Darkness and illumination ✨
Does everything seem extra hard right now?
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Descending into winter, the darkness illuminates everything.
Toolkits and strategies clamor for reevaluation: suddenly, the tried-and-trues are less reliable. Blindspots come into relief. Absences are obvious: ghosts—both living and dead—hover close, shimmering in the periphery. Toes are stubbed on all the things pushed aside for “later.” Previously wrangled thought patterns roar back, untamed, parasitic. The doubt monster blocks the exits, arms crossed, daring, at the ready to roll it’s eyes, wag it’s finger.
I want to run; I want to act out. I want to join the Peace Corps, I want to win the lottery that I have never—not once—played. I want to outsource the inner work, throw it on someone else’s compost pile, have it returned to me polished, packaged, pretty. I want to befriend a fortune teller who will tell me everything will be OK, who will kindly pat me on the back no matter how many times I ask, which will be a lot of times.
HA! The Doubt Monster cackles. HA HA. HAHAHAHAHA.
The clocks fall back this Sunday. I’m never ready.
*
Two Sundays ago, the rain came. For twenty-four straight hours, it rained, no breaks. Across my part of the state, all this rain wrecked havoc. It had been so long. I stood outside, no umbrella, face to the sky. Thank you, thank you.
I’ve lived in California my whole life, which means I’ve lived in drought my whole life. The past few years have been different, next level. You know this. You see the maps, all those little fire icons everywhere. In the nineteen years I’ve lived here, San Francisco, as ever, has remained an outlier. It’s always damp and lush here. But this year has been different. Tall, old trees in McLaren Park dried up, fell over. The scrub across empty fields turned to pure dirt. The coyotes traipsing about Glen Canyon and on Bernal Hill looked particularly skinny and parched.
Overnight—please believe me when I tell you that I’m not exaggerating—shoots of grass sprang up. From the bottom of the hill, the landscape was as yellowy-brown as it’s been, but up close you could see: a fuzz of green everywhere. Seeing green did something to my brain, my nervous system. Quenched something in me that’s been just as dry and thirsty.
This grass, well, it feels…enthusiastic. You get the sense of how at-the-ready it was, just waiting for the proper conditions to emerge so it might erupt just as it’s designed to do. Just the way evolution intended.
This is what I want: to unfold. To hold nothing back. To rise up, because of course. Because the conditions are such that I can’t help myself.
*
I don’t want to fight the dark. I want to attune.
In a given moment, I might not know how to tend to my inner landscape, nor how to unhook the Doubt Monster’s talons from my brain. I am still not that great at trusting my life, defaulting again and again—despite my best and most earnest efforts!—to micromanaging it. Oh, and I operate from just as much internalized capitalism as anyone else, working to confront the inner engine that’s powered by a frequency of more more more.
My new friends—those humble shoots of grass—are not trying to be anything other than what they are. Sun and rain, and a whole city transforms. What conditions do I need?
What I know: the way I’ve operated up to now hasn’t been so helpful. I tend to cause myself more stress than peace. The pervasive push to know, to figure out, to understand, to have a plan, a strategy, someone else’s validation, and on-and-on into infinity…yeah. So exhausting. Not to mention boring (I’m tired of myself).
So: I’m creating conditions. Making this place as cozy as possible for the unknown to unfurl. Taking care of my physical body when I don’t know how to deal with the swirl in my brain. So far, this looks like movement, along with rest. Eating mostly home-cooked food, and indulging along the way (hello, CHEESE). Texting friends when I want to reach out to a certain someone else. Reading fiction and trading platform passwords with friends so I can watch all the shows (nothing too violent, please). Writing, ideating, imaginating.
Oh, and fun. I’m trying to have more fun. Oh, and THERAPY! I’m looking for a therapist (asking for help helps create conditions, I remind myself).
I want to embrace the dark. Let it envelope me, a cocoon of possibility. Let its lessons work themselves over on me, eyes open, truths received, digested. Let me celebrate; let me imprint joy; let me sing and tell stories; let me feed my friends around crowded tables. Let me be still, let me bask in uncertainty. We’ve been here before, we are utterly different than ever before. We’ll know when it’s time again to reach. We won’t be able to help ourselves.
From the archives ~ this time last year:
⭐️Democracy is Rising - Election Day 2020
SELF MADE is a newsletter for fellow 🌺late bloomers🌺 with a focus on recovery, creativity and community. It's written by me, Dani, a writer, coach, and recovery advocate in San Francisco, CA.
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I just loved this, Dani. So much resonance. Thank you 😊
MOON SHADOWS 💜