Author: gracesmuggler

Image Description: The word ‘language’ in a dictionary.

In the English language, we have one primary word for love. Just… Love. There are certainly synonyms and words that expand upon it, but we typically use one word while other languages are a bit more expansive.

I’ve decided that it would be wonderful if these kinds of experiences and feelings of love had names:

— There’s a wonderful feeling of discovering that you are known in your specificity and loved in your limitations, and that without saying anything, people anticipate and accommodate what you need, including barriers that might be challenging for you.

I’ve experienced that. That’s love. I wish it had its own name.

— There’s a wonderful feeling of discovering that people think about things and frame things in particular ways because they’ve internalized stories you have told, and when they reveal this to you, there’s a beautiful surprise of recognizing that they have internalized pieces of you, just as you have internalized pieces of them.

I’ve experienced that. That’s love. I wish it had its own name.

— There’s a wonderful feeling of discovering you have commonality with a person, that simply being in their presence returns you to a part of yourself, a piece you didn’t even know was missing.

I’ve experienced that. That’s love. I wish it had its own name.

–There’s a wonderful feeling of discovering that people now see you — really see you in some of your more challenging moments — not in an exposed way but in an expansive and affirming way, demonstrating a recognition that you have suffered and prevailed, and showing you a surprising amount of compassion, awe, and respect.

I’ve experienced that. That’s love. I wish it had its own name.

–Renee Roederer

Today’s piece is re-post from March 21, 2018. It was written after I attended the “Why Christian?” conference in Durham, North Carolina. These themes have been with me in renewed ways over the last few days, and I intend to write in these directions for the rest of the week. I love this language of Radical Homemaking. I also love my own calling as a Radical Homemaker. How does this resonate with you?

What could be possible if we put joy at the center?

For me, this question is connected to Radical Homemaking, and it has been energizing me since I’ve returned home after spending much of last week in Durham, North Carolina. I visited very beloved folks there and then attended the Why Christian Conference.

Some context…

The name of the Why Christian conference is actually pretty apt. Organized by Nadia Bolz-Weber and Rachel Held Evans, the conference invited eight incredible women to give testimony, answering these questions:

“Why, in the wake of centuries of corruption, hypocrisy, crusades, televangelists, and puppet ministries do we continue to follow Jesus? Why, amidst all the challenges and disappointments, do we still have skin in the game? It’s a question that may take a lifetime to answer, but we hope the next two days inspire you to wrestle with it in some new and fresh ways.”

All of the stories were remarkably powerful and compelling. They weren’t crafted to convince people of anything, or move to some sort of ‘or else,’ grand conclusion, as many of us have experienced in fire-and-brimstone churches. These were life testimonies of experience, speaking to deep conviction, love, and joy, and that took place right alongside stories of honesty, confession, loss, trauma, and vulnerability.

The piece that impacted me the most was one of the breakout sessions. I attended a session with the Rev. Amy Campbell, pastor of the BeLoved Community in Asheville. This session was called, “The Radical Art of Making Home.” “What if our primary vocation as humans is to make home?” she asked. Over these last years, she has been making home together with people who are acquainted with the painful experiences of homelessness. The BeLoved Community is an intentional community in a house in Asheville. People worship, share meals, sleep, build friendships, and beautifully celebrate one another — especially making space for people who have no shelter or people who are estranged from a sense of home in one way or another.

Radical Homemaking. . . I can’t begin to tell you how much this spoke to me. In my own context, I feel like this framework names the calling that energizes me as well.

What does it mean to be at home. . .
. . . in our bodies?
. . . in our selves?
. . . in our relationships?
. . . in connection to the Sacred?
. . . in the ways we organize our communities?
. . . in the beautiful broadening of kinship-belonging?
. . . in the ways we shape family and choose family?
. . . in the cultivation of space (including literal homes) for hospitality and nurture?
. . . in the inclusion of people (or perhaps, parts of ourselves) that feel estranged from home in one way or another?

Radical Homemaking. . . Radical: meaning, of, relating to, proceeding from a root. . . Last week, I found myself pondering this so much. This is newer language for what I know has been calling me all along.

So that brings us back here: What could be possible if we put joy at the center?

Radical Homemaking is one of my deepest joys. And I have returned home with such deep awareness that I need to put this calling and joy right at the center. Giving and receiving from this framework, I wonder what is possible?

–Renee Roederer

As we move through this time of upheaval and pandemic, this is an important time to learn about trauma and the responses that our nervous systems often take in response. When we’re feeling overwhelmed, we can move into states of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. We might also vacillate between a couple of these.

In addition to these becoming activated due to present circumstances,

— some people have endured past traumas as well, and these can become reactivated in our nervous systems in these ways,

and/or

— some people have lived in environments that were generally anxious or non-nurturing for long periods of time.

Trauma and post-traumatic symptoms don’t always emerge as memories. They nearly always emerge as a reaction or set of reactions.

Here is an image from @ryantheholistichealthcoach:

It reads…

Flight
Workaholic
Over-Thinker
Anxiety, panic OCD
Difficulty sitting still
Perfectionist

Fight
Anger outburst
Controlling
“The bully”
Narcissistic
Explosive behaviour

Freeze
Difficulty making decisions
Stuck
Dissociation
Isolating
Numb

Fawn
People pleaser
Lack of identity
No boundaries
Overwhelmed
Codependent

Which reaction pathways tend to be primary for you? 

Do you recognize these patterns in yourself or your loved ones? They are natural and do truly discharge traumatic energy. Our bodies have them because we need them at times. But we don’t want to become stuck in them. That causes larger problems for us. These patterns may spin out, causing us pain, and impacting our relationships.

