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Notes on caring for yourself in a lockdown

Today in Boston everything feels different. The city is slowly drawing to a close. Schools are closing. Colleges are sending (or have already sent) students home for the rest of the semester as campuses empty out. The grocery stores are bare of eggs and milk and anything canned or frozen. 

Today in Boston everything feels normal. No one I know is sick. Our case totals of COVID-19 are growing, but so far the numbers remain small. Access to testing is still very limited so there may be many more cases that we do not know about, but for now the official totals are reassuring. The state of Massachusetts has not yet recorded its first death from COVID-19, which is also reassuring.

Today I am settling in for the long haul. I have been instructed to work from home as much as possible in the coming weeks and have no plans to return to the office for the foreseeable future. Very happily my job can be performed remotely and I have adequate paid sick leave and good health insurance so I am already so much luckier than so many here in Boston and around the world.

Today in Boston everything is okay, and yet I know that very soon it probably won’t be. An epidemic is a slow moving crisis that seems okay a while and then suddenly isn’t. Here in Boston we’re still waiting for that tipping point to arrive and until it does we won’t have a good idea how bad things are going to get. Right now the disease is spreading slowly and silently and in the absence of mass testing there’s really no way to know how far it has spread until people are gravely ill.

Today I’m finding myself restless. Perhaps today you are feeling restless, too. Perhaps your restlessness is an attempt to quell a thinly veiled sense of worry or panic. Perhaps mine is, too.

All of my routines have been upended. I won’t be going to ballet classes again for the foreseeable future. I won’t be going to restaurants or to the movies. I have had to choose which doctor’s appointments to keep and which to jettison as I try to balance the importance of keeping myself healthy in other ways with the risk of contracting COVID-19 and possibly spreading it to others.

Social distancing doesn’t require total isolation but it does mean far fewer contacts with people. I’m trimming my social circle back to just a couple of the most important people. Everyone else will be transitioned to digital-only interactions. Many of my loved ones are already remote, so we will be talking on the phone more often and caring for each other from a distance. 

Today I am grateful to live with a roommate who is also one of my dearest friends, rather than a quasi-stranger from Craigslist who I only vaguely tolerate. Living with a good friend feels like a blessing always, but especially in light of the weeks of close quarters that likely lie ahead of us.

I’m also grateful that modern technology makes it possible to connect with the people who matter to me remotely, so that we do not have to gather in person to feel a part of a community in quite the same way as was true before cell phones and the internet made it so much easier to be together from afar.

In just a few short days COVID-19 has changed life from normal to different. Today we are struggling to patch together new routines. We are trying to learn how to stay emotionally and physically healthy when we are trapped indoors in ways that we are not accustomed to. 

I too am struggling with these things and so I don’t pretend to have answers for you. The only thing I know is that it is okay to find this transition disorienting and to struggle to find a new equilibrium. It’s okay to feel restless and anxious and scared for our loved ones who are most at risk and sad for the trips that were cancelled and the activities that we have had to give up.

My plans for the coming weeks involve:

  • Enjoying as many remote interactions with people as I can.
  • Doubling down on my at home yoga practice, as well as adding other forms of at-home fitness to my daily routine. It’s really important for my wellbeing that I don’t just sit on the couch all day.
  • Deep cleaning the apartment, doing some mending, and otherwise getting to all the nagging chores that I always mean to do but never have time for.
  • Writing more — especially working more on my memoir, which I’ve been working my way through re-reading in preparation for beginning work on the second draft.
  • Reading more — I have a huge backlog of books on my kindle that are waiting for me so I’m excited to put a dent in my list.

If you’re looking for books to read while you’re in lockdown, here are some books I’ve read and loved in the past year: City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert, The Bear & The Nightingale by Katherine Arden, Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik, The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, and Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi.

