I sense in my bones that the long pause of spring and summer is over. The pace of our lives is quickening. Months of binge-watching Tiger King (a show which ultimately hurt my heart, I wish I had never seen it) and rereading the Harry Potter books are coming to an end. Maybe it’s because school is starting, the election is ramping up, tickets went on sale for the festival where I work, a festival that plans (perhaps foolishly, but no one asked my opinion) to open October 3, as is tradition. The light is changing, and with it, my own inner metronome is recalibrating to a steadier, quicker tempo.
I have never really been a morning person. I don’t hit the ground running. I sort of slog into my day, shuffling around in a haze of clouded, fuzzy thoughts. Coronavirus quarantine has exacerbated this tendency, for months I slept in until mid-morning, waking up just early enough to make a phone conference meeting at 10:00 twice a week. I didn’t start working until afternoon, I have been fortunate enough to be allowed to work from home, and working on my own schedule has meant later hours, albeit always in yoga pants, rarely in anything with snaps, buttons, or a zipper.
But a couple of weeks ago, I began to desire an earlier start to my day.
The fog is lifting.
The cobwebs are blowing away.
The dust is shaking off.
I’m taking real, measurable steps to reset my days, for while I no longer want to be driven by compulsive productivity, I do want to create and make work that is valuable and moves the needle toward positive change and the realization of my deeply held, lofty dreams.
I am getting out of bed earlier and then making it.
I am riding my bicycle in the early morning hour, before 9:00, when the south Texas heat is still just a glimmer.
I am journaling in the form of my morning pages, according to the method of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, a practice that helps me set my intention and connect with my innermost motivations early in the day.
Of course, it’s yellow…
I am reciting my “litany of blessings and thanks.” I keep a recipe card file, a vintage one from the early 1970s I found on Etsy, within it are index cards where I have written the names of people who I know are struggling or have a need. I read their names, and then simply say, “Be Blessed.” I speak it at my window, where I can see all the treetops and I send their names into the sky and the trees. Praying this way has become such a balm to my spirit, it has lifted the burden of the wordy prayer where I struggle to articulate my thoughts, thinking I need to somehow find the right, perfect, mellifluous words that will translate my thoughts in a pretty enough way to get the Divine One’s attention. Also, I don’t fall asleep. And, to be rigorously honest, this way of praying is efficient. My home is not a place where lengthy prayer sessions are even possible. Spending just a few minutes in a prescribed ritual has given my spirit structure, as sense of safety and well-being. I understand the Catholic rosary tradition in a whole new way, it’s the contact with God that matters. She can hear the communication of our souls in the simple, repetitive phrases, “Be Blessed,” or “Thank you.” It is enough, for what is prayerful communication but the opportunity to commune?
And then, a small protein-rich breakfast. Now, I am ready to face my day. To tap into my dreams for my career, to write, to create, and yes, to do the mundane tasks that accompany any job: emails, deliverables, meetings, schedules, and timetables.
These routine actions are signaling to my spirit that the challenges of the life I am meant to live on this day are ready to be met.
Dear reader, do you have routines, whether early or late, that help you stay on track? I’d love to know them, I believe we can all learn from each other! And if you’d like your name on one of my prayer cards, say the word. Have a blessed day!
“What do you do when disappointment comes? When it weighs on you like a rock, you can either let it press you down until you become discouraged, even devastated, or you can use it as a stepping-stone to better things.”– Joyce Meyer
Yesterday, while on my walk, the word “Disappointment” was dropped into my head and heart as if by some Divine force. Sometimes, that’s how my life works, God lays a bread crumb trail to where I’m needed. I followed the crumbs to Facebook, where I asked people to share their experiences of disappointment. Nearly twenty hours later, I am still getting pings on Messenger, and the stories have brought me to tears.
I’ll start with mine.
I have, for two consecutive years, been interviewing to work with the Disney Corporation in a department so perfectly suited to my talents, training, and experience that it might have been created specifically for me: to host in the student field trip program at Disneyland in Anaheim. Last year, I got so close to a job offer that I put myself on a waiting list for a spot at a long-term camping resort just a couple of miles from the park, and, in an attempt to put manifestation to work for a dream, I wrote a blog post that I never got to publish to announce my new position:
“And so here I am. I am about to leave for Anaheim, where I will spend my days with student groups, taking everything I have learned about teaching and classroom management as well as all the skills I honed running the School Days program at Texas Renaissance Festival to walk alongside them in the most magical place I know. I will get to share my love of theatre and my love of Mickey Mouse. I don’t know if this will be a forever career or a seasonal one, but I have spent enough time among seasonal festival business people to have no fear of the unknown.”
It is only slightly comforting to know that the coronavirus would have halted the dream. Had I gotten the job and toodled my tiny camper to Cali only to be sent home like all the frontline Disney employees were in April, the knowledge that I had gotten the offer, that I had done the work for a couple of months, that I would have a place waiting for me when the virus had run its course, does not dampen the tremendous sense of disappointment.
