Statement on the Events of 11/5/24

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I wrote this for our weekly craft salon, and wanted to share it here as well.

Statement on the Events of 11/5/24

I know we’ve seen the news by now, and that the results are not what we wanted. I wanted to say a few words and provide, if I can, some measure of solace for the times that are ahead of us.
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.

Resources:

Mindfulness:
Yoga Nidra:
Molly Birkholm has a number of resources. There are quite a few, but the ones I like are a series she did during the pandemic:
Community:
Saturday studio time: Saturdays, noon to 2 Pacific on Zoom (leave me a comment to discuss if you’re not already on the list)

Indivisible: https://indivisible.org/

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)

 

Creativity:
The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron
Seattle Writers Group on Discord (leave a comment and we can discuss privately if you would like to join; open joins are paused for the moment for the safety of the community)
Monday Write-ins with Writer Zen Garden (leave a comment and we can discuss privately)
I will have more info and thoughts in the coming days, but like you, I’m reeling from the news. Be gentle with each other. And above all, remember you are loved.

Z Is For… ZED!

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We made it.

The 2023 A to Z Blog Challenge is in the bag. We have two straggler posts, and may get them up; if not, I’m STILL declaring this a win BECAUSE…

  1. One of us got laid off.
  2. One of us had a family memorial to attend.
  3. One of us went to Europe for three weeks.
  4. One of us is dealing with the disposition of the estate of a parent.
  5. The world is crazy right now, and everyone is dealing with Entirely Too Much (TM).

What did we learn this month?

  1. Don’t let the best be the enemy of the good. (I heard this from Colonel Lawrence R. Stack, and he said it’s “an old army saying.”)
  2. Some writing is better than no writing.
  3. Sometimes rushing gives you an edge. The trick is knowing how much to rush and on what things. Example: I didn’t get this post in on time yesterday, but I have 15 minutes right now and voila. A post.
  4. Sometimes stress makes you have to stop. Like, everything.
  5. Corollary: when you need to nap, do it.
  6. The body keeps the score. (This is from a book by that title, which discusses the impact of trauma on the human body.) But it’s true. If we don’t take measures to mitigate stress’s harmful effects, it will, perforce, HARM us.
  7. Meditation makes you faster.
  8. Slow down to speed up.
  9. Focus on one thing at a time.
  10. Multi-tasking is a myth. (No, really. Look it up. Emerging brain science insights prove it.)

And so, my friends, my message to you is this:

Thank you for visiting. You are why we do this.

Well, that, and chocolate. Will write for chocolate. And friends. And words.

Oh, hell. I write because it love it.

And you, Dear Reader. Much love to you. May you find the peace you need, the accomplishments you long for, and the goals you’ve set. Believe in yourself and take regular rest breaks.

And above all,

Write on.

Y Is For… Yearning!

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Contributed by JaeSage

I want to tell you about a dream I had the other night.  I want to ask you your opinion on what the heck it was trying to t tell me.  I have been yearning, yearning for change of some kind but it has been a bit of the “lady or the tiger” kind of yearning.

A dream… it begins with optimistic anticipation… a heavy backpack… going somewhere… two faceless companions accompany me. There seem to be other people in the near distance, shadowy figures, some benign and some menacingly dangerous. I can feel it.

There are three ways forward presented to the dreamer (me)… hard, icy cold, silvery metal elevator doors to a deep mysterious unknown:

Next there are dark, dank steep and slippery stairs back down to the level surface of vague familiarity.

And finally the third, a brightly sunlit, jutting promontory over a lush tropical ocean scene.

Which one to take? Which one to avoid?

First, choosing the lure of the clearly visible, yet unattainably far, turquoise ocean bay. Vivid memory of moving toward the promontory point. The sudden shock and terror of a relentlessly heavy, sharp wind and of being nearly swept over into the sea a thousand feet below. Ignored by the shadow others who accompanied me to this point of indecision.

Desperately begging the companions to help, trying to get them to realize the danger in their laissez-faire demeanor. Urgency! Save me! The backpack, grab it. It’s dragging me over. Help me stop. Help me make a better (safer?) choice. …… and then….. and then silence.       Sudden relief when I was no longer in danger of an imminent terrifying plummet into open space, anticipating a body rending landing on flesh-ripping bone-crushing rocks.

Where did the sudden quiet stillness come from? It’s a dreamscape … some foggy some sharp visions creep into my memory …

Wondering… Did someone grab my backpack thus relieving me of the burden that was also a sail being caught by the force of the seaward wind?

