A Day of Settling In - Sitting with Feelings

I had a good sleep last night, and I woke up at 6 this morning and after a little while went back to sleep until 9:30!  The tiredness that I felt is slowly leaving my body.  I am settling back into home.   I did less today than yesterday.   I did not turn on the tv or radio until after noon, then turned it off pretty quickly.   I have made a few calls, responded to a few emails, and sent a couple of texts.  

I am aware that I have many feelings, they are almost overflowing - the fear that fueled my adrenaline that helped to get me home is lessening.  Not that I am not holding a big bucket of fear for myself, my family, our country, the world but it is not a fear that is searing through my veins and helped to keep me on hyper alert.   This deeper more compassionate fear is one that I can sit with, one that will help to move me in "right direction"  for now it is keeping me home,  it is going to help me figure out how to use my sewing machine again, and it will bring me to other action to help my community to be as safe as we can.  

What I know I also know is that I am living with grief.  Grief that Jackie and I are not in the car and getting ready to unload all our stuff into the great house we were renting for the week in New Orleans,  grief that Myah will not go to Greece for her birthday, and that Luke is missing all the many rituals he was excited for as he ends his senior year in high school.  These are stories of grief of the privileged (ME) but they are part of my grief.  There is a larger grief,  men and women locked up for selling marijuana (a 5 cent bag) or whatever it is, and they now have a death sentence as the virus spreads unabated in their facility.  Grief for the refugees and what will happen if and when the virus gets inside their squalid and unprotected tents they call home.  Grief that while people die in the USA we have a president who continues to roll back regulations,  dismiss science,  line the pockets of his cronies and his rich buds who kiss his butt ( that grief seethes with rage).   It is the little and big losses and we have so much yet to come.  

I will move, I will act with and because of this grief, it will not silence or stop me.  It does need to be acknowledged.  It has to have it's place.  

All of it,  the laughter that comes from the memories that rise in grief,  the memories that bring me to having cheerios, with banana's and milk (like when i was 6) and Sasha was eating her O's. 

It is the last day of March,  not one game of March Madness played.  We didn't get to see how right or wrong Charlie Creme was in his  predictions for the Women's Basketball Tournament.  There was no return to New Orleans for the Final Four.  I didn't get to go to Atchafalya Restaurant to eat.   No dancing with the old lesbians from the LOAF club.  No walking in the parks and in the museums. 

 And in this....we move forward, we unfold once again, and again.  I am cherishing the stillness.  I am taking care,  with all of it,  I am taking care.   I am sending out care.  I am in isolation but I am not isolated, we are all in this together.