Preface

I have been reeling hard, deep in the reeling places, and wrote this piece to explores some of that, in between many panic episodes.

Something I have been holding on to for dear life, in addition to the concepts mentioned here today, are my Emergency Calming Techniques from, good lord, all the way back in 2008? 2009?, a long time ago, and that’s been helping me through.

So, I will be giving away a copy of these (ebook + audio recordings) to anyone who gives any sum of money at all to the appreciation funds / discretionary fund.

If you already have a copy then you can give it to someone else, or give it another listen. The more we practice, the better. For each other and for the collective, and also for ourselves in these scary times.

Okay, onward, let’s breathe and figure out what we do in the reeling times when we are reeling or it feels like everything around us is reeling.

Words for the reeling times / words for these reeling times

The pre-reeling, if that’s a thing (it is now I guess)

To be honest, I was already reeling pretty impressively, shaken and stirred if you will, but not in a good way. Not having fun. Unmoored.

I was reeling initially from the U.S. presidential election, not so much from the results themselves which did not surprise me particularly, but from having to interact with the brutal reality of knowing for sure.

Knowing and seeing the devastating effects that are to come.

From knowing all the ways that I and people I love can be harmed. An overdose of cruel clarity.

Friday

The text was what shattered me. It’s another unsolvable mystery of the many unsolvable mysteries but here is the core of it:

Someone I cherish and care for tremendously and think about lovingly every single day wrote to say that they no longer cherish or care for me in that way or at all really.

And that something had happened to cause this change but they weren’t going to say what it was. They are just done, for reasons.

The unknown unknown

It was less elegant and more baffling and hurtful than that, but that was the gist of it.

I don’t have more information or a way to shed light on any of it because there is no more information they want to share, and any guess I could try to make only leaves me more confused and distraught.

Whatever I did or said or something-ed, I am incredibly sorry about it, and also I wonder if the whole thing surely must be some kind of terrible misunderstanding that could be resolved lovingly through talking about it? Like people who treasure each other do?

Except it can’t, because there isn’t any information and there is no mechanism for talking it out.

The void of not knowing, the void of nothing to be known

I will also say that, in retrospect, my initial attempts to confusingly but whole-heartedly make amends for any possible possibilities were just a very apt live demonstration of the [denial and bargaining] phases of grief in action.

Anyway, my heart hurts.

This is an understatement. I feel completely wrecked. Shattered and adrift. Reeling in the mystery.

Double and multiple multiplied meanings, bless them

The more I thought about how I am reeling, in the sense of spinning, in the sense of gravitational force has no meaning, I have lost contact with the earth, just bouncing around aimlessly in grief space…

It also occurred to me that [reeling in] is what you do with a fishing line.

I am reeling in the mystery = [I AM REELING] and this experience of ungrounded reeling is taking place within the great mystery of what cannot be known or understood.

And, also, I am reeling in the mystery = Here I am with my fishing pole, pulling the mystery towards me, even as it remains unknowable. I keep reeling it in, I keep reeling in the mystery.

The Reel Reel

A reel is also a filmstrip.

A reel is also a dance?

Reeling through an alternate reality, now I don’t know what is real anymore. (That’s why I’m reeling.)

It is unreal. An unreal reeling. Like a Sufi dance but in the chaos of collapsing, not the powerful whirling. In between falling and falling, there must be some kind of rhythm, but I haven’t found it.

Heart pain, again

Picture a whole heart, Cate suggested, when I said that I feel broken and shattered.

I thought about a whole heart, and my smaller shard-filled heart swimming inside the whole heart space.

Still reeling, still feeling, alive. Fucking miserable, but alive.

It didn’t help, but that is often the way of things that help, they don’t help until they do.

What is a fountain? What is a faucet?

I thought the sweetness and adoration this person and I had for each other were foundational, like a deep fountain, or a powerful waterfall that flows in all seasons.

And it turned out that for this person, these qualities could be simply turned off like a faucet, with a small movement of the wrist. Click.

My heart does not click on and off. My heart loves big and loves hard, and then sometimes it reels.

Wise words, wise self, wisdom from someone smarter (future me)

This is not exactly a mantra, I don’t think that’s right, but this is what Slightly Wiser Me, my personal internal crisis center, keeps repeating, every time I ask for wise counsel and support:

It’s gonna keep hurting until it stops hurting (or hurts less), but get this…

It’s gonna keep hurting until it stops hurting (or hurts less), but it’s not going to hurt the way it does right now.

You take one step and then another step.

You take one step and then another step

The pain will ebb. And then it will return but not as strong. And then it will ebb again. Sometimes it will blindside you. But mostly it will lessen and ease up. It is not going to keep hurting like this.

