Hi everybody. Today, I am home by my wood stove as our winter storm continues. We already have 22 inches, and I’m not going anywhere. I have not added a word to my blog in about a year, with the excuse of busy-ness. Today, no excuses.
I’ve been asking myself, why the silence all this time? There was the process of my mother’s death back in May. Maybe the next post will be what I read at her memorial service.
There was the process of buying and sharing the directorship of the Rosen Method Open Center. I am excited to be a key part of laying groundwork and thinking about our school and our mission. I’ll post that later too.
Then there was being invited to become Director of Teaching in Denmark! I am especially pleased that that happened because of the extraordinary atmosphere of safety and community that we have created at the Open Center. I’ll teaching in Denmark in June!
And of course our elections. For a brief time, I got really depressed that a person like Donald Trump could get elected, so much that I decided to do something way outside my realm of knowledge or experience. Something wacky and fun, some way to respond to the times. So I signed up for a class in stand-up comedy. Donald Trump inspired me: after all, what makes me think I’m qualified to be a comedian?
Apparently, I’m totally not. After reading two books on writing comedy and watching countless hours of stand-up, I still can’t write a joke. My routine was about my marching on Washington the day after Trump’s inauguration. I went from barely being able to spit out the “p___” word to describe my cat-eared pink hat to spontaneously swearing so sincerely that my class cracked up. Because I had made up insults that don’t actually exist. (“Screw heads?” That was about my feelings after reading the Republican Party Platform. If you’re curious, check out what they say about the Clean Air Act and CO2 emissions.)
My first performance was a huge success. All three of my friends who attended laughed uproariously.
SO, it’s important in these times to have a voice. A blog like this is a platform, so speak I will. All these years, I’ve been trying to make the world a better place, spreading the word about how healing happens, addressing trauma, and so forth. These days, it feels like not enough.
I am learning that I have to truly accept what is–something I preach all the time. But it’s a challenge for me to say, yes, this is what is actually happening now. Greedy, amoral and immoral men are in charge of how things go in the world, and they are destroying it. Deportations, violent attacks on minorities, allowing pollution of waterways…the list is long.
Here’s the strange thing. Day to day, I am happy. Even when I get paranoid about whether I will be allowed back into the US if I travel (I have a weird name and my passport shows I was born in a Muslim country, though not one on Donal’s List), somehow I stay in a good mood. This, I think, is the result of embodiment.
My actual current experience is positive. Every day, I see progress in my clients. Some of them have been through such horrific experiences, yet they are coming back to their bodies and their freedom. Every day, I enjoy my marriage, my home, my friends and family. I am looking forward to the next March on Washington on April 29.
We are in a huge process. I have to take the longer view: where have we come from in American history? How is that still unfolding? What will happen on earth when the current forms of life on it can no longer survive? When I put questions on that level, it immediately feels like the questions and responses come from a different level of my being. I can only call it a spiritual level.
From that level, the only advice I’ve gotten so far is to expand as much is I can in order to take in what is, take each step at a time without having a set map, and live in process. That means, I don’t know the outcome but I know what’s true each step of the way, and I trust the process. All of these things are what we learn and practice in doing Rosen Method Bodywork, so they feel like home to me.
