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?
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’.
I think Glennon Doyle calls this something like 'writing from the muddled middle,' the potentially helpful-to-the-reader practice of capturing a mid-point in a journey sometimes, full of the uncertainties of journey, rather than reporting out only from a more resolved, better understood point.
In education one sometimes sees the word 'formative' for reports from the middle and 'summative' for reports from the end of a loop.
In reference to the question of cog versus force for change or for better, I think the fairest way to look at any of us is that we are probably both, ineffective or neutral in some ways and making a difference in others. None of us can take on everything in an effective way. I think the most heartful practice is to ask ourselves with some regularity but not obsessively whether we are taking on some of the actually hard things we are equipped to take on or whether we tend to leave that to others. But none of us can work on every hard thing.
Most of us in the last decades of our lives have been in the position you describe of worrying about taking care of aging and maybe demented parents who live far away, even as we have kids of our own and jobs. The tradeoffs are hard. The first question, of course, is whether your parents would be better off moving close to you that staying put. Some people have a support system and services where they are living that are richly anchoring for them, leaving them unmoored if they were to leave. Others would be much happier near their adult kids. It is a hard time of life all around.
Thank you for writing about feeling bewildered. I am trying to figure out what I can do to preserve what is left of our natural world for our children and grandchildren. Looking back at my own innocent childhood in the 1940s, and could walk to the public library or play in the woods behind our back yard with my friends or siblings, I never thought about violence or danger.
Nothing to ask, but I am pleased because I went to a bookshop on Monday and asked a bookseller to pick out a book for me, and the book she picked was MARTYR!, which I'd never heard of, and wasn't even sure of as I was purchasing, but if I hadn't bought it, I would be KICKING MYSELF right now after reading this message from you, and now, instead, I'm just quite excited to pick up my new book. So thank you for that. I hope you feel better soon. I am grateful your your words, ideas, curiosity, and wonder.
What's helped you to make some measure of peace with living moderately far from your family? I've lived about 6 hours from most of mine for the past 11 years, and at times it really eats at me. But I've formed deep relationships here over the last 11 years, so even if I were to move back to where I grew up, I'd always be far from some version of "family." I think the part that gets to me is that I have a good relationship with my family, and so many others don't, so sometimes I wonder why I would voluntarily live far from them (obviously there are reasons I live where I do, but I still wrestle at times with this)?
And on a lighter note, what's your favorite gentle but not fluffy read? Reading is what I do when I feel sad and disconcerted and anxious, but for me they often have to be gentler reads, so I'm always on the lookout for suggestions.
What’s on my mind? GAZA! Yes, intense grief of the kind that Courtney eloquently describes is overwhelming; yet, as Courtney realizes, the suffering of entirely innocent people on the scale that’s now being experienced in Gaza consumes me.
More than at any time since Alzheimer’s took my younger brother. How can we here in America possibly justify our engagement in such hideous violence? Please join me in protesting this madness! DD
First, I am so sorry for the loss of your friend. I have huge respect for you, Courtney, but I have to take exception to your calling the war in Gaza a ‘genocide’. Being a left-leaning lifetime liberal myself, and having been disenchanted with Israel on many occasions, and feeling every bit as devastated by the ugliness of war as you do, I still came to see things very differently as I educated myself on the new realities since October 7th. When you are feeling better, please take a look at Joshua Hoffman’s blog, “Future of Jewish” and consider what you find there. Wishing you strength and healing.
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’.
I think Glennon Doyle calls this something like 'writing from the muddled middle,' the potentially helpful-to-the-reader practice of capturing a mid-point in a journey sometimes, full of the uncertainties of journey, rather than reporting out only from a more resolved, better understood point.
In education one sometimes sees the word 'formative' for reports from the middle and 'summative' for reports from the end of a loop.
In reference to the question of cog versus force for change or for better, I think the fairest way to look at any of us is that we are probably both, ineffective or neutral in some ways and making a difference in others. None of us can take on everything in an effective way. I think the most heartful practice is to ask ourselves with some regularity but not obsessively whether we are taking on some of the actually hard things we are equipped to take on or whether we tend to leave that to others. But none of us can work on every hard thing.
Most of us in the last decades of our lives have been in the position you describe of worrying about taking care of aging and maybe demented parents who live far away, even as we have kids of our own and jobs. The tradeoffs are hard. The first question, of course, is whether your parents would be better off moving close to you that staying put. Some people have a support system and services where they are living that are richly anchoring for them, leaving them unmoored if they were to leave. Others would be much happier near their adult kids. It is a hard time of life all around.
Thank you for writing about feeling bewildered. I am trying to figure out what I can do to preserve what is left of our natural world for our children and grandchildren. Looking back at my own innocent childhood in the 1940s, and could walk to the public library or play in the woods behind our back yard with my friends or siblings, I never thought about violence or danger.
Nothing to ask, but I am pleased because I went to a bookshop on Monday and asked a bookseller to pick out a book for me, and the book she picked was MARTYR!, which I'd never heard of, and wasn't even sure of as I was purchasing, but if I hadn't bought it, I would be KICKING MYSELF right now after reading this message from you, and now, instead, I'm just quite excited to pick up my new book. So thank you for that. I hope you feel better soon. I am grateful your your words, ideas, curiosity, and wonder.
What's helped you to make some measure of peace with living moderately far from your family? I've lived about 6 hours from most of mine for the past 11 years, and at times it really eats at me. But I've formed deep relationships here over the last 11 years, so even if I were to move back to where I grew up, I'd always be far from some version of "family." I think the part that gets to me is that I have a good relationship with my family, and so many others don't, so sometimes I wonder why I would voluntarily live far from them (obviously there are reasons I live where I do, but I still wrestle at times with this)?
And on a lighter note, what's your favorite gentle but not fluffy read? Reading is what I do when I feel sad and disconcerted and anxious, but for me they often have to be gentler reads, so I'm always on the lookout for suggestions.
What’s on my mind? GAZA! Yes, intense grief of the kind that Courtney eloquently describes is overwhelming; yet, as Courtney realizes, the suffering of entirely innocent people on the scale that’s now being experienced in Gaza consumes me.
More than at any time since Alzheimer’s took my younger brother. How can we here in America possibly justify our engagement in such hideous violence? Please join me in protesting this madness! DD
First, I am so sorry for the loss of your friend. I have huge respect for you, Courtney, but I have to take exception to your calling the war in Gaza a ‘genocide’. Being a left-leaning lifetime liberal myself, and having been disenchanted with Israel on many occasions, and feeling every bit as devastated by the ugliness of war as you do, I still came to see things very differently as I educated myself on the new realities since October 7th. When you are feeling better, please take a look at Joshua Hoffman’s blog, “Future of Jewish” and consider what you find there. Wishing you strength and healing.