Hello everyone, dear ones. It’s New Years Eve, 2023. It’s been a hell of a year for me, what about you? It feels so strange to say that because I said it in 2022 and then I said it in 2021 and 2020 and well, I wrote the below Facebook Memory (thanks META!) in 2019.
I’ll get to that in a second, or I suppose you can just skip ahead if you want, I mean I can’t stop you. Be non-linear, time travel!
On this New Year’s Eve, it’s early in the morning. I’ve had a really deeply relaxing and contemplative break. I’ve been off work since the 21st which is a true luxury and gift and I’ve used the time both to couch-rot while binge-watching Schitt’s Creek and various silly films, and to write and reflect actively on the past few years. Truth be told the inner investigations started up earlier in the year, due to a work upheaval and then a medical diagnosis for my truest heart, my husband. And then I took a trip to see family in Georgia. If you’ve been reading along, this is not unfamiliar. I’d link them but I’ve linked enough!!!
I’ve learned a few things this year, I think, and those things are as follows.
1) Trauma is hard to heal from, and honestly I don’t think (I mean I was probably foolish to believe this to begin with) that “healing” trauma means all of it goes away like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It’s simply (and complicatedly) part of your landscape. Like a mountain. Or a river. Maybe the mountain softens over time. Or maybe not, and you just know not to do too much mountain climbing. Or you wear a life jacket in the river. I suppose I knew that, but I didn’t want to know that.
2) Moral Injury is a thing that makes the trauma hurt more. We are raised with books and films and movies that have a hero that avenges bad acts. Bad guys go to jail. Etc. And often, in the real world, that just doesn’t happen. I’d say over history it’s more likely than not that shit happens and people have to deal with the leftover scar tissue. I have, for better or worse, a strong expectation for the good. A boss a long time ago told me I had too much moral fiber. I snapped back with, “At least I don’t get ethically constipated.”
I didn’t last long at that job.
What I’m wrestling with today is how perhaps I could have made more change if I’d been willing to be patient and sit with discomfort and find a way to engage that moral sense with pragmatism. Because….
3) I have not been good at sitting with discomfort, though I am far better than I used to be. First of all, I’m an Aries only child. I’m impatient and eager for things to change. When I realize that I have little to no ability to change a system that is causing harm to me or others? I have left or changed roles. But the deeper issue there is (most likely) that some of the O.G. trauma was a toxic early childhood system that I could NOT leave. I couldn’t change it. I couldn’t leave it. And that drove me to create both good and bad coping mechanisms including leaving things!
And then the next level trauma (my mother’s dementia) was also something I couldn’t leave, but I did leave, I SURE DID, every night at 5pm for happy hour and a few other activities. And I mean, it got me through? Sort of? But I can see how drinking and gallivanting in the face of her brain-melting illness was in its own way a moral injury to myself, and probably my children and to others that cared about me This is worth far more investigation.
4) It is tempting to return to the familiar, even if it is unhealthy, mostly because your body’s nervous system recognizes the patterns. What remains to be seen is can there be a new relationship built within the family structure that is still valuable. Because I don’t ever think we should throw the good away if we can help it. Sometimes we can’t help it. I always leave my door open a crack, I just do. Is that my nature or is it trauma? Am I live or am I Memorex?
5) The past four years have really been hard. For me, for so many people. For us collectively. There has been so much pain. And there is moral injury in how our nation has (not) dealt with it. We are in a huge sea-change, a maelstrom, politically, culturally, ecologically and climate-ically (which is not a word).
(As a side note, I mean look at nonprofits. Geewhiz, look at how they have to fill a void that gets bigger and bigger all the time and the poles run from “business models will solve everything” to “community action will be the answer” and the government just hides in the background letting other people fill in the gaps, and still people are hungry and poor, and systems are just fucking broken and let me tell you if you cannot afford to rent an apartment, you are not gonna be a major donor no you are not and so we MUST change and we MUST demand that we have system partners cause this ain’t working long term. We are in for a tidal wave of change in how we do our work.)
