not so grounded

Our Ancestors, Our Dreams

Power of Our Ancestors, Promise Of Our Dreams

In 1959 my mother, a Jew, converted to Christianity when she married my father, an Episcopal seminarian. I was mildly aware of this in the same vague way happy children know anything about their parents: it was just a random fact. Sometimes dad performed family christenings, and sometimes we danced at family bar mitzvahs. My Christian nanny made sweet apple jelly from her orchards; my Jewish grandma ordered palatial bagel trays from the deli. Since none of this kept me from watching my favorite cartoons, it just wasn’t a big deal.

Growing up a preacher’s kid I deeply felt Christianity’s comfort, grounding and beauty. Yet over time I also learned that some faiths and their faithful have an ugly side. My best friend was Jewish and, as a result, banned from the clubs where I swam and played tennis. An elderly couple in the church embraced our family as their own, but only because my mother hid her Jewish background. My paternal ancestors came through Ellis Island to build a new life; some, but not all, of my maternal ancestors escaped persecution and death.

I still remember when my parents shared this information with my brother and me, their anguish partly from the facts and partly because they had to expose those facts to their children. And I vividly remember their work dedicated to changing those facts.

My childhood awakening just happened to be around religious discrimination, yet it could’ve sprung from anything declaring “we” dominate “others.” I certainly don’t suggest my experience equals or dilutes today’s righteous powerful demands of Black Americans. Or - in honor of Pride month - usurps righteous claims for equality and dignity among those who identify LGBTQ.

I’m merely reflective. Because in this moment I can't stop weeping. I am fully present with my neighbors in the streets today and remembering the 1960’s when my dad demanded change from others in power, and my mom, his partner in all ways, advocated for children in need. I'm gut punched that we still kill, abuse and traumatize others and simultaneously so grateful my parents have always shown me how to champion what’s right and reinvent the world to come. I hope I live by their example.

Wishing that you also feel the power of your ancestors and the promise of your dreams in this time of transformation.

(PS. The pic above is my awesome Mom.)

Okay.

A dear friend of mine is an energy healer, and while her daily connection to typical American culture can be spotty (she's never heard of my two all-time favorite tv shows*, for example, and does not text ever), she has a supernatural power to engage multidimensionally in ways that only come to me through great science fiction. 

This is the End and the Beginning, she says. Everything we've known is complete. Experiences, beliefs, lessons, conventions, karma, commitments, vows, systems, cycles ... even history itself. Still our foundation, yet now complete.

And now anything is possible.

We still have to choose. We still have to choose wisely. And, some of those choices still demand unbelievable courage and change. Yet we get to start fresh.

She whittled it into a precise sentence, and while I'm not usually the mantra-kind, I'm loving this one: You are whole, and from that wholeness you can create anew.

Okay.

 

(*Schitt's Creek and Twin Peaks.)

 

 

 

 

 

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

Heart of the Matter

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.

As always, read, subscribe, unsubscribe, respond, or ignore anytime.

(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.)

Conscious Planning a Thousand Years Out

It didn't take long for the guy next to me on the train to ask if I was pretty liberal.  He was merely confirming the obvious, as we amicably disagreed on several current lightning rods: health care reform, sustainable energy and the growing practice of natural gas hydrofracking, which, it turns out, was also his profession.  He didn't dismiss the environmental hazards -- most notably permanently poisoning millions of gallons of water -- but instead emphasized the vast potential yield, that fracking can satisfy our energy needs for many many years to come.

But not 200 years or 300 or 1000 ...

I suddenly realized how infrequently we plan for centuries.  18 months, maybe 24, a large corporation may vision 10-20 years perhaps, or too often we plan just 'till the next election ...

But our future scope is frighteningly narrow. 

We revere history.  We are fully engaged in protecting a ruin, holding sacred a ceremony, honoring the dead, studying the past ... we explore our ancestry, re-enact past battles ... we celebrate foundings, anniversaries, ancient texts, long-standing beliefs ... We insist our children learn vast swaths of history, and our daily media stream the past and present with mind-numbing force.

I'm not suggesting that's wrong.  But why not the future in equal measure?  How come our future is relegated to video games and sci-fi or to those we sequester in ivory towers?  We're closer to 2200 than 1776, so how come our kids aren't exploring that with as much vigor?  Imagine a bunch of 2nd graders spending half their school day envisioning 2492.  Then imagine them over the course of their education honing those visions, creating new inventions & skills, defining their world 800 years from now.  What if communities routinely came together not to fight over a shrinking economic pie but to explore what commerce and exchange might look like in 2500?  What if we were consciously planning our way-out future?

Instead of justifying (and having to earn a living justifying) a practice that may momentarily keep our lights on but will, as the nice guy on the train admitted, permanently destroy our water tables, what if he could describe how his multinational was thinking energy in 500 years?

