This is Stella, a day after her surgery (she was spayed, a routine procedure but nonetheless traumatic for both of us). I sent this picture to a friend and she responded, “That’s exactly the way I feel right now.”
I think many of us, too, can relate.
It’s hard not to feel despondent about our lives, our losses, the pain of the world.
It’s exhausting to try to digest the daily doses of outrageousness that assail us on our devices, on television, in the very air we breathe, especially and literally for those living in the western part of our country.
It’s bewildering, like it was for Stella, to comprehend the now-surreal nature of the world to which we were accustomed, that turned steadily and reliably on its diurnal axis.
If any of us did not believe that impermanence was the only sure thing in our lives—that we truly have no control---now is certainly the time to completely surrender that disbelief.
Like Stella, we need time to heal, but there’s no rest from the assaults we’re bombarded with.
Every two weeks, Bret Stephens (conservative Republican) and Gail Collins (liberal Democrat) have a discussion published as an op-ed in the New York Times. I always find some solace in it. Here’s what Bret had to say in the last one:
Bret: You know, Gail, as we approach this final sprint, my prevailing feeling is that I’m so sick of it. Sick of living in Donald Trump’s Clownverse, or Dramaverse, or Bullyverse, or I-Can’t-Believe-This-Guy-Is-Actually-the-President-verse. On Tuesday I watched a debate between an upright but uninspiring candidate with whose views I usually disagree, and a guy who made me want to stuff my fingers in my ears while I cringe for my country. A former colleague of ours, Rick Bragg, once wrote a heart-wrenching memoir, “All Over but the Shoutin’,” and the title really seems to fit where we are. If Biden gets elected and does nothing except lower the national decibel level, he’ll earn a spot on Mount Rushmore in my book.
A holy yes to that.
Another friend, or maybe it was the same one who said Stella’s sad face resonated with her own despair, says we’re all suffering from PTSD. I agree. And PTSD can be a magnet for all the other troubles and losses we’ve experienced—many women friends of mine have also been triggered by Trump’s violent verbal abusiveness especially in the last debate, and those of us who grew up in dysfunctional families feel like we’re back home again.
The spinning never stops.
Off kilter, constantly outraged, stressed to the max, I knew I needed to find a way to get my balance back.
Many of you know that since 1992, I’ve been a practitioner of mindfulness. My son’s death and my inability to keep my grief from making my life a grim shadow of its former self led me to my first meditation retreat at the Lama Foundation near Taos, New Mexico. My new memoir, I Am Not A Juvenile Delinquent, tells that story and how the path of mindfulness taught me difficult lesson after lesson as I tried to navigate the challenging waters of a turbulent residential treatment center and its young inhabitants, and continues to as I cope with aging, the pandemic and its isolating, frightening confusion, and the current surreal political situation.
The Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA, where I’ve done most of my retreats, sends out a monthly sangha newsletter. Since they’ve had to close indefinitely due to COVID, I’ve been unable to go to my yearly retreat at The Forest Refuge there. Neither, of course, has anyone else, cutting off both IMS’s source of financial support and ours of spiritual succor. They’ve coped with this by offering a series of online retreats—obviously lacking the seclusion and transport to a calming, nurturing place free of distraction—but as my husband often says, “the perfect is the enemy of the good,” and they were surely better than nothing, I thought.
“Down To Earth Dharma: Buddhism From A Feminine Paradigm,” caught my eye in the latest newsletter. But I didn’t sign up for it until the very last minute, the day before it began. I resisted. It seemed like it would be really difficult to do it at home, with all the distractions of my husband, Stella, the computer, the laundry, the garden, and all the other expected interruptions of life at my house; but really, it was hard to admit how much I needed its potential healing, as Stella had needed hers.
I think it was Trump getting the virus that forced me to click “register.”
I’d had enough of the craziness.
I’m just finishing up the five days now—and what an oasis it has been in my formerly spinning world. The teachers have been stellar, the renewed realization that mindfulness is “advanced common sense,” as one of them put it, and the comfort I’ve received in mega-doses, all have brought my footing back. Guided meditation sessions, dharma talks, movement and yoga sessions, walking in the woods with a recovered Stella, just sitting still, away from the loud voices of phone, Ipad and TV, have returned me to my heart.
I can breathe again.
I woke up last night from a dream in which I was singing an old camp song—mind you, I’ve not heard it in 60 years---and its words seem a good way to end this post.
How much I wish this for all of us.
Peace, I ask of thee, oh river, peace, peace, peace.
When I learn to live serenely, cares will cease.
From the hills I gather wisdom, visions of the days to be---
Strength to lead and faith to follow---
All are given unto me.
Peace I ask of thee, of river, peace, peace, peace……
Sending love as always,
Sharon