I spent much of 2023 leading folks through metabolizing their grief and rage and I learned a lot. I am more convinced than ever that our bodies are amazing vessels that need us to do this kind of work in order to fully realize who we are as spiritual, biological, communal beings. My latest offering is a longer, slower one, and it is for anyone who struggles to feel happy, content, safe in their own body, for whatever reason. Maybe you suffered physical trauma, perhaps you live with body dysmorphia or struggle with eating disorders, or you experience chronic pain or a physical disability. Understanding what it might mean to truly reside in your body and celebrate it rather than see it as something to be tamed takes time and effort, and it’s something that we can do together. Some of the details for the next cohort are below, and the Google form to sign up is at the end of the graphics. Let me know if you have questions. I’m excited to get started.

Sign up here

Unknown photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

This one is for all the rage-cryers out there. You know who you are. I’m one, too. I cry when I am furious, and it used to really piss me off. In class, in heated discussions in a college setting, at work. Someone would say something that enraged me (remember – rage is about powerlessness, so whenever there was a particular injustice or something that was misconstrued in an altogether unfair way, when I was belittled or mocked or dismissed …) and I would feel it start to well up and it was awful because I am a woman. It’s embarrassing. And more than that, it is one of those things that, as soon as the tears begin to flow, you know people will stop paying attention to what you’re saying and start reacting to the fact that you are “being emotional.”

If you identify with this, you are aware that there is literally nothing you can do to stop it once it starts. Even if you do your level best to continue to speak logically, you know there are people who are rolling their eyes at you and dismissing you simply because  you are crying.

But here’s the thing: focus on the “nothing you can do” part and know this (and share it widely because the more people know, the more we can destigmatize rage tears): Rage crying is a normal, physiological human response to increased levels of cortisol in our bodies. 

The main goal of our bodies is to maintain and/or restore homeostasis – that is, a middle ground, equilibrium. That is why, when we get too hot, our bodies trigger the mechanism that makes us sweat, so we cool off. When we are too cold, we shiver and get goosebumps so that we are prompted to raise our body temperature. When we have too much gas in our systems, our bodies have adapted to pass that gas – by burping or farting. Etc. Etc. Cortisol is a hormone that is produced by our adrenal glands in response to stress, and when we have too much of it, our bodies know that it needs to be offloaded somehow. Excess cortisol affects our immune response, increases levels of inflammation and can cause all sorts of physical ailments – so when there is too much, we have to get rid of it.

Wanna know one of the most efficient ways to offload cortisol?

Crying.

I shit you not.

Researchers have measured the amount of cortisol in tears when people are crying in different situations, and have shown that there are elevated levels of stress hormone in the tears of people who rage cry.

So basically, when you are frustrated with someone and feeling powerless and you start to sob, that is just your body’s way of achieving homeostasis – it’s like burping when you have too much gas in your belly or sweating when you’re too hot.

Sadly, we have been taught that crying in public is unacceptable, so many of us have learned to stifle this urge. Patriarchy has us teaching boys that it’s not really ok to cry at all, and prompts us to tell young women that in order to be ‘professional’ they need to compose themselves at work or they won’t be taken seriously. But this does nothing to relieve our bodies of the extra stress hormone it carries, and so when we force ourselves to stop crying, our bodies often turn to other means. So what else do humans do to relieve stress during these times? Men and boys have been socialized to externalize their stress – how many stories have you heard of a teenage boy punching a hole in a wall when he was upset? Turns out punching and kicking things also offloads cortisol (although not as efficiently as crying). Young women and girls internalize their stress for social and cultural reasons and one of the scariest things we know about how they try to achieve homeostasis is by self-harming – namely burning or cutting themselves. Cortisol levels drop measurably in people who engage in cutting behavior (and, yes, young men engage in self-harm as well, although not as often as young women do).

So the question we need to ask ourselves is whether we’d rather normalize angry tears from our fellow human beings as a normal, physiological response to stress or not. Can we recognize that this is a normal, adaptive thing that our bodies do and not force an alternative response that will ultimately end up being more harmful? Yes, it’s uncomfortable for us to witness another person crying, but the more we understand that it is literally something our bodies need to do in order to function better, the more we can accept it and move forward.

