Shutting Down the Ride
The work of grief is long and tedious. Reframing my approach to "self-care" helps.
A large lesson I’ve learned while doing grief in a pandemic is that it is okay to shut down a ride in the middle of the day in the theme park of my life.
I worked at a theme park for three years, and let me tell you, it’s always a disaster when a big-ticket ride shuts down at 3pm in July. Everyone is frustrated. All the lines for the other rides back up. It’s tedious and time consuming and no one is happy. But that’s what it takes to keep the ride online tomorrow.
Why does a ride shut down? There’s trash on the tracks. Someone nudged the emergency break. A kid threw up. Most of the time, everyone and everything is fine. There’s a reason theme parks stop rides at the slightest suggestion of a malfunction: it’s to avoid a bigger disaster later on. Stop the ride, get everyone off, give it a good once-over, and resume.
This is the work of self-care. It’s a preemptive shut down in order to ensure functioning can continue with as much routine as possible.
A year ago this week we made the decision to start hospice.
I’m still reframing my world to deal with the glaring absence of my mommy. I’m staring at a picture of my life, with a massive gash through the center. Every time I do something good for myself, like eat well, go for a run, complete a project, have a cry on the phone with my dad, or teach a class, I’m giving a Bob Ross touch up to the areas around this gash to soften its edges. Happy little yoga classes, if you will. But whenever I step back, it’s still there. In the center of the painting. Ripping it in two.
No amount of paint is going to hide this rip down the center of my life. No amount of what the modern age calls “self-care” is going to right my upturned boat. But what it does do is enable me to keep going, even if it’s at a snail’s pace.
I’ve learned to make time for lots of little touch ups. Running, as detailed in my last post, is essential. I’ve started doing Morning Pages at the suggestion of my friend Lydia, and it’s been a nice way to get myself out of bed. I’m in a meditation course, so I’ve added a 20 minute meditation every day. I try to throw myself into the actual woods once a week.
These are all nice Instagram Ready Ways to Take Back My Life and Find Peace and Build Sacred Spaces and Make Tiny Rituals and Breath Deeply and Savor the Small Things. But they don’t fix the rip in the center of my life. They numb it. They distract from it. They allow me to survive it for another day.
I admit it is frustrating it is to make the space and time to do all of the goopy self-care things and know that no matter how many nose strips and candles I buy, no matter how many cups of tea I drink while watching the rain, no matter how many grocery store bouquets of flowers I stick into empty wine bottles, my mother is still dead.
I use these systems and tactics to keep me moving from day to day. They’re less of an indulgence and more of a prescription. Reframing this from “laziness” to “shutting down the theme park ride so it can run tomorrow” hasn’t been easy.
I have had to force my self-judgement-o-meter to flip the way I view things I’m conditioned to regard as indulgent extras, and instead view them as the anti-anxiety medication for my soul. I take meds for my brain, I buy flowers for my spirit. The work of self-care is choices I make to prioritize my ability to stay sane on this earth. Regardless of this mindset, I do get nervous when I sit on the couch drinking tea and reading, like, you better enjoy yourself, Steph, because this is You Time! Appreciate it!
But sitting on the couch drinking tea and reading for thirty minutes in the middle of the afternoon is the screen and brain break I need to sit back down at my desk and do other work. It’s not lazy, no matter how much my gut wants to tell me it is. It’s a smart choice that benefits me overall. That is why it is self-care. It is not a meme or a caption. It is a choice that ripples out to the health of my work and relationships. And I’m not ashamed to admit that I need it.
Would I prefer to function with the high-school aged fervor of maniacal time management I had at seventeen? Would it be great to be able to operate with the schedule of my second semester junior year of college, when I, quite literally, had one half hour free during the week between 8am and 9pm every single day? Yes, yes, that would be lovely. That would be stunning. That is a fantasy.
