LEARNING TO ADAPT BY FINDING PRESENCE WITH YOUR FEAR, ANGER, GRIEF AND BEYOND

I am always looking to find different tools to play with and stretch  the edges of what patterns and habits my brain has become familiar with in order to allow for more possibilities. To be clear, I am not always in search of calm or peace, I am just as much in search of the disruption necessary for change. For me, embodiment and sports have helped me build awareness and change a lot of patterns. First, climbing taught me how to be with my fear as opposed to try and fix it. Climbing requires your brain to strategize and your body to feel. Fear dismantles your ability to do both. When you are 100’s of feet off the ground, we should be afraid. It is actually adaptive to be afraid because it could save your life. It then becomes how you sit with the fear and navigate it as opposed to avoid it or stop it. 

Boxing became another tool  I used to retrain my brain. Initially, I used it to flood my nervous system, using sparring to practice regulating a flooded nervous system. This helped me be more adaptive with my fear in life and even more in climbing.  When I consistently activated my nervous system consciously and then practiced regulating it, it began to give me more ways of adapting my nervous system to unexpected triggers in life.  Instead of looking for calm, I sought out agitation and flooding, to help practice new ways of responding.

Simultaneously, I used boxing as a way to move feelings through my body such as anger and grief.  Feelings are the language of the body and they need to be met with the same resonance as the feeling itself to be acknowledged. Anger for example needs reverberation. Grief needs to sometimes be dislodged and always needs to be given the time and space to unfold. 

To train my brain, body, and nervous system with new skills, I started to say “how can I”, instead of “I can’t”. Naturally I am not coordinated, I was the kid who would trip walking on a flat side walk, could not follow choreographed dance moves, had no rhythm, was tone deaf and had very bad hand-eye coordination. I wanted new possibilities, so I learned to box, dance, climb and even sing to learn how to adapt how I navigated my world. Don’t get me wrong my default is still clutzy and I still miss the beat often, but I have practiced other possibilities so much, I have adapted and now have more options in how my mind and body can respond.  

“Can’t” is a mindset, but so is “how can I”. In boxing I moved from copying and pure force to brain jiujitsu, thinking of every small movement I needed to do to correct my form, at all times as often as possible. The problem became when my brain got tired - I couldn’t keep up with all the tips and I would get less coordinated. I would  loose the skills I had developed or get overwhelmed. I knew the feeling well, because this is also similar to when we get tired after being hypervigilant or hyperfocused for long periods of time. There is only so long our brain can sustain holding and controlling every possible detail. 

My boxing coach would tell me, I needed to feel it. I realized how similar this is to adapting your nervous system to something new. Even if it is more efficient, effective or adaptive our brain and subsequently our nervous system will choose the comfort of familiar over anything else. First you have to become aware of the familiar comfort zone patterns, then disrupt them consistently. Finally, the new habits you have been consistent with have  to integrate into your body so you can feel it - be it - as opposed to just think it. 

We often skip the feeling it part- the being verse doing part. And, as a result the change does not get integrated and we fall back to our default brain and nervous system patterns. So, how do you feel it verse think about feeling. My suggestion is whale noises. Yes, I mean moan and groan the noise of what you feel or want to say, instead of using words and see what reveals. You can even do it in your head. The body experiences feelings, the mind hears thoughts. Talk to your body in “whale”- in the sound of feelings, so you mind can’t start a story - in words and thoughts. Then, dig deeper. This is when you need perseverance - resistance and defensiveness will show you when you are successfully threatening familiar, but outdated patterns. Find the support and accountability of others to keep you on track to let the change settle into your system and be sustainable. 

If we become aware of something, we can change it. But to change it we have to be consistent with it. Make a new choice. And, keep practicing that new habit over and over until it is integrated. We discover that we have to practice longer if the old habit overrides the new pattern again, because it shows us it hasn’t quite stuck yet.

Currently, little white bugs on my house plants are driving this point home to me. If I ignore them, they infest more plants. If I take a half hour every few days to kill any new growth they begin to disappear. The problem becomes that I get satisfied with their decline and stop the practice of searching for them every few days, because I don’t see them as a threat. Though only a few initially survive, it becomes an infestation again because I didn’t stay consistent after some success. 