Tell your families, tell your co-workers, tell your kids. And the next time you feel that familiar lump in your throat and your hands clench into fists, let ‘er rip.

Cassandra.mllr / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)

I don’t generally dream, or at least if I do, I don’t remember dreaming, for the most part. Occasionally, if I fall back asleep in the morning hours when I should be getting out of bed, I will have short, strange dreams that I can recall, but for the most part, I have no active dream life.

Lately, I’ve been dreaming about the food bank – specifically, how to configure boxes and pack them efficiently, what kinds of food we have left on the shelves that we can share, what supplies we need to order to bolster our pantry. I am usually a champion sleeper – falling fast asleep within minutes and sleeping soundly for 7-8 hours at a time. But in the last two weeks, my sleep has been restless, dreaming of squatting to pack cardboard boxes with dry goods furiously, sliding them across the concrete floor to stack higher and higher. I dream for a while, wake to acknowledge that it’s a dream, roll over and begin again. All night long. Strangely, I wake rested, but by 3:30pm I am exhausted and ready to nap on the couch with the dogs.

This morning when I stepped out of the shower, recalling last night’s dreams of scrolling Costco lists and counting the jars of peanut butter we have left in storage, I shook my head, remembering the other times in my life when I dreamt like this. I recalled my first job as a waitress, my sleep peppered with scenes of heavy trays of clam chowder and sourdough bread, refilling coffee cups and forgetting the creamer, sliding across the kitchen floor as I smeared my rubber-soled shoes through a spill someone had left behind. I dreamt like this again when I took a job managing the wait list for children’s inpatient psychiatric care, imagining spreadsheets and databases, sorting by county and age and number of days in foster care.

This is my brain’s way of working out how to master something new. It’s what I do, and even as it is repetitive and lasts for weeks, it is not something that feels distressing to me. I have come to appreciate it as a way my brain works while my body rests.

I volunteered for a while leading groups for parents of newborns. I spent 12 weeks with couples or just mothers with new babies, helping them build community, giving them a safe space to vent and find solidarity with others, and teaching them about the unique qualities and milestones their children would make their way through. I remembered those days of sleepless nights, not ever feeling like you were on solid footing, reinventing every single day anew. I didn’t dream during those times, mostly because I never slept long enough between feedings or rocking my babies at night to get to that stage of sleep.

But I do remember counseling new moms about their babies’ sleep patterns. I remember cautioning them that even when their babies did settle in to an overnight routine – sleeping 5 or more hours at a time – that every time they came to a new milestone, their sleep would be restless again for a while. A week before they figure out how to crawl, many babies will revert to old ways of waking over and over again in the night. They repeat this when they’re learning to walk, and talk, and when they start solid foods. I imagine it the same way my brain works to figure out something new, to master a new skill or task. And so while it is stressful and frustrating for parents to feel as though they have finally gotten their baby to sleep for a long stretch at night and then have to go backward, what their babies really need during this time is care and comfort. It is hard work creating those new neural pathways, but once created, they serve us well for most of the rest of our lives. In general, once we learn to crawl, we never forget how to do it. Same with walking and talking.

It is a reminder to me to nurture my own disrupted sleep as my brain toils to find a better solution, and to react to my teens with compassion as they stay up later and later or lie in bed for 12 hours and come down for coffee still looking like they haven’t slept much at all. We are all, in our own way, working out how to manage this time in a way that feels right and sustainable for us. Like I tell my newborn parents, the least we can do is be gentle with each other and know that even if we can’t see it happening, there is magic going on in our heads that takes time to work through.

Naturvetenskap 1

I am a storyteller and I have been my whole life. I carry them inside me, work on them, figure out the best way to share them. But sometimes the stories get heavy. Before I ever put anything on the page, the words and feelings chase each other around and around inside, making connections and trying to fit the puzzle pieces together. When I sit too long with the stories, they start to burn and I know it’s time to walk or go pull weeds. Somehow, being outside helps the sentences flow and combine in ways they can’t when I am indoors.

