Ninth Elegy

My next workshop is on the subject of war. In creating this 10-week series, I’ve been contemplating the relationship between poetry and war, and also the reason why poetry is so therapeutic. Each time I encounter a poem, or listen to someone speak about poetry and its process, the relationship between poetry and emotional healing becomes clearer to me. At a reading I went to just the other day a woman stood up during the comment period and told of how she relied on the poets to help her make sense out of 911 after it occurred. She said the event was too large for her to hold–it was incomprehensible, and that only poetry was able to ground it and shatter her sense of dissociation.

One of the reasons poetry can do this is because it has the ability to hold the tensions of opposing forces while remaining firmly committed to imagery and substance. Poetry’s job is not to sew up and make into sensible soundbites the pain and tragedies of our lives. It’s job is to evoke a feeling of sympathetic resonance in the person reading–whether that is joy, or nostalgia, or existential dread, or the poignancy of a loss, poetry is a path of empathic intimacy. Why else would poets write?

In a poetry workshop I participate in each week, I recently had the experience of sharing a poem about my childhood. As the other participants read and workshopped my poem, I had this incredible sense of feeling understood–they really “got” what I was trying to say. This is not a “therapeutic” workshop, per se, but as they explained their reactions and thoughts, even though some parts of the poem were not working, my overall sensation was almost–dare I say?–pleasurable. My sense of pleasure in sharing this poem came from seeing how it effected others. This little piece of my childhood experience at the dinner table became a point of meeting–of feeling responded to and seen in a dark moment of my childhood.

In writing the poem, it seemed as though I was making sense of something I could hardly describe in the usual sorts of words we might use in a therapy session. By describing certain details and indicating the mood through word choice and syntax, I felt I came closer to what I was trying to communicate. Meaning was made out of situation that had previously lurked formlessly and loose in the corners of my consciousness.

I guess that’s why I think poetry will be useful for people struggling with this idea of war. What other form could possibly hold, without strident arguments and extreme positions, the complex of feelings that emerge around the issue of war? And what other form has the power to influence feelings of others who are stuck in solidified positions? If I can draw a picture with words the look on the face of a terrified soldier, or a mother clinging to an infant in her mind as her son leaves to join an army, then I can reach past arguments and blame, and hopefully capture the heart of a reader.

If my words can somehow find their way to the right readers, that is. Which is why there is a slight activist/protest element to the workshop I’m designing. Whether through a reading, website postings, or other methods, I will invite participants in my workshops to find a way to share their poems publicly. The dialogue of poetry can then find peaceful and non-violent ways to quietly protest in the psyche of the hearers…

(For details about time and location of workshop, please visit my website)

Adrenal exhaustion is a lifestyle “game changer.” You lose choices about how much you can get away with anymore, and you have to look hard at how you’ve been living. I’ve approached this from a variety of areas, which I’ll post in a simple way here, and then follow with more in-depth posts later. Here, essentially, is the plan I’m adhering to, and again, it’s not intended as medical advice–this is what is working for me, and I recommend seeing a health care provider who can conduct appropriate tests.

The course:
• Rest yourself well: Going to bed earlier in the evening, and staying away from computers and news helps lower stress levels and cortisol levels at night.

• Feed yourself well: If I begin to feel ill, I stop eating carbohydrates and focus on protein and vegetables. This means no sugar of any kind, and not even any fruit. Once I start eating grains again, the only grains I eat are quinoa, brown rice, and barley (all high in protein). Soup stock is important, and I cook it long and at low heat, and am sure to include the interesting and discarded parts of things not ordinarily eaten (which are discarded later). Green tea is the only acceptable caffeinated beverage while I’m fighting a virus, infection or cold. Once I’m better, I start eating fruit and other grains again.

• Supplement yourself: I take a whack of supplements for stress, adrenals, and nutritional deficiencies. More about these in a separate post.

