I spoke to my therapist for the first time in 2020 last week.
I have a habit of dropping off the grid in times of crisis. The last time I went this long without seeing her was probably the first year postpartum. I know, I know. I acknowledge the irony. It's a cobbler's children have no shoes situation. So just do as I say and not as I do.
To process, distill, and convey the past nine months through the lens of mental and emotional well being in a succinct way in under 50 minutes was not easy. Bottom-lining is not my forte. Thanks to years of practice, a fantastic therapist, and the efficiency of the enneagram, we did it. Covered, captured, cut to the core.
Something about September felt like standing at a crossroads. Perhaps it’s the perpetual student and teacher in me who always and only thinks in academic calendars. Perhaps it’s feeling as though the end of the sideways summer and the start of the surreal school year should signal some kind of rounding of some kind of corner that should bring some kind of shift in perspective.
It’s the crossroads of stuck and shift.
Stuck in the house. Stuck in distance learning for the foreseeable future. Stuck in scripts. Stuck in a loop. Stuck in the inextricable roles I play in the venn diagrams of this household. Stuck in habits. Stuck in this pandemic. Stuck in this presidency. Stuck in a perspective.
Craving a shift. A shift in energy, in reality, in roles, in the news, in agency. An escape hatch from the loop.
The past nine months have morphed and shape shifted between crisis, coping, shock, grief, panic, paralysis, fight, flight, freeze, punctuated with interludes of normalcy, joy, intimacy, growth, connection, resilience and levity. Early on and then for what felt like indefinitely, we found ourselves in coping mode. For some of us, that looks like buying toilet paper in bulk, filling the freezer with meat, and scanning the horizon for danger. Hunkering down for the imminent apocalypse. For some it looks like compulsive purging, tidying, straightening, and scrubbing. A circling dog who never actually lies down. For some it has been travel mugs of beer on afternoon walks and extra servings of cinnamon toast crunch after the kids are asleep. It has looked like insomnia and crying jags and rage walks to nowhere. It has brought clarity and diminished our capacity for pettiness. We have forged connections in unlikely places and lost touch in others. It is all coping. Ambiguous, perpetual, human coping.
When we find ourselves at the crossroads of stuck and shift, a long way down a long road of coping, scratching at a door, even if we don’t know where it leads, it’s tempting to go wholesale. The old “my diet starts tomorrow” bit. The cupboard slamming, hyperbolic “from now on, I will never…” rant. The classic fear and fantasy trap. If I don’t change everything right now, I’m screwed. Or, alternatively, if I do change everything right now, all will be fine. Wholesale.
I’m hard wired for wholesale. Many of us are. I love a clean slate, a blank sheet of paper, an escape hatch built on elbow grease, promise, optimism and hope. And that’s on a normal day. You should see me in crisis! It’s wholesale city.
On a plane ride home from a tournament in Florida, my teammate, roommate and dear friend sitting in the seat beside me slumped in her seat and appeared to lose consciousness. As flight attendants carried her to the front of the plane and summoned any doctors on the flight, I flew into crisis mode. Which meant putting my shoes on, tidying our row of seats, packing up our belongings, and frantically craning my head around to the rows of teammates around me, demanding that they all do the same. To this day, we laugh about how, without questioning why, everyone just began to fall into line, hurriedly tidying their areas. Wholesale. If we can get our areas tidied up, we will be ready for an emergency landing. We will be ready for the unknown. If we can control our areas and control ourselves and quickly get our tray tables up and our damn shoes on, maybe we can control whether or not she will be OK. Maybe we can save her. She was OK, and it turned out to be a vasovagal syncope episode (for all you medical nerds out there). She came back, she was in good hands, and we made it home. And not necessarily because I went wholesale drill sergeant on my team.
While we are biologically and evolutionarily wired to go wholesale in the face of crisis, it doesn’t always serve us. When we’re not outrunning a lion but rather mobilizing to outvote a craven and corrupt administration over the slog of many months. When we’re not escaping a sinking ship but rather recalibrating our expectations to the multitude of slow moving parts of a society and school system reopening. When we’re faced with ambiguous loss, boundless grief, unending uncertainty, and circumstances that feel simultaneously impossible and inevitable. Wholesale doesn’t work. Sometimes even digging deep and getting scrappy doesn’t work.
That’s when we have to soften the edges.
Here are the ways I have been softening the edges these days...
I try to be intentional about the amount of information I take in and take on in any given moment on any given day. Not first thing in the morning, not right before bed. Not when I am already overwhelmed, over threshold, overtasking. From smart soulful people who I trust who help me make sense of and feel empowered to affect change in the world.
I try to take care of myself in small, tangible ways. Not committing to a masochistic diet or unsustainable fitness regimen or ambitious meditation practice. I walk the pup for miles in the foggy forest with an old friend. Brew custom tinctures to balance my moods and promote calm in the little cup on the sill above my kitchen sink. Diffuse scents in different rooms, grounding in the homeschool HQ, wellness in the living room, relax in the bedroom. Hold "the moments that don’t feel like you have to choose between holding and folding". I try to state my needs and take the time to remember I still have them.
I find outlets. The ocean. Outdoor dinners with girlfriends. Music that soothes my soul. Lying on the floor next to my dog. A good cry. Scream shushing into a light well. Laughter.
I reframe. It’s not remote learning...it’s closer to home learning! I give my imagination a nice long lead line and explore the depths of different fantasies. I practice time traveling meditation. Channel my inner Chad.
I circle the wagons and lean into my village. Exchange flowers and juices and books and beer and messages of solidarity with my people. Circle my fellow mamas, parents, and superheroines in arms and find strength in the collective. I listen to my guides and my teachers. I call my mom and dad.
I mark time. Every morning, my son helps my husband make the first round of coffee. Before we head out to our respective corners of the home to make our way through our respective corners of the day. The second round of coffee coincides with the end of a daily conference call for one grown up and the start of a zoom break for the first grader. The dog goes out, the dog comes in. We call grandma and talk about horses. We zoom, we learn, we teach, we work, we coach, we talk, we listen. We cue up Little House and my almost seven year old posits, "death is part of the olden days". We close out the day. We mark time. Every Friday, we go Russian Hill and order pizza from our favorite spot. We take our to go beers and walk along Hyde, look out onto the bay, and welcome the weekend. We pick up homemade ice cream for ourselves and our upstairs neighbors and the guys at the pizza place. We eat one slice out of the box on the way home as we weave down Lombard St and listen to KPOO. We mark time.
On that dark September Wednesday with the orange sky, my son woke up late to the scratching of our pup at his bedroom door. He stumbled out of his room and said, “Hey boy, you woke me up! But it’s Ok. It wasn’t that great of a dream anyway.” We walked the dog around the block in the eerie light. We took comfort in a Brady Bunch patchwork of sleepy and silly first grade faces. For lunch, we stood in line at the bakery across the street. In the afternoon, we rode out to the park, headlights on, marveling at what my son called the “old timey light”. And as he rode in circles on his horse against the sepia sky, I thought about time. I prayed for my friends in fire stricken valleys. I missed my parents and my sisters. My heart ached. For our family, our city, our state, our country, our planet, our olden days, our future. I woke from my daydream and chatted with the wranglers about the sky, now growing lighter. The edges softening.
When the day's sun is blotted out and the end of days feels near, wake up, get a croissant for lunch, get back on your horse. Scratch at the door. It may not be that great of a dream anyway.
With love and solidarity,
Abby
