Sabbatical #2 Who Are You Accountable To?

This is the second installment of learnings from my 4-week sabbatical in January.

You all, great news! It’s going to get weird here—as in, “not functioning as normal,” not even a little bit. I don’t know what my writing or sharing will be like. I’m in a massive internal transition. Nope, not divorce or work upheaval or health crisis or geographic relocation. I’ve committed to the deepest internal and spiritual work (why do I use the word work, why are we so attached it—does it make us feel legit?) of my life this past year and it’s supporting a clearer barometer read. The more I align with myself and the natural world and the mammal body, the less I can collude with other systems and forces. Just. Cannot. Do. It. Anymore.

+ the portal of perimenopause. (Writing to you wide-awake at 4:38am)

So, it’s transition soup over here.

I will not go through it blindly.

I see that as my duty to myself and to the greater good.

I am both more sturdy and more un-formed than I’ve ever been.

On our way to the Osa Peninsula during sabbatical, we zoomed on a large speedboat through a crocodile-full river out into the ocean. When the lazy brown river met the incoming tide and sea waves, the transition was wild, sloshy and, in moments, terrifying. At one point, the boat’s engine cut out as a wave was about to hit us side-long and I gave my husband that two-second look of, When it goes over, you take Eula, I’ll take Bo, I love you. At least we had life-jackets, flimsy as they were. Our youngest was moan-screaming and holding onto the meat of my leg with a fervor yet unknown to her. I stroked Bo’s head and cooed and tried to smile at Eula who was out of my arms reach (the hardest for a mama), “It’ll be okay.” Passengers were braced. I could even sense the 18-year old captain’s held breath behind me. We made it, though. Transitions! They are bumpy and uncomfortable and require lots of back and forth, as well as negotiation—and gentleness.

One of the funniest parts of my current robust internal transition is the way I now engage with the workaholic part of me. She still gets antsy, scared and judgy as hell when I take extra time to prepare a meal or clean out a closet. I have to thank her for trying to protect me and then put her in a chair, give her some popcorn and tell her she gets to watch the stunning show called, Mundane and Sacred Life. Don’t worry, I’m still working. I love my vocation. I am, however, doing it differently.

On land after the wild boat ride

All to say, I’ve been writing to you in my head at every night—tossing, turning, eyes fluttering at the shadowy dark, ears attuned to the crackle of the wood stove, the snoring of our dogs, the stillness of the trees. I tried to type this letter at my kitchen counter, to speak it from the hot steaming bath, to walk with it. No words came. Only existential concerns that I have nothing more to say, followed by relief because there is too much noise anyway. But the idea circled back, tugging on my shirt, asking me to stay and listen. Still, no words came. Too tangled up. Too messy. I didn’t push it. I’ve learned that over-effort leads to costly and expensive re-dos.

It took the time it took.

Let me speak plainly.

I want to be wholly local.

No big revolution to many, but that statement STRETCHES me. It goes against what I’ve been taught and cultivated in myself: reach beyond what you know, learn about people who aren’t like you and don’t live near you, don’t be myopic, broaden your scope, don’t get too comfortable. Local as a concept and experience was foreign for a girl who grew up internationally in the same way her father did.

Is locality really what I want?

I flip and flop.

I already have locality to some degree—15 years in Montana, seeing people I know at the co-op and library and hardware store, growing emotionally weathered and gray and so much wiser alongside friends, a longer-gevity than I ever witnessed as a child, navigating dual-relationships everywhere, running into former workshop participants at holiday parties or at the eye doctor, meal trains upon meal trains to support what needs supporting, watching elders fade, watching young ones start to walk, having been here long enough to see sprawl, hearing a trusted bodyworker remind my quaking body that her hands have known me for 10 years, gathering in so many iterations of circles. There is almost no anonymity here for anyone. Once, in our local hot springs, I stood with my swimsuit top off in the locker room and was somehow recognized by a woman rushing toward me to tell me she loved my book. Same story in a grocery store when my kids and I were dirty from camping, ragged and grumbly with each other. Nothing to hide.

I want to go deeper.

I am wrestling with this modern moment where so many of us have ‘broadened our scopes’ to the point of being connected everywhere via the blessing and curse of technology. It has had a purpose. It has been exhilarating. But are we past a tipping point? What I’m witnessing (and feeling) now at large is a deep exhaustion. People spread thin. Overcome with too many obligations and touch points and news articles about every atrocity in the world. Our mammal bodies aren’t adapted to metabolize that volume or speed of information. It’s actually impossible to commit to 100 causes, or even 100 people. No one knows where to focus. So many folks questioning how to show up, how to be the right kind of person, how to respond appropriately, how to post to social media responsibly, how to be everything to everyone. If you have a beating heart, you are likely yanked around by these questions. It’s good. We are roughing up the soil. And it’s too much. We simply cannot do all the things. I can barely stock my refrigerator without feeling a low-level coursing and constant overwhelm about what is next, who needs to be fed, what needs to be cleaned or organized and oh yes those work emails I forgot and what about showing up in this way or that way for this or for that. How do you be a human right now?

