Life Naturals

What do you believe about why we’re here, on earth, alive and mortal, right here and now? It’s a big question and sometimes it feels easier to focus on the small, daily tasks of living, the personal ups & downs and a narrower lens that doesn’t tend to overwhelm. But the undeniable truth seems to be that this tighter frame forces out not just the scarier parts but also the most exhilarating. It’s like Alan Watts said, “We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.” Perhaps part of the purpose of our aliveness is to practice, little by little all the time, the art of becoming more willing to sit with the pain so that we can become more able to sit with the pleasure. Another thing Alan Watts said: “The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.”

I am a writer—it’s what I believe I was born to do and it’s the one thing I might not survive this life without the freedom to keep doing. Somewhere along the way, my love of language (how it can be so strikingly and subtly wielded to help us understand and expand our lives) led me into the realm of psychotherapy and social justice. For the last eight years I’ve been seeing individuals and couples in private practice. It’s difficult, beautiful, and fascinating work. I learn something new every single day. And I meet so many people who teach me all kinds of important lessons about how to behave and what to value. Sometimes I’m lucky enough to cross paths with a human whose essence and perspective align with and challenge my own in ways that allow us both to truly evolve. I’ve often said that this role of psychotherapist is a “privilege” or “an honor,” and it is certainly both of those things. But I think the best way to describe the role, the work, the process of it all is to call it an adventure, alternately dark, daunting and then lovely, lit up with hope. I learn so much from these fellow humans we call “clients,” and I know, at my best, they’re learning a thing or two from me. By way of all my brilliant teachers, and my own lived experience, I am able to inhabit this role that I’ve taken to thinking about as conduit.

People come to me for myriad reasons and respond to me—and the adventure—in myriad ways. Many patterns and themes begin to present themselves, and any therapist will tell you they see a lot of repetition in what their caseload brings to the table. When someone’s reaction to this mysterious, adventurous leap of faith we call “therapy” is outside the bounds of these perennial patterns you, hopefully, take note. Four years ago someone came to me for reasons that are sacred and will stay in the silence but what I can tell you is that the way they came to me was different than most (not all) of what I’d encountered before. This person had a palpable energetic lightness to him and was immediately more humble, and also more confident, in his point of view than many are in their very first session. Over the course of the subsequent several years, I had the privilege and honor to go on an ever-expanding adventure with this person. The work got deeper and his engagement with his own aliveness grew. Like a tree rooting downward into the belly of the earth even as it reaches outward branching up with a joyful buoyancy, I watched this person take stock and make changes, delight in his gifts, and push at his resistance wherever it popped up.

A few days ago, this person’s time on the planet came to an abrupt and terrible end. When I got the news, my first thought—after the visceral shock began to wane a little—was that he, this person no longer alive, was precisely the person I’d want to talk to in a moment of learning about his death. I smiled at this thought because I knew he’d find it funny.

You aren’t always conscious of the precise nature of the attachment that you’re building (or have built) with a client. This is why we’re encouraged to participate in professional consultation and other networking opportunities where we can reflect on the people we’re working with, how we’re doing, how they’re doing, and what impact we seem to be having on one another across time. Once in a while I find myself more aware of the thing as it’s happening, and there’s one specific element that I think provides the explanation: laughter. When I was studying the philosophy of yoga some years ago, one of my teachers made a pointed effort to draw our attention to the presence of humor in so many Buddhist, and other mindfulness, writings. We talked about the power of a childlike attitude and the way properly timed/intentioned humorousness can change everything, even save a life. I’m happy to report that I was lucky to be raised among silliness, sarcasm, and a tilt towards gratitude (qualities that my practices and relationships help me enhance and integrate more and more all the time); I’m very happy also to note that because of who I was when I entered into the role of psychotherapist, most of my clients are similarly appreciative of the funny, or open to it at least.

