Love within Chaos

It is a tough time to be a human, friends. There are days where I feel like I want to scream and rage and yell and hurl petty insults wherever I can. Days when yet another "breaking news" alerts my phone but the breaking news is just that the president is still an absolute monster and found a new way to show us. Sometimes, this will happen while I'm preparing a yoga class, or having just glanced at my phone after a beautiful meditation practice, and I'm all of a sudden yanked out of my love and light and into "And this motherfucker...." that nasty feeling right in the pit of my stomach that I keep trying to unwind cruelly twisting back into a knot.

And that? Sucks.

How do we find a middle ground? What balance is there to find when it feels like the world is on fire? How do I justify sitting in a quiet room, trying to find my breath and my center and myself in all this mess, while children are wondering where their parents are? While babies are being starved to death and people are being grabbed from their places of work? How fucking dare I complain about literally anything, at any time, when this is happening around me? My life is pure, unbridled joy compared to the struggles of those literally afraid for their very lives. How do I teach the yoga that has saved me when I want to set everything on fire just to make it stop being so horrible?

Now would be the time where I'd love to tell you how I do it and you can, too, but I can't do that. My experience is going to be different than anyone reading these words. You're different from me in some way, whether it's gender or race or financial status or weight or you have kids or you're gay or you're a churchgoing Christian or you're only in your twenties or maybe you're in your seventies. None of us are the same and none of us are processing what's going on around us in the same way, and it is starting to feel like it's harder and harder to have a common ground.

What used to be "good" and "safe" spaces are often now littered with such gatekeeping, such a holier-than-thou attitude that discourse becomes impossible, which is directly oppositional to what we need. We need conversation more than ever. We need to be able to say, "I don't understand why you feel like that. Can you help me?" and when the answer comes, we need to not dismiss but dissect it and find where we can relate and if we can't, how we can help.

It's time to emerge from those bubbles that 2020 created, both literally and figuratively. We're communicating so often only via social media and friends, at this point I should not have to tell you not to trust one goddamn thing you see on there. I joined a gardening group that got infiltrated with AI bots stealing pictures of plants, for god's sake. There is no rest for the wicked. We are in the Wild West of AI right now, and while one would think we would have learned our lesson from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc., we know that we have not. I don't know what we'll be saying about AI in ten years time, but I'd bet my ass that it's something along the lines of, "We just didn't KNOW then!"

So what do we actually do now? This sustained, "omg-omg-omg-omg what is even happening right now" is wreaking fucking havoc on all of our nervous systems and instead of facing the world at our best, we are (sometimes literally) crying in a corner, trying to shake it off and wearily stand up and put on our gloves. And I don't have the answer because you guys, there isn't an answer. There is no diet or medication or amount of exercise or cold plunges or shot we can get to fix the world right now, however you're experiencing it.

I spent forty days in the hospital during my transplant. That's a lot of time to think, and I was left with an awful lot of questions. About myself, about addiction, about how I'm spending my time and energy, about how in the fuck I was supposed to walk through this dumpster fire of a timeline without drowning myself in either grief or alcohol or both.

Most of all, though, was this: Is it even possible to happy in this world amongst the heartbreak?

I have spent the last three years trying as hard as I can to find it - the simple joy of existence. Through yoga and meditation, yes, but also through creating things and going outside to look at a rainbow or the moon and taking a walk without my phone and saying yes instead of no sometimes but also learning to say no instead of yes when it's necessary. Through intentionally making the choice, every single day, to be grateful.

Some people will read this and think, well, of course she feels like that. She almost died. That will change anyone's perspective. Or, it's easy to say that. She's straight and white and has support, and insurance, and a family that loves her. And that's not wrong, nor is it unfair. I know the privilege that I have just by virtue of where I was born and who I was born to. Like a lot of us, I'm trying to better understand and recognize that, and I can't do that in a vacuum.

What I also know is that mental illness and addiction and trauma don't give a flying fuck about any of that. None of that discriminates; some of us are just luckier than others when it comes to resources. I am one of the lucky ones. I have had the luxury to concentrate only on myself and getting healthy and do not think for a moment I don't know that I have had the most precious commodity of all, that of time. Most of us don't have it. I did, and I still do, for because of all of that time and space and energy I put into myself, I now work for myself and can spend even more of my time exploring this.

So I want to share. What has helped me, what has not served me, what has saved me, and what I'm still struggling with. As much as we'd like to think we're all so very different, we really aren't when it comes right down to it. We are all human. We are all trying our best, even if it doesn't look or feel like it. Some of the things I share may resonate deeply and some you may think, "Oh, wow, this bitch really is crazy." And that's cool, I get that a lot. I'm okay with it.

Working on ourselves doesn't mean not caring about others. Working on ourselves gives us the capacity to stand up and lace up our boots with intention and purpose, confidently lending a hand to pull up our neighbors and marginalized friends. "They go low, we go high" doesn't resonate for me anymore, not when the low has no bottom. But using that strong hand to pull up instead of punch down will always be the right thing.

We need connection, and understanding, and curiosity, and love, and strength. We need to be at our best, and we need to help the people we can touch. I hope to explore and foster some of that here, and I would love for you to join me.