How do you stay consistent when the pain that caused you to make the initial change has lessened or is no longer there? How do you stay consistent when you feel resistance- maybe it comes as boredom, disinterest, frustration, or a drive for being busy? 

What do your most prevalent patterns and habits show you about what you are prioritizing most in your life? What would it take to change the habits you don’t want? How would you adapt to what is here and now, in the present moment, to feel good now as opposed to wait for your circumstances to change? 

Finding the Eye of a Tornado

When chaos, uncertainty, fear, big feelings, pain and immense change are whirling around you beckoning your nervous system towards activation and survival, what tools do you use to stay present and grounded? How do you intentionally participate with as well as constantly adapt to what shows up? 

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I have been thinking a lot about imagery for these times and a tornado keeps coming up in my conversations with the question “how do you stay in the eye of a tornado?”

In full confession, I was initially imagining a tornado to be like a hurricane. The eye of a hurricane is the calmest part of the storm, the center surrounded by an eyewall -  a clear boundary between the calm and the most dangerous impact of the storm. I discovered the eyes of tornados are a bit different and more difficult to discern. For tornadoes, there are believed to be multiple “sub-verticles” - the equivalent of mini tornados within a larger tornado that surround a center that is more calm, causing the eyewall of a tornado to be more complex and the calm of the center to be more difficult to pinpoint consistently. In this discovery, I realized  that a tornado is exactly what life feels like right now. I don’t know many people who are not living in a tornado right now - the subverticles are global, national, local, relational and personal. 

When facing “sub-verticals” focus becomes adaptability - your ability to participate with what presents, moving from activation to equilibrium again. We are activated if we are reacting/defending/resisting (fight), avoiding (flight), hiding (freeze) or pretending/pleasing (fawn).  Once we know we are activated, we can have more agency on how to care for our own nervous system and the nervous systems around us. 

Because there are very different tools for different levels of nervous system activation, we have to acknowledge where we are to know what tools to use or if we need to build new tools. 

This week I felt like a shaken coke can. Anger and frustration building. I was proud of myself for using boxing to move it through me effectively. And, reaching out for support. I had thought I had handled it well and my nervous system was adapting.  

Two elders in my life - older than my own parents - metaphorically mom’ed and dad’ed me. I have learned to always listen when they share wisdom, but I noticed I was acting like a teenager, like I had it all handled on my own. I watched them both cut right through to truth and show where my nervous system was still activated and I was avoiding/resisting. 

A man I deeply respect told me, I had to pause boxing because my hand needed time to heal. I inadvertently looked away as I nodded. He called out my casual dismissal. Looked me straight in the eyes and made me confront what I was avoiding.  I didn’t want to use another tool other than boxing to manage my building anger, even if it cost me some pain. I needed him to disrupt my avoidance because I wasn’t listening to the disruption my hand pain was causing. If I kept avoiding, a larger correction would inevitably come for me in an injury or something even bigger to make me listen. 

A woman I deeply respect, told me I needed more support. I resisted. Readying my argument with all the ways I support myself and receive support. I prepared a list, instead of listening. And, I began to share all the ways the people around me were struggling, as a subconscious way to ensure her I was doing okay. She disrupted my defenses with, “yes and you need even more support, because of the state of the world around you and everyone you are supporting.”  I had no argument, it was just true. In fact, this was an argument I had used with clients earlier that day. I signed up for more support and set aside some time to build a strategy to build even more support for myself in April.

I am trying to live in the eye of a tornado. And like everyone, sometimes I am good at it and other times I am lost in the winds. I have been working with my own nervous system activation, studying nervous system activation and supporting others’ with their nervous system activation for over 20 years. AND RIGHT NOW, at this time, things are pressing in on me and everyone I know. It is taking all of my tools, and I have a lot, just to exist. And, I still need to build up even more support. 

