the good and loving mother you think. I was probably a terrible mother.
And here’s how I will rename my ratty sheep and fluff her wool:
I was, however, the best that I could be then, in that place and time, scrabbling for a hold on the greasy sides of the pit he dug for me with his sharp-edged shovel of disparagement and discounting.
Guilt, you panting, overgrown, teething puppy, you brought us together, my shoddy sheep and I. Now, take them away.
I’m ready to stop shearing their tiresome, bulky fleece. I’m ready to stop endlessly carding, hopelessly spinning; I’m ready to stop wearing their rough, itchy wool. There’s much better wool on the Sheep of Honour Myself. I’m off to knit a shawl.
My Aunt died this week. She was 101, active, and happy. Beautiful with her years and, though I have not seen her in decades, suddenly missed. Thinking of her passing put me in mind of another passing, another end of life, this one sad and reluctant in life and death. I find myself thinking deeply about the two lives that turned out so differently, thinking about the choices that led away from the same place down two divergent paths, wondering about lessons they have to teach me.
You cannot choose the prison of your senile old age, they say. When dementia takes you over, it devours you and spits out your essence, your lost self, as waste. They say.
I’m not so sure that is the complete answer. I think that we spend a lifetime building the walls and windows of the places we wander at the end.
“Life is a choice,” according to Arnold. It’s so true. There are choices in every moment, and every one of those choices is an opportunity to build our capacity for happiness.
Some choose iron bars and concrete blocks for their building materials. They bed down in their little cell, leave the door cracked open just in case, and learn to like the familiarity. Over the years, they come out less and less. You can watch the change in their eyes when they realize they’ve wandered too far from the comfort of sadness. You can watch them look around, take in the sunshine and loveliness, think about it—and say no.
I watched the old person I know so well do that as she crouched in her wheelchair at the end of the hall. She looked at me, she saw me, she heard my singing, and she touched the tips of her fingers to the shine of happiness in the air.
But she found the space too open, too frightening, too strange, and she missed her hard little bed in the dark cell. Goodbye, said her blurred blue eyes.
And she was gone again.
She wrapped fear and anxiety around her thin shoulders, scurried away to her darkness, and peered out through her fingers at the blinding light outside. She saw things that weren’t there, things she’d carried with her for decades, things she’d fed and cosseted inside her mind until in her age and weakness they chuckled darkly and came out to play.
There in the nursing home, I tried to drown them in my music, to shoo them away, to firmly point them out the door, but they just stuck their warped claws into my flesh and sought to drag me deep into the stinking prison where they live. And she turned away her head, reached to draw her monsters close around her, snuggled them under her stiff blankets, sucked in their bile, and spat it at the world.
I sang to still my soul and weave a shawl of peace around me while I watched her. I thought about the years, the long years, of branching paths along her way, the paths she refused.
No judgment. It’s hard, so hard, to walk away from the path your elders trod ahead of you. The ground underfoot is invitingly smooth (or so it seems in the dim light), while the unfamiliar paths wind under thick and tangled trees, around rocks, through flooded streams.
Those other ways will lead you to strange hollows and foreign towns. You don’t speak the language. And you are, you believe, alone. So many reasons (or so it seems to your terrified soul) to walk where your parents walked.
Her choices took away so much from me.
Even more from herself.
But now, nearing the end, she has a gift for me, and I think that in some shuttered corner of her soul she knows about the gift, caresses it, polishes it carefully before handing it to me wrapped in her bruised love.
Her at-last gift is the gift of knowing.
I open the invisible card that comes with her gift and read her shaky disappearing handwriting:
Do not be like me.
Choose happiness at every breath and branching pathway.
Learn while you still can.
This is good enough for me. I accept the gift. I will choose differently.
I have only just realized that I’ve been paying an extra three months for a service that I don’t want.
Have you ever done that?
It’s always annoying. This streaming service, that subscription, the small donation that you thought was a one-off…sigh. Or, you know, a service that isn’t very good, that I’ve been looking forward to concluding when my contract was up.
And this time around, it was a chunk of money that made me blink a little. How could I forget to cancel it?
I keep giving myself the pep talk: well, of course you forgot. The company didn’t send you any kind of reminder, any kind of thanks for doing business with us at the end of your contract. No upcoming bill notice. And I’m back to work full-time, still madly studying for two intense courses, finding my way through the daily life threads that tangle and knot all of us sometimes, and dealing with an injury. (Well, two injuries since I managed to fall skating and made the first injury quite annoyed with me again.)