In order to stay in my body and tend to my soul, I employ many cliché rituals that have become fetishized in pandemic culture, almost reaching a fever pitch in how they’re documented in social media. This creates a foolish cycle of expectation. If I see hikes and books being so therapeutic for others, am I doing it wrong if they barely get me to baseline? Is the magical cure-all of “treat yourself” a sham?
The fetishization of self-care, which has turned it into an industry of fluffy blankets and good smells and rejuvenating movement, detracts from the granular work it’s actually doing. I want these things to fix me. I want to get to the end of a day that included meditation and sunshine and be put back together again. But I’m not. Mommy is still dead. The self-care failed.
But not really. When I make my space bright and comfortable, I am better able to do the work I need to do. When I move my body during the day, I am able to return to my laptop and concentrate. I have become unnaturally dependent upon the cut flowers I put around my desk, because their brief life cycle reminds me of the lilies of the field from Matthew’s Gospel.
When I allow these paint strokes of peace to take up time and space in my life (anxiety be damned!), it is part of the work of grief. When I designate flower funds, it is part of the work of grief. When I have a day shot to hell by the less-frequent-but-still-occurring paralysis of loss, demanding a temporary shutdown to shift the day’s focus to staying in my body, it is a part of the work of grief. And it is work. And I’m doing it.
Pedestrian/layman’s self-care isn’t a miraculous fix. It’s part of the slog. But when I treat it as part of the slow work of grief, the benefits run deeper.
Steph’s Viennese Regimen of Self-Care
Morning Pages: I get up earlier than necessary, make coffee, and write. Before anything else, I do something creative. Usually I write about the dream I had. Or complain about something.
Work Space: My desk is covered in paintings and postcards and transcribed encouragements friends have said to me this year. It is my throne. I am surrounded by loveliness.
Movement: I try to move my body once a day. I don’t always do it. Whether it’s a two-mile run, twenty minutes of yoga, or an online class, I want to do something that raises my heart rate or stretches me out. I’ve got a casual accountability group for this here.
Meditation: I am currently doing this course, which involves a commitment to meditation every day. I do it after I move my body. The time taken to do this pays dividends in productivity later on.
Flowers: They look amazing and smell even better. I spend about €12 on flowers every week. A bouquet of roses is a third of the price it would be in the US. Worth it.
Candles: Twice, before a lockdown, I have purchased ten large candles from TK Maxx (The TJ Maxx of Europe) and donkey-hauled them back to my apartment. I always have one going. I rotate through them. The different scents bring different moods. The day’s candle lives on the top of a shelf with pictures of my mom.
Sunshine: This is becoming easier as the season is changing. I either walk outside or stand on the porch with my face toward the sun. The Viennese do this a lot; you can often see older folks stepping off of a path to turn towards the sun, hand behind their back, eyes closed.
Reading: If I’m stressed or flustered or really sad, I grab my book and set my timer for 20 min and sit on the couch. I get my head out of this world and into another. I read teen fantasy, nicely rebranded by publishers in recent years as “New Adult,” because the readership is all me’s, no shame. I’m currently reading everything by Leigh Bardugo.
Prayer: I prefer to go to mass in-person if I can. We’re in a lockdown (agaaaaaain) so sometimes I stick close to home and read the readings on my couch. This also helps me avoid the awful moment when I go to put the Eucharist in my mouth by pulling down my FFP2 mask and accidentally send my glasses flying. (This has happened, twice.)
Spur of the moment prayers consist of my personal version of the Suscipe, in which I mutter some combination of cuss words that ends with, “YOU take care of it, Jesus. YOU deal with this shit. Whatever.” (You can’t hold water in a fist.)
Teaching: Perhaps the greatest self-care I’ve developed is getting myself to teach again. Conducting my Soul Singing classes (which are breathing/humming/vocalizing classes) has been so good for me. It allows me to work the music teaching muscle that’s desperate for exercise. (Shameless plug.)
Have a wonderful week, dear friend.
Pictured: Historical documentation of My Life in Lockdown, unstaged, featuring Michaela Aue on my laptop screen.