• Move yourself: A light course of non-injurious exercise. This is an area where I tend to either overdo or underdo. Right now I’m finding the middle way with water aerobics, and hope to step up some yoga and bicycling soon. Recently, I’ve noticed that my strength for exercise has come back–this is something that’s been missing for a very long time, so I’m encouraged that this course is working.

• Advocate for yourself: I am learning that it’s important to insist on seeking help and asking for what I need. I’ve been to far too many health care providers who want to put me anti-depressants or relegate my problems to psychological issues. I believe in therapy, of course, but I don’t think every unknown symptom or health complex means that a person is somehow emotionally challenged. The health problem IS the challenge, oftentimes, and allopathic approaches to medicine most often miss how not feeling well leads to all sorts of emotional complexes. So, insist on good tests, and keep seeking out doctors until you find someone who is really willing to look deeply into your case. Also, low-grade depression and anxiety (I believe) can be treated better with natural supplements and life-style changes than with the current use of pharmaceuticals (too often addictive or laced with side-effects).

• Listen to and nurture yourself: I’ve learned that I can be hard on myself for being ill. What I do now is listen carefully to voices in my head that want to disparage me for not feeling well. For instance, the other day I wrote a poem to my nose (sinuses). I just let the words come out and didn’t edit anything. Re-reading the poem, I heard this terribly parental voice practically sending me to my room for not feeling well! I was a little shocked and used the situation to write another poem to my nose–this time it was the way I imagined a loving parent might respond.

This is one way to work with changing our internal messages–and I think if you listen carefully enough, you’ll hear yourself saying all kinds of non-nurturing things to yourself when you are sick. Here’s a tricky one: “What’s wrong with me that I’m sick again?” Sounds like an innocuous question, but it’s really a judgment.

• Care for your relationships: Surrounding ourselves with supportive and loving relationships is essential to health and stress management. Taking care to develop sustaining relational practices with our significant others and friends and co-workers is often overlooked as a method toward health, but I think it ranks right up there with eating and resting well as non-negotiable. We often take better care of our cars than of our relationships–changing their oil, washing them, maintaining them–but few people develop systems of sustainable relating. By this I mean ongoing relational practices that help us to “clean-up” issues and hurt feelings as we go along. Under-the-surface tensions will eat your adrenals up in record time.

• Choose for yourself: Sometimes it’s really hard to cut out things you want to do, or think you ought to do. I struggle with having too many interests and things I’d like to accomplish. Realizing that I have to focus and prioritize has been essential to my ability to simplify my life and my time. I simply can’t do it all, so I have to determine what is most important to me, and focus on that. This takes some discipline. My tendency is to get caught in too many forums, and to go too far afield in my quest to know a lot of things. Right now I’m trying to focus on knowing a couple of things more deeply. I find by allowing myself to sink in, I’m not really losing anything, as all that I need is really contained in whatever I am choosing. This is hard to explain–but having more depth, I feel as if my life is taking on the breadth that I’ve always sought after…

In my next post, I’ll talk about all of the supplements I’m taking, and why.

Dear Alex:

I found this picture of you on your way to Kuwait on your sister’s Facebook account. I know I haven’t been much of a presence in your life, for reasons too complicated to go into here, but I’ve always thought about you during intermittent visits and as pictures came to me over the years. I’ve wondered about you (and my other nieces and nephew) and how you would grow up, what you would do, and what would be the outcome of the sort of upbringing you received.

I guess it surprises me a little, to feel the impact of my emotions, seeing you in your desert fatigues, a pack as big as you are on your back, headed to your first stop overseas on your way to war.

I’ve always been angry about this war. A while back I marched with Veterans Against the War down the streets of Seattle–and I was glad to be participating in something–not just on the sidelines. But when I heard you had enlisted, I was upset. I didn’t know anything about why you had made such a choice, only having heard a year before that you were into “spiritual things,” other pursuits–busy being shiftless and young and not knowing what to do with your life. It was right where you were supposed to be at your age–nothing sewn up, nothing figured out, perhaps dreaming of making it as a drummer in your animal band…and I had no way to contact you. No one seemed to know how, or maybe they didn’t want me to. My brother said he was proud of you, so I held my tongue. I didn’t want to interfere with those feelings. And maybe you are just where you need to be, and like what you are doing, for all I know.

