Body Grief

Sometime about a year or so ago, I decided to pay closer attention to my body. Not for reasons of appearance, but more about reconnecting to my body in ways that honors and appreciates all that it has been for me. I fooled myself thinking that I could reconnect with my body by remembering only the good things, the positive things.

But Grief demanded my attention. 

Grief said to my positive memories: Me first. I don't blame her. I've been shoving my body grief down deep within me, in hopes that it would disappear in a black hole or somehow filter out with no pain or process. That never works. Like, ever.

Grief needs to be felt and heard. She needs me to see her.

It hurts for me to look so I've been ignoring her all this time.

When I was born, I was born into a muted world. My fingers itch to tell you that I was OK, everything was OK, there is nothing special about any of it and I can do anything I want, thankyouverymuch do not show sympathy for me because not only do I not need it, I do not deserve it. 

*Deep Breath*

Grief is trying to say something but it's hard for her to get a word in edgewise with all my words and caveats and comparisons and I'mfines. 

Here is what Grief says if I give her a chance to speak...

I was born into a muted world. 

So I will never hear music like most of you do. If I could hear, I think I may have been a composer. I love hearing a violin sing above the orchestra, a small stringed instrument with the power to soar above the crowd. If I could hear, I might have been a singer/songwriter playing the guitar and trying her best to put the world's emotions to music. I may have had an outlet for my own emotions, one that was as easy as humming a perfectly placed tune. What would it be like to open my mouth and have music come out?

If I could hear, I could sing in church with my full voice instead of lip-synching. I can't remember when it was that I first understood that "make a joyful noise" was actually not suitable for worship. No, sorry, you are distracting with your imperfections. So I made myself quiet. To this day I do not sing out loud in church. Those who were so sad when the coronavirus took away their ability to sing in church, well, it kind of made me sad in a mad way, or mad in a sad way. I haven't been singing for years.

If I could hear, I could catch all the little witty sayings in the movies, and laugh at the same time as everyone else without feeling like I was annoying someone by asking them what was so funny. "What did I miss?" Those who love me tell me, the rest will say something like "never-mind, it's no big deal." But they don't know that half my life was never-minded, and I was deemed unworthy of deciding for myself if something was a "big deal" or not. I still have the experience of watching an old movie from childhood "for the first time" because they have captions now. I keep learning how much I missed the first time around.

If I could hear, I could discern the music playing at the restaurant and enjoy it like you do. I could burst out with the song lyrics that you know, just from hearing it on the radio. I wouldn't have had to memorize the lyric sheets from old tapes and CDs. I might know more than just the chorus of famous songs. 

If I could hear, I could understand your whispers. I would be included in every aspect of life that includes whispering, most of them funny, many intimate. I can't hear or understand whispers, so I either throw the game of telephone into hilarity, or I just simply miss the moment. So many missed moments.

If I could hear, maybe I would have been cooler as a kid, maybe I would have understood more jokes and hidden meanings muttered under our breaths. Maybe I could have been in on whatever scheme or inside joke was running around. Maybe I would have caught all the innuendo or pop-culture references. 

If I could hear, I would hear my children wake at night, and instead of going to their Dad, they would come to me. If I could hear, would they feel more connected to me? Would they feel like they could depend on me more? 

If I could hear, I could get a good nights sleep when I am alone, without worrying about whether something bad would happen the moment I took my hearing aids out, that I would miss a child crying, a door creaking, an alarm going off, a dog whining. 

If I could hear, I could save money to go on more trips instead of buying hearing aids. 

If I could hear I wouldn't know what it was like to sit at a table and not be able to join the conversation because it was too hard to focus on reading lips that long, or across that many faces. I wouldn't have to choose only one conversation to focus on and hope it held my attention or that I would be included for the totality of it. If I could hear, I wouldn't have to work so hard at the easy things like having a conversation. Maybe being around people, ones I care about, wouldn't exhaust me.

