Resolved
At the beginning of the year you hear it the most.
Just do it! Change your life! Change yourself! Now is the time!
All of the platitudes that are supposed to get inspire you to get off your butt and be the full human being you’ve always wanted to be. You hear it the most at the beginning of the year, but it’s with us always. Boostrapping our way to everything from financial freedom to thinness to a great job.
Just do it (yourself). (Why aren’t you) just doing it?
I took this picture the day of Winter Solstice 2016. There is a farm close to me that has buffalo and I knew when I left the house that day that I wanted to take a picture of the buffalo for Solstice. I imagined a hard core picture of a herd of buffalo charging up the small hill in their grazing area. Or maybe a picture of one of them swinging its powerful head back and forth, sweeping aside snow and debris to get at the food underneath. Something that would ‘inspire’ me, and prop me up on bad days.
What I didn’t imagine was this picture I got. An unsure buffalo standing in front of an open fence, unable to decide what she’s going to do. Go through the fence? Turn around and walk the other way? Lay down and do nothing?
I didn’t notice her at first, I was busy focusing my camera in on the groups of buffalo walking around the field. Sometimes they take off running and the thunderous sound of hooves digging into the ground and the surprisingly quick speed in which they run is a sight to behold. But after it became apparent there would be no running on that day, I shifted my camera’s focus onto the groups of grazing buffalo. Looking for maybe a ‘mother/baby’ combo or even just friendly looking buffalo buddies sharing some food. It was when one of the buffalos I was focusing on turned and walked through the fence gate that my camera finally passed this anxious buffalo, this one that couldn’t make up her mind.
And that she couldn’t make up her mind was obvious, as was her stress. Her head swung back and forth, not as I had seen other buffalo do, powerfully, low to the ground, with intention–but as if looking around for friends. I have a few shots of her looking directly at me and then a few more shots of her head in the opposite direction. Her body doesn’t move or shift in anyway in any of the pictures.
And she always went back to the staring at what was right in front of her. The open fence door. With something on the other side that she couldn’t get to. Even if she wanted to.
I wondered if the fences had electric currents and she had been shocked at some point. Or if she was just pausing for some reason only known to buffalos. Or if maybe she was younger than other buffalo in the area (she is significantly smaller than the others) and just didn’t know what to do with this big fence in front of her.
For whatever reason, she wasn’t ‘just doing it.’
And that’s the reason I finally snapped this particular picture and decided to post it.
Because it was the first time it really ever occurred to me: what does it take to walk through the fence? What does it take? Oh, I know all about structural and systemic inequality that prevents so many people from doing things like going to college or getting that amazing job we’re all supposed to be shooting for. Or getting that book published that we’re all supposed to just be ‘doing’ ourselves.
But when I saw this buffalo in front of the fence and started thinking about my own life and how I have lived 4 decades with an undiagnosed autoimmune disease, how just getting out of bed somedays has been nearly impossible, some times only able to accomplish it through extreme self-bullying (get up, what the fuck is wrong with you? MOVE NOW YOU LAZY SHIT!), and how I’ve been told for about 20 years that if I just lost weight–if I just ‘did it,’ I’d feel better…How many times and in how many ways have I hurt myself in order to force my body to do what others decided it needed to do? How long have I been holding on for dear life, wanting desperately to walk through the fence (Get up and exercise so you lose weight and feel better! Get up and cook dinner so you lose weight and feel better! Get up and take a shower so you want to lose weight and feel better!), but just not being able to?
How terrifying has that fence become to me after all this time?
I’ve been stuck in the same field all my life, and have had everybody from parents to doctors to myself try to force me through the fence without ever once considering that the reason I wasn’t moving wasn’t something I could control. Absolutely because of structural system inequality: not being able to afford a gym membership, not having safe enough streets to exercise on for awhile, not having childcare help.
But also because of just being different and needing different things to get through the fence. Needing a proper diagnosis. Needing time in the day not devoted to surviving work. Needing explanations about my body and the way it works. Needing a different set of goals, my own goals. Needing to learn how to even imagine outside of the box of ‘survival.’ Needing gentleness and support. Needing to know how to do gentleness and support.
We’re all sitting in our own field with our own fences that we haven’t been able to figure out how to get through. Have you ever been shown what it takes? Has anybody ever shown you how to walk through the fence in a way that won’t hurt you? Have you been shown repeatedly that walking through the fence comes with physical and emotional violence? Have you been beaten for being different, for wanting to be different? Or have you lived in a world that is so closed down, so narrow, that you’ve never even been allowed to imagine that walking through the fence is a possibility?
In the book, When the Body Says No, Dr. Gabor Mate discusses the stress of never being in control of your own life can lead to the type of chronic stress that can cause ill health and death. No wonder we all sit in front of our fences, panic attacks in one hand and reluctance in the other, heads swinging back and forth, desperately looking for a way to not have to deal with it.
