'Lord, increase my bewilderment'
Three quick logistical things:
I am moderating a conversation about burn-out, particularly for women of color in the nonprofit sector, tomorrow morning at 8am PST / 11am EST for FRESH and you are all invited. Register here.
The Slate pod this week is on having better conversations and it features this cool way of listening called “looping,” that I find to be a very powerful tool for anyone who cares about making others feel truly understood. Take a listen and let us know what you think?
And as always, subscribing, sharing, and switching to a paid membership here is a real gift to me as I try to make my way in the world as a writer. Thank you!
Hi friends, I don’t really have anything eloquent to say this week. I’m feeling totally enraged and sad (not a big enough word) about the genocide in Gaza, all the while aware that there are other horrible things happening that I’m not even paying as much attention to. I’m struggling with some professional existentialism (Am I a cog in the wheel or am I actually a force for good trouble from the inside?) and personal uncertainty (How can I take care of my dad and my mom the way I’d like to when they live five hours away?). Someone I loved very much, who raised me up in my 20s and taught me how to just be still and shoot the shit, died. I wrote some “private poems” about her this weekend and that helped a little. I walked in the woods.
I’ve been doing what I do when I am uneasy and sad—read a lot. I finished Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! last weekend and in it he writes, “The performance of certainty seems to be at the root of so much grief.”
And also: “Lord, increase my bewilderment.”
Lord, I am bewildered. On so many fronts. Last night I stayed up into the wee hours of the night to finish Doppleganger by Naomi Klein, which was due at the library. It blew me away—such a wildly articulate and weird summary of the times we are living in, the narrative battles for our attention, the way politics is preying on our worst possible selves. This paragraph, where Klein is quoting novelist Daisy Hildyard, really landed in my body:
So this is all sort of mishmash because I’m a mishmash this week. Are you a mishmash, too? A body and a second body? Welcome! It’s not exactly sunny here, but it is not lonely when you realize that you are not, in fact, alone.
In light of my professed uncertainty it may seem strange to turn this into an AMA (Ask Me Anything), but why not? I promise not to have pat answers, but more wanderings and wonderings that will hopefully be real and helpful to you. So…what’s on your mind?
One thing I'm thinking about this week is that it's the 4 year anniversary of the official COVID quarantine/lockdown in the Bay Area. Our bodies remember this trauma, the bewildered feeling is alive in so many ways inside of me. When I'm feeling like this, somatically, emotionally, existentially - I try to turn to nature for solace. Currently writing a lyrical essay about talking to trees. Even the act of writing it, of visualizing my hands on a tree, has been soothing.
Thank you for your willingness to open up painful parts of your life —-e.g. your father’s situation and your bewilderment - to public view. I believe learning to embrace our vulnerability is an essential part of maturing. There’s a lot of freedom in realizing that nothing can kill your deepest Self unless you let it—-realizing that an open heart isn’t dangerous. Most of us spend too much energy protecting ourselves from hurt or bewilderment or absence of control. It’s wonderful to finally see that it’s okay to let them into the guest house of your life, to see each as a messenger versus a weakness. You have a special way of sharing the discomfort of being ‘fully human’.