Stargazing and other apathy antidotes: How toddler me is teaching me about delight, curiosity, and mental health

NOTE: This was originally posted on my Substack and I will only occasionally repeat those pieces over here. PLEASE be reminded that my Substack is free and you can access it via your browser, no need to download an app. If you have a moment and could go over there and engage with some of my material, I would appreciate it.

I have this memory of myself around the age of three and a half, and I think residing inside this memory is the blueprint for my happiness. I might even assert that it’s the blueprint for any human’s happiness.

I am outside, by myself, standing under the night sky. (It was the early 1970s… kids were free range… perhaps to the extreme but it was what it was.) The full moon is sitting high over a field across the street. It sits nestled in a blanket of stars. And I am just, well, star struck. I am in awe. I can feel this feeling in my body to this day.

I am still that little girl every single time I see the moon. Maybe you feel the same. It’s like the moon is new to us every night. (Side note: If you do feel the same, you might be shocked to find out that not everyone feels like this. There are people who barely notice the moon. I know! It’s really quite terrible.)

Fast forward and I am 11 years old and I’ve saved up all of my birthday money and allowances to buy my very own telescope. Seeing the moon’s surface, I am speechless.

Fast forward again and I am in my 30s and I own the house outside of which I sit on a stoop in snow pants in the middle of winter so I can gaze up at the moon and Orion (my fave).

Now I live in a city with too much light pollution and I am sad. These things are not unrelated.

We are going to be changing our circumstances soon, but it has taken me about six years of living here to understand all of the ways I have cut myself off from my toddler self and her connection to the moon and the natural world and what that cutting off has meant for my mental health.

My mental health (and probably yours) is complicated, of course, by our current political situation, but really… I know I would be handling even that much better if this toddler self were being taken care of.

She lives off of awe and fascination and curiosity and intense noticing.

And that… that right there is the blueprint.

The disease of apathy

I’ve written about the part that despair was playing in my depression, and I am relieved that I am no longer that stuck, but I am still somewhat stuck. Like before I was in quicksand (and hello!? Where is all the quicksand Gen X was warned about!?), and now I am in some regular old mud… maybe to just below the knees.

That mud is my apathy.

I am doing things but I’m not feeling great about those things.

I am doing things but I’m doing the bare minimum.

I am doing things but I’m no longer dreaming.

And that right there is awful. My dreaming muscles used to be so strong, and they were strong enough that they led to actions and to the building of those dreams.

I used to believe in the beauty of life and in my capacity to create beautiful things.

But the last decade has been so hard. There is the political reality we’ve all been living within, but on a micro/personal level, I’ve gone into full menopause (anyone else?); I’ve lost my soul cat at the age of 9 (far too young and it was sudden and traumatic); I went through two years of living with, treating, and healing two frozen shoulders (yep, one after the other) so my overall movement got smaller and smaller, and there was more, but you get the idea.

The depression cycle was bad.

There are remnants and bad habits left behind.

The biggest remnant and bad habit is the apathy.

How I noticed it

I hadn’t really… noticed it, that is. It had/has become such a regular feeling and state in my life.

I have started to wonder, is this it? Is this how life gets as we age?

I recoil from those questions. I refuse those questions even as I find myself constructing them.

None of my old tricks were helping. None of the old routines were kicking in. Nothing I was doing was working, until I started to pay attention to someone whom I’ve known of since I was writing my Blisschick blog about 20 years ago ((what!??!)): Andrea Schroeder of Creative Dream Incubator.

As a teacher, I often find myself lacking mentors because I’m so focused on self directed learning and the creation of my classes and methods for my students.

But as they say, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

I finally signed up for one of her smaller courses, Project Miracle. I ran through the material faster than the 30 days it’s intended for but I couldn’t help it. I could feel the energy building and I was… what is that feeling???… excited!

The miracle I was working on was simply wanting more positive energy in all its forms — physical, emotional, and spiritual. That’s how deep my apathy had become — that positive energy would feel like a miracle.

How the energy showed up

It’s always in some unexpected way, right? We ask for one thing but get something that seems to be not it and then it turns out to be exactly what we needed.