If I could hear, maybe I would feel more easily connected to new people. Maybe I wouldn't be so isolated. Maybe I would feel like less of an outsider, in every group, every space. 

If I could hear, I wouldn't have worried as a teenager about a boy kissing me and then being horrified that my hearing aids would squeal with feedback if he touches my ear. Maybe that's why I didn't have my first kiss until college. 

If I could hear, maybe I wouldn't have been so awkward and anxious at pool parties and going to the beach with friends, when I had to make sure no one got my hearing aids wet, because even my best friend would forget and playfully push me in the pool with my hearing aids in. If I could hear, maybe when I take my kids to the neighborhood pool I could actually talk to other parents AND play with my kids, instead of having to choose between the two because I can't get my hearing aids wet. 

If I could hear, maybe I wouldn't be so angry when people shushed me, because I wouldn't have spent an unbelievable amount of energy listening to what *they* had to say. 

If I could hear, I wouldn't be paranoid about remembering to bring batteries with me everywhere in case a battery went out and I suddenly can't hear out of one ear, our God forbid both (it happens more often than I care to admit).

If I could hear, perhaps waiting rooms, airports, public transit, and other places where it is important to hear announcements, even your name, wouldn't be so tiring and taxing. I wouldn't have to be the equivalent of a night guard, always awake, always alert. Maybe this is why I sleep so heavily at night, because once I don't have to work so hard at hearing, I can finally fully relax.

I honestly don't know what would be different about myself or my life if I could hear. I'm not really trying to figure that out definitively, mostly because it's impossible to do that. I want to give myself space to recognize what was, and what is. I didn't allow myself to grieve whatever losses I had, because I was so busy trying to change it, or ignore it. Or minimizing it by saying itsfineitsOKitsnotabigdeal. (I'm trying very hard not to do this now.)

I want to relax into what is, and the best way I know how to do that is to grieve what isn't, and then move forward. 

I grieve that things weren't easy, and by doing that simple act, I'm giving myself permission to name that things weren't easy. Just because I am finethankyouverymuch, doesn't mean that it wasn't hard, or that it isn't still challenging. Giving myself permission to see that is a revelation in itself. It allows me to accept help, without shame even! 

Naming the challenges hopefully will allow me to appreciate myself, my supports, and give myself grace and care when I need it. Hopefully I will be more realistic about my capabilities, my needs, and the limits of my energy. Weirdly, by acknowledging my limitations, I will free myself to be at ease with who I am. I won't be actively trying to mask my limitations, to go into overdrive to prove I can do something I shouldn't. Freeing indeed!

I grieve the hearing I never had. I think somewhere deep down inside I thought that I could somehow adjust, compensate, focus hard enough to make up for the loss. I can't do that. The loss will always remain, no matter how hard I work. I need to stop expecting myself to be "normal" and allow myself to be me. This is actually kind of revolutionary for me, and I still struggle to do that.

I Grieve, therefore I can be. I wonder what unprocessed grief you have that keeps you from being. I won't tell you it's easy to let your grief speak, but it is good.

Rest is not Scarce

I have been following Tricia Hersey’s Instagram Account “The Nap Ministry” (Follow on Instagram here: @thenapministry; and visit her website here: https://thenapministry.wordpress.com). 

Hersey has proclaimed herself the Nap Bishop, and for the new year I have resolved to learn everything I can from her. Her message is not specifically for me, though. At least not directly. Her message is for the Black community who need to hear her central message: that rest is owed to them as reparations, and that they must take it. 

This is not a trite message, although it sounds simple. It is far from simple. Hersey has reached her current prophetic message through in-depth study, and by acknowledging her community’s inherited trauma of the Black body exploited for free labor. The intrinsic worth of the Black body has been for generations equaled to their productivity. Hersey posits that if every Black person refused to produce for the rest of their lives, it would only begin to heal their community and pay the debt our country owes them. That's how long and how wide the collective need for rest is in that community.

As a white person, I'm struggling to answer the question of what I can do to both enable (and empower) rest for the Black community, and also embody rest myself. 

