Encouragement, love letters, and reminders to be compassionate — from my keyboard to me and you.
Each year, I take a photo on (or near) my birthday to capture both the moment and the passage of time. Some photos are better than others; some hold better memories than others.
Today, I add another photo to the collection, a memento from the second birthday I’ve celebrated in this pandemic. Today, I’m especially humbled and overwhelmed, in ways I can’t even express, by the love that surrounds me. I’m so grateful.
What a thing it is “to be alive / on this fresh morning / in the broken world.”
Three hundred and sixty-some days. A year of a pandemic, lived, survived, now behind us; onto the next.
I gained weight, lost weight, didn’t leave the house for days on end, watched approximately all of Netflix, created Calvin and Hobbes collage remixes for 100 days, walked miles and miles, read more than 20 books, ran a 5K, finished two art journals, ate and slept and went to the grocery store (and sometimes Target as a treat) and worked from home every single day.
I saw my family four whole times.
In the midst of all this, I’ve been thinking a lot about change. There’s some poetry in that, as we’re marking the anniversary of the pandemic, spring is arriving.
Change is always hard, even if it’s for the better; it requires us to be open to growth and prepared for discomfort. Choosing change, or being forced into it, requires commitment and vulnerability and hope, and faith that it will all work out. (As Anaïs Nin famously wrote, “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”)
In the depths of 2020, I read Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents (both here). Based in a future in the midst of a climate-change-driven apocalypse, the main character builds a religion rooted in and defined by change:
God is Change— Seed to tree, tree to forest; Rain to river, river to sea; Grubs to bees, bees to swarm. From one, many; from many, one; Forever uniting, growing, dissolving— forever Changing. The universe is God’s self-portrait.
In this moment, the world is showing us just how beautiful change can be.
Three hundred and sixty some days later, and the world is still spinning, and change is still constant, and hope still springs eternal.
Between a pandemic and relentless capitalist culture — and also this question of “What is your quarantine masterpiece?” that still lingers over my head a year into COVID — I am getting increasingly frustrated with the idea of being consistently productive in the face of such overwhelming circumstances.
In his newsletter last week, Austin Kleon shared this video by Ali Abdaal (titled, not subtly, “How Writing Online Made me a Millionaire”). Yes, Ali’s thoughts are interesting and helpful and inspiring…
… but this still emphasizes an end product that is the result of extreme focus, and at this point in time I find it laughably depressing. If you do everything I do, maybe you can find even find your life partner, Ali says in the video above. Okay.
During the pandemic, I have mastered the art of stacking dirty dishes high in the sink. My cats are still alive. Netflix has been nearly conquered. Most of the time, both my day pajamas and the night pajamas are clean.
Sometimes I paint. Sometimes (maybe once a month, if I’m feeling it) I journal.
And most of the time, I feel like I’m failing, wasting time, and that I need to be more productive in order to prove my worth.
So — to Austin and Ali and everyone else who is driven and consistent and has a huge amount of work to show for it: I am seriously impressed. And sure, I am jealous. And I’ll get there someday, but for now, I’m going to keep myself and my furry companions alive and get through as best I can.
The more uncertainty and fear and there is — like, say, in this apocalyptic year — the more I desperately try to hold on to control of anything within grasp. Perfectionism and control go hand in hand; perfectionism, really, is having ultimate control. But that attitude is crippling and focusing on perfectionism stifles everything from creativity to racial justice.
Being human is messy. We’re complicated beings filled with emotion and impulse. It’s how we have evolved, and it’s generally served us well. We are adaptive, creative, and innovative. We’re empathetic and have survived millennia by caring for and leaning on one another. The shiniest bits of this year have been these things.
But we’re also obsessed with “more” and “better”. At its extreme, your inner goblin may be chanting: You’re not special unless you are the best and the brightest and everyone knows it. You are not an artist — and shame on you for having pride in your work — unless you are the most perfect. If you’re not, don’t even try.
Brené Brown is a researcher, author, and decades-long advocate of challenging this inner voice and tearing down the impossible expectations we set for ourselves. She has a whole book about the gifts of imperfection. She says:
Perfectionism is a self destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect, and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame.
But what if we redefined “perfection” as actually leaning into the messiness and the emotion of existence? Maybe perfection is actually showing up as, and celebrating, the whole complicated human you are.
In a heavy, heavy year, art is what will help us process and work through all the worry, fear, frustration, and uncertainty. Art, one of the most ancient human practices, allows us to express all that we feel and experience where words fail. It’s served us for thousands upon thousands of years.
Art is a place to show up as your messy, human self.
You deserve the best, the very best, because you are one of the few people in this lousy world who are honest to themselves, and that is the only thing that really counts. – Frida Kahlo
We may have little control over this pandemic or politics or even our own lives right now, but we can create. We can acknowledge and embrace all that we’re thinking and feeling. We can name our selves and our experiences through the stroke of a brush or the movement of your body or a trembling note that encompasses your own humanity.
And that’s more than enough.
September marks six months of living with a pandemic — six months of face masks, hand sanitizer, uncertainty, heightened anxiety, restricted travel and social gatherings, and for many, six months of serious hardship, financial instability, and the pain of losing a loved one to this disease. September is also Suicide Prevention Awareness month.
I’m going to cut right to it, love: this shit is hard, and it’s ok if you’re struggling.
In fact, it would be a surprise to me if you weren’t struggling in some way.
The thing I need to keep reminding myself is that I can only see how I am responding to this crisis. Others’ coping strategies are much harder to spot, especially through a screen. You may feel that you’re the only one who’s unproductive, distracted, or disorganized, or that the ratio of chores completed to Netflix shows binged is way out of balance (ahem: me). But others truly are in the same boat. We just can’t see their struggle the same way we can see our own.
In the spirit of acknowledging and prioritizing mental health this month, I want to share some resources for professional support and then share a few things that, in addition to regular therapy appointments, help me to put one foot in front of the other on the hardest days.
Mental Health Support
Everyday Self Care
For a long time I thought that self care meant simply indulging when I felt down, without restraint; now I know that it means parenting myself with love and giving my body and my mind what they actually need in order to function. I matter, and I need to treat myself well. You do, too.
Listed below are a few small things that I rely on days when I am really struggling. Sometimes a shower is the only thing I accomplish on a given day; other times, it’s just the jump start I need to get a few other things done. None of these is a substitute for professional help, but I do know that each one is a small act of self love that makes me feel just a tiny bit better.
In sum: this shit is hard. It’s so, so hard. And you need, and you deserve, to take care of yourself as you’re dealing with something that is unprecedented in our lifetimes. Fill your cup. Please use these resources. You are worth it. You really are.
Together, we will get through this and someday things will be different.
Sending so much love.
