Going Back to Go Forward

“Hope is grounded in memory. It lies not in looking forward but in looking back.” Walter Brueggemann

Many of us are finding ourselves with a type of time—suspended, unrushed, and sometimes unsettling—we’ve never had before. Answering the question “What is this time for?” has brought me purpose, grounding and centeredness in the uncertainty.

If you’ve realized there is something you need going forward that you’ll only find by going back, now is the time to discover your story more deeply.

In April & May, my monthly online story membership will be exploring the memoir Educated by Tara Westover. Her journey is uniquely strange and yet in her story we find the DNA of all our stories:

• The “compressed hierarchy” of roles as siblings leave home

• “Acceptable” activities in family culture

• Danger & what we bond with in order to shelter ourselves

• Coping strategies in unsafety

• Our alien-ness as we leave home

• The importance of being seen by others outside our family

• The battle, cost and power of telling our stories

Join this TWO-PART ONLINE GROUP EXPERIENCE to…

begin a process for which you’ve had the desire but not the space and connect with others also wanting to more deeply know their story

COST FOR BOTH SESSIONS: $20

Chapters 1-16:

Friday April 24th 6:00-7:30 pm MST

OR

Saturday April 25th 9:00-10:30 am MST

Chapters 17-40:

Friday May 15th 6:00-7:30 pm MST

OR

Saturday May 16th 9:00-10:30 am MST

Exposing Emptiness

Over the past two weeks, I’ve spent half of my energy managing emotions I had no idea so significantly undergirded my life.

Avoiding exposure to COVID-19 has exposed how the busyness of my days buffers me from tension in my marriage, discontentment with my body, insecurity as a writer, financial fear and emotional emptiness.

Of all these unsettling realities, I sense emotional emptiness is the headwaters of them all.

In Understanding the Borderline Mother, Christine Ann Lawson writes:

Emptiness and loneliness are distinctly different emotional experiences. Whereas loneliness results from loss and evokes sadness, emptiness results from deprivation and triggers anger.

A deep understanding of my story means I more honestly admit, to myself and those close to me, how deeply lonely I felt growing up. But Lawson’s words, in the midst of this quarantine, invite me to reassess if what I’ve become accustomed to calling loneliness is really an ancient emptiness I have no idea how to address.

In his book, Addictions and Grace, Gerald May wrote:

All [these success stories] are because of one fact: the people did not fill up the space left by their addictions. A contemplative quality can be found in anyone who has encountered emptiness and chosen not to turn away.

Making peace with emptiness—this is the daunting task at the heart of May’s teaching. And it is both relieving and terrifying that the process of learning to live with universal spaciousness begins by not turning away from it.

Maybe this is why, of all the things my friends have posted on social media this week, the most encouraging ones have been wry confessions of what they always thought they’d do with more time but are finding they still aren’t choosing: reading more, deeply cleaning their house, exercising faithfully, cooking healthier meals, etc.

In their words I read a turning towards an exposed reality of their desires, or lack of them, even if it doesn’t measure up to an ideal image they’ve always expected of themselves. Maybe I can do the same.

What unbuffered emotions has a quarantined life invited you to turn towards? What childhood story of deprivation do you need to tell in order to be kind to the emotional emptiness surfacing for you in these unique days?

Healing Exhaustion

What if our exhaustion is a wound rather than a ball and chain?

What if in these weeks, when we can do little else, it’s something to heal rather than a weight we are desperate to shed?

What if instead of self-imposed schedules to keep our sanity we let our bodies lead us, revealing ways our lives need better care?

Coronavirus, Bananas & Developmental Trauma

Two hours ago I walked into a Trader Joe’s to get OJ and bananas and walked out with over $100 worth of frozen meals and dry goods.

Despite having shopped at two other grocery stores last night and thus having a full refrigerator, the combination of empty shelves, overloaded shopping carts and the speed at which people combed the aisles was panic-inducing.

I KNOW we have enough food and just yesterday morning rolled my eyes at other people’s over reactions, but back in my car I realized the logical part of my brain had not been powerful enough to override my mirror neurons as they screamed at me to mimic the intense emotions and dysregulated behavior of those around me.

Driving home, I was too flooded to listen to my usual audiobook or even leave a voicemail update for a friend who reached out last night to check in on our family.

Even crazier was unloading my groceries and seeing I had bought a total of 32 bananas from the three stores I had visited in the past 12 hours. A few minutes later, I realized it was because a friend who lives in another state had texted me yesterday afternoon that her grocery stores was out of bread, onions and—-you guessed it, bananas. The process of internalizing the emotions and experiences of others had begun hours ago not when I walked through the doors of my local Trader Joe’s.

The battle I have faced, the last 24 hours, to choose my own emotional and behavioral response to my world’s reaction to the Coronavirus, has taught me much about the impossibility it would have been as a young child to have felt differently than my mentally-ill parents.

When sharing stories about my family growing up, I often expect so much of my younger self. Even as young as age four, I can find fault with my coping methods—that I wasn’t more separate from the darkness going on around me or that I didn’t stand up to the unhealthy behavior of my caregivers or that I didn’t learn earlier how to have not needed their care or connection.

But at 46 years old, I can’t even walk into a chaotic grocery store and only get what I need when others are fearfully stocking up. How kind is it then that I demand of myself as an adult to no longer carry any trace of those I grew up engulfed by?

What story do you need to tell about the emotions you were surrounded by growing up in order to be more patient and kind with yourself as an adult?