Show Me Where It Hurts
Today, I awoke to a feeling that I'm certain many of us are collectively sharing: a sense of deep heaviness. As someone well-versed in trauma, I can easily identify this feeling now, where it lives in my body, and thankfully, I have an arsenal of tools now that help me process in healthy ways. (I guess it turns out everything that I've experienced can be a good teacher, after all. Well, well, well.) In my younger years, I'd allow this feeling to weigh on me with the force of a water-logged tarp, and I believed in earnest that my job was to bounce back and forth under it to keep the water from spilling over - anything to keep me dry and protected from the coming onslaught. What this past year has taught me is that staying dry never was my job or the goal; rather, allowing the weight of these feelings and grief to wash over me expedites my healing process.
A year ago, I shifted into a depression like I hadn't experienced in years. I struggle seasonally with this, but last January, I was facing existential crises that plummeted my delicate seasonal balance into a depth of despair I had seldom experienced. I sat at a crossroads in my career at 42, questioning what my purpose was. Circumstances in my life were triggering wounds I didn't know even existed, and I fell into a state of paralysis. No one knew about it, at least not the extent of it - not even my own husband. Basic functions like getting out of bed and showering simply didn't have a wellspring of energy to draw from, and I simply couldn't bootstrap my way out of despondency.
This experience stripped me of all my typical trappings of self-care and self-medication. Nothing was touching it. There was no band-aid. I realized over the next six months that the only way through this thing was to lean into it, learn to sit with its discomfort, listen to what it had to teach me, and be okay with whatever answers came.
As it turned out, I didn't shrivel up and die from the discomfort. In fact, I felt relief granting myself permission to stop fighting. I let myself not be okay, and in doing so, I started feeling better. Delving into my own patterns of thinking and acting, listening to where I felt them in my body, and examining them through a lens of grace rather than admonishment helped me find lightness again.
I don't know what that looks like for anyone else. For me, it required prioritizing certain things: regulating how much media I consumed, carving out time for writing and reading, spending time every day outdoors in the sunshine. I also made myself a set of really basic promises I vowed to keep each day: shower each morning. Put on makeup. Commit to washing my face every night. Take my vitamins. By keeping these small promises, I started trusting myself again in a time where I didn't feel like I could fully trust anything I had learned in this life the past 43 years.
Anticipating this season of uncertainty and big feelings that we find ourselves in today, I made a list last month of everything that brings me joy and peace, and I've worked to build this little arsenal to help support me. Some were significant, like writing 500 words each day, spending at least 45 minute outdoors, and putting a plan together to pay off debt over the next 12 months. But others, while they seem trivial, make a difference when compounded together: cozy socks, soft cardigans and pants, a heated blanket, my favorite candles.
Those lessons I'm putting back into practice today as I sit with more uncertainty. This time, I feel much more grounded and whole in my mind and body, but the world around me seems to be swirling in chaos, change, and a foreboding sense of dread. Here's how I'm spending this January 20:
Morning calming meditation with the Calm app (I bit the bullet last week and got a year's subscription - feels like a solid investment).
Deep cleaning/organizing - we spent most of the holiday break purging and doing a complete refresh of our house. Today, I'm getting into the nitty-gritty stuff and deep cleaning drawers and corners of the house that I keep saying I'll get to one day. Today is that day.
Making a delicious, healthy lemon chicken orzo soup since apparently we're living in the Artic circle this week.
Opening all my blinds and curtains to let the sunshine in since 12 degrees isn't conducive to my restful Harpeth River visits.
Taking a long Epsom salt bath with my essential oils and doing my weekly face and hair masks while I enjoy a glass of red wine and a light rom-com fiction book.
Taking all my vitamins, drinking a lot of water, and going to bed early to set myself up for a successful work week tomorrow.
Checking social media only twice - once this morning, once this evening. I do not need a front-row seat to what I know brings me dread, anxiety, and spiraling thoughts over things I have no control over.
I don't know what the next years will bring, or even the next 24 hours. And even if I did, there is not one damn thing I can do about it. It's time to hibernate for a while to protect my peace and care for an inner child who is simply doing her best to show up every day. Whatever that looks like for you today, I hope you are able to carve out some time to care for yours as well. In the meantime, I'll leave you with one of my favorite poems by the timeless philosopher, Wendell Berry:
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
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