Oh, and there’s a pandemic going on.
The pep talk isn’t working. I can try to get a refund for part of it. You never know. I don’t have the energy to pursue it very far though. That’s why I hired the company to begin with! (Oh, and here’s a tip I should have followed: buy local.)
There I go again. I don’t want to feel this way. Trapped, helpless, letting that negative self-talk monster out to play, becoming so tangled in those daily-life threads that my energy is all about escape instead of peace, simply being, gratitude and happiness, and allowing life to be what it is.
Allowing! Thank you.
I’d forgotten that gem,
as I forget it nearly every day
until something taps me
on the shoulder
and asks for space in my life.
And gratitude.
That’s a tough one to practice in the dark times, but it’s tough on the dark murkiness too. Gratitude is a mop and broom, a scrubbing brush and a jug of disinfectant to murk and discouragement. I remind myself: there was a time, a most-of-my-life time, when this blink-inducing amount of money would have taken me over, filled me with instant, stomach-grinding, paralyzing fear.
Now, things are different, and so is my acquaintance with fear.
(Fear is, in fact, weak.
And I am strong!
So are you.)
I don’t want to forget about that money.
But I am so grateful that I can choose to forget about it. I can choose to let it go. I am grateful that at this place in my life, I’ll still be able to buy my groceries, take an Uber, order pizza now and then, and enjoy my lovely little riverside apartment if I choose to. I am grateful that if I notice my energy draining away into a prolonged fight for a refund, I can stop. I am grateful that I don’t even have to start that fight if I don’t want to!
I can choose to pay the piper and enjoy the tune or walk away with earplugs in and make my own tune.
And I am grateful that I have learned to recognize these knotty experiences as just things that happen, things that float by and unravel, things that have consequences and effects but that do not control my feelings and actions. I used to see them as enormous boulders made of all the knots and threads, petrified knots that would crush me if I did not resist, fight back, and obey fear.
I won’t ever try to tell you that your experience is the same as mine, that your condition is your problem or your fault and you can fix it all with gratitude. That is not true. The world can be hard and cold, and we are not meant to be bearing the burden of the cruel things that came our way as children, that come our way now as we navigate the treacherous ways of healing from trauma.
I only want you to know that gratitude, if you can find it, can help you make it through. And I see you, I hear you, I love you, I am grateful for you.
(And–I should just point out that the shysters in the featured image at the top are some kind of relatives, uncles perhaps, Irish or Italian, New Jersey, quite probably Barnums. My family is not unacquainted with scam creative business people.)
That’s the new handmade sign on the tree at the end of the riverside forest path, right before a short but steep snow-covered hill that leads from the forest to city sidewalks, cars, and apartment buildings. I love finding art messages on my walks, and I’m always pretty certain they’re meant for me! Ok, they’re meant for every person who reads them, and I always read them.
Press on!
Not necessarily something I want to hear, not necessarily something that’s helpful to hear. For instance…
At the beginning of our first shut down, I decided to do yoga, just like I used to. Feel that stretch! Make it happen! Dig deep!
And I gave myself bursitis.
When it happened, it sounded as if every muscle in my hip tore. It felt as if my leg was hanging, unattached, but not quite falling off altogether. It hurt too much to walk. How much hurt is that? I don’t know how to measure pain, but I do know that I fell asleep between labour contractions. So.
It took months of physio before I could face that hill. Months of learning how to use my body, discovering I’d become used to a duct-tape version, worn duct-tape barely holding together neglected bits and pieces, catching in the non-act the muscles that were having a drink with their feet up while other muscles, not meant for the job, worked too hard and got hurt.
As I take some photos and enjoy a few more precious minutes of the frozen river and the tiny sounds of winter wildlife, I think about this new message. I wonder if the artist had that steep and slippery hill in mind when they hung the sign. Which kind of press on did they mean? Or did they want to leave that up to me, show me the possibility of a new way to press, dig in, demand more of myself?
Pressing on can serve you, and it can also harm you. Brene Brown talks about her experience of digging deeper, of pressing on, pushing herself to the point that her whole being stopped functioning and she had a breakdown.
But, we all know of circumstances where someone made a huge and beautiful life-changing contribution by hanging on, pressing on, digging deep for that last burst of energy.
So, what’s the difference? When should I, and when shouldn’t I?
