Covid winter is here

trauma season

I had a newsletter all drafted and almost ready to go - and then yesterday afternoon happened. Part of what got us here in the first place is continuing to act as if nothing is wrong when so much is wrong, so I won’t do that today.

I have been saying for the last several months that we are all living through a traumatic event - a pandemic on its own would be traumatizing enough, but then you add in a racial reckoning, leadership failures all around, a vitriolic election, a President and his cronies attempting a coup (that is exactly what has been going on for the last six weeks), 350,000 Americans dead - and we are all traumatized, whether you’re actually feeling it or not. In fact, that is the way trauma works - it won’t show up until your body feels it is safe enough for it to process the trauma. Which means that we won’t be able to fully deal with this trauma - individually or societally - until we reach that 80 percent-ish vaccination rate that will usher in a return to “normality” (whatever that means at this point).

That doesn’t mean that I think we should all just throw up our hands until the end of 2021. But I do think it means that we should be aware of what we’re living through. That helps us build compassion for ourselves and others, which will serve us well in the days ahead. I also think there are two things we can do in this in-between season that might better prepare us for the trauma that will come at some point: reflect and rest up.

As cases spike all over the country and we break new death records each day, we are deep in the #CovidWinter the experts warned us about. Winter is always a time for rest and reflection, but I’m not sure that we have ever needed rest and reflection more than we do this season. We must carve out time to reflect on what has been and what we want for ourselves and our families on the other side of this. Looking back helps us figure out what is important to us and let go of what isn’t. I love the “what I’m learning and loving” practice for this forced reflection time each month. I am using these questions to reflect back this season. The whole of winter is for reflecting, so you don’t have to feel like you have to squeeze it all in to the last week of the year or the first week of the new year. Take your time, be thoughtful.

We have to rest up to refuel our tanks from the seemingly endless slog of 2020 and prepare for the hard work yet to come. We have to rest to remind ourselves that we are human beings not human doings (as Father Richie says). Because of capitalism, we all are indoctrinated to feel like rest isn’t really doing anything or that it is lazy, but as the Nap Bishop teaches, “rest is resistance.” We can’t make the world better for anyone let alone ourselves if we’re exhausted or running close to burnout. But also, we can take care of ourselves because we are worthy of being cared for. Period. Neghar’s writing on self-care a few years ago was a major light bulb moment for me on this.

I am hopeful that we arrive on the other side of this more awake to our interconnectedness and more compassionate with ourselves and others, but I think, in order for that to happen, the work starts here, in this #CovidWinter that we find ourselves.

Rants and raves

👍 I am almost finished with J. Courtney Smith’s newest, Friends and Strangers, and it is SO GOOD. I am almost a Smith completist, so I obviously love her stuff, but Friends and Strangers is a perfect blend of nostalgia for early motherhood and early adulthood - two points in time more alike than I had realized before reading it. I highly recommend you add it to your TBR stack.

👎 I was not at all surprised about the storming of the Capitol yesterday while simultaneously being shocked that it was allowed to happen (especially with the President declaring his plans openly for weeks and explicitly Wednesday morning). If instigating insurrection isn’t an impeachable offense - or at this point reason enough to invoke the 25th or 14th amendments - then do those safeguards mean anything at all?!

Stuff worth sharing this week

• This beautiful reflection from Courtney Martin inspired by murmuration - those times when birds swoop through the air in tandem - inspired me to add “who are your seven?” to my journal reflecting time this week. As I reflected, I was reminded how good it is to have different friends for different needs and seasons. No one person need shoulder all of the weight, and there is less guilt about letting go of those connections that were fruitful for a certain season but aren’t any longer.

• Part of the grieving and letting go process is reflecting on what was. To that end, this New Yorker piece on “The Plague Year” was an insightful and necessary, if depressing, read. I took some time with it - reading it over a few days, and journaling about what was going on in my life as the article moved throughout the year.

• I saved this episode of Pantsuit Politics until I had time to really savor it, which was earlier this week. It was definitely worth the wait and helped put me in that wintry, reflective mood.

A blessing

I used to call this my favorite “winter season” blessing, but I think, instead, it should at least temporarily be dubbed our “Covid blessing,” whispering it often to ourselves and our loved ones these days:

For One Who Is Exhausted, a Blessing by John O’Donohue from Bless the Space Between Us (one of my desert island books)

When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight,

The light in the mind becomes dim.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laboursome events of will.

Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.

The tide you never valued has gone out.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life.

You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken for the race of days.

At first your thinking will darken
And sadness take over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.

You have travelled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of colour
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.

Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.

Seasonal view of the week

Icy #NatureTherapy to celebrate the end of the year:

Cheers to resting and reflecting in the weeks ahead,

Sara