The stories of the last year and a half are heavier than many that have gone before, and I’m finding that walking takes on a new urgency for me and it also requires a focus I haven’t been forced to have before. These days, I have to walk farther away from home and immerse myself in places that are new and expansive in order to divorce myself from the circling thoughts and feelings. I have found an open space surrounded by trees where few people go and at least once a week I walk there and sit and untether the words from each other, and also from my head and heart. Sitting in this place just breathing helps to re-string it all in a way that offers clarity.

I am learning that there is a sort of chemical reaction taking place as I assimilate the stories and try to keep my heart and my head on the same level. Most days, the two are at war, fighting for supremacy, which sometimes means wild swings from sadness to anger. My brain can only witness so much grief before it burns it off with anger, like alcohol in a skillet. My heart is simultaneously relieved of its burden and seduced by the beautiful flames, but the anger is also expansive and  at some point I realize it is taking up too much space in my head. The sadness dissipated, but the stories are still there and they are all about other people. I imagine a large section of my brain colonized by the stories of others, the actions of others, the words of others, and I am impatient to evict them.

When I was in college, the days I spent in the Chemistry lab were some of my favorites. The cool, cave-like room with its expanse of concrete worktops and glass beakers and pipettes and orderly rhythms gave me a stillness and a focus. There were rules, a set of steps to be taken, and all that was asked of me was to do one thing at a time and remain curious – observe and report. Even if I knew what I was supposed to be creating, somehow the cascading chemical reactions along the way were always enchanting – sometimes it was a smell or a particular color flame that I hadn’t expected. Witnessing the magic kept me from getting caught up in the story or the sequence. I had my instructions. Observe and report. Remain curious.

 

I never know where inspiration will come from, but in general, it is spurred by conversations with people I don’t know as well as I thought I did. And for that, I am tremendously grateful.

I have been part of a book club for about four years that is composed of women who look an awful lot like me – upper middle class, white, most of us have children who are teenagers. Most are married (some for the second time), and about half work a traditional job. And yet, the disparate backgrounds and thought processes are interesting enough that we have some pretty deep conversations. I have to say, there have been some tense moments (for me, anyway, who is incapable of staying quiet when I think there is something privileged or provocative or unacknowledged), but they’ve generally been talked through, and all are sparked by books we’ve read.

Many of the books are ones I wouldn’t have picked up in the first place and I love that, too. There have been a few over the years that I couldn’t bring myself to finish (one that I didn’t even bother to start), but for the most part, I dive in with curiosity and look forward to the conversations we have. And nearly always, I am left with lots to think about in the ensuing days. Our last meeting was a week ago and I’m still chewing on one small exchange that happened around PTSD and when I think about something for that long, it usually means the only way I can process it is to write about it.

We read The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah which contains themes of domestic violence and PTSD (albeit largely unacknowledged – only alluded to) throughout.  At one point during our discussion, I referenced this post from a few weeks ago in an effort to talk about the way my brain worked to prepare myself for potential catastrophe when I was a kid and one of the other women chimed in, “From who?”

I stopped talking and turned to look at her.

“From who? Who were you afraid of?”

In the moment, I answered truthfully and moved on to make my point, but it is that exchange that has been stuck in a crevice of my brain for nearly a week now and I feel the need to elaborate on my original answer.

Here’s what I know about PTSD (in my case – I won’t generalize to other people’s experiences): it’s not rational, and it doesn’t limit itself to one trigger. If, as a kid, I was afraid of one particular person, anytime I encountered another person who had similar characteristics, my nervous system went into overdrive and sent me to fight/flight. So while I may have started out worrying about one person harming me, as soon as I went out in to the wider world, I saw potential disaster in all sorts of places that other people wouldn’t normally see it. I was, quite literally, prepared to duck and run at any time. I saw danger everywhere for years. This is how PTSD compromised my ability to function in my daily life – by keeping me on a hair trigger whether it made sense to other people or not.

Here’s another thing I know about PTSD; repeated exposure to triggers won’t give me the sense that I’m safe. This is not like experiments scientists are doing with food allergies where small doses over long periods of time gradually help the immune system become accustomed to ingesting the item and end up being ok with it. Repeated exposure to triggers only made me develop more armor which I spent a lot of time and money with therapists trying to dismantle. The way I overcame most of my PTSD was to have small repeated exposure to safe spaces, to people who didn’t violate or harm or scare me. With a lot of effort and mindfulness, I was gradually able to change the narrative in my brain, but it didn’t just happen. It took work.

