I am in the midst of one of those curve balls, and I did not see it coming. There’s a good chance I won’t complete a number of my original goals for this year, including finishing the manuscript for my dissertation as planned - though I am going to try. I have not failed to meet a writing goal in the four years I have been writing professionally. I am not being pessimistic, I am being real. And yes, it’s only January.
Circumstances are such that I cannot even write about them. This feels so restrictive since I write to know what I think and feel. Yet, as I sit here in the eye of the hurricane, it is still my job to care for myself. So I will write about that. Some days are better than others in terms of how I care for myself.
Here's what I am doing:
I get up and go to bed about the same time each day. I hydrate.
I now eat breakfast. This means I am taking a break from intermittent fasting (no pun intended). I am finding I am constantly hungry, so I am going with that and eating healthy, nutritionally dense food. Kind people have been supplying us good food but also with an overabundance of Christmas cookies. I have not been overindulging in sugar. Because when I do, I feel bad (or worse than I already do), so why eat them at all? Every other day, I may eat half a cookie with a cup of tea, but it mostly isn’t worth it. I will say the odd dark chocolate still hits the spot for me. I try to keep it to two small pieces. Breakfast is a cup of Earl Grey tea, a fried egg, and a piece of grainy toast – the crunchier the better. And lots of butter.
Since I wrote the above, I woke up the last few days and noticed I wasn’t starving hungry. So I had a cup of tea and went on with my morning routine without breakfast. I was just fine. I did have green tea to mitigate hunger pangs. It seems my body can adapt and adjust to what it needs fairly quickly. My job is to listen and learn.
After breakfast, I do my prayer practice from Pray-as-You-Go. This includes listening to some scripture and reflecting on it. Acknowledging my need for help and asking for it. I often do my 5 Tibetans while I am listening. My low back has been irritated, so I add in some low-back stretching and strengthening and some supine twists and knees-to-chest.
This last week, I added 15-20 minutes of Body Groove. It improves my mood and reduces my back/hip pain. It is easy, fun, and I don’t have to “think” – I just do. I went old school and ordered a secondhand DVD for cheap. It has at least 6 workouts on it for about $7. Yes, I still have a DVD player, and I know how to use it. In fact, it is the only thing that does work on my big screen TV. Sometimes going low tech does the job, and I didn’t need to purchase another subscription service.
I am napping right after lunch.
I am eating dinner earlier. I am resisting the urge to drink wine with my meal. Though maybe once a week, I will have one glass.
I go to bed fairly early, around 9.30 p.m.
I use my hot water bottle to warm my feet. It gives me comfort.
I listen to my prayer app (Pray-as-You-Go) – The Gift of Sleep meditation.
I am taking an occasional yoga class as time permits. I am still doing a monthly sauna and cold plunge. My body feels so relaxed afterwards.
I am seeing my chiropractor monthly. I added acupuncture. I haven’t done that in a while. My family members are pretty good with giving hugs and massages as requested.
I continue to do spiritual direction every month (which means I see my spiritual director). Not to be confused with the fact that I am a spiritual director – we spiritual directors always have our own SD. It’s part of the practice.
I plan on seeing my therapist for support.
Some evenings I will sit quietly with a cup of ginger tea and listen to music I enjoy – usually something mellow and folksy.
I take comfort from friends and family who know that all is not well and send me words of comfort. We all have these times, yes, and the details vary in degree and depth. But we have all been in raging storms if we have lived for more than a year or two.
At the same time, I feel privileged to be able to do any of the above things I am doing to care for myself. It takes time and resources. Not an overwhelmingly so, but some. To have some of each at this time, I am grateful.
So I send you this brief post from my life raft. I am holding on. May you hold on too – whatever it is you are going through. We are not alone. Let’s keep breathing together.
With love,
Joanne
An Experimental Poem
We weep with you, Ross Gay, oh gentle word wizard
Professor of I’ll-give-you-an-A-for-showing-up
Such freedom!
We weep with you, weep with me, me weep with you,
Weep you you weep me we
You read us Grief Suite[1]
I am gutted undone not ok but ok
Whatever that means anyway
I’m just being in ‘it’
What ever ‘it’ is That’s what I’m ok with
A moment of complete presence
Then the next moment lost in the footnotes
Of grief of loss of pain yours mine the
collective of us
The world all of us
What I heard was a wrestling with the cosmic imbalance
of the divine masculine
and the divine feminine
the yin/yang of energy in the universe
Footnote: I break from the serious for a moment. Ross write’s bloody long footnotes. I love a good footnote. I read all of them. I have conversationswith people in footnotes – like editors, or professors! I mean, if you are going to all the trouble of writing a footnote, you want to be sure someone will read it. End footnote.
[1] Grief Suite is a 100 page essay by Ross Gay. Yes, that’s right, 100 page essay on grief. It is a very personal and vulnerable essay about grief and grief eventually giving way to joy.
A Book on the Horizon
If you have been reading along with me for over a year now, you will know there is a very long lag time between finishing a book project and that book being launched into the world. Here’s the one that was finished last year with Catherine Cook-Cottone. The cover art is just lovely. The inside will be even better. Stay tuned for more to come. Release date is June 21 - right around Summer Solstice.
Heartfelt and beautiful! Hang in. 😘❤💙
Thank you for sharing. It would have been easy and understandable to abandon the Be Well project in the midst of difficulties. Instead, you write from the eye of the hurricane. Thanks for taking care of yourself.