Footprints for getting weirder and being REAL (Part 1 of 2)

Life is messy and often confusing or busy and exhausting and sometimes it's scary as hell. Here we've noticed that becoming more honest about what we're really feeling, doing, thinking, and becoming—sharing more of our lived reality, more of our wild imaginings, and just more of the strangeness that is us and life—helps. This feels like getting weirder to me. My niece calls it being REAL. Sometimes on the path to getting weirder and becoming REAL, we notice that there are someone-has-been-here-before-me footprints to ponder or track. Just to get through your day, month, or the present fear, crisis, or chaos—while not feeling so alone—really helps. No matter how old you are. This Part 1 is one pattern I've seen and story I've lived for getting weirder and being REAL. Part 2 surfaces new words and questions that unlock wonder, strangeness, freedom, and belonging from the jails we adults like to put them in.

There are so many ways to get weirder. To be REAL. You do you. This pattern is for people at least a little like me—people who enjoy sensing patterns and finding belonging by wandering. Not a single word here is a map. It doesn't tell you where to go. Think footprints. Hints of belonging. There are definitely many good patterns to be found everywhere on and around earth now. The patterns meant for us often come from beings who look/think/act/live/pray/work/breathe/rest nothing like us, and yet they feel familiar, like a deeper coming home or like reminders of something you and your people forgot or like Deja vu or even like a comfort food you've never had but it reminds you of something your grandma made. And—this is the most important part—the patterns meant for you do not and will not require marketing, sales pitches, emotional manipulation, ad campaigns. There will be no pay wall between you and patterns meant for you. No payment plan. No artifice at all to reach you or reach for. In a world that can feel overrun with ads and the artificial, how lucky we are to be here right now. Getting weirder and being REAL together.

Footprint #1: Flailing and failing alone, and then together

We hit moments in life where nothing in our experience has prepared us for what we're encountering now. We literally can't imagine a way out on our own. If you're lucky enough to be from a community-centered culture, you're aware most days that you face these moments together and that you're connected to a long lineage of people who deeply cared/care now/will care no matter what happens. My family is like that. My culture isn't. If you're from a culture like ours, you're as likely to try facing moments like this alone (you imagine), while also flailing and failing alone (you imagine), while also feeling bad for not being able to figure out an impossible or unimaginable situation alone. Individual imagination is not collective imagination. It can be idiotic. Delusional. My people and I are delulu at times. My deepest condolences to you if this is a painful shock for you. I don't expect it to be, though. There's delulu to be found in all directions here these days.

A supportive family (including non-human beings), diverse group of friends (including non-human beings and people of all ages), empathetic strangers and at least one slightly scary stranger (including non-human beings), and/or ancestors both good and bad (including non-human beings) all help—when you reach the points you can receive their help. I've noticed that I tend to stay here, spinning and making footprints, until I've gathered a rogue band of merry and cranky weirdos and those experienced with some part of the weirdness we're currently all facing together. I stay longer than many here, I now suspect, because I love documenting what's happening even when what's happening is horrible. I love documenting what's happening even when the horrible thing that's happening is the result, in part, of my own disconnection or rush or arrogance—such as me getting Covid this time around when I travelled, which led to me getting long Covid. I may feel like the King of the Idiots right now (most Queens are far too smart for what I did to myself this year), but at least the gods have blessed me by allowing me to continue to do what I most love to do—wandering, wondering, encountering the unexpected and the strange, noticing patterns, encountering the forgotten or new, and writing—making footprints.

Footprint #2: Embracing weirdness

Here's the weirdness I'm currently somewhat grudgingly embracing. I'm entering my fourth month of living with long Covid. So I have this to say. It's so weird. Just weird, weird, weird, all day, every day.

I wake up every morning now and must assess: Ok, what's working and not working well within me today? My damaged lungs? Sinuses? Throat? The muscles in my neck? My glands? My whole lymph system? My jaw and sides of my face? My digestive system? Am I dizzy? Do I have enough energy to walk or cook or read or write or eat or garden or socialize? My energy levels are all over the place. Am I someone other people should be around today? Is my once naturally sunny disposition accessible today? Can the people I'm going to be with handle this me today? And can I handle them?

Something is taking the day off within me: every day right now. This is frustrating, annoying, and, I now suspect, it's forging me into someone I like far more than my old self.

I fought Covid and have been struggling with this long Covid weirdness on top of all the other weirdnesses of now, for months, like Odysseus fighting in Troy and then fighting weirdness after weirdness after weirdness to get home (we saw the latest The Odyssey last week—enjoyed it) and something big shifted within me only when I listened to some of our strangest Good Neighbors last week. Thanks to those Good Neighbors, and other weirdos in our lives, and Odysseus & his angry-gods-causing weirdnesses, and the real long-term chronic illness warrior goddesses in my life now, I'm starting to embrace the energy weirdness within me. Most days. Cunning Odysseus fully embraced all the weirdness only near the end of his homeward journey—embracing the weirdness around him and within him as he travelled helped him survive returning home. Where, it turned out, things were every bit as weird as when he was travelling home. Argh!

Hey, does anyone else think that epic poem and latest movie about it would have been far more interesting and exciting if it had focused on a band of women embracing weirdness together at every step instead of focusing so much on one dude certain that he was facing so much—and carrying so much—alone? But I digress...

Something is taking the day off within me: every day right now. This is frustrating, annoying, and, I now suspect, it's forging me into someone I like far more than my old self.