Gloria Steinem

Tonight on HBO, a documentary about Gloria Steinem.  And, so, an excuse to post my interview with her (such a cool gift!) for All About Women (For some reason the magazine took offline the first several years of issues.)  From All About Women, 2/08:

In 1968 journalist Moses Znaimer conducted a lengthy, intimate interview with then 34-year-old Gloria Steinem in her New York City apartment, subsequently broadcast on the Canadian Broadcast Centre show entitled, The Way It Is.  “New journalism” was the primary topic, Znaimer and Steinem discussing the new trend among an elite group of writers, including Steinem, who blended impeccable reporting with their own personal perspectives and connections with the story.  Certainly it was interesting to learn about the origins of a journalistic style we now take for granted.  But I found the interview’s equally overt sub-text even more fascinating. 

Gloria Steinem was a “girl” and Moses Znaimer wove that fact into the interview with easy, casual frequency: 

Do you distinguish in your work between the fact that you’re writing and you’re a lady writing?

I just want to get past one uncomfortable & fairly obvious fact … that you’re a pretty stunning woman.  And I want to know whether you capitalize on that?

While Steinem inexplicably ironed a blouse during a portion of the interview, Znaimer asked, How many “ladies” things do you like doing?  Do you cook? You iron … exceedingly well, too.

While discussing Steinem’s undercover expose as a Playboy bunny, Znaimer asked, “Forgive me, but I always thought you had to be stacked, absolutely stacked to be a bunny girl.  How did you get the job?”

After the interview, the closing anchor, holding an iron in his hand, summarized with a smile, “[That was] Moses, ironing out a few things with a heck of a good writer, and not a hateful looker …”

Pull of the Moon

Message to a friend who just showed up in my dream ... life is supposed to feel good, feel blissful in fact, if we actually allow such things.  Love, too, but that goes without adding.  Even change or growth or those expansions we invite or that life imposes sometimes unawares:  shouldn't be a pit weighing heavy in our gut, but butterflies alight with anticipation or excitement, even if laced with a little healthy scarededness.  Any decision quietly fueled by guilt, or god forbid shame, (or a twinge of that characteristic Stubborness that gets us in trouble every time) really should be reconsidered.  Or maybe redone, even if such a radical wave makes the tides themselves shift direction.  Cause when parts of ourselves fly through the pull of the moon seeking advice from others who slumber, somthin's up.  Or at least it seemed to be as I softely brushed the first sleep from my eyes, back in the room where last night I lay my head.

Aaron O'Connell

 

This is the coolest 7 minutes & 51 second worth of info.  [And here's the TED link for those of you who don't receive the embedded video.] 

Salmon Khan - Flipping the Paradigm

 

Besides the obvious personal implications for Alden and his fellow middle schoolers, my mind is popping with all sorts of other contexts ... for my therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist colleagues:  similar self-paced, interactive video, private & blissfully personal learning for those elements of recovery, wellness, illness management, psycho-ed, family supports, healthy relationships.  And then saving precious face-to-face time for deeper applications -- wrangling troublespots, making it real with loved ones & groups, finding tailored sweetspots unique for a person or relationship.

Certainly has relevance for all my trainings.  We're so locked into an expert training or facilitating a group of participants through content and exercises, whether live or tech-fancy remote.  And sure we have eLearning, but imagine tossing those boundaries.  Offering spaces of time, with instructions like "go watch these videos and then these times we'll play together with the concepts."

People want engagement, conversation, discussion, "relationshiping" over getting expert content poured into their heads, now more than ever.  TED itself has proven the utter bliss that can be offered in 20-minutes (honestly, the limits to my attention span anyway). The Kahn Academy just propels it to so many cool new horizons.

Leaning the Present Moment One-Step

Living fully in the present moment is far more disorienting than advertised.  Don’t get me wrong – I feel great. But I have lost my familiar landmarks.  When unconstrained by time and space, my boundaries bleed seamlessly into some universal pool so I can't quite feel any ground beneath my feet.  If I'm One with the dang cosmos, then where do I reside on the map?  And if I can't punch in my point of origin, then it totally messes with the whole concept of "direction," let alone the familiar process of setting a course.  Seems all backwards now: I used to be tethered to an evolutionary past, using previous experience to guide my next journey.  And I got pretty good at self-reflection, goal-setting, planning then doing.  But now I’m all glorious imagination, dancing from this moment to any of a zillion new desires. And I can’t find my starting point.  Hell, I can’t even find the atlas.

I'm pretty sure it’s all gone … the map, the linear plane, the sequence of logical events … I suspect those things have always been an illusion. But, sheesh, this totally messes with skills I’ve honed for eons, not to mention mucking with the brain chemical that helps me find my hotel in a strange city ... 

I am exhilarated, to be sure.  But this is a huge change, and the new learning curve is making me kind of dizzy.