The cardiologist doesn’t know why I collect fluid around my heart. Pericardial effusion, mild to moderate accumulation. Breathing gets hard when it spikes. I also turn sort of gray.
Echocardiogram, EKG, abdominal ultrasound, chest x-ray, screens for lupus and other auto-immune disorders, 3 rounds of blood work … Fortunately it’s all normal, yet the fluid risk remains. It’s from Inflammation, they say, though they don’t know what causes the cause.
“It’s probably no coincidence this happened right after the election,” I joke to my doctor.
“Oh, that could be a new diagnostic code,” she jokes back. Though neither of us is really joking.
I have yet to decide if Donald Trump’s election made me unable or unwilling to write, though I suspect the latter. I have always preferred vulnerability, a commitment to honesty and self-reflection made public. I’ve mostly assumed most others – whether known or strangers -- are mostly curious and compassionate, even if they believe my ideas are stupid or my delivery sucks. I’ve mostly chosen to believe we’re all mostly kind.
But when 63 million people believed Donald Trump would make a viable president of the United States? No way. On November 8, 2016 I turned my back on my optimistic belief that others are trustworthy. Mine was a petty, immature, and arrogantly stupid response, to be sure. But I took my ball of faith and went home.
My friend, Lou Murrey, declared 2018 the year of reckoning, the courage to own and be accountable for, once and for all, our full truths, desires, and actions. I’ve been okay at that over the years: living my values, making hard choices, acting on those decisions despite my terror or shame. And like millions this past year I’ve joined more organizations, supported more causes, subscribed to more media, contacted more legislators, and marched along more streets.
But since November 2016 I haven’t risked enough that’s real or audacious, and I know it. I pulled my heart out of circulation, stashing it behind my disgust and my grief and mostly my privilege, until it suffered crushing congestion. Until I couldn’t breathe.
I know Lou means we should take our reckoning up a bunch of notches:
- Demand for real what we’re apt to dismiss as utopian, whether global, national, communal, or personal.
- Put our whole hearts on the line.
So I’m bringing my heart back out into the light, which for me means writing in public. This next year I’ll riff on hope and transformation, on the profound difference between governance and politics, on radical momentum, on why cultivating wisdom and knowledge matter, on things fueled by compassion and strength. On love.
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(PS about my physical heart: acupuncture is miraculous; when that first needle hit the exact right point, breath rushed in so deep, so satisfying I felt like I had broken through from drowning. My acupuncturist also warned nightshade veggies can escalate histamine, so I cut back on those luscious local winter potatoes and summer tomatoes I’d been devouring daily. There were other treatments, too: some energy medicine and some supplements. All combined, I haven’t had a physical symptom in months. And I appreciate every full breath I take.)
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