Can I Be Here and Also There?

Question of December

Listen to this 1-2 minute profound Instagram share from Leah Manaema of CoCulture Communications. I’ve returned to it over and over. Every single sentence landed.

Hybrid Poem, let’s go.

I was brushing her hair out at the kitchen table before bed, combing through the knots and her groans because we forget and a week later it leads to tangles that hurt and all I could think of, at our wooden table covered in watercolors and pasta bowls and school papers, was not her head hurt but The Hurt happening right now, this exact moment, to another child.

Mom, mom…. mom? she asked.

Yes, I’m here.

Not really. I am there. Not really there actually. Of course, I’m not there. Not really here either. Where am I? It’s not about me, though. Where are you? Is it about you? Where are our hearts? But it is about us because we are a part, we play a part.

Where is the we?

I want to be local, to locate myself so that I can locate you and all of us, the we.

I want to make my world smaller in the name of something bigger.

Dig down. Be accountable to a neighbor. Be expected. Expect. Touch.

We are learning a new modern dance. How do we go into the screen-world of 50 trillion little points of existence and important learnings and connections across oceans and then return to what is in front of us? If we stay elsewhere or swirl in distractions in order to cope with any of it and don’t return, are we even here on earth? We become rootless, maybe even ruthless. Can I do both? Can I touch in to all of those other lands, come back to my own feet, go back out, come back, go back out, come back, and do that every single day until my body from outline to center is filled in and present and showing up?

I don’t ever want to be a robot or in relation with a robot.

I want to be skilled at The Return so that I can be a person in a place.

I imagine all of the children lost and dead floating above us watching and wondering.

What are the adults going to do?

I confront again my white woman-ness, oh my it just autocorrected to womanless.

I am feeling my less, my empty, my workarounds. Again. Again. Again.

Remember, it isn’t about me. Sticky.

I don’t want to stress any of you out and yet it’s appropriate to be stressed out.

It would actually be strange not to be feeling upside down right now.

Social media is the problem. Quiet down, sweet righteous self. It’s also a solution, a megaphone, a diving board for a revolution.

Stop obsessing. You better obsess.

Look. Don’t look. Look. Don’t look.

Read. Don’t read. Read. Don’t read.

Feel. Don’t feel. Feel. Don’t feel.

Take care. Care of what, of who?

Humanity is a real word with a real meaning.

What is the maturation process here?

What are the mature solutions here?

Let’s dig down again. I want to gather with people from other soils, squat on the earth together and share handfuls of our actual soil. This is my soil. What is your soil? Oh look at the gorgeous and different textures and shades and worms and sticks and silt and density and glints. We would share it and keep digging and then realize, together, if we go layers deep enough, that IT ALL BECOMES THE SAME SOIL.

So easy to say from my cozy home where I have no present-day connection to any of the wars my ancestors fought.

It’s true though, isn’t it? Same soil.

It’s true and it might not be enough. Rough. Tough. Enough.

Make eye contact.

Just make eye contact.

Can I be here and also there?

Mom, mom, can you read me a book? Mom?

I want to be a person in a place so that I can be here and there.

***I found this share from @stefkaufman on Instagram very important concerning CPTSD as a label and diagnosis. Read through all of the slides. Apply to any and all people who have experienced this kind of de-humanization.