Hot yoga and sitting with your pain

I recently listened to Glennon Doyle’s book Love Warrior (which I highly recommend) and was struck by Doyle’s recollection of an experience she faced during her separation from her husband. She describes how one day, she accidentally found herself in a hot yoga class, expecting it to be a regular air-conditioned yoga class. Instead of joining the others in the stretches, she sat on her mat and let herself feel her pain. She had been distracting herself from it, keeping busy with her children and with writing, and this was the first time she sat and faced it. She chose to not run away.

And I realized how guilty I am and have often been of distracting myself from my pain. I’m a private person and prefer to grieve alone, and these days, I am hardly ever alone. But even when I do have time to myself—after the kids are in bed, for example—I do whatever is fun or engaging. It’s not even necessarily that I am currently in pain or grieving any recent loss, although right now I am. Sometimes the pain is years old and has just never been felt because I’ve pushed it away.

There are so many losses I have not let myself fully grieve, actually sitting with my pain. My favorite person in the world, my grandpa, passed away six years ago, and I foolishly missed my chance to say goodbye. I came home from his memorial service directly into a separation from my husband that led, several months later, to divorce.

When my husband left us, I didn’t have--make--time to grieve. I jumped right into the job search and taking care of my kids as a single mom.

A year later, another of my favorite people, my high school mentor, died after a five-year fight against ALS.

When my coworker Sarah died suddenly this past May during the birth of her beautiful baby girl, I actually sat in my pain. The people around me pushed me to feel the grief and made space to process the loss. I didn’t know Sarah half as well as I’d have liked, but she was so precious, and knowing how much the others around me were hurting actually validated my own pain. I wept for Sarah and those she left behind. And the act of weeping in itself was healing.

But grief doesn’t just come in the deaths of loved ones; it comes in transitions, in losses of ability, losses of fellowship, losses of stability. When a friendly coworker moved away to pursue graduate studies, I experienced loss that I never processed. Even in this, our most recent move, leaving people and a job I loved—and faculty who really got me—I experienced loss.

I used to consider myself a pessimist. Then I referred to myself as a realist. My psychology faculty last year let me know that realists aren’t on the spectrum of optimism to pessimism, that “realists” are actually pessimists. I’m still not entirely convinced, but in the consideration of the point, I’ve begun to classify myself as a reluctant optimist. Don’t get me wrong: I still get depressed about certain things, such as the state of our presidency and the plight of people in Syria. But in day-to-day things, I have forced myself to be positive, to hope for the best, to tell myself, “It will all work out somehow.” And I actually believe it. Maybe this is because of a family history of clinical depression. Maybe I’m just frightened that if I lower myself into my pain, I won’t be able to climb out again and will only sink deeper and deeper into darkness. Maybe. But whatever the reason, I make myself face forward probably more often than is healthy. I have no desire to wallow in despair for the things in my past I cannot change, but moving forward in a healthy way does require acknowledging and experiencing the pain.

Since Sarah’s death in May, I have lost two other people I liked and respected—a caring therapist who doubled as one of my Psychology faculty, and a mission-field “uncle” I’ve known since I was nine years old who doubled as one of my Family Medicine faculty. Both deaths were sudden, and my heart aches in their loss. So I will choose to make time this week—maybe even tonight—to sit with my pain, to let myself feel their loss. 

It will perhaps be my final act of love.

Cross-Country Cruisin 2019 - Day 4

Day 4: Idaho Falls, Idaho, to Red Lodge, Montana
Miles: 309
States: Idaho, Wyoming, Montana

Day 4: Yellowstone National Park (July 7)

Today, we went to Yellowstone! We drove to Montana from Idaho Falls. Took a few pictures of the Montana sign, and drove to Yellowstone.

Yellowstone isn’t like Zion. In Zion, you park, get in a shuttle, and you’re in Zion. The only way to get to things is the shuttle. In Yellowstone, you’re driving around and looking at things from your car. You can get out, though. We saw elk, bison, and rabbits. The first animal I saw was a bison. We took pictures of it. We then saw geysers. There were a bunch of them!!

The best thing was Old Faithful. We saw that after lunch, which was a very fancy bison burger at a very fancy restaurant(I was not made for a fancy restaurant). We went to the gift shop and got a few keychains and postcards. After that, we were heading toward the exit, which was about 100 miles from where we were. Luckily, we had a book to listen to called Cress.