I say all this about the maelstrom without footnotes and references because I’m shit at research. I just know that I know it. I should get better at research. I just know…that I know it.
6) Time for a new therapist. If I can find one because they are all booked up with clients which makes me even more sure we are in a maelstrom.
So here’s the memory that Facebook showed me from 2019 which I was like OH COME ON FACEBOOK AND PAST JULIE, way to come round full circle.
I'm eating cinnamon bread and drinking a latte, which I have to say I'm choosing to see as a sign of how the sweet and bitter can come together in so many forms. Too much sugar, there is no nuance. Too much cinnamon and it's biting and cloying. Steamed milk tempers the smoky espresso, but too much milk makes the whole thing quite tasteless. In some ways that's how the decade looks to me, at least in the comfort of retrospect. Lots of dynamics and extremes. I'm looking back at a decade of extreme growth and a kind of movement-in-stillness.
In 2010, I began my relationship with BedPosts and the role of a storytelling curator, producer, holder of space. The show was a joy and a jewel in my life, offering a passage for me to move through as I grappled with my own feelings about my body and sexuality. It was a starter kit for something bigger for me, not bigger like "national!" but bigger in spirit and purpose. Moving away from Austin and the show was a deep grief but one that helped me see the next steps.
Moving through the 10's, I performed and produced more than I ever have in my life and then performed nearly nothing at all. I ran a half marathon, completed a sprint triathlon and then lay on the couch. I showed up at big conferences where I was a "known" and also went places where I was anonymous. I did work in public and work (probably more powerful work) in secret.
I moved from a long longterm job to a series of shorter term jobs which gave me a crash course in trusting the power of my instincts and skills. In being able to name the problem. In being able to see injustice in action and call it out and in standing up for myself.
I lost my mother in this decade. I grieved in a way that seemed nearly invisible even to me. I was so inward and so still and so depressed that when I look back I think it's shocking. On the surface though, I don't think it really read as such. Maybe in my drinking. Maybe in some of my avoidance of adult responsibility.
I moved 2000 miles away from Austin to a very very different kind of place, but found deep work here. I learned what I didn't know. I learned that seeds can grow where you plant them but you have to be aware of the soil and climate you are working with--If your seeds aren't growing, it might not be your fault per se, but can you find a new adaptation of that familiar plant? My mother and father-in-law taught me that and I'm grateful for their closeness here in town.
I've watched my boys blossom into young men and my husband soar in his new role here. It's a grace to get to support him in the work he cares so much about.
The cat got a bit nicer. We got a dog. This is a joy.
I lost my uterus, which was a necessity, but it was a huge passage and I feel I faced that with ritual and with a sense of claiming-ness. I feel like I entered again into a zone of uncertainty about my role in the world and about what my body was and is for. My uterus housed my children and as I've noted, was probably the only organ I really talked to on a monthly or weekly basis. I honored that loss.
This year 2019, I gained the ability to Mother myself, that's what my breast cancer/DCIS diagnosis did for me. That's a huge thing-for any of you who know my story well enough to understand why, well, it's a huge thing. Just trust me.
I have to admit a sense of pleasure in how I faced this (and I'm aware that DCIS is a small diagnosis but the last 5 months have been pretty wild) because I honestly felt like I just...embraced it, if that makes sense. I couldn't have done it without the guidance of two who went before me Harmony Leanna Eichsteadt and Dustin Harp. Thank you.
I got a therapist. I made a support group on FB. I asked my people for help and love. I wrote about it. I took pictures of my treatment days and have a playlist of songs I heard each day. I centered myself in a way I never really have before, and loved my body in a way I hadn't ever before and I cried when I wanted to and I did things when I wanted to. I talked to all the patients I met and the techs at the radiation
I stopped drinking during that process (and come to find out alcohol and breasts don't really make good friends). I probably won't start again if for no other reason than my health. I will go to bars with you though. Keep asking.
I found out today, just as a fun fact, that my oncology blood work shows that I'm fully in menopause. This feels fitting and wonderful to me.