For quite a while now, I’ve been trying to get movement in first thing in the morning. I got to the point where I gave up because nothing I tried was sticking. I just couldn’t. It started to feel like I was bullying myself. The resistance was that bad. Staying in bed later than I wanted to, cuddling with Begonia cat, happened every day no matter the systems I set up.

Then a little over a week ago, Andrea asked this question in one of the Project Miracle units: what are you willing to change to get what you want?

I kept reading/hearing it as: what are you willing to give up?

Finally, from deep inside me, I got a very clear and loud answer: APATHY.

I called myself out.

I don’t know what was different about this time… not exactly. I know that I had done a lot of introspective work with Project Miracle but the miracle of it all was the way it just suddenly! Poof! Change!

I got up easily the first Monday after that and walked almost four miles right off the bat.

Crazily, I immediately could feel how cemented in the change was.

The results of this “small” thing keep accumulating: my brain is clearer; I’m giggling more; I want to move more (which is more normal for me); life feels… good.

More anti-apathy work to be done

But I also know this is just the beginning and I’m working another course with Andrea to keep my mind focused in the right direction.

And I’m looking for other anti-apathy tools. So let’s start a list, shall we? I would love for you to add to it, but here’s the beginning:

• Notice a time in your life when you were young and you were so full of yourself, meaning you were who you were born to be. Notice what she loved. Notice what sparked her joy. Is there a blueprint in all of that for you?

• Start doing the things little you loved to do, no matter how ridiculous you may feel. Like me getting roller skates a few years back. I sucked but I did it anyway. (Then the frozen shoulders happened.)

• Add in little things like checking the moon every night. Put reminders on your phone if you need them. It can be hard to remember on our own when we’ve not been doing these things.

• Make lists of things you love. Do this every day. For example, I’ve restarted the practice of a joy/sanity list on my socials every morning. I used to do bliss lists long ago and people would comment how much they meant to them. This has started to happen again. (Ripples!)

• Go outside more.

• Go look at art wherever and whenever you can.

• Listen to more music. Listen to favorites from times in your life when you felt good but also find new things. (Each of those approaches does amazing and different things for your brain.)

• Ride a bike. Really. Find a hill and go down as fast as you can. (Or find another equivalent of this type of activity.)

• Sit by water as much as you can. (There’s too much research on the efficacy of this to ignore it.)

• Look around at the people in your life and do not be afraid to notice who is bringing nothing but negativity to your spaces. Clean house. (I don’t mean to sound cruel there but life is short and we know it’s important who we allow in to our inner circles.)

• Be cautious of what you’re watching and reading. Feed your brain and heart with things that grow the states of being you want to experience. I’ve written about Japanese healing fiction and now I’m into my third novel of that nature and I am more in love than I thought I would be.

• Pick something small to focus on learning. I was just reminded the other day of a summer that I spent in my backyard in Erie learning all the different sparrows. There are so many and there are often very small differences. But this seemingly tedious differentiation task made me feel connected at a new level.

For now, that’s enough from me. Like I said, I’d love to hear from you. And I’m sure I’ll be writing more about this soon.

Back at it: daily dance and the problem of boredom

Though I had a week with an exhausting head cold that interrupted my new routine, I have been getting back to daily dance. I have been managing a half hour. And for working by myself, this is a good start amount.

In the recent past when I’ve tried to do this, I immediately feel a deep boredom, so I thought back to my practices years ago and came up with a couple of…

Key “rules”

• I can’t force myself into using music that I think I “should.” Yes, even I have this issue. I go into practice thinking I “need” to work on serious pieces. Nope. Whatever works is the best thing.

• So I’ve been using a lot of pop music for now. Like this list and also this list that triggers joy molecules from my tween years at the skating rink.

• And the most important rule of all: the second I feel bored with the music and/or my movement, I change the song. Sometimes that means fast-forwarding through a few songs at a time, waiting for my body to respond.

• Finally, I always start with seated tummy circles, like I start just about every single class I teach. Or if I’m feeling extra dull or sad, I start with Mud Body and then go into seated tummy circles. I ritualize the start of my own practice time just like I do classes and this tells my body, here we go, and it grounds me… helps me to let go of work or overthinking.