And then…another thought drifts into my mind… Did I perhaps, by myself, crawl along the surface toward a heretofore unseen door leading to one of the other difficult, scary, less visibly desirable, but perhaps, more serviceable choices forward? What was the dream trying to tell me?

What scene was just outside my vision? Could there also have been a smooth mostly level landscape, green and pleasant, albeit a bit of a misty fog hanging over it, obscuring the path? Has the optimistic anticipation of the dream’s beginning returned? Was that a memory of an actual element of the dream or is my waking mind embellishing the story of the dream with a fourth choice?

Again, what was the dream telling me? What was I, the figure in the dream yearning to do, to be, to choose?

Okay, looking back on that post, it was a bit David Lynch.

Now I am having an afterthought: Y is for Jungian*?

*Pronounced yoong- e- uhn, Carl Jung was a Swiss personality scientist whose research often involved dreamscapes.

Anyway, thanks for letting me in. Suggestions of what that all meant are welcome. Hope your dreams are lovely or at least interesting even if you can’t figure them out.

By JaeSage
Iowa Druid and Dream Maker
2023

X Is For… Xennials!

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Contributed by Laura Rios.

I love Xennials. In case you’re not familiar with the term, Xennials describes the “micro-generation” of people whose birth years are between the late 1970s and the early 1980’s.  Essentially, this group of people are on the cusp of Gen X and Gen Y. They’re the younger Gen X’ers but they are definitely not millennials.

What makes a Xennial so special? Xennials are the first people to grow up with computers and have access to the internet, giving them a major edge with technology. They experienced the rise of the internet as they grew up; they weren’t simply born into the current world of online shopping, social media, and VPNs. Xennials were the last group of young people to get through high school without Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Most of them didn’t have a cell phone until they became adults.

In addition, Xennials entered the workforce while it was still dominated by hard-working baby boomers. While these “youngsters” had a clear advantage with technology, their supervisors and mentors modeled a strong work ethic, common sense, and a lot of on-the-job know-how. Xennials sucked all this up like sponges. They are often savvy, confident, and determined risk takers.

These qualities can make Xennials a force to be reckoned with, for better or for worse. They are uniquely positioned to be movers and shakers. They’re often in the limelight and can become brilliantly popular or dangerously notorious. More than 20% of the current US congress fall into this microgeneration. Late basketball superstar Kobe Bryant was a Xennial. Dictator Kim Jong-un is also a Xennial. Other well-known Gen X/Gen Y hybrids include: songwriter/singer/musician John Legend, the late rapper Tupac Shakur, Kim Kardashian, Tony Romo, Paris Hilton, Macaulay Culkin, both Serena and Venus Williams, pop star Pink, Tiffany Haddish, novelist Colleen Hoover, and Sarah London, CEO of the Fortune 500 healthcare giant Centene Corporation. Xennials, all.

As an aging “boomer”, I find Xennials fascinating. There’s a certain understanding between us, a special symbiotic relationship, between their generation and mine. I’d keep my eyes on Xennials, if I were you.

W Is For… Win!

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Contributed by Tina Holland.

Are you celebrating your wins?  If not, you need to.  In times of renewal, especially when we are forming positive habits we need to celebrate winning.

It doesn’t have to be something elaborate, it just needs to be something that motivates you.

Some wins I have in a week:

Testing my Blood Sugar Daily, I’m a Type Two diabetic so it’s important that I know where to sit at the beginning of each day.   Writing down the number is sort of its own reward along with the checkmark.

Writing 1K a week.  I get a sticker if I reach this.

These are the two main goals that I track and reward myself for.   I’ve started thinking about celebrating the bigger things these goals get me:  A healthier handle on my Blood Sugar and Finishing a project.

Usually, when I complete a book, I celebrate with a dinner out with my husband or something similar.  Not sure what I’ll do when I finally get my health in order.  Maybe a trip, but I guarantee I will post both events (and have) on my social media platforms.   There’s something great about announcing an achievement and having your virtual friends, family, and fans rally around you.

So how will you celebrate your next WIN?

V Is For… Values

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It’s been a challenging week for me, and for a lot of people with whom I talk. As I was thinking up what to write for today, I decided to look up Creative Commons images for “funny values.”

This came up.

Talk about distracting. “Yum, milkshake!” “Wait, is that an avocado?” “Who ARE those people?”

