Plenty of words will be written and spoken in the coming days about what happened, why it occurred, and what to do about it. But my focus is, and must be, closer to home. What is relevant for our purposes is this: the foundation of our personal wellness comes down to at least three things: mindfulness, community, and creativity. It is by exercising those three things, which are entirely in our control, that we garner the strength to heal, the resilience to act, and the strength to respond to adverse circumstances.

Mindfulness:

Mindfulness doesn’t only mean meditation, and meditation doesn’t only mean stillness. As trauma specialist Molly Birkholm points out, there are three key questions we can ask ourselves whenever we need to come back to our home ground:

1. What is present?

2. Where am I feeling it in my body?

3. Is this information asking me to take some action in the world?

If you, like me, are experiencing a flood of emotions and anxiety, that first question is where our focus will have the most impact. As we learn to sit with our discomfort, to hold the hurt parts, the anxiety, the fear, and the rage, we come into coherence: coherence with our emotions, with our bodies, and with our minds. It is in coherence that we can act from our best and most enlightened selves. This is not comfortable work. It is not easy work. It IS work. It is THE work.

Stay with the emotions as you can, and remember that they tend to come in 90 second waves, like labor pains. Breathe. Practice good self care. Eat well, sleep well, hydrate. If we fall off the wagon and binge on junk food or drugs and alcohol, give ourselves grace to realize that’s a trauma response. We are trying to self-medicate. Get back on the wagon. Follow your program. I’ve got some resources below if you need them.

Community:

A Good Yarn: Makerspace and Crafting Salon is not going anywhere. We will continue our “politics-free zone,” and for the same reason that I put that in place when we started this. It’s not to white-wash what’s happening. It’s not to make nice. It’s not because there are good people on both sides. It’s because, plain and simple, we need a fucking break. We need a break from the vitriol, the division, and the very real fear for ourselves, our families, our community, and our world. Do not think for a moment that I am blind to any of these things. It is precisely because I see them and feel them so keenly that I need to stake out a place where I say, this place, this sacred space, this liminal space is a space out of space and a time out of time and is inviolate to the forces of confusion that seek to destroy it. It is, quite simply, a radical act.

Remember our communities. We are not alone, and there is nothing we cannot accomplish when we work together. I know that it might not feel like that right now, and that you, like me, are feeling bruised. That’s why these steps are chronological. Go back to the beginning. Go back to the breath. What is present. Where are you feeling it. Is the information asking you to take some action in the world.:

Act. Join your local Indivisible chapter. Cure ballots. (Ask me privately what that is if you haven’t heard of it.) Join Red, Wine, and Blue. Follow Heather Cox Richardson and Dan Rather. Talk to flesh and blood humans and stay the fuck off social media when you want to connect, and really connect with other humans. Come to craft circle. You don’t even have to say a word, just sit there and soak up the energy. Remember: Winnie the Pooh and friends didn’t kick Piglet out when he was feeling down. They sat with him.

Creativity:

I’ve said this many times before: all writing is a radical act. I would expand that to all acts of creativity are radical acts. Our power is in our hands and our voices, and in our ability to play. Audre Lorde said it best: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation and that is an act of political warfare.”

Child-like pursuits are also radical acts. It takes balls to color as an adult. It takes balls to stand up and say, I like to knit. It takes balls to make something, to have the temerity to declare ourselves “artist” in a world that is fueled by monetization.

Do it anyway.

Stay strong. Keep the faith. Write.

EMDR International: https://www.emdria.org/find-an-emdr-therapist/

US-based: Find a therapist: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/

Calm app: https://calm.com/

Yoga Nidra:

Saturday studio time: Saturdays, noon to 2 Pacific on Zoom (leave me a comment to discuss if you’re not already on the list)

Red, Wine, and Blue: https://redwine.blue/

Heather Cox Richardson: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/ (there is a free version of her daily newsletter; she also puts up an audio version the next day. Letters come out daily in the evening. She’s a professor on the East Coast of the U.S.; non-partisan.)

Dan Rather: https://steady.substack.com/ (there is a free version; he’s a retired U.S. reporter, non-partisan)