Plus a few of the books I’m looking forward to reading while I’m stuck at home: The Yellow House by Sarah Broom, Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

There are also some things I will be doing less of:

  • I’m limiting how much time I spend reading the news. I want to read enough to stay informed, but not enough to induce panic. I will also be limiting myself to just a few reputable sources: one source for local news and one or two national papers.
  • I’m limiting social media (especially Facebook). I won’t be pulling off of social media altogether because some of it is good for me. I get updates from loved ones in my extended network on social media and my women’s memoir writing circle has a group there which is lovely and nourishing. But also: I will be temporarily muting anyone who shares too many articles about coronavirus or otherwise fills my news feed with fear. 

Most of all, I’ll be trying to shape my life in a way that allows me to remain healthy and sane and well-rested so that I can do my part to keep everyone safe by staying home and continuing to do good work and checking in on my loved ones.

I share this list not because I think that these ideas will be exactly right for anyone else, but because we should all be making plans for a lockdown now. And while most of us have thought to stock up on toilet paper, food, disinfecting wipes, cold medicine, and any prescription medications, we have perhaps not thought about how we will need to reshape our routines in order to keep ourselves sane and healthy through the worst of the outbreak. 

But this is important work, too — much more important than refreshing the news one more time to see what the latest infection counts are.

In addition to taking care of myself, I am also going to be looking for ways to donate financial resources to those who will be most affected by the coronavirus. As businesses close there are going to be many in Massachusetts and around the world who won’t be able to make rent payments or afford groceries. The economic fallout of the shutdown is going to be devastating for so many. As someone who is lucky enough to have financial resources and to be earning a paycheck during the outbreak, I’m looking for ways to give back some of my surplus. If you know of or hear about organizations doing much needed relief work during the outbreak, please hit reply and send suggestions my way!

Wherever you are reading this, I hope that you are well and that you are safe and that you have food and shelter and health insurance and paid sick leave and all of the things that human beings deserve. And if you do not have those things and are frightened or scared then my heart goes out to you. If there’s any way that I can help, please hit reply and let me know. We all need each other more than ever right now — even as we remain socially distant and physically far apart.

Much love,
Jessica

You’re allowed to be a work in progress

As I sit here on the first day of 2020, amongst the hubbub of an internet that seems to be overflowing with people announcing their goals for the coming year, I find myself wanting to offer a counter-argument. 

Maybe January 1st is not the time to tear down and disavow everything you do not like about yourself. Maybe January 1st is not the time to cast those rejected pieces aside like so much garbage in the hopes that the dump truck will come to haul them away for good.

Maybe that approach was never going to work out the way you wanted it to. Maybe the cast off pieces of yourself were always going to come crawling back just about the time your resolutions started to slip and old habits began to creep back again.

Maybe it’s okay to be a work in progress. 

Maybe you are allowed to be just as messy and imperfect today as you were yesterday. Maybe the only thing that’s changed is that today you are just a little bit braver, just a little bit more prepared to admit to your flaws and to love yourself anyways.

Maybe the only intention you need for the new year is to become every day just a bit more of yourself. Just a little bit braver, just a little bit wiser, just a little bit more willing to speak the words you are afraid to say, and to disagree with the people whose opinions of you matter the most.

Maybe these are the only things you have ever really needed. And maybe casting off the parts of yourself that you could not be proud of only ever served to make you feel more dreadful about yourself, maybe it never helped to dislike those parts of you at all.

In 2019 I did a lot of things I’m proud of:

  • I finished the first draft of my memoir-in-progress. Finally. After literal years of failing.
  • I read 38 books after several years of really not reading much of substance or quality.
  • I walked 96 miles from start to finish of the West Highland Way in Scotland with a great friend.
  • My sister got married and I managed to pull off being her maid of honor despite being far outside of my comfort zone.
  • I nourished connections with old friends and new ones.
  • I navigated difficult conversations and found that sometimes relationships come out stronger on the other side.

The thing about 2019 was that I didn’t set out to do any of these things. Indeed, in 2019, as far as I remember I abdicated goals and intentions entirely because they seemed way of torturing myself for not yet being the person I knew that I could be (and therefore thought I should be), rather than being a healthy and productive way of motivating myself to make beneficial changes.

Because the first thing I know is that when it comes to making changes is this: it’s okay to not be ready yet. 

