When We Rise

Finding courage and fortitude in unprecedented times...

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This morning as I sat on my rooftop in the highlands of central Mexico, a warm cup of green tea perilously wedged between calf and thigh, lap top resting on one knee, breaking my promise to myself to not look at the daily political unfoldings north of the border, the church bells rang out and snapped me out of my doom scrolling.

Breathing in long and deep, I took in my surroundings, trying to remind myself, you are not there, you are in San Miguel, where life is gentle and good and soft. I looked up at the faded pink spirals of the parroquia, the treetops lining our terracotta roof, bougainvillea, claret and blushed, dancing in the breeze. You're ok, you’re safe, I reminded myself. But even this far away, it still activates little triggers and long-buried hurts.

Photo by Edu Lins on Unsplash

To be honest, I didn't think we’d be back here again. This was not supposed to happen. Great candidate, unprecedented turnout, stadiums filled. Obama-level excitement. But regardless of what my suspicions tell me, we are indeed here.

I refused to watch the inauguration. And had only a couple of mildly shameful FB skirmishes with some red hats the day before. Last time around, I was fully engaged but to be honest, I’m having a hard time doing it again. There are moments where I feel like I have nothing left to give, or rather, the part of me that has always been a fighter has gone into a state of extreme paraplegia. The first time around I organized and joined the river of protestors that flooded the streets, I worked the polls, made calls, texted 10s of thousands and gathered friends in postcard writing parties.

Despite the glorious turnout of the No Kings Marches and all the other protests leading up to it, I think there are many of us that have just gone dormant. Checked out. Glued to our phones awaiting the next news drop, but this time around our bodies stay firmly glued to the couch. I’m not proud of it.

In thinking about what the cause of my personal apathy is, I have to go all the way back to my family of origin. And those of my friends in New York City. It's no accident we found each other. All from dysfunctional families. Raised in the 70s without car seats, safe spaces and parents that left us alone while on vacation or engaging in their own self-soothing behaviors, while we ran wild through the rough city streets. Addiction seemed to permeate the soft membranes of just about everyone’s homes. Instead of coping, we self-medicated. Instead of telling the truth, we hid our shame by constructing alternate realities, and some from homes with violence and predatory behavior simply froze.

In many ways, that's what this moment feels like to me. A mirror of the dysfunctional home of my upbringing. When I discovered pot then booze then coke and on and on, it was magic. It felt like a bulletproof vest that could withstand any assault that came my way. Every frying pan sailing over my head, every brittle hand across my cheek and all the cutting criticism that left lifelong open wounds. Even fortifying me to experience repeated sexual assault in a bubble of a kind of curious study in dissociation. Oh, is this happening now? Why don't I feel anything? Am I going to make it out of this room alive?

The same kind of dissociated mechanism is at work in me now. It's a muscle. Maybe that's what happens when we’ve fought the good fight for so long, but in the end, the perpetrator still ends up silencing you and taking away what's yours. Dissociation can feel rather soothing in times like these. So we do it. No longer in fight or flight, we inhabit the space of freeze. The survivors in us know we can't stay like potential prey playing dead forever. Somehow, someway, we need to rise.

When I was 19 with his hands around my throat and his body inside mine, I had no idea if I would make it out of that room. So, quite instinctively and completely without feeling, I played dead. I let him do what he was going to do and did not give him the satisfaction of my rage or my tears. My body read the room and knew what was best. So I waited, silently, patiently, for my moment, and then I escaped.

Years later, in the many rooms and corridors of twelve-step programs, I rose up again, rooted in my newly discovered sobriety that gave rise to my unrealized inner strength and fortitude. I see now, it was never about the things that I took to stay numb, that was the symptom that came later. It was about the wounds that happened many years earlier that I carried with me.

So I went back to the beginning. To the original wounds that were made long before presidents and captors in strange bedrooms. I held them in my hands and explored their essence, who made these wounds, what they left behind and what I needed to do to heal them.

And perhaps that is the exact same mechanism that is in place now. Perhaps we need to play dead, to turn away, to view this moment as a study in the dynamics of dysfunction and go within to where things feel silent and safe, if only for a brief moment. To look at all those little triggers that we all carry that have been reawakened by the current moment we find ourselves in. The triggers that shut us up and shut us down. That keep us glued to our seats instead of engaged in the fight itself. So that we can cast them off and finally lay them to rest. Perhaps only then can we gain the emotional sobriety to rise. Not as victims but as victors.

I know it's easy for me to say from this rooftop under the blaze of a perfect Mexican sun while the cathedral bells reverberate in the distance. But as someone who’s risen so many times before, I believe that resurrection can come from the most challenging of moments. I believe that perhaps even now, that is why we inhabit this very space. So that we can transform and become better than what we were. So I sit here. I breathe. And I wait. Till I rise again.

Un abbraccio, Timothi Jane xo

A Supportive Meditation

Thank you for reading Words and Wildfire. If you would like to go a little deeper, click here to explore a supportive companion piece. A short meditation on Rising up in Challenging Times. Remember, you are not alone. We are all in this together.