We’re told relentlessly to ‘just do it.’ We want desperately to just do it. We learn how to beat ourselves, assault ourselves, self medicate ourselves, for not having any idea what to do with the massive fence in front of us, keeping us from dreams we never knew we were allowed to dream.
Dr. Mate suggests that a helpful way to challenge the way we have learned to talk to ourselves is to ask if we would talk to a loved one the way we talk to ourselves. So I ask myself, would you beat this buffalo? Would you see how powerful she is, and know that she can do it–and so decide all she needs is a good zap in the butt? Or maybe a fist to the face? Or maybe you could just scream at her, just do it, just goddamn do it you lazy sack of shit! You’re a buffalo! You’re more powerful than any other creature here! What is wrong with you??
Why won’t you just do it?
Thank god I was raised with love and respect for buffalo, with a sense of kinship with buffalo. Otherwise I might not be able to answer completely and honestly–no. I would never ever treat any buffalo as I do myself. I’d work with the buffalo on their own terms in ways that they needed to get them to trust walking through the fence. In best case scenario, I’d make sure they weren’t fenced in anywhere. I take the fence completely out of the equation. Because I know their natures are not that of farm animals. Because I love them and feel kinship with them.
What do I feel for myself that I won’t do the same thing for me?
As I have spent more time reflecting. I’ve come to realize that deciding whether or not to go through any symbolic or metaphorical or even very real fence is not the question. It’s recognizing how very little so many of us have been prepared to walk through any fence on our own terms and in our own way–indeed, how many of us have been traumatized or violated for even trying.
And so this year, I resolve. I won’t scream at myself JUST DO IT, WHY AREN’T YOU DOING IT!?!? I won’t beat myself when I fail again. I won’t self-medicate with abuse and shaming.
This year, I will instead with compassion and love, sit with myself and mourn, cry, educate, and love the buffalo that was never helped until this point.
What is wrong with you?
What is wrong with you?
The truth is, nothing is wrong with you. There is nothing wrong with me.
It’s ok to be sick, to be hurting, to not know. It’s ok. We’re all doing the very best that we can. And that is good enough.
We’ll get to that fence on our own time in our own ways, once we’re ready, hopefully. For now–rest. Fists down. And rest.
In prayer:
May we all be safe. May we all find peace. May we all be free.
And then decide. Not to go through the fence. But how to be kind to ourselves as we learn, as we breath, as we live. How to show compassion to ourselves. How to be gentle.
Let’s begin with compassion.
And because I have learned that self-compassion is a skill that can be learned, that I am teaching myself, I share with you the resources that have taught me:
Self-Compassion with Dr. Kristen Neff
The mindful path to self-compassion
The Gifts of Imperfection
loving in the war years: when it all falls apart
in the middle of mourning, news came that a family member has stage four cancer. and that it had spread, far and wide.
and everything just stopped. work, laughter, joy, mourning. grey overcast rolled over life and i couldn’t move.
i lost a dear friend to breast cancer. a different family member was throwing up blood, but guilt and shame over an addiction made him assume the blood was caused by the addiction. it was cancer. another family member died a long slow painful death from a cancer nobody had ever heard of.
and now here we are again.
not only is there the pain of a loved one being ill, but there’s that Death guy again, staring at me straight in my face. challenging me. he’s not going away. in fact, he just keeps getting closer and closer. i can’t avoid him, i can’t pretend he doesn’t exist. not anymore.
what is my relationship with death? what am i going to do about the fact that i’m going to die at some point?
i’ve written and contemplated a lot about death. as a kid, i was terrified of ‘not being’ anymore, and so the dying part terrified me. the moment when you switch from being alive to being dead. but now i am older and i’ve experienced death of loved ones and meditated with death and written stories about it…and i’m less afraid of not existing. and utterly terrified of not ‘being alive’ before i no longer exist.
a person i follow on twitter asked the question, what do you hope to be doing in 5 years? it’s a great question, one that i have long struggled to answer. but it’s also a question that she asked right around the time we were finding out about this family member. and so the question was not one that lead to joyful answers or determination. it lead to the worst case of nihilism i think i’ve ever had. and boy, let me tell you, i can do nihilism hard core.
what is the point of being alive? what’s the point of any of this? why are we here? what intention did god or the universe or whatever created this planet and humans have for any of us?
these are not new questions, these are questions that have hounded and terrorized most of humanity for the entirety of its existence. but as i sit here, a middle aged person that is about the same age as so many of the others i’ve known who have died, i wonder why am i here and not them. why do kids in war torn regions get killed and not me? what decided which hundreds of thousands of people would be killed when the atomic bombs were dropped and which wouldn’t?
is there a god or a universal law that decides these things? and if so, what is the criteria? what was the deciding factor that let the mother be killed but not the baby that is left suckling at her breast?