I was reflecting on this with a friend and fellow therapist about a year ago as we talked through how we were coping with helping all of our clients cope with the ongoing pandemic alongside all the other societal and environmental meltdowns. “There’s this one client,” I told her, “he’s one of those you almost feel doesn’t need therapy in that he seems to have been born with the equanimity thing we’re all working so hard to acquire, but of course he has his growth edges like the rest of us. It’s just that he’s got such a healthy sense of humor, and so his resiliency is crazy high.” She smiled, knowingly, and told me to simply be grateful for my time with this client because it’s the people like him who, despite any unseen pain or healing they have to address, provide us—their therapists, their friends, their family—with a much-needed infusion of their curious and comical sensibility, a vicarious fortifying just from spending time in the presence of this lighter kind of soul.

She was right. In a way—and please pardon any creeping hyperbole or dramatics—these people pave the path for us to be with heavier stuff of life, the harder patches and the irrefutable ugliness that’s endemic to our world. Our work then, to repay the universe for these folks who keep us sane, is to commit to a daily ritual of getting very quiet and very still so we can listen to our own wisdom and remember who these people are in our lives, in all types of relationship, and to sit in several minutes of silent appreciation, and love, for everything they are and all they allow us to be.

The writer Sarah Wilson calls these people, “life naturals,” in her wildly instructive and resonant book First We Make The Beast Beautiful. She talks about how essential every personality type is, the way anxiety can be a critical tool for survival and improvement, how tender a guide the more sensitive among us are if we pay attention to them and make room. And still, in the end, it’s clear that she (who is not a life natural) is just a tad envious of, if mostly grateful for, the people she’s known who do have this thick thread of groundedness running through their center.

Each of us, each individual way of being, is an indispensable part of the order of the cosmos, so it seems. All we’re really saying I think—Buddha, Sarah Wilson, me, so many of you—is just how fucking great it is that among all the worriers, and the cynics, and the planners there are these bright stars of seemingly limitless joyfulness. All we are saying is give that a chance.

In honor of these people in our lives—and maybe it’s YOU—who bring so much laughter and lightheartedness (without ignorance or avoidance), and specifically in honor of my recently departed fellow human/former client/kindred spirit who’s been born into the next realm, I invite you to invest in the mindful development of a quieter, kinder, sillier, saner future in any ways that might work for you, including by sharing resources of time and/or money here.

***

Death scares us and often sends us hiding from it in all manner of ways. Understandable as our fears are, we should try to be lovingly firm with ourselves and each other as we walk into the unknown future. Our planet is sick, our society is broken, and in the hearts of so many billions of people there is, ultimately, the central desire for love—to feel it, to give it, to revel in its many incarnations. When someone you care about dies you’re faced with a fork. I’ve lost a few very dear and foundational people and these experiences showed me how to find my way through—not around—the mortality of us all. You’ll find your own way and, at our best, we’ll all support each other along this nonlinear road of finding faith.

My only suggestion is to think about this process as part of the adventure. Being alive is mostly made better by accepting, and making your own relationship to, the fact that we will leave this life, one way or another. Faith doesn’t mean you know anything for certain, it only means you want to fill your mind and heart with ideas that comfort you and therefore make you calmer, kinder, and more focused on what you do have than what you don’t.

Whomever and whatever helps you develop your own philosophy of faith are the most important people and teachings we will spend time with while we’re alive. Seek them, share them, protect them, and respect everyone’s version of finding peace with this one precious life.

This little bit from the inside of my mind/soul is dedicated to Sam, who showed me the thing I suspected all along: the funny ones are deeper than you think and wiser than the rest.

Love to you all,

Emily

Unlearning Fragility: Moving from Actor to Accomplice

“Racism is bigger than conscious hate….” -Scott Woods



Central components to begin:

  1. Establish the indisputable reality that all white people have some degree of internalized racism and will perpetuate racist beliefs against people of color.

  2. Have adequate (and ever-evolving) skills of self-awareness; vulnerability; reflection; mindfulness; self-care; distress tolerance; emotion regulation; intentional action.


