When Liz Gilbert, author of the popular book Eat, Pray, Love announced a virtual book club featuring a title I didn’t know by an author I’d never heard of, I didn’t hesitate or even read the description of the book. I just ordered the paperback and dove in when the package arrived.

Rutgers University professor Dr. Brittney Cooper, in her memoir/social commentary Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower, unpacks key moments of her life in the context of Black Feminism within the American patriarchy. She describes complex relationships with peers, family members, and policies, and (at one point) suggests, “Perhaps we could start with empathy” (p. 93).

 

What is empathy?

Social worker, researcher and storyteller Dr. Brené Brown points to Theresa Wiseman’s four defining attributes of empathy:

• to be able to see the world as others see it
• to be nonjudgmental
• to understand another person’s feelings
• to communicate your understanding of that person’s feelings

Reading both fiction and nonfiction has long been my favorite way to explore perspectives and ways of life that vary from my own experiences. Reading stories—whether they’re fictional or not—can be a way to see the world as others do; to foster a sense of curiosity and nonjudgmentalism; and to begin to understand another’s feelings. 

In the virtual book club interview, Cooper calls on the audience to listen to and trust other people’s stories. “I’m going to stand on the side of justice and rightness,” she proclaims, “And when marginalized people tell me this thing is happening to them, I’m going to stand with them—even as I’m learning, even as I’m growing—because we can do the right thing even when we don’t always understand all the contours of it on the front end” (79:24).

What if we start with empathy? What if we stand with our neighbor even when we don’t understand them completely? What if we practice loving our neighbor as ourselves?

Cooper closes her book in a benediction, the bones of which follow:

May you have joy.
May you have gut-busting belly laughter, every day.
May you ask more and better questions.
May your rage be a force for good.
You got this. We got this.

May it be so.

Learn: Routines & Rituals Are Grounding

Thursday is one of the days when I participate in a weekly online professional gathering at noon. This week's topic was navigating disorientation, something we all seem to be able to relate to these days. (I bet you've seen the Blursday the fortyteenth meme.) My wise psychologist colleagues pointed out how routines serve to ground us and help us mark time. Now that many of us are working from home and routines and life are drastically disrupted, it's common to lose track of what day it is.

This insight has me thinking about ways I can introduce additional day-of-the-week routines to my current state of being. Artist Lisa Congdon keeps a daily journal that she shares in her Instagram stories. Knowing myself as I do, I likely wouldn't maintain a daily practice, but maybe I could journal each Saturday. I do have distinct routines on other days; for example, Wednesdays are grocery pickup days (which is pretty exciting), and each Sunday morning I read one chapter in a book called Onigamiising: Seasons of an Ojibwe Year (which begins in the season of spring, and which I started with the beginning of spring).

Yesterday I received the copy of Mary Oliver's A Thousand Mornings that I ordered earlier this week. Even though a daily practice doesn't tend to work for me, maybe I will try reading one of the poems each day, recording the day and date along with a couple brief thoughts right there in the book. Or maybe I can post a calendar in my work space and physically cross of the days to develop a more tangible sense of time.

Are you feeling disoriented about what day and/or date it is? Do you have daily rituals that help you mark time? What routines do you find helpful or comforting? Share your experience in a comment here on the blog; check in over on the facebook community page; or connect with me on Instagram.

Share: My Week in a Nutshell

In all honesty, this has been another rough week for me. I spent a few days in sweatpants all day and didn't shower for a few days. It's been cold and snowy (ugh) since last Saturday evening. Today was the first day I made it out for a run all week. Last weekend, however, I experienced a spark of creativity and dug into my paints for the first time in ages. Plus I redesigned Learn + Explore + Share, and the new header image makes me very happy. 

Another project that brings me flickers of joy has been a new playlist. This one is full of hope and playfulness. You can find it below (on Spotify) or on Apple Music.

Have music to recommend for a future playlist? Want to gripe or celebrate? Get in touch with me. I am here and willing to listen.

Wishing you peace & hope,

 

The organization where I work is full of psychologists. (For the record, I truly love my job and my colleagues.) Today, I participated in a professional gathering where one of my colleagues highlighted the differences between different types of worry—stress, fear and anxiety (find definitions below, if you're interested)—and then he threw grief into the mix. Psychologists say there's value in identifying our specific feelings and noticing how we're experiencing those emotions: maybe a feeling of anger is actually grief; perhaps irritability is veiled anxiety. I realized that throughout this difficult time (and maybe more this past week than previously), my emotions have been ping-ponging around to stress, fear, anxiety, grief and occasionally a sense of security or normalcy. No wonder I'm exhausted by day's end. (Let's not even talk about poor sleep quality.) 

Despite—or maybe because of—it having been a particularly difficult week for me emotionally, I've been noticing what's been helpful to bring me out of that emotional ping pong game, and I've been keeping a list on my phone: going for a walk, using my therapy light, enjoying bits of Jimmy Fallon's #FallonAtHome (specifically this), practicing gratitude. This week I also found myself inspired to create a Coronavirus playlist, which you'll find below (on Spotify) or on Apple Music. (Yes, the playlist reflects my emotions. There's a hopeful upswing toward the end of the playlist.)

How have you been experiencing these strange days? What's keeping you grounded and connected to gratitude? Leave a comment below or on the facebook community page; or find me on Instagram and exchange thoughts with me there.

Be well,

 

* definitions my colleague Drew Benson, PhD, LP shared in today's gathering:

stress: perceived environmental demands exceed one's ability

fear: a present-oriented defensive response to an observable threat (e.g., a rattle snake)

anxiety: a future-oriented "diffuse apprehension" or general worry