The Crone appears when you can mother yourself I suppose. I don't intend on that being gendered mind you. I think we all carry the great archetypes in ourselves-Warriors, Wisdom Keepers, Gamines, Child Rearers, Seducers, Peacemakers, Communicators, Artists and those are not gendered at all. It's just that I always was drawn to the trinity of maiden, mother, and crone (ironic for a Unitarian Universalist), birth, life, death and for me, I've passed through two now and can welcome the advent of the third.
I've had my final radiation treatment today and I embraced as much of it as I could from learning about the engineering of it all to the ringing of the bell at the end of my visit today. Radiation is the emission or transmission of energy through space or some material in the form of a wave. I would lie still while energy would beam into me and one way I managed my anxiety about it was to imagine this power entering my body, my body holding it and it was a bit of sci-fi meets mysticism, but it was movement -in-stillness and seems fitting that the process moved through the quiet of year and decade end, and penetrated me deeply through the solstice.
So I enter 2020 ready for...something.*** There are huge and probably painful changes coming to our world, our planet, our nation and to our little villages and communities of people. I see no way out of it but through-fighting white supremacy, patriarchy, the cultures of dominance that have infiltrated our economics, our spiritualities, our bodies. Through using and enjoying our bodies to their fullest in resistance to a dangerous darkness which is out of balance with how things could be.
The dark itself isn't the issue-it's perhaps that our country has never been good at facing it and balancing it back. We are at extremes, and we need more movement than stillness. We need transmissions of energy moving through us all which will help us mother and father ourselves through this time because we are all we got. For me, this means deepening my commitment to spirituality and work connected to that. I plan on a path towards seminary in the UU church and community ministry which includes the body and pleasure and and justice.
I wish you peace and justice and action towards that this last day of 2019.
***Ready for something. I was not ready for COVID or the fires or my child's self harm and pain or the work upheaval or January 6th or Chris's cancer. But especially not COVID. Notable in that post was a declaration of wanting to to to seminary. Something happened in 2020-2021 which was a bit of a loss of faith. A lot of loss of faith. Like…a lot a lot. Not sure if in myself or systems or in even understanding what faith meant.
And I mean, I say that knowing KNOWING still how lucky and privileged I am, but I did get deeply lost during all that time. I thought I was lost after my mother died, still. COVID was…more.
Moral injury is real. We all of us have experienced moral injury since 2020. Like, I don’t think we really get how much. Enough to freeze us all into inaction, at least internally. It hurts.
All this is funny to me because yesterday one of my dearest friends told me she thought I had a ministerial calling. And then lo and behold there is a post up this morning in my Facebook Memories about me declaring it. Which, if I'd committed to that in 2020, I would be by now. But 2020 was a time of lost faith. A dry riverbed. Forty days in the desert.
Lol. Not lol.
How do you become a minister if you don’t have faith in god? If god is just in the spaces between people, and people are acting like DING-DONGS globally (including yourself) how on earth do you dive into that hot mess????? Cue me not sitting with the discomfort, but trying to sit with the discomfort. With a near-beer.
I’d like to think, even through the last four years, in a sense, in the way I do my work, I have kept some kind of faith, acting perhaps like a little "m” minister, a lay leader of community, a midwife of money. A reverend of resource development. Cringe, I know.
But, what now are nonprofits if not missions of the secular world? Aren't theatre and music always a church both holy and profane? Dionysus is a god, and I KNOW that I feel the spirit in music and art, far more than in a church-building.
Maybe my fundraising and systems building has meant many ephemeral and spiritual experiences for people.
So, I'm up for conversation today on New Year's Eve. What do you think about your life? What advice or support do you need. What do you observe about your past into your now. What do you want for your future. How can I help?
And if you don’t need anything at all today, that just means more binge tv for me. So we both win, you lovely people.
As always, thank you for reading. And if you write here on Substack (or other places) thank you for sharing your thoughts. I hope your NYE festivities are safe and fun and frolicsome (or contemplative your choice)