A. Understand your own motivation and intentions for engaging in antiracist work (internally and externally):

  • Do necessary self-awareness work

  • Do necessary vulnerability work

  • Practice reflection (journal, etc)

  • Talk with other white people about these things; name your fears, confusions, hopes

B. Ask the ‘right’ questions:

  • What has allowed me to remain ignorant about how to interrupt racism?

  • Asking how, NOT if, I participate in and uphold racism and white supremacy.

  • Do I confuse comfort with safety?

  • What am I willing to do to recognize, learn, and adapt my behaviors to become less likely to act on internalized racism?

C. Define core terms for a working understanding of what is being talked about in a given context so you don’t waste time arguing due to differing understandings of words:

  • White fragility

  • Whiteness

  • White privilege

  • Actor; ally; accomplice


D. Understand the concept of the continuum of racism that all white people land on/move across, based on the work they are/aren’t doing to become more antiracist:

  • Again, engage in ongoing (radical) acceptance of the indisputable reality we began with.

  • Ask yourself: In what ways have I benefited from institutional and cultural racism?

  • What internalized racial biases do I possess? How do these manifest?


E. Beginning to act more and more in alignment with antiracist ideas and actions:

  • Work with/take private time to process all of the above as often as you need; it’s a lot.

  • Be willing (and prepared: see section A) to move into (vs. away from) uncomfortable conversations.

  • Welcome, and ask for, critical feedback.

  • Learn to listen (not just hear).


Resources:

  1. My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakam

  2. The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

  3. How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

  4. All About Love by bell hooks

  5. Pleasure Activism by adrienne maree brown

  6. Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat-Zinn

  7. Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change by Pema Chodron



Mindfulness Now

As many of you know, my business model is rooted in considering how mental health is connected to participation in some form of service. Many of you have been in workshop space with me talking about the work of Micheal Stone who instructed that we have a dedicated mindfulness practice that also is deeply connected to contributing outward. In various ways, I have always tried to model and facilitate active citizenship. But we are up against a lot these days and it's going to take more.

We can all do better. I can do better. Everyone has their own personal struggle and journey; at the very least, we have to stand in solidarity with each other, considering the oppression of anyone to be the oppression of all. 

To this end, I have always aired on the side of transparency when it comes to my commitment to social justice (this is also implied in my being a social worker by training, and I've included this kind of language in my bios, etc). Yet, I have also maintained a degree of confidentiality around these topics to respect the variance in perspective that may come to my practice, in keeping with arguably outdated protocols in my field. Over the last several years, and especially since 2017, I have been reconsidering this approach. 

After much thought and conversation with peers/mentors, I have decided to officially be open and public about my beliefs, in terms of what I support and what I denounce. I recognize that this may make some people uncomfortable and ultimately it may mean you prefer a different practice. This is completely the prerogative of every individual. For my part, I feel the need to assert and protect my values to the extent that this is effectively part of protecting the lives of those with far less privilege than I have.

As always, I will not be available to hold space for any conversation that advocates any kind of overt exclusion. I am always available to hold space for learning, asking questions, risking mistakes, and being guided by the intention of doing better. I will never turn you away so long as you remain open to new ideas. 

***

Practically, I want to reiterate that I am here for continued therapeutic support for all those who continue to feel I am the right fit. Never hesitate to bring up your feelings, questions, etc about what you see happening in the world around you. I will do my best to guide you in taking a balanced lens of processing and proactivity.

Yoga/meditation can be infused into your sessions as much as you like (this is going pretty well virtually as some of you have already experienced with me). It's important to lean into our practices during times of increased stress so that we can stay strong and engaged. 

I want to encourage you to remember that self-care is selfless; if you are not well, you cannot be of service to anyone else. Put your own oxygen mask on first. The key is to be consistent in your practices so you can correctly identify the moment when you feel ready to turn your attention outward. 

