I sent a message to one friend, and then started writing an email to another friend, and then thought of other friends I wanted to include, and then finally I just gave myself a talking to. Tresa. Tree. Be Brave. Just put it on the blog for anyone who could use it.

I have so much I want to share about the development I’ve been doing. When I came back to the blog it was with the hopes of launching into my second act, triumphantly shaking off old stories that never fit and stepping into the person I was always meant to be: An artist. That process has been so so hard and I am learning so much I am stretching into entirely new parts of myself. I want to explain what I’m learning and how I got here and what I believe now, about art and about myself.

But, of course, 2020. And like all of you, I’m up to my neck fighting with school districts and how bizarre and rigorous daily life is. All my big ambitious perfectionistic goals are laughing and laughing at me. This is not a time for perfectionism. This is a time for good enough.

So for today I’ll just say this: Through this process I’m learning what kind of artist I am. What I believe, what I have to share, what unique skills and features about me I can showcase – You know, Dolly Parton style “Find out who you are and do it on purpose” stuff. What I’ve learned is that one of my special strengths as a singer is conveying intense emotion. I’ve learned that through my trauma healing background and my connected spirituality, I happen to be uniquely suited to sing in a way that makes people feel their feelings. And I believe learning to process our feelings in a healthy way is CRUCIAL to public health.

We live in a society that forces us to repress our feelings. We’re allowed to vent if we’re angry, but never anything else. Surely not sad, or hurt, or scared, or grieving. No crying at work. No crying in baseball. We tell our kids all the time, “Stop crying, you’re fine,” teaching them to suppress emotions for the convenience of the people around them. Humans co-regulate our emotions. If the people around you tell you not to have them. You don’t have them. Publicly. Instead you shove them down inside until you can’t shove them down anymore and the pressure builds until you blow. You get sick and your body falls apart. Or else you rage and lash out at the people around you. Or you numb yourself until you’re just a fleshpod LARPing a life instead of living one.

I think having emotional fallaparts are like controlled burns. You could wait for lightening to strike and then the out of control wildfire has you screaming at your whole family and weeping in the bathroom and second guessing all your life choices, or you can be proactive and put on Adele and have yourself a little cry. ALL of our feelings need to be vented, not just the angry one.

These are just scratch tracks I recorded in a hotel shower, I never intended to release them publicly. I’m singing unrehearsed acapella off the top of my head, and all I can hear are the changes I want to make. But we have to survive this week so it’s past time for me to be precious about my perfectionism. 

Give yourself 10 minutes. In a closet, a backyard, a bathroom. Somewhere where you don’t have to manage anybody’s feelings but your own. Listen to the music I’m linking or anything else that gets right to your heart, and just have yourself a cry.

Another day I’ll write about the science behind this, but there is science behind this (Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski is good for this). It’s a way of completing the stress cycle, getting out those stress chemicals, and PROCESSING the stress instead of just FEELING it.

Stay is for when you are overcome with grief and worry and praying for some kind of good outcome.

The One Who Knows is for when you are overwhelmed at the needs of your children and your ability to meet them. It’s a reminder of what your ACTUAL job is.

Landslide is for when you are feeling afraid of change.

This week is going to be miserable. Now is the time to abandon everything that can be abandoned and batten down your emotional hatches. Be proactive about taking care of yourself. Take your meds, drink your water, exercise if you can, meditate, sing, dance, hug your body and thank it for working so hard to cope. And go hide in the garage and have yourself a 10 minute cry.

Originally published at Reese Dixon
Some coping tools from your emotional doula…

Reese Dixon - Messy thoughts about a messy world

Atticus had his latest surgery this week, an operation on his knees that one of our friends and CP mentors calls “a right of passage for a CP kid.” We are home from a week in the hospital now, licking our wounds and recovering. This is an experience we are way too familiar with, between my health and Atti’s. We keep losing track of how many surgeries we’ve each had, so none of my recent social media posts even have consistent numbers. When Atti is grown I hope we will write a book together about these experiences, but until then I try to be very thoughtful about how much I share. He always signs off on pictures and videos I share and which stories I tell, and I try and think about which ones he might be OK with at one stage of his life, and not OK with at another. An 8 year old might think a pic of his baby butt on the internet is funny, a teenager, not so much.

For now I will say that these surgeries are harrowing. Harrowing in a way I struggle to talk about without getting too close to disableist tropes about how *hard* it is to be a “special needs parent.” The truth is that there is nothing “special” about needing medical care. And it is HARROWING to have to encounter America’s current healthcare system, even if you are on the luckiest end of it like we are.

There were a couple of moments in there where I was witnessing something truly awful and the sarcastic bitch in my brain said, “Oh great, that sight’s gonna feature heavily in some future panic attacks. Filing that image away in the PTSD drawer!” I have spent so much freaking time trying to clean out that drawer and it just keeps filling up.

***

I don’t believe that God is the one who gives us hard things in our life. The God I have a relationship with is not putting me through an obstacle training course, God is with me and around me and inside my mind and heart. Not held apart in some holy unreachable place, but right here, in the trenches of this life with me. God is not asking me to dance while God pulls my strings all in the hopes that I grow from it while so many people in similar situations canker over or just suffer until they die. God doesn’t love me more than them. If we believe God is making the choice on who experiences hardship, there is no reason or explanation that satisfies why some suffer so much in this world and others don’t, that doesn’t render God into being a bigot or a bully.