I saw my brother again recently, and he was a changed man. He said everyone thought the war would be over by the time you finished training. He said the army assured that you and your family would be taken care of. I can’t remember the exact words, but it seemed like you were told things that weren’t true, and that you are now being carried off into this war under false pretenses–a choice you did not clearly make…

I don’t recall ever seeing my brother so angry. I was surprised when he told me he’s voting democratic this year, and that he’s speaking out against the war. Christopher and I told him about work we are doing with returning veterans and their families–survivors of trauma, and he seemed so grateful, and thanked us…

Maybe that’s why it’s hitting me so hard, seeing you on your way, a picture snapped by one of your sisters who wrote on your Facebook wall about how she already misses you–there among similar comments from your mother and other sisters: “I wish I was there to see you:( I miss you but I know you’ll be fine!” …”and i miss you …boo…i miss you lots and i love you~!*”

You might hear stories about how things will be for you once you come home–about trauma and after-effects of war. Just so you know, we know how to work with this, and I’ll help your dad and sisters know how. We aren’t going to let you fall through the cracks that other veterans have fallen through once home–we know how to get you through what happens when you return to this country–so don’t worry–just get through what you have to do, and come home.

I do know a few things you can expect, however, from talking with returning soldiers. Probably this will be one of the most eventful periods of your life. You won’t want to say to anyone when you come back about how you miss your buddies, or how close you were to feeling fully alive while out there. You won’t want anyone to know how changed you are inside–how you’ll never go back to being the way you were. Your innocence and idealism will have suffered, and may be lost, but it will be replaced with a longing for your companions–those who fought with you–one of the strongest bonds you’ll make with anyone in your life–you’ll know something about fierceness and loyalty. Those will be the guys who really “get” what you went through, and you’ll be tempted to think no one else can understand. But give your family a chance–let them in on how it is. You’ll be surprised at how much your family can help if you do.

You don’t know this yet, but there will be sounds you will hear that will disturb you–ordinary sounds like a truck bouncing on its axle on the road–your nervous system will trigger, and your heart will pound. Your sleep will be effected. You’ll be tempted to drink too much. There are things you will never be able to take for granted again. And there are things you will appreciate and truly love about your country for the first time.

I watched a news report on MSNBC last night. Pictures of young men in fatigues–young men your age in Afghanistan telling the cameras, “there aren’t enough of us–we need help!” They are always on alert, unable to let down their guards, in a constant state of hyper-arousal…

Part of me wants you to get there–to help those other soldiers and give them some rest–a break, a chance at survival and mental stability…but a bigger part of me, a selfish part, wants you home, back in your worn t-shirt with your wild curly hair, slouching against the wall at some hippie fair, idling away what you believe are your endless days…

“The adrenals are an integral part of the endocrine system. They are responsible for producing several important hormones and are critical to the stress response. They have two parts: the cortex, and the medulla. The cortex is the outer wrapping of the gland. It produces cortisol which is a powerful anti-inflammatory hormone. Cortisol controls inflammation. The level of Cortisol in the body affects allergies, wound healing, asthma, arthritis, and lupus, just to name a few.”

Well, they’re not pretty, but without them it’s pretty hard to get by. Since learning mine are exhausted (not just fatigued, not just tired, but not even producing), a whole complex of symptoms now seems to make sense. I experienced fatigue, mood swings, irritability, joint pain, hair loss, skin problems, allergies and frequent colds that turned into sinus infections and bronchitis. Needless to say, this has impacted a few things in my life.

I think a few things contributed to the exacerbation of symptoms. For the past two years, I’ve had over-the-top life stressers, including the death of my father, writing a book, entering a relationship (and a complicated family situation), moving my counseling practice, moving my residence, and a bout with melanoma (fortunately not serious). I think I’m forgetting something–oh yes, the collapse of the economy….