It is likely that this year I would have gotten an offer in September. No more. The parks are barely functioning, schools are unlikely to open as normal this fall. Budgets on both ends of this equation are stripped to their bare minimums. I may be able to postpone this dream for one more year, perhaps September of 2021 will bring me an offer. But damn, it has been excruciating to examine that dream, then stash it in the box on my highest closet shelf, a clear plastic bin full of Mickey ears, souvenir pins, and my name tag from the Disney leadership summit I attended in 2018.
Disappointment.
A dear friend of our family, a young woman I held when she was just three days old, graduated from high school this June. We had watched all her posts of spinning flags in her school’s corps, her photos of banquets in pretty gowns, her braces on, then her gleaming, perfect smile when the braces came off. She didn’t get her prom, her graduation was weird. I had a hoodie custom made for her to wear at her university this fall, but her family is not even sure what university life will look like- will she get to move into the dorm, attend Fish Camp, pledge a club? Disappointment.
A friend miscarried at 7. 5 weeks, but because of Covid didn’t have access to in-person medical care until her 13th week, when an ultrasound revealed a gestational sac that had stopped growing. With only virtual visits and a revolving door of doctors, her diagnosis was missed, and what was meant to be a Father’s Day announcement of a new baby became instead a D-and-C. Profound, heart-wrenching disappointment.
My friends have lost dream careers, canceled long-awaited family reunions, foregone first-baby showers, and summer camps. They’re scared they’ll lose their aging parents during this awful time when they cannot say goodbye except through a video app on the phone or computer. One is, in fact, watching her mother die and she can’t say goodbye in person. A couple have lost close family members and could not seek the comfort of ritual and family to sustain them in their grief.
One of the strongest women I know wrote:
“This pandemic has caused great grief and managed to unbottle all previous grief. Nowhere to go, no outlet to channel it, it just keeps crashing over and over again.
The riptide has taken me and all I can do is keep calm, hold my breath, get my bearings, and try to swim even with the shore or the wave will win.”
Disappointment.
It starts early in our lives and comes in big packages and small. A birthday party rained out, a cancer surgery unsuccessful. A cake is dry, a parent abuses. Disappointment may be mild, it can be devastating. And we all know that the very worst critique we can receive from a parent, teacher, or boss is, “I’m disappointed in you.”
Disappointment is something we humans must wrestle with, though thankfully, not constantly. Even in a challenging, dark life, there are glorious moments when we get the part we auditioned for, when healthy babies are born, when the movies we’ve anticipated are as good as we’d hoped. Medical tests come back with favorable results, apologies are offered and accepted, the sun shines on the wedding day; simple kindnesses like bread shared or a letter received bring just a glimmer of joy.
I have learned that the best way to overcome disappointment is first, acknowledge that it’s there. We can’t deal with what we’re too afraid or ashamed to name. Share the burden of it with a friend. Let them share with you as well.
Next, we look inward, which requires a commitment to gentle but honest self-examination. I used to believe in rigorous, unflinching self-examination, but that only led to being hypercritical of myself, unforgiving and unwilling to grant grace for my own failures. To grow in grace, to be honest about my own disappointments, to acknowledge when I have disappointed others, I listen. I seek wisdom from those who are living lives that shine, sometimes in the form of conversations with trusted mentors, frequently in podcasts, constantly in books.
Spend time in fresh air. For me, this is to walk or ride my bicycle or, when rheumatoid arthritis is wracking, to sit. To settle among birds, dragonflies, and breeze is healing. I do not know that there is a way to live in spiritual or mental health unless one gets outside. When I am among the trees and grass, I have my best ideas, I lay plans and untangle the knots in my thinking. And I am, thank all that is good and wholesome, not mindlessly scrolling the swamp that Facebook can become.
Express the disappointment, if it lives in the shadows and crevices of your heart, it will fester. I write. Every day, every morning. I write by hand, two to three pages. It is a practice that has become as necessary as air. I used to think it was my daily orange juice that got me going in the morning; I know for many folks, it’s their first cup of coffee. But for me, spending thirty minutes writing before I dive into my day has been life-changing. The words are uncensored and inelegant, a nearly-illegible scrawl. I ponder and process feminine spirituality, I list things I am grateful for, I articulate dreams, I unpack the worries that are plaguing me. I have been sleeping better since I began this writing practice, I think it’s vital.
To look outward, though, that is the final stepping stone to lay on our path to healing and mental health. We can’t look outward in a way that compares our own suffering or disappointments to others’, on that path exists only bitterness or pride; there will always be someone who has it better and someone who has it worse. Our disappointment is ours, and it is valid. No, what I mean by “looking outward” is simply this: look for ways to serve, to heal. Write letters. Call a lonely friend or elder person who lives alone. Sew masks and distribute them to the less fortunate. Listen to the stories of the unheard. Deliver meals. Discover your gift then ply it to plug joy back into the connected race that is all of us. Set your sights on the restoration of the soul of humanity.
These actions serve to nourish and defend against the sharpest nettles of disappointment. They are stones that can be stacked, one beside and above the other, to forge a path that leads us out of today’s disappointment and ahead to tomorrow’s blessing. It’s hard to see sometimes. But stillness followed by service can be a gorgeous way forward. The inimitable Marilyn Monroe once said, “Sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.” I love that. Our world is falling apart. Perhaps we will build something better, both in a global sense and a deeply personal one.
Kimberly Bryant, MA 