We are facing a collective collapse.

The definition of a threat to the nervous system is too much too soon too fast.

Collapse is a very body-intelligent response.

Alternative: I wonder about hands.

What can we each of us do with our actual hands in our actual community?

Tactile is my favorite word.

I want to be accountable, even more than I am.

To what is around me. To what pulls deeply on me—and that cannot be everything or everyone. I can have a broad heart for all things but my hands cannot tend to them all.

Isn’t there some wise social architecture to localizing?

Be somewhere with someone instead of nowhere with no-one.

On sabbatical, drying laundry, eating plantains, feel connected.

Before sabbatical, winter sick again, drinking tea, feeling connected still.

I want to forget the dish-pile and cancel after school activities to go care for my mother’s arthritic thumb. I want to reschedule a work meeting to help a friend bathe her beloved dying horse. I want to call my brothers every day just to say hi. I want to spend money I’ll have to earn later to spontaneously fly across the country to sit alongside a friend in her grief. I want to lean even further into the faces and stories of my Loam community; I want to show up in all my weirdness here for you all and hope that some of it is useful. I want to hug my husband (and the many fertile and hard faces of marriage we’ve navigated together) in the kitchen for 10 or 30 minutes longer, to shush the pulls on our attention, to say, “Wait, please, do you see what is happening here?” I want explore where my facilitation of groups can be useful in-person in this valley again. I want to make bone broth for my daughter’s pregnant teacher. I want to listen more fully to the grocery cashier’s story about her recent school exams.

I do all these things. I want to do them more. I want to do them slower. Fast was never bad or wrong, but fast has overtaken. The Fast Hog has boxed out the other ones and eaten all the food and now, please to all the gods, we need to fatten up the Slow Hogs just to balance the system. A natural pendulation.

Recently, I ask myself:

What and who do I want to be accountable to?

Make a list. I have a fantasy that if each human asked her/him/themselves that question and focused in on where they are called (it may not be where they live), maybe all the gaps in the world would fill. Maybe resources would balance out. Do you think? By accountable, I mean ALL IN, ride or die, drop all the things, here I am.

I don’t want this to be a long letter.

It already is.

I can feel all the holes in what I’m saying.

Oh well.

I will continue calling back my own attention month by month, day by day.

Who are you accountable to?

My intention for 2024 is to listen to where I can best and most usefully show up.

I want to commit.

The zeitgeist definitely doesn’t think commitment is sexy, on any level. We, at least those with structural privilege, are accustomed to forever options. A friend in her 40’s is trying to find a life partner and not one person out there is interested in monogamy. Cool, that’s fine, but wow. No one wants to commit to a person, a place, a job, a way of being, an animal, anything.

I wonder, again, about hands.

Imagine if the scrolling thumbs were given a tactile job instead.

Where can my hands dig in, give care, be useful?

I am pausing in order to look around my town and ask this question.

Next year, I have a full 2025 retreat line-up set along with exciting collaborations.

This year, though, is purposely quiet on the vocation front. I decided to only run a small retreat (for past attendees only) here in Montana, along with what I do online already. That’s it. As with everything, there are benefits and consequences to that choice. It’s my year of re-committing to family near and far, to the land we live on, to the animals we care for, to our friends, to each other. I want to turn more fully toward my local community, to return to a version of my pre-pandemic role here as a workshop facilitator with different crews and to COMMIT to circles born of the circles I’ve already cultivated. More on what that means in March/April.

Nothing (and I mean nothing) inspires me more than sitting in circle with others and watching the profound innate healing that arises.

I want to be one of the swampy monsters who emerged from the Great Collapse.

Do you?

She looked around, said no, and made other choices.

She stepped out of the murk, pulled the weeds off her face and started to SEE.

Reality check:

It isn’t all rainbows. Already, as I shift my way of being, I am still inconvenienced.

Maybe even more so.

That is okay.

Plans change in order to show up for someone. The messy workings of a beloved relationship ask for attention. The dog gets an infection. The kids have a perpetual winter cold. The blood transfusion stops everything. The toilet stops working. The work plan falls through. I get behind on X, Y, and A through M.

I don’t want to ‘manage’ life.

I want to be with it.

I’m not saying I have any conclusions or know anything. I’m saying that my wise mammal body will no longer ride this collective train of avoidance, distraction and doing the same everyday things we know are hurting us and others without making changes.

There it is.

Okay, it’s almost 6am and my girls are about to run up into our bedroom and then back down to the living room to find me here, in the dark, under the growing moon, on the couch, writing to you.

Go well into your days with all that you are accountable to…

Next week: sabbatical #3 installment on the inside vs. outside job. At least that’s the loose plan. We. Shall. See.

I hope I sleep tonight! And you too.

Love,