As my friend Alexandra put it, don’t beat yourself up for not doing something. We’re doing the A to Z Challenge to have fun and create things for our followers. And she’s right.

As I continued my research for funny pictures about “values,” (as in, personal values, core values, etc.), I saw this one.

What struck me is that each of the people in this picture seem at home in their body. Even the man glaring at the cooking pot is focused on what he’s doing, which is helping to cook (I hope, and that it’s not that he’s the “boss” and about to berate the man stirring the pot).

This speaks to me because I am learning to be in my body and respect my body’s need for fuel (i.e. food but also sleep and exercise). But let’s keep researching.

 

Um…

Well okay then.

What have we learned?

  1. Internet searches aren’t always linear.
  2. It’s okay to mess up on this journey we’re on. Progress is more important than perfection.
  3. Some lessons we keep returning to.
  4. Food is more fun with friends.
  5. Keep your taser and your personal appliances in separate drawers.
  6. You might need to re-evaluate your life choices if you feel it necessary to keep a taser in your bedroom.
  7. Tasers come in pink?
  8. Avocados apparently go in milkshakes.
  9. I have plenty of time.
  10. Don’t rush. Sometimes, the journey IS the destination.

 

Stay curious, my friends.

Cheers.

U Is For… Unbelievable!

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Mary Kay Ash, the founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, used to say, when someone asks you how you are, you look ’em in the eye and you say, “Great!”

The idea being, that when you had that energy, it attracts people to you. It presents the image that you are cheerful, motivated, and have things going on.

I was at a training with a Mary Kay Director whom I’m embarrassed to say I’ve forgotten her name. But what she said stuck with me.

“Sometimes, we cannot honestly say, ‘great,’ because of things going on in our lives. So when that happens, I want you to look them in the eye, and say, ‘Unbelievable!'”

I thought, well, that’s kind of silly.

About a week later, I was at the office and I was having, well, an “unbelievable” day. You know the kind, where nothing goes right, everyone is cranky, and your boss is being a so-and-so. (Boss, if you’re reading this, I’m not talking about you.) And it happened. A client asked me, “How are you?”

I took a beat and said, “Unbelievable!” and looked ’em right in the eye.

Pause.

We both burst out laughing at the same moment.

And you know what? I felt better. They felt better. And damned if it didn’t make my DAY better.

Huh.

Unbelievable!

T Is For… Try!

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I know, I know. Yoda (not Grogu, pictured above), said “Do, or do not. There is no try.”

With all respect to the Jedi Master, I call bullshit.

Sometimes, all we can DO is TRY.

Sometimes, trying is as brave as doing.

And sometimes, trying IS doing.

If there’s a thing you want to do, and your mind is stuck and your emotions are high, and your inner monologue is like Cruella D’Ville only meaner, I suggest that instead of “doing,” we try.

TRY writing for 5 minutes.

TRY sketching something.

TRY getting out of the chair and walking around the house.

TRY giving it a shot.

TRY calling back the prospect.

TRY.

Our culture, and late-stage capitalism, are obsessed with the doing. “Just do it.” Yes, I know I’ve quoted that slogan before, and yes, I know that it works. Sometimes.

I’m not talking about sometimes.

I’m talking about those times when we don’t even have the sometimes in our brain, and we’ve forgotten the sometimes we’ve succeeded, we’ve forgotten how to do, we’ve forgotten who we are and that we have skills and experience.

I’m talking about the times when we feel small, and stuck, and blank, but yearn with desire to feel those times when we have been motivated, and competent, and productive.

It’s in the interstices of those times that I propose “try” belongs.

Sometimes, try can get you from that in between place into the doing place.

Still don’t believe me?

This blog series, right here, the A to Z for 2023 on Writer Zen Garden, is exactly that: we tried it, and we did it.

Try.

Please.

Just try.

S Is For… Surprises!

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Contributed by Laura E. Rios.

As surely as winter follows fall, spring arrives at the end of winter. This repeating cycle comes every year. Most of us happily anticipate the changes that spring brings along, like nature’s beauty, longer days, and warmer weather. There are undesirable situations that we know are coming too, such as the annual tornado season, the IRS income tax deadline, and so on.

Obviously, something as inevitable as spring can also bring surprises. Some surprises are pleasant ones. One year we had a volunteer giant sunflower sprout in the back yard. An errant sunflower seed from the bird feeder brought us the most amazing six-foot-tall beauty, totally free! It was so fun to watch it grow. I felt like Mother Nature had presented me with a wonderful and unexpected gift.