Hersey is not saying that only Black people need rest, she's saying they are OWED rest. Rest has been stolen from generations of Black people. Her message is that white people, all people need to rest too, for the sake of rest itself, but more importantly, because rest is resistance to the capitalistic system that disproportionately burdens people of color.

All people need rest. We as white people are terrified to make room for more rest within our own communities, because deep down inside we know that the systems of capitalism and white supremacy favors our rest over others. Our rest is needed, and the systems in place are favorable for us to get it. We fear that if we make space for everyone to have rest, we'll lose our own.

Our fear and selfishness puts the security of our rest above the availability of rest for others. If you suss it all out: we've decided white supremacy is OK and necessary as long as it keeps our access to rest in quick supply. That's pretty crappy. It's also based on lies.

We all fear that rest is scarce. Short version: it isn't.

For Black people, the supply of rest has been limited either in reality (forced labor), or in manipulation (double standards). Black people have said they have to work twice as hard to get half as far. For Black people, rest might feel like giving up the fight. The system we have now, forces Black people to "hustle" just to get by. If they don't work harder than everyone else, the fear is not that they won't make it to the top, it's that they won't make it at all. 

This system is unjust. That's why Tricia Hersey says a big, fat NOPE to that. She's gonna bypass the system. She's challenging the established rules.

White people have secured access points to rest over a very long time. The way our economy works today protects that access. We work to uphold the systems that have supported our successes: capitalism, and what Hersey calls the "grind culture." We keep functioning within these systems because they are the only way we know how to get the "luxury" of rest and leisure. It's worked for us so far, right? 

If we work hard enough, we make enough money to take a vacation. If we work hard and long enough, we get to retire someday. If we work hard enough, we make enough money to hire other people to do the work that exhausts us. We can have a house cleaner, eat out, get the car detailed, the lawn maintained. We'll save time from all our hard work for rest. Work begets rest. It's worked for us for years, hasn't it? 

Ah, but it hasn't. The irony is that this doesn't seem to pan out for everyone, does it? In fact, more so than ever, it seems our system is working less and less, even for the people it was built to support: white people. 

We're still busy; ceaselessly working toward the next goal. We kick the finish line down the street by our own unsatisfied determination and desires. We wonder when we will "arrive" and the answer is never, because our goal is no longer rest. Our goal has become power, money, and prestige. These goals are mirages that shift as quickly as the slant of the sun on a desert road. This is the grind culture. 

One of the things I have learned with Hersey's message, is that work does not beget rest; rest begets rest. When we rest, we give space for more rest, for others to rest. 

It feels counter-intuitive, but think about it. When I decide that my work email does not need to be answered 24-7, I am setting a boundary that allows my colleagues to not feel like they need to answer my emails ASAP. By setting my own boundary, I am giving space and permission for other boundaries to be set. By de-escalating a situation from "urgent" to "normal," I am setting the tone for how (and how fast) we do things. We have been steadily inflating our speed to match each other in a weird time-speed race. Why are we rushing? Why are we trying to become machinery? Isn't life so much more than that? If we start to scale back, re-set the time-warp speed at which we expect things to be done, we will find rest and we will foster rest in our community.

Our community needs rest. We're in the middle of a pandemic, both physical and mental. Everywhere you look, you hear lonely and exhausted people, with very shallow wells of rest and reprieve to draw from. We blame it on the pandemic, but the truth is, the pandemic only revealed how shallow our wells were to begin with. The pandemic also revealed how heavily we relied on the productivity and grinding of the lowest paid, hardest working people of our society, a category of workers who are disproportionately Black and Brown people. 

A while ago, before the pandemic, I remember reading a post on social media by an exhausted local mother and thinking, I remember when I was that exhausted with young children, why aren't we helping each other more? The answer was and still is that we are all so caught up in the grind-culture that we can only maintain our own existence, our own rest. We feel like we have none to spare. Some people are lucky enough to have a functional village or family nearby for support. But most Americans today live isolated in a sea of people, hoarding their resources because they know they are close to exhaustion.