But we can heal these patterns with somatic therapy and personal and relational care, and we can do the work of healing the systems that cause so much trauma in the first place. I love how the word ‘heal’ is both passive and active at once. We receive healing and cultivate it over time, and we can act as healers for a world with less trauma.

—Renee Roederer

This is a heartbreaking statistic shared by The Washington Post, and I don’t think we’ve had many, if any, ways to honor this intense level of collective grief.

1 in 500 Americans has died from COVID-19.

And in addition to this number, an even larger number of people have long term symptoms and disabling impacts.

The grief is deeply personal for those who have lost a loved one. And for all of us, it is broad, sweeping, and collective. This trauma is a part of our lives.

We can pause and remember people.

We can slow down.

We can reach out to loved ones.

We can cry.

We can express anger.

We can share words of kindness and tenderness with one another.

We are all impacted by this. Some people and families are upended by this. Let’s pause, remember, and honor them today.

–Renee Roederer

May this day be especially meaningful for all who observe it.

While driving in my car, I listened to an episode of the podcast Hidden Brain called You 2.0: Rebel With a Cause. The episode was about people who find themselves breaking rules that need to be broken. This includes people who live with a sense of openness. It allows for shifts in thinking and the cultivation of new possibilities in living and in problem solving. For a portion of the episode, they talked about the concept of Beginner’s Mind.

Beginner’s Mind, or Shoshin, comes from Zen Buddhism. The Zen monk and teacher Shunryu Suzuki says, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” When we approach life with a sense of newness, we can learn, grow, and view more possibilities.

Last night, I experienced this in a small but refreshing way. I stepped outside of the house and walked outside around the block, something I’ve done more times than I can count. But this time, I walked the block counter-clockwise instead of my typical clockwise. It wasn’t the first time I had done so, but I hadn’t walked in this direction in a very long time.

And I noticed so many different details in the neighborhood!

My favorite previously unnoticed detail was an adorable, mini tableau camping scene outside of a neighbor’s house.

There’s a lot to notice. We just need to begin again. There are a lot of possibilities.

–Renee Roederer

I wrote this piece a couple years ago, pre-pandemic. I’m remembering it fondly again.

Last week, I spent some time in the waiting room for a doctor’s visit… like a lot of time. Waiting. Usually, it doesn’t take this long — something my doctor also confirmed once he was able to see me.

For a while, I just sat in silence. I brought a book, but I think I just needed a bit of time to decompress and think of very little. The truth is, I had had a lot on my mind over the last few days. All of that was still there, of course, so I sat there while silence accompanied my still emerging thoughts. That and daytime television.

Then a man approached my side of the room, and he sat directly to my left. He had a walker. I soon realized the walker was for his wife who came immediately behind him. She moved to sit directly to my right, so before she sat, I asked,

“Would you like this seat?” wondering if they’d rather sit directly next to each other.

“Oh no, honey, this is just fine.”

Suddenly, I was sandwiched between Bob and Sue, two older adults, who were much better at accompanying me than the silence. For the next twenty minutes, I honestly felt wonderfully grandparented, as they delighted in talking with me. Bob told me his creative strategy to get telemarketers to stop calling. Sue told me that she knows one of my neighbors. They both shared why they keep choosing this medical clinic. They inquired about me. I felt so enjoyed, and I enjoyed them too.

At one point, while flipping through magazines, Sue saw a picture of a cardinal and said, “Aren’t they so pretty?”

“Yes, I love them,” I said, thinking about the ones who fly into my yard and how they’re my university mascot as well.

“You know, I’ve never seen a baby cardinal. I wonder what they look like.”

“I’ll look it up,” I said, pulling out my phone.

They chuckled at the marvel of it, that we could look that up on a phone. “These young people know how to do it,” Bob said. I smiled, enjoying being relationally young, though I’m just a couple years shy of forty.

“Oh, here it is. Look at that!” I said. It turns out that baby cardinals are pretty cute. We passed my phone around to see.

A few minutes later, a medical assistant spoke their names, and Bob and Sue were called to the back before I was. When they stood up to shuffle to their visit, I felt different.

There are many ways that kindness and delight can show up, surprisingly, even in times of stress. We just have to show up to it. Or sometimes… let it just find us.

*I changed the names of this wonderful couple. I will remember them by their real names for a long time.

—Renee Roederer

I could make a parallel post to this week’s piece about having needs.

A great deal of cultural messaging says,

“Don’t speak up.”

“Keep that idea to yourself.” (or let me appropriate it…)

“Stay small.”

“Who are you to be in the room? Who are you to lead?”

These messages are sent especially to those with marginalized identities.

But shouldn’t we be suspicious? So frequently, aren’t the cultural forces and systems of greed, along with their benefactors, the loudest messengers in these directions?

Let’s take in this quote from Elaine Welteroth, shared by @bookedinsouthdakota:

“Sometimes just being yourself is the radical act. When you occupy space in systems that weren’t built for you, your authenticity is your activism.”

Image from @bookedinsouthdakota

Image Description: The quote above is typed on a white page in a book with black writing.

–Renee Roederer

At one point this weekend, I was talking with someone who seems to think that people’s pandemic precautions have been overblown. He had gotten vaccinated, but he felt as though people have been overreacting about all of this over the last year and a half

Yet right now, we are losing a 9-11 amount of people nearly every single day to this illness. Of course, each of those people have names and are loved.

A few days ago, I saw someone pointing this out on Twitter. Each year on this date, we rightfully pause and remember those who died on September 11, 2001. But we don’t always have the ability, and sometimes, the willingness, to have collective morning for those who are dying daily. How do we wrap our minds around this much loss? It’s hard to do.

And so I pause to remember those who died 20 years ago and to remember those who are dying today.

–Renee Roederer