The Mormonism I come from has in its theology that God is NOT omniscient. I was taught that was unique among Christian churches, but since leaving the faith of my childhood I’ve learned they really can’t be trusted to report what other faiths believe. Maybe it’s not unique. But I was taught that God can’t just do whatever God wants. God has rules to follow or else God “ceases to be God.” To Mormons, obedience is such a high priority that even God has to follow it. I was taught that “Mercy cannot rob justice.” And so God does not intervene to prevent suffering because the guilty have to be judged appropriately. If God stopped wicked acts, no wicked people could be appropriately judged. So innocents have to suffer and that will be added to their own judgments and the celestial math will come out in the end to determine your eternal fate. I think about this and envision God in a ratty gray suit, with a shiny bald head and small glasses, sitting behind protective glass, an officious government worker at City Hall, shrugging God’s shoulders as God explains there is nothing to be done, “it’s just the policy” and shuffling papers around while God avoided your gaze.

No. That just does not match up with the relationship I have. In prayer, in meditation, in moments of quiet solitude and dark nights of the soul. Every part of me rejects this notion of a bureaucratic God who checks your paperwork before you ascend to a hierarchical heaven. I reject it. I don’t believe it anymore and it was bad for my soul when I did.

I have rejected the Mormon God, but I still love Jesus. Jesus says that “rain falls on the just and unjust alike.” Jesus says we are to love everyone because we are all children of God, and the hardships we experience are just part of living on this planet, just like experiencing rain and sunshine. This makes sense to me. It reminds me of the social model of disability.

The social model of disability is an example of critical theory. It argues that what is actually DISABLING to a person isn’t whatever behavior their body is or is not capable of performing. What is actually disabling is the society that particular body has to exist in. In Atti’s case, using a wheelchair is nothing but a joy for him. He LOVES his wheelchair. He doesn’t sit and pine away that his body isn’t doing what my body does, he just does what he is capable of. Like every other human. Just like I don’t spend a lot of time cursing my inability to play volleyball or hit a basket. It’s fine. It’s just how my body came.

What ACTUALLY is disabling is the fact that anytime we want to go in public we have to gamble on finding spaces that are accessible to us. It’s not being able to take a walk in our own neighborhood without planning a route that has curbcuts. It’s not being able to go in certain stores, restaurants, public spaces, government buildings, schools because they aren’t built for wheels. It’s not being able to speak Autistic in public without getting stares and side-eyes. Cerebral Palsy and Autism doesn’t cause any of that pain. The world he has to navigate with them does. That’s the social model of disability.

I still believe that God can’t just do anything God wants. But now it’s less because God’s a middle manager in some eternal bureaucracy, and more because God is a parent. And just like me, God can’t undo the things about this life that make God’s children suffer. God can only walk with us and around us and inside us and bring us comfort and love and solidarity and inspiration as we walk through this life that people have created. People built the institutions and crafted the laws. People and their biases are the ones insuring that some people go hungry while other people hoard resources. People built the medical system that is such a nightmare to navigate. God didn’t bring any of that to my door. The society I live in did. The social model of adversity.

I always say: People are the WORST. But humans, I love.

The difference to me is vulnerability. People are still wearing their shiny image-crafted personas, pretending they are in control of things and know what to do. Humans embrace their woundedness and aren’t trying to be anything other than what we are. Humans know we don’t have the answers and are open to finding them. We are aware of our mistakes and our limitations and have the humility to repair and restore. People just cover up.

Since embracing my humanness I don’t have to plaster a “high vibes only” smile on my life to prove I’m succeeding. Now I know I’m succeeding every time I have the smallest of victories against this rigged system and corrupt world. Acknowledging that I am fighting forces outside of my control – capitalism, bigotry, government corruption, coercive religion, pervasive abuse culture, suffering of every human flavor – means that none of it is personal. God is not choosing this for me. It is something to fight against in order to love all God’s children the way that God loves them.

When I believed that God was determining my suffering, it made me crave death like sugar. I felt tortured and cosmically rejected, coated in shame that God had determined this was the path I had earned. Now I understand that my suffering was actually the direct result of bad laws governing reproductive health and the toxic nightmare stew that is the American healthcare system. God didn’t give me endometriosis because I was unfit to mother God’s spirits, it’s just the rain falling on the just and unjust. It’s just part of having a human body. 1 in 10 women have it. It’s a pretty standard feature of human biodiversity. It’s not God torturing me, it’s This World.

As we can see clearly now, the forces in power don’t want us recognizing that the system we’ve built is the source of our problems. Because that means it can be torn down and rebuilt. That’s why the monument removals are so powerful. We built them. And we can unbuild them, and build new ones.

Originally published at Reese Dixon
The Social Model of Adversity

Reese Dixon - Messy thoughts about a messy world

I had a different topic for this post in mind, but when I looked up the date and realized we’re almost through May already, I needed to toss it out for a mini-existential breakdown. Whew. Time, eh?

I love hearing people talk about quarantine time because the validation is delicious. I am used to apologizing for my own sense of time, warped by so many years of housebound disability. I have to ask Atticus to tell me what the date is, and often even the day of the week. There’s just not a lot of use for a calendar in my days when I have to be as flexible as possible in case my body quits. I’m not ruled by business hours or weekdays, I’m ruled by, “How much work can I do before I cost myself twice the recovery time, and will that be true this time or will some new weird symptom pop up.” I’ve been healthy enough for long enough that that was starting to change, and then, boom. Pandemic.