We need each other and we all need a variety of support. We can’t do this alone. As a result, I am starting more group coaching offerings next month.

In my opinion, group work is the most essential and effective support out there; I have done my greatest healing and witnessed the greatest healing in groups.

We all need each other, more than ever

With so much uncertainty and change occurring, especially in places and structures that have historically appeared more stable, we are no longer able to cling to previously comforting truths, and as a result this shake and shock is activating all of our nervous systems. It’s unavoidable. Who are you leaning on? What are you learning? When are you finding moments of hope and joy?

Some of us are more vulnerable than others…who are you reaching out to…offering support to? How are you gathering?

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I learn a lot from the people in my life. I have recently been interviewing and reflecting with people in my close and broad communities, about this question “how do we build community with structures of belonging and repair in what feels like end times, especially when their is no where to escape - only how and with whom we choose to stand? This is some of the wisdom that I have received in the past weeks…

The dog trainer: I interviewed a dog trainer, who literally changed my life years back, Brandon Fouche. He works with aggressive and fear aggressive dogs. Here are two things he said to me that stuck with me around advice specifically for humans…1) “There is a new devil and every level.” We have to have new strategies for each level, we never have anything figured out. There is always something new to address, and it never has the same solution, no matter how familiar it feels. 2) “Truth resonates. People can not like what you’re saying or even hate you, but they can still feel the truth in it.” He told me a story about a man at a workshop, who stood up and said something to the effect of:  “I don’t like you, but I believe you.” The man owned a toy shop for dogs and Brandon Fouche explicitly proclaimed the controversial fact that dog toys are a significant source for producing the aggressive and neurotic behaviors we don’t want in our domesticated dogs. For some this may feel abstract, but in context, he was teaching how we can all “be” different by being present with the new “devil” arising and stand with it to come up with novel solutions. He also offers an example that implies how we hold and discern truth may be how we best care for ourselves and others. In my experience, children and teens are the best barometers of how truth has a resonance…they behaviorally respond to it. Can we learn to stretch at every new level and feel the resonance of truth again?

Grammie: A dear friend, we affectionately call Grammie, had me over for pancakes one Sunday morning. While she was cooking she told me that she had 10 years of therapy in a moment. It was one thing her pickle ball partner told her during a game. Grammie had not been playing at her best, and missing her serve. As a result her, doubles partner had become very agitated with her and started to make mean remarks, criticizing Grammie, eventually refusing to play with her in a follow up game. Fortunately a third woman jumped in to partner with Grammie for the next game. Before they started the woman said to Grammie, “Do you ever reset? Like look up at the trees, take a breath and then start again.” This simple yet poignant support transformed Grammie. She got her serve back. And subsequently, transformed me. I now reset all the time.  What would happen if we all reset and encouraged each other to do so regularly?

Calling a Friend: I called a friend walking home, really worried and frustrated about another friend’s well being and wanting to do more. My friend and I have been reflecting a lot on how we show up in community. She asked me lots of questions to determine if I had done everything I could to support the friend in need. When I continued to come up with ways I could help them help themselves or even help them understand better what to do, she firmly and gently interjected, “remember, stay in your lane, Kat.”  Caught in the act of wanting to over-help, I stopped walking for a minute, and felt the truth in what she said.  I was so grateful she had caught me before putting my nose where it didn't belong. It was that person’s work for them to figure out not mine, loving them meant standing with them and letting them make whatever choice they needed to in that moment without intervening to protect them from pain. How can we learn to love each other better and hold each other accountable to it?

The Mediator, Therapist: I interviewed a woman who has done mediation and conflict resolution for decades as well as radical therapy, Beth Roy. She affirmed to me that the biggest challenges individuals have in groups is that they don’t know how to resolve conflict, rebuild trust and repair. We aren’t taught how to repair in our society. Most people are just taught to apologize. An apology alone isn’t resolution. As a result, it’s very difficult for groups to resolve conflict without formal training for each individual both in mediation and leadership. What if we all learned how to mediate repair, especially in groups, what would change?

