12/22/2025
Christmas/Holiday Blessings to All -
“I’ll wait. If I actually hear explosions, I’ll go down to the basement.” So said a colleague and my partner in a workshop we were attending to increase our skills in treating recent event trauma.
She was in Kyiv and I in my warm home office here in the US. We both heard the air raid sirens go off. I breathed deeply to stay calm for her, to see what she needed, what I could possibly do from so far away. Apparently, that was to continue our work as though nothing out of the ordinary was happening.
We carried on, taking turns being client and therapist. We finished our exercises and had a few extra minutes before being called back to the large Zoom room for instruction to continue. We talked about adaptation to circumstances beyond our control, how necessary a human capacity that is. “Otherwise, I’d spend my life running up and down stairs. I choose to live my life.” With shrug and what I took to be a very Ukrainian noise sounding like “pifft”, I saw Elana’s ordinary life. I saw that ordinary does not mean uneventful. Nor does it necessarily mean easy or safe.
I believe the life that is ordinary for each of us is about familiar circumstances, what we’ve grown used to. The question is, have we adapted to what is beyond our control, carrying on with fierce dedication to walk our walk, or have we capitulated, collapsed? Are we dull eyed and resigned, or awake, aware and holding love as True North? Whether or not the sirens of pending emergency or bombs dropping around us are literal, we each adapt to what has become ordinary to us, what is hard, what is scary, what is beyond our control. No matter what we are each called to face, I pray that we can follow Elana’s example and choose to stay present in body and soul.
In Light, Love and Hope,
Jeanne