It seems like every article on the internet is either Covid news, a thinkpiece on productivity, or a thinkpiece about thinkpieces on productivity. I am in the camp that thinks productivity is never a super healthy obsession, and it sure as hell isn’t right now. But I am also in the camp that has big ambition and an internal drive to create, so I am hungry for productivity advice. Somewhere along the way I learned that if I was going to get out of that mental hamster wheel that was so harmful to me, while holding on to my goals for myself, I was going to have to redefine “productivity”.

I don’t think productivity is about finishing things. Or having something to show for yourself. I think productivity is just about how you use your time. Using your time mindfully so that it is not idly wasted, but spent towards producing some kind of benefit.

Under that definition, having a 5 minute cry on the porch is more “productive” than another hour scrolling. You get a much bigger benefit from an emotional release than you do from an hour of distraction. A three hour nap is FAR more “productive” than three hours of ragged busywork. Ten minutes of cuddling a dog or a child is better than four hours of homework battles where everyone ends up in tears and no work is done.

I just feel like the Productivity Media Complex that sells us all these methods of doing more faster rarely treat us as human beings. Usually it’s just another tool of selling us capitalism. I read the books because I want to make the art of my dreams, but usually it just makes you into a better worker bee at the job you’re already unsatisfied by. These experts rarely teach about the importance of rest, and connection, and intimate relationships, and self-knowledge, which most of us have to learn the hard way by not having those things and suffering. Kind of like right now.

If you feel guilt or shame about your own productivity levels during this pandemic, try changing your definition so that it actually reflects your humanity. Hygiene is productive. Rest is productive. Connection is productive. Exercise is productive. Nourishing is productive. Education is productive.

And most of all, self-knowledge is productive.

I saw a few memes floating around saying, “If you can’t go out, go in.” and I’m jealous of the pithiness of that original writer. This was the big lesson for me in surgical recovery. If you can’t go out, go in. Go spelunking in your own consciousness. It is the most productive thing I’ve ever done.

This process gets real messy, so having time when you don’t have to be in public is ideal. Feel the feelings you’ve been avoiding while they’re right there on the surface for you thanks to covid fears. Time in solitude is usually extremely hard to come by in our world, and it is the thing that is the most necessary for this kind of deeply introspective work. It takes time to ponder without distractions, to let the new realizations settle into your body, to know your own voice well enough to hold true in the face of any influence. If you are safe and financially stable during this moment, you also have an opportunity.

I think this kind of work pairs very well with grief work, which none of us can avoid right now anyway. As you dig down there are layers of ourselves to grieve and make peace with. The person whose poor choices gave you consequences you’re still paying, or the self that you have lost along the way. It is hard hard work to make peace with your own self, but the most productive work you will ever do.

This is my advice for learning how to love yourself if you don’t:

You start by finding compassion.

You can start as young as you need to in order to find that compassion. Start as a teeny child. Start as a completely innocent baby. However far back you need to go. Go back far enough that you can’t help but acknowledge that version of you was vulnerable and needed nurturing. Whatever little self in you that you can find compassion for. Before the shame came along to infect what you think you are.

Think about that little person you used to be, and the environment they grew up in. Was it safe? Was it secure? The choices that little person made, did they make sense based on what they knew of the world?

Carry a picture of that little person and think about their experiences now that you are the grownup. Things you saw as normal as a child, as an adult you will find alarming. Things you have been shaming yourself over, you will understand is just part of being the age you were. You will find understanding.

Most of us, if we can view our child experiences as our adult selves, would find adorable moments of heroism. If we were our own parents, we’d be touched at our bravery. Moved by our problem solving. And that’s how you find the love. You bring the compassion to the understanding and it makes love. And you do that for yourself over and over again at every stage of your life, reevaluating things from your adult perspective. Compassion and understanding.

Along the way you will find ways you hurt others, and you will have to fix that in order to keep finding compassion. Compassion isn’t a blank check, it’s empathy that recognizes the position you were in. The second you cheat that, you’ll stall out in your progress. But by fixing the hurt you caused, you’ll discover a new source of pride. Instead of shitting on yourself for your actions, you’ll realize your actions are healing. And even the really hurtful mistakes become a little easier to love yourself through, because you have compassion for yourself due to your sincere efforts.

I still have a lot to share about my efforts as a performer, but the biggest boldest lesson I’ve learned is that no education matters if your emotional state won’t let you apply it. Working on improving your emotional state will make whatever productivity tools you try, actually produce.

Originally published at Reese Dixon
Productivity in the Pandemic

Reese Dixon - Messy thoughts about a messy world

I’ve spent the entire last six weeks sewing my heart out. Sustainably at first, just one project among many I’d spend my time on. A little ironing here, a little sewing there. When I started, people were still scoffing at my cloth masks and calling it alarmist and pointless, but I have a history of good foresight, so I just kept going, hoping they would at least be helpful just to provide a barrier to fluids and smells when other PPE was unavailable.

My family’s livelihood comes from Bear’s career as a nursing home administrator. Whenever a natural disaster comes along, we’re used to dividing up the labor. I handle home, he handles work, we catch up on the other side, hands in, Go Team Edmunds, BREAK! Every year during fires, random flooding or earthquakes, a threat to the building of any kind means he drives off to take care of his residents and staff while I make sure Atticus is safe. And then once Atticus is taken care of, I do what I can from wherever I am for the staff. This pandemic is far from the first time I’ve watched health care workers get treated like soldiers or firefighters, it happens every fire season. Every season we worry about how their kids are doing and what’s happening at home. Because a lot of the people working front line staff medical jobs are immigrants, people of color, and single moms. They need a team. As soon as PPE shortages hit the news, I started sewing.