When we are under unrelenting stress for long periods of time our adrenals inject stress hormones that are meant to help us cope with threatening situations. When this becomes chronic, the adrenals first become fatigued and erratic, and over time, they give up altogether. In my case, my brain chemistry was also altered, and it became difficult to even do the things I knew would relieve stress. I was very much in a sort of “survival” mode, much like a trauma sufferer.

I was fortunate enough to find a specialist in natural methods for dealing with mood disorders who recognized my symptoms and conducted the appropriate tests. Now that I’ve been receiving treatment for about a month, I’m noticing marked improvements in my mood and my irritability, and I am hopeful about healing my immune system (I say, as I’m down with another sinus infection!). For the next couple of posts, I’ll go over how these remedies are working and my thoughts about natural health supplements.

(Of course, this is my story, and none of this is intended as medical advice–if you have similar symptoms it’s important to seek a professional–as I learn of qualified people I’ll include them in my links)

Sometimes no amount of therapy can help us feel well and whole unless we are supported by good brain chemistry and nutritional support. Not long ago, I learned that my adrenals are exhausted and that I suffer from a severe magnesium deficiency. The Naturopath who carefully conducted the tests looked at the the blood work she had just gotten back from the lab and said: “The last person I saw with levels this low couldn’t even get out of bed and go to work.”

We are tempted, when we feel down, to beat ourselves up for our lack of character. This is what I had been doing. It came out in questions I would ask myself, such as: “What is wrong with me? Why can’t I do this? Why don’t I have any energy?” I really thought there was nothing wrong with my health, as I’d been to see doctors in the past who assured me it was all in my head and encouraged me to try antidepressants (or therapy!). I did try them, I would say to the doctor. My mood improved a little, but there was still this grinding fatigue. The doctor usually answered me with a blank stare.

The nice thing about getting a diagnosis, aside from having a treatment plan, is this feeling of vindication–knowing that my “character” is okay. It’s just that past stressers have been too much, and my body has put on the brakes. I also feel maybe just a little pride about how well I did do under the circumstances. Adrenal exhaustion is not a small thing–and neither is magnesium deficiency. The fact that I kept going at all is something of an achievement.

In light of my recent diagnosis, I’m going to attempt to post some blogs here about the symptoms of these conditions and how treatment is going. I’m also going to talk about some supplements I’m using for stress and anxiety and mental focus. In addition, I’ll talk about exercise and stress reduction strategies and how they are working. So, keep checking in for these updates! And if you have stories about what has worked for you, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

I’m not sure about how to respond to events in the world right now. People are frightened. I am frightened. Our economy appears to be collapsing, and the government only seems to offer band-aids that come with a negatively amortizing price-tag rather than real solutions that will eliminate the cause of this collapse. So what do we do?

One friend told me a mystic teacher advised three things: Meditation, community, and the purchase of seeds. Other people are buying gold, and jumping out of the stock market. Others have decided to go out and shop to ease their pain.

For me, I have to say I saw this coming from a mile away (see my post). The way our economy is run is simply not sustainable. The blindness and apathy inherent in our system is acid to my nerves, and part of me is a little relieved that we are getting a wake up call; another part frightened that it may be too late.

I’ve always thought the best way to handle an economic collapse would be to educate ourselves on how to do things–simple things, like gardening, repairing and sewing, and gathering and storing food. I also studied native plants and herbs, so I’d have some specialized knowledge that would be of value to others, should things go that way. But now I think the most important skill to have is an ability to reach out and make community with others. This, I think, is the best way to alleviate our fears, join our resources, and mitigate the effects of our downward spiral.

As I see it, the real danger of economic breakdown lies in our fear of one another. If you watch closely, as I have, you will notice that fear perpetuates all sorts of behaviors that are harmful to community building–such as hoarding, othering, isolation, and violence. For instance, when the power goes out for an extended period, I’ve noticed that people tend to come out of their homes and find one another. They begin to talk to each other and connect. This runs counter to the terror we have that collapse will turn our world into some Mad Max nightmare, or post-apocalyptic wasteland. The thing is, it could go either way, and what we still have at this point, is a CHOICE. So we need to plan.

