not so grounded

How Are You?

I was recently asked three questions about my personal pandemic experience by the community story-tellers at Boonies, found on Instagram and Facebook.

How am I?

I am suddenly, rapidly learning to hold many Big Feels all at once.

Before, when struck by grief, let’s say, or fear, or at opposite times happiness, each Feel could have its own way with me until one faded into the next. But now I’m holding all the Big Feels, all full, all at once, and all crashing into each other.

I weep for those dying and their loved ones left behind. I worry incessantly about our healthcare heroes. I burn for those who must choose between their health and making ends meet, worse when their jobs are under-appreciated and their salaries too low. I rage (again!!) that this pandemic is worst for people of color, those in poverty and others marginalized (like every other catastrophe??!!). I miss my family and friends, my favorite restaurants, my yoga studio .... And I'm really whiny about my hair.

Yet side-by-side with those Big Feels, I laugh on Zoom and talk for hours to loved ones. My heart swells observing countless acts of kindness. I rejoice as so many gravitate toward good leaders and reject the opposite. I am glad so many have quickly and resolutely turned to government for help and realize that we've misunderstood and neglected it far too long. I am optimistic that many more now remember that "government" is us, that government is an excellent way to peacefully and collectively take care of us all. Or not, of course, yet I believe more people are tired of that approach. I suddenly blaze with confidence that the next decade will bring unforeseen progress. And I gaze out my window as winter becomes spring, thunderstruck that never before did I have or take time to witness the birth of a leaf.

I am feeling this all at once, all colliding with the speed and force of unseen molecules. I think those Feels invite us to reimagine everything. I think they mean I'll never be the same.

Do I personally know anyone who's contracted COVID-19?

I finally talked to Maddy, my daughter, toward the end of her February trip to Costa Rica. Day two she texted she was too sick to surf; day three she couldn't walk the beach; day four she couldn't get out of bed. I finally heard her voice day five, and if she had not been flanked by her boyfriend and best friends I would've been on the first available plane with the singular focus of all mothers crazed with fear.

Maddy recovered. And neither she nor any of my family and close friends has been tested for COVID-19; none is sick now. I shout my gratitude with each and every sunrise.

Yet I work with hundreds of people around the country leading mental health and addictions agencies, and many are shepherding those ill and dying from this disease. Even in the best of times their clients suffer way more from diabetes, heart disease, or asthma, and die 25 years sooner than average. Mostly because of poverty, racism, stigma, and lack of good healthcare. So I’m helping all I can.

How am I coping?

I’ve killed countless orchids over the years. Not on purpose; I’ve tried the right sun, ice- cube watering, and scheduled soaking. But inevitably the blossoms would fall, leaving me with endless pots of lonely wide-fanned leaves.

Yet suddenly now, all this time at home doing nothing much besides too much baking and Netflix binging, my orchids are blooming. And like the wildlife returning to Yosemite or the Himalayas suddenly within view, like the love sewn into every face mask and each inconvenience accepted with a smile, like the teacher waving hand-made signs as she drives by her students' homes and the therapist Zooming unwavering care, my orchid buds are a marvel.

With gratitude and wishing you safety and health,

Jeanne

Here and There All At Once

At the eastern entrance to I-40, on the outskirts of Wilmington, NC, an official green highway sign reads, "Barstow, CA 2,554 miles."  As I drove past it Friday, I happened to be talking to a colleague who lives near the western entrance of that same freeway.  On Monday I will fly over Barstow, in fact, when I head her way.  The fourth trip so far in my 9-bed September, my own absurd strategy for measuring the relative zaniness of my travel schedule.  I will sleep in 9 different beds between September 1-30, only one of which is technically my own. 

I am a "seasoned" traveler.  I know, for example, to avoid winter layovers in Denver or Chicago, that summer thunderstorms can paralyze east coast flight patterns, and that Houston and Atlanta are best avoided altogether.  I know I can get a quick nitrate-free spicy sausage near gate C-20 at Phoenix Sky Harbor. I know the women hired to clean the Charlotte Douglas rest rooms live on tips and a paltry $2-3.00 an hour. 

These are ridiculous things to know (except that women cleaning our airport toilets go home after 8 hours of unappreciated work with approximately $20 -- that fact is appalling.)  And while they engender a certain misguided travel pride, I cannot escape this fundamental dissonance:

At the same time my professional clients need a heightened personal presence, so do my family, friends and community.  California staff need hands-on help to improve some thorny processes, women cleaning bathrooms need generous tips, Appalachian farmers need folks to buy their delicious tomatoes, and my home needs a family dinner.  All at once.  We are past that euphamistic breaking point and need genuine, live, loving, consistent human connection.

This is not suggesting my presence is important.  Rather, I believe we all increasingly need to be both global and local, in multiple time zones, conversations & cultures and contributing to the wellbeing of many layers ... all at the same time.  