Yellowstone Lake

After we finally got out of the park, we went towards the mountains, where there was a bunch of snow.

We were so high up!! We were 11,000 feet high.

It was amazing. It took us a while to get to our hotel. After we got there, we put our stuff down and went swimmin’.

Wyoming-Montana border on the Beartooth Hwy

Cross-Country Cruisin' 2019 - Day 3

Day 3: St. George, Utah, to Idaho Falls, Idaho
Miles: 514
States: Utah, Idaho

From Tim:

Day 3: Driving again (July 6)

Today, we were driving from St. George, UT, to Idaho Falls, ID. It was a long day. We drove for about seven hours. It took us nine hours total to actually get there. We watched Iron Man and Captain America: Winter Soldier. We also listened to my playlist on the way. It wasn’t a very active day.

Here’s a link to my playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6s42Lk4mjfKObJL57pFxZ7

Cross-Country Cruisin' 2019 - Day 2

Day 2: St. George, Utah, to Zion National Park and back
Miles: 88
States: Utah

Here's Tim's entry from Day 2.

Day 2: Zion National Park (July 5)

The journey to Zion took us about an hour. I was asleep for most of it because I was awake late the night before. Once we got there, we parked in the nearest town and waited for a shuttle to come and take us to the entrance to Zion. We had gotten to the entrance when we realized we had forgotten our National Parks Passports, so they couldn’t be stamped. We got the annual pass so that we could go to any National Park for free for one year. 

We walked to the bathrooms first and passed an enormous line. I thought, “Lucky we don’t have to wait in that line.” We went to the bathrooms and headed toward the visitors center to look around. We looked around and left. We realized that the line was for the shuttle, which was the only way to get anywhere. We had to wait in the line for an hour and a half, standing in the hot sun. For some parts, it was shady. After the wait, we finally got onto the shuttle and headed toward the Zion Lodge, where we could eat. We went to the restaurant and bought (overpriced) burgers. Anna got pizza (typical Anna). After eating, we went to the bathroom and got on a shuttle. We got off at the last stop. There is an entrance to a riverside hike at the last stop. We didn’t go on the hike, but we did get into the water. It was really cold!! I eventually got used to it, though. I got completely wet. We spent 45 minutes to an hour there. When we finally got back to the shuttle stop, there was a long line again. Luckily, it wasn’t as long as the one in the beginning. We got back to the front of the park and bought a few postcards and a puzzle at the store. We left the park and headed home/hotel. We swam for 30 minutes and then left. After that, we went to bed.

Cross-Country Cruisin' 2019 - Day 1

If you read my blog but don't follow me on Facebook, you may not already know that the kids and I are moving to Fairfax, VA, in the greater DC area, for a year or two. We're currently on our way across the country, seeing what and whom we can along the way!

Day 1: Bakersfield, California, to St. George, Utah
Miles: 412
States: California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah

Here's Timothy's take on our first day of traveling.

Day 1: Driving (July 4)

After days of packing, the day came. We left just before 10:30 this morning. We had to do multiple sweeps before we were sure that we were good to go. I had made a playlist to listen to on the way to Utah. We had just started driving and listening to the playlist when Grandpa told us that there was a 6.6 earthquake in the Mojave Desert. We were heading there and had just missed it. The trip was going to take around six hours and for the first few hours, I was fine just listening to the music, but then the playlist ended, and I didn’t want to eat all of our food in one drive. After the playlist ended, it started to get boring because nobody wanted to play the games I wanted to play. We couldn’t find the visitors center going into Nevada, so we decided to try the one leaving Nevada. Unfortunately, it was closed for the 4th of July. We had just gotten back on the road when we realized we were now in Arizona. We hadn’t realized that we had to go through a little bit of Arizona to get to Utah. The scenery in Arizona was beautiful!! We passed through a mountain river gorge, and the view was remarkable.

Virgin River Gorge, AZ

We got to our hotel and went to Cracker Barrel for dinner. After that, we went swimming! We weren’t there for very long (Anna got cold), so we went to bed.

Broken-hearted

I want to be real. I want to be authentic. Today that means being raw and bleeding. I am caught amid anger and frustration and pain beyond description.

I used to be one of many white middle-class Americans who could afford to be apolitical. I didn't vote for Obama because I thought being pro-life was too important, but I couldn't vote against him because I knew he was a good president. Oh, what I would give to go back and vote for him not once but twice! I used to be able to afford to ignore the issues and go on living a quiet, unobtrusive life. That was before Trayvon Martin, before Weinstein, before a racist misogynist became president. The more time goes by, the less apolitical I can be, and the more angry and deeply wounded I become.

