Today I will...
Diary Series: Part 1
Today I will…
-Wake up, have coffee with my mother and be present while she excitedly tells me about her and my Dad’s most recent trip to Las Vegas, joyfully watching her come to life after a long year of stress and exhaustion. She deserves a vacation every month, every year until the end of time.
-Walk around the yard with the chickens as they graze while I listen closely to the thorny woods and forest spirits whisper their tales of the changing season. The longest night will soon ride hand-in-hand with Winter; Persephone will be making her descent into the underworld with Hades until Spring.
-Also remember that after the longest night, the following days will slowly start to return with more sunlight for longer amounts of time. The Wheel continues to turn. And though we all instinctively know how the cycles of the seasons work, we tend to forget and get caught up in how dark it is and how much we hate it. But the light will come again and we are all the more grateful for its rays on our faces.
-Eat sickly sweet carbs, in warm clothes while I pretend there’s no such thing as BMI, anorexic chic or beauty standards. It’s all fake anyway so I might as well do what I want. Besides, I love the idea of having a nice, fully belly as a kind of silent resistance. I dunno, it just makes me happy!
-Stop forcing winter to act like summer. This quote has lived inside my bones since I read it in Anouk’s beautifully written blog about overriding our body’s natural cycles to be in this futile “extreme self-improvement” capitalist merry-go-round, especially during the winter. I’m going to sleep when I want to sleep. Eat when I want to eat. Read when I want to read. Listen to my body and take care of her in the ways she needs. She is not my enemy or a child throwing a tantrum. I am not lazy, selfish, stupid or a burden for being hurt and needing time to truly heal myself.
And, by the way, if anyone talked to me the way I talk to my body, they would no longer be my friend.
-Love myself enough to take my multivitamins, do my laundry, stretch and drink my damn water, even though it’s painful/annoying. These things aren’t fun or exciting whatsoever and I would much rather stay in my warm bed, but I know I will rest easier because they got taken care of and I’m not scrambling to find something to wear last minute before I have an appointment or something. Part of rewiring our brains to create new patterns is remembering that panicked, scrambling feeling and doing everything we can to not feel that as often. It’s still going to happen because I’m only human, but (and I hate using this phrase) “using my time wisely” really does make me feel like I’m actually doing something to circumvent anxiety in the future. So when I think of it that way, I’ll take less anxiety over fun any day.
-Remember that I am not better than anyone on this planet, despite what they have done or how they have behaved toward me. I’m just a little silly human doing things for the first time, too, and we all deserve a little grace. Do I believe there are people who are cruel and cause great suffering to others? Absolutely. Do I have intense, deep feelings and reactions to those people? 1000% you betcha! Do I have the qualifications to decide or dole out judgement to those people? Absolutely not.
More than anything, though, I think a lot of us are just seriously lost.
I think of that scene in Pixar’s Soul where Joe finds himself in The Zone and he sees these homunculus looking sand creatures, repeating the same phrase over and over again (“sell the stock”, “find the gold”), having forgotten what it means to be a human being.
We’ve all become so scared and flat out exhausted, that we can’t even trust ourselves, let alone each other.
The outrage. The shame. The fear.
The Buddhist practice of Metta is actively wishing for the well-being of enemies which prevents anger and hatred from taking root in one’s own mind - considered the true, internal enemy. I find myself holding so tightly to that root, demanding closure for why someone hurt me or how a human being could hurt another human so carelessly. It adds this layer of helplessness and even deeper, rage, to a victim mentality that I already have a hard time letting go of and suddenly I haven’t left my house in days and even trusting those that love me becomes more difficult.
So today, I will do my best to remember that I’m human too - with blood and bones and mistakes littering my path to this point in my life, and it’s not my job to “fix them” whatever that means. And thank goddess for that, because I still have a lot of growing up of my own to do. All I can control is me and my perspective which is constantly changing and becoming, even now as I truly hunker down for the winter into my healing.
Which reminds me of this article I read recently that explained how female bears (specifically black bears and grizzlies) will go into hibernation pregnant and give birth during that time. The babies are born in completely darkness and live that way with their mother for months, until the snow begins to melt and Spring is on her way; another turn of the Wheel.
So, even in that dank, dark cave, life is happening; things are changing. Trust the process. Trust yourself. Trust the Universe.
But ya know - easier said than done, right? 🤷♀️