Gonna get real for a minute here… if you’re looking for my usual lighthearted or snarky posts, you may want to move on.
Like most folks, 2020 has really, really sucked. Major life changes, illness, illness of others, death, and general upheaval had already happened in our house before covid came into play.
You add that, and well, yeah.
Visualize mushroom cloud.
So what does an Ari person do there? Well, she puts head down and copes, as best she can. The difficult part about that is that with each new piece of nuts, I am also dealing with twin spurs of anxiety and depression. I don’t talk about these things much, because I was taught from a very early age that my feelings needed to be bagged up tidily and kept out of everyone’s way.
Why am I talking about it now? Well, in part, because of this-
So it’s time to open up about how I’m coping, hoping it reaches someone who needs to see it and know they aren’t alone.
The mantra I try to keep in front of me is that these feelings can take me, but they don’t get to keep me- I cannot control them, but I can control how I react to them.
And this year… they’ve been bad. Like shingles, ulcer, insomnia for days level bad.
So how do I keep them from taking me?
By taking a page out of Ghandi’s book (not with the fasting, I’m not cut out for that) and being the change I want to see in the world. I think of ways to spark a little moment of joy, spread light and life, and generally help pick people up when and where I see they need it. I give my energy to those efforts and starve the energy to the feelings that are destructive.
I also try very hard to keep a series of routines that keep me healthy and feeling centered. Meditation, skin care, exercise, letting whole worlds play out in my head and getting them onto paper, time with Rick and our pups. I remind myself that there is beauty in every moment, if you just have the will to see it.
And, yeah, some days, I don’t make it. Some days all those vortexes of negativity and fear and doubt take me.
But I will be damned if I let them keep me.
Curiouser and Curiouser 