There’s a particularly uncomfortable place that we linger in — a liminal space between the moment when we understand that more is possible for us, and some future moment when we are finally brave enough to step through the doorway and to try on that new way of being out in the world where other people might see and hear and judge us.

There is a sacred pause in the process of becoming.

It is a pause that cannot be skipped or avoided. It must be lived fully because only by leaning into the discomfort of becoming will we ever find our way to the other side.

But also: how you navigate this liminal space matters more than anything else. 

Learning to love yourself in the space between knowing who you could be and actually having become that person, will always work better than trying to excise the parts of you that you do not like.

In the end there’s nothing special about the beginning of a new year (or a new decade). 

Which is why in 2020 I’m not planning to make any big changes. Instead, I’m planning to keep leaning into courage as much as I am able to — and to love myself as much as I can in the moments when my courage fails me and I fall short of being as brave as I hoped to be. 

There are of course, more tangible things I would like to do as well: to revise my memoir, to perhaps begin blogging again, to continue to focus on the health of the relationships in my life that matter most to me, and to make sure that life is as rich and fulfilling as possible.

But in the end what I will accomplish in 2020 is less important to me than the choices I will make. Will I choose to act in accordance with my deepest values? Will I be brave enough to use my voice? Will I allow myself to be truly seen by the people who matter to me the most?

What about you — what choices will you make in 2020?

In search of quiet

It’s a snow day here in Boston, which seems like the perfect time to write to you about quiet because a snow day always brings the most delicious hush to the city. People stay huddled up inside their homes and the silence is interrupted only by the howling of the winds and the thunderous scraping of the plows as they drive by…

The general bustle and lack of quiet is hands down my least favorite thing about living in the city. Those of you who are highly sensitive like me will probably understand my dismay at how difficult it is to shut out the world around you in the city (no amount of headphones or ear plugs is really sufficient in my experience).

But despite these challenges, my life seems likely to be tied to the city for a number of years still, and so I’ve been thinking about ways in which I can consciously create more quiet for myself in the city.

And if you don’t live in a city, or are not highly sensitive and are starting to wonder if this post is for you — here’s the thing. I believe that most of the time our circumstances are not entirely ideal.

Life doesn’t provide us with exactly all of the things we need in order to thrive.

I think it’s easy to look around at our lives and think, “If I just had an on-demand supply of peace and quiet, then life would be perfect…” (or whatever it is that you’re longing for).

But life is a complex optimization problem. Yes, I could move somewhere quieter — but then I might need to own a car and I really, really enjoy not needing to drive or find parking in Boston. Yes, I could move out of the city altogether — but then I might have to change my job and I like my job quite a bit these days and I don’t really want to give that up either.

So life is a series of compromises, which means that the best way forward lies in learning to make the best of a less-than-ideal situation — and learning to do this effectively means learning to harness your ability to look for creative solutions to the situations that trouble you.

For example, one of the paradoxical ways in which I am bringing more quiet into my life is by listening to more music.

On its surface this seems like a pure contradiction — but since I’m stuck hearing noise either way, one of the things I can do is I can try to take control of what noises I’m hearing. Using noise that has a neutral or positive effect on my mood to cover over less-pleasant noises (like the cars driving by outside or a coworker’s loud conversation), is actually really helpful.

And because my emotions are less jangly and aggravated when I’m not being disturbed by other people, I feel more quiet and grounded inside myself. By adding more of a specific kind of noise to my life I can actually increase the number of hours I experience a kind of quiet.

Trying to live the very best version of your life means looking for ways in which you can better all the parts that aren’t working for you until you’re doing everything in your power to maximize your happiness.

The truth that took me years to learn is that we have a shocking amount of control over how we experience our circumstances. By making small changes that move the needle just a little bit in the right direction we can dramatically improve our day-to-day experience.

I know this for sure because I used to be pretty unhappy with my circumstances, even just a few years ago. I really disliked living in the city and yearned for the small-town lifestyle I grew up with. I was dissatisfied with my job and I spent a long time seriously considering changing careers.