Be on the lookout for resonant models and keep track of the things you are learning. If you’re a white person and you feel overwhelmed and unsure of what you can do to dismantle systems that were designed to uphold racism, start by examining your own personal life and relationships. Be honest and be brave. Ask questions and don’t be afraid to be wrong. This is not a time for ego. Take your beginner’s mind and open up to all you don’t know. And support people and organizations who’ve been in this work for far longer than the mainstream has taken notice, including Color of Change and your local chapter of Black Lives Matter.

If you have a platform or a vision, find a thoughtful way to leverage and use these things. We need you. There is much we all need to learn, and there is much we all have to offer. Two things are most often true. Your privilege will allow you to hold this dissonance while you keep fighting forward.

"Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced." -James Baldwin 

Reflections from a Distance

Here, Now

If you start with a deep breath--slowly in through your nose; slowly out through your nose--you will find your way to it. To this moment. Right here. Now. We are perpetually instructed to return back to this moment, by our guides, our books, our mentors, and, eventually, with practice, by the voice in our own head. We are being asked back to this moment now by the hairs that stand on the back of your neck or the sharp swallow when things just don’t seem right. We are being directed to get back to ‘right now’ by the call of a bird passing high overhead or the rustle of dense tree leaves as the wind rushes through. We are called back to now by the sensation of cold floor on bare feet or cool hand on warm face. Every moment is a moment to return to the present. What we overthink could fill our endless numbered days so we sense our intuition asking us to reach for simplicity. We set intentions and try to be kind as we allow each ‘distraction’ to be, simply, a passing present moment that guides us to the next one, and the next one…..and more of this, on and on, until we sleep. 

So what to do when you’re there, in the present moment? Depends, right? Are you in seated meditation? Keep breathing. Are you in a task? Keep going. Are you in conversation? Keep listening. Are you in a book? Keep reading. Are you in fear? Slow down, and pick up a bit of gratitude. It’s right there, yes, over there, right beside you perhaps, or maybe you'll need to reach out and extend the limits of your arm to catch hold, but it’s there. Because, whether you can see it or not, it’s tethered to you, bound to your being like the heat or air that move through you always. So if you’re here, it’s here.

Take another (slow, deep) breath through your nose; close your eyes this time. Now look again. Reach for your bit of gratitude--the one that this moment here & now is offering--and hold it in your two hands like a child with an extra-large leaf. As you examine this thing of goodness, ask yourself to notice it’s full shape and size and feel. Is it the shape and size and feel of being grateful for a warm bed or a warm meal or warm friend or a cool breeze or your favorite song? Whatever shape it’s in, begin to slow everything in your mind-body by watching your gentle breath move in and out of you with the wisdom of a hundred million years until you see this thing so clearly it’s there with you, and then hold it in your mind for long enough that it becomes the image at the back of your eyelids when you close your eyes again; in each new present moment take full, slow breaths in and out, over and over, for as long as you need, until you feel your body call you towards rising to stand and move into the next present moment, carrying this bit of gratitude with you, in your pocket, in your mind’s eye, in that nameless place inside of you where there will always be room for more goodness.

Repeat this cycle of breathing*pausing*reaching*seeing every day if you can.

***

I’m reading a thing called “The Book of Delights” by Ross Gay and it is such a beautiful thing that I have to tell  you a little bit about it, as it was the bit of gratitude I found within my reach today. Having something to read that is a comfort, and also eerily resonant/relevant to the time you find yourself in, is a delight. The section of this beautiful book that I read today is about joy and sorrow and annihilation. Ross reminds us of Zadie Smith and her wonderful words on joy. She says, “Joy is such a human madness.” Exploring the difference between joy and pleasure, he takes us along a winding road in his mind & heart, arriving at a place where he’s remembering for us the words of a student who said to him, and to her peers, about being a teacher, about gathering for poetry and learning: “What if we joined our wildernesses together?” Then he writes to us, the reader of this beautiful book, “Sit with that for a minute.” 