Footprint #3: Surrendering

Activist Lori within me lives by the motto "Never give up! Never surrender!" which is a quote from Galaxy Quest, one of our family's favorite silly sci-fi movie spoofs. A movie within which even the main character's teammates eventually scream "Shut up!!!" in response to his often-quoted old motto. Activist Lori had/still has much to learn about the remarkable powers of surrender. Activist Lori is learning to drop patriarchal nonsense. She's learning, again, the art of surrender.

For me, the worst symptom of long Covid is the chronic, crushing, humbling, infuriating, annoying, debilitating, and remarkably freeing fatigue. I've begun to include the word freeing in that list, because it's part of my truth of living with long Covid too.

I've been a daughter, sister, editor, wife, consultant, researcher, activist, writer, author, herbalist, gardener, forager, neighbor, ridiculously hard worker, wonder woman, space host, market host, event inventor, community volunteer, auntie, and also an elder care partner or dementia caregiver for my parents most of my adult life (younger onset Alzheimer's disease comes for our family members in their early to mid 50s, which for me meant taking on care partnering for parents in my 30s while also worrying about it coming for me or yet another someone else I love in the family every day since then, too). For the past few decades, in addition to my work and day jobs—necessary to live in the U.S.—I've also been taking care of others, emotionally supporting others, worrying about others, helping and planning ahead for others, shopping for and feeding others, helping create homes for others, helping heal others, supporting nearby neighbors and also community members on the other side of the world, revealing and building community, hosting others, fundraising for others, and even writing and capturing stories and sharing best practices for others—and all that without pay, thanks patriarchy—while, often, putting my own emotional needs and my body's needs either on hold or dead last in the long list of things that mattered to me that I needed to help with.

But guess what? I literally can't do that anymore. Even if I wanted to.

I have to receive at least as much care as I give right now—and often receive more than I give. I can't do all of this! I surrender! I give up!

Thank you, long Covid. Thank you.

Footprint #4: Shedding your old self

Activist Me is still present, and she's always itching to say or do more. Some days now I have to tell her to put a sock in it. And. Five to six days a week right now, I'm almost entirely free of Caregiver Me. Huzzah!

Mom passed away in December. She doesn't need me to have her back anymore—she's joined the ranks of wise and funny and powerful ancestors who've got my back now.

Daniel's health has been considerably better than mine this year so far—which is not always the case. He's been a caregiving whirlwind this year. We would be eating out nonstop, hiring a housecleaner, hiring yard care professionals, and also hiring pet sitters this year if it wasn't for him. He's picked up all the tasks left to do as long Covid and I kill off Caregiver Me. I deeply hope he agrees to hire some help before its needed by him and that he sheds at least part of his caregiver self too before its too much and he ends up with an unexpected chronic illness like I did. Getting help before you need it is a gift of community that far too many of my people remember and receive gratefully.

My Dad now receives a lot of support from his close-knit 55+ managed neighborhood and from his neighbors, new friends and old friends, Daniel, his new men's group, and other family who call from afar and offer emotional support. Plus he has the funds to get all the medical, dental, legal, housework, yardwork, and meal planning/prep/cooking work help that he wants and needs, too. Unlike us. So, he gets Caregiver Me just 1 day a week now. Most weeks now, he gets someone better.

I sold my herbalist practice last year just before Mom went into hospice, so I'm not supporting the community to the same extent in that way anymore. And right now, instead of hosting groups or teaching, I attend groups that others are hosting. I go mostly where others are teaching, others are caregiving, others are writing and reflecting or singing or laughing or crying or protesting with me, and to where people are like me now—happy to give and to receive, as community, in somewhat equal measure that shifts by the hour and day, and we all shift with it.

Footprint #5: Sharing your new words and self/selves

When you're shedding an old self and maybe especially when you see that you're new, I think its a good idea to introduce or reintroduce yourself to others. Especially to those who leaned on the old you and those still using your old words or assuming they're talking to the old you—the people who might be a little or lot surprised or confused or even hurt that you've become someone new.

Receiving the time for this fifth step ushers you in to the land of the Freeing. You're being freed and you're freeing yourself and aware of both. Just by being you here, you're also freeing others to try or do something similar or new or different or weird in your presence. This becomes your word, now, too. Our word. We are freeing.

Freeing people can learn from anyone and anything present most days. Freeing Me thought to ask my niece if she and her friends had a slang/new word for this thing we olds might call becoming more of your self, or being authentic, or becoming weirder—revealing even more yourself—on purpose. She taught me a new word. That's REAL folks. I'm so glad I asked. Love it!

So, yeah. Freeing. And REAL. That's us right now. Those are my words now too. Words I lived but didn't use out loud in the past. Among all the other words that attend long Covid, other chronic illnesses, and chronic difficulties of all kinds, these are the words I recognize as truly ours. We are among the Freeing and among the REAL. A spacious, just-breathing-together awareness or wonder-induced silence or bone-deep camaraderie within the noise and pain and heartbreak of right now. We see each other.

I found the words freeing and REAL not when I was healthy, but because that's what long Covid is doing for me now and I needed words to describe what was happening. Exhausted enough to be more honest. Humble enough to ask for help, not just give help, every single day now—help from everyone and everything.

Long Covid is killing Caregiver Me right now.

And now that I'm not fighting it anymore, it's glorious.

Glorious! Off with her head!

Whoa, is the new me Klingon? Or the Queen of Hearts? Hmm.

Join me for Part 2 to find out...