You can't always trust your body
(Photos of the camping trip of incredible mountains, trees, body of water. And on the right, I created a piece inspired by the view with watercolors and charcoal - I used the water from Lake Louise for the watercolor.)
[ Scroll to the bottom to watch the visual version of this post ]
In September 2016, I went on a 10 day camping trip with friends through Glacier National Park to Banff National Park…it was so epic. We pitched our tents at a new location every night. I remember waking up to the scent pine trees, forest dirt, and fresh rain. The smell was intoxicating. Love the rain, but it’s hard to set up camp during rainfall and it’s not really fun when you’re cold and wet. It was way colder than we expected, and I was unfortunately a little unprepared for that part. On top of that it was kinda rough to depend on park showers and bathrooms every single day. But it was so worth the adventure being amongst such awe-inducing nature.
(Photos of me making art in my apartment soon after that trip.)
Something I revisit weirdly often is the euphoric experience when I got back. The first 24 hours back in my studio apartment were out of this world. It was like I was high! The first hot shower in a clean bathroom. The first night in my fluffy warm bed. The first change into clean clothes. The first skincare routine not from travel bottles. The first day without having to talk to anyone. I was having an out of body experience. Pure bliss.
The novelty of my being at home was so visceral for me that I can almost feel it right now 10 years later.
In that same era, I learned about hedonic adaptation (or treadmill), which is the human phenomenon of always needing to “up” our experiences to get to our previous level of enjoyment.
For example: the first time going to the lake was so magical…I felt like I could do it every day and not get sick of it. So the next time, I brought my favorite chilled drink and loved it, but sitting there, I already knew that I wanted to bring a camping chair next time. So then, I do that…and then it would be cuter if I also had food. So suddenly, the magic of being by the lake without anything doesn’t exactly have the same shimmery feeling, because I need the other elements. There’s nothing wrong with bringing a drink or snack to the lake, but it demonstrates how fast our sense of awe or gratitude can evaporate.
Another way to see it is this chase for novelty, and by definition, novelty can’t really be experienced in repetition. The only way to combat it is to create a contrasting experience. In this example, to not go to the lake for a while, and enjoy level 1 again. Or go back to level 1 and intentionally invite the feeling of gratitude and awe.
Back to my camping trip, I felt euphoric in my apartment, because I was experiencing novelty. My norm for the past 10 days was setting camp in the rain, really cold uncomfortable nights, a hard sleeping mat, dirty bathrooms, cold showers, and constant socializing. So coming home of course felt like heaven. I moved my baseline.
I think our bodies, our nervous systems, our psyche, are always looking for a balance of safety through routine and novelty.
We want to feel settled in day to day life and not have to use our executive thinking all the time, because decision fatigue is so draining. AND we also want to feel like we are alive and can use our agency in experiencing new things.
For some of us, we might gravitate towards seeing the mundane as dangerous…like it’s a sign that we are getting complacent in life. The repetition of life could almost feel like our agency is taken from us. That is especially true under capitalism when most of us are forced to labor in order to have a roof over our heads. So much agency is stolen from us with that piece alone. It could feel so suffocating and depressing.
While for others, we might see novelty as threatening to our safety. Taking risks and experiencing the unknown could feel completely outside of our capacity. When life is already so unknown, it sometimes doesn’t feel worth shaking up everything without a certain outcome. This could play out with big life decisions, but it can also show up in small ways. Like saying yes to hanging out with a friend. Or finding a new hobby. This could induce feelings of anxiety and wanting to hide away.
Either way we are always doing the math on whether something is worth it or not (mostly subconsciously). If the balance is off, our bodies will feel off.
It’s so hard, because arguably for all of us we carry a physical and spiritual lineage of data…of what is safe versus dangerous. I carry what my maternal great-grandfather experienced when he was here on Turtle Island when the railroads were being built. I carry what my paternal grandmother experienced under my abusive grandfather in HK. I carry so many stories that are unsaid that it both haunts me and gives me unexplainable strength.
So as I’m figuring out how to live with integrity while also finding some equilibrium in my body, sometimes I feel lost. Intellectually, I know all the things…how important it is to take care of myself and to witness and grieve…and my body feels wobbly. Compared to a year ago, I have come really far in finding stability mentally and emotionally. And I never want to take that for granted. AND there are days like today when I’m bleeding heavily, I’m feeling tired, and my body feels shaky. This round I feel like crawling into my bed and not wanting to experience anything novel for a bit.
