Tag: fear

Awkwardly shamelessly human

So much of every day we do what we do and we don’t what we don’t because of a “supposed to” feeling. Many of these arbitrary standards, none of us even like anymore, but we don’t dare color outside the lines about them.

Most of us don’t dance when we want to dance. Most people don’t even want to dance when our bodies are happy or emotional. Because you don’t. You just don’t. You’re supposed to save dancing for where it belongs and then be one of those enviable people who can switch it on.

Most of us answer “pretty good, thanks” when we for sure aren’t pretty good, thanks, because this is just what you do. Because letting your lip quiver and eyes go misty is strange and uncomfortable and friendship is not what friends are for.

Most of us wear the clothes we’re supposed to wear, order the drink we’re supposed to like, keep the job we’re supposed to have, say the things we’re supposed to say, stay alone like we’re supposed to stay alone.

If rewards and punishments and hierarchies and shame and norms and rules and expectations all disappeared, would you sing more? Would you hug more? Would you enjoy your food more? Would you jump in a lake with your clothes on more or at least lay on a beach more? Would you share more and ask more? Would you slow down more and put your phone away and actually rub your dog’s belly for more hours? Would you ask for what you truly want more? Would you laugh more? Would you maybe even do that 6-year-old thing again where you say “Hey, can we be friends?” and suddenly find that the human life isn’t quite so lonely without all the shame?

What if doing what you’re supposed to do and don’ting what you’re supposed to don’t is suffocating you? What if humans aren’t supposed to robot?

When do we get to meet shameless you?

Photo by Lyssi

~

Want some more reminders for your awkwardly shamelessly human journey?

Roots

What are your roots?

And who told you?

Therapy homework one year consisted of writing the letter to my parents that I’d probably never send but always needed to write. At the time, the words gushed like a fresh wound–thousands and thousands and I never even reached the end. At the time, reading what I wrote and sharing bits and pieces became a cathartic therapy for me. It felt a bit like watching the wound scab over. Last week–and I don’t remember why–I pulled the letter up again. This time it felt strangely foreign. Oh I remember every second, but it’s not . . . I just don’t . . . need to remember anymore? It feels a little gratuitous now?

If I decide to go back, I can remember the odd and dizzying experience of trying to find my footing as a 20-year-old in a reality very different than the one I grew up in. Slowly dicing onions with shaking hands, I would contribute some thought to the chatter, something I thought sounded normal, and the whole Chipotle crew would fall silent and turn to look at me a little too curiously. Like I was from a different planet. We’d open the doors to a stream of normal people on their normal lunch breaks, and as I looked down and fidgeted with the tortilla press I would deliver the tense line, “What can I get for you?” over and over until Max stepped in with some brotherly taunting to teach me how to speak terrifyingly confident greetings, like “Well hey there, what brings you in today?!” My shoulders tightened progressively through the day until I ended my shift with a splitting headache and found myself back in bed crying over how completely lost I was.

Memories like these once served a useful purpose in fortifying my rejection of the world I had known where there were no crowds of normal people and I wasn’t allowed to get a job and rarely allowed to go to a friends’ house. The memories helped me prove to others (really so that I could prove to myself) that my childhood had been dysfunctional, that it was a culty experience that left me helpless in the outside world, and that I was right to get out when I could.

But now the memories feel, as I said, a little gratuitous. Like re-watching a bloody surgery I don’t need to re-watch. Reading my letter with its story after story of weird abuse doesn’t seem therapeutic anymore, at least for now. That time of uprooting is done.

We all come with confusing stories about who we are, why we are, where we must be headed, and what is even going on in this strange world. Many of these stories we’ve accepted from others, and they can feel set in stone. The stories speak of values deeply ingrained by our families, or by our cultures large and small. Values we rarely stop to question. Assumptions rooted deep within our psyches. Truths rooted deep within our bodies.

And then when things hit just enough of a chaos point, just enough dissonance and impossibility, just enough crashing and burning–we sometimes get to see that these roots may have been quite arbitrary, and realize it’s time to dig ourselves out.

So we uproot and replant. Or uproot and be blown around a lot and maybe never replant. Life can be hard and is different for each of us.