Sure, right now it is. You will reel until you are done reeling. Make it a dance.

Not funny yet, but also, not not-funny

One day this will be another boring mystery in the tales of boring mysteries, or even a funny story — bittersweet but still somehow funny.

Even now it’s a little bit funny, even as it is a devastation. Do I appreciate the humor? Oh, not at all. But I can’t pretend it’s not in there somewhere.

Even as I can’t sleep because I am having all night panic episodes, I can’t disagree with Slightly Wiser Me that there is also something oddly comical in how it happened, even given how terrible and destabilizing it all is.

The museum (imaginary, but also, imagine it!)

If you can imagine a museum solely devoted to the worst breakup texts of all time…

I am picturing long corridors filled with assorted horrors, a collection of devastation. These can be romantic breakups or friendship breakups or work breakups, pretty sure they all hurt in similar ways.

People gasp as they move from exhibit to exhibit. There are boxes of tissues available if you anything is too relatable.

That’s fine, it’s not a bad museum, however I’m going to need them to build a special wing devoted entirely to this particular text that began with “love a four day work week lol”.

Visitors to the museum will employ the skills of talmudic scholars trying to parse that one, but also they will laugh.

Shot from a cannon

When I am shattered, I read Etgar Keret, and also when I am not shattered.

This week he fortuitously wrote about being shot from a cannon, as a much better and more accurate metaphor for the writing process than giving birth.

It is also an apt metaphor for so many forms of heartbreak:

I am not ready for this, I am fully unprepared, I don’t enjoy the process of being smashed and shattered, god the pain it is so agonizing.

And also, I will, realistically, let’s be honest here, I will absolutely get back in the cannon.

Because

I don’t know.

Because I love to love people, and I love to be a person who loves, and because I am curious about what will happen.

And because flying is very intense. And because I’m not going to be able to resist.

Not just bravery in the face of awful things but sure let’s go another round

I mean, I hate being brave.

And right now, just functioning at a basic level while reeling is requiring a lot of courage that I do not have.

And yet, I would do it again.

Clearing the decks

Each day I get rid of a few things.

It’s a fractal practice. Emptying to empty. Clearing the path to clear the path.

Making room for something, whatever it might be. Not this.

Any port of focus in a storm.

The on-ramp and the off-ramp (RAMP!)

A friend likes to talk about Radical Acceptance of this Moment Present, as the on-ramp and the off-ramp.

The moment that is happening is the moment that is. It sucks, I don’t have to like it, and also I do have to turn the page and be here, because this is the current reality.

Radical acceptance of the present moment, even a very shitty present moment, is not about giving up or giving in, it’s about consciously and intentionally not fighting with what-is.

And then sometimes you can also see little glimpses of beauty in the what-is. Or you can see yourself raging against the what-is, and radically accept that

My heart hurts terribly, I am radically accepting this moment present, I am exhausted from not sleeping, radically accepting this moment present, wishing things were different and radically accepting that they are not, here we are, this moment present. Take the ramp.

The peregrination of the heart

I can’t sleep because all I can think about is how everything is other than how I thought it was, and so I jog in my kitchen from 5-6am and wait for the sun to come up.

Little peripatetic figure-eights, a journey that is both large and small.

For the final ten minutes I jog backwards. Jostling and moving.

Movement is the way I process pain, but also the way I process everything.

Clear-eyed

If you don’t already read Sarah Weinman’s excellent newsletter The Crime Lady, I recommend it.

She said something great last week, it was in the context of the election but it could be about anything:

I’d rather be clear-eyed than in denial.

I’d rather be clear-eyed, ideally with some Loving Clarity, but either way let me stay clear, than retreat into denial.

Denial is where I am fighting with the moment present instead of accepting it, denial is where I want to burn down the special wing in the imaginary museum, where I want to right things that cannot be righted, or at least not now and not by me.

Building from ruins

This was another great quote I’d saved last week, before the great unraveling that sent me into reeling mode.

It’s about chronic illness and very relatable to me, as someone who has better and worse days with Long Covid, but people around me are seemingly always somehow still surprised by the rough days, maybe because I can sometimes hide them…

Recovery stories will very often claim that a shift in mindset, or an increase in activity levels, was critical.  But the silent story for most of us is that we “decided to get better” but couldn’t; started doing a little more each day but had a relapse; tried yet another treatment and found it wanting; and then, having lost everything, built the best life we could from the ruins.”

You can read the rest here, the piece is called The Trouble With Recovery Stories.

Reeling my way through what was ruined

Obviously heart-healing is a different animal (animal? that feels wrong, a different continent!) than chronic illness in many if not most ways.

