Photo by Evan Dennis on Unsplash
By: Stella Orange
“Everyone is trying to pretend it’s normal right now,” my friend Sarah told me.
“Except that it’s not.”
The time is ripe for us to acknowledge that we all continue to move inside a global pandemic. Maybe we’re trying to keep it together. Maybe we’re trying to do business. Maybe we’re trying to do any number of things that, in other contexts, might be hard (but easier).
On a personal note, I’ve been noticing that some of my reactions to things are a bit off. Exaggerated. Bigger than I would otherwise expect.
Little things set me off, in a way that kind of takes me by surprise. For example, last night the Philosopher did our weekly grocery shop. Among less noteworthy items, he bought moldy sweet potatoes, a ginormous bottle of applesauce instead of the little single serve cups, and a rotten orange.
I was not my best self, friends. I could not come up with a single creative way to fix the Giant Applesauce Conundrum of 2021. Put it in smaller mason jars? Freeze half?
It broke my brain.
And then I felt bad that all it takes is an abnormally large bottle of applesauce to upset my proverbial apple cart.
My equanimity and ability to roll with the punches?
POOF!
Offline. Unavailable. Not there. This silly little let-go-and-let-someone-else-do-the-grocery-shopping thing was my undoing. It took me twenty minutes to get my head screwed back on straight. I knew I should just let it go. Instead, I HAD to show him the mushy, moldy sweet potatoes. For educational purposes. I guess.
Side bar: We currently have a running joke in our house, pulled from a choice line I said in another one of these moments, when I was certainly not joking:
“I am literally doing the best I can right now. Literally.”
But my point is, maybe you’ve been feeling similarly—a bit of wtf sprinkled with I’m-literally-doing-the-best-I-can-right-now and a skosh of feels-like-I’m-swimming-through-molasses-just-keep-going…
Oh yeah.
We feel ya.
So we’re calling a meeting for anyone who wants or needs it. On the agenda: talking about how this pandemic and world shifting stuff is influencing us on a deep personal level. How destabilizing it’s been. How that might be affecting us now. Showing examples of what it could look like, and what trauma response can show up like in our bodies. And then let’s talk about what you can do to experience more grounding, more clarity, more stability.
We’re gathering Tuesday, October 12th, 7-8 pm ET in Rebecca’s Zoom room (Here’s the link: https://zoom.us/j/5196718968)
If it’s for you, please join us. If you want to come, but time zones or scheduling isn’t lining up, email Jane at hello@lasperegrinas.org and sweetly request the playback in the next week or so.
And if you’ve got a friend who would appreciate a conversation like this, feel free to invite ‘em to come along, too. Just slide them the link above and tell ‘em when to show up and maybe a bit about why you like us, so they have a bit of context.
Stella is cofounder and copywriter at Las Peregrinas, a creative and consulting agency. As our resident word nerd, she writes copy and points out the stories everyone is living and telling through their work. She is also fun at parties.
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