“Men and women who live wholeheartedly do indeed dig deep. They just do it in a different way. When they’re exhausted and overwhelmed they get:
— Deliberate in their thoughts and intentions through prayer, meditation or simply setting their intentions;
— Inspired to make new and different choices;
— Going. They take action.
I spent far too many years digging deep in that old, exhausting way, pushing through to survive another chaotic day in the debilitating, possessive circle of a narcissistic, abusive husband (now so joyfully divorced for many blossoming years!), somehow coping, though not well, with raising two beautiful boys.
Now, I know the difference. I see that sign and I see the steep, snowy hill. The hill must be climbed unless I go all the way back to the beginning of the path–and, even if I do, there’s another hill! It must be climbed, and I can climb it. But I won’t huff and puff and slip and slide and climb it obstinately at any cost.
Instead, I pause to check in with my body, breathe deeply with the trees and the slow, frozen river, and make sure that the core of my being, the part that endured all those years of digging in, the part that is energetically and physically the centre of me, is engaged and ready.
I breathe and begin to climb, step by conscious step, grateful for my life now, grateful for the learning of my life then. I can see and appreciate the ever-changing perfection in my chosen path of deliberate, inspired, active intention. My morning walk on the forest path is a gift every day. I am blessed to be here. My body is stronger each time I walk the path, more ready each day to climb the hill. (My spirit is too.)
The quiet little sign with its handmade lettering and stenciled dove still invites me to press on every day. Whatever the artist intended, I’m grateful they made their offering here, where I can see it and be inspired.
Today is holy in many cultures. Here in North America, we’ve nearly lost the holiness in a mess of candy chasing and best-costume prizes. This year is different as COVID rages and people choose to — or are made to — stay home. I would have anyway (solitude is my refreshment), but I have rarely felt so deeply the need, on this day, for spiritual connection. Pandemics can do that to you.
Ghosts of October 31 past grin at me from the wind storm shadows and tossing branches outside my tree-top windows. Many Hallowe’en parties, many All Hallows Eve vigils, some Dia De los Muertes (thank you Mariachi Ghost!) celebrations, some Samhain gatherings. But this is the first time I’ve watched the full moon rise and understood the meaning of the night, looked for the ending and beginning that my heritage (Irish and Catholic) teaches me.
Samhain moonrise
My grandmothers and great-grandmothers for generations prepared in vigil for the Feast of All Saints on November 1. They would have kept, and slowly lost, the memories of an earlier time, a time when the great fire festival at Tlachtga in Meath marked the passing from the light half to the dark half of the year.
I imagine wandering back to Ireland, slipping into their Rosary circle, letting their prayers lead me deeper into memory, to ancient times, until we glimpse the brightness of the Samhain fire far across the island from my grandmothers’ homes.
“This is a momentous time in the lives of a people to whom the changing of the seasons was a matter of life and death.”
https://www.newgrange.com/tlachtga.htm
What did they do when they saw the beautiful light? Samhain was the end and beginning of the year, the last gifts of the precious harvest stored, the thinning of the veil between this world and otherworld, a time to honour and welcome ancestor spirits and protect from harmful spirits. There were rituals to be followed in those ancient times just as there were for my grandmother and her vigil with her ever-present Rosary, just as there are for each of us if we are willing.
And, I think there must have been private, hidden, silent words, soft thoughts and barely articulated feelings. Whatever the ritual then or centuries later, I think they said, thank you.
Thank you for the promise of the sun once we’ve made it through this long darkness,
thank you for the promise of light and new life,
thank you for
this dark night to let our sadness out and watch it disappear into the dark,
this thin veil to release the grief of the year past,
the sorrow of unwanted goodbyes,
the end of things we would have held closely.
Things change, and we need a holy place and time to make peace with the change. Our beings rest in ritual, relax in familiar prayers. We do well when we can set aside time and prepare a particular, separate space to give thanks for change, to allow, to rest without resistance as the seasons shift, as darkness and light circle in their long dance, and as the moon rises on this holy night.
“As long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than there is wrong, no matter how ill or how hopeless you may feel.” Jon Kabat-Zinn in Full Catastrophe Living.
I’m breathing, and I’m here! This project, Fear is Weak I am Strong, is finally born, after years of thinking, writing, observing, planning – and quite possibly fearing, now and then. 😉 All my threads find a home here: harp therapy, sound work, writing blogs, writing stories, croning, aging, children’s storytimes, all are embroidered in this new tapestry.
