Getting to the feelings just beyond dread

Here in month 6 of debilitating long Covid chronic fatigue and other nonsense, I don't have the energy for much. But I'm an empathic being who loves to talk about meaningful-to-us things, so I still spend a chunk of time every day now talking with people—both in person and online—about how they're feeling. Dread comes up all the time. We feel dread now. Whether that dread is rooted in government collapse, family collapse, societal collapse, economic collapse, climate/environmental collapse, personal health/body collapse, the collapse of trust somewhere, the impending winter darkness in the northern hemisphere, or all of the above. We all seem to feel some dread here: in ourselves and in each other.

Naming difficult emotions out loud is remarkably helpful for me. If you're not a fan, I'm likely not for you. Here's a quick (for me) story about moving with and past dread with the help of kind strangers, followed by some of what I've learned about dread that's helping us feel better here, most days.

The story: from joy to dread to gratitude to wonder

Dread can feel like the whole story– or the end of the story– when you're in it...

Back when we lived in Seattle, one Thanksgiving we volunteered to help at the St. James food kitchen in our new-to-us, city-center, neighborhood. As newbie volunteers, we pulled the 5 am to 9 am shift: all work, no glory, and that was fine with us. We had love, family, a home, enough food, and impending holiday joy while many in our neighborhood didn't: we didn't need glory. So we found ourselves walking down a very dark and unfamiliar side street at 4:45 a.m., in freezing late November, looking for the kitchen door in an unfamiliar set of church-adjacent buildings in heart of downtown Seattle.

Years earlier, I'd taught ESL (English as a Second Language) to immigrants and refugees at St. James and I had assumed I knew where the kitchen, and the door we needed, was. I was wrong. So there we were: half awake, lost, in the dark, on a creepy-at-night side street, in the heart of a sleeping big city. The feeling of holiday joy and belonging within me shifted to a feeling of dread with each lost footstep. First I feared we'd be late. Then I feared worse. And then, it felt like something really bad could happen right here. To us. We can feel it in our bodies. I began looking for trouble behind every tree and every tall shrub. Hello dread.

Here's what did happen. This is the good part.

We found a door that was locked, but there was glass in it so we could at least look in. We saw dozens, maybe even hundreds– it was really dark and the building felt enormous– of people, asleep on cots and in sleeping bags on the floor. Packed in tight like sardines or Pringles in a can. We were seeing the people we were there to help prepare a holiday meal for. As we peered in and looked around, wondering where to go, a man opened his eyes, saw us, smiled, stood up off his blanket, walked to the door, and opened it for us. He had assumed that we needed a place to sleep, too, and he invited us in. We whispered that we were volunteers and asked him where the kitchen door was, and he told us to go around the corner to find the door we needed and that that door would be standing open, or at least be unlocked, for volunteers.

We thanked him, grateful, and walked around the corner. Joy was almost instantly back when we saw that open door and the warm light pouring out of it. Dread lifted. I felt tears of gratitude in my eyes. And then we had a blast chopping hundreds of loaves of bread and onions for stuffing and slicing potatoes with the other volunteers including two hilarious men– one old, one young– who worked together like a well-oiled comedy team, but, it turned out, were surgeons at the hospital down the street. Nobody among us could beat their knife skills, and most of us were jealous that these experienced volunteers had thought to bring their own well-sharpened knives as the rest of us hacked through vegetables and bread with the church's very old, well loved, kitchen tools. This was clearly not their first time volunteering to prepare meals. What a fantastic mentor that older surgeon was to the younger one!

Before we left, we learned that the man who had stood up from his sleeping bag and offered us a place to sleep had broken very strict rules for us. Those doors were to remain closed and locked after a certain time, maybe midnight. By opening that door for us, he had not only smilingly disturbed his own rest for strangers, but he had also risked ever being allowed back at the temporary shelter set up by the city-center church to help homeless people on extra cold nights. He had broken the rules for us. At the beginning of winter, as a homeless person, he had risked his very life for us. The generosity of that one small action changed me. Strengthened me. Empowered me. I fell in love with the entire neighborhood in an instant.

What feeling or feelings does hearing what a homeless man risked for strangers– for us– bring up in you? Name those feelings. Write them down or draw them or sing them or sew them or do whatever creative thing you do to remember. These are the feelings that live just on the other side of dread.

I learned something about dread that night. I learned more about the kind of good neighbor I had been—giving with minimal risk to my individual self—and the kind of good neighbor I actually wanted to be. I wanted to be more like him: giving to strangers with apparently no worry about his individual self at all. Giving like we all belong and I had nothing to lose. We'd only moved to the city-center neighborhood a short while before then. We were still adjusting to center-of-a-big-city life. To homeless people as friends and as neighbors. To the transient nature of the place and the many, many people passing through the neighborhood. I know for a fact that I would have hesitated to open our new front door to a stranger at 4:40 a.m. like he had done for us. It was humbling to witness more bravery, selflessness, and generosity in homeless people than in people with homes, including us. Not exactly what those with all the money running the good old U.S. of A. try to teach us, is it?