And then something magical happened.

I graduated from my life coach training program and I changed exactly nothing about my life (literally not a single detail), but I radically changed my beliefs and how I show up in the world.

I reclaimed a lot of my agency and discovered that I liked my circumstances quite a lot once I’d removed all the layers of suffering I’d layered in on top of the reality of how things were.

So you may not always be able to control your circumstances (I cannot magically call in a snow storm to bring me some peace and quiet whenever I need it…), but how you feel about the circumstances you find yourself in is surprisingly malleable.

Sometimes all it takes is a few small shifts in how you approach your life in order to make a really big difference in how you feel.

Because the truth as I know it, is that I am happiest when I am able to exercise my agency, my creativity, and my power to satisfy my needs and create the life I yearn for right here, right now.

My wish is that you might come to learn and wield this power, too.

So my question for you today is what do you need? What are you longing for? And how might you be able to create even the tiniest scrap of that thing in your life right here, right now? 

Much love,
Jessica

P.S. If there’s something you’re longing to create in your life but you’re struggling to actually do it, I’d like to invite you to consider the option of private coaching with me. While the concepts that lead us to freedom are in some sense universal, the barriers are often very individual and working privately with a coach can be the most effective way to overcome your unique barriers and see real results. If this interests you, click here to schedule a free conversation with me and learn more about what I offer my private clients.

I’ve spent my whole life asking the wrong question…

I have an uncomfortable confession to make. You see, I was born with a question on my lips and I’ve spent pretty much entire life trying to answer it. Which is why it’s been uncomfortable for me to realize in the past month or two that I’m pretty sure I’ve been asking exactly the wrong question all my life.

That question, by the way, is “why?”.

Since I was first old enough to formulate this question it has plagued me — amounting to a total span of time far greater than the normal four-year old fixation.

One of the lovely women I coach with has dubbed me “the one with a hypothesis for everything” — and it’s so true.

Every mystery, every puzzle, every question — I am fixated, transfixed, addicted. I chew them over and over in my mind, obsessed with figuring out the why of things until I happen upon a plausible explanation. Only they is my curiosity sated.

But.

As I’ve been thinking about 2016 and what I want to do in the coming year(s) of my life, I’m starting to realize that the question “why?” is ultimately a trap.

“Why” leads invariably to a line of questioning in which the world becomes an murky, impossible place and every decision is weighed down by 10,000 confounding variables.

Under the burden of “why?”, even the simplest decision becomes impossible.

In deciding what to have to dinner one must know why chicken might be better than beef, why Indian food might be better than Chinese, why it might be important to buy organic, etc.

Under the burden of “why” a decision cannot be decided under the auspices of reasons such as “because I want to” (why?) or “because it sounds good” (why?).

Instead, a decision must be infinitely logical and well defended. Under the burden of “why?”, all possible reasons must be vindicated and validated and living your life rapidly begins to feel impossible.

Which is why I’ve decided to start asking a new question: “Why not?”

It’s possible that I find this magical just because I’m going through a phase of some sort… but bear with me for a second if you’re feeling skeptical.

“I feel like having chicken for dinner.” Why not?
“I think I’ll meditate this evening before bed.” Why not?
“Should I skip class tonight and go to bed early?” Why not!

“Why not?” is almost always immediate permission to move in the direction you wanted to go anyways.

As a coach, this is probably something I should have figured out a long time ago — because I ask my clients why-questions a lot in order to help me understand how they see their world.

But I don’t ask “why?” or “why do you think that?” or “why is that?” very often.

Instead, I usually ask questions like “why would that be bad?” or “why would that be a problem?” or “so what?” or “who cares?” (or “why *not*?”!).

When we ask ourselves these “why not?” questions we can see immediately to the heart of the matter.

Because the answers that come up are always are excuses.

“I might fail.” “It’ll never work.” “I’m not qualified.” “I ate chicken last night.”

And our excuses are almost always… well, pretty darn lame.

But sometimes they’re also not lame and that’s fine too.

