What a Week

What a week.

All I can say is, “Wow.”

The new year came with a lot of loss. 

Grief.

Wounds that won’t be healed easily—if ever. 

Three different friends and family who experienced devastating losses of loved ones this week.

Do you ever think, “I can’t take one more thing!”?

What do we do with this kind of staggering weight—especially when it all comes in one week?

On Wednesday, I was in an Uber with a person who was talking about how he didn’t believe in global warming. Just as I was about to argue with him about climate change, he said, “I do think there will be a World War III, though.”

As if that’s a comfort. 

And then on Friday, I ended the week with a root canal. I hate going to any kind of dentist. Who doesn’t? But I always remind myself, “I am so lucky to be able to get good dental care. Appreciate it. Lean into it. Be grateful.”

Just before I went under the files and excavators, as I was waiting for the anesthesia to do its work, a video started playing on the small chair TV about the asteroid that hit the planet, covered the sun, and killed all the dinosaurs. 

Then it turned to Deep Water Horizon and the Exxon Valdez oil spills. And just before the endo arrived: A story about Hitler.

Just when you start to feel like you can manage being human, the universe turns up the heat. The noise gets exponentially louder.

I asked Dr. M. when he came into the room, “Is this a strategy? Remind your patients about the crappy world out there so we think being here with you is no big deal?”

He laughed. 

“I love history so much I could have been a history teacher,” he said. He showed me with his hands how he weighed these two professions back and forth. “History, or root canals?” he said, chuckling again.

The root canal went fine—it was no worse than going to the regular dentist in the end. But when I left the office after a tense 90 minutes trying to relax, the rest of all of it came rushing in. 

I felt the burden of others’ losses weighing heavily on my shoulders. 

I hurt for my friends and family and the world whose hearts are hearting. 

If we are remotely empathic, what are we to do with all of this? How can we feel our feet on the ground when our very earth is trembling? How can we stand being human, even those of us who are fairly privileged in this Western world? 

We still feel loss. 

We still experience grief. 

As Anne Lamott wrote in A New Codependency, “We’ll lose everything and everyone someday. Things begin deteriorating the second they’re made. Everyone heads toward death the second they are born. Accomplishments are fleeting.”

And as we get older, the losses come faster and more frequently.

I was thinking about this as I sat in the dentist’s chair. My last endodontist—the one who did an original root canal 10 years ago—passed away in September. 

As I left the office with half my face numbed, I was very aware of the fluidity of life.

Amy Elizabeth Fox, psychotherapist and CEO of Mobius, was interviewed on the Coaches Rising podcast recently. She had the best advice I have heard in a long time. She said, “Turn towards your life. Let yourself feel what your life is bringing you.” 

Turn towards it.

In other words, don’t run.

Don’t detach.

Don’t shut down.

As best you can, don’t dart in another direction, away from what you’re feeling. Instead, Fox said, “Turn towards the immediacy of felt experience.”

Argh. 

I often don’t want to feel what I’m feeling right now. I want to run in the other direction. 

But what if instead I focus on softening the experience of that feeling. What if I ask, “What am I feeling right now? And how might I soften how I’m feeling it?”

There’s no way to move through the pain more quickly. We can’t take it away—for ourselves or for anyone else. All we can do is move through it. And be there for other human beings in it.

If we have lived these losses, we can be witness to it for others.

I have never done Aikido. But I understand that this soft martial art can help us learn about harmonizing. It helps us learn about the harmony of movement and alignment of the spirit, mind, and body. It can help us find greater harmony—when we stop pushing against how it works. 

Fox suggested, “Turn towards the questions of your life. What needs to be explored and healed?” 

I have a tooth that needs to be healed. But there are a few other things on my list. I have a list of questions. Things that have yet to be explored and healed. 

I can’t fix it for everyone else. I can't heal the world. But I can heal myself. 

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