The average American goes home to a house or apartment, turns on the television and listens to all sorts of scary and isolating news. We are taught by advertisers to fear one another, to look out for ourselves, and to protect ourselves from germs, criminals, and people who are different. We are taught by advertising not to share, but to have our VERY OWN product, and preferably, a newer version of it than anyone else.

Well, in the face of certain instability and, for heaven’s sake! the limits of physical laws that govern unlimited growth, we have to free ourselves from the consumer-as-voter ethic, and begin to educate ourselves and govern our country in a sustainable way. This means finding alternatives to unsustainable growth (Edward Abbey said unlimited growth is the ideology of a cancer cell…)

So, here we go:
1) Meditation to stabilize our inner lives and our ability to sustain loss and forebear.
2) Build community and connection with others and talk about the potential problems
3) Education about the interconnectedness of our economy, and about alternative economies; bartering, for instance.

Can you think of some sustainable strategies for building community and staving off disasters? I’d love to hear about them in my comments.

Emily Warn begins a poem in her most recent book with the line: “The trick? To live without survival kits:/miracles, bottled water, fire starters, spells…” I am unable to paraphrase this poem, but I can tell you how it impacts me. I’m left with a feeling, after contemplating her words for awhile, of needing to become more engaged with life–to stop coming up with reasons about why and how I am beleaguered, frustrated, and halted in my progress–to stop protecting myself from imaginary threats. I read her words and I can feel how I want to “just join hay stalk to hay stalk, bale to bale…” The answers are not in my stories–but in my engagement with reality, the lived world, the felt and seen and experienced places–not in my neurotic fabrications and inwardly spiraling defenses. Her poem brings me out of myself, and brings me into relationship. With what? With the poem. With words. With an experience generated by reading her poem. With others who read poetry and write. With Emily. And something I can only describe as spiritual.

The poem is called “The House of Musing,” and its inspiration is the Hebrew letter, Beit. In a recent workshop Emily spoke of working with the Hebrew alphabet for four years, using it as a container in which she created her book of poetry, Shadow Architect.

In her workshop, she brought out the ineffable quality of poetry–how it touches us in places that are beyond words. A poem evokes something felt in a reader, and the substance of that feeling is not easy to transcribe or explain. Poet and reader are in a subtle relationship–a contemplative space, where meanings emerge, where poetry serves as a connecting point between the inscrutable inner worlds of two psyches. The poem itself, Emily notes, makes its own rules and meaning as it written.

So what am I learning by reading and contemplating this poem?
1) Poetry reading and writing is a spiritual practice with psychological depth. I feel I am doing my inner work when I read poetry. It takes space and time, a sense of allowing meaning to come into me. By giving it value in my life, I am deepening, opening, becoming more human, less mechanical and prone to be used by heartless systems. I guess I would even call engagement with poetry (and spiritual life) an act of subversion, given the current political climate. (That’s an entire blog topic of its own..)

2) There are no wrapped up, easy answers to life. There is just life itself, the daily work, and engagement with the claims of reality and survival. Poetry holds complexity, and good modern poetry doesn’t try to wrap life up in neat, convenient packages. It’s messy, hands-on, sleeves rolled up, pay-attention-to-your-life-and-what-is-happening, work. Emily counseled us in our workshop to live our lives–take our kids to school, engage with what is in-front-of us, fully and completely, and that from these places, our poetry, our meanings, will emerge.

3) Reading and writing poetry is an act of what Warn calls “reconciliation.” It is a holding of the tensions of opposing forces in our lives, complex ideas, and confusing or conflicted states of being. By writing in and of these tensions, there is some release, some difficult-to-describe peacefulness that emerges by the way these tensions find form and expression in a poem. I gain both an ability to more easily hold the tensions, and a sense that they are indeed, somehow reconciled in the very form and expression of the poem itself.