In order for rest to be realized at the communal level, we must resist the antithesis of rest: the grind culture. This grind culture is the "time-race" I'm talking about above, where everything has to be better, faster, more efficient to the point where we expect machine-like quality and efficiency without stopping to ask if it is even necessary (it isn't). 

Tricia Hersey states that at the base of this grind-culture, and what fuels the ugliness of capitalism, is white supremacy. The grind culture demands that everyone do and produce so that we may uphold some invisible standard (possession of power, privilege, and prestige). The grind culture inevitably forces that invisible standard to ceaselessly rocket higher and higher out of reach. Someone will always reach the goal, and therefore the goal must escalate, because someone else wants it. 

Most of the time, the person at the top is white, and not because they are awesome.

The whole idea built into white supremacy and grind culture is that someone wins. Someone gets to be at the top. Since there are millions of people in this race, there is almost never a winner, but rather a steady, recycling turn-table of the same rich, white people who were born two feet from the finish line. White people like to pride themselves if they were born ten feet from the line and by sheer hard work and skill, sprinted to the top. It feels like a victory. They shout down to the lower echelons of society: "I did it! I made it! Just keep moving, working, racing! You can make it too!"

Meanwhile, on Tricia Hersey's plane of existence, she is not concerned with the apoplectic and out of breath humans on the mountain top. She's napping. She opted out of the whole ridiculous thing. And she is telling her Black community that they can opt out too. They work hard enough. They don't need the race to be whole people.

Grind culture at its very basic function is a traumatizing and racist enterprise. Those who have had rest stolen from them for generations are asked to just keep producing more to keep up, catch up. Tricia Hersey is *done* with that. And we should be, too.

The problem is not whether we are working hard enough. The problem is the system that requires us to grind like machines.

She says that if we rest, we resist this manic operation. We stop the machine from churning out more broken Black bodies (and others who are crushed in this grind). We create space within our communities for all to rest.

So as a white person, when I rest, I am not only seeking that which is needed for myself, I'm squatting in protest on the foundation of white supremacy. I'm using my body as a clear signal that I will no longer participate in this culture that grinds all bodies to dust, particularly those with Black and Brown skin. I am putting a speed bump in the middle of a demonic racetrack. 

Rest begets rest: when I rest, I am communicating that I will not put my body into this cycle of burnout and needless urgency. I am setting a boundary which redefines what the social norms could be. As a white person, I have the privilege and responsibility to set those boundaries in ways that can shift social norms.

Tricia Hersey is calling on Black people everywhere to take a nap. While they nap, white people need to do the work of tearing down the grind culture. White people need to take turns napping and dismantling. 

We need to create a community where everyone has access to rest. We need to create a community where everyone has access to the good things in life: love, community, food, shelter, beauty, work, and the pursuit of happiness. We need to redefine the parameters of what success looks like. We need to take stock in what it means to be human, and what we need to feel whole. Spoiler: it's not power, prestige, or hoards of cash. Rest will teach us all. 

Follow #thenapministry on instagram for more on this revolutionary concept, and start your practice of rest today. Start resisting white supremacy, start resisting the grind culture, start embodying the wholeness of what it means to be human. 

Start where you can and build up. Take a nap, don't answer the email right away. Take time off work, and really take the time off. Don't be productive for a whole day and practice turning off that shame portal when you rest. Empower others in your family to rest. Empower it in your work space. And not the kind of rest that comes because you worked extra hard, hobbling to collapse at the finish line. Genuine, regular rest, before exhaustion. 

Change the small systems around you. Is someone doing the lion's share of work in your home? At work? Is it you? Or is it someone else? Create a system where the work (and rest) is shared. That might mean lowering expectations, and that is not a bad thing. Decrease urgency. 

De-stigmatise rest. It is not laziness. In fact, if you have any religious background, it is built into the foundations of nearly every major religious practice as Sabbath. For some, it's a commandment!

