The Wellness Work

03/14/2025

Just watch it. Fold laundry. Stretch. Just make the time and listen to all of it.

Rebecca Solnit on the silver lining of this chaotic, incompetent authoritarianism. Plus: resistance, coalition-building, purity politics, hope, gathering, and roses

10/28/2024

Someone reminded me this morning that the acronym for shame is "Should Have Already Mastered Everything."
Most of my instagram posts are about personal inventory. One thing seems consistent: All that I assess ultimately starts in the body. While I can inventory my day's external interactions and activities, it always comes down to feelings. Being hungry, angry, lonely, tired, embarrassed, and unforgiving are often placed in a debit column, counted as loss, challenges to equanimity, imperfections. The body generated a biochem cocktail which deliberately thwarted a separate, autonomous will which I’ve dubbed the boss of me. I forget the interdependence of chemistry, mental states and behavior because it all is labeled, and sometimes resolved, in the content and language of thought. And while the body speaks all the time, I don’t always listen. Every inhale asks a question. Exhaling brings data to be sorted, examined - data that can often determine the acceptability of my being, its capacity and need to do better. The mind rates my satiety, generosity, patience, vigor, pride and forgiveness all in an effort to regulate, achieve homeostasis and improve mental health. But I sometimes forget that I’m not a victim of this system. I am reminded of my wholeness when I can measure small efforts rather than the final tally of the day's difficulties and disappointments. Sometimes I can rate the moments and ultimately the day by how personally I took each fear, doubt, or episode of nominal aphasia. The standard by which I’ve judged myself has shifted and now includes more moments of peace I may have found while noticing the sun that shone on a bright red leaf.
Peace and fear begin and end in the nervous system.

03/02/2024

a reflection on the ability to build community and awareness through art forms that combine comedy, education, and vulnerability. Or, why my friend's one-act play was hella rad.

02/19/2024

New Year. Old knees.

Strength without humility is like a mateless dragon sock.
As billionaires research living past 100, most of us are just trying to get through the week. Teaching Qi Gong felt great in Jan. Then, I embraced Feb vibes. New England finally froze and the lunar new year brought dragons for gentlefolk to fight pigheadedness. So, one crisp sunny day, I chose to run from a shop to my car - because I could.
Someone hollered, “I got change for your hundred!” No clue what he meant, I turned mid-gallup. Something tore deep in my left knee. I didn’t fall, but it was impossible to stand. One brief reaction changed everything. The sun still shone, but I now felt vulnerable, old, helpless.
Years with a bum right knee moved me past the “why me?” response to pain. No mystery there. After prenatal parkour, I emerged a competitive swimmer, diver, gymnast, hiker, and Yogi who danced wildly to any beat. In later years, I slowed down with Tae Kwon Do, kickboxing and Aikido, broken up by many hours of sitting and standing practice. This body is not what you’d call “gently used". So, I accept knee pain as the price for decades of moves like Astaire, Weismuller, Jackson, Jaeger, Chan and Buddha.
As for my mind - knowledge, emotional intelligence and learning skills are actually improving. When a noun, name or memory vanishes, I trust my CPU is sorting wheat from the chaff. When/if I’m beset with dementia, sorry Kids, that’ll be a you problem.
But, body aging feels like personal failure. I assumed even damaged limbs would keep me moving at a respectable speed. With two vanquished knees, I hobble in first gear, descend stairs like a toddler and find age suddenly quantifiable.
Aging can be slowed and injuries healed with just a little PT, meditation, crossword puzzling, and cutting inflammatory foods. But, stuff happens. Joyful runs in the sun can send me stumbling into speed traps of time. Whether a year is old or new, celebration, pain, and healing emerge from this single day’s patience. Dragons or no dragons, aging demands genuine humility, and hard as I try, I can’t always turn pain into something profound.
Happy new year! Age Gracefully.

12/28/2023

He never stops to talk!
I feel growing pains when my habitual dynamics in primary relationships change or stop. Many wounds into which the behaviors of others used to fit have changed shape or healed over completely.
In some cases I've become more appropriately confrontational when folks try a round peg in one of my square or vanished holes. Other times I can be blissfully neutral. Either way, there's a stronger impulse for self-care and advocacy.
I use fewer "You" and "they" statements and almost never declare that this is just the way "I am." It feels more liberating to admit, "I'm working on it."
When someone's insecurities are immovable or unmanageable, I know that I can choose to either waste effort trying control the uncontrollable or grieve the impossibility of a healthy relationship with them.
Adulting is a long game. Live long and heal.

06/01/2023

Like I say every spring, go home, May! You're drunk.
So moved by Nora Logan's really real email this morning. It's nice to read someone who gets the efforts it takes to live a life.
"I wanted to write something honest today about mental health because I think it’s really easy to say something about raising awareness without talking through any details. "

Hi friends, Touching in with you at the end of May. As I’m sure some of you already know, May is Mental Health Awareness Month. It is fitting, then, that I write a newsletter on the very last day of this month. This is because all month, I’ve wanted to write a newsletter, and all month, my depre...