I drove myself a little crazy with the efforts. When the news is coming out so hot and fast and no one knows anything, it is so easy to get carried away. When the fabric shortages started and elastic became as valuable as toilet paper, the anxiety built higher and faster. By the time we crafters were swapping tips about cutting up dollar store headbands for the elastic, it was hard not to feel like any moment I wasn’t sewing was a moment I was putting someone at risk.

But I’ve got 20 years of therapy under my belt, so I took a deep breath, made a self-deprecating joke about not being Oskar Schindler, and put on the next episode of Ugly Delicious on Netflix while I comfortably sewed in my lovely home. Perspective.

When I ran out of supplies I put out a call on social media and I got such incredible support. Laura and Emily with elastic, Tiffany with fabric, Wendy sending ear guards. It reminded me why I got into this blogging thing way back when. We’re all out here needing each other and needing to be needed.

So far I’ve sewn 216 masks. Everyone at the nursing home has a mask to use now. Things got real stressful for a second once people came around on masks. Overnight it became a legal requirement to use them, when there were none to be had, so I went from panicking about putting people at risk every moment I wasn’t sewing, to *knowing* the facility was in actual legal and biological risk every moment I wasn’t sewing. The stories coming in from other facilities… it’s intense. I’m a degree removed from it and even I am talking about not being able to talk freely with civilians. I don’t want to feed the panic when there’s nothing to be done.

What you *can* do, is find a way to help. Like so many feminists, Rosie the Riveter has always held a special place in my heart, and I like to think I’d be working on planes if I was around back then. The Great Sew felt like something I could do to contribute now. To take all of my own anxiety and fear and uncertainty and battle against that existential crisis with concrete proof of my existence. To take my sputtering rage at the failures in leadership and put it to what I can do in its absence. When you’re on your own you can’t afford to sink into despair. You keep moving, you solve the problems in front of you, and you live another day.

I’m fighting the fight of media consumption like all of us. How much news do I need to watch to be responsible, and how little can I watch without feeling the anxiety tighten my throat? When I feel the terror rise I know it’s time to get off social media, where we’re all just tossing our panic into the void. But in between panic sessions, there is so much heartbreaking good happening out there amidst the heartbreaking bad. Humans. Just when I think there’s no hope, sure enough, someone will be out there giving free rent or delivering food or making art. Fighting against the entropy of despair. People are the worst. But humans, humans I love.

We are what we’ve got. This is what I can do, but each of us have contributions to make.

Originally published at Reese Dixon
We Can Do It

Reese Dixon - Messy thoughts about a messy world

I’ve been quieter here than I anticipated when I announced my return. Current events and a global pandemic threw all our plans up in the air and laughed. I’ve struggled with knowing exactly what to say. I’m in a very different place than a lot of people.

For one, despite the fact that our family is made up of two medically fragile people and one nursing home administrator, we’re actually really well positioned for this crisis. Bear’s job is more essential than ever and Atti and I have so much experience staying home that I forget sometimes we *can’t* leave the house. Luckily this isn’t a problem because I’m rarely tempted to try. I keep joking that I have been training for this moment for years. I’m a former Mormon raised by preppers, who has OCD so KNOWS how to wash her hands and deal with contamination, and I have a mood disorder so I have a stocked tool kit for coping. Atticus and I have spent the last 6 years dealing with medical crises that included LONG ISOLATED recovery periods. We know exactly what to do.

But I am witnessing what this is like for the rest of you and I’m worried about you all. I keep thinking of ways I can make art and share what I’ve learned. How can I spare you all some of the lessons I had to learn the hard way, and give you something to cope through this hardship? I think I have some answers for that, but not yet.

First comes the grief, and that can’t be rushed. Meaning making is important, but if you jump to easy answers it’s just another method of denial. Before you can find meaning, you have to understand the problem. And you can’t do that without feeling the full weight of it. If you jump straight to “everything happens for a reason” high vibes conscripted positivity, you can’t learn a thing. You’re assigning meaning, not making meaning. To make your suffering mean something, you have to experience the suffering. You can’t shortcut your way back to happiness. You will only be pretending until you can’t hold the act anymore.

Part of the grief we’re all feeling is the disruption in our normal. And here, lovingly, I would sit with your grief and tell it: THERE WAS NEVER A NORMAL. There was never a time when people weren’t getting sick and dying. There was never a time when everyone had enough food, or employment, or safety. There was never a time when our government or employers or educational systems were meeting everyone’s needs. It never existed. You are grieving the illusion.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t grieving to be done. There IS! Humans operate in this world by explaining things to ourselves through stories. And when we discover that one of those stories isn’t true, it is a betrayal. It is a loss of a coping method and requires accepting a new reality. That necessitates grief. But the first step out of the grief is recognizing that it was just a story. It was never something you were entitled to. And then, you get to work fighting for it to become a reality for *everyone* who doesn’t have it.