If you love someone who has PTSD, please don’t explain to them why they shouldn’t be scared or anticipate disaster. Please don’t trigger them and later say, “See? I didn’t hit you. I just yelled. You were over-reacting.” A trigger sets off a biochemical chain reaction that completely obliterates language. By the time I realize you haven’t hit me, I’ve already felt the fear in every corner of my brain and body and it’s too late for you to convince me that I shouldn’t be scared. I already was. It happened. And that’s one more example in my brain of why it’s not safe to be around you – whether you hit me or not.

I realize that PTSD is unfathomable to people who don’t have it but the more we can try to understand what triggers our loved ones with PTSD, the more we can avoid those incidents that send them in to a frenzy of survival mode behavior. Just because we can’t understand someone else’s reaction to something doesn’t make it unimportant or irrelevant or over-reaction. PTSD starts with one trigger but our brains are so good at generalizing and so worried about keeping us safe that we can expand the list of triggers to include things that others think are nuts. If you love someone with PTSD, the best thing you can do is learn what triggers them and avoid doing those things as you continually remind them that you are safe and loving.

(For the record, I was dismayed that the book we read didn’t explore the idea that one of the main characters was clearly struggling with PTSD. There was a missed opportunity there, in my opinion, to make him a much more 3-dimensional character. )

Two things: I don’t like the way anger feels in my body but I am discovering how to help it leave, and for me, nature is an integral part of that process.

When anger comes it is seductive and as a human being and a storyteller, my wont is to engage my mind and immediately begin to weave words around it and harness its power.

But that red hot ball burrows its way in to me and sometimes hunkers down to stay a while and it sends out tendrils, armies, missionaries. It burns.

So what I’ve learned is that anger has to reside in my body sometimes, but I don’t have to help it stay any longer. I don’t have to soften the space where it hangs out, change the sheets and offer fresh towels. I only have to acknowledge it, nod my head at it, and keep it from connecting with my stories. My stories are meant to heal, to illuminate, to open understanding, and anger sucks the life out of them and makes them hard and mean. Even if it feels powerful and purposeful. That is the seduction.

A wise friend once told me that it’s important to help move anger through my body – that movement makes it hard for the hot twist of resentment to stay. And so I walk in nature. I disconnect from my head and ground myself deep in my belly. I run a cord from my sacrum to the earth and I breathe and I move, and gradually I feel lighter. Noticing the trees and moss and meandering streams reminds me that movement and coexistence, community and cooperation, connection and distinction are my sweet spot. I cannot make my priorities anyone else’s priorities. I cannot predict or prescribe what will happen when I speak my truth. But I can invite the anger to leave and fill myself up with possibility and light and let the ripples move through me out into the world.

Sometimes, I have a view in to PTSD that I haven’t ever seen before. Generally, at this point in my life, it’s a pretty distanced view, and for that I am grateful.

As I was getting ready to take the dogs for a walk this morning, I was putting my shoes and socks on and having to contend with Chivito to keep possession of both socks. He loves nothing more than watching me separate a pair of socks and waiting until I begin to put the first one on and my attention is diverted so he can snatch the other sock and run away with it to a corner of the room. As I chased him to retrieve it, I was suddenly reminded of something I used to muse on as a kid.

Is it better to put both socks on first and then start on your shoes, or one sock and one shoe first and then the other sock/shoe combo?


Seems fairly philosophical, except that, as a kid, when you’re living in fear, it’s not. It’s practical. I always chose one sock and one shoe and then the other pair and here is why – if I got interrupted halfway through and had to run, at least one foot would be entirely covered. If I did both socks first and had to run, those socks wouldn’t protect my feet for long as I ran away, but, I reasoned, I could always give the bare foot a break by hopping on the foot with the shoe for a little bit if necessary.

These days I can look back at the kid who thought that way most mornings and smile with compassion. I no longer feel that sharp spike of adrenaline in my chest as I imagine what she was afraid of. I know I’m safe these days. I am filled with appreciation for that little girl’s survival skills and for the fact that I made it through that time and am no longer forced to think that way.