If doing something really is a bad idea then you’ll figure that out when you ask “why not?”.

That’s the brilliance of the question, really. It’s just waiting for you to look your choices in the eye. It doesn’t have any sort of an agenda.

Now it’s your turn! I dare you to pick a dream for 2016 and ask yourself “why not?” Let me know what comes up for you in the comments!

 

Settling into the stillness

While I was a student at MIT I forgot how to be still.

I was so madly busy, so go-go-go that every time I came up for breath, I twitched restlessly, sure I must be missing or forgetting something.

I would go home for Christmas, and in the days that followed my arrival I was relentless. I fidgeted. I poked and prodded. I asked “What’s up?” over and over, helplessly, of anyone afflicted with my presence.

One year, in a fit of desperation I sat down to my mother’s piano (an instrument I do not play) and proceeded to teach myself Bach, one agonized note at a time. I played the same piece over and over and over for hours, for days until my fingers flew almost gracefully over the keys.

I played until every nerve in the house was frayed just like mine were and — in the moment when my sister finally yelled at me to stop — I thought that in their annoyance my family at last shared a trace of my pain.

This affliction was usually (thankfully) short-lived. Within a handful of days my anxiety dimmed from a pitched fervor to a disquieting buzz that settled in my bones and could be mistaken for “normal”. I could come to accept that for a few short weeks there might be nothing I needed to do — no imminent crisis that needed thwarting, no pending deadline I had somehow forgotten.

But I could not settle into stillness.

—

The first time I tried in earnest to meditate was the winter after I graduated with my Master’s degree.

I settled down on a cushion and dutifully crossed my legs. I set my timer for the recommended 20 minutes. I closed my eyes and focused my attention on my breathing. I pressed “start” on my cell phone timer.

I think I lasted all of 30 seconds before I was shifting again — my hand reaching instinctively to kill the timer as I rose to my feet and settled myself back at the computer.

Sitting in stillness with my thoughts was unbearable.

I tried again in the following days — setting my timer. I never made it the full 20 minutes, but sometimes I counted myself lucky to endure five as my thoughts raced in tight, anxious circles and I struggled to remember my breath.

I gave up eventually. I quit.

I decided meditation wasn’t for me; the way I’d decided it wasn’t at age 10 when I’d read about it in a book, sat down to try it out, and remained still for a (very patient) three minutes before deciding I must not be doing it right.

I guess I’d expected some kind of a mystical experience, but all I got was me — concentrated and intensified and uncomfortably near as I struggled to follow, not dictate, the rhythm of my breath.

—

But as we enter this particular winter — as we enter into the liminal space between winter’s first chill and the snowy onset of winter’s depths — I’ve noticed something in me has shifted.

No longer am I the girl who can’t sit still.

No longer am I the girl who found a 20 minute meditation stretched out like an infinite, bridgeless crevasse I was unable to cross.

No.

These days I find myself sitting in stillness more often than not, in vast stretches of empty hours spent on the bus to and from work or on airplanes as I criss-cross the country with the alacrity of a hockey puck.

I used to fill these spaces with noise, with words, with pages and pages of the books I voraciously consumed — stuffing my head to the brim with thoughts and ideas. But these days, more and more, I find I’d rather just sit down where I am and watch and breathe and contemplate the world as it slips silently by out my window.

On the eve of this particular winter I’m finding myself settling into a new and yet familiar stillness, settling into the moments of soft introspection as my attention draws inward even as the trees draw in their sap.

I find myself welcoming, not dreading, the impending cold that will keep me hunkered down. No longer does the threat of this seem anything other than delicious as I settle myself down for a kind of inward-turning hibernation.

I find myself feeling, for perhaps the first time since I arrived at MIT, like I’m incubating the seeds of something entirely new.

I find myself returning to the oft-quoted passage from T.S. Eliot:

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

I’m sinking myself into the stillness now, I’m waiting into the winter.

Because I do not yet feel ready for thought as I settle, ever more deeply, into the person I find I’m busy becoming.

What about you — who might you be becoming? Let me know in the comments.