The Wood Wide Web

Since my daughter Lucia was an infant I have worried about screen time. She didn't get any until she was two-years-old. I've carried a screen time worry around with me for her sixteen years of life like a satchel of rocks on my back. As a mother of teenager in Corona I have had to loosen the reigns more than ever before. I can see that her phone is her primary way to stay connected to the outside world, and to herself.

In the absence of the physical presence of her peers, her phone-- FaceTime, SnapChat, Instagram are all she has to actually feel connected to her people. But the worry is always there for me. It's like a pilot light in my chest, just a slight flutter of panic, ready to ignite at any moment. Nothing significant with Lucia and her phone needs to happen. She doesn't have to be cyber-bullied or be caught sexting. Just thinking about how her relationship with her phone might be hindering or degrading her cognitive and emotional development can ignite my little pilot light into a mini bonfire in my chest, engulfing my entire torso. As the inferno blazes, all rational thought stops and I become desperate to save her. I feel compelled to make a new rule or give a compelling lecture or share a fear inducing real-life story about cell phone addiction and college drop out rates.

Sometimes I follow the panic and subject Lucia to a verbal tirade, but lately I've been able to hold my tongue. I've thought about how right now her phone is her survival tool. It is helping her communicate with her friends, with the world that is important to her-- TickTock, fashion, recipes, make up. She can see what her friends are doing and she can share pieces of herself, pieces that need to be seen for her to feel alive, connected, and nourished as a teenager.

The image of trees in a forest comes to me. They are rooted in place, yet they communicate through mushrooms-- called the mycorrhizal network. The trees share water and nutrients through the roots of mushrooms. The saplings, unable to reach the sun, benefit from the older, taller, more well-established trees who share their bounty with the little ones. These older trees, called Mother Trees, have deeper roots and the strongest fungal connections. They use these connections to sense distress in the saplings and help send water and other nutrients when they are in need. It's even been discovered that Mother Trees can detect the roots of their relatives and direct nutrients specifically to them.

Scientist Peter Wohlleben coined this network of mushroom roots the wood wide web. Trees depend on this web of information to survive. Right now, we are depending on our electronic devices to connect, to survive. My entire household uses the screen to work, do school, talk to family and friends, do exercise classes, have social gatherings. Lucia and I are not that different. She is surviving. Just like me, just like my partner Nancy. Just like all of my family and friends. 

Her network, her wood wide web, looks different from mine. She has social media and a focus on things that are relevant to a sixteen-year-old. I have work and writing and keeping up with my mother and siblings. We are each surviving in our way, using the network to serve us. And I am the Mother Tree. If I listen, I can sense when she is in distress and give her nutrients. For sixteen years my worry bag of rocks, the little pilot light in my chest, has told me to clamp down, do something, control it. 

But my Mother Tree instincts, my deeper roots, tell me that this isn't what will nourish Lucia right now. What she needs is sunlight, connection. Just like me, just like all of us. When I think about what the opposite of worry is for me, the feeling that snuffs out the pilot light, it is celebration. Instead of stewing in worry I can find ways to celebrate Lucia-- for the creative cooking ideas she gets from her magic phone, for the new clothing styles she comes up with and puts together, for her interest in getting a job, for figuring out how the hell to do school through a laptop day after day.

I don't know if replacing worry with celebration will extinguish my internal pilot light completely, but I know it will help. When I close my eyes and imagine myself as a Mother Tree, crown rising up into the sky, roots spreading out and down, syncing up with a mysterious mycorrhizal network, I feel a sense of calm, power, and connection. 

I ache to change the isolation we are all experiencing, especially for my little sapling Lucia. But I don't want my pilot light of worry to engulf her. That would make her life more difficult and isolated than it already is. 

Lucia and all of her friends are like trees in the forest, standing alone, unable to come together. They are  building their wood wide web, establishing roots to connect to their growing mycorrhizal networks. Lucia is surviving with her phone, her laptop, her apps, connecting in ways that nourish and sustain her. And I, as the Mother Tree, am soaking up what sunlight is available, tapping into my deep roots, and listening for signs of distress. As the stronger, older, more deeply rooted and connected tree, my job is to listen to Lucia's signals and nourish her with what she needs until she can survive on her own. 

Donald Trump's Next Life.....

Watching the impeachment hearings yesterday I was struck (again) by how extremely divided our country is in both perspective and fundamental belief systems. I know there were also politics, financial, and personal interests at play yesterday, but looking beyond the hearings, at the past few decades in our country (the time in my life when I've been actively involved in voting and caring), I can clearly see the ebbs and flows of progressive and conservative. We go from one to the other, back and forth, like boxers, trying to knock each other out. It's exhausting and confusing. For me the only answer here is to draw on my faith. I believe in a collective consciousness. I believe that we are all connected. Our thoughts, beliefs, feelings, actions, all affect all of us. I believe that the universe is a good place, filled with light and love, that the universe has our backs, and we're going to be okay.

Yesterday when my partner Nancy was sharing her deep sadness about the execution of Lisa Montgomery, I felt a surge of anger and hate towards Donald Trump. Donald Trump resurrected federal executions at the end of his term. We haven't had a federal execution in the United States since 2003, yet in 2020, we executed seventeen federal prisoners. Seventeen human beings. Lisa Montgomery was the first woman to be executed in seventy years. Last month, Brandon Bernard, just forty years old, was executed. Why would Trump want to bring back federal executions? What is wrong with him and others who support this barbaric practice? The anger and rage I felt didn't help me and it didn't comfort Nancy in her grief. It just swirled around in me like dirty water. 

As I meditated this morning, focusing on healing and patience, I found myself thinking that, in another life, I might love Donald Trump. To be so vile and venomous in this life, Donald Trump will likely be profoundly kind, gentle and benevolent in his next life because he will have so much bad karma to work out. He might be the antithesis of who is now-- Barak Obama or Ruth Bader Ginsberg. 

Last night before dinner, we said a prayer for healing for two people close in our lives who have COVID. One is very high risk and now in the hospital. Yesterday in the car my daughter Lucia said, "Mom, it feels like the virus is closing in on us." She's right. It is. We are in profoundly scary moment. It is easy to lose faith. 

I have so much resentment and anger towards Donald Trump for setting a confusing, divisive precedent about masking, social distancing, and even believing in the Coronavirus. Our friends who are sick, so many people in this country who've become sick and died, could be okay right now. But Donald Trump is a deeply troubled man, poisoned from the inside out, a river of a toxic waste rushing through his veins. He's disconnected from humanity, from the collective consciousness, and so he continues to act in the ways he does, desperately trying to fill his hard, hollow heart.

But in the impeachment hearings yesterday, the overarching message I got was not vile, hateful, Trumpian rhetoric. It was grace in action. The voice of our collective consciousness flowed through. The innate goodness of the universe was present there. I wonder why the bad has to come with the good. I wonder why, if the universe is ultimately a good place, we have so much oppression and violence. I'm still contemplating that, trying to figure that out. 

There is no simple answer to why we are where we are right now. But this morning, as I imagined truly loving Donald Trump in his next life, I had a glimmer of understanding that we are not that different from each other, all of us humans divided. We're all part of a much bigger picture, a picture as vast as the universe. Some of us are in sync with universal goodness and grace, and some of us are out of step right now. No matter how divided we are in this moment, what side of the boxing ring we are standing in, we are in this together. It's easy to get sucked into anger and grief, but I have faith that someday even Donald Trump will find his way into the light.

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.