Lost in the Woods

The thing about this pandemic is that it keeps on going. Every time there is a little breather, something else happens, like insane, ill-informed, white people storming our nation's Capital. As the COVID numbers soar and restrictions tighten again, I take another deep breath and tell myself that this is possible. We can do this. We have adapted thus far and we will keep going.

This time in my life feels like being lost in the woods for an indeterminate length of time. Eventually, lost in the woods, I would figure some things out. I'd figure out how to eat leaves and berries. I'd watch the birds and the beavers build their homes and figure out a way to construct some kind of shelter for myself. I'd get used to the perils of the forest and I'd adapt. My hair would grow long, offering me protection from the cold. My GI system would toughen up and I'd be able to drink water from the creeks and streams. I'd make friends with the animals. I'd learn how to dress wounds with moss from the trees and make a blouse from the pulp of a nurse log. 

Eventually I might even forget what my life before looked like. Cell phones and grocery stores would become a distant memory and I'd learn to be comfortable singing to myself and spending long hours watching chipmunks gather nuts. I'd transform into a different species, evolved from where I am now. If I had to return to my old life, I'd seem wild, feral.

What will we become when this is over? And what does "over" really mean? I don't think there's a going back to where we were. And personally, I don't want to go back there. This extreme challenge in our humanity has forced so many sensations, thoughts and feelings to the surface. Did I ever really like drinking red wine at a crowded bar? Not really. Do I miss being away from my home for 8-10 hours a day for work? No. In adapting through this period in history, we have each evolved into a new incarnation of ourselves. Like being lost in the woods, we've figured out how to eat dinner outside in the cold, go for weeks without being in the physical presence of anyone other than our household people or pets and the grocery store clerk. We've evolved into learning how to manage deep grief and intense fear. 

So what does it mean to go back to "how things were?" When we try to go back to the way things used to be will we appear savage and untamed? It might not be quite that extreme, but I think we'll notice. I think we might be socially awkward, tentative, unsure and on edge when the world starts to transition back. When I think about being lost in the woods it feels scary, but also kind of thrilling, even romantic, to be able to learn all of those new skills, to commune with nature in a wholly new way. I feel that now as well,  in the life changes I've made in the pandemic. It's more work, coordination, and organization to have dinner with a friend outside, but it's kind of exciting too. And it feels like a major accomplishment when I can pull it off. 

Yes, life is really hard right now. We're lost in the woods. We're learning new skills to survive in this different habitat. We're figuring things out, adjusting to the elements, the diversity of wildlife, and the dangerous predators in our midst. But little by slowly we are figuring it out. We've survived in the woods this long and I have faith that we can keep going. 

Feeling from the Inside Out

There's a Korean Women's Spa about forty-five minutes away from where I live. Most of my women friends have gone there for massages, scrubs, and just to soak in the pools, cook in the steam room, and lounge in the variety of relaxation rooms. One of my favorite parts of the spa is a little section along the edge of the pools. It's a white-tiled area with benches along two walls, forming an L-shape. Along the walls of the L are spigots with big plastic white bowls underneath. The idea is to fill the large plastic bowl with warm water and wash yourself after a steam or scrub, before entering the tubs. One could also shower, but the bowls of warm water feel so much better.

The feeling of the warm water flowing from the top of the head down the shoulders, over the chest and back, then pooling at the base of the spine offers the sensation of comfort, warmth and bliss. I remember at the last stage of labor with my daughter, going into the warm bathtub. Immersing myself in the warm water offered a similar (yet momentary) ease in my body.

For the last forty days I have been going into the cold lake near my house. I've become addicted to this daily ritual, primarily for the after-effect. The sensation of coming out of the water and the body working to recalibrate towards equilibrium is like nothing else. Yesterday the air outside was 34 degrees Fahrenheit and it was hard to get into the water. After submerging and getting back to the shore, I stood very still and felt my body working to recover from the cold water. It was like the warm water from the spa, but from the inside instead of the outside. Like thousands of tiny trees with plentiful branches and leaves blowing in the wind, my skin was being tickled from the inside out. The heat came from within my body and gave me a similar, yet very distinct feeling of warmth, comfort and bliss that I've experienced with a flooding of warm water on my skin from the outside.

