Things are weird right now.

Everything is closed. Streets are dead. The majority of us are (working) at home.

We’re in this weird twilight zone.

What day is it?

Everyone’s going a little (stir) crazy.

We’re in this limbo state and life seems to be put on hold.

Which, honestly, is how I’ve felt for every cyst/tumour I had and surgery as well.

This isn’t my first mindfuck of a rodeo.

Are you feelin’ like…

• You can only distract yourself from your feelings for so long and you can’t rationalize away your unease.
• You’re forced to slow down which makes you face the shit you normally don’t need to face when life is humming along. (I mean, you can only watch so much Netflix before you actually have to start feeling your feelings…)
• Your mind can only take you so far before you have to surrender to the fact that we actually know/control very little.
  Life tip: The more you try to control, the less in control you feel. The more you accept your lack of control, the more you feel in control.
• You get both nihilistic/existential (“What even matters?! What’s my life purpose?!”) and hedonistic (“Well if I’m doomed anyway and nothing I’m doing seems to be helping, then I might as well drink all the wine and eat all the ice cream!”)
• Your mind wanders with worst-case scenarios and you secretly hold out for some magic cure.
• There are blissful moments when you forget and just are.
• But then the doubt, worry, anxiety returns and you feel so insecure (finances, life, relationships) and feel like you have no control.
• It’s simultaneously all you want to talk about and what you never want to talk about.
• You wonder what other people think about, how they manage, how they love, how they live in a time like this.
• You go through all the feels… my Coven jokes about it being like a trip to Mordor every morning — before lunch.
• You feel totally fine one moment and then want to give up the next, and vice versa.
• You wonder if it would be possible to live without being consumed by the thought of it?.
• Could I date? Who could love at a time like this? Who could love me?!
• How can I be happy/joyful/experience pleasure at a time like this? The guilt! The judgment! Shouldn’t I be more serious?
• You forget what “normal” is…

We’re living the movie right now.

“Interesting times” is an understatement.

The experts and systems we trust to always “fix” things just don’t have the capacity and can only take us so far.

So much is unprecedented. So much is unknown.

I want you to know that how you’re feeling is OKAY. So absolutely, wildly okay.

We’re all just riding the wave right now. We’re all just doing the best we can.

Consider this a time to turn inward.

Any of my surgeries made me learn something, go deeper, and be more aware.

Your intellect is gonna fight your intuition, and it’s absolutely terrifying, but keep turning inward and trust that there is more.

3 things to remember that have helped me;

1. It’s impermanent. We so often think the bad lasts forever and the good never lasts. But both are transient. “This too shall pass.” Can you get off on the “bad” as much as you can with the “good”? Both are simply a sensation.

2. Suffering more doesn’t help anyone. Just because someone has it worse, doesn’t mean you can’t be sad. Just because someone has it better doesn’t mean you can’t be happy. Being more sick doesn’t help others get well. Being poor doesn’t help others get rich. Don’t deny yourself your pain, but don’t deny yourself your pleasure either. Life is still meant to be lived.

3. We don’t know yet. We don’t know how this’ll play out yet. I’m not ignoring the pain, fear, grief, people dying that is going on. And, I think of every “bad” thing that’s ever happened to me and how it ultimately led me to so much growth and “good”. What if we open ourselves to the possibility that sometimes we don’t expand and evolve without the push? “Necessity breeds innovation,” they say. We’ll see.

Life will go on.

You won’t be the same after this. The world won’t be the same after this.

And while there’s nothing wrong with our old world, maybe we’re being invited to create a more evolved world together.

I’m not going anywhere.

I believe in you. I believe in us. More than ever.

One small step at a time,

Deanne