I can't speak for the man who did this for us. As new volunteers in a place with tremendous need there wasn't room for us at the meal we'd prepared, so we headed home to make our own meal. We never saw him again and I don't even know his name. But from the moment I realized what he'd risked for us with his generous act, I began to wonder... Did he give comfort to strangers because he was so connected to the living world around him that he didn't have a choice but to help when someone showed up needing help? Did he know that what we do for/to others we also do for/to ourselves? Did he not mind breaking the rules to help others in need? Risking being banned from returning? It takes courage to break rules, especially when you apparently have little to no power and nowhere else to go. Did he give because he had nothing left to lose? Could it be that living on the land, even in a city, is actually more grounding than living in a house? Maybe he was just exponentially more spiritually grounded than I was. Maybe he realized that he had nothing to lose and that we ALL have nothing to lose by helping each other when helping each other is what we're all here for to begin with.

Wonder– as it turns out– changes everything. And dread is not the end of the story.

What they gave me

I was given three things that dark-cold morning:

• The lived experience that we get to the feelings on the other side of dread together, not alone.
• The lived experience that a stranger can be generous beyond reason and change your life for the better, in an instant, with the quietest, smallest of actions. The lived experience of our remarkable power as individuals, not just as collectives.
• Unshakable faith in earthlings as a whole. That's what I was really given that morning, by strangers– a homeless man and a circle of tired-but-happy volunteers– on that very early, cold, and dark Thanksgiving morning 20 years ago. Raised by a family, community, and world that prepared me to expect and receive lessons in every moment, I was present enough to receive this one. Talk about something to be grateful for. And something to share. I believe that both my curious researcher self and my playful writer self were re-born in that moment: many years before I became a researcher or returned to writing as an adult.

One thing I've learned about myself and my people lately

Although I often forget that moving through/past/with dread is a team sport, I still have the capacity for it and I even find remarkable comfort and joy in it. Personally, I'm re-learning, again, how to start with holding dread together instead of first allowing myself to be taken in by my own fears or those who sell us BIG DREAD for profit until I'm down, depressed, angry, and/or ill and only then remembering that simply talking with a friend, or even a stranger, about how I'm really feeling can get me to the other side of dread again. "Feel dread? Find someone to talk to right now." is my current mantra. I think that's what dread is usually saying* to me.

*If you're in physical or emotionally abusive danger, trust your body and get the hell out of there and get or accept the help you need.

The magic of experience + reflection

That last part was for writer me and reader us. This part is for people who like deeper reflection and have the time to go deeper with researcher me...

Memory and reflection. When I feel dread now, here, 20 years later, I still think about that selfless and generous-beyond-reason homeless man smiling and opening the forbidden-to-open door, to strangers, in the dark. Opening the door to offer us shelter. And I think about the old surgeon and the young surgeon, living and learning and practicing their values together. I think about the power of those quiet, unseen-by-most, actions behind the scenes. The staying power of those gentle, brave, vulnerable, wordless, and nonjudgmental lessons within me. And sometimes when I'm feeling dread now, I also think about all the other people and beings on earth who have shifted that feeling of dread within me and within loved ones over the years– that something really bad could happen here, to me, to us, right now, or very very soon sinking sensation that makes you look for danger behind every tree, tall shrub, or in every face or word. And how they, too, turned that feeling into something else within us. Like magic.

Magic. We are magic together. Like the mycelium network talking with trees magic: far more than can be seen with the eye. Magic is felt. We feel it. Whether you ever put words to it or not, that's the lesson to be found just one moment, one second, past dread, together, most days. Look again, friend. We are magic together.

Listen to your experts. Researcher Me wants to qualify that I'm not an expert on dread. Poet Me experiences all living beings as experts at living and more than capable of choosing our own paths and experts. I grew up wanted, well loved, protected and relatively safe, gently taught, celebrated, and– I've since learned, lucky– because I didn't know that much about dread until adulthood. I've learned that dread is a feeling that kids who grow up living with immature/hurt/isolated/abusive adults at home learn to feel and live with almost all the time. That dread is a baseline state of being for some humans, which breaks my heart (aka, makes my emotional capacity larger). I've learned that dread can feel like an an anchor around your neck or a heavy boulder on your head/neck/shoulders that you can't quite push off alone. Some dread is so big it takes a whole family, care team, village, region, country, or planet to shake it. I've learned that often its the very adults who (at first) piss me off the most who know the most about dread, because they've lived with it the longest. Those who've lived with dread their whole lives have much to teach me about dread. Some have lived with dread for generations, as targeted, intentionally harmed, groups and communities. They have even more to teach about dread and about getting to the feelings beyond dread together. As a woman, I live and breathe the air as one of those groups.