So, here’s one of mine, written at the workshop (and not yet finished–but here it is anyway).

Affinity for a Weed

If you could stay somewhere like this
could you leave behind your darkness?
Or would you bring your cluttered corners and clothing-heaped chairs,
Your unwashed dishes, and butter-lettuce, gone to seed,

if you could stay here, in this light?

Is that clarity you long for
always at one precise distance?
Does a tended place of bells and simple schedules
seem closer
than life made somewhere else?

If you could ask a teacher one bright, final question,
for one sentence to fortify your life,
you’d ask then, for the question–
for the one bright, final question

even knowing as ink unwinds the point,
that what waters this garden pauses its rapid wings
above five diminished purple petals,
above the invasive weed, “Stinky Bob,”
the one the Native Plant people love to root out.

“The sanity that binds us one to another in a society is not necessarily the sanity that bonds us companionably to the creatures with whom we share the Earth. If we could assume the viewpoint of nonhuman nature, what passes for sane behavior in our social affairs might seem madness. But as the prevailing reality principle would have it, nothing could be greater madness than to believe that beast and plant, mountain and river have a ‘point of view.’ We think that sanity–like honor , decency, compassion–is exclusively a social category. It is an attribute of the mind that can only be judged by other minds. And minds exist, so we believe, nowhere but in human heads.” Theodore Roszak, The Voice of the Earth: An Exploration of Ecopsychology

The other day I looked out at the fields which surround our house and realized with a shock that the swallows are gone. Gone! Just like that. I haven’t lived in this house for a full year yet, so I wasn’t expecting this. I was aware of their arrival–how they suddenly appeared and captivated my attention–how often I thought about them when I woke up in the morning and saw them swooping and swerving in what seemed liked an articulated, pre-arranged flight plan highly coordinated with one another. I thought, surely there must be an air traffic control tower around here somewhere! It was as if they were weaving delicate nets across the sky, and the more I observed them, the more I became aware of some subtle communication between them. I wanted to watch them more, to see if I could detect their pattern, because I sensed that one existed–but life prevailed, and I was busy with other things, and now, they are gone! I’ve lost my chance. Rumor has it, they are headed to Argentina.

So what does this have to do with Ecopsychology and the quote above? I listened to a friend of mine yesterday give a talk about her life, and she told of how as a child she wanted to get inside of the heads of her parents, her friends, and others around her to see things from their perspectives. She made up games with her childhood friends where they would pretend to actually do this. Her story reminded me of a book called The Once and Future King, by T.H. White. In this tale, Merlin helps young Arthur grow up and become king by magically allowing Arthur to become a hawk, fish, ant, owl, goose, and badger, and to see and feel with the eyes and awareness of each creature. My friend used her childhood games and ability to enter the lives of others to become a wonderful story-teller. T.H. White seemed to be saying that Arthur could only become a wise king by entering into and wholly grasping what it feels like to be another creature.

I think that when we can give ourselves the space and time to fully be aware of other creatures, whether human, animal, or plant, then some part of that creature enters us and changes us. As I give myself over to enclosed buildings, enclosed cars, and cramped offices, I start feel enclosed, shut-down and cramped. But when I take the time to observe and study the swallows, I feel spacious, daring, acrobatic and free. I enter their reality and begin to see from their perspective, and this in turn invests me in their reality. I want to make sure they have nests when they return. I pray that the fields will remain and no houses will be built. The lagoon and the stand of alders and the empty fields suddenly take on new importance as swallow habitat, and I hope no condos or housing developments will be built.