We are all sitting with an activated nervous system at some elevated volume notch, in some type of fear right now. What’s your impulse? To hide, to run, to fix, to please, to freeze, to go it alone, to look only to others for answers, to fight. The destabilizing fear right now is not something our nervous systems can help us survive because it is not something we can get out of or away from.

When there isn’t a clear exit or end in sight, how do you build sustainable resilience? If it is the type of fear we have to learn to stand with, to be with, than through it can we be even more gentle and caring with ourselves and one another in spite of the survival mechanisms that might show up.  We all need soft places to land. We can’t do this alone, we all need each other, more than ever. How do we come together to co-create hope and new pathways to a new future?

Finding new perspectives, when your mind has tunnel vision.

My car was nearly stolen with just a screw driver through the passenger side door’s key hole. After the second time it happened, a mechanic told me that there was nothing I could do. When he saw a look of desperation in my eyes, he explained that many vehicles have quirks that make them especially vulnerable to theft. He continued to tell me that any thief “worth their salt” knows you can steal this vehicle with just a screw driver. When the look of fear grew in my eyes, he tried to comfort me by telling me that most vehicles have something like this. Needless to say, his words did not comfort me. I left the conversation feeling extra vulnerable and questioning how to protect a vehicle that can be so easily stolen. 

I started to use a club on the steering wheel, as an extra precaution. I paid a lot of attention to where I parked it. I started moving it regularly from area to area in hopes no one would target it. I got strategic and it quickly turned into hypervigilance, keeping me on high alert for potential danger and threat. It took a lot of focus, energy and time to helicopter around the vehicle to prevent from all the “what ifs”.

One morning, I was walking to go to an appointment. In my hypervigilance, I thought I would walk by to make sure all was safe and sound around where I parked. As I approached my car, there was a man who appeared to be looking in the passenger side window. He scurried away as soon as I walked up. All of my senses heightened and I looked around for where he went, instantly deducing he must be casing the vehicle to steal it with a screw driver. 

My mind started to race with scenarios, but I continued to walk to my meeting, until I couldn’t take it any longer. I looped back around the block to walk back to where my car was parked, even though I knew it would make me late for my meeting. When I approached again, still more than 50 yards away, the same man was looking in the passenger window of a smaller car just behind mine. I decided to catch him in the act as I watched him move to the passenger window of my car again. I was not totally clear on what I would do when I caught him, but I was headed straight to him with determination to save my car from getting stolen by him.

When I got there, he was using the big side view mirrors to shave. It was obvious that he could see more of the contours of his face because my rearview was larger than the car’s mirror behind mine. I was too close to turn around, so after startling him with my stare, I smiled at him and kept walking. 

I had tunnel vision, causing misperception, assumptions, fears and subsequent hypervigilance. This man was just caring for his basic needs and I was happy to allow him to use my windows as a shared resource. It gave me pause to think about the assumptions I made and how quick I was to assume the worst.

My invitation for myself and all of you…when we have tunnel vision and the accompanied fears, hypervigilance and assumptions. Slow down. Get present. Find more perspectives - new ways of looking at a scenario. Take the actions you can to take exquisite care of yourself and those around you in the moment, instead of draining yourself with the “what ifs”.  

A different type of survival guide for the holidays...

This is the time of year when our bodies remember ALL holidays past, whether we want them to or not. We relive the moments of belonging and the moments of abandonment; both within the families we were born into and the families we have created. The memories live in our cells. Good, bad or in between. This can feel like you are being hijacked by feelings from years ago.

What buoys you through this period of re-feeling and how are you supporting your body? How are you prioritizing care for your nervous system and learning to provide care for your family nervous system (*acknowledging that the group we call family comes in lots of forms and constellations beyond blood relatives)?

You may be asking…what does it mean to tend to the family nervous system?