Reading on annihilation and wildness and the space between joy and pleasure and sorrow is a strange gift in a time like this, when the world has been paused and the fibrous bonds between us are being stretched beyond any reach we’ve ever known, as we grasp to keep these bonds in tact, fearing loss so deeply. But then, when we sit back from our grasping to rest for a moment, we find that these bonds are so much stronger than we ever knew, overwhelmingly strong. Ross Gay ends this section of his book by wondering, “Is this sorrow, of which our impending being no more might be the foundation, the great wilderness?/ Is sorrow the true wild?/ And if it is--and if we join them--your wild to mine--what’s that?/ For joining, too, is a kind of annihilation./ What if we joined our sorrows, I’m saying./ I’m saying: What if that is joy?”

And so as I put the book down, rationing it out to myself as a daily delight all its own, I sat for a long moment and thought. And then I reached out for the nearest bit of gratitude. What I found in my two hands, as I held it up into the light of the truest childlike wonder I could find, was this question: What if there is joy in entering sorrow, with our eyes and hearts so wide we can’t miss one sacred thing, and, in doing this, we transcend the pain of sorrow and reach the true depths of it, where things are not chaotic but peaceful, and in the depths of sorrow we find what is really there, beneath all that viscous, opaque fear: what if, in the depths of sorrow we find hope, the kind that comes from looking upward and feeling in your bones that there’s something worth surviving here?

And then I turned to Clarissa Pinkola Estes retelling The Ugly Duckling in the tradition of her family, the falusias meselok, in “Women Who Run With The Wolves.” She ends the retelling like this: 

And the children who came to feed the swans bits of bread bread cried out, “There’s a new one.” And as children everywhere do, they ran to tell everyone. And the old women came down to the water, unbraiding their long silver hair. And the young men cupped the deep green water in their hands and flicked it at the young girls, who blushed like petals. The men took time away from milking just to breathe the air. The women took time away from mending just to laugh with their mates. And the old men told stories about how war is too long and life too short.

And one by one, because of life and passion and time passing, they all danced away; the young men, the young women, all danced away. And the old ones, the husbands, the wives, they all danced away. The children and swans all danced away...leaving just us...and the springtime...and down by the river, another mother duck begins to brood on her nest of eggs.

And then I set that book aside, and closed my eyes, and breathed deep breaths and let gratitude pass through me--gratitude for all that makes it so I can read and think and gather and look ahead and look back, and return, over and over, to this moment now. 

***

What is happening in the world right now is unclear, in terms of words of reason or fact that we think might comfort us. There’s an uncertainty clinging to every moment like a stain we wish would wash out. But it won’t. It’s here to stay, for now. 

But if you listen to the whispers in the space between the panic and the forced optimism, you can hear, in different terms--in wordless felt sense and softer combinations of language that we may have long ago strayed from--that an explanation for what is happening is trying to emerge. If you are lucky enough to have the space and the time and the health to sit and pause and listen, you might find a piece of the puzzle sent from the universe just for you.

Soon enough, I believe, we will bring all these pieces together, we will join our wildernesses, and, once and for all, we will see the truer meaning of what we’re doing here, and why we’re always being called back to the present moment. We will understand, finally, and in an entirely new way, why we’re perpetually directed back to “here and now.” Finally, and for good, we will agree, together, that here and now is where life is. Before and later are of dreams and fantasies. Not all bad, but not enough. We need this. Here. Presence. To see ourselves. To see each other. To make decisions, to act, to live in ways that are actually rooted in the deep rich earth of love and compassion. We’ve been rolling stones for way too long.

Can you see it? Can you see the vast field of wildflowers literally digging themselves into the dirt for new depths and bringing the sun and the rain and seasons to them for the nourishment they need? Can you see the way unity begets life? Can you see the way outliers are coaxed towards the warmth of the group and no one is turned away? Can you see how the ones who claim not to care are suddenly in the center seeking the stability of the whole and weeping the excruciating sobs of having had their wrongs revealed to them? Can you feel it? Can you feel the sorrow becoming joy?