Ambivalence
Ambivalent. This is what I’m feeling. I’ve read about languishing, dormancy, and brain fog recently and find truth in all of these, but return to ambivalent, at least for today.
I am fully vaccinated, thank the gods and science, and I can re-enter the outside world. While I am grateful to begin to reconnect in person with loved ones – let the hugging commence – I have been surprised by the mixed feelings I also feel about this next phase.
I remind myself that we are living through a fricking pandemic. (Many parts of the world are still being devastated by the pandemic.) Not one of us has ever done this before. And in spite of the promise of a post-vaccine life, I’m not sure that I believe we are returning to “normal.” In fact, I don’t want to. I think my hesitancy to jump into summer plans and schedules is related to this.
I am looking forward to hanging out with my loved ones and friends, live music with friends and convivial strangers, having a pint on a brewery patio, eating a meal out that someone else cooks and someone else cleans up, hiking without a mask, visiting different places.
AND (you know there is always a both/and for me)…
I don’t want to rush back into “normal” life and wipe away what I see as the gifts of the pandemic. I want my life to remain slow. I want to keep observing the birds and plants in my small yard, noticing the subtle changes through the seasons. I want to maintain the increased connection to many neighbors that I’ve found during this year plus of hyper-local life. I want to keep making time for reading. I want to invest myself in building real community and relationships, and let the shallow ones go.
I want us all to keep paying attention to what is going on in our communities and nation and world. I don’t want the busyness of “normal” life to distract us from what is really going on, and from working to transform this world into one that works for all of us.
I was thinking today about who has influenced and inspired me during this pandemic – whose wisdom do I want to carry forward? The first who came to mind was Sonya Renee Taylor–her What’s Up Y’all videos, her conversation with Brené Brown, and her book The Body Is Not An Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love. Her thinking about the power of radical self-love and compassion in our lives and the world comes back to me over and over:
I want to change the world by convincing you to love every facet of yourself, radically and unapologetically, even the parts you don’t like. And through this work, illustrate for you how radical love alters our planet. Radical self-love is an internal process offering external transformation. How we show up to life reflects how we show up to ourselves.
I think of Valerie Kaur and her book See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love and her wisdom about the power of revolutionary love to transform us and our world, and her metaphor of a woman laboring to give birth. I think of Resmaa Menakem and My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies and his work on somatic abolition and the connection between our bodies and the legacy of white supremacy.
Maybe part of re-entry is this invitation to pause and reflect. I invite you to join me.
What have been the gifts of the pandemic that you want to carry forward?
What parts of the old “normal” do you want to leave behind?
Who has influenced or inspired you during this time and what wisdom of theirs are you carrying forward with you?
I always love to hear from you if you care to share what you find.