Does a little bit matter?

June 1st: The Importance of Pockets

The micro-moves. The small steps. The pockets. The older I get, the more I know these to be the most sturdy of friends, the little lanterns that light the path.

My niece having a small pocket of everydayness (eating popcorn on the windowsill of our hotel room with my daughter) amidst a weekend of grieving the death of and celebrating the life of her mother.

I first heard the term “pockets of safety” from my Somatic Experiencing teacher Abi Blakeslee. She was referencing that not everyone can find actual safety because of the societal and structural realities of the world: i.e., it isn’t accurate or fair or right to assume that a nervous system cue or exercise is going to support someone when letting down their defenses would be very unwise. Imagine telling a trans person or an undocumented student right now to simply settle themselves by looking around the room when they enter it. There may be very few rooms in which that person has actual safety. You can’t encourage a Black male teenager walking on a street to simply notice his feet connected to the earth. There may be very few streets, if any, in which he has actual safety. So, what to do?

You look for pockets of safety, even if they are tiny.

It sounds like a crumb. Maybe it is a crumb.

There is also a sound reason and we are going to explore it for 24 hours—not related to safety exactly (though safety is always a part), but applied to another critical force.