the randomness, the lack of rules. there is no way to assure ourselves that we will die in our sleep at a very old age. it is discombobulating. but it is terrifying to think that the lives of the people who are killed by wars, who die from cancer, who are hit by cars (as my dear friend was), who’ve ‘reached their time’–have no meaning. that it doesn’t matter what they did or accomplished in their five year time line or what they checked off their bucket list or what they did that morning or what they wanted to do that evening…it is terrifying to think that there is no meaning to the lives they lived. that there is no meaning to my life.
that we’re all here on earth just waiting for the moment until we die.
i’ve always thought that i was put on this earth to be the greatest and best me that god intended me to be. but i don’t know anymore. i could’ve been at the bar in florida that was shot up. I could’ve been the driver on I-94 that was smeared across the pavement. i could’ve been the one who was told the cancer was back and it spread. everywhere.
that i’m not the one who died yesterday doesn’t give meaning to my life today. or does it? should it?what is the point of doing this, of doing life?
what happens if i die, and i’ve never done all that i wanted to do? or i’ve never dreamed as greatly as god intended me to dream?
i am blanketed by grey immobilizing hopelessness, while a blistering fire of desperation burns in my guts. there is no hope. but there’s so little time. i must get a bucket list, i must get that job i always wanted, i must win the lottery, i must i must i must i must…
i will eventually be the one that death doesn’t walk away from. what do i do until then?
i don’t move. i haven’t moved. i snarl and hiss at my partner and wearily cart children to school and dutifully wait for them seven hours later. rote life. rote living. terrorized by death.
what am i going to do? what is any of us going to do?
loving in the war years: day twenty eight
Coming Back To Life: Healing Through Crisis With Ritual + Action
A creative parent holds space for a child to explore, be creative, test boundaries, let their imagination run wild, experience different personalities, ideas and roles. A great parent doesn’t control or shut down. This is the same when dealing with your inner-child. Allow yourself explore and experience life, empower yourself to make the right choices and live life in your own way. Be an innovative parent to your inner child: loving yourself when you’re sick, being encouraging when you fall over, and always cheering yourself on.
loving in the war years: day twenty seven
Feeling Grief + Dreaming Another World
“Philandro Castille. I honor your life by releasing this grief to go home. I release this heaviness in my heart so I can be an active part of creating a new world”
“To the people of Nice. I honor your lives by releasing this grief to go home. I release this heaviness in my heart so I can be an active part of creating a new world”
“ For the non-human communities who are devastated by strip-mining… For the three officers who were killed in Baton Rouge… For anyone who preaches hate and division… I honor your lives [or the lives that have been affected by your wounds] by releasing this grief to go home. I release this heaviness in my heart so I can be an active part of creating a new world ”
loving in the war years: day twenty six
the following quote comes from a really great blog post about nourishing self with food during times of mourning. it has a good recipe for bone broth that i highly recommend–with a few caveats. while this author is probably correct that bone broth should be made from organically grown animals, i also know that organic meat that’s connected to the organic bones can be and is often extremely expensive. sometimes you can get lucky and find just the bones without the meat, but even those can be super expensive. whole foods knows there’s a bone broth phenomenon going on right now.
my suggestion is to buy the ‘tough’ cuts of organic meat with bones in–because they’re not ‘prime’ meat they’re often quite a bit less expensive. you can also ask for bones, on the off chance you have access to a butcher (but as i said this often can be just as expensive depending on where you go). also, don’t forget that buying already made organic broth in a box is totally a choice. of course it feels good to buy things fresh and make it yourself–but, sometimes self care comes in the form of being able to pull a lid off a $2.99 container and heat up contents in microwave. you get the benefits of self care, self nourishment, and calming soup all for much less expense and much less work.
anyway. check out this excerpt:
Sorrow and mourning can take many forms, as death and loss can come in so many different guises. Sometimes it isn’t the physical death of a loved one that we mourn, but the end of something we cherished. The loss of a job, or a friendship, or an intimate relationship, or even a lost pet. So many experiences tear holes into us, and we have to practice a fair bit of self care in order to heal those wounds so they don’t grow and fester.
I’ve mentioned that one of the most nourishing foods I’ve come across yet is bone broth, as it isn’t just a soothing internal hug, but also replenishes a body right down to the cellular level. It can be used as the base for a heavier soup, or just enjoyed on its own by the mugful; something that I try to do as often as possible, especially during the autumn and winter months. Quite often, a cup of this broth first thing in the morning does more to wake me and replenish my spirits than half a dozen cups of coffee ever could.
loving in the war years: day twenty four
sometimes there are no words so the universe talks for you.
loving in the war years: day twenty three
and then there are the days when you just can’t think anymore or pray anymore or focus or do anything with the pain anymore. on those days of rest, there is the sylvester the cat series.