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…

December Focus: Slow Joy

Slow and joy are both favorite things around JoyBody Studio, as you all know. But as we have entered the holiday season, I notice the same old frenetic energy mindlessly taking over. And even when we try to resist, it can feel like we’re caught up in a tsunami of to do lists and shopping and cooking and baking and well… people-ing.

And we’re supposed to feel all fa-la-la-la-la about it but that just feels like yet another added pressure.

On top of that, if you’re into Christmas and advent, it’s supposed to be a deeply spiritual season of entering into your own fecundity and seeing what is there, waiting to be born into the world when the light returns. So hurry up so you can get to your meditation/prayers/mass/whatevers.

AND one more … on top of THAT, so many people are pushing year end workshops or certifications or specials on their products/classes, etc., and the idea that if we really hustle, we can make some freaking magic in our work or our small businesses before we get to breathe for a few days around the year change. At which point, you BETTER have some damn good ideas about your goals for NEXT year because it’s COMING IN HOT!

My god. That exhausted me just writing it.

So here’s another idea: SLOW JOY.

Stop the madness. Put down the pen and paper (unless you’re journaling or writing poetry but if you’re making yet another freaking list… put it down and walk away!).

Part of this practice will be the act of saying no.

Take a moment and look around and decide what actually really truly matters.

Get rid of the rest.

Then for the rest of the month, it’s SLOW JOY time.

Every day, moment to moment, just notice the little things. Just notice. You don’t have to write them down or make art from them or wax poetic … unless you want to and it feels like it’s part of the slow joy.

I want you to notice, too, the easeful things, or more like… what would the easeful thing be? And then do that.

Notice the soft and kind things. Take them in and also create them.

And notice the giggling things. We don’t do this even a fraction enough. Seek out laughter. But also? LET YOURSELF LAUGH. I see too many people stopping their laughter.

And spoiler: I think we should continue this, like, for the rest of time.