Another spring, I bought a new hanging plant and brought it home and hung it on the front porch. Then, a pair of mourning doves surprised me by building their nest in it. So, I sacrificed the impatiens plant and instead, I spent the spring watching a pair of doves raise their family. That was an unpleasant surprise that ended up being a happy one.

This spring we’ve been surprised by hailstorms, increasing gas prices, and a dental emergency, and it’s only April. But, if not for those things, it would most certainly be something else, because as Gilda Radners’s Roseanne Rosannadanna used to say, “It’s always something”.

Daily life really does fling something new at us all the time, like bird droppings on your freshly cleaned windshield. Charles R. Swindoll said “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you deal with it.” He would have been good friends with Roseanne Rosannadanna. They shared a similar attitude about dealing with surprises.

Ultimately, it’s healthiest to embrace the surprises that come our way, whether they are pleasant or unpleasant. We might as well expect good things as well as bad, since they’re both part of life. They can come any time of the year, so we can always be on the lookout for them. Keeping a positive mental attitude and remaining flexible are good strategies for dealing with whatever this spring throws at you. Surprise!

 

The Image accompanying this item is royalty-free from Pixabay.

R is for… Romantic Comedies!

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Contributed by Laura F.

Who doesn’t love a good romantic comedy?  Nobody with whom I would care to associate, certainly.  :>).  Hating good romantic comedies, from my perspective, would be like hating kittens or boy bands: the sign of a tragically soured outlook on life.

Of course, the key word is “good.”  Any team of idiots with multi-million dollar funding by a major studio can toss a film together, call it a romantic comedy, and unleash it on an unsuspecting public.  I have learned from bitter experience that although so-called romantic comedies abound, very few of them are either romantic or comic.

The reason for this sorry state of things, I believe, is the current terror of being connected with anything that anyone anywhere might label “s-e-n-t-i-m-e-n-t-a-l,” a word so feared and despised nowadays that I feel compelled to spell it rather than say it out loud.  Unfortunately, separating romantic love (supposedly the basis of romantic comedies) from anything that might strike anyone as “s-e-n-t-i-m-e-n-t-a-l” puts filmmakers in a bit of a quandary.  We all know that the couple who are destined to be together have to wait until the end of the film to actually get together.  If they were joined at the hip from the beginning, where would be the suspense?

With typical Hollywood genius, filmmakers are prone to solve this problem by having the destined couple HATE each other right up until that kiss (or equivalent) at the end.  Do you think I exaggerate?  I invite you to consider Ticket to Paradise, a movie I forced my poor family to watch last Christmas.  It had George Clooney!  It had Julia Roberts!  They played a divorced couple who unite in order to prevent what they believe will be a disastrous marriage for their daughter.  All this and the background of a tropical – well, paradise!  What could go wrong?

What could, and did, go wrong is that the script was far too convincing in showing the Clooney and Roberts characters as genuinely estranged from each other, genuinely angry at, and contemptuous of, each other.  Their sniping and sarcasm and quarrels were truly nasty.  Sorry, Hollywood, after witnessing scene after scene of two people who show every sign of deeply disliking each other, even the most rosily optimistic audience member will not believe in the completely last-minute freeze frame that is supposed to signal their reconciliation.

So much for the romance.  So, also, for the comedy.  Again, accept my apologies, Hollywood, but the current popularity of so-called “insult comedy” does not mean that every insult is automatically comic, let alone clever, let alone witty.  It is possible for a put-down to be funny, but it is a huge mistake to assume that every put-down is funny just because it is a put-down.

Does this mean that the art of the romantic comedy is completely dead?  No.  One charming example of the genre is Love Hard, a film whose title comes from the fact that the heroine’s favorite Christmas movie is Die Hard while the hero’s favorite Christmas movie is Love, Actually.  I won’t pretend that the film is perfect; its plot relies heavily on the heroine’s obtuseness in pursuing an outdoorsy hunk instead of recognizing what the audience sees instantly: that she and the bespectacled hero are made for each other.  If you watch this movie (and I hope you will), you will roll your eyes over her slowness.  The point remains, however, that the two of them are made for each other; their respect and affection for each other shine through their every scene together.  As a result, when the two finally come together, I felt like cheering.

Romantic?  Comic?  Yes, Love Hard proves a film can be both those things.  So, Hollywood, can we have more true romantic comedies, please?