BIG FEELS ABOUT BECOMING A PILL FOR OTHERS TO SWALLOW:
I have a theory to pose in the form of a question: How many of us have been responding to the current global issues by reverting to our childhood ways of coping with stress?
I ask because I’m noticing this in myself. My way of coping in a chaotic and stressful household was to become quieter and smaller while absorbing the stressors of everyone around me, thinking that if I could become perfect and easy, that I could be swallowed like a pill—taking their pain and turning it into medicine.
The world is nothing if not chaotic and stressful at the moment, and I caught myself doing this again—absorb, absorb, shrink, shrink, swallow, swallow.
Children are dead, the earth is so hot, money is short, the bad flu is still here, I’m back at work, I pushed myself too hard, I’m tired, tired, tired, and things are changing, lots of things, lots of change.
I laughed when I realized what I was doing. An overwhelmed, incredulous, hysterical laugh. How can I absorb a whole world of pain? How can I ever hope to swallow enough of it, to shrink small enough, to create the medicine to fix it all?
It didn’t work with my family. It won’t work now.
But I’ve learned this lesson already, so I know what to do instead. Define my own values and priorities. Connect and collaborate with the people who love me and don’t ask for too much. Take up every hard earned inch of space that I have.
My power as the individual is the little moments, the kind interactions, the gentle acceptance that love is free and pain is here, intermingled.
Talk soon,
Natahna
The recommends: Dream Pops in Matcha Vanilla or Mango Rosemary (I get them from Superstore). This is not a drill.
The part that got me was this: “absorb, absorb, shrink, shrink, swallow, swallow.” I didn’t want it to be true but it was. Like you, everything feels too much right now. But if I can focus on the things that nourish me, I’ll be able to tackle the nebulous everything — in time.