In my work with families, I talk a lot about the “family nervous system”. This is a concept I started using after working with families that were facing significant trauma, but it quickly evolved to an approach with all families because our nervous systems influence one another even when trauma is not present.  The simple fact is that we are all wired with a nervous system that activates (sometimes called the lizard brain or survival mode) when we feel a real or perceived threat. The tricky part is that, unlike animals, our nervous system can perceive a threat from feelings arising from within us in the moment, about the future or even from a past experience, like a holiday. These past feelings of sadness, anger or fear for example, turns up the volume of our nervous system, activating big emotions and big responses, whether we react or withdraw our nervous system response alerts the nervous systems of everyone around us. Our partners, kids and other loved ones get the stealth message that they need to be on guard too. It’s a little like crying wolf because as one person’s volume turns up, the volume of the whole family turns up, activating the whole family nervous system for a threat that doesn’t actually exist but makes everyone a little more scratchy towards each other. 

For the sake of simplicity, I am going to talk about a conventional nuclear family - two parents and 2 children, but please apply this to the unique constellation of your family or chosen family.  Although we are especially influenced by those groups we invest trust in, we influence one another’s nervous systems in any group we take part in. Yes, this even means at work or school,even if you don’t like the people in the group. We all still function like herd animals when a threat (or perceived threat) arises. Our nervous systems have their own secret language to tell one another about the danger, unfortunately because of the complexity of our minds and undigested feelings, our responses are often not as adaptive as a herd of zebras escaping from hungry lions unscathed. 

So when the volume of our nervous system turns up, we naturally turn up the volume of those around us. As a result, the volume is up in the whole family. What does this mean? It means couples will be quicker to fight, especially over the long standing arguments every couple has. It means kids will act out what is happening in the collective nervous system. Everyone leans on the pattern they have adapted to in the family, so kids that hit, start hitting. Kids that manage and keep everything calm, start managing and  calming everyone. Teenagers will double down on their defiance in whatever way it looks like for them. Parents are stripped of their resources to navigate any of these behaviors in the adaptive ways, not because they don’t know how to but because they no longer have emotional access to the tools they have at a lower volume. High volume requires tools that are simple, foundational or novel.

My first suggestion is to give everyone A PAUSE, a time out. No amount of teaching, disciplining or calming your kids will work when everyone is playing heavy metal music inside their brains, especially if you are trying to pretend it’s playing meditative music. In the pause, acknowledge what is happening. It could be as simple as saying, “let’s take a beat, we are all getting scratchy.” It is important to mention that this is not always about calming. Sometimes it is about meeting the energy where it is at. Maybe you actually need to play heavy metal music on the speaker, especially if you hate it, and have everyone have a dance break right at that moment. This is especially good because this type of pause also moves the feelings that were raising the volume.

After a pause, start GETTING CURIOUS and NOTICE what is happening. It becomes about calling in, and to know what to call in, you first have to look for whatever is being avoided or pushed out. This is where you try to find where there are blindspots. A  family nervous system is only as graceful as all of its parts combined. I find kids to be the best barometer in these situations because they respond to the emotional soup they are immersed in viscerally and without thinking, and are therefore really good at showing us what is in a blindspot for th family.  Maybe you were the kid that masterfully revealed the anger, grief or anxiety in the room by acting it out or maybe you have the kid that does this. Typically what is avoided is a feeling, a fear or sometimes the individual who is embodying the feeling or fear the family doesn’t want to see or face. 

Whether you have discovered the root of the actived family nervous system, the blindspot or what exactly is being avoided is less important than finding a notion or a whiff to follow. The edges of blindspots are blurry and still hard to see, so this is where you can LEAN IN versus leaning out and start PRACTICING  BEING IN A NEW WAY even without clarity. This can be uncomfortable at first. Our state of being is the state of our nervous system. We can do things differently, but our nervous system depends on the quality behind the doing - we do. It is not always what is said or done, it is more what is felt or it has a resonance of truth that can actually be felt, even trusted. It is in essence learning to walk your talk. 