Normal is how we got here. Where propaganda networks owned by plutocrats spew out toxic fear and lies until our parents are brainwashed. Where people in their childbearing years, caregivers, and disabled people have been begging for work from home options for decades and been called lazy freeloaders. Where immigrants and poor people work in inhumane conditions and are told they should be grateful for the non-living wage, until they become essential services and then we start talking about them like first responders without increasing pay. Where abuse is so normal it’s invisible and talking about the effects mean you are an attention seeking whiner, while the Abuser-in-Chief strips our country for parts while he watches us die.

This didn’t just happen when the Covid-19 virus reached us. This has always been true. It’s just that crisis makes things visible. It strips the false stories away from us because there is too much contrary evidence to ignore.

Eventually we will make good come from this, because that’s the human in us. But first, we need to grieve. Not for the world we’ve lost, but for the truth of the world that we’ve discovered.

Originally published at Reese Dixon
There Never Was a Normal

Reese Dixon - Messy thoughts about a messy world

My poor friends! I see you out there, having to face horrible things as this Coronavirus descends on our communities and we’re left without leadership. We’re all terrified and trying to figure out what comes next and facing outcomes that we haven’t seen for generations.

As for me and my fellow crisis comrades, we’re doing great. People with PTSD or extensive trauma histories are finally taking a deep breath. The day all our hypervigilance has been preparing us for is here!

I watch my normal friends reaching these grim conclusions about what is in store for us, and my reaction…well, have you ever been stuck at a dead party? And everyone is bored and inertia has set in, and then, just when you think someone has to call this off already, the door bursts open and in come new partygoers with fresh booze and a ‘we’re here to freak out’ attitude. I feel like opening up my arms as I slosh a cocktail around and saying “Welcome friends! I’ve been waiting for you! [hic]” Grim resignation followed by defiant optimism is a basically my brand.

Bear runs a nursing home and I am a medically fragile obsessive panic news reader, so the Coronavirus has been ruling our life and there’s just not one positive prediction in the whole mess. No matter what source it’s coming from, it all just promises to be really bad and tragic in ways we aren’t even imagining yet. I won’t feed your fears the specifics, but I am not one to get caught up in panic and yet I am still seeing radical cultural changes coming for us.

But we will get through this. With losses and sadness and tragedy, most of us will get through this, grieving the ones who don’t. This is well-worn territory for some of us hard luck kids. Since calamity is the only hometown I have, let me show you around.

Panic is completely unproductive. Worrying won’t prevent calamity, it will only double your grief. Set limits on your news intake. Read enough to be responsible but don’t go “Doomscrolling” which is a genius term I saw pinging around twitter. Feed your brain whatever feeds your spirit. Art, music, podcasts, deep conversations, good books. Make your best, most mindful media choices.

Don’t avoid your grief. This has taken me 40 years to learn and now I’m so speedy I can feel the small griefs immediately and be done with them forever. Grief will not be ignored and will blow your life up however it needs to in order to get your attention. This is true for the devastating griefs that come from losing someone we love, to the stupid griefs of the daily disappointments of canceled plans. It’s not relative. If we don’t stop and say, “yes, that’s sad. I feel sad about that.” and take the time to feel our feelings, our feelings will feel us and by the end of the day you are shouting at your husband for his cavalier attitude about leftovers in the midst of a quarantine.(Just a random example, totally unconnected from anything I actually did. Just off the top of the dome. Yeah, that’s it.) People without a lot of experience with dealing with negative emotions often feel that opening up to the feelings is threatening. Like there is no bottom, or the feelings will overwhelm you to the point that you are lost. I promise that’s not true. It’s awful, but there is an end. The tears won’t last forever. There will come a time when you say, “That’s done now.” The better practice you get dealing with your negative emotions, the faster that time comes.

Seek out connection. Talk one on one to the people you love. Whatever tech you use to do it, just do it. Get out of your head and remind yourself that the whole world is full of people just like you, with hopes and dreams and rich internal lives. That no matter what you think or experience, you are not alone in that. If the fearful thoughts or tragic emotions ping around the inside of your head without an outside influence, they will just get faster and faster and faster until you reach panic. So get them out of your head.

Journal. In a notes app or through copy/pasted Facebook comments if you have to. Get the thoughts out of your head, but also, create yourself a record. Of other times you conquered hard things, survived a terrible loss, learned a profound lesson. And then go back to those journals when you need a reminder that all this will pass, for better or for worse. Looking back through my own journals has taught me a lot, reminded me of what I needed to remember, but most of all, taught me that no matter how much something hurt in the moment, with enough time and resilience, you will keep going. Sometimes it’s even shocking to me to discover something I’ve forgotten. How could I forget something that caused me so much pain? But you do. That’s how time and brains work. I doubt we’ll forget this time, but even if we don’t, the emotions will recede.

Make something. Remind yourself that you have the power to take concrete action. All it takes is baking something, writing a poem, mending a hem, weeding a garden, creating an idea. So much of the fear we are all feeling is existential. This feels like a threat to human existence, so combat that feeling by proving you exist now. Make something that wasn’t there before and get a taste of your power as a human.

Move your body. Listen to the trauma survivors: You need those toxic stress chemicals out of your body. We are all – especially small powerless children – being flooded with cortisol, adrenaline, and a host of other hormones and brain chemicals that are trying to keep us safe. But if there’s no way to fight and there’s no way to flee, those chemicals serve no purpose and can become toxic. (Read The Deepest Well by Nadine Burke Harris for more on this subject.) So we need to give those chemicals a purpose. Run, dance, flail your arms over your head as you run around screaming for a minute. Just get those chemicals out so your nervous system can calm down. We’re big fans of dance parties at my house, so I made a spotify playlist for a kid friendly dance party.