There’s still plenty to do. And it feels exciting, inspiring, and energy-giving as I consider where this path is leading me. I’ve arrived here from a whole other world, tripping over a lot of rocks, getting pebbles in my shoes, getting caught in hail storms and mud, and collecting some interesting scratches and bruises as I clambered up an unknown mountain. I think this might be near the mountain top!
We’re all losing track of time anyway. Sure, I planned to have the focus and energy to write every single day, and now regret is growling at me from outside, but I didn’t write, and regret isn’t getting in. Not today.
A few things I’ve noticed this week.
I thought we were all in this together – but – no. One acquaintance is complaining, thoroughly irritated, that she can’t sit to eat in the food court. Another’s delight in receding pollution (don’t get me wrong – it’s a good thing coming out of a lot of bad things!) contemptuously disregards human suffering and fear.
Two people I know well continue to go to gatherings and out to dinner, the latter because service is fantastic now that restaurants are empty.
Some of my acquaintances believe that their place of worship is some kind of a free pass, a bubble zone that starts from the moment they walk out their front doors until the moment they are back inside. God will obviously protect them. He cares about them!
I wonder, but don’t ask on Facebook, what opinion they think God has of those who have died. Or the health care professionals who ended up sick themselves after too long taking care of sick people. I wonder what kind of f*cked up childhood they must have had to make them worship and claim love for such a dick of a god.
And – I notice that if someone were to observe my judgy little brain cells’ party, that person might, possibly might, suggest that I’m a bit self-righteous, or at the least, that letting those thoughts occupy my attention and energy is not helpful, not contributing to the maintenance of good health.
~Right. That lesson again. The only person I can change is myself, and right now, the only change in me that matters is learning to always find and follow the path that nurtures health and goodness.~
A few days later
How can I be more tired, busier, now than when I work at work? I do have an explanation – when I go to work, coming home is coming into a chill zone. I’m too tired (I tell myself) to focus on much else.
But working from home means that I overestimate the time and energy I have and insist that I can do ALL the things. Hey, I don’t have to get dressed, my jammies are the most comfortable ever, my harp is right next to me and my fiddle on the other side, hours to rest into writing that otherwise would have been eaten up with people, and commuting, and chilling…
Not yet. At some point, I will write again, I will learn many new tunes on the harp (or maybe even on the squalling fiddle), I will build my new website, I will.
Right now, my brain and my heart would like some time to release, relax, empty themselves of the things that do not serve, do a deep clean of all the neglected corners and dusty shelves.
More days later
My balcony is heaven right now. Bare feet! Windy but not too much, crows and geese working out spring deals, the forest still a leafless charcoal sketch over melting ice on the river. All I need is my yoga mat and cushions to make an office for my work-from-home hours. It’s still hard to let myself take a break, but when I do, meditation and yoga are ready for me.
Some music friends and I tried a jam over Zoom. It’s weird motion-sickness, time-sickness fun trying to clap together. Playing instruments together – yeah, no. Established that there’s a reason people make music jamming software.
Lessons
When you’re quarantined with someone else, there is only one pathway that isn’t blocked with fallen chunks of stone and years of baggage. It’s the path that has helpful signs posted everywhere:
Learn to listen.
Learn to really listen.
Say I feel instead of you do.
Breathe before you speak.
Make your intention in every conversation that you want the other person to feel loved.
Most of your opinions aren’t that important after all.
Listen. (There are a lot of these signs.)
Ask instead of tell.
Argument is for philosophy class.
Making music together can happen differently for now. I took part in one of Deborah Henson-Conant’s free harp playalongs on Zoom. Deborah is one of those people, the kind who are so vibrant, so comfortably real, that they come right through the webcam. It felt like we were all playing together even though we were on mute, so that I heard only Deborah and myself.
How did she do that?
Ok, it helps that she’s brilliant. But it seems to me we can all be the kind of brilliant that lets us be ok with the music we make, however we make it. Who’s up for a weird zoom jam?
Afterward, a bunch of us stayed in the Zoom room and got to know each other. California, Canadian Prairies, and the east coast of Australia have a lot in common. It was nice.
And now, it’s April 4
If this hadn’t happened. I would be walking by the ocean right now, having dropped off my fiddle and knapsack at the hotel. Or I’d be already heading to the first session of my week in Halifax, looking forward to harp lessons, fiddle lessons, ferry rides, islands, and cold salt wind.