Dread as precursor to taking a really big leap. I've also learned that dread is something we often feel before we take really big, really scary for us, leaps forward. During times of change, transition, and growth. Leaps into the unknown or into the imagined possibilities/unknown, which feel remarkably similar. Feeling dread can mean we are aware that we have something to lose and something even better to gain if we change/get to the place we want to be.

Chronic dread as indicator it's past time to change and get help. In adulthood, chronic dread can sometimes mean we've collectively got some growing to do. That we've allow the worst people to be in charge of things. That we've allowed somebody else to write our story. Chronic dread can also sometimes mean that we've had the privilege of ample time to worry alone and sometimes that means we end up stuck and spinning in a muddy puddle of dread/worry/doubt/fear, which eventually shows up as depression, anxiety, and all the other things people want to sell you drugs and therapy for. I'm not dissing drugs and I'm really not dissing therapy: do what you need to do to get out of your muddy puddle and good therapists have so many, many tools to choose among to get yourself out. I am saying that when I get to these spinning-in-the-dark places myself, I've noticed that I tend to start screaming to my partner: "I don't need therapy! I need family time! I need more time with friends! I need to encounter kind strangers! I need faces to see me and smile in the darkness!" We writers who deeply love alone time and writing can write ourselves straight into depression if we're not careful. Fortunately, a little more face time with people + writing (aka, what we most love to do), and we can move ourselves right on out. Usually. As someone who recently lost her mother and then ended up with long Covid three months later, I'm a huge fan of support groups these days. I like the balance of talking with people who know me and listening to strangers and how shocking similar the experiences of strangers are to my own. Our own.

Dread as friend or companion. If you're physically safe and still feeling dread, name it out loud: "I feel dread." Feel it. If you're not in immediate physical danger, don't rush through it. Sit with dread a moment. What does it do to your body? Where do you feel it? Befriend dread or, more likely when you're feeling it, just accept that dread is your current companion. Accept what is. Then, ask dread what it's there to show you or teach you. For me, this usually requires sleeping at least a night and allowing my mind to shut up and my body to speak. Then, ask yourself what you're ready, now, this year, to learn or to unlearn that dread is there to help you see. What we are ready to learn or let go of changes by the year. And if you can't do that alone (I often can't, especially in these days of BIG DREAD pushed by RIDICULOUSLY CRUEL, DISCONNECTED, & WEALTHY MEN), then find one other being who you can say out loud to: "I'm feeling dread and I'm not sure what to do." Accepting what is– and what emotions are here attending us– is usually simpler and faster to do with a friend or a kind stranger. Introvert Me remains so pissed off about this. Oh, and all living and once-living beings count as who you can talk to. If you're wildly creative or desperate, imaginary beings and characters also count. That other perspective is important. A mirror to better see past the surface: to see just past the fear in our individual, more-prone-to-dread minds and imaginations.

Trusting emotions. Our emotions arrive as attendants to change. They are our body speaking. They arrive to teach. To inform. To protect. To transform. To connect. To deepen relationship. To push us toward new relationships and away from stale ones. And to change the stories, and even the DNA, that we pass on to future generations. Which shift are you ready for right now? Following your energy and emotions wordlessly tells you that. If you're like me, your body knows well ahead of your mind what needs to change. It's chronically boggling to me to find myself part of a culture that centers both the part of us most inclined to fear (our individual minds/thoughts) and the self most inclined to fear (the individual self) when relationship is where we can move with and past fear and dread.

With lots of practice trusting our emotions. Walking open-eyed and not un-harmed through the global pain of these times, it's clear to me that humanity as a whole is becoming more loving, far more aware of how remarkably connected all living beings are, and many are also becoming more honest and open to help others feel and see what they feel and see. Many of us still feel alone sometimes, even often in the U.S., in this time of BIG DREAD pushed at us by every greedy billionaire, corrupt government official, and just about every screen we look at now, but we're also all at a tipping point together, as a species. About to make a big leap. Together. You and I grow closer to others and more honest, open-hearted, and loving to hold it all. To hold BIG DREAD. Those certain they're 100% alone in this world 100% of the time– unable to shake the chronic dread and fear and blame alone– are now ordering dissolvable-under-the-tongue ketamine wafers to help them handle all the abuse, pain, suffering, and death they're dishing out. Similar to what Hitler's Nazi's had to do to continue committing crimes against humanity. They are dangerous, yes. They are hurting many we love and trampling human rights and the environment, yes. And, they are exposed now, they are very few compared to us, and they have to take stronger and stronger drugs just to keep believing the nonsense they believe. I believe in us. Those who face dread together, fiercely and lovingly. I can see the bright open door waiting for us ahead. Held open by generations of countless loving beings who came before us. Those who triumphed over BIG DREAD with far less than we have.

Happy Halloween, friends. And blessed Samhain, Day of the Dead, and All Saints Day, too. Light a candle, thank the ancestors, vote if you haven't yet, ask for the help you need, help some neighbors, and allow community to hold your fear and dread with you. We're in this together. We always have been. Always will be. That's what's waiting for us down the dark street and around the corner.