We have all been through a lot. This is not meant to be another way to attack yourself for not having an agile nervous system or not walking your talk. This is about practicing, not perfection. This is about stretching and staying gentle with yourself. Don’t let guilt drive your decisions, guilt is naughty because it is like a tripwire to activate the nervous system, especially if it’s been passed down over generations. It’s about practicing something new, which may be following what is uncomfortable versus what is comfortable. Or maybe it's about slowing down versus reacting and looking for points of connection versus disconnection before, during and after conflict. Each time we slow down, get curious, pay attention, and lean in into novelty, we offer our family nervous system new grace by each practicing being in a new way. This builds and strengthens new neural pathways, changing our brains. This allows more mobility between familial roles, giving each member more options to respond in a variety of ways, as opposed to only maintaining a set role. This gives the whole family the agility and grace to find their way through anything.

Getting a bit more concrete: 

For adults with family visiting or visiting family:  it’s usually after about 72 hours with your family of origin that old childhood patterns resurface. In other words: we all become children and start becoming the role we played in our family of origin as opposed to being the adult we have become. We no longer can as effectively use all the tools we have developed in life and embody our new adult patterns of living, partnering or even parenting as easily.This activates your nervous system. My (playful but honest) advice…plan a trip for 71 hours until you have lots of nervous system practice and can giggle at yourself. 

If a short trip is not possible, no worries, here are a few things to help.1) take lots of pauses: bathroom breaks, long walks by yourself, anything that gives you a break from the expectations of your childhood role, so you can disrupt it and be with your adult self. 2) be gentle with yourself and be as playful as possible. Even if you aren’t the playful type, find a way towards laughter 3) ground in nature - even if it is putting your hands in the dirt of a house plant, but better if you can touch a tree, put your feet in dirt or walk on the beach.  4) this may seem taboo, but orgasms help too. If this is too far of a leap for you, try anything that invites pleasure for your senses.  

For parents and their children: Take space for you. Practice pausing, curiosity, connection and a novel approach. Being is visceral. Kids speak body more than adults. If the way you are being doesn’t match your words, they can’t as easily hear you or learn from you. Find new ways to connect and stretch. Teach less and “be” your lessons.  Play with doing something radically different in the way you usually discipline or connect, creating a disruption, and observe how your kids respond. If you surprised them, you are on the right track. When you are “being” different, they will “be” different…then you can decide if you like the change or not, and the practice is still worth it because it grows new pathways in everyone's brains and therefore encourages resilience for each member and the family nervous system as a whole. 

Building Structures of Belonging and Repair

In 2015, I opened a non-profit called Hatch Community with the mission to disrupt cycles of poverty and nurture parent-child relationships. We wanted to transform generations through economic opportunity, birth and parenting education, and a community of support for and by young parents. It was a big, heart driven mission, with a deep belief in conscious community building and shared resources. Through vocational training and peer support we provided services to all parents under 25 with a specific focus on foster youth, transitional youth, LGBTQAI+ and sexually exploited youth. Our focus was on these populations because they are the most difficult to structure belonging around because they are rightfully cautious with their trust. The typical systems of support the average person leans on fell through for them - biological family, extended family, chosen family, their community and societal systems. My underlying belief and hope was that if we could build structures of belonging and care for the most betrayed populations in our society then by including them we could begin to learn to build togetherness for all of us. By inviting in all the people (and parts of ourselves) that we try to discard so that we can fit into a mold of society that no longer works for any of us we could create a society that works for ALL of us. 

How we built structures of belonging, where the feeling of it lasts to this day in the heart of everyone involved:

• Our training programs taught young people how to care for themselves and be accountable to their actions to care for others. We developed layers of support by providing a peer mentor program on top of a peer support program.

• Our Educators and Staff were walking their talk by actually doing the work they were teaching,  while also learning to care for themselves so they could care for others better. 

• We had consistent weekly meetings where we learned to bridge differences, to broaden perspectives by holding other peoples experiences, and celebrated one another’s successes. 

• We invited and had the hard conversations. We built trust and offered repair when trust was broken. 

• We invited every part of every person and learned to care for the part and the person better every time. 

• We co-created a learning environment that was focused on curiosity and brought in outside experts to better understand challenges the group was facing: including talking about isms, phobias, microaggressions and oppression. Both individuals and the group as a whole showed us where we needed more attention to move forward. 