Like the rest of the world, I’m not sure how to start thinking about that, about the difference between what would have been and what is. (Oh, and speaking of…we had lots and lots of snow and it’s -15 and I’m not on my balcony.)
I’m pretty sure, though, that thinking about it isn’t helpful. On the theme of everything you need to know you can learn from a kids’ book…
“To know what would have happened, child?” said Aslan. “No. Nobody is ever told that.”
“Oh dear,” said Lucy.
“But anyone can find out what will happen,” said Aslan.
I’ll let you know next week (more or less) what did happen!
The bus was late. Not just late, it disappeared. I heard the same stories of late and non-existent buses from everyone on all the routes. (SHOUT OUT – transit drivers do a great job in stupidly tough circumstances. When are we going to realize that free transit is the best thing for any city? Oh and include in that a several-times-a-day disinfecting and cleaning schedule.)
Late buses don’t seem all that important anymore.
Four cases confirmed, the university closing and moving to online classes, food services laying off people after catering cancellations pour in, so, so, many artist friends report canceled concerts, art shows, fundraiser parties, and other self-employed friends who help supply and support those events share their worry about canceled contracts.
(You already know about all the big ones like the NHL and the way arenas dumped all their low-end employees. See, they’re just doing it for (as a friend posted) shits and giggles to decompress after their full-time jobs. They don’t need the money. The players still get paid of course. OMG, how would they manage if they had to do without a paycheque?)
Schools are closing! But not for another week. Because – well. I’m not sure why. Just because.
I work at the library. Not going to talk about it because – well, again, just because. Only to say that we’re starting to feel the stress. We see the families who come to the library because that’s the only place they can access for free, and it’s such a nice environment after cramped, noisy, falling apart apartments. We see the kids doing their work there because they don’t have internet at home, and maybe they don’t want to risk taking books home then forgetting to get them back in time. I am so grateful that I have a good job.
Throughout so much of my life, while I was married for way too long to someone whose emptiness could never be filled, someone who, over and over again, took what I had just because I had it, who spent money as if he had a giant trust fund because money is a river he said whenever he wanted something, and you can’t dam it up, throughout those dismal decades, I could not have kept our children fed and clothed, could not have paid for a place to live if this pandemic had happened then.
I am so grateful for where I am now. But I shiver and feel the clench of fear in my gut each time I think of families in those desperate circumstances. Trauma lasts a long time.
I know from experience (the bitter kind, turned sweet) that meditation is my go-to medication, and without it, the trauma will take over, bitter as f, and pack away all the thinking parts of my brain. So meditation is, thank goodness (goonness, I typoed. I like that.), back in my life to lead me through this crazy world.
My son is working long, long hours outside in the cold. I’m not too worried because he has excellent hygiene, and being outside in the fresh air is a good way to stay away from nasty viruses of all kinds. But no sleep and long hours and cold, freezing cold….He has a bit of something that does seem to be no more than his usual sinus and head cold. He has a bit of a smoker’s cough. I’m going to pick up some more immune-boosting supplements and Nyquil after work.
The Rexall across the street is out of things I didn’t plan to buy anyway: face masks, hand sanitizer, and alcohol. I didn’t check the tp situation, but I do need paper towels. Wasteful, yes. One more ethical conviction that fell in the face of real life.
I’ve given in to the lure of paper towels and Swiffer, but they don’t completely rule me, not yet. Instead of fitting up the Swiffer mop with its own cleaning pads, I use paper towels to sweep and the cleaning pads for a quick hand scrub of the bathroom. Can you tell I sometimes feel guilty about it? Hardly the act of an environmentalist.
Then I think of the years, decades, when hardly a disposable anything crossed my threshold and came through my doorway. Ferry trips from Salt Spring to Vancouver Island meant taking cloth diapers and extra terry cleaning cloths, plastic bags for the dirty stuff, and (for some reason I don’t remember) a small plastic baby food container. I think it might have had some kind of baby butt cleaning goop in it in case I couldn’t get to running water. In those days, change tables were scarce. Dryer? That’s why they made the sun.
Packed lunches – waxed paper if there was no other way, lunch boxes, and hard to clean thermoses. Candles made and remade from melted wax to save on electric lights. Melting snow for baths, dishes, hair wash when the well ran dry.
I think about it, and then I forgive myself – again. Inner balance, calm, stability has a way of spreading to the people around us. Mental health first means we have the strength and energy to create environmental health.