For me, paying attention to physical sensations is one of my tools for staying connected to my interiority. Like a lot of people, I struggle to keep my perspective, to hold onto my feelings or opinions once they enter the outside world. I can feel very clear, very certain of an emotion I am having or a belief I hold, until my thoughts are mixed with someone else's and then it all becomes murky. I suppose that is the very nature of one's interiority-- it belongs only to you. It is sacred and known only to you. Too often I forget to connect back to my inner voice. I get lost in someone else's voice or social media or the news. I have to take a step back, a deep breath and a pause and come back inside myself to remember my interiority. But physical sensations-- like feeling warm water being poured over one's body or the post-cold-water-plunge experience-- are not subject to any external influence. They just are. They are pure. I don't have to try to step back inside myself. I am wholly experiencing the sensations exactly as they are. There is no external influence that can change the feelings in my body.

Recently my sixteen-year-old daughter Lucia started the process of looking for a job. She applied to restaurants and retail stores around town without any prompting. When I asked her what inspired her, she told me that she wanted to make more money so that when she got her license she could afford gas and insurance. I told her I was proud of her for taking that initiative. Lucia then said to me, in a very clear, seemingly planned statement, "Mom, do you notice how I do things when you don't nag me to do them? Remember how you used to try to get me to take walks all the time? Since you stopped bugging me to do that I take a walk every day. It's the same with looking for a job. I did that because I wanted to."

Interiority- Inner life or substance*. The actions Lucia took in her own life came from her interiority, her inner life. And they were pure and free of interference from the outside world (me). She could feel them and respond to them purely, from her inner life. Interiority--inner character or nature* -- is what makes each of us who we are. Connecting with that, listening to it, and acting from that pure internal nature, feels different from doing something (like going for a walk or looking for a job) because someone tells you to do it. 

We live among other people. Being completely free of influence from those around us is impossible. But connecting to one's inner character or nature is where we each find that magical feeling of truth, the feeling that we are doing the right thing, on the right path. It is where we ultimately find happiness. I'm reminded each time I come out of the cold lake that this purity of feeling exists. There is no doubt that I am feeling the sensations blossoming from the inside of my body. I feel happy and sure of myself. I alone feel these thousands of prickles warming my skin from the inside. It is a feeling of aliveness and clarity. Lucia found her interiority the other day. And it made her feel inspired, alive, and motivated. Physical sensations are a reminder of how energizing and connecting it is to really feel what is present. This reminder is an invitation to check back in with ourselves and discover the same sense of presence mentally and emotionally. You don't need to jump into a freezing cold lake to be reminded, but it might help. 

Isolation within Isolation

I'm shut down. This happens to me when I need to retreat in the midst of too many emotions, too much stress, or chaos. It's like a fuse has blown. Like the whole electrical panel has sparked out. Every light in my internal house is turned off and I can't see anything in any of the rooms. I'm still functional-- working, writing, parenting, exercising-- but there's a roadblock to my feelings. 

I know I have feelings-- fear, happiness, sadness, and loneliness-- but I can't feel those feelings beyond an intellectual understanding that they are there. It's a strange experience, like being a lone coconut on a long-lost little island. I'm just plopped there, all dried up and waiting for something to change.

We're all isolated, waiting out this eternal storm, staying in our little bunkers as much as we can. Right now it feels deeper--like I'm isolating within the isolation. I'm like the tiniest Matroyshka doll-- the one in the very center that is too small to have another hidden doll. There's nothing inside, nothing to discover or explore. Just plain wood; no light, no air. 

My isolation is an adaptation to the despair in the world we are living in now, and I've only begun to process the happenings of yesterday and the two weeks to come. It's been a slogging, slow build to get where I am emotionally and I've no idea how long it will be before my long-lost feelings return. I keep on plugging away every day, hoping, knowing, that one day I'll wake up and something will spark. Maybe I'll cry or laugh really hard. I'll reconnect when I have enough reserves to manage it all. 

Since the pandemic started, I've worn essentially the same thing every day. I have four pairs of overalls and a few shirts (short-sleeved in summer, long-sleeved in winter) that I rotate. Sometimes I look at my dresser with nine drawers, all filled with clothes I used to wear-- different patterned sweaters, my favorite jeans, long lost t-shirts with slogans. I rarely open my closet filled with skirts and blouses and dresses and so many shoes. Every morning I just put on one version or another of my uniform. Safely armed in my familiar, comfortable garb, I go through my day-- isolated within isolation. 

Emotionally, I'm like that dresser right now. All of my emotional goodies are tucked away. The shirts and sweaters and pants all rolled up and neatly filed, Marie Kondo style. The clothes, like my long lost emotions, are waiting to be used again. Waiting, like me, for a time when there is cause to dress up, dress differently, maybe for a coffee date with a friend or a dinner date with my beloved. Or a choir recital at the high school where I'd get to see my daughter and her friends together, singing their hearts out. 