Other rules to keep in mind about this sort of practice:

• Don’t change your clothes if that’s getting in the way. Dance in whatever you’re wearing. Or maybe only change your pants. (I do that one a LOT.)

• Don’t fret about space. You can dance in a closet.

• Set time goals for yourself but don’t force it. But also don’t just give up. Find that delicate balance between the two.

• Maybe find a friend (like me!) who could help you with accountability.

• If you hear a song while you’re driving or doing something else that gets an immediate response from your body, make sure to put that on a list.

Let me know if you have any issues with getting into a daily practice or if there are any questions I can help you with.

Movement play inspiration for your new year

I would like to say happy new year but I’m writing this on January 6th and I’m just not feeling it. I’m assuming most (if not all) of you reading this are on the same page.

I also just taught at the residential recovery center and spent that time talking to someone about their fears about what’s coming. Wherever I go, people are anxious and worried. January feels like we’re collectively holding our breath until the 20th and the few days after. But then I think we’ve all been doing that to some degree since the night of the election.

Here’s hoping that the guardrails hold…

Regardless we need to keep moving forward, and focusing our energy on the things we can actually control becomes more important than ever.

Taking care of ourselves and filling ourselves with joyful energy is crucial if we are ever to build the kind of world that I know we all want — one of inclusivity, compassion, and real love… the kind of love that values every being as worthy.

With that in mind, I come to my main new year’s intention: to get back my sense of passion and playfulness with my own dance/movement practices, rather than only feeling that way when I’m teaching.

I’m starting slowly with about ten minutes at noon every day. I got a fun disco light just for this. I turn that on and put on a list of 80s dance music. I don’t “try” to “do” or experiment or create. Just dance. That’s it. Let it flow.

Next week, I’ll be building more aspects of my practice.

And in preparation for all of this, I’ve created a playlist of inspiration on YouTube that you also can access by hitting the upper right corner where it says 1/16 on the video below or click here. There’s only one of my own videos on this list and then other things that you can skip around in for ideas.

I’ll add to this list whenever I come across anything that fits that bill.

Let me know if you have any videos you think belong on it.

A bit of radiance

Today I started teaching a fresh online session of morning quickie kundalini, and as I was preparing, it hit me that I wanted to share a tiny reading at the beginning of class.

Then I realized… whoa, I haven’t even wanted to pick a reading for so long, much less read it aloud in class, thanks to the darkness of utter disbelief in anything but the material world that has been plaguing me for the last few years. (I wrote about my sudden release from depression related atheism in the previous post.)

This felt like a big deal… yet another layer of change or another layer of becoming myself again.

And when I was explaining this at the beginning of class, the glee with which long term students reacted to my little announcement confirmed my feeling that we’d all been missing this.

If you’ve been in classes with me, you know I select these randomly by letting the book fall open or having someone yell out a page number.

So here’s the one I read this morning. It’s from this book, which is one of my favorites ever.

Radiance Sutra #61

Adorable one,

Sit or lie down, completely immobile,
Beholding the cloudless sky —
Or if there are clouds, the sky beyond.

As vastness envelops you,
The body vanishes,
Thoughts forget to come.
In this moment,
You are the nature of the great sky.

JoyList: Things that make me go OH!

I haven’t done this in a while so here are some things that are making me happy or feeding into my curiosity or making me go OH! in a big way. I hope some of them do the same for you.

This tai chi guy is one of my fave movers right now and his shorts on YouTube (and TikTok) are just the right bit of info to give me something to play with or think about with my movement.

We often think of “exercise” (not the movement play you and I do together) as activating of the fight or flight response on the brain level (and it is), but now research is showing the vagus nerve can be active too. I’m thinking that what you and I often do together is activating all kinds of safety in the body so I find this research interesting.

This podcast is delightful on many levels. The Movement Movement is hosted by a guy who talks in a way that totally reminds me of Jeff Goldblum. Same sorts of rhythms and phrasings. HY.STERICAL. BUT he also has a lot of great guests and he’s pushing the ideas around movement in ways that I appreciate and you will too. This particular episode has a section about healing touch that is compelling on an neuroscience level. They don’t call it healing touch but that’s what you, my woo sisters, would know it as. ((smile)) Here it is on Spotify and here it is on YouTube.

