We Need Better Bookends

Here we are. It is a precarious, chaotic week in many places and among many communities.

In the United States, many people are experiencing mental, physical, and emotional expressions of trauma, and/or dedicating themselves to personal practices of self-care and community-care to make sure those do not completely overwhelm us. Wherever we are, and whatever we feel, it’s all valid.

Trauma has a way of making time swirl together. What I mean is that experiences of trauma call up moments of difficulty from the past, and they become launching pads for anxieties about the future. It’s as if past and future (that is, an imagined and feared one) converge into the present. And when we have an inauguration and a flurry of painful executive orders, why wouldn’t that bring up memories and physical sensations from the initial presidency from 2016-2020, while also causing serious anxieties about what is ahead in 2025 and beyond? Those bookends of time can feel present — past and future — even when some of them haven’t happened yet.

So while these may absolutely be felt, and likely need to be processed, I want to invite us into an exercise so we may call in our deepest values and see how those might impact our present moments, too. These can also impact our mental processes, our physical bodies, and our emotions.

What are some of your deepest values, and some of the commitments you have that no matter what, you are determined to live and show forth in the world?

Think about these or write them down.

Think about a moment in the past when these values were really alive in your life or in the life of your community… Go ahead and get specific. You might want to think about a memory for each of the values, or a memory where they came together.

Think about these or write them down.

Rehearse those moments in your thinking and feeling. What was it like? Tell it like a story. Remember the sensations and what you saw and felt. Let your body feel that. You can come back to this any time.
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Now think about what it might look like to put these values into action and into relationship in the future — the near future or maybe slightly ahead of that. Visualize it. Who would be there? What would it sound like? What would it feel like for these values to be a much bigger force than our fears? What would it feel like for these to make a difference in our own lives and in the lives of others?

Think about these or write them down.

What if this form of the past and this form of the future can also converge in our present, allowing us to feel fortified mentally, physically, and emotionally? What if these can be our bigger and better bookends of time, alongside or even transcending the bookends of a presidency?

We can’t control everything that is happening. But no one can take these memories, values, forms of imagination, and action from us. No one.

Keep calling them in.

— Renee Roederer