Challenge the current culture! Don't "try not to burnout"- be rested! Don't "try to balance life and work" - be rested! Resist productivity as an intrinsic virtue and value. View "well-rested" as the epitome of whole human experience. 

If you think you have no space or time for rest, The Nap Bishop will tell you that's not true. She knows. You have to brush your teeth every day and you have to rest every day.

Rest is not scarce. We must shake the bounds of white supremacy and embrace communal rest.

Weight

I did the dumbest thing a person can do in the tenth month of a pandemic: I weighed myself. I had intentionally stayed away from the scales because I knew it was a dumb idea to start my morning with numbers. I added insult to injury by weighing myself on the first day of my period, which if you don't know, is like getting a portrait done five minutes after you've woken up. It's just a bad idea all around.

SO I weighed myself, couldn't stop my impulse and there they were: the numbers. And they told me exactly what I expected them to tell me: I had gained weight. OBVIOUSLY. But I gained ten pounds and this felt a little harsh for my scale to thrust at my face.

Now let me tell you a little secret: I feel great. I mean, even though I'm more anxious and I haven't worn a bra or makeup for an untold amount of time, even though I can't even imagine wearing anything with buttons or anything other than cozy socks, even though I am becoming an expert at stretching the acceptable length of time between showers, I actually feel pretty confident in my body. I've been walking lots, wearing sexy yoga pants, that kind of thing. 

Just to be sure I wasn't doing something terrible to myself (because I felt fine and even though I'm sure I could eat more healthy, I feel like I've been doing OK), I looked up my BMI. Because that's a perfect measurement of health. (Please say that last line with all the sarcasm you can muster.) But seriously, it's at least a tool that can help me know if I should maybe be less laissez-faire with my choices. 

Get this: my BMI is in the normal category. 

I am certain that about 90% of the people who read that last line just uttered (possibly out loud): 

"This Bitch." 

And that's not entirely unfair. I get it. Here I am whining about gaining ten pounds and I'm in the "normal" BMI range, whatever that means. I'm on the top of it, but I made it.

This is when it hit me. I feel fine because I AM fine. The numbers are just one measurement that I have had to learn not to take too seriously. If you're fighting with me in your head (as some voices in my own head are trying to do), then you might have some body image issues. It's OK- join the universal club- it takes a long ass time to work that shit out, and the entire capitalistic society is working overtime against your efforts. 

I had forgotten how huge the market was for us feeling crappy about our bodies until I watched cable with commercials for the first time in months at our Airbnb (aka: we need to be ANYWHERE ELSE other than home). Wow. SO many commercials telling you SO many things about your body and food. All of it conflicting, none of it helpful. If you grew up before streaming shows was a thing (which is most of us), then you grew up with at least one source of "your body sucks," aka commercials. Forget about whatever family baggage you have. Body image issues seem to be a foundational part of being human, specifically, American.

But here's the other realization that I had: weight has nothing to do with your body image issues. I'm going to repeat it because even I don't fully believe it: 

Weight has nothing to do with your body image issues. 

Y'ALL. How many skinny-gorgeous-people do you know who are complete lunatics about their bodies? I can name a few. In fact I remember this one baby doll-eyed gorgeous woman confessing her low self-esteem and I was like: "This Bitch." But she wasn't lying. She was *gorgeous* and had body image issues. If you think about it, the list of people who have body image issues is about as diverse in actual body shape/size/ability as the fish in the ocean. 

SO therefore, if you change your numbers, it won't change your mind. The body is a friggin miracle and also an insanely delicate and resilient thing. Human bodies really are bizarre. They deserve a whole lot more than stupid numbers. They deserve to be moved in fun ways, touched, bathed, rested, walked, lotioned, all the nice things you should wish upon an entity that carries your heart, soul, and mind. 

She's working hard y'all! Give her some love, and watch your body relax into the safe space you've created for her. 

$#@%^ the numbers.