• We educated the professionals who came in with a culture that questioned everyone, regardless of their status, while also honoring their wisdom. 

The program was wildly successful and wee grew fast with minimal resources. We paved new ways for the populations we served and the birth and parenting communities in the Bay area. The contract we held with Alameda County is now a paid part of Medical. We showed other organizations how to build and grow in community. We made mistakes. We learned from them. We grew from them, together. 

At the start of 2020 the organization closed, breaking down into parts and giving graduates the pieces to carry on in their individual work and hearts.  I am still in awe of what each of them created inside themselves, in their communities and in the world. 

We need more programs, more communities, more spaces that invite all of us and every part of us to the table, creating structure for belonging and repair.

I would love to share with you what I have learned and also learn from you, in supporting you to create these structures in your partnerships, your family, your chosen family, your communities and your organizations or businesses. We need to come together, in a new way, with our whole selves, so that what feels like the end times are actually new beginnings. 

An invitation to whiteness and white women...

We are all impacted by our relationship to whiteness because of the societal soup we all live in, to say it lightly. The most recent election exemplifies this and, to me, exemplifies the blindspots white women, specifically, have. I’ve spoken about this a lot before because I believe in the power of uncovering and facing our blindspots. We all have them and they control our subconscious until we are willing to truly see them. We need help seeing them, because they are literally our blind-spot.  I have been fortunate enough to have some incredible teachers show me my blindspots - coaches and leaders in the field, but also there was a woman with developmental disabilities that I worked with for 10 years, the foster youth who schooled me when I was supposed to be teaching them, the countless innocent wisdom of kids calling me out for my incongruence, the professors of color who took a chance on educating me at a cost to them, the friends of color, the trans friends, and my LGBTQAI+ and POC elders. I am still learning. I still make mistakes. 

To White Women: we have some work to do together and it starts with exposing our blindspots. Whether you voted for trump, are hiding you voted for trump, would never have voted for trump, or didn’t vote at all, white women were the demographic that pulled the support for trump over the finish line into first place. And no matter what group you belong to above, we all have a part in it. It is our shared blindspots that got us here. Our biggest responsibility as white women is to be accountable to what we don’t yet see and understand or learn how to handle it so that the privileges we have doesn’t cause harm to someone else, especially accidentally. 

We need to learn to build structures of belonging. We need to invite everyone and all parts in. We need to stop turning on one another but rather start finding the way back to each other. 

I don’t have all the answers, but I have a good starting point: Curiosity. Talk with white people who have already been taught by marginalized populations to see their blindspots. 

I have been the woman accidentally reinforcing the patriarchy by maintaining the lies of abusers.

I have been the white woman who has participated in microagressions on people of color because of my blindspot to my privilege.

I have been the person who hadn’t fully stepped into who I am and harmed people because they represented a part of me I wasn’t ready to be, specifically around my queerness.

I have no desire to preach or make you feel wrong. We are all always learning. And…what we are not changing we are choosing, consciously and subconsciously. I can help you expose more blindspots.  Reach out.

Pain, as my biggest teacher

I often joke that I am like Benjamin Button. In truth, I don’t know much about the myth of him except he was the man who grew younger as he aged. I feel this way because I can do more with my body now than I could when I was younger and because I still have childlike awe for the world around me. When friends of mine say, “I am too old to do that”, I always smile and think “this is the first time I can do this”.

My magic potion has been changing my relationship to pain to one of repair - listening and turning towards physical and emotional pain as opposed to pushing through, disconnecting or avoiding it. 

For as long as I can remember, I remember being in pain.  I was told I had muscular scoliosis as a kid, which the doctors explained to me as my muscles pulling on my spine in the wrong directions. It didn’t mean anything to me except that I wanted to cry most days just from carrying my backpack. I viscerally remember the feeling of sitting on a curb waiting for my mom to pick me up from school, when I was only 8. I was carrying a book bag with tears in my eyes, looking at the other kids and wondering why their bags didn’t hurt so much.