Embrace adaptation. The whole world is getting a glimpse of the work of disability advocates now. Able to work from home? Thank a disabled person, who probably didn’t get your job. Relying on delivery services you thought were only for lazy people? You’re welcome for that too. The entire concept that as human beings we are more than what we can achieve that makes money for somebody already rich? Welcome to Crip Theory. This whole radical mind shift has been one of my greatest joys in being Atti’s mom. I couldn’t get there for myself, with my own invisible disabilities. I could only get there for him and then go, “Wait a minute. If he gets to do things the way they work best for him and not according to some arbitrary social rule…does that mean *I COULD TOO*??” And from that moment on my whole life has exploded in joy. Just think about all the things you really shit on yourself for. The “bad habits” and neglected chores that you cover yourself in shame over. What if you didn’t have to feel that anymore? It’s true! It takes trial and error and a lot of creativity, but if you build a life that works for your own needs and regular human biodiversity, you will be shocked at how much better everything gets. Here’s one dumb example: I am a night owl. But my whole life I have TORTURED myself (and been tortured by people enforcing social norms) over my mornings. Coming from religion, I was taught that early to bed early to rise was the only way to function. When I couldn’t get myself up for early morning seminary despite working two jobs and taking a full course load at the community college, all the adults in my life viewed it as a character flaw and gave me consequences accordingly. There was no framework at all for me to shrug and say “people are wired differently, what are you gonna do?” I was just lazy. Now, we know better. I still have responsibilities in the morning, so I still have to build a life that includes a 7am wakeup, but I can build in supportive systems to make that happen and I can stop feeling like hot garbage for not being able to hop out of bed like god himself prodded me awake. Often the solutions aren’t even that big a deal, but the act of acknowledging that you need one is what is transformative.

Depend on the kindness of strangers. This is really only news to people who have a lot of privilege. It’s a pretty common approach for all kinds of marginalized groups. Disabled people, gay or trans people, black people, immigrants, these have always been the communities where I found resonance for myself, largely because they are communities that rely on mutual and community caregiving to survive. If you don’t have the “assigned relationships” of family or systems or other traditional roles, you still need community. And if there are forces in this world out to get you, you learn to find that community in all kinds of unconventional ways. When I was Mormon, the thought of not having that community kept me from leaving for a long time. But community is all around us. You make community one person at a time, looking out for people who look out for you. If you are a loving person, love will rise up to meet you. I bet my life on it every day.

It is what it is. This is the catchphrase of grim resignation and one of the fastest ways to spot a trauma survivor in the wild. Some things can’t be changed, they can only be borne. This world is hard and brutal and most people don’t have their needs met. Some of us get to live in comfortable fictions that say that’s not the case, but a global pandemic sure cuts through privilege and individualism to show everyone up close that they are not special, they are not immune, and they are not going to get through this life without knowing trauma of one kind or another. Losing those coping narratives is traumatic and I have genuine empathy for those of you just discovering how rigged this world is. I especially feel for religionists who have been taught that following a rigid set of regulations will inure them from calamity, because I spent a whole lot of time in that space. It didn’t work. Even a little. I have my own feelings about what calamity is for and why god allows it, but no matter where the beliefs come from or end up, it is shattering to lose that certainty. I also believe it’s essential to lose that certainty, but my surgeries have been essential and that didn’t make them good either.

I feel for you, new partygoers, and I hope that I can stand here like a lighthouse. There is a way through the fog. It may require embracing some new realities, but you will find benefits from it. You will have more empathy and depth and understanding, which will improve every one of your relationships, most of all with yourself.

Originally published at Reese Dixon
Welcome to Calamity! Here’s How to Cope.

Reese Dixon - Messy thoughts about a messy world

Hello old friends!

It’s been a while, and in that time, a whole lot has changed. In a “burn your life to the ground and start over” kind of way, even though so many of the big things in my life are the same. Still Atti’s mom and he is doing awesome. Still married to Bear with no plans on changing that any time soon. Still living in Northern California, but we’ve just finished a move away from my mountain haven and closer in to the city.

But internally? Internally it is a completely different landscape. My inner state feels like Mad Max Fury Road and the best version of me is Furiosa walking away from an explosion.

This all started before I stepped away from the blog. All of us fight off change with denial until we’re up to our eyeballs in it and there’s nothing else to see. I can’t even really decide on a true start date for the slide into calamity. 2016 when I got so sick we thought I was dying of MS? 2014 when I did a stint at the mental hospital? 2012 when we Mormon Feminists began engaging in direct action and learned first hand that the leaders of the church were not what we had been taught to believe? We toss in Atti’s whole childhood and his near-death birth and we’re back in 2008, and then we can really just keep going all the way back to the beginning.

For whatever reason, I just seem to be a hard luck kinda kid. :shrug: I don’t have a lot of self-pity about this. Some self-pity, I’m not a saint. Sometimes I have myself a good old fashioned “why me” fist shake at the heavens. But these days I usually just accept it as part of how the world works. I have worked in grassroots activism for 23 years now. I have listened to so many different stories of oppression and tragedy, walked people through the inadequate or rigged justice system, fought against bias in health care, listened to women describe the horrors they lived with everyday that were still less dangerous than leaving their spouse. I know in my bones that this world is not just or fair. Bad guys win every day. Sometimes things don’t work out. Not everything happens for a reason. It’s grim, sure, but pretending otherwise doesn’t actually make anything change, it just changes the resources you have to deal with it.

