November 2020

It’s hard out there you guys, really hard.

I feel incredibly isolated from all of the trauma because I’m just quietly hunkered in with people that I love, that said; the studio is closed and Lady Harriet has passed away after being the greatest cat for fifteen years.

So there’s been a lot of grief and change which gives me a tiny sense of how people far more impacted by this disaster are doing… but no actual understanding.

It’s all very overwhelming isn’t it?

The world is on fire, the environment is tanking, the number of people who are financially desperate keeps going up, billionaires are getting richer, authority figures keep murdering people with less privilege, we’re still destroying the worlds forests and oceans and water pathways and wildlife habitats, and on top of that people are dying from a freaking virus we still can’t cure.

So, I guess what I’m trying to say is, whether you’re in a safe bubble or an unsafe one, it’s okay to feel overwhelmed or desperate or exhausted or even just empty inside.

It’s okay if your mental illness or trauma responses are acting up. It’s okay if your self care has become a distant memory (but if it has start easy like take a short walk or drink some water or lovely tea or have a bath…) and it’s totally okay if you can’t get yourself to exercise for anything.

We, collectively, are in a world wide shared trauma.

Some people are being drowned and some people are sailing along okay (like me, and I know exactly how lucky I was to have options when my income disappeared while my cat was dying of expensive and fast cancer) but we are all feeling the weight of shared grief and fear and uncertainty.

What is normal?

What is the “new normal”?

Is normal even possible anymore?

These are huge and terrifying and exhausting existential questions and all of us are stuck in or cycling through some form of the startle reflex in response.

So there’s fight. Being stuck in fight is when you clean your oven for the tenth time this month or write a book or something. There’s flight… which can look like being totally unable to stop escaping into television or denial or whatever… There’s freeze which looks a lot like depression and fawn which probably means locked in service of some kind.

Basically your brain is working really hard to figure out the future and can’t dedicate as many cycles to normal tasks. So a lot of executive function stuff starts to pile up or exhaustion or over/under eating or whatever. There are tons of great articles about this out these days by the way.

We are also passing the six month wall now, so basically everyone in the world is hitting the wall. Again many many articles discuss this and it’s a known phenomenon. Let yourself hit it, trust that you will come through the other side.

All of this to say:

Be kinder and more compassionate with yourself please

All my love :)