I came across this tiktok [https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8gATw3M/] of the late Andrea Gibson [https://substack.com/@andreagibson] reciting a few things on their bucket list:
To see through the lens of my spirit, and not the bruised and clouded eyes of my wounds.To wear my heart on my sleeve, and never grow out of that shirt.To be what Mary Oliver called a bride married to amazement, and to not file for divorce from amazement when my life is hard.To know exactly what parts of me are comforted by other people’s approval and comfort those parts myself instead.To know shame can’t live in the light, and let the light fall wherever I am hiding.To reckon with my trauma until it is a poem no longer written in blood.To love my body as if it were my soul’s silhouette.To break the vows I have made to my suffering.To interrupt my judgments, criticisms, blames knowing they are almost always trying to distract me from my own pain.To be guided by giving instead of getting.To live in a bungalow of kindness.To know every leaf, every river, every sunrise is a child saying, “Watch me! Watch me! Watch me!”To live like I’m kissing the universe on her temple.
That feels like the novelty I want to embody more.
There’s a sense of awe that is woven into the most profoundly simple things. There is novelty in the bravery it takes to truly meet myself. There is novelty in being soft enough to receive kindness. There is novelty in having my arms open for the possibility of deeper love.
Capitalism has instilled in our collective intuition that the easiest way to satisfy our novelty craving is to spend money. And oh baby am I sucker for retail therapy. The hit of buying things after a breakup feels healing lol! But the truth is…that kind of novelty is so cheap. A vacation, a fun night out, a splurge isn’t wrong.
But the question is: have we been intentional in carving out feelings of novelty? That helps us heal from capitalism. To help us be reminded we have agency. To give ourselves the jolt of excitement of what is possible. To provide the relief that we aren’t stuck.
(an image of a very cute wholesome breakfast spread from pinterest.)
I want to find novelty in having a slow abundant breakfast with coffee with my honey. Even if it’s every sunday morning.
(a gif of baby peter rabbit being tucked into bed by his mama after a sip of something warm.)
When it comes to finding safety in the familiar, we all need a base of predictability to feel safe in our bodies. When we can find patterns, it’s easier to know how to move. Even if the predictable is somewhat harmful, our systems eventually adapt. Like how our attraction could be based on undesirable traits of our parents, because it feels familiar and predictable (even if the behavior is toxic).
In this corner, surprises are a big no-no. Trauma is something that happens too fast and too big for our bodies to process and digest. It is a shock, a surprise, an unconsensual experience. It makes sense that sometimes we want to crawl into a hole and close off our senses. Everything feels like too much.
Where it goes wrong is when we accept that our window of tolerance is small…and don’t try to expand it with patience. It goes wrong when feeling safe all the time becomes the goal. For white people, I see this way too often, and it’s infuriating. Keeping their peace becomes very very dangerous for Black and Brown people. And any attempt to call out or in…white people’s tears, anger, guilt becomes the center. Their dysregulation becomes the center. It’s exhausting.
How we interpret our body’s signal for danger is KEEYYY! People like saying (aka I like saying) things like “trust your body” or “trust your intuition.” And truuuee our bodies do have alot of wisdom and we do have valuable intuition, but ONLY if we interpret the sensations accurately. Most of the time, our feelings of threat aren’t us physically being in danger. They probably come from the fear of betrayal, feeling shame, being isolated, or playing on a worst possible scenario, forgetting that there are a thousand steps for that to happen. And a tiny percentage of the time, our feeling of danger is right on.
Because I have a history of being serially cheated on, my partner could turn around to walk to the kitchen and my spidey senses would go up. And see it as a “sign.” My brain is so good at coming up with scenarios and predicting the future from one trigger. So then my wiser brain needs to turn on, and talk to my lizard brain…and say “ok you’re feeling activated. Let’s let this sensation pass. And then we can talk about it…between you and me. You know your history, and it makes sense you’re ultra sensitive. But keep it together for a few more minutes.” After that, the sensation passes and I keep on living my life.
Wanting to feel safe is so natural and human, but we get to choose how we relate to discomfort, threat, and danger both perceived and real. We deserve to allocate our energy with precision and not just by default. Life is unpredictable and change is inevitable. Danger is inevitable too, sadly. Allocating our energy intentionally so that we can build the world we want to see and arriving resourced when danger is at our doorstep…or at our neighbor’s doorstep is the goal.
