is there ease in being uncomfortable from a place of comfort?

"what if..." in theory vs reality

Mar 20, 2025

like this Magnolia blossom, i’m allowing myself to emerge. photo by anne richardson

dear sojourners,

well