Smuggling Grace in 2024

Posted on by gracesmuggler


As we near the end of the year, I want to thank you once more for following Smuggling Grace. Thank you for connecting with content here and also sharing your own thoughts and reflections in comments. It means a great deal to me, and I have great gratitude for your presence.

I enjoy creating content here. I also hope to cull and curate content as well. So in 2024, posts will move in these directions:

— On Sundays, I will continue share nature photography. Alongside it, I want to extend an invitation for all of us to slow down and notice the beauty around us, wherever we live or travel.

— On Mondays, I will share content with a mental health focus. Over the last few years, I have done a deep dive into learning about trauma, healing through mind/body connections, attachment styles in relationships, family systems theory, mindfulness, and the power of social connections to ease isolation, depression, anxiety, and more. Alongside my own thoughts, I want to share resources. I will share videos, links, and quotes that may be helpful.

— On Tuesdays through Fridays, I will share my own written reflections, continuing to notice moments of meaning, beauty, and delight in daily life. After all, this blog is about smuggling such moments to our awareness and letting them impact us.

— On Saturdays, I will share an invitation to learn what I will call — for lack of a better term — neato curiosities. I’ll share my best smatterings of learning through podcast episodes, books, YouTube videos, and you name it. These are basically opportunities to share what has captured my interest, and I’ll invite you along with me.

Support for Smuggling Grace

Two delicious coffees

If you’d like to support or amplify connections to this space, there are also a number of ways to do that:

— Subscribe: Do you know someone who might enjoy reading and learning with us? Feel free to pass along the link, and you can invite them to subscribe. You can also share to social media any posts that have been especially meaningful or intriguing to you.

— Patreon: Would you like to support Smuggling Grace on Patreon? If so, you can do that for as little as $2 or $5 per month. I will be sharing exclusive content to Patreon supporters as well in 2024. I use these monthly funds to build connections and provide support to neighbors in my town through shared meals and coffee. Thank you for helping me do that. If you want to become a Patreon supporter, you can visit Patreon here.

— Coffee Gratitude: Would you like to offer a tip? If these posts have been meaningful to you in 2023, and you’d like to help me provide shared meals and coffee with local neighbors and friends (see above) you can also give in a one-time way: Help Renee Share the Coffee Love

And your presence is a gift — Thank you!
—Renee Roederer

Summoning a Story

Posted on by gracesmuggler
The word ‘lan-guage’ as an entry in a dictionary. Public domain image.

One of the most transformative and empowering acts of care we can offer is an invitation to tell a story. When people can put their experiences into words, they connect meaningfully with others, and perhaps most significantly, they make meaning of their own lives. People remember who they are and become crafters of narratives that convey some of their most significant experiences.

Trauma researchers have written a great deal about this; healing often comes with the ability to share narratives and make meaning out of challenging experiences. We never want to inquire about trauma experiences in intrusive ways, but when people begin to open up, and we sense that they want to share, an invitation of, “Would you like to tell me more about that?” can be remarkably transformative.

Likewise, invitations to share stories of positive experiences can be just as transformative, especially when people are feeling down, sad, confused, or burned out. At the right time — and it is important for it to be at the right time — have you ever asked someone to share about their own resilience? Or about a moment when they felt joy? Or about a time when they felt really engaged and alive in what they are doing?

As we share, these positive memories of the past become present, physiologically speaking. These stories flow through people’s bodies as they tell them, and the act telling them changes how their bodies are feeling in that moment.

One of the most transformative and empowering acts of care we can offer is an invitation to tell a story.

–Renee Roederer

The Courage to See What Is Kept Out of View

Posted on by gracesmuggler
The cover of, “Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption”

It takes courage to see what is purposefully held out of view.

In addition to making targets out of particular human beings, abusive, unjust systems have ways of keeping that harm out of view. Very often, the broader community is kept from knowing that harm, either because it is held in secret, or because it is removed quite purposefully from the rhythms of their daily lives.

A few years ago, I had an opportunity to hear Bryan Stevenson speak. He’s the author of Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. His book is difficult, powerful, beautiful, and challenging at once. As I read this, I recognize how much I am not seeing. And I know I do not look often enough or advocate enough.

I would like to share some quotes from this book today. These are found on pages 15-16:

“When I first went to death row in December 1983, America was in the early stages of a radical transformation that would turn us into an unprecedentedly harsh and punitive nation and result in mass imprisonment that has no historical parallel. Today we have the highest rate of incarceration in the world. The prison population has increased from 300,000 people in the early 1970s to 2.3 million people today. There are nearly six million people on probation or on parole. One in every fifteen people born in the United States in 2001 is expected to go to jail or prison; one in every three black male babies born in this century is expected to be incarcerated.”

“Some states have no minimum age for prosecuting children as adults; we’ve sent a quarter million kids to adult jails and prisons to serve long prison terms, some under the age of twelve. For years, we’ve been the only country in the world that condemns children to life imprisonment without parole; nearly three thousand juveniles have been sentenced to die in prison.”

“We have declared a costly war on people with substance abuse problems. There are more than a half-million people in state or federal prisons for drug offenses today, up from just 41,000 in 1980.”