I wish I could put on a thick skin and ignore it all. I wish all of the events on the news didn't trigger the fire of emotion in me. I wish I were not terrified about my son's being the victim of police brutality. I wish I were not terrified of my daughter's being the victim of sexual assault from an acquaintance. But I am terrified.

I wish I could dismiss the stories of children being separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. I wish I could ignore the stories of people fighting for survival in Syria, where the U.S. has denied funding and aid. I wish I didn't care. But I do care.

I feel helpless and hopeless. I'm only one person, and the darkness around me is closing in, trapping me. Every conversation I have seems to deepen the despair. I've been called disrespectful, irrational, overemotional, rude, hypocritical, curt, sharp. It is true that I am most offensive when I am hurting most.

I admit I can't see it from your perspective. I don't want to. Even trying to think the way you do makes me feel physically ill. I am hard-headed and stubborn. I don't want to understand why you support our president. I don't want to understand why you loathe Colin Kaepernick. I don't want to understand how you can rationalize owning semi-automatic weapons. I don't want to understand how you can justify the confirmation of Kavanaugh. It's true; I don't want to understand. I don't want to climb inside your head and find common ground. How can there be any?

And I'm tired of the trite admonition to pray for peace, to let Jesus handle it all, to give it to God. As if that actually solved anything, as though Jesus were a fairy godmother brandishing a wand so we could all marry a rich prince. Praying for peace doesn't keep bad things from happening. Trusting in God won't keep Tim from getting shot by a cop for doing absolutely nothing wrong, or keep Anna from being assaulted by a drunk boy from school. Leaving it in God's hands means we are either despairing at effecting change or admitting we don't care enough to say or do anything.

My heart is full of despair, but I don't want to give up, and I do care. I want to be active. I don't know how yet, but if I don't get off my sorry little butt and get involved, I will continue to spiral down into the darkness of despair.

As for this blog, maybe it is time for it to die. Everything I want to say John Pavlovitz or Jen Hatmaker has pretty much already said. I can't be eloquent when I am so discouraged. Everything else in my life seems petty compared to the Big Picture. My words are gone. They've all dried up, and all I am left with is ashes.

Staying put

In the past 13 years, I have moved a lot. Really, a lot. I have said many farewells. I grew up on farewells, so in some ways, they're just a part of the life I've always known - more so than for most people, I think. But for the past 13 years, I've usually been the one doing the leaving. Somehow this has made goodbyes much more bearable, less traumatic. I couldn't say why, but it's much easier to say goodbye when I'm the one leaving, when the departure is at least partially my own choice.

For the first time in over a decade - maybe even since college - I'm saying farewells because I am being left behind. This time, the people I hold dear are moving on to bigger and better things, and I am stuck here without them. Don't misunderstand me: I am thrilled that the ones I love and respect have opportunities to grow and enrich their lives. I am thankful and excited for them. I would not want them to stay here without room to grow. But the moving on, as always, is bittersweet. And because if has been so long since I've been the one left behind, my heart is beginning to break in a way that had become almost entirely unfamiliar to me. It has been so long that I honestly don't know how I'm going to cope.

Until the final farewells are said, I will just have to treasure each moment, each laugh, and steel myself for the coming emptiness, the impending silence.

For silence will fall.

A taxi to market

One Saturday, Mom tells Lisa and me that we're going downtown to the market to buy cloth to make us each a Nigerian outfit. We have to put on long skirts and sneakers, she says, because we'll be doing a lot of walking. 

"Are we walking all the way downtown?" I ask, my eyes wide. Mom smiles and shakes her head. 

"No," she says, "Aunt Janne is going to show us how to get a taxi." I have never ridden in a taxi before and start to skip around the house, putting a long skirt on over my shorts and tying on a pair of sneakers. I hate skirts, but I must wear one whenever I leave the compound—except when we go to school. The sneakers are still mostly new, and I wonder if they will need to last me for the next four years until we return to the U.S. 

Aunt Janne knocks on the screen door, and we grab umbrellas and start down the dirt road toward the compound gate. Aunt Janne isn't my aunt; she is our Australian neighbour, Shelley's mum. But here, the children call all adults except teachers "aunt" and "uncle." Shelley and Kimmie are going downtown with us, too. It's a 10-minute walk to the gate, skirting potholes and puddles, and I am hot by the time we greet the guards in Hausa and move onto the road that passes by the hospital compound where we live.  