I don't know how to do that yet.  Oh I post, update, text and skype with the best of 'em, and I don't blink at a cellular call across opposite ends of a freeway or continent.

But I feel a universal tug to be all places at all times, as if the worn tethers securing my identity to gravity and locale are unravelling.  As if the seams of a self I once concretely defined as only my own, as only in this place or with that person, are being gently removed stitch by stitch.  I feel increasingly boundless, just beginning to imagine that maybe I can be Here and There at once. 

Sure, I'm momentarily freaked about a possible personal implosion.  But ultimately I'm comforted by a growing belief that I am -- we are -- so much more than these individual bodies & lives suggest.  That perhaps being Here and Everywhere all at once is our original blueprint.  That at some point I will, in fact, help a west coast clinic improve its health services, pick dinner fresh from my neighbor's garden, and nestle up to my husband in our own bed ... all in the same day.

 

The Most Perfect Day Ever

Awoke early for a glorious long canter (Elise does not walk ...) across More Mesa bluff and then down along the Pacific.  Magnificent gray swells and kelp, seals lounging on jagged rocks, timeless fog against eroded cliffs, warm sweatshirt against the cold.  We met another friend, 5 dogs between us, and glided through wide empty swaths of low-tide beach. 

Returned to prepare for the workday, suddenly stopped heavy by an overdose of global overwhelm,  confusion on top.  Dusted with a little frustration, or maybe that's sadness?  Probably woven with fear.  Not a specific person, thing, circumstance, client, or item in the news  But every organization I work with, everything I observe, so much that I encounter ... folks are burning to a crisp.  Somber and weighty. 

I know I'm supposed to help my clients accomplish measurable business objectives, but, quite honestly, I'd rather wrap them snug in star-kissed silk, serve them warm chocolate chip cookies, and tease out something worth a belly laugh.

I cleared my head with a hot shower, stepped onto the back deck just as the sun appeared in full, and took a deep breath.

What if we all got out in the sun?  Stepped away from the responsibilities, to-do lists, and frustrations that prop up illusions we don't even like?  I know how to shift my vibration - a moment of gratitude for sand between my toes, my closest friend in the next room, the scent of fresh eucalyptus, laughing for no reason ... I'm so there.  

I just want everyone there.  I want everyone to awake every morning knowing this will be the most perfect day ever, the 6+ billion different ways that might be defined. 

Is that too much to ask?

Pakistan & Verve Magazine

My piece about Pakistan is now online in Asheville's Verve Magazine.  Maddy was sixteen-year-old blase about her photos; Alden wanted to know why the man was eating a snake ...

Radicalizing the G20

I'm thinking about Charlie Wilson's War. For most of the movie Congressman Wilson creates a tidal wave of excited support for covertly training & arming various Afghan forces until they successfully drive out the Soviets.  But in the movie's final scenes he couldn't interest his colleagues in the follow-up -- rebuilding schools, roads & bridges, and helping with all the vital, but bland, infrastructure necessary to rebuild after war.

I'm worried I'll do the same this post-election, that I'll return to complacency now that my anxiety of the last 8 (or maybe 28) years subsides.  That I'll get disinterested or confused or too overwhelmed by the complexities our own re-building requires and retreat.  

So as one way to fight the urge, I'm forcing myself to think about the G20 that's been meeting this week, ostensibly to reshape the global financial markets, hinting at improving the global economic system.  I'm not an economist or an expert in any related field.  But I'm putting my vision out there, as naive & uninformed & potentially silly as it might be.

Here's what I think should be included in a new global economy:

• No one on this planet should ever have trouble finding enough healthy food & water.
• Everyone should have a comfortable place to live. 
• Everyone should have access to a good education.
• Health should be a priority and option available to everyone, utilizing what every culture -- old & new -- has learned about finding & maintaining it.
• Countries should be allowed to participate freely in a global system of trade & commerce only if they abide by certain conditions:   (a) their business laws demand protection of human & animal rights, environmental sustainability, as well as profitability; (b) their citizens are guaranteed free healthcare (physical & mental), education, and basic protections from poverty, homelessness, and social isolation; (c) they adopt a holistic way of measuring "progress" that expands from our narrow Gross National/Domestic Product (emphasizing consumption, mass production & markets, and money) to a broader array of indicators, like well-being, happiness, health, vitality, community building, sustainability, as well as security, comfort, and abundance; (d) a mandated 20/25-hour work week, minimum 5-weeks paid vacation, lengthy paid family leave; (e) domestic fiscal policies that encourage full-employment.  Countries that don't abide simply can't play.  
• Our financial systems should be fully transparent, violators sanctioned quickly, and the rest of us encouraged & rewarded for doing good work, preferably work we enjoy & that others find valuable.

There you go.