This is not normally what I would write or share on here. I’m not even sure this is going to be a complete thought. My mind is numb. Yet emotions and thoughts are swirling and need to come out. So here we are.
I’m sitting in my office drinking tea. My kids are all safely asleep in their beds. The sun is beginning to rise, although you can’t quite see it. You just have to trust that it’s there, between the smoke, fog and heartache. The eerie glow on the walls tells us it’s morning.
Like many of you, this has been a horrific week witnessing (and for many of you, experiencing) what’s happening in LA. Although I feel guilty even saying that as our home is still standing and we are in no danger. Survivors guilt.
I feel numb and unable to concentrate or do anything quote unquote “normal”. There is a sense of guilt you feel trying to live life normally, while you can literally see a community burning just miles away. Homes of people you know and love, of coworkers. Restaurants and shops you visit often. Witnessing them all burn, literally, as we stand on our beach. An image you will try and one day forget.
The past few mornings as I’ve woken up, I’ve gone outside to wipe ash and soot off our cars, the kid’s bikes, and surfboards, and for a moment I feel a pull at my heartstring knowing that there’s another mother out there who would do anything to have the privilege of wiping ashes off her child’s things. What child’s toy burned to become this ash, that I’m now wiping off my own.
We are the lucky ones. Our lives only affected by what we see, what we breathe, and what we can so easily, wipe away. For the most part we, the bystanders, are still “ok”. Yet, anything but.
My oldest child celebrated his 16th birthday this week. Blowing out a birthday flame for your son while fires were blazing just miles away felt like cruel irony. As a mother, I tried my best to show up for him, to make his day feel special. But to be honest, I’m not sure I did that.
At 8:30 on the night of his birthday, as we were getting ready for bed, we got a call that friends needed help. Without the blink of an eye my son was beside me changing the sheets on his bed, and getting towels, preparing his room for our friends who had just been evacuated. It wasn’t even up for debate, “they’ll take my room, mom”.
I was feeling guilty this year that we didn’t do a lot for his birthday. There was not a big “sweet 16” party and the only gifts we got him were a sweatshirt and a small pocket knife for camping. But maybe the real gift this year was not in receiving, but in the opportunity to give.
To be honest, I feel silly even talking about his birthday. His world is filled with such abundance and my feelings really have nothing to do with him or his day – but rather the juxtapositions that always exist in our world.
One child is blowing out a candle, and half way around the world another is running from bombs, and miles away another is watching his home burn.
Our human minds struggle to hold two truths at once.
As F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function”.
Holding two opposing ideas, and opposing feelings. What so many of us are doing right now watching this manmade tragedy unfold – feeling empathy and heartache for those suffering, while also trying to appreciate and savor the preciousness of the life in front of us. Beauty and pain, side by side.
“I am washing my face before bed while a country is on fire. It feels dumb to wash my face, and dumb not to. It has never been this way, and it has always been this way.
Someone has always clinked a cocktail glass in one hemisphere as someone loses a home in another, while someone falls in love in the same apartment building where someone grieves. The fact that suffering, mundanity and beauty coincide is unbearable and remarkable.
I consider whether its foolish to want to have children at times such as these and I consider that its has always been “times such as these” and I consider that its never been worse. Then, in some ways, never been better. Shouldn’t my hypothetical future child have their chance to smell honeysuckle and taste berries.
What does it look like to stare in the midst of smoke, I choose energy?
For starters, I choose to finish washing my face.
Then, I choose to look: Not away, but toward.
I choose to trust: First, in goodness. Then, in people I know.
Then, in people I’ll never meet.
Always, In myself”. – Mari Andres
Then, I choose to look: Not away, but toward.
As we are all being asked to look “toward”, I’m also challenging myself, and you, to look within.
It can be so easy, in “times such as these” as Andrews says, to want to find blame. To want to place our anger somewhere, on someone or something. To make sense of the tragedy and find the culprit.
When I open my phone in recent days and go online I’m not just heartbroken by the images of sheer loss and grief, but now a new added layer of anger, rage and blame that I’m witnessing. Quick finger pointing; The LA mayor, Biden, global warming, big oil, colonization. All targets.
And while the easy answer is “yes” to all of these. We know the answer is so much more complex and is not just the fault of one party, one law, one ideology.
It can be so tempting to want to “other” in moments like this. To place blame over there, so my conscience is clean here. But it doesn’t work that way. Because the truth is, we are ALL to blame. Me, you reading this, all of us.
We have all been adding, and benefiting from, the decisions (conscious of it or not) that got us here, and therefore we will ALL be responsible for the change required to rebuild from this.
The true change that will be required to make our world whole, safe and at peace will require us all to realize just how disconnected from ourselves, each other, and the planet we truly are.
The L.A. fires, while horrifically tragic, are no different than every other disaster we have experienced. But our actions following this need to be different. Instead of offering our “prayers”, where instead can we offer true action and change individually, to help us all collectively.
We are not free, until we ALL are free.
We are not safe, until we ALL are safe.
We are not well, until we ALL are well.
This is not a planet of you versus me. We are a sum of the whole. It’s time to start behaving as one.
*If you are looking for places to donate/help in the L.A. area here is a full spreadsheet of places that could use your help.
**By far and away the number one saving grace for me during this time has been my meditation practice. It is truly my life force.
If you are interested in starting your own daily practice, and become more aware and accountable for your energy, come join me for a 28-day mindfulness reset where you will have the support and daily accountably to develop and deepen your own meditation practice.
I’ve said this before, but I truly believe the number one thing we’re all being called to do this year is to become more responsible for our own energy. And for inspiration to get started today on your own mindfulness practice, you can listen to my most recent podcast episode on mindfulness here.
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