Nature isn’t some optional space that exists because we allow it. Nature is the place from where we come, and whether we like to believe it or not, we are never separate from it. We may block ourselves from feeling its full vitality by insulating ourselves in dead zones of plastic, concrete, steel and glass, but we are nature. And nature gives us everything that nourishes us and feeds us, regardless of whether we take the time to acknowledge and appreciate it. Psychological health and maturity arrives when we start to be able to give back to our world. When we grow up, we no longer feel comfortable in our infantile ability to take without giving back. We naturally want reciprocal relationships of give and take, and anything less becomes strange, codependent, or co-addictive. The same is true with our relationship to our earth. As a species, we need to grow up before we destroy ourselves through depletion. This means, very simply, cultivating awareness and appreciation for what is around us. From this awareness and appreciation will naturally grow a desire to keep our natural world from more harm. It begins by stopping, by deciding to look around, and by attending to our surroundings, rather than rushing about, too busy to care, too busy to notice.

“When we express our true nature, we are human beings. When we do not, we do not know what we are.” Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

This morning I awakened with a gripping sense of insecurity. I’m familiar with this fear–it’s an old companion, and one I don’t always welcome. Friends of mine have this same experience–good, respectable people with successful lives wake up with this sense of dread every day of their lives, so I know I’m not alone with my morning demons. Today’s dread came out directed at my partner, rather than at myself. I looked over at my partner, whose eyes were closed and whose mind was off somewhere else, and decided my dread was somehow about our relationship–him not loving me–or some other story my mind decided to cook up. I felt insecure and uncertain and wondered if we were going to continue to make it through all of the recent relational hurdles we’ve had to overcome of late. Rather than expressing this fear to him, my dread-filled mind decided that he was abandoning me, and I withdrew from him and began to feel sad and fearful. I was not able to be with or hold my insecurity, and I could feel myself pulling away from him as a result. Inside, I also pulled away from myself.

Well, he noticed this, and commented to me that I seemed sad and despondent. Somehow this observation brought to my attention that I was swimming in my story of what was going on, rather than really listening to my fear and insecurity. I suddenly became aware of how I was pushing him away (and myself away from myself, or true nature). Because I did not accept my fear and insecurity–because I wanted it to go away, I pulled back into myself, and didn’t tell him about what was going on with me. He sensed it anyway, and asked about it. When he did, I could feel it–how I was this ball of abandoned being, rolled up inside of myself, certain that I was being neglected yet again (as I was in childhood). Seeing this, rather than blaming him or accusing him of abandoning me, or being off in some other world, I was able to express my fear and insecurity to him in a direct way, and he was able to hear it. As I heard myself tell him how I was really feeling, I began to touch on my own needs–to be held, talked to, reassured. And so I was able to give these things to myself. As I gave myself the words I needed to hear–that I would be there for me, that it’s okay to feel scared and insecure–I felt reassured and comforted. At about that point, my partner seemed to shift, and was able to come back to our relationship as well and be more present with what was going on, rather than off in his drifting and distracted state (which, understandably, may have been his defense against my veiled feelings).

Our processes of noticing are so imperfect. But they do work, as long as I can stay with what is going on inside of me, as long as we can give gentle feedback to one another in relationship, and as long as we can stay real with one another about what is going on…I don’t have to come up with a false persona to maintain my relationship with someone. I just have to continue to access the reality beneath my stories. My fears are real and are there, but they don’t have to turn into stories that then run the show and usually create all sorts of new trouble. Right now, I feel such relief and peace–perhaps I’ve turned a corner with this, and will continue to be there for my fears and insecurities now. Or maybe it’s just another baby step on the way to getting to that place. In either case, I’m going to trust that I don’t have to be anything other than the expression of my truest nature, as Suzuki-roshi so elegantly says in the above quote. I’m going to continue to chisel away at the internal half-truths and work through the unattended traumas, and allow no part of my psyche to be spared from my compassionate attention.

What is the structure of longing and belonging?

Some time ago I lived on Orcas Island off and on for about 4 or 5 years. I hadn’t been back to the island for 5 years, so for part of our vacation, my partner and I visited for a couple of days. Looking at the new visitors and tourists gazing with longing at the perceived life of the island put me in touch with what I had longed for the first time I came there–the ideals and projections I had about the place, and also, how those projections were dismantled, one by one.

