“How many times a week, on average, do you feel like you don’t want to engage the world?” asked the nurse practitioner. “Three to four?” “Yes, that sounds about right,” I replied.
“Do you feel depressed?” she followed. “Yes, I can feel that a bit.”
“Okay, I have to ask more questions,” she added, just as I had anticipated.
As she asked the follow-up questions, I could honestly answer “no” from my deepest self, but I could also feel the weight of everything she expressed. I’ve been feeling it for over a year, and it’s not just mine, it’s the weight of the world right now.
“It’s just the pandemic,” I offered as a succinct bottom line summary. It was sufficient albeit inadequately complex. “I think we’re all feeling it on some level.” She nodded immediately as if circling back to what she already knew before the prescribed questions had to be stitched together to find the truth in this particular situation.
(Note: These questions are important and not everyone’s feelings are the same as mine. My words in this story were about my situation and not intended to undermine more severe mental health struggles.)
This appointment had come after months of being put off due to a lack of providers available, and it had been entered incorrectly, which meant that instead of a doctor, a midwife entered the room and told me she was expecting to have a women’s exam with me and not a physical. Tears flooded my eyes. I tried to remain calm and kind. “But I came here because I have pain in my toe and shoulder and hip. I just turned 45 and I need to have my colon checked. I want to get my blood work done.” “Sorry, I can’t do any of those things for you.”
After some pivoting, she graciously got me a new appointment for the following week (Spoiler: This also ended up being entered incorrectly.) and I hurried to my car. There I sat and let the tears flow. The can of worms known as grief had been opened and there was no stopping it.
I did the next right thing and got an iced coffee with all the fixins and drove to a wooded labyrinth. I walked a path to the back of the labyrinth and saw another woman, roughly my age, just sitting in the middle. I quietly sat on a large stone and waited, giving her space to complete her process. I wondered what she was sitting with and if it felt similar to my own stuff, all the while knowing it did.
Around the same time as this, I reached out to a friend who casually mentioned that I had entered her spirit and had stayed with her. She felt the weight of what I was holding. We got together for coffee and she offered loving and non-judgmental presence. She offered a safe space in which I could say the whole truth. I could say things like “Being a woman in leadership is pretty much bullshit. There just aren’t the right resources in place to support new ways of being.” and she could see me clearly and understand me completely. What a gift this was. It was also a reminder that all I have been feeling is not unique.
(For perspective, I also want to offer that our certain societal norms of individualism and consumerism greatly exacerbate these conditions. It also speaks to privilege. There are people who have walked longer with much worse conditions and fewer resources that are no doubt navigating these times with a wisdom that others of us may only be newly encountering. This is not a note of shame or guilt. It’s just a more expanded practice of awareness in the here and now.)
I feel that many of us are struggling in uncharted territory. I feel we are searching for a new definition of “okay”. I think many of us feel we walk the line between keeping it together and losing our shit on an hourly basis. I think many of us who reject performative living are recognizing that it’s almost a survival skill right now, and maybe we’re struggling to make peace with that.
I recognize that this is vulnerable sharing and may lead some to seriously question my ability to move through my work and life right now. But here’s the thing - feeling all of this and naming it is spiritual work, spiritual practice. There’s a saying in spiritual direction: You cannot accompany others in places where you have not been willing to go yourself. Sitting with all of this and processing the grief is like professional development for a spiritual director. And it’s just important work for anyone. Don’t try to find yourself a spiritual director who doesn’t have trenches. Find one that knows how to sit in them with presence.
Sitting with spiritual direction clients is the one place that remains so wonderfully clear and aligned. It’s the space I leave feeling reassured and refreshed, grateful and hopeful. There’s a lightness in that space where we can be present with one another on the deepest level and know that we are safe and anchored in unconditional love. And the presence and support I feel from other realms at this time is heartwarming.
I’m convinced that we need these deeper, underground connections to sustain us these days. Each month I send out a Soul Speak newsletter. This month I prefaced it by saying that if I could, I would extend my hand to each person receiving it and help them remember that they are not forsaken. I got more responses to that email than any I’ve sent out in the past two years.
I recently explained to a friend that if I step back and bring my awareness to the bigger picture, I can picture each of us almost as grains of sand on a vibrating table. These tables can vibrate at certain frequencies and form sand molecules into various patterns. When we watch the process as observers, we can see the miraculous process of beauty manifesting in response to the vibrations. But if we only are aware of ourselves as the grain, we will feel like the whole world is ending and maybe we are screwed and about to fall of the edge.
And really, it’s a both/and situation. We have to be present to the grain and the grandeur. And we have to remind one another that we are not alone and we are not forsaken. We are. We are here. We are here now. We are here now and. We are here now and not. We are here now and not forsaken. Step by step, clarity by clarity, presence by presence, we can walk in our belovedness as whole and complex beings.