I looked out the window, and I saw a thick, cloudy sky of gray. In my backyard, I can see some color, but it’s not like the vibrant hues I can find on trees in other areas of my town. I see plants and wildflowers beginning to wilt and yield themselves toward this season.
“I miss summer already,” I thought. Then I thought about how this, too, will return later. It’s time to be present with this season now.
Then I pondered, “What if we didn’t know summer would reemerge? What if we had no idea that spring would bring blossoms and new growth? What if we had no cyclical knowledge?”
In that case, this current change would be pretty scary. We would assume this is all it is, and that we’re moving toward a perpetual worse. But thank goodness, we are able to anticipate and basically, trust the process when nature shifts.
Can we trust the process when… we shift? Or when life shifts around us? Or for us? Or even to us?
Can we anticipate that goodness is possible too? That it can arise? That it can at very least accompany the pains? And often grow large enough to hold them? And in some cases, become expansive enough to transform them?
I’ve learned a great deal from a person who says this: “As long as love remains, there is hope.”
If love remains — even in change, even in moments that feel like utter tumultuousness — there is hope. There is hope for vitality. There is hope for transformation. There is hope for renewal. There is hope for connection and re-connection. There is hope for growth.
If there is love, there is hope. If there is hope, there are possibilities. If there are possibilities, there is change. If there is change, there is growth. If there is growth, there is…
Quite naturally, our bodies have a stress response. Stress causes adrenaline and cortisol, the tightening of muscles, and at times, the initiation of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn responses.
But we can also have a relaxation response. In the relaxation response, the activated sympathetic nervous system is calmed by the parasympathetic nervous system. What helps this? Intentional, deep breathing, stretching, meditation, mindfulness, touch, bilateral movement (walking, running, additional ways of moving), somatic processes like the body scan, cuddling, and generally slowing down — again — intentional, deep breathing (after all, this helps us slow down).
But here’s the thing:
The stress response is innate and automatic, and the relaxation response has to be learned. The body needs practice in order for this to happen naturally on its own.
All of these are worthy practice. Very worth our time.
I’ve had a consistent headache for days, and I’m tired. I need to prioritize some gentleness.
In the midst of this, and immensely bigger, it is an understatement to say that our world needs gentleness… The war in Ukraine continues on after more than a year. Migrants are desperately on the move but are impeded at borders or are lost at sea. Israeli civilians have been kidnapped violently and are being used as hostages, rightfully terrifying Jews around the globe. The people of Palestine have lived in what has been termed an open air prison for decades and are now in immediate danger from bombs and tanks.
When I was on my daily bike ride, I noticed a kid walking down the street to his house, having returned from school. He looked like he was about 8 years old. I wondered, “How are kids processing all of this right now, particularly Jewish children and Muslim children? How are they doing?”
A car came down the road in the opposite direction of me. I needed to move into an area on my side of the street where there is construction. There was nothing dangerous about this, but I was going fast enough that when I hit a bump, I felt that on the bike, and the e-bike battery popped off. No big deal; I was able to fix it.
But this kiddo saw it happen, and though I passed him previously on the bike, he now was about to pass me on foot, and he said,
“Would you like a raisin?” He asked. “It’s my last one.”
I was so touched at this sweetheart. “Oh no, thank you. But that is so kind of you to offer. That’s very sweet.”
It really was. And this offer of a last raisin fixed nothing of these problems of the world, but it moved me. And for a minute, thanks to this darling kiddo, the world was gentler. I hope this child is receiving gentleness in every place where he goes. Children around our globe deserve gentleness in every place where they go.
We need a gentler world — in the every day and on a global scale.
An important person in my life has said this about his cancer experience:
I wouldn’t wish cancer on my worst enemy, but what I do wish is that everyone had the opportunity to experience what it feels like to have your community catch you.
A friend of mine is a student, and as part of an assignment, she needed to interview people about a crisis moment in their lives. I participated and talked about an experience I had more than 15 years ago. I was in a very serious skiing accident — so much so, that I barely have memories of the day. I have no visual recollections, only a couple of moments when I heard people’s voices around me.
On that day, I had an experience of my community catching me. There was a group of friends who rallied and took care of my body. I never had to ask; I never even had a chance to remember. But I was told, and as I shared yesterday, I discovered that I was surrounded by people who loved me thoroughly.
I wouldn’t wish that experience on my worst enemy either, but I, too, wish that everyone had the opportunity to experience what it feels like to have your community catch you.
Do you have a moment like that? What comes to mind? If you recall it to mind and heart, how might that impact the ways your body feels today?
Me, posing with my bike. I also wear a helmet, though I don’t have it on for this photo.
Yesterday, a man screamed at me virulently out of the window of his pickup truck and called me a F***ing C***. It was horrifying, scary, and demoralizing.
Why? Of course, there is no actual justification for this, but it’s because I’m a woman on a bicycle who dared to take up a minuscule amount of space on the road.
I am allowed on the road.
If I may be honest, it’s always men in pickup trucks. Last week, I cycled into a median style turning lane to — geez, I don’t know, turn? — No one was in that lane with me, and I was about to turn left, when a man in a pick up truck drove by on the right side of the road and honked his horn angrily a bunch of times because I guess I’m just a dumb broad who is biking in the middle of the street for no reason.
But yesterday was much worse. I was at a stoplight. There were two cars ahead of me, then me, and then traffic behind me. Whenever I can be in a bike lane, that’s where I am, but once more, let me assert that I am allowed on the road. I am quite literally following the rules of traffic. I am not supposed to be on the sidewalk. I am supposed to be on the road.
The light turned green, and I biked right behind the cars ahead of me. I kept up with them at this point because they were only starting to speed up, and there was a bike lane 30 feet ahead of me. That’s precisely where I was headed. No one was stalled by me. Though again, if they were, that is my right. I am allowed on the road.
I was on the right side of the lane so anyone could pass me. To share how much I inconvenienced no one, this man and others did pass me. They had space to do it.
And that’s when he drove by and screamed, “YOU’RE SLOWING DOWN TRAFFIC, YOU F***ING C***!!!!”
It took my breath away.
I spent the next 15 minutes so nervous of being on the road, that I was biking slightly off of the road in areas of rocks, debris, and gravel. This is dangerous, of course, because this is exactly the kind of situation where someone can spin out, fall, and maybe tumble into traffic. “What’s more dangerous,” I wondered. “This? Or angry, violent men in trucks?” I had to do that risk assessment.
Eventually, I took my space on the road again, and now I was angry.
I am allowed on the road.
We all know that if I was a man wearing cycling gear, no one would have yelled at me like that. I was wearing a helmet but also a sundress. Apparently, that makes me a target for misogyny. Just for being. Just being who I am.
For the rest of that ride, I zoomed home safely, fuming, and then thought of it as an analogy too.
I am allowed on the road.
I know some lovely, knock-it-out the ballpark human beings, including many cherished men in my life. And.. there have been eras, too, where I was denied to have needs, when I was scapegoated, when I was targeted, when I was cast out, when I was made to be a symbolic stand-in so other people could reenact their unresolved traumas. And damn it — let me now be the one to curse — I am allowed to take up space. I am allowed on the road. I am a person. I am not just a role for people to channel vitriol and unresolved emotions. That has happened to me too many times.
And it has happened to many others, countless times. Many women, of course. Sometimes, men. Certainly, many — and I would actually say, all — people who carry identities far more marginalized than mine.
I am allowed on the road. So are we all. Buckle up, do the work of learning how to regulate your own emotions, and stop yelling at us.