Back to finding safety in the familiar, how I want to embody this is by checking my compass. Where am I going with my liberatory community? How can I strengthen my window of tolerance so that I can take big risks and do scary things that align with the world I want to see?
I went to Nat Vikistreth’s (@comebacktocare [https://www.instagram.com/comebacktocare/]) book launch at Women and Children First bookstore the other evening. Raising Change Agents [https://www.comebacktocare.com/book] is written for guardians and caretakers of children, and it’s about how to raise young ones from an abolitionist and liberatory lens. I kept on tearing up, because it was so hopeful how Nat was talking about children and what they deserve. I’m tearing up right now thinking about how it filled me so much emotion thinking about how kids deserve to live in a liberated world. Nat talked about how they are our future, and it’s our responsibility to raise them to be able to resist empire and to build the world free of it.
She shared a framework that she uses with guardians with their kids, but I also think it is so applicable to us as adults. It’s getting down to the child’s level when they are about to make a choice…and ask whether it is liberation-smart or survival-smart. She explains how liberation-smarts is collaborative and finds ways where everyone can get their needs and desires met. That way is usually slower and needs negotiating. And survival-smarts are ways we have to behave to survive in the world as it is now. That could look like teaching a kid to be punctual with colonial time, because being on time to school or for their future job is important to survive.
Nat explained how both are important, but at home the goal is to lean more into liberation-smarts as often as possible. It isn’t usually the most convenient or quickest choice for everyone, but it upholds the values we want to instill in children and it positions them to be respected in all of their dignity.
I raised my hand during Q+A, and I asked Nat: How do you navigate the importance of routine (that provides the child with a felt sense of stability) when there might be resistance to keeping the routine (and not wanting to force them into compliance)?
She answered with the example of a bedtime routine that has 3 parts. She said that 2 of the parts should be steady and non-negotiable, but the third part can change based on the child’s preferences. So it’s giving them the agency of changing up the third part that can give them the safety of routine while also giving them some independence.
I loved her answer, because that question was for me. I sometimes go back and forth between being very rigid with myself and then letting it all go to feel free. But her answer reminded me that there is a way to be more thoughtful to give my system safe rhythms while also just enough novelty…so I can land on somewhat of an equilibrium.
I can’t wait to read the book! I’m sure I’ll be sharing more thoughts about it later.
What does Liberatory Imagination spark in me today?
We must find internal grounding so that we can do things that stretch outside of our comfort zone, because resisting empire is very uncomfortable, very dysregulating, and inevitably very dangerous. Coherence with our integrity and what we want to see in the world is the challenge. It is an honor to get closer to aligning it all.
I just read “The Hand That Will Testify” by Mohammad Mustafa [https://open.substack.com/pub/mufastamo/p/the-hand-that-will-testify?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web]:
(the image is a dusty hand of a martyred woman in Gaza, and on her finger is a prayer clicker.)
Look at this photograph. Look at it the way you would look at a mirror. A woman’s hand, gray with the dust of her own home, emerges from the wreckage. And between her fingers still warm with the rhythm of repetition and dhikr. You will see a tasbeeh. She was counting the names of God when they killed her.
Subhanallah. Subhanallah. Subhanallah.
I believe this as a description of how the world actually works. And I believe it not despite the photograph but because of it. Because the photograph contains, in a single frame, both the case for despair and the answer to it. The rubble is the case for despair. The tasbeeh is the answer. The rubble says look what they can do to you. But the tasbeeh says look what they cannot take from you.
Dhikr: Remembrance of Allah
Tasbeeh: Islamic prayer beads, and sometimes it comes in the form of a clicker like in the photo
Subhannallah: Glory be to Allah
In the face of such evil, Palestinians are steady in their devotion to God. That kind of faith confronts me with the call to never forget why I need to stay steady, work with my body, and work with aligned people so that we can show up for what actually matters.
We must be grounded in the repetitive act of remembering what this is all about. We must never forget our agency and our collective power. From our lives inside our home to global movement, it is our responsibility to never lose sight of what this is all about. Coherence. Some of our seasons will look very quiet (doing the low-to-the-ground work of gaining strength and relational endurance) and other seasons will be very much above ground and action-heavy. It takes faith to take a forward step every day fine-tuning our rhythms and our agency.
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