We are halfway between winter and spring. The West Michigan winter has been cloudier than usual: in December we saw 12% of possible sunshine; January gave us less than that. As Barbara Brown Taylor notes in Leaving Church, we know what’s killing us, but it’s harder to recognize what’s saving us. So today I’m joining with Modern Mrs. Darcy and naming what is saving me right now.
That photo of me.
My daughter took it for a portrait assignment for her photography class. Look at this woman. She looks so determined. And so strong. This woman will keep going and not give up. And this woman is me! I love that she captured the steely side of my core.
The coat I’m wearing belonged to my Oma, my Dutch grandmother, who took 5 children through World War II in the Netherlands (two of whom were born during the Occupation). They had to move suddenly when the Nazis commandeered their home. Her husband was in a Resistance Cell, so he was often gone, working to undermine the occupiers; whether he was out or at home, there was a constant sense that the Nazis could come for him at any time. Because they did. The last winter of the war, the Hunger Winter, she walked for 2 days with her husband and 5 young children, one of whom was an infant, to get to her sister’s country home where there was food — if you count ground fish heads and bones as food. The Nazis didn’t; they’d commandeered all the truly edible stuff from the family’s soup factory. But three families survived that winter on the disgusting scraps the Nazis left them.
I see that legacy in this photo. And I love it. (Also, I love that I was right to suggest my daughter take a photography class. #momwin)
Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski
When I shared my post last month to Facebook, one of my friends recommended that I read Burnout. I burned through the audiobook in a few days (see what I did there?).
It is already saving my life.
The first tenet of Burnout is that whether or not you are able to change the stressors in you life, you have to complete the stress cycle in order to deal with the stress. The purpose of completing the stress cycle is to tell your body and mind that you are safe, that you have dealt with the adrenaline caused by the stressor, and that you do not need to constantly be in a state of alarm.
There are multiple ways to complete the stress cycle: exercise is the best, conversation with a trusted love one, getting enough sleep, connecting with deeper meaning in your life, doing things with a group that highlight your togetherness, expressing your creativity.
All things I love to do, but all things that I neglect when under stress. When the kids were younger, and not rational, I endeavored to be the soul of patience and not yell — I wasn’t successful, but I tried really, really hard. And I wondered what I could do with all the anger and frustration that I’d pushed down. This book would’ve saved my life back then. Being able to divorce the stress from the stressor, being able to consciously pursue those things as a way to complete that stress cycle, would have been a big help.
It’s a big help to me now.
The second way the Nagorski sisters are saving my life: I realized that it is actively unhealthy and unhelpful for me to constantly hold in my stomach muscles. I’ve been doing it for years. Partially because I thought it was one way to ensure good posture, and partially because I’ve gained weight and I don’t like my tummy. But it also signals to my body and brain that I’m bracing for something. Constantly. Which is a way of being perpetually in an alarm state — unable to complete the stress cycle. It also put constant pressure on my internal organs, and I’d been experiencing some unpleasant urinary symptoms: not being able to hold it in the morning, and frequently feeling like I needed to pee, even when I’d just peed.
Once I let my stomach relax, those unpleasant symptoms went away. Within two days.
And my posture is just as good as it always was. My pants fit differently, but I’m getting used to it.
So there are three things that are saving my life these days.
How about you?