When I was 12 my mom took me to the doctors, because I had been complaining about my feet. They told my mother I had a rare disease in my feet that 90 year olds typically get. I remember the doctor telling my mother, “she can either be in a wheelchair for a year and it might help or she can learn to deal with the pain”. My mom asked me if I wanted to be in a wheelchair and I said no, so I learned to cope with the pain. It felt like knives driving through the balls of my feet with every step and nothing helped. I was still required to play sports in school. I never was great at sports as a kid, but they helped me learn to manage the constant pain by developing a lot of pain tolerance. 

I thought pain was part of sports. When I was only 20 and had been climbing for a couple years, I had every diagnosis - frozen shoulders, arthritis, and tendonitis. I pushed through them all. Even if I had to wake up multiple times a night in pain or cry myself to sleep, I would still climb. In all fairness it hurt just as much to do nothing, so fighting the pain to do something became another way I survived the pain.

 In part because of all the physical pain, I also learned to feel less emotionally. Feelings are the way our body speaks and I didn’t think I could survive any more pain by listening to it. As a result, I gave my mind the job instead. I learned to think about my feelings, instead of really feeling them. It gave me the illusion of some control over all the pain.  

I was convinced I could keep pushing past the pain and feelings, and eventually I would overcome them. Unfortunately, what happened was a lot of unfelt grief and anger stored up in my body, causing more pain. It started to feel more overwhelming to feel sadness or even frustration. Every time I experienced a loss or disappointment there was a landslide of feelings waiting to erupt. I learned breathing exercises and meditation. I did all types of stretching, mobility, and cross training. I learned and used so many different tools to navigate emotions by training to be a therapist and working with kids. It all helped. But, I still kept getting bigger and bigger lessons to refine how to listen to my body and stop pushing through the pain and past the feelings. 

Breaking my back became a pivotal point of change, because it also coincided with big losses in my family, community and in my work. I remember a friend saying, “what is it going to take for you to take a knee”. With so much pain from so many directions, I didn’t have enough tools or support. And in my reluctant surrender, it revealed I was still leaning mostly on movement, doing or pushing through to survive pain and manage feelings. I had to give in to letting go of everything that felt most important at the time and with it the fight against change. I had to be with and be in it all.

I rebuilt my body like lego pieces. While also building new emotional tools to truly listen and feel. While I did the most excruciatingly small physical exercises that were more painful than anything I have ever experienced, I also surrendered to all the feelings. I learned to scream and ball my eyes out and pound the floor or a pillow until I started feeling instead of thinking about my feelings. I, bit by bit, taught myself to feel the underneath of the underneath, instead of falling into feeling like a victim. I grieved. I raged at my pillow. I surrendered to not knowing and not being able to do it on my own.  

I begin to rebuild the support systems around me and made them more sustainable. I learned to receive, and learned to keep receiving more support from others - more than I ever had or had ever felt comfortable doing. I learned to give in new ways, where I considered what I had to generously give while still holding boundaries of self love. 

 I broke my back over 7 years ago, and today I can do what my 20 year old self never could - box (which I am still in awe of), rock climb, dance and simply live without chronic pain. I also feel more held, trust more and have a greater sense of belonging than ever before. My relationship with myself and with others has transformed and continues too - I am willing to share my feelings; turn towards the tough conversations and repair; celebrate and upride successes; and both give and receive reciprocally. I am still a work in progress. I still experience really tough lessons. I am still learning to listen more and refine how to better care for myself and others. I still make mistakes. I am still paying attention and always looking for novel ways to stretch and shift old outdated patterns into new patterns. 

But, through it all, I also found that pleasure lives alongside my pain and joy lives alongside my grief. And, my willingness to surrender to change, choose vulnerability, and turn towards my grief, my anger and what I most fear, holds in it endless possibilities of love, freedom, integrity, authenticity, community, generosity and new dreams. 

Thank you for reading my journey! I would love to hear from you and learn what pain has taught you?

If you find yourself wanting some support and are curious about what I do in my coaching, reach out! We can set up a 20 minute chat, so I can learn more about what type of support you are looking for and share with you about my approaches and techniques.