MAYDAY MAYDAY

An unserious cry for serious help

I’ve been dreading May since March; trying to plan for it, feeling too overwhelmed to plan for it, wearing-thin my weighted blanket (which is actually pretty remarkable given its made of, well, weights). The blanket was a gift from my mom before weighted blankets were a thing, and I was professionally curious about its effect on calming anxiety. I am now completely attached to said blanket, but we had a rough beginning.

Odd disclosure: I am a flipper-flopper mostly stomach sleeper. Imagine a human-sized starfish doing sleepy gymnastics confined to a square, and you’ll have a pretty apt description of my night life. (And before you ask, yes the starfish knows this causes face wrinkles and unflattering edema, but the starfish has been unwavering in her love of tummy time all her life, so there’s no use reasoning with her. She is additionally tentative about addressing said wrinkles via botox, fearing the face-freezing juice will somehow activate during the fiddliest hours of sleep, worsening matters considerably.)

While we’re engaging in odd disclosure, you should also know I struggle with adaptation. While I am often enthusiastic to try new things like having a horse as a life coach (oh, we’ll get there), I’m not often great at the new things I try. So instead of trying out the weighted blanket for ten minutes like a normal person, I hurled it atop my bed, fell asleep, and woke up hours later in the exact same position, excruciatingly immobile, squished into the mattress. There’s a learning curve for hard things, and for people like me, a learning curve for easy things. Bless.

May is of course Mother’s Day, and Memorial Day, which marks the anniversary of the final days I had with my mom. By mid-April I was desperate to hatch my escape from the brunch scene and feel like I was in another country without actually going to another country (which I did last Mother’s Day). But horror intruded: one of my besties suddenly, unexpectedly, lost her child, and time stopped. I’m not going to write about it; it is frenzied and raw. Suffice it to say I fell out of one grief into another, and caught my breath several weeks later when I happened to look at my calendar and realize Mother’s Day weekend was hours, not weeks, away.

I managed to find a retreat center that promised me I wouldn’t be exposed to the fanfare of the holiday (they lied a little, but not much), and within the hour I had a room and a customized itinerary for my own personal wellness retreat. (Note to self: email financial advisor full confession ASAP).

I unpacked from the funeral, repacked for the retreat, and drove off feeling nothing but a thousand blahs in my heart. I checked into my “treehouse,” which was actually a gorgeous room cantilevered among redwoods, completely private save for the eyes of bluebirds. Why am I even here if the blahs are so unmovable?

I should tell you I once lost hope. All of it. For quite some time I went through the motions of life, wondering why I was even bothering. I remember walking into a shop—it was October—and there were Christmas trees covered in beautifully scripted ornaments that read love, noel, and hope. In that moment I was struck by the availability of hope. It was there with all the things humans celebrate, and I thought what makes me so special that I’m the only human who can’t have hope? It was for sale, and I bought it. I put hope on my nightstand with its little red satin ribbon. It was the last thing my eyes saw before sleep, and the first thing they saw in the morning. I did nothing but put it in front of my eyes, month after month after month, until it started working its way into my body, tiny molecule by tiny molecule, gradually reacquainting itself with a forsaken companion. It hasn’t left.

But hope doesn’t erase grief; the two coexist, each strong and earned in its own right. So I went to my first private retreat session, hopefully. I left fifty minutes later, laughing at the audacity of the universe in giving me a carbon copy of my ex-husband on our wedding day: same age, same degree, same belief that this degree entitled him to help people despite not having specific training in helping people. My own research was literally published by a medical journal, showing the correlation between (a) level of education and (b) the amount of time spent in counseling activities for people employed in this particular field. (In case you’re wondering, the two were inversely proportional in the cohort I studied—the less educated the more likely to provide counseling, the more educated the more likely to refer to a trained mental healthcare professional for counseling.) The “spiritual wellness expert” who was supposed to talk to me about the big life transitions of losing both my mom and my career identity showed up with nothing to offer other than an invitation to talk. How do you tell someone, “Sorry, but you’re twenty, I’m actually an expert in this and work with veritable therapists and spiritual mentors and you are nowhere near equipped to meet me at my level, let alone meet my needs?” I became blah and triggered, which is a peculiar combination to pull off, but I am admittedly a tad extra at this point.

The next morning I met Anabelle, my brown haired, brown eyed 900 pound therapist. “It is actually life coaching, not therapy,” explained Dennis*, whose job it is to translate horse body language into human language. (*Not his real name. His real name is Steve, but I would swear he was introduced to me as Dennis, and then repeated, “Hi, I’m Dennis,” and I proceeded to refer to him as Dennis all morning, which is only one reason I should never serve on a jury.) My session with Anabelle indeed brought up all of my major life issues that need coaching. Dennis asked, “What do you want to happen right now?” I replied, “Horse snuggles.” Dennis asked, “How do you think you can make that happen?” I replied, “Fuck if I know, Dennis.”

Left to my own devices, I was literally chasing this horse back and forth across the pen trying to get her to love me. Dennis asked, “What are you thinking right now?” I replied, “I think she likes eating grass more than she likes me.” Dennis asked, “Are you sure that’s what’s going on?” I pointed to Anabelle, ignoring me while chowing down on some grass and replied, “Yes, I’m pretty sure.” This went on for a sweaty hour. Poor Dennis.

I know it was all meant to ground me, but my brain was working overtime to dissociate from May, so rather than dismantling, my blah doubled down and entered internal combat. After this string of spectacles, I retreated to my room, earnestly missing my blanket.

I somehow snapped alert in the early evening of Mother’s Day, deciding to emerge from my self-imposed cocoon wearing my favorite muumuu. I think it was hope calling.

Author Jeannie Cochran DuBose was giving a talk called Portals into Wonder and Awe, based on Dacher Keltner’s book Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life. She had us write out what we think we’ll miss about life when we’re at it’s end, and it made me think about how it feels to leap into cool water. The scent of hyacinths. The sound of waves crashing. The feeling you get when the right kind of music finds you and grabs you by the insides and you want to scream a full bodied yes! The sacred moment when a beautiful brown horse leans in and lets you kiss her nose and rest your head on her head for a precious life lesson, right before she motorboats you in front of Dennis.

….A perfect outdoor lunch, with horse nose residue smudged all over the boob part of your t-shirt, right where it says JOY.

I’m back. Thanks for being patient with me—and supportive, and funny and kind.

Xo,

Jenny