Speaking of Tai Chi, here’s one of my favorite choreographers whose work is grounded in Tai Chai, working with one of my favorite companies. When you’re watching, think about the body’s weight and gravity. It’s something we can all play with more.

I’m really digging this dancer who is currently in residency at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in NYC.

Pilates is notoriously NOT body inclusive. (And yes, there are exceptions…I’m about to talk to one…) THIS instructor on Instagram is working to change that (and here’s another with whom I’ve actually taken classes here in Columbus).

If you love earrings and art and artful earrings, please go and check out and support my friend Brandy Morris. She’s an amazing human doing beautiful work.

What has been bringing you joy? I’d love to hear! Please send me clips, links, whatever as you come across them. I love collecting all these shiny bits.

Joy and Grief Live Side by Side in Memory

We had a beautiful wedding to attend this past Saturday in Erie, and I also made sure that our schedule allowed for a couple of hours at the beach, rather than the five minutes that that important part of myself usually gets allotted.

Craig went running with his brother, and so I had about 45 minutes of that time just for me, my iced latte, chocolate croissant, and a bit of journaling and reading.

I started to read a Virginia Woolf I’ve somehow not read (Between the Acts), and the morning was perfection. There’s something about me and Woolf and water. When I first moved to Chicago for grad school at the age of 23, I sat on the edge of that lake and read Mrs. Dalloway and that memory will forever beckon me.

That memory will forever beckon me… That sentence is filled with nostalgia and sentimentality and joy and grief, isn’t it?

When we left Erie, I, as usual, felt a mixture of sadness and anger. I love that lake and am linked to it forever. And yet that town, that small city, does not seem to be able to recover itself from its identity of “GE town,” and I fear that that inability to move on will be its death. Every time we go home, it seems a little more critical in terms of its health.

Remember I lived in the actual CITY — not out in some suburb — for well over 20 years. I lived in a realm of hope that turned into delusion that turned into bitterness, until I realized that I was becoming some sort of toxic version of myself and needed to move on… needed to MOVE, period. I could no longer tolerate the constant talk of “any day now” for which there was never any real evidence. (Entrenched politicians are greatly to blame for what’s happening in Erie but that’s another blog post and not my point here.)

I was born on the edge of the bay in the old Hamot Hospital.

We soon moved away and then moved back. My entire childhood would be a series of moving away and returning, over and over, as my father pursued higher and higher education.

Every time we moved away, we knew it was temporary. We would lament not being in Erie. We would look forward to the year or month or day that we got to move back.

In every school I went to in all the different places we lived, I would be that little girl, red in the face, defending her beloved home against the taunts of “dreary Erie, the mistake on the lake.”

The ache for a return to Erie was born and bred into me.

I myself have tried to move away a few times, and each time, like some migrating bird, I end up back there, unable to resist the pull… the very magnetism of that lake, my true north.

But this time is different.

We are in Columbus, and though I love it here and I love our house, this too might not be permanent. I don’t think I can live the rest of my life without big water, but I will not return to Erie.

We will find a place to put roots that has big water but that does not break my heart with its stilted ways and cliquey groups of humans that seem to be stuck in high school concepts of relationship. (I think that’s an inevitable sort of outcome in a very small city where people can’t let go of the ideas that they have of others from when they were teenagers.)

Where we are right now is growing, and that matters… An environment of growth and change that is future oriented allows for humans to grow and change and evolve into new and exciting versions of themselves.

But with all of the good of this place, it is not the place to which I am tethered. The sense of tugging can be very subtle most days and other days it’s quite painful. Visiting Erie brings all of this up for me every single time, and for many days after, the pain of the loss returns full force.

Home is where the heart is and yet sometimes home is where there is too much pain so we must do our best and find new, fertile ground (and water) that allows our hearts to heal and expand.

Re/Joy in this shitty time

Name one era when you think things were better, and I’ll be 100% correct that it wasn’t, no matter what time you name. History repeats itself, for sure. If one group isn’t marginalized, a whole host of others are.

When I was in college in the late 80’s/early 90s, things did feel like they were somehow shifting. Yet even that was an illusion: the economy was tanking, poverty was rising, homelessness was worse than ever (thanks, Reagan), incarcerations were on the rise and wouldn’t stop (and won’t stop), the war on drugs was targeting the wrong thing and the wrong people (for the most part), people were banning music (remember that?), the excess of the few was the leap off of the cliff that would start the real climate spiral, and I could go on.

