JOURNEY OF SELF-PERCEPTION, PART 2

In Part 1, I shared writing prompts designed to help express difficult emotions (Journey of Self-Perception, 7/11/20).  The prompts are from a clinical trial to measure whether expressive writing can help build resilience during a time of crisis, such as this pandemic. 

Since the trial I've done a bit of research on this; studies measuring biochemical markers show that expressive writing has the potential to boost our immune systems.  So mental health and physical well-being.  This is good for us.  Those of us who took part found it valuable in all sorts of ways; the Zoom chats showed that.  So I am passing on some of the exercises.  If you like to write anyway, I bet you'll find this worthwhile too. 

The instructions again are to respond for 15-20 minutes and write non-judgmentally, with kindness for yourself.  The idea is to look toward intentionally cultivating compassion, forgiveness, and an attitude of mindfulness; all while writing about what is most important and emotionally significant to you (for some--or even many--this may be something other than this pandemic).

1.  Compassionate Letter--Imagine someone you love is experiencing the same challenges that you are: a real or imagined person. (I addressed my letter to "Friend of My Heart.")  Write a letter of encouragement. Words of comfort and hope.  What might you encourage them to forgive themselves for? Write based upon your own experiences and lessons learned so far, in a compassionate and respectful way.

     I loved that this was a chance to be gentle and hopeful.  A calming moment.  Perhaps it will be for you too.

2.  Writing to Let Go--What have you discovered you no longer need?  Objects, perspectives, outdated beliefs, toxic relationships?  What could you forgive yourself or others for?  What can you release that would allow you to move forward with a lighter heart?

3.  Mindful Writing, Acceptance--describing your acceptance of things and yourself as they are, not as you wish or think they should be.  This does not mean that you are passive or satisfied.  Rather, mindful acceptance is simply describing to yourself how things really are with you in the present moment.  Begin each sentence with "I accept that . . . ." 

When I have time (a problem, but less so these days) I'm going to respond to the mindful writing prompts again, without looking at what I wrote before.  After all, a journey of self-perception isn't static is it?  I'll follow my intuition.

INTUITION IS SEEING WITH THE SOUL.

JOURNEY OF SELF-PERCEPTION

I'm going to share with you writing prompts for cultivating resilience that are from a project to test the benefits of expressive writing for those in crisis, specifically the COVID-19 crisis.  Although our own crises may not be limited to this pandemic, since many of us live through more than one crisis or trauma in our life and often simultaneously. The writing is only for ourselves and can include the past as we wish.  The instructions are to respond for about 15-20 minutes to each prompt and to do so with patience and compassion for ourselves.   What I'm sharing is an abbreviated version. 

1.   Write about your deepest thoughts and feelings about how this crisis is affecting you personally.  Try to use the time to reflect upon the issues most important to you at this time.  For example, how the crisis is affecting your day-to-day activities, your mental and physical health, your relationships, etc.

2.  Dig deeper.  What fears, difficult emotions and losses have you experienced or do you anticipate?  All emotions are welcome.  (If this becomes too bothersome stop and take a break.  No prompt needs to be completed.  It's up to us based upon the compassion we show ourselves.) 

3.  Now write about your experience from a different perspective:  a wise friend, a future you, a divine or neutral observer or anything that comes to mind.  This could be in the form of a letter to yourself or to someone else, or not.  

4.  Try to tie together the threads of your writing so far into a wish or intention for the future.  What is important to you in continuing to navigate this crisis?  What values matter most right now?  How do you want to relate to yourself and others now and in the future?

5.  Mindful writing:  awareness without judging. impartially witnessing our own experience with compassion.  For ten minutes begin each sentence with "I am aware that. . . " or "I am aware of. . . ."

I liked the last prompt best.  I found so many things I was aware of having to do with my own coping skills and the life I lead that I had not exactly thought of before.  The writing became a positive experience.  See what you think.  