“Finally, we spend lots of money. Spending on jails and prisons by state and federal governments has risen from $6.9 billion in 1980 to nearly $80 billion today. Private prison builders and prison service companies have spent millions of dollars to persuade state and local governments to create new crimes, impose harsher sentences, and keep more people locked up so that they can earn more profits. Private profit has corrupted incentives to improve public safety, reduce the costs of mass incarceration, and most significantly, promote rehabilitation of the incarcerated. State governments have been forced to shift funds from public services, education, health, and welfare to pay for incarceration, and they now face unprecedented economic crises as a result. The privatization of prison health care, prison commerce, and a range of services has made mass incarceration a money-making windfall for a few and a costly nightmare for the rest of us.”

Of course, we can say that it takes courage to see what is purposefully held out of view, but the greatest courage is found among those who are directly impacted and those who are pushing for criminal justice reform.

What is being kept from view among us? Can we see it? Can we see the human beings impacted by it? Can we welcome this vulnerability? Can we make ourselves vulnerable to change?

–Renee Roederer

My Little, White Elephant

Posted on by gracesmuggler
A white, ceramic elephant. Found here.

When I was 9, I heard about a white elephant gift exchange for the first time. My friend’s Mom was having one. I no longer believed in Santa, but for about two weeks of my life, I sincerely believed my friend was about to receive a small, white elephant as a pet.

And because I was over there all the time, I was about to receive a small, white elephant as a pet.

I was so very excited. And sadly… disappointed.

I still enjoy white elephant gift exchanges, but this one had the cutest expectations.

–Renee Roederer

Welcome to the Party

Posted on by gracesmuggler
A nativity scene around candles.

Once a month, I have the privilege of leading a spiritual reflection service with a community called Parables in Chelsea, Michigan. This service is planned with, for, and by disabled and neurodivergent community members.

While present on Sunday, I was so pleased to look over and spot this mantra ray who entered the nativity scene.

Sometimes the sweetest joys are found in the details.

–Renee Roederer

The 9 Year Window When I Didn’t Believe in Reindeer

Posted on by gracesmuggler
Four very real reindeer are eating grass.
Public domain image.

This is one of my favorite questions to ask people:

What is something you learned incorrectly as a child but only realized well into your adulthood?

This is a fantastic question! It leads to stories that are very dear and often, quite hilarious. Some people talk about words they mispronounced for decades, only revealed, of course, when they blurted them aloud in a group setting. Others talk about illogical beliefs they internalized as kids which emerged unexpectedly in their minds years later (or were also voiced aloud!) These come as a total surprise because people hadn’t even thought about the topic, let alone questioned their young belief, until that very moment.

This American Life has an entire episode of stories like these. My favorite involves a moment when a college student approached other college students at a campus party and asked the question, “So… are unicorns just really rare, or did they go extinct?”

Hysterical. Totally embarrassing. But also so dear. I love it!

With all of this in mind, I will now admit that I have an embarrassment of riches of stories like these from my own life. And I will share one of them today.

My favorite personal story of this kind involves the nine year window when I didn’t believe in reindeer.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Now I hope this doesn’t come as a total surprise or crush anyone’s dreams, but when I was eight years old, I learned the sad truth that Santa wasn’t real. (Are you okay? I hope so). In the moment of this revelation, I was pretty of devastated. I was also deeply concerned that I wouldn’t get presents anymore.

So in the midst of my sadness, I resigned myself to reality. So much so, in fact, that I just kind of… over-steered. I just assumed… that… reindeer weren’t real either.

I mean, come on… They fly! Flying reindeer? No way.

At least there was some sort of evidence of Santa’s existence. Gifts showed up annually, so there was something tangible to associate with him. Plus, I saw him in all the malls!

But once I knew the sad truth, how could I possibly believe in flying, antlered caribou? Reindeer quickly went the way of the unicorn. (Ahem… not extinct. Non-existent).

That is, until… I was 17 years old. That is, until… I was flipping through the channels and saw a nature documentary on my television set.

A British accented, David Attenbourough wannabe voiced commentary as creatures walked around in the snow, plunging their faces into the frigid stuff, attempting to nibble on frozen grasses. “The reindeer are in the tundra,” the David Attenbourough wannabe said in all his formal tones.

And I started laughing. Laughing! “The reindeer! In the tundra! Yeah…”

But then, my laughing stopped abruptly, and my mouth gaped open. As I sat alone in the living room of my childhood home, in my last year before legal adulthood, a recognition completely washed over me. It dawned on me — at age 17 — that reindeer are REAL.

I had indeed over-steered. The reindeer had been in the tundra this whole time.

This whole time.

–Renee Roederer

Safe Bodies, Transformed Minds

Posted on by gracesmuggler

“So it’s very important to be very aware that these reactions emanate from your body, and so the big challenge of treating trauma is, how do you help people to live in bodies that feel fundamentally safe?”
— Bessel van der Kolk

In this video, Bessel van der Kolk discusses
1) Psychotherapy
2) EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)
3) Yoga
4) Theatre & Movement
5) Neurofeedback
6) Psychedelics

“Part of what has kept me so busy all these years is, how can we find a treatment that allows the basic sense of defectiveness and self-loathing to be controlled, and now it looks like we have found something that has found a very substantial drop in PTSD… But what is important here is that one size doesn’t fit all. Different people need very different things. What worked for my last patient may very well not work for you. Everything is an experiment in life, and healing from trauma is an experiment.”
— Bessel van der Kolk