If you expect the world to be just, you are blindsided every time it demonstrates it isn’t. It is harrowing, and traumatic. But if you understand that “life is pain, highness, anyone who says different is selling something” then you can prepare for it. Create support systems. Take your pain seriously and responsibly. Mindfully choose who you allow into your life. Fight for justice. And treasure all the beautiful things in this world as they happen instead of expecting them as an entitlement.

Even though I might sound like a nihilist, I think of myself as an optimistic nihilist. An optimistic nihilist and a skeptical mystic. My philosophies are as bipolar as my brain.

I stopped attending the LDS church in 2014 when they started excommunicating Mormon Feminists. I loved the church with everything I had in me until then and it was one of the most traumatic and hurtful betrayals in my life to discover that our sincere efforts to follow where we felt called, with all the pure Mormon-ness of our hearts, was not only unwelcome but viewed as its own kind of betrayal. We were putting everything we had been taught to believe to the test, and the foundation cracked. Personal revelation isn’t that big a deal after all. Revering the pioneers is only for a certain kind of pioneer and not for those women giving blessings. It is a far greater sin to question leadership than to abuse another human.

Back when I was a practicing member I couldn’t imagine a life without the church and now that I have six years of freedom under my belt I know why. A lifetime of avoiding certain media and certain environments and certain people will create a stronger bubble than any Facebook algorithm. If I could have imagined a life like what I’m living, I would have understood the risk to leave it all behind was worth it. But I couldn’t see that from the inside. The whole world was coated with a one way glass that only reflected back to me the vision created by fear-mongering leadership, and all the people I loved and trusted told me it was reality.

In 2014, things took another unexpected turn when two of my nieces came back into my life. I have long written about having a shitty childhood and going no contact with my parents 20 years ago. Over those years I’ve also drawn some boundaries with other family members, and that meant that these two nieces, L & S, have never known us. And then they moved in with us, and now we think of them as our daughters. They are both grown and living on their own now, and family dynamics being what they are, might not be a regular feature here. There’s still a lot to sort out. I couldn’t be prouder of either of them and want to link to all their work, but I’m going to do it very thoughtfully.

For the last four years I’ve been pinging back and forth wildly between medical procedures. At one point I had 6 surgeries in 18 months. It appears that MS was just a temporary destination on the journey to a proper diagnosis and what has really caused my rapid decline can actually best be summed up as: Trauma. A host of intersecting autoimmune conditions and muscular/skeletal problems exacerbated or brought on by trauma.

I spent last year in what I have affectionately termed Traumapalooza 2019. Most of the year was in surgical recovery, and after so many years of that I honestly didn’t know how I was going to make it back to the land of the living. Chronic illness, yall. It adds up. But I’m doing really great now and feeling hopeful about the future. Trauma recovery is real.

Now I finally feel like I am coming through the great Midlife Sifting that Brene Brown talks about. I turned 41 in December. Every vision I had for my future has crumbled into dust around me. I expected to be living on a working farm with a brood of children and spending all my time dedicated to God. Now I use a lot of weed, we rattle around this big empty house, and my concept of both God and humans is so much bigger than I ever imagined. I love my new life so much I burst into tears in random intervals, grateful for the expansive feeling of an open road before me. But it did come at a cost. Giving up that feeling of stability and security the church gave me. It this chaotic world, people do a lot worse for security than stay in a harmful church, and for me the church was every connection I have ever known. I don’t have a family I came from. I don’t have a hometown. Leaving took with it 20 years of friendships, college friends, job opportunities, extended family and even risked my marriage. Mormonism is my heritage and ethnicity. It was my people and my past and my future, and without it sometimes I still get vertigo. But now that I’ve stepped out of that cage, I’ve found all the parts of myself I carved off to try and fit.

My big sassy sailor mouth I never successfully bridled now gets to carry my authentic voice. My love of beauty and art doesn’t have to be a secret shame and fear of being vain. My desire to perform can be about so many other things than attention seeking. Now that I’ve let go of the dreams I had of a certain kind of motherhood, I can pick back up all the dreams I abandoned for it.

In my deepest of hearts I wanted to be an actress. And I gave it up at 21 because I thought it was incompatible with my dreams of Mormon motherhood. And honestly, I don’t think I was wrong about that. I just didn’t realize that the Mormon motherhood dreams were just as much of an illusion as the brightest of Hollywood fantasies. I’ve hustled for years, scraping whatever opportunities I could through the loopholes of “appropriate” Mormon womanhood. I don’t want to settle anymore. I don’t want to tell myself that the odd storytelling show or comedy open mic is enough. I want to chase it. I want to see what I can actually do if take all that faith and dedication I used to give institutions, and see what happens if I put it into myself.

I’m grieving Elizabeth Warren’s candidacy, but one thing I’m keeping from that experience came from her last press conference when she was talking about what it was like to cast a vote for herself in the primary. The symbolism of that moment struck me, and I told myself then: Vote For Yourself Like Elizabeth Warren.

So that’s my new goal and the new focus of this blog. What happens when, at 41, I drop every expectation I was ever given and do things my way? What happens when I pick up all those long abandoned dreams? I don’t know what will happen, but I already tried doing it someone else’s way and it brought me nothing but heartache. So I’m going to vote for myself.