Uprooting, by the way, is not always a choice and is rarely pleasant. It takes courage and it usually means having hit a low point. So when you see someone uprooted–whether they’re still blowing in the wind or have found different soil–remember compassion.

So what were you told were your roots? Were they really roots for you? And are they still? And do they have to be? And are they allowing you to grow beautifully? Or are they stifling and starving you?

When I wake up in the middle of the night and, with the willpower of a person half asleep and half needing a distraction from the high pollen count, find myself scrolling from Kyiv bombings to missiles in the Korean peninsula to a senator swearing assault rifle regulation is off the table to a rich bully threatening the employees who make him his money to a major news outlet reporting on a major celebrity stating the least sexy thing a guy can do is fart to a money guru tweeting in all caps about the economy crashing and how you need to buy silver . . . it makes me wonder where my roots are?

I think a lot of us these days are finding ourselves tangled in news feeds. Somehow supposed to digest a thousand threats and crises and scandals and tragedies and offenses during an afternoon on the couch. Until we’re left with no willpower and little imagination and just a fizzle of who we were somewhere deep inside, sputtering a little weaker each day.

And then there are those who have a firm foundation from which to accuse and judge and know. Simple arguments and convenient theories and too much confidence and too narrow a window on the world. Some of us live with unquestioned roots that explain everything for us so that we’re not lost and anxious and we know exactly how it will all turn out. Until something drags us down into the street and exposes just how full our society is of things we don’t know, don’t understand, and wish we hadn’t seen, but can’t unsee.

In my experience, the logic-y, dogma-ish roots are too dry and inflexible and they tend to snap when life gets stormy enough. Which may be why despite hundreds of millions of people who are pretty sure they know what’s up, our society seems to blindly stumble from year to year, blaming and blaming and never quite fixing.

And if you also find yourself sleepless some nights, I wonder how your body itself may support you with its own roots in those worried moments. When all the reasons and plans and budgets and jobs and rules and structures and explanations aren’t working for you, maybe your breath will still sustain you like it always has, and your feet will find they’re still rooted to the ground, and you’re still alive, and you’re still here, and you can still touch and taste and see and hear and feel and laugh and cry and hug and dance and sing and do the body things that don’t require a credit score or a stock exchange.

Your feet can’t tell you why the world is the way it is today. Your hands can’t tell you where we’re headed. Your breath can’t change the trajectory of humanity–except that it can calm and center you and that a bunch of you’s make up humanity and that maybe if we all stopped to breathe calmly our trajectory may change. You, though, in your body, right now, can’t solve it all. But I think it’s your chaotic, scrolling brain that is insisting you find all the solutions–not your body. I think your body is just waiting for you to drop in and find the same aliveness and ease that you did as a running and pushing and swinging and bouncing and singing child, before you joined the world of the adults who have to know it all.

Today, your feet and your hands and your belly and your lungs and your movement and your stillness and your ears and your eyes and even your nose and your mouth can be your roots to a different kind of place, a different state. Not one of fixing or judgment or worry or need. One of aliveness, of being. And with those roots you may find some rest and peace.

And while the world needs you to come back to the work from time to time, when you find yourself blowing in the wind I wish you the courage to let the wind blow around you as you feel the ground with your feet and enjoy being a body.

~

Let’s find roots together as we go? Email address below. <3

Shake-offs and yawns and a rough couple years

Some things really stress Junko out. When she’s having more fun than she knows how to express and suddenly hears the words “Gentle–no bite!” When we won’t let her hunt the backyard bunnies. Or when, despite her curious, sweet puppy-dog-eyes, we finish the last of our human-food without sharing. When these things happen, Junko does a BIG yawn or a floppy shake-off, and then she feels better.

At a funeral in America, everyone wears black, and you may hear some quiet sniffles, and a few reliefy chuckles when someone “lightens” the mood with a joke the deceased would have appreciated.

When I walked out of the Addis Ababa airport, I witnessed grief given a voice: A loving crowd following a coffin, many joining their voices in ululation, some openly wailing for their lost loved one.

Back when I was aggressively hit on the bottom most days by my parents, to make me a better person, a few commands always followed: Some weird ones like being told to say “thank you.” And one particularly problematic one: “Cry quietly.”

It’s such a cultural thing you and I have grown up with: Emotions are to be not seen, and not heard. Especially the yucky ones, like anger or grief. We don’t wail.