I know this will pass because I've been here before-- both during the pandemic and before. It helps to imagine that even though I feel flat, deflated, disconnected, the feelings are still there. They are waiting, folded neat, and tidy in the drawers. Eventually, I'll get tired of these overalls and I'll open up my pants drawer and pull out something new. Maybe I'll even open the closet and try on a dress. But for now, I'll just take comfort in knowing that all my clothes are still there, waiting.

Waking in the Darkness: An Invitation into the Light

The darkness in Seattle is a real thing. In the winter it is dark until 8am and dark again by 4pm. I have to strategize, between the rain and the dark, how and when to take my rain-averse dog Freckles out to go poo.

I love the darkness of the morning. It is like a warm blanket of stillness that keeps me warm until the sky lightens. Though there must be people all over the city who, like me, are awake, quietly enjoying these early morning hours, it feels like I am alone in my own tiny universe. My mind is quiet because the world is quiet. There is no news. No footsteps in the house. No delivery trucks outside. The loudest thing is my fingers typing and Freckles breathing.

I remember when I was a girl I used to lock my door, hide away to get quiet from my big, loud family. I didn’t know about the early morning back then. My teenage hormones begged me to sleep longer, getting up much later than the sun’s rise and going to sleep way after its set. Had I known about the magic of the hours before daylight, I might have used those to find the quiet I craved.

We learn that darkness is scary, that ominous things happen in dark hallways and alleys. Growing up in Chicago I learned to fear the darkness of the streets, especially under the viaducts I had to pass through to get to the bus stop and to the train that took me to my dad’s house. I remember the way my heart would race, how I’d hold my breath through the dark until I could reach the light again. Once through the viaduct, in the light of the elevated train platform, I’d feel calm again, like the danger was gone.

The darkness of the morning is different. It is a beginning, an invitation to the light that is coming soon. The darkness of night is a long haul. There’s an eternity of darkness ahead. But the morning darkness is limited. The black sky turns midnight blue, then cobalt blue, then sky blue (or, in Seattle, light gray). And when the light finally comes, so does the awakening around me. Slowly I am joined by my family. I can hear the footsteps of joggers running by my house down to the lake and car doors slamming, answering the calls of the day. The world has arisen to take part in the daylight hours ahead.

Every morning, for the past thirty-five days, my friend Genessa and I have gone swimming in Lake Washington at dawn. The temperature in the air has been between 30 and 50 degrees Fahrenheit and the water is somewhere between 40–50. It is always cold and sometimes raining, but the combination of the dawn and the submersion into the cold water is profoundly invigorating. We dunk at the tail end of the darkness, emerging out of the frigid lake with a gasp, heart racing, skin tingling, into the light of a new day. 

Resilience

Lately my daughter Lucia has been doing a lot of creative baking. She's made vegan peanut butter cookies, gluten-free brownie bites, dairy-free snickerdoodles. She's also started taking long walks to the coffee shop, always by herself. Lucia is sixteen and every ounce of her being wants to bust out and be free, but she's trapped in the house with her parents, almost all the time. These culinary experiments and long meandering excursions to get coffee are adaptations she's created to meet her need for independence and autonomy.

One of the most common statements one hears as a parent is "kids are resilient." They can handle most things-- divorce, death, a pandemic. But I wonder what we really mean by that. What does resilience truly mean? Kids adapt, just like adults do, because there is no other choice. When our resilience dries up, we are in crisis. We can no longer function. So amazingly, we continue to conjure tools, internal resources, and boundless creativity to muddle through.

In the last month or so I've been thinking a lot about Lucia's adaptive behaviors. As a curious teenager, ready to break free of her parents, Lucia has figured out a way to listen to herself, to tend to her own internal sparks in this constricted and confined time in her development. Even if what her parents have to say is wildly interesting and exciting, Lucia isn't interested because now is the time for her to not be interested in us.  Lucia does not want to bake any of our old family recipes or go for a walk with her parents. Her natural place right now is listening to herself, making her own creations, being solo in the world, seeing with her own eyes.

I can't remember being sixteen in great detail. And, while I don't remember many specific experiences, I can recall the general feeling I had. I wanted to escape. I longed to be free of the gaze of my parents. I wanted my voice, my thoughts, to be heard, and not necessarily by them. I retreated, closed myself off from my parents, became excessively private to keep my independence. I wouldn't tell them about my classes, my boyfriend, even where I was applying for college.