Originally published at Reese Dixon
So let’s catch up…

Reese Dixon - Messy thoughts about a messy world

Whenever my story is told
My pain belongs to my mother
Neither my freedom nor my captivity my own
Trapped in a bargain I never chose
My life a casualty in a longer war

In all the sorrow and the pain
I’ve had to be stoic
I could not add to the burden of my mother
With the truth of my suffering
And I could not allow my tormentor
To see I am tormented

So I fixed my eyes forward
I did not think about the smell of blooms
Or the juice from a tree-ripened plum
I long ago learned that
Living in tomorrow to get through today
Is a loan that can never be paid back

I survive the isolation by refusing to be isolated
I talk with my selves.
The avenger, the artist, the spy, the mourner, the victim
The wise woman with wild hair
What are you going to do?
What can you make yours?

He avoids me now.
My every gaze demands accountability.
He is afraid of what I know.
I know mysteries that even he can’t comprehend.
I do not fear death.
I know there are many ways to die.
And that I will survive them.

I know that when there is nothing left but stillness
new senses develop
To see in the dark
Hear in the silence
Discover the depths that are waiting to be uncovered

And in that stillness you see the illusion
Nothing is still
Even in this place
They are only unobserved

Roots continue to inch ever down
Water collects on the stone walls
Worms turn and nutrients absorb
All the hidden, unseen work
the blossoms depend on

I send my own roots down to the source of me
I collect the water of every kindness,
every drop of love
I nourish myself like a gardener,
offering gentle showers of praise

I love you
You’ve been through so much
You have done so well

When I am returned to the light
They will embrace me and keen
Rocking with the injustice and sorrow.
Asking me how how how
Demanding i solve my riddles and their own.

For this evil bargain
I command the power of creation
The joy and the grief. So much grief.
The birth and the death and then the regeneration
Even in this prison I have power that makes my captor quake
I have transcendence

Originally published at Reese Dixon
Persephone

Reese Dixon - Messy thoughts about a messy world

With my business partner Meredith, I’ve started a subscription box company that specializes in self care. Our box includes things like lotions and sleep masks, treats and stationary, jewelry and soaps. Items that will help you sleep better, eat better, inspire you towards healthy choices, and engage you in luxury.

Along with all the other fantastic products, each box will include at least two craft kits in every box. We have tied everything we’re doing to scientific research, and the research is in. Making something is one of the best things you can do for yourself. It reduces stress, improves mood, lowers blood pressure, increases cognitive neuroplasticity, and so much more. So we’re including kits that represent all kinds of different types of crafting, so that you can experiment and see what kind of a maker you are. And if you hate it? So what! Do you love every workout you do? Sometimes you just get in there and sweat and flail and make a mess but you still did it and will reap the benefits. So if you sweat and flail through your crafting, just throw the dang thing out afterward! You’ll still get the benefits, and the next time you’ll be better, and better after that, until your making muscles are…swole? I’ve reached the limit of my knowledge for this metaphor.

Also included in each box is our exclusive zine, CULTIVATE. This is the women’s magazine I need to exist in the world. Full of authentic inspiration (as opposed to impossible expectations), stories of real women defining their own success, exercises you can use to improve your mental and emotional health, instructions on how to use the items in the box in a manner that best supports self care, and lots more art and humor to make this something that you will really value.

Through the course of all the nonsense I’ve had to wade through in my life, I’ve picked up a lot of survival tips. I’ve learned how essential it is to take my health and well-being into my own hands, and how to use self care as a radical health care tool, not just an excuse to treat myself. Our boxes will come stuffed with tools, education, and permission. You are worth the trouble of taking care of yourself, and I can’t wait to show you how.

Developing this box has been a long journey and I’ve missed coming here and pouring my heart out about every setback and every triumph. But now I can’t even look at this box without weeping because I’ve put so much of my heart and soul into it. I know that this is a product that will benefit people because it’s built on the same foundation as what has benefited me. Not just the reading and learning, but the LIVING. All the days I couldn’t leave my bed, all the times I had to learn shortcuts to make sure I ate, or gave myself incentives for showering. All the times I cross stitched through group therapy so I could stand to sit in my seat. I feel like all the horrors I’ve been through might actually have a purpose.

Our box is called HavenTree, named after the trees I used to hide under when I was a kid, whenever I needed some security. We all need a little safety and I know – because I’ve lived it – that no matter what is going on in your life you can find that place inside you.

Every quarter, you’ll receive a box stuffed full of products you will love. Inspiration to tackle the problems you’re facing. Education about tools that will change your life. And an authentic approach to real life – hard stuff and all.

I hope you love it. I made it just for you.

HavenTreeBox.com

Originally published at Reese Dixon
Big News to Share!

Reese Dixon - Messy thoughts about a messy world

I did pretty dang good trying to cram all of my holiday tutorials into the time I had between back spasms and general poor health, but at 8:00 on Christmas Eve it’s time to move on to playing Santa. So I’m going to leave you with two last videos and leave the step by step text version on my desk drive. Hopefully you’ll watch these and be entertained in those times when family makes you crazy.

I’m still planning on doing a proper home tour video tomorrow when everyone is off playing with their new toys. But until I see you all again I hope you have a wonderful holiday filled with love and cheesy holiday movies.

Originally published at Reese Dixon
Christmas DIY – Make a Retro Crocheted Santa

Reese Dixon - Messy thoughts about a messy world