To be continued . . . .

"WHAT HAPPENS NOW IS HAPPENING TO US"

"We have arrived.  What happens now is happening to us."

Anna Seghers, born Anna (Netty) Reiling (1900-1983)

A German Jewish writer who escaped Nazi Germany wrote these words in 1939, eighty-one years ago.  In her historical novel The Seventh Cross she had reached the concentration camp, which she avoided but where other members of her family would perish.  In 1939 she could not know the outcome.  But she felt a moment of recognition, that moment when we see ourselves as historical subjects.  When from an imaginary future platform we look back to see the importance of our present lives. 

For weeks and months now this has been us.  The coronavirus has arrived.  So has the social reckoning about race.  What the virus is doing is being done to us.  Whether racism can be eradicated will be decided by us.  Wherever we live, on whatever continent in whatever country or state, what happens now is on our watch.  We are the ones making history, everyone alive today. 

Strange but I don't see these words as negative.  I like it that whatever happens, happens to us all. Most of us understand that we're in the present together and however the future unspools we'll be there together too. ("No Man Is an Island," 5/29/20)

I've touted www.Mindful.org before.  Today in my in-box were three questions:

1. How can I love myself today?
2. How can I love others today?
3. How can I love the world today?
   

When I was in the throes of parenthood I never thought about loving myself.  If I practiced compassion toward myself it went unnoticed by me.  Love and care for the children was automatic, but I didn't think much about the world either.  Nothing to brag about. 

But life is different now.  Everyday I'm loving the world, nurturing my own green spaces, keeping the butterfly bushes healthy, feeding the birds, contributing to the right causes.  Wearing face coverings and wishing everyone were.  Thinking about safety and friendships and vocations in new ways.  You are too, aren't you?  We are doing this.     

   

LIFT EVERY VOICE AND SING THIS IS MY COUNTRY

The 4th of July.  We watched it on television this year.  The United States Navy Band virtual choir sang "This is My Country."  The United States Marine Band played Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" remotely during the fireworks over the capital, canons thundering.  Cece Winans reached toward the sky with her version of "Lift Every Voice and Sing."  The New York Philharmonic played "America the Beautiful" from as many different locations as instruments.  The Harlem Gospel Singers sang remotely.  Split-screen to the Empire State all in red, white and blue.  All the pageantry that we love on the Fourth.  Maybe you were watching.

It was a welcome break all of this, against the backdrop of protests and a pandemic.  Most experts think our country has mismanaged the coronavirus, which is increasing in almost every state.   Earlier in the day we had watched the news.  The virus is on a frightening rampage in Florida where my brother lives.  Over 11,000 new cases per day!  Beaches, restaurants and bars are re-closing but not fast enough.  Hospitals are full. When have we had to worry about that before? 

In South Dakota Trump held another rally.  People mingled freely without face masks.  Such a cheap and easy preventative measure.  One doctor compared the lack of care for self and others to a kind of Jonestown mentality. Remember Jonestown? I do.  On November 18, 1978, more than 900 members of an American cult died in a mass suicide-murder under the direction of their leader Jim Jones. They drank kool-aid laced with cyanide because he told them to, and watched each other drop. Children too.  Such is the power of demagoguery.    

The coronavirus task force says we will be living in this pandemic for the foreseeable future.  We did so well shutting down.  But our gains may have been cancelled by now.  Too many reopened too early and too aggressively.  Too much mistaken feeling of invincibility.  Going mask-less as a symbol.  I could go on. . . we all could.

I do believe in America the Beautiful.  I've been in too many national parks to doubt that. It is my country.  And yours.  All of ours. 

I don't want to be a citizen anywhere else.  But on this July 4th there is both pride and some shame.  Perhaps every year should have been like that, and has been for many. But this year everything is heightened.  Pride in the peaceful protesters, with Black Lives Matter already determined to be the largest movement in U.S. history.  Some shame in perhaps having wasted the sacrifices of so many by allowing, and even encouraging, the resurgence of coronavirus cases.  So, as we learned in law school but didn't need law school to know:  everything cuts both ways.  Love, pride, fear, concern. . . .