We turn left, and my senses are assailed from all sides. Horns honk from passing cars and trucks. Reggae music blares from a shop across the street. (The electricity must have come back on since we left our house.) Exhaust clouds around us as we walk along the muddy shoulder toward the roundabout where our road meets the road that runs south into town. Cars here don't have to do emissions tests, apparently, and I cough on the fumes. There is colour everywhere: grass greener than I ever saw in California, brilliant azure sky, and vivid—even garish—patterns in women's clothing.We veer left at the roundabout, and I see a gaggle of green cars parked in a grassy area, each with a wide yellow stripe painted horizontally all the way around the car below the door handle. I'm reminded of making a similar stripe while dyeing Easter eggs by putting a rubber band around the egg before dipping it. Aunt Janne tells us that taxis from different states have different colour patterns. Taxis from Kano, for example, are blue with a white stripe. 

Aunt Janne walks up to a parked taxi, an old Peugeot 504 station wagon, and negotiates with the driver. I hear her say, "Terminus" but am not sure if that's a place or a price. The taxi looks a lot like the station wagon we used to own in California, except it's more beat-up. The paint is scratched in numerous places, and I see dents along the passenger side. The back bumper is twisted and rusty. Aunt Janne gives the driver a few notes of currency—naira—and we clamber in. There is a row of seats behind the bench seat that I would normally call "the back seat." One of the back seats pushes forward with the lifting of a little handle, and Shelley and I climb in the way back. Aunt Janne sits in the front seat, and Mom, Lisa, and Kimmie sit in the middle seat. Aunt Janne explains that normally the taxi driver would stop along the way to pick up more clients, but she has paid up-front for a direct ride to the centre of town, Terminus. 

The taxi looks older on the inside than it does on the outside. The seat cushions beneath us are torn in several places, and I can see the springs inside. The windows are cracked—the windshield looks almost shattered over in the lower right corner. The doors are missing panels to cover their innards, leaving metal rods and gears exposed. The driver's side back door has no handle on the inside at all. The upholstery smells odd. Kimmie scrunches up her nose and tells me it's a goat smell. Aunt Janne shushes her as the driver shifts gears and we leave the car park. 

It isn't a long ride, but I have never been this direction in town before. Most of the women we pass—even the young girls my age or smaller—wear a head-covering that covers all but the face. In other parts of town where I've been, the women cover their hair with an elaborately tied piece of colourful cloth. Here, however, the women's heads and shoulders are completely covered by a single draped solid-colour cloth—grey or white. It reminds me of pictures I've seen of girls in Saudi Arabia, except the girls' faces are visible. I wonder about this but am too shy to ask. We pass a man pushing a wheelbarrow that is full to nearly overflowing with huge white sacks. Another man pulls a two-wheeled cart filled with 10-gallon plastic water jugs. At an intersection we are passed by a motorcycle carrying a man and two children—one in front of him and one behind. None of them are wearing helmets. I can't believe how many people are on the streets. I'm sure there are more people on foot than there are in cars. 

And then we are at the roundabout they call Terminus. It's jam-packed with vehicles—taxis like ours, vans big and small, bicycles, big trucks, motorcycles, and private vehicles. The driver pulls over, blocking two other cars, and Aunt Janne gets out and opens the back door. We clamber out, and she hands the driver another note.  

"Mun gode," she says, nodding her head, and we move back from the taxi. 

"That's Main Market over there," Aunt Janne tells us, gesturing with her chin towards a huge multi-story building to our left. "Stay together." We start walking in that direction, Shelley, Kimmie, and I linking arms as we follow our moms and Lisa through the crowds. There are just so many people—men, women, children, old people, young people, all shifting and cutting each other off. I've lived in Los Angeles, but I've never been downtown, and this is new to me.  

We walk a short way and then turn to cross the intersection diagonally, first to the roundabout and then to the market building corner. There is no traffic light, no crosswalk, no policeman to direct traffic. It is a free-for-all, every-man-for-himself fight against traffic. Fortunately, Aunt Janne is a pro and makes sure we all cross safely amid the tide of people and push of cars. The traffic is actually an advantage, as it's easier to pick our way between cars going only 5 miles an hour than dashing between speeding cars. Still, I'm relieved when we reach the opposite corner without injury.  

This is where the fun really begins.