Being a teenager in COVID is something I cannot begin to imagine. The inability to curate a private life in which to retreat from one's parents must feel like a version of insanity. But, as we like to say, kids are resilient. They figure out a way to create a world where they can survive. And like so many of us in COVID, the building blocks of our resilience must now come from an internal source instead of from the world at large. During COVID, I can't go to a yoga class and be with fellow students, sharing and absorbing the energy that is so healing for me and others. And Lucia can't go out to a party on Friday night and do the secret, hidden things that teenagers are meant to do. 

We both, we all, have to turn our lens inside to find tools to shepherd us through whatever stage we are in, be in adolescence, a mid-life professional crisis, or retirement. It's inspiring to watch Lucia listening to herself, finding little ways to attend to her needs for independence and autonomy. I suggest things all the time-- different programs or activities that I think she might like-- and she politely (and sometimes not-so-politely) rejects my suggestion and goes out for.a two mile walk to get coffee or buy ingredients for a new concoction. She's listening to her internal voice instead of my external one. And that's a good thing. That's the right thing for her right now. That's resilience. 

The Treasures in Your Baggage

You know when you go on a trip and buy a special souvenir? Like a tiny ceramic vase or a silk scarf? Maybe a special bottle of olive oil or a beautiful antique sterling tray from a flea market? You know how, when it's time to pack, sometimes you have to leave something at the hotel? Maybe a sweater that you never really wear or a pair of shoes that it turns out just aren't that comfortable? It's often an impulsive decision, a rushed moment where you have to zip your suitcase and everything simply won't fit. When you get home you rarely miss the sweater or the shoes. You get joy from looking at the little vase on the bathroom shelf or wearing the new scarf. These new items bring memories of your journey and you are glad you brought them home with you.

In a few years' time, you might put the vase or the scarf into the Goodwill pile. The olive oil either went bad or it is all used up. You regifted the antique tray to a friend who had a birthday and you forgot to get them a gift. Those special items have served their role and now they can move along. 

When we make that decision to leave our old sweater or shoes in the hotel in Belize and take home the vase or the scarf, we are deciding to let go of the old and bring in the new. And we do this time and time again with each year that passes. Change is the one true constant in our lives. 

The New Year is a conscious opportunity to look inside our baggage. New Year's Day feels cliche, and to many, it is an annoying and stress-filled day. The pressure to know what to commit to, to declare as a resolution, feels contrived. But really we aren't coming up with anything new. The resolutions, the commitments, are already here. The New Year is simply a chance to look into the suitcase and see what we've acquired in our travels in the year passed and decide what we want to keep. It's an acknowledgment of what we've learned on our journey.  And then, just like making the hard decision on your trip to Belize, in the same way, you'll note what hasn't really been useful and leave that stuff at the hotel. 

I am a constant seeker of souvenirs. I am forever hunting for treasures that will symbolize where I've been. This year, in my travels through the Pandemic, I added more writing, a love affair with the Peleton, and a daily dip in Lake Washington to my suitcase. I love those treasures and I want to keep them. I'm not practicing yoga every day like I used to, just once or twice a week. And I'm not baking as much as I did in the past. There's simply not enough space in the bag for all of it. 

But as we come to a new year I spend some time deliberately thinking about the things I've added to my baggage. These are my chosen souvenirs from 2020, the treasures in my baggage, the precious items I am excited about that remind me of the journey I'm coming home from. These new souvenirs are the things I choose to keep. Next year will be different. Maybe yoga will start to come back, or baking. 

2021 is a new adventure, an opportunity to collect souvenirs as we go. As we move through the next year, instead of holding on tight to each new resolution, just be aware of it in your life. Does it serve you? Are you using it often? And be an explorer in this new year. What feels good? What is interesting or invigorating? Collect the souvenirs as they come and at the end of the year, you can look into your suitcase again and decide what to keep and what to leave behind. 

On Being a Twin

Being a twin is one of my two-truths-and-one-lie tricks. If we didn't grow up together or we're not close friends now, you'd never know that I'm a twin. It's always a surprise to people when I say, "I have a twin." To parents on the street pushing twins, I always stop and admire the babies and, at some point declare, "I'm a twin," noting my belonging to this special club that fewer than four percent of humans inhabit. Being a twin is an experience only twins can understand. My twin sister Katherine and I used to laugh and call ourselves "wombmates." From our conception, we were never alone. We were always a part of one another, completing one whole. Though we occupied different physical bodies, we existed in reference to each other.