Today things feel worse because they’re so much more on the surface and in our face pretty much 24/7. We had a toxic idiot of a President that made all hate acceptable in a very public way. (Some would argue we needed to see that … that too many of us were still living in denial… I kinda agree.)

So all times have, technically, been shitty times. For someone. For groups of someones.

And yet humanity keeps trying to move forward. Honorable or stupid? Some days I go back and forth depending on how exhausted and angry I’m feeling.

Most days… most days, I feel like we’re to be admired for a seemingly bottomless well of hope and effort and optimism.

Most days, I understand that those of us with access to hope and effort and optimism have to hold on to those things, if not for ourselves then for those who just can’t anymore.

To do this requires a certain kind of mental, emotional, and spiritual musculature. It’s easy, in this world, to allow that to atrophy, and then when we need it, to act surprised by its weakness.

In other words, we have to use some of our effort muscle to keep our hope, effort, and optimism muscles in shape. The world needs them.

How do we do this? What is the “gym” of this sort of workout?

It’s the very world that we can find so utterly reprehensible.

But we need to take that world in our hands and turn it every so slightly so we’re looking at it from a different angle: we need to look at it in better lighting so that we can see the beauty and love there. There are days that no matter how much we adjust the angle or the lighting that the beauty and love we find feels just about… microscopic. But that doesn’t matter.

It’s in this noticing and then in the naming that we work out. This is our gym. These are the weights we lift over and over for strength. The treadmills we walk and run for stamina. The stretches we use to maintain mobility.

And these sorts of workouts for emotional, mental, and spiritual musculature need to be as consistent as any we do for our bodies. You know full well that you can’t run a marathon if you’ve been sitting on the couch for the entire year leading up to it. You’re not surprised that you can’t deadlift some crazy amount if you’ve never picked up anything heavier than a soup can.

But we act surprised by our own exhaustion over the work of the world when we’ve done very little to maintain our healthy connection to that same world. We wonder at our anger and our rage that is paralyzing when we’ve done nothing to feed our joy that is mobilizing.

Start small, just like you would with any exercise program. Small steps, small amounts, build slowly but be mindful and intentional and persistent to the point of stubborn.

Start today: go outside with a small notebook and just make lists of everything you see that you love. Do this for… five minutes. Then do it tomorrow and the day after and the day after…

JoyList: Stuff floating my boat

Are you heading to any music or festivals this summer? We started off this past weekend with our neighborhood ComFest (community arts and music festival). It’s been going on in our park for 51 years.

Obviously, the stilt walker was at our festival. She was one of two. I can’t imagine. Even this bit of height would turn my stomach, but they were so happy and smiley.

Other things floating my boat…

Did you hear about this wacky and amazing science-y discovery that is blowing all the scientists brains this week? The papers were released on the 28th and wow! If you like time and space stuff, check it out.

OH! I have a new video of a super simple and highly effective psoas release that also works, of course, on your diaphragm and your nervous system. Go here and look under “shorts.” It’ll be the first one with me looking way up at the camera. And if you get something out of it, make sure to like, comment, and/or subscribe. (Thank you!)

Speaking of YouTube:

Something new from one of my favorite dance companies.

My favorite creator who talks about her different brain and burnout and how she’s healing that.

Have you ever watched any of the videos by this Chinese creator? She lives in the mountains on her grandparents’ farm and does every freaking thing by hand and traditional methods. Watching her cook or build something is so freaking soothing to me. She also practices traditional arts like calligraphy… just whoa.

For my Butoh loving peeps, here’s a short video of Kauo Ohno (one of the founders) talking about technique and motivation.

For my book lovers, here are a few of my recent faves, but you can always just look at my goodreads.

For specific books:

I’m about 2/3s of the way through Lisa See’s most current book. ANYTHING SHE WRITES is worth your time.

I loved Louise Erdrich’s most recent. She just never misses the mark.

And someone told me to read this Rebecca Solnit quite a while ago. I love her work and am loving this too.

What’s floating YOUR boat?