When an antelope suddenly sees a lion spring out of the tall grass, it gets a sudden rush of hormones and it flies across the savannah. After a minute or two the lion tires out, and the antelope can calm down and return to grazing, the panicky energy having dissipated through its pumping legs.

Stressful experiences give us certain energies: Hormones like adrenaline, or emotions like sadness, fear, or anger. These energies serve purposes and have natural outlets so they don’t get stuck.

Animals are great at giving the energy an outlet to serve its purpose, run its course, and dissipate. Junko violently shakes her body to release the pent up frustration.

Some humans are great at expressing and releasing. Like people who wail, who dance, who punch, who scream into a pillow.

And some of us, instead, just manage the energy.

And slowly implode with unresolved, ever-growing stress.

~

Nobody is “doing well” these days, right? At least not many. The world is struggling. Our country is struggling. My co-workers and friends are struggling. I’m struggling.

COVID and masks and staying at home and no more hugs and over a million dead just in America. The election with all its still leftover yard signs and whatever the hell happened on January 6. Social media and hate. Family members that are seeing each other’s real values and not sure if they’re meshable. Inflation. Racism, arguments over whether racism even exists, hate crimes, police brutality, protests, national guard convoys, tear gas, and threats to use the US military against our own population. Oh and inflation. Short-staffing. Complete disconnect and hatred of left vs right. Russia and Ukraine and nervous questions about nuclear bombs. Mass shootings becoming tragically normal. Increasing suicide rates accompanying a growing mental health crisis. Texas blizzards knocking out power, paid for by all of us everywhere. End-of-times-looking wildfires in Australia. Hurricane force winds throughout the last month in my Minnesota backyard. Baseball-sized hail. All the biggest, baddest, unprecedentedest weather events in recorded history. Millions of traumatized nurses and doctors and teachers, arguments over whether their trauma even exists. And are the bees still dying? And now robots keep trying to follow me on Instagram and other robots are busy ringing a phone that I can’t get away from. Oh and did I mention inflation? And this is just scratching the surface of our universal sh**show–we haven’t even gotten to our individual heartaches, like losing jobs, losing loved ones, chronic pain and illnesses, and I still cry sometimes about Willoughby dying.

That is a lot of energy.

And it needs to go somewhere. Except you’re not supposed to wail.

~

All that energy. Where is it supposed to go?

Sometimes the energy gets so big and loud that people do really sad things to other people. But it doesn’t have to be like that. There are healthy ways you can use that energy.

Remember the scene in Footloose where he angry-dances? I want to be like that scene when I grow up. It is an amazing answer to life.

Did you know that scared energy and excited energy aren’t that different physically? When you’re about to speak in front of a group, and you start feeling a little floaty and buzzy and shaky and fluttery, it’s similar to when you see your crush.

The good and the bad in life is constantly giving your body energy to respond. It’s revving you up for something. You could let it out by hurting people. Some do. I think you don’t want that, though. In fact, I think you’re trying so hard to not do bad things with all the anger and fear and sadness and stress that you’re holding it tightly deep in your chest. For years. And each day it’s getting a little harder.

What if you could let that energy out before it makes you sick or explodes at the people you love?

What if you could dance?

Or run?

Or sing?

Or drive hours into the dark night, letting the tears flow, or write it all down.

Or play a loud, low, angry sounding key on the piano, like sweet old Mr. Rogers in the movie It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.

What if it’s actually really healthy to scream in your car?

What if you could laugh harder than you’ve ever laughed over a game with your friends until your stomach aches and you feel lighter than you’ve felt in 3 years?

What if yoga would help you release the heartbreak?

What if swimming underwater could calm your body? (It does. Google “diving reflex.”)

What if you could just SAY that frustrated truth you haven’t been saying to your partner? And not watered down?

What if something as simple as humming could let out all that overwhelming energy?

I was raised to cry quietly. I bet you were, too. We Americans are conditioned to be tough and pleasant. Until we snap.

But when she’s upset, Junko yawns and does a shake-off. Some cultures wail loudly for their lost loved ones. Both these options look and sound weird, but they work. They’re so healthy.

I think that we all have a lot of hard energy right now. Sad. Angry. Confused. Overwhelmed. Exhausted.

