How does one find joy in the midst of a global pandemic?
This was originally posted on Medium. You can read it there.
I’ve not worked that much (or even been in touch with friends and family aside from texts) because we have had Coronavirus at our house. And while I do run a business, it has not been business as usual.
For the first month or six weeks of this experience, life was hard and joy was hard to come by.
Anger and frustration and a “woe is me” lament filled my heart- how were we to look after our child, ourselves, the house, a business while trying to get well?
It felt like an impossible task. And trying to find the joy in it all felt like adding to the trauma. I was struggling mightily and stuck in a limbic loop that desperately needed things to be different so that I could feel something different.
I longed to “raise my vibration” (in quotes because anyone who has experienced true trauma/despair knows how inaccessible it is to try to do that), but I could not seem to dig myself out of the hole.
Around that time my therapist/coach said to me, “Sometimes authenticity is the highest vibration.”
Her profound statement urged me into a place that seems obvious in hindsight- the often elusive prerequisite to positive change- acceptance.
Acceptance is a word bandied about without much context by well meaning coaches and healers. They exhort us- with enthusiasm and many exclamation points- to accept the truly shitty circumstances we find ourselves in in order to move forward. To make change.
It sounds so easy on the surface. Accept. Two syllables. How hard can it be?
But to accept means to:
receive (something offered) willingly
endure without protest or reaction
agree to undertake (a responsibility)
WOW. When I read these definitions I realize how truly mountainous the process of finding internal acceptance of external madness can be.
Right now, my experience is definitely offering me something- but am I receiving it? Rejecting it? Mostly I think I have been rejecting it!
Have I been enduring without protest or reaction? Well, I’m still here so I am enduring (more on that in a minute), but without protest or reaction? Ha. No way. I’ve been super reactive and certainly protesting circumstances to divine management when I have had the chance.
As for agreeing to shoulder the responsibility for the situation- I’m usually pretty good at that. But in the past 6–8 weeks I’ve been doing a looooot of blaming (mostly of my hubs and child and occasionally POTUS).
So yep, I would get an F on my acceptance report card.
Early in my coaching career I remember blithely spouting the doctrine of “first you have to accept where you are, then you can move forward” and only now do I fully comprehend the futility of that directive.
It’s truly difficult to just accept what is in an instant- especially when what is right in front of us is truly painful.
How, then, can we move towards acceptance? Embody it? Practice it?
The model for acceptance is in the very handy Merriam-Webster definition, though they got the order wrong.
The first order of business is to endure. To keep going.
I posted this quote the other day:
When we cannot thrive we go on till we can thrive again.
- Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Asking someone in the midst of pain to thrive is too much. Let’s just ask them to live to see another sunrise. Otherwise known as getting through the day.
String together a few sunrises. Remind yourself that you can. And you will.
2. Now, once we’ve got the survival part down, it’s time to take a look at the reaction. Survival is hard. Not reacting? That’s SUPER hard.
We can no longer go, “OMGeeeeee! Whyyyyyy is this happening to meeeeee?!?!? Not reacting looks more like this: “Oh this is what’s happening right now.” Neutral. Sportscasting. No emotion or meaning or belief attached to what is.
For the record I almost never do this but I’m starting to practice it specifically with my daughter (a different long story I’ll tell sometime). When she loses it (and I mean loses it), I now say in my head, “Oh ok. This is what’s up right now.”
Not, “whyyyyyyyyy can’t i have a different child??!! Whatttttttt is the matter with her?????” etc. See the difference? Reacting with emotion and beliefs reinforces negative patterns. A neutral sportscaster tone uses facts to say what’s up so that…
3. It’s time to take some action. That looks like ownership- responsibility. Regardless of your role in the current situation, taking responsibility is a key part of acceptance because all of a sudden you’re at cause and have agency. You’re no longer the leaf just blowing in the wind at the whim of weather and squirrels. You ARE the wind! Or the squirrel if that’s your jam. Once you take responsibility you make the leaf your bitch. This step feels good because we have bodies and our bodies love action. See acceptance is not some passive thing that we can just flip a switch for. We have to work for it.
4. The last key to moving toward acceptance is the dictionary’s first definition- receiving what is offered willingly. I know WTF. Ooh goody the gift of pain and anguish! Let me celebrate it!
If you were to try this step first, you’d be screwed because asking someone in the middle of a clusternuck to sign up for more chaos is not a good idea. It’s only available AFTER you’ve completed the first three steps because each one of those shifts your mindset (dare I say vibration) and the action gives you some confidence. Only then can you find the willingness to dig deeper, to see the messages, even express gratitude.*
My wish for you right now is that you can find some joy via acceptance of this current situation on a macro level as well as acceptance for whatever stuff is going on with you personally, on the micro.
All those well-meaning coaches saying “acceptance is the first step to change” weren’t wrong. They just didn’t know how hard it can be to accept that which is truly painful.
*People spouting gratitude as the panacea for everything from mental illness to poverty make me so angry. One day I’ll talk/write about the inherent privilege in that stance and how neurologically people in survival mode (essentially fight or flight) cannot typically access it.
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