Back in the store, it turns out they are also all out of rubber gloves – the thin disposable ones. Something else I would never use, but recently, I’ve had a couple of allergy scares when cleaning. I don’t even use “products”. But it turns out that excessive amounts of TKO can cause me to blow up like a scarlet balloon if I touch my face. Now that constant cleaning is the way of life, and disinfectant (wonderful Benefect, for choice) is coming to stay, so are rubber gloves. I’ll have to wait on the disposable ones though, and make sure to thoroughly disinfect the yellow ones every time. It’s getting complicated.
There’s plenty of cough and cold medicine, lozenges, vitamins. Is that good news? People aren’t getting sick in droves, so there’s medicine left? I don’t know, but I buy enough to get my son through this and have some leftover. The staff are friendly and patient despite what must have been a hectic day.
I’m still unsure about how I feel. Anxiety is hanging around. I see my friends’ Facebook and Instagram posts, so I know I’m not the only one. I sit down to play some slow, simple, early music on the harp, breathe with the music, focus on heart energy flowing through my arm and into my fingers. Ah. There it is, the inner serenity, the spreading pool of golden light. That’s something I can do to – maybe -help.
I make public some of my earlier harp videos and share them with friends. I don’t know if listening to it will have anything like the effect of playing it, and my harp should be plugged in since it’s not fully acoustic, and my laptop mic and camera aren’t very good, and…
Oh. You again. Listen, anxiety, I really do appreciate your protectiveness. But I’m good, thanks.
It’s a word that often appears at the end of a letter from people who identify as (or who want to be seen as) leftist, progressive, left-leaning, labour friendly, radical, activist…Have I covered them all? Please, fill in your identity, and think about what, exactly, you are signalling when you say, Solidarity, sister! Does it mean you agree with me absolutely? Does it mean that you disagree, but you support my right to stand up for my beliefs? Does it mean you have no idea what is important to me, but you like the sound of the word?
SOL. I. DARE. I. TY.
Recently, a colleague said that she didn’t see much solidarity in a group we both belong to. She said it in response to a long discussion about signing on to a letter she’d written. Some people chose to sign on without asking for any changes; some pointed out errors or requested certain deletions and additions as a requisite for their support; some elected to write their own letters. Some temporarily abstained pending further information.
The thing that struck me is this: No one in the group said that the sign-on letter should be scrapped. Everyone acknowledged that the anger was justified; that those who wanted to send the letter had good reason for their decision.
We didn’t all agree about the exact nature of our action. We didn’t agree about the words we should use to voice our shared concerns. We didn’t agree about the severity of the problem.
We did agree that there was a problem, and we did agree that some response was required now or in the near future. Each of us was, in fact, in solidarity with the letter-writer, with others in the group.
I think this little group with their concerns over an issue that is vital to them, but irrelevant to most of you, I think this group is a cipher for every other group of humans. You and I, for instance. All of you; I’m not singling out one person, or obliquely referencing you in real life. We’re all in this together.
Of course we disagree about things. And, sometimes, our disagreement leads us to a truth neither of us suspected at the outset. Sometimes not. There are so many paths that open every time we see things differently.
We can choose to clamber down opposite sides of the mountain, stick to our stories, and lose sight of each other.
We can investigate and (perhaps) eventually find ourselves on the same side.
We can make our way through the woods on slowly converging paths.
We can wander, explore, meet new people on the mountain, learn unrelated things, and muse on the problem for as long as it takes.
On this enormous, craggy, soft-sloped, river-running, cloud-cloaked, rock-jutting, plateaued, cliffed, and magnificent mountain, I’m in solidarity with you, my fellow being. If I come across you clinging to a precipice, I’ll do my best to haul you up, I’ll burst my lungs crying out for help, I’ll hang on sweat-soaked. (If you kick me away and smile as your hands slip, I might have to let you go. I won’t grieve. I did my best, and the best of each of us is beauty.)
We all have our journeys. We won’t always want the same thing. But we can, if we choose, always want the best for each other.
SOL – sun, shine, star, sunlight, sunrise, aubade (“A piece sung or played outdoors at dawn, usually as a compliment to someone.”)
I – Me, myself, my ego, yes, but also my heart and soul. This is me, looking into your eyes, seeing you.
DARE – I dare to believe in you, to reach across the roaring abyss for you, when I don’t agree with you.
I – This is you, believing in me. (Or, you know, it could just be me again.)
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