I wonder what else that little girl could have done with her time and intellect if she hadn’t been so afraid all the time, so focused on fight or flight, and it makes me determined to do what I can to keep other kids from living that way.

This is a pretty ham-handed segue in to a discussion about gun control, but here you have it: this is one of the reasons I find it unconscionable that there are lawmakers considering adding more guns to the landscape of our kids’ lives. Between active-shooter drills and actual mass shootings in schools, churches, and other public places, our kids are traumatized, and we are letting it happen. Consider this post by a teacher named Danae Ray (taken from Facebook postings made by her FB friends – I don’t know her):


“Today in school we practiced our active shooter lockdown. One of my first graders was scared and I had to hold him. Today is his birthday. He kept whispering “When will it be over?” into my ear. I kept responding “Soon” as I rocked him and tried to keep his birthday crown from stabbing me.
I had a mix of 1-5 graders in my classroom because we have a million tests that need to be taken. My fifth grader patted the back of the 2nd grader huddled next to him under a table. A 3rd grade girl cried silently and clutched the hand of her friend. The rest of the kids sat quietly (casket quiet) and stared aimlessly in the dark.
As the”intruder” tried to break into our room twice, several of them jumped, but remained silently. The 1st grader in my lap began to pant and his heart was beating out of his chest, but he didn’t make a peep. Eventually, the principal announced the lockdown was lifted.
I turned on the lights, removed the table from in front of the door, opened the blinds and announced “Let’s get back to work. ” I was greeted with blank faces… petrified faces…. tear stained faces… confused faces… elated faces…and one “bitch REALLY?” face.
This is teaching in 2018. And no… I don’t want a gun.” #teacherlyfe

Now consider those children coming to school every morning, passing through metal detectors staffed by men and women with guns. Think about what it must take to walk through the halls of school with armed personnel in your periphery. Think about what it might feel like to be a child of color, whose family history might be peppered with stories of police officers using undue force. Imagine how incredibly difficult it might be to focus on what your teacher is saying or relax enough to joke with your friends or cut up in the lunchroom.

Think about what it would be like, as you get older and begin to draw conclusions based on subtle societal cues, and you notice that your teachers are working two or three jobs just to afford their rent and your classmates are holding bake sales and car washes to raise money for field trips or band uniforms, but the government seems to have plenty of money for school police officers and ammunition and bullet proof vests. What would your conclusions be about where our priorities lie?

Human beings can’t learn when they are in fear-mode. They can only react. Schools need to be a place of learning. They need to be safe places to experiment, and they should be places of joy. In order to create the best conditions for creative thought, problem-solving, and collaboration, we need teachers who are not afraid and who feel as though their efforts are appreciated and well-rewarded. We need students who are well-nourished, relaxed, and who feel safe and optimistic.

Banning assault weapons (or whatever you choose to call them – I know there is some petty argument about whether bump stocks or AR-15s should be called “assault weapons” – but I’m clear on the fact that these are not simple hunting rifles unless you’re hunting human beings) is not an affront to anyone’s Second Amendment rights. Banning assault weapons is simply a way to incrementally increase the safety and security of every single person in this country. Is it a perfect solution? No. That doesn’t exist. Is it a key part of the puzzle? Yes. It is. And if we can take that step toward reducing the amount of fear our children have as they simply get dressed in the morning to go to school, it’s the least we can do.

#guncontrolnow #notonemore #neveragain

photo from www.newromantimes.com

We had snow in Seattle last Wednesday. It rarely happens, and when it does, it’s a novelty and generally doesn’t last for long – just the way I like it. Thursday, the sun came out and melted most of the inch or so that had accumulated, except in the spots that remained shady. As I walked the dogs through the neighborhood, I could see some icy patches of sidewalk and a few places with snow tucked beneath branches. We rounded one corner and there stood a tilted snowman about three feet high, just beginning to melt and sag at the top. The dogs cowered behind me, tugging at the leashes to get as far away from it as they could.

It wasn’t moving or making noise. It was just sitting there, melting in the sun. And they were petrified because never before on our walk had they seen this thing in this place. It freaked them out.

I considered encouraging them to go closer and investigate – to see that it wasn’t a threat – but they would have none of it. I wish I knew what was happening in their heads – what did they think it was? What were they worried it was going to do? All they knew was that it was foreign, unexpected, and scary.