We go forward. 

A LIFE THAT TAKES ITS TIME, PART II

"Do Your Best to Enjoy Today"

After all why not?  Why would we ever put NO EFFORT into enjoying our day? We owe ourselves that much.  This week a friend made room for four of us on her patio.  With all the time now to tend and putter at home, her garden was perfect.  Shady, weeded, bursting with color (bright blue hydrangeas), with paths, stone borders and a bubbling fountain.
 

Blue Hydrangea

We all got caught up on how we're coping and who we're missing.  A needed break from the news cycle, which is worse than it has been in many of our lifetimes.  (I'm not going to talk about the disconnect between our president congratulating himself while we have the highest death tally in the world . . . Well, OK, but that one sentence is it.) 

Last night other friends with a lovely back garden, au naturel with volunteer seedlings, wild violets and a hodge podge of paving stones, brick and weathered concrete, had us over.  I feel grateful. 

 

Then this afternoon I went back to Irene and Astrid's A Book that Takes its Time ("A Life that Takes its Time," 6/17/20) and came across these lines from a poem by Octavio Paz (1914-1998), winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 1990:

  "All is visible and all elusive,

 all is near and can't be touched. . . . 

Time throbbing in my temples repeats 

the same unchanging syllable of blood.

. . .                 

Motionless, 

I stay and go:  I am a pause."

               Between Going and Staying

I think this feels like now. I too am a pause some days.  Things can seem near but unreachable.  The poem is bittersweet. 

Then this: 

   Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone. 

This charming book also has a chapter on why we might want to leave our comfort zones.  The author, journalist Caroline Buijs, writes that everyone needs to go on having new experiences if only because they make our lives seem longer.   I never thought of that as a reason for new experiences. Of course, we've all had to postpone many of our anticipated ventures for this year.  But I think it's true that we have also found ways to expand our worlds and that having time to think is something we can use to our advantage. 

I like some of our new habits: entertaining just a few friends at a time and outdoors; shopping quickly and less often; more time with the person I love. Many of us even like having fewer choices. We're all finding new ways to cope with uncertainty, some quite simple like today:  Saturday afternoon skillet-popped corn and a movie.  I hope you're enjoying your day too. 

Midsummer Geranium

  

   

  

A LIFE THAT TAKES ITS TIME

Somehow we believe  our lives are more worthwhile when we do as much as possible.  There must be research on this.  Our Puritan heritage?  The status of busyness?  For many, most of the day is planned time. True for me for most of my life. 

I was given a lovely present, A Book that Takes its Time by Irene Smit and Astrid Van Der Hulst.  It seems like the perfect present for these days.  In North Carolina coronavirus cases are still rising and my life is the most unhurried it has ever been.  Same with the rest of our family.  On-line summer art classes; working from home; child care; walking the dogs; weighing who we can visit with and where.  The children have been told that Fall semester will be distance learning again.  So although life is crazy there is also more time to breathe.  Right now my husband and I are sheltering at the beach where nothing much needs doing.  I hope your mind has a chance to clear too.  

This book has pull-outs, punch-outs and fill-ins.  Among them are 48 Notecards on which to write a Beautiful Moment.  

I love filling these in.  I went back in time for some moments, ones that are precious.  Like, May 2005:  my son calling to say "No son ever loved a mother more than I love you."  (That may be my lifetime #1.)  Another from May 2005:  when I told my mom, "Mom, we have no issues," and it was true, always true.  

Other simpler recurring Beautiful Moments:  my husband making my morning tea; sunset from our Adirondack chairs;  when I hear the words, "Hi Grandma."   I wrote one today.  "Today I found 20 Augers!"  Those little predatory marine sea snails that leave a spiral shell that resembles a slender screw or an auger.  I like to think it takes a trained eye to spot that many in the piles of broken shells left after the tide recedes. 