How will you release it?

(No seriously, tell me–we all need ideas right now.)

~

We need each other these days. If I can be there for you through this blog, put your email below.

The not good enough thing

I haven’t met a person that really, deep down, is always confident that they’re good enough.

Nobody thinks they’re doing enough.

And nobody thinks they’re doing it well enough.

And nobody thinks all their efforts are good enough for them to be loved,

let alone good enough for them to not be exposed as a fraud.

It’s not just you. We’re all “not good enough,” and it seems like that may just be good enough to keep the world spinning and people hugging.

/*-+++++++++++++++++ <- Junko typed all those symbols. She really wants to go for a walk. Junko also is good enough.

~

Can I send you a copy whenever I write stuff about being human?

Deeper

Do you ever catch yourself looking into someone’s eyes just a little longer and thinking “holy **** there’s an actual person in there!” before quickly breaking eye contact and saying something like “ugh, winter” or “thank god it’s Friday” just to lighten the tension of the tangible spirituality you just experienced between two powerfully human beings?

How much energy do we spend trying to avoid seeing each other as humans and deeply connecting?

And then, once we’ve carefully avoided truly connecting, how much TV do we watch alone on the couch wishing that we had someone there to talk to? But like to really talk to?

And then when we do find someone to talk to, how quickly do we replace the magical mystery of deep connection with a less fragile, less volatile, maybe less explosive normalcy like “how was your day?” again or “what do you want to watch?”

Really seeing someone is uncomfortable. Really being seen is uncomfortable.

When someone says “Hey. . . . how are you really doing?” there’s this strange hit–half ecstasy, half terror.

Deep connection is too good.

And full of too much potential.

So we sign it away in exchange for casual predictability.

No more rocking the boat of our lives or each other’s lives. Safe familiarity. Safe predictability. Safe blandness.

Safe nothingness.

Lonely nothingness.

And then one day we dare to hold someone’s gaze a little longer and speak with a deeply felt emotion for the first time since high school. And the possibilities of being a human and how magical it is come flooding back.

How many words do you speak in a day? And of those, how many do you actually care to speak? How many of your words are just social lubricant so you can avoid honesty and vulnerability and connection? Tailored to avoid the smallest chance that you’ll reach your tender, childlike hands out for connection and be rejected again?

Toughness is manufactured. Toughness is protection against the chance of experiencing the pain that can come along with being deeply human. And so toughness accidentally protects us from the magic of being human at all.

But what would happen if you looked someone in the eye just a little longer and said something like “Hey . . . I appreciate you.” . . . ? Or even the terrifying baggagey words that you’ve learned not to use, or at least to breeze quickly through, diluted with as much casualness as you can muster: “I love you.”

What if you risked connection?

What if you risked touching souls with someone?

What if someone else is waiting for the same thing?

Do you think the weather could wait?

Is it scary? Yeah. Yeah, it is. We’ve all tried before and failed.

As a kid, I laid it all out there with my crush after years of “being mature” about stuffing my feelings, until she’d thoroughly moved on, and I realized I had to go ahead and speak from my heart, and . . . well, it didn’t go as planned.

Then as a young adult, I shared with my mom some deep feeling of sadness over leaving my students, and she just brushed it aside and updated me on her garden or something and it felt so yucky.

I learned it’s safer to stay surface level. “How’s work?” when I’m really more interested in how my friend is doing on their insides. I learned to make sure there’s an “activity” planned instead of just inviting someone to be together to be together.

This is a lot of rambling.

Okay.

I guess what I’m saying is,

it’s not too late,

look at someone in the eye,

see that they are a human,

feel that you are a human,

and say something real.

Live your deep humanity.

Don’t live a script.

Let your insides out a little.

Not every place is a safe place,

but I think we live as if there are no safe places,

and a world with no safe places isn’t the world you’re looking for.

You know at least, like, 20 people. Chances are, one of them you could get real with. And find in that realness–that connection–a strange feeling of care and love and aliveness and togetherness and magic that you haven’t felt since you were listening to Death Cab for Cutie as a teenager.

You’re allowed to go off script and show up as your deeply human self. And it just may free someone else who needs the same thing.

Get weirdly connecty.

Sending you love today. <3

~

Can we stay connected?