Is it my imagination or was 2021 and 2022 WAY harder on us all than we know? I’m in a place of finally releasing – after being able to let go of my dad and all the arrangements we were holding around his funeral – and I’m slowly feeling the release of tensions, emotions, thoughts, attachments and feelings that I have been carrying for god knows how long.
This past winter especially, during the months of ever lengthening light, has been hard. I started to turn a corner in April, but the weather in the west coast was cold and dark and dreary for almost the whole spring, and so my mood followed, interior looking, cozy, quiet, reflective. It has taken a trip to the quiet humidity of an early southern Ontario summer to finally out some distance between my self and my mood. I’m in the midst of healing from a wound I don’t know I have. Putting my feet back under me so I can be more helpful.
I’ve not been at my best these past few months, not sure anyone has. Our brittle collective psyche seems cracked and damaged, held together by small hopes and small wins. I’ve found a few things that are helping me – a regular rhythm of practice in the morning and evening, eating very good food and not much of it, learning just a little bit more jazz every day. I’m taking joy in things like supporting my TSS Rovers FC and putting the wind in the sails of young professionals who are growing in their practices of hosting and harvesting.
But I still have this feeling of “waiting for something” that I’m trying hard to shake. I see friends and colleagues “getting back to normal” but I’m different. I am still quite careful in closed spaces, limiting my travel, wearing a mask in most places. I’m still living with the pandemic, which is worse now in terms of infections than it ever has been. I can feel the bifurcation of those still practicing public health practices and those who aren’t. I haven’t had COVID and I don’t want to have it. And so I keep close to home mostly and support colleagues from afar.
And when I lift my eyes I see that there are things that really worry me in the world. The creeping fascism that is a reactionary response to the big cracks now appearing in our economic system and our civic life not to mention our climate and environment. The hyper inequality that surrounds us. The displacement and the changes wrought on community and society. The intensification of colonization, misogyny, racism, homo- and transphobia that is taking deeper root in the legislative codes that govern people I care deeply about.
I find joy in music, in my spiritual practice, in the voices of those I can mentor, vicariously through their successes.
So what am I seeing? I know I’m not alone in seeing all this. What is similar and different where you are sitting?
The word “brittle” stands out for me in this piece. I agree with your overall assessment; things are… okay? sort of? but after the past two years+ of constant shocks and stress, everything feels very fragile. I hope that we all get a chance to breathe and process, and figure out a path forward.
Appreciate this Chris. Appreciating you.
I have my practices too. Breathing. Writing (journal, blog, poetry). Walks. Exercise, stretching, stationary bike.
I have little things (seemingly silly) that I find I have extra joy in. Listening to a comedy program. Following the hockey playoffs.
And…, there is a noise that I experience in contemporary life. It’s primary narratives of fear. It’s advertised reductionism. It’s habits of noise on noise.
I too find I need the quiet. Spiritual practice.
So often my private journal writing brings me back to a reminder. “Stay simple. These are the two words I most often need to remember.”
That, and a regular dose of “I don’t know” (sometimes a despairingly big dose).
And then people and life seem to bring doses of essential companioning that help me to sit in the realness and the rawness of it all. This is a gift of friendship and love.
From where I sit.
Not alone. It seems to be a new form of burnout at so many levels. Nature brings me home and the practice of letting go, graceful decline of unnecessary things ( and invitations) and getting all kinds of rest while struggling with the realization of my privilege to do so.
What are you seeing? It’s called collapse. As Hemingway said of bankruptcy, it happens “gradually, and then suddenly”. We’re witnessing the gradually, picking up speed. The anxiety is to be expected. The practices that will work best will be those that optimize our resilience, and our (relative) comfort with uncertainty, ambiguity, and cog dissonance.
A long way down, and the path and slope are not yet clear.
Reading indi.ca, Indrajit Samarajiva’s chronicle of the accelerating collapse in Sri Lanka, helps me see what’s coming. It’s not all awful.
Thank you for pointing me to Inderjit’s blog. “Not all awful“ is enough to make me feel somewhat encouraged!
I feel it. Moments of connection like in pc days, over meals, real hugs. And continued caution, masks.
Daily breathwork and regular-ish meditation along with the Online Healing Circles I’ve hosted twice a week through pandemic have kept me mostly ok. The reflections and images that have emerged out of this time have surprised and gratituded me. (There needs to be a word for something that inspires gratitude. Anyone?) And. . .
And I detect a level of bone weariness deeper than any I can remember. Grief at the state of the world, the economic, political and environmental fissures undergirds it. And fear. I long for a community of people to be in it with yet feel isolated, apart. This is much different than the grief and unknowing after my spouse died. Then I trusted the unfolding. Now I’m not so sure.
I’ve been a part of a regular circle as well, hosted by the grandmothers of the downtown Eastside Inn Vancouver. It has been tremendously healing and supportive, and I’ve grown very close to the people in that circle even though I’ve only met a handful of them in person.
I have been saying to my husband over the past couple months that it feels like things really are beginning to fall apart. Old solutions in the US don’t seem to work and create new and seemingly unexpected consequences. I worry for my grand and great grand kids about the ‘creeping fascism’ you mention and the seeming accelerating climate disturbances. It feels like a dark time probably getting darker, tho personally I am in a good place with spiritual practices & study which offer some ground, and feeling that standing on that ground with an intention to respond to what comes with as much helpfulness as I can see is what I should be doing with the days I have.
I could echo much of what you have written, this past winter and spring have been difficult. I’m just now back home from leading a retreat at Rivendell for pandemic-weary church and community leaders. Some hope and light emerged amidst the sharing with others, and through the peacefulness on top of Cates Hill.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
I’ve been curious lately about how much of “being back around people” is necessary for us to even get a baseline understanding or feeling sense of where we actually are. For those of us who have been able to turn home, turn in, tighten the circle of humans we interact with in the body to body ways… we are evolving and shifting and changing with ourselves. Do we catch the nuances? And as people stretch to interact and engage with one another more, might the grief and sorrow and fear and uncertainty and changes we didn’t know had happened find more wrinkles and brow furrows and silent pleads of companion and support seeping into felt sensations, revealing themselves with more nuance of expression… Does it take coming out of the cocoon some to even have a sense of what the state of being is? I find myself waiting for a massive mental health fall-out to drop even more intensely than what I already feel around me.
And for me, the devotion and call to practices that tend to my regulated nervous system, cultivating my own sphere of inner peace, practicing the feelings, sensations, and states that nourish me. . .
Learning to navigate my sensitive receptors for when I am with the world around me that has always felt intense and feels even more intense now.
And praying… praying so much for the young ones caught in these cross fires…
Sending love… grateful for you and other humans here that ignite my heart’s smile.
Thanks. I think I’m still trying to learn those strategies of regulation in my new skin here all the while being asked to interact with the world in sometimes old ways. Lots to chew on here, Ashley. Thanks.
This post resonated with me too. I feel the same way and have realised that my mindset has “switched”. I feel a lot different to the person I was pre 2020. Now, I’m thankful of my life, I write, I knit, I do things that challenge me in some small way (but don’t let things overcome me). Work has dropped in significance a lot – in fact, it doesn’t even rate a mention anymore. Recently I also deleted social media and I feel as if a burden as lifted. Small steps. Lots to look forward to but absolutely no need to rush to get there.
It all brings a us a little closer to being meaningful present. And that’s no small thing.
I really relate to this, with still being cautious/careful , not being at my best.. healing cracks