Today's Treasures

I have a large decorative bottle full that belonged to my mother.  I imagine her bending and picking up each one, then washing it and dropping it through the narrow mouth into the bottle. 

If you have some time, try remembering your Beautiful Moments.  Where could you keep them?  On craft paper in a tin or jar?  Part of taking care of ourselves.

There's also a chapter in the book by Lissette Thooft (Dutch writer, b. 1953) about another way to live more slowly.  It has to do with waiting for things--sort of like we are now.  Waiting to see friends, waiting to travel, waiting to hug each other when greeting, waiting for a vaccine, for normalcy, in America waiting for the presidential election . . . .   While our waiting now is nothing any of us particularly want, in general, experts say,  anticipation is good for us; anticipation produces dopamine, the chemical that makes us feel good.  Things and experiences gain value when we wait for them.  We've all noticed that haven't we?  What we may have taken for granted 6 months ago we now yearn for. 

The instant gratification we've become accustomed to may be a form of greed.  I know I can get almost angry just watching my computer buffer.  Perhaps patience is a kind of generosity  People who can have whatever they want as soon as they want it may end up feeling empty and disappointed (or in debt). Waiting for something good may bring us greater satisfaction.  The quiet enjoyment of a goal reached.  It may make us realize that life is worth waiting for.  

More on this charming book later.  

 






    



  

  














 

TODAY, A DAY OF NOURISHMENT

Some days I wake up and think no news, just the good stuff.  Admittedly that's easier at the beach.  More good stuff here.  For most of today the sea and sky were the same steely gray.  Nothing wrong with that.  Now it's brighter and there's a horizon in view.  

So what good thing to do on a gray day with an hour or two home alone?  I wrote.  I'm taking part in a clinical study sponsored by Duke Integrative Medicine on the benefits of expressive writing in a time of crisis.   I hadn't before keyed into the idea of expressive writing as writing just for ourselves.  Wide-open, so to speak, about our feelings and emotions rather than factually writing about events, memories, objects or people.  Of course the events, memories, etc. are there, the underpinnings of our feelings.  Our feelings and emotions are about something. 

I didn't write today as part of the study; that writing is only done together, in a weekly 90-minute Zoom session with professionally designed prompts.  But like that writing, this would be read by no one but me. 

One psychologist says that writing can sometimes be better for our mental health than seeing a therapist.  Not sure about that, but I get her point.  It can be hard to be vulnerable and honest with another person, any person. Too many layers, too much background, too expensive, too exposed, possibly hurtful . . . .  But writing what no one else sees can be as honest as our minds are capable of.  A way to process experiences, stressors and thoughts that costs not one penny.  If we're writing about something that bothers us, it's out of our head and on the paper.  I suppose we could even take the paper, fold it up and put it somewhere if we wanted a symbolic action of removal. 

If we're writing our feelings of gratitude, how much more vivid they become when we search and tag our lives for the things that buoy us.  Professionals say that writing improves our immune systems as well as our minds.  I know that I immediately become calmer when I open my Prayer Journal--I remind myself of Pavlov's dogs (or my own):  stimulus/response.  My breathing slows, my body settles in the chair.  Yoga, mindfulness, exercise, prayer, writing, nature, meditation--all benefits to mind, body and spirit.  What else?

So today has been a day of nourishment.  Like the balance I wrote about a couple of days ago ("A Crazy Balanced Life, Even Now," 6/8/20).  The news will be there tomorrow.  For today, writing, a healthy lunch, walking the dog in the rain, publishing this post . . . and it's still early.  I hope all is going well for you too.                          
                                                        Nina Naomi

PS.  "If someone you love, real or imaginary, were feeling just as you are, what encouragement would you give them?"  It's an awesome prompt!  Write for 10 minutes.