And also it is still an experience of slow rebuilding, and, this is critical: you are not rebuilding what was, because what was is gone.

Radically accepting that is really not fun, though it is useful in the moments that it feels possible.

You are building something new from the rubble, and maybe you are the only one who can find the beauty there right now, and maybe sometimes you can’t find it either, and you still keep going.

Brave and stalwart, reeling our way through this new territory, learning its outlines.

When crushed, break glass

I have been making lists of what helps.

Some of it is wise words from wise friends or wise people I admire, or Slightly Wiser Me.

Some of it is things that help, small challenges, making tea, rolling on the floor, getting out into the sunshine for a minute.

Checking tiny things off the list. Renaming items on the list to be funny or ridiculous, and also keeping the items very, very small helps me the most! Mainly: progress towards anything.

Learning a word or phrase in another language and enjoying it.

It’s all brave and it all counts.

Listen to the Cowboy of Chore Hour

The Cowboy of Chore Hour is another wise self, an aspect of me, and this is what they had to say:

Something better will come when it comes, either way you are tough, powerful, a force to be reckoned with. I admire you.

I admire that you are someone who shows up to meet a hard situation with love, and you thought this other person was too, and it turns out they are someone who walks, and maybe that’s for the best and maybe it isn’t, but it doesn’t matter because now you know.

Now you have that information and it matters that you got it now instead of down the road. An unlikely blessing.

This is a temporary reel, says the Cowboy of Chore Hour

Right now is the worst it’s gonna hurt.

It will come in waves and do its thing like heartache does, but this is the worst part, when you are in the reeling part, you will reel, and then it will pass.

THIS IS A TEMPORARY REEL, this is the reeling time. It sucks, it is hard and painful and it will pass.

You deserve big wonderful love in all your relationships and friendships, a love that shows up for you and holds you and doesn’t drop you; I am so sorry that this wasn’t it, and also I’m glad you are getting this information fast rather than slowly over time.

Please trust the path and stay in your strength. Treasure the good parts of your life in the wilds, and keep doing the things that work, the things that help, doing your writing and cooking and training, building and rebuilding your world.

What is the wish?

Wishing for heart-healing, wishing for merciful compassion to accompany the loving-clarity, wishing for common good and for any solutions revealing themselves beautifully and swiftly.

Wishing for a sense of humor to hold me through the reeling. Wishing for kind perspective. Wishing for patience. Wishing for new good surprises. Wishing for the [it’s all for the best] to reveal itself, wishing for help and good companionship for the rebuilding.

Wishing for the courage to exist and keep existing while feeling so adjacent to the void; to remember that I can be both the one who is reeling and the one who holds a field of love in which the reeling can reel itself out.

What would that be like?

Reeling in the mystery as a superpower rather than a devastation. What would that be like?

What would that be like? I can’t wait to find out.

Come play in the comments, I appreciate the company

You are welcome to share anything that sparked for you while reading, anything that helped or anything on your mind, wish some wishes, process what’s percolating…

I am lighting a candle for us and our beautiful heart-wishes. What a brave thing it is to allow ourselves to want something better for us and for the world.

Or if there’s anything you’d like to toss into the wishing pot, the healing power of the collective is no small thing, companionship helps.

Whatever comes to mind or heart. Let’s support each other’s hope-sparks…

Housekeeping note: You can subscribe to posts by email again!

If you aren’t seeing these updates in your in your email and want to, you can can solve that here.

This will pop up a new page on Follow.It that lets you subscribe via email, newsletter, or RSS reader. They say “expect 50 stories a week”, and that’s a very imaginary number, once a week is the dream.

I am emailing copies of the Emergency Calming Techniques package!

Anyone who gives to the Discretionary this week (more info below) will get my Emergency Calming Techniques package by email as a pdf. I am only checking email twice a week because I no longer have wifi at my place, long story, so be patient with me but if it doesn’t show up within the week then let me know!

I have some ideas for the next ebook too but if you do too, shoot me an email or share in the comments.

A request!

If you received clues or perspective or want to send appreciation for the writing and work/play we do here, I appreciate it tremendously. Between Long Covid and traumatic brain injury recovery, things are slow going.

I am accepting support (with joy & gratitude) in the form of Appreciation Money to the Discretionary Fund. Asking is not where my strength resides but Brave & Stalwart is the theme these days, and pattern-rewriting is the work, it all helps with fixing the many broken things.

And if those aren’t options, I get it, you can light a candle for support (or light one in your mind!), share this with someone who loves words, tell people about these techniques, approaches and themes, send them here, it all helps, it’s all welcome, and I appreciate it and you so much. ❤️