One of my regular practices is Yoga Nidra. As part of this practice, we contemplate opposites. This mental shift, from one sensation, feeling, or thought to its opposite, opens up a greater expanse of awareness. Not only are we able to move from a potentially entrenched experience to it's opposite, but we open ourselves up to all of the experiences in between and beyond those two opposites.

In all of my years of writing about my emotional musings, I have only touched on my experience of being a twin, but in reality, it is one of the foundational pieces of my identity. It occurred to me the other morning as I was meditating, that for me, growing up as a twin was like being one of the opposites. When I was young, I was very shy. My twin sister Katherine was incredibly outgoing. I was an athlete, a swimmer, one of the quietest, most independent of sports. Katherine was a thespian- a drama star at our little high school. I was awkward socially and she was gifted, popular with all of the cliques. I am grateful that she forever let me tag along to receive little sprinklings of her social magic. I would never have been comfortable going to parties, concerts, and school events without Katherine. She was my confidence and my guide in this realm that I had never had to develop on my own.

We were like two halves of a whole, two pieces of a puzzle, Yin and Yang. Katherine was the lighthearted, funny one and I was the serious, worrying one. As an adult looking back now and knowing more about child development and family systems, I understand that we were perhaps guided into those roles to complete a larger family picture. As I watch my daughter, an only child, navigate through her world, one part, one whole, I can see how different it might have been to grow up not being a twin.

In Yoga Nidra, we try to see the preferences we have and to soften our grip on those preferences. I prefer to feel happy and playful, but fully welcoming the experience of sadness and despair helps me understand that, without those emotions, there would be no happy and playful. Without one, there is no other. Ultimately, preferring one emotion over another does not serve us because we need all of the emotions to feel any of them. Seeing opposites enables us not only to release our preferences for one or the other but helps us to see all of the other stops along the way.

For many years, I felt like the unpreferred twin. I was stuck in my role of the serious twin, the rigid, uptight one. And Katherine was locked into her role as the life of the party, always being happy and light. We both felt pressure to keep our half of the circle intact. We first separated in college. I went south and she went east. It was a micro-separation and we remained very close. At first, the space away from Katherine was painful. I didn't understand how to access the pieces of myself that Katherine had occupied growing up. I felt like an imposter--being social, taking up space in that way, trying on the role of playful and fun.

After we both graduated from college we moved west together, forging a new path together, falling very much into the same roles we occupied in high school. This lasted for a few years and then we began to move apart again, this time in a bigger way than we had in college. First, we moved to different apartments and then to separate states, and eventually very far apart emotionally, almost alienated from one another. In hindsight, I think the alienation from the other was a subconscious distance Katherine and I created so that each of us could step lightly into the realm of "other."

Those were hard years. It felt unnatural to be so distant from the person I thought I needed to complete me. I wasn't yet comfortable occupying space that used to be hers. But as we stayed separate, it got easier. Our former opposite selves became neutral-- neither good nor bad, neither mine nor hers. In getting enough distance from our former identities of two parts of one whole, we could see that we no longer needed to dwell in our formerly-defined parts. In the physical and emotional distance we created, we were able to see and feel our whole selves. And we were able to finally see each other.

I still feel out of place at times. Making new friends is hard for me and I'm still socially awkward. My default is still rigid and uptight. I know for Katherine too, it has been a long, complicated journey to move away from the expectations of who she was when we made up two parts of a whole to the person she is now. It's a neverending road, this path to wholeness. Contemplating how we limit ourselves, our possibilities, our preferences for ways of being, is painful but important. For me, having the perspective of a twin is a clear way to look back and see how I limited myself because I thought I couldn't be like my twin. I could only define myself in a way that made sense to complete our puzzle.

I am still serious and I still worry (a lot). Katherine is still funny as hell and is often still the entertainer. But we're both greatly changed, expanded. We've learned to dip our toes, and sometimes our whole bodies into what once was our opposite, our twin's role. I am far more social now than Katherine. And she is much more serious than I ever was. To look back and see our journeys is to understand the importance of welcoming everything, opening up and making room for all the pieces that make each of us whole.

For me, having the clear reference point of being a twin allows me to see how easy it is to get stuck in a role, to limit myself to one way of being. In looking back over my own history, I can see how slowly moving away from the tight twin circle I used to inhabit has helped me to become a whole of my own. Like a meteor breaking apart in space, the fireballs and sparks that come from the explosion light up the universe with possibilities. In breaking apart, we become complete in a new incarnation of wholeness.