I am 'Built' for These Times.

Exuding stability in times of chaos.

There is a hush over my house in these early hours.

Soft sighs occasionally slip from the back bedroom where my granddaughters are sleeping. The first early winter snow blankets the ground, frosting trees that a few weeks ago still held gold and bronze leaves that through our extended autumn drifted lazily to the ground to land in strewn about heaps for weeks longer than typically occurs in our mountainous valley. A few fresh tire tracks criss-cross the snow covered road and the washing machine rattles efficiently.

This is peace.

The breath before the day begins prior to the joyful chaos of waking girls, bottles that need filling, diapers that need changing, and hungry tummies to be tended. It is the peace and pleasure of a small black cat curled in the tight space between my belly and laptop, my mermaid-green-tipped fingernails tapping industriously away at the keys of my silver-sticker-covered Mac. Writing as I like to in the early morning hours.

It is not just the cozy environment of my little tin cottage on this early winter morning that exudes peace. It is me. It is my nervous system, my body, these bones and this womb that hold this state of calm. Were I as distressed as some people right now, I doubt that my physical space would feel this way to me. My anxiety might spin tales of concern about driving on icy roads later or whether or not my weather-sensitive Subaru will even start. At this moment I don’t care. We have what we need and we have each other.

I wish more people could find this space.

At this moment, we have what we need. We have each other.

This is my prayer at this time for humans all over the world, and especially for the groups of people who are overwrought and distraught at the current events in our political arenas and what they may or may not bring in our near future, what may or may not be unfolding in these moments in our history.

I realize lots of people are scared right now. I am not.

I realize I can be called “tone deaf” to people’s concerns at this time. I realize some may think of me as “privileged”, a word that gets tossed about when someone’s level of interest in subject matter or distress is not “complimentary” to how certain “parties” think we should think, feel, or act.

It’s not that I don’t care for people’s distress. I do. I deeply care. I was the peacemaker in my family for years. I took it upon myself to care and care and care and to build bridges for people who did not seem to care. 

I care for the world’s distress. I want to hold it like a colicky infant. And I do not care to be perturbed by it—by waves of worry, be they founded or unfounded.

Believe it or not, we can be alert to the surges of collective’s energy without being subsumed or drowned by them.

This stability is rather new territory for me, whereas the catastrophizing and hyper alertness is the “old shoe” and I am tired of wearing it. Not only am I tired of that shoe, I am tired of waiting for the “other shoe to drop”. Those are old and all too familiar “states” for me, “states” which I spent long stretches of my life enmeshed in.

Stability is the new horizon and I know it is neither static nor is it isolationist. I am far more of a willow than an oak when it comes to how I am responding to incoming storms. I have “snapped” before—cracked right down the middle. Now I find myself adapting, leaning, and stretching my boughs to bend to what is brewing and better hold those who need it.

I think part of the reason I am not freaked out by what is unfolding in the world right now is that I was raised in a “doomsday” cult. I was told the world was literally ending when I was 9 and spent several nights in a bomb shelter. Not to pigeonhole my upbringing, it was also quite beautiful where I was raised. The property was owned by Church Universal, the “New Age” community that grew their own food, owed allegiance to a “guru” and sunk bomb shelters into a mountainside in the beautiful Paradise Valley in Montana.

Growing up was a mixture. There was this one really big “event”—bomb shelters, world ending, everyone you care about that is not “chosen” to be underground now and “saved” is going to die—that kind of wreaked havoc on my developing nervous system for a long time. However, I also got a fantastic Montessori education. I got to spend pretty much all my free time in the woods, the creeks, and mountains. I was also introduced to a wealth of spiritual philosophies which I assimilated, integrated, and rejected long before an age at which most modern adults have even been exposed to them.

I am “rooted” in the Mother and it is part thanks to my upbringing.

Aside from varied terrain of where I was raised and what I was raised “in”, both of my parents were severely volatile people who had not addressed their own inherited trauma. Both were prone to violent outbursts and were habitually dysregulated.

I have been working for years to get that—gestures in and all around myself, up and down, into the deep past, and in my own cells—out of my system. I have “rode" panic attacks, have spent days and days and sleepless nights steeped in anxiety, a state which peeked during the utter fuckery that was the covid “lockdown”. I have done drugs to “mimic” my childhood dysregulaiton and engaged in many habits, hobbies, and relationships to stifle my own fears, insecurities and even sense of Self, power, and creativity. I’ve picked places where I thought I “fit in” to give my own various neuroses things to attach to.

I can’t do it anymore. It’s exhausting. I have earned this stability—this self-determination—and I will not be relinquishing it anytime soon.

I see people reporting all kinds of “reactions” to our current collective “climate”.

All of our feelings are always valid.

What we do with those feelings and reactions are also choices and places we can bring more awareness. I am having an interesting "reaction" as well. I have been sleeping more and writing more. I feel this depth of calmness I have not felt in years if ever. I am tapping into desires that have previously felt hard to explore and readily sharing information that feels relevant without questioning myself. Isn't it curious the way we internalize events and "information" and "react" in different ways?

The energy that is activating right now are “currents” I have been “surfing” my whole life: narcissism, the aggrandized type and the covert. I don’t see “parties” of “right” and “wrong”— I see Wetiko pretty much everywhere I look. I want people to see it ”in here” (points at self) and “out there” (gestures at everything). I want people to understand the underlying energetics of what is happening and how to navigate them with agency and safety.

I am here to love, to “hold” , to nourish and to carry.

If I am expected to be “derailed” right now as a being demonstrative of “solidarity” I am not the practitioner you are looking for. 

I will “hold” you as you move through your fears. I will listen and help you regurgitate all you have been “programmed” with and even feed you ipecac syrup if that is what you need to expectorate these eons of poison. I will point your sword in the right direction: at the rapacious energy which has so insidiously insinuated itself not only into every corner of our culture—but also into our most intimate spaces, and into our very cellular structure.

I’m here for it. For all of it—and I will not be moved. Like the mountains I dwell at the base of, my roots are deep and ancient. The wisdom of the earth hums through my bones and I hear Her saying, “Peace. Be still.”

I have a compass and an ark and though the waters are definitely going to get rough we are going to be okay.

Lotsa love,

~Justice