Photo by Sarah Salcedo, Sunset at Lake Sammamish
I wanted to share about good things and the sustaining power of counting one's blessings, but it necessitates starting on a downbeat: October has been a strange barrage of events so stressful that I've forgotten we're in the midst of a pandemic for a bit. There have been so many things this month that have taken my breath away with the sharpness of these particular difficulties.
I believe in hope and I do believe that this darkness will not last forever. But wow. The last six or seven weeks has turned around and looked at all the other months that have come before and said, "Hold my beer. I'm up."
I'm aware that so many people are going through so much worse than me, but each of us experiences pain in a vacuum. We work to extend our empathy to connect us to our awareness of privilege and the pain of others. What feels like "the worst" to us is valid and reflexive, even as we're aware of the grand hyperbolic overreach of that statement. Heartache is heartache. Hardship is hardship. We thread the needle of feeling our feelings and work hard to be aware of how it exists in the scope of all that's going on outside of ourselves. And it's that scope, that knowledge of the weight of all that's wrong in the world, that can be so crushing on top of the hard-pressed quality of our day to day.
I am being sustained right now by a series of tiny, infinitesimal victories that I'm cobbling together out of the normal, looked-over, low hanging fruits of day to day existence. These aren't victories by normal standards—I'm being liberal with the term. These are tiny things that have not gone wrong, and in 2020, I'm celebrating the hell out of those things.
Did I finish my work? CELEBRATE IT. Did I send that email even through I felt overextended? CELEBRATE IT. Did I make meals, or walk, or take time for myself? Did I spend time nurturing my spiritual side, or working on my therapy-work? CELEBRATE IT. Did I text a friend or family member to check in on them? CELEBRATE IT.
But even that stuff sometimes feels too much, too big, too out of reach. Did I not finish my work? It's okay. Did I make progress on it at least? CELEBRATE IT. But what if I was I feeling so ill I couldn't work on it at all? What if I haven't texted anyone back today because I feel so overwhelmed that the only thing that I can muster is a whimper, and that doesn't translate to text too well.
That's when I adjust my focus to the more basic functions of existing, because being that overwhelmed usually means I'm so overwhelmed that I need to focus on basic self-care. So, I celebrate whether or not I get up in the morning and go to bed at night. For someone with executive function issues, this is more difficult than it should be, so I should be damn proud of every day I get to notch that up on my wall. Especially now. Sleeping during seasons like this feels like an exorbitant victory, because I feel my anxiety dragging nails over my mental blackboard, trying to draw my attention.
And sometimes it does get me. Sometimes insomnia sinks its teeth in, as it has since I was a kid, and drags me through the night rough and ragged. When I was a kid (through early adulthood honestly), I used to feel such shame when I couldn't sleep. The shame is part of it, though. The shame exacerbates the anxiety and contributes to the whole vicious cycle. In the last few years, I try to always have a story to write or a book to read or an old movie to watch so that, if I can't sleep for more than an hour, I try to view it as a good thing. A chance to do something nice for myself other than sleep.
Taking the stigma away from my insomnia has helped it immensely.
Still. Sometimes there's nothing that goes right.
So I celebrate smaller.
I focus on my breath.
If you're reading this, try it with me. Focus on your breathing. Draw a breath in, then let it out. Again. Try it at your own speed, and slow it down if you want. Slow breathing doesn't work for some people, so if you've been advised to do deep breathing before and it made you anxious, just breathe normally and focus on the mechanics of it at your own pace.
Focus on the fact that the world's in a season right now where we're reminded how precious our breathing is and if you can breathe right now, you're lucky. Whether wildfire smoke is choking the air, or COVID-19 infiltrates your lungs, breathing is a small thing we can't take for granted anymore. Breathe in. Breathe out.
There. That's a good thing. That good thing is yours.
This week started so rough. But I've collected good things along the way:
I'm breathing.
I've slept each night (length or quality don't matter, just doing it is enough) and I've woken up each morning.
I've made meals.
I've gone on walks.
I've worked and finished a few items on my week's to-do list and progressed others.
I watched a really good show that lifted my heart (Ted Lasso on Apple+, the newest show from Scrubs' showrunner Bill Lawrence and SNL's Jason Sudeikis.)
I've journaled (not something that's easy, again with the executive function issues). I voted.
My vote was counted.
This isn’t the complete list of the good things from this week. But every thing, big or small, I can count as good helps me move forward in the coming days when things feel anything but good.
When I was a kid, my Mom's lullaby to me was the one her Dad had sung to her: Bing Crosby's "Count Your Blessings" from the movie White Christmas. Lullabies are over-simplistic, sure, but drilling into this is helping me get through this year. Even if I can't sleep, counting blessings and giving myself grace on what I call a blessing, even if it's just small things like "I'm thankful that I'm breathing", it begins to pile up. A momentum of gratitude builds, even on the worst of days.
And just to clarify: gratitude isn't blind optimism. How can you truly be grateful for things if you don't acknowledge suffering or hardship? If you're not aware of your privilege and empathize with others who are hurting? If your view of life is that everything everywhere is great, you're being obtuse. Blind optimism is a crutch when we're afraid. There's nothing wrong with saying "life is hard", "this situation sucks", and "I feel awful". If you feel it and then broaden what you see and feel to include other people and situations beyond yourself, you'll have the empathetic imagination required to find the small good things in your life to count up.
We have eleven days until the election and no one knows what will happen. COVID-19 cases are spiking and despite all that's going on globally and nationally, each of us has our own hardships that we're going through.
I just wanted to post this and let you know: you're doing great. Every day you exist is a victory. Every moment you draw breath, in and out, is an achievement. Whatever you do for yourself, for your physical, mental, and spiritual health, is good. Whatever you do for others, for your community, friends, or family, is good. It doesn't matter how small the thing. This is such a difficult time. Count up those good things you're engaged in, and if you can get above zero, then you're doing good.
You are doing good. I believe in all of us. We're doing great, considering all that's going on. We're going to finish out this year, even if all we do is breathe, and we're going to make it into 2021 without shame.
Focus on those small good things, and build from there as you're able.
For more on gratitude, UC Berkeley (through the Greater Good Science Center) is doing an amazing project studying the effects of gratitude on the body, on healing from trauma, on community work, etc. These have great resources, articles, videos and more, if you want to check it out here.