Sometimes it’s hard to argue with your instincts. Sometimes, you have to just hope that the thing you just saw that freaked you out won’t be there the next time you round that corner and try to put it out of your mind.

And sometimes, you have to creep up to it, slowly and cautiously, to check it out. You have to walk around it to see from all angles, sniff it, maybe even poke at it and try to determine what the significance is. It’s also important, while you’re doing this, to acknowledge that this takes energy – a lot more energy than walking away does. It’s frankly exhausting to stay alert and run through the mental calculations and be ready to bolt at a second’s notice.

Parenting teenagers is a lot like happening on an unexpected snowman in your neighborhood. Sometimes I just rear back and walk away from that thing that just happened, hoping it was a one-off. Other times, I steel myself and tiptoe up to assess the situation, ever-vigilant and truly hoping it’s not as frightening as I thought it was when I first saw it.

It was a week filled with snowmen. I’m tired, but also relieved that the ones I saw weren’t as bad as my nervous system said they were. And I’m also happy that I’ve spent time training myself over the years to breathe deeply and creep forward. I’ve learned that if I simply describe what I see in front of me I am suddenly less fearful.

There is this thing here that I didn’t expect and I’m not sure what to do with it. To be honest, with teenagers, it happens more than I’d like. I can’t possibly anticipate most of the things they’ll do even though I try, and sometimes I’m altogether floored.

But, as the mom, it’s my job to remember that I set the standard, and that maybe we’re all a little freaked out by this thing that happened (even if it happened as a consequence of some teenager’s poor choices). So I take a minute to let the initial adrenaline rush subside and I start talking. And usually, that snowman starts to melt in front of our eyes and become more manageable.

The last year or so has been a challenging one. I am getting a divorce after 23 years and there is a lot to learn, and even more to un-learn; about the world, about myself, about relationships. I have been thinking a lot about “groundwork” and how I believed for a long time in a paradigm that said if I worked hard and diligently and laid a solid ground beneath my feet, at some point I could rest easy and revel in that. It’s that same story we hear in the West about getting to retirement or busting our asses in high school so that we can get in to a good college or killing ourselves in college so that we can land a good job and … rest.

I am un-learning.

I am reminded that people who embody their purpose and their passion, who trust their instincts and intuition and forge a path from that, centered in it, steeped in it, are the people who most inspire me. These people don’t lead with fear, they live with it, walk with it until it falls away. It is, at most, an occasional companion on their journey, not the engine that drives their motion.

I wanted, at some point, to stop living moment by moment, breathing deeply and re-centering myself. I wanted to have built a solid path already so that I wouldn’t have to keep laying one cobblestone at a time, breathing always, focused always. I wanted there to be some magical point in time when I would have laid enough “groundwork” that the path would simply be there, shining and solid before me, so that all I had to do was step out and follow it with ease.

As I say that out loud, I realize that the only way that can happen is if I go backwards. The path in front of me hasn’t been laid yet. It can only be laid by me.

Some days, I want to lie down on the path I’ve already made, at the place where the last cobblestone is set before dropping off into Earth, and rest. And I think that’s ok. Rest is ok. This is hard work, laying your own path, staying grounded in who you are and being true to your own deepest pull.

If I am to forge my own way, I have to keep building one stone at a time. I have to keep asking, ‘is this who I am?’ I have to believe that what lies behind me is only important because it is how I got here. It is not worth going back to.

So while I don’t know exactly where I am going, I know that I am getting there one brick at a time and I also know that each brick is laid with care and determination. The point is not to get “Somewhere” or to “Finish” or even to look back and show how far I’ve come. The work is the point. The daily inquiry – what is most important and true today? what is the highest and best expression of my Self? what is the next right step?

If I embody those things, the work is centering and grounding and I am grateful for it.

Suddenly, I have no more longing for a clear path ahead. I know that what I’m creating is its own purpose, and that gives me joy. And I know that all around me is an abundance of materials and support, reverence and love, and that if I can remember that I am part of something bigger that sustains me and to which I am responsible, in the moments when I falter, I am held firmly.

My latest for parents and teachers who work with teens is here. Once you know how to spot anxiety, the next trick is to figure out what’s triggering it.