While there, memories flooded back to me with unexpected poignancy. I was caught by both the sameness of things, and by how many things had changed. Some of the same old characters still sat at the same coffee shops, even as elsewhere entire buildings had been leveled and replaced by new structures. I learned that a few people I’d known and cared about had died–one from colon cancer, another from a rare blood disease, another from a tragic accident, another from a heart attack. Others appeared changeless, and welcomed me as if I’d only been gone a little while.

I could see in the faces of new people the shiny-ness of the island. The magic of the place. For them, no one had suffered or died there, and no relationship had come to an end there. None of their dreams had fizzled there, or had become blisteringly difficult and survival oriented. They hadn’t made the sacrifices necessary to live such a life. They didn’t know the stories of wealthy entitlement hurting the lives of others on the island–of swimming pools draining the neighbor’s wells, or of old growth trees being blown up and turned into vacuous lawn…or of the 5000 square foot homes that sit empty most of the year when many of the needed workers on the island barely afford rent or find places to live–some of them living in tents in the summer. They saw only warmth and community and beauty. They were unaware of the earned nature of that community–of the internal (and sometimes dark) politics beneath the surface. They were just like I was when I first set my eyes on the place. It was all magic–some sort of panacea–a place where I would find community and my longings would be answered. On this last visit, I felt myself longing not so much for the island, but for that innocence, for that lost sense of hope.

And that’s precisely what my longing was–not in reality for the life that is lived on that island, among all that striking beauty. My longing was for the innocent hope I felt when I first came to the island. I believed in it–in what it held, in the magic and community. I knew the place was going to be my home. I felt it in my bones. I was never going to leave–I was committed.

Except that I didn’t really know what I was committing to, and I didn’t know myself very well. I wasn’t cut out for retail service jobs, or care-giving for the elderly, and god knows I was a disaster as a prep cook. (I never heard the end of it from one of the cooks when I forgot to the put the yeast in the bread dough, and the rolls would not rise the next day!) When I injured my back, I was unable to do the work I liked doing (being a kayak guide), and I had to give up other job possibilities that I may have liked.

The deflation of my dream of Orcas took many years, but slowly I came to the realization that it was not going to work for me to be there, and I left, got a degree, and am now published, successfully self-employed, and in a great relationship. Yet, with all of these things in place, my return to the island again pricked at what is still missing in my life: Community and a sense of place. Seeing old friends and being surrounded by a place I loved so much filled me with a mix of feeling. I felt sad. I missed the innocence and hope, and I felt the familiar tug of the island siren song trying to lure me back. I remembered Christmas at the Artworks, singing carols with friends at the old Victorian chapel, lunching at The Kitchen, long trips to the grocery store with all of the inevitable conversations up and down the aisles, and driving into town with my good friend for chocolate treats. It was more of a home to me than any other place I’d ever lived, and I still felt that while there this last time.

The loss of hope is something necessary. I know it is. My nostalgia for Orcas is now checked by reality and knowledge, and I know that I’ve made a trade-off that is working for now. I wish I could have my career and relationship and also live in a place that feels like real community and home. But honestly, I know that my ability to be somewhere like Orcas depends on my ability to be right where I am now, and be happy here. Hope is for something other than what is in front of me. It has a drug-like quality to it. It takes me away from what it means to live here, to work here, and to make and find community here. I know that community exists here, and that this place I now live has its own beauty. If I hold onto a past ideal, I am thwarted in my life, stuck in longing. Everything will always be somewhere else. So there really is no hope of something better. This is it–and what I have to work with is what is here now, just as it was when I lived on Orcas. It doesn’t really matter. I could go back there today, and I’d have the same set of problems. Moving to an ideal location does not solve anything, avoid anything, or fix anything. What there is to solve and fix is right here with me, no matter how much I may try to avoid it. And that’s where the sense of commitment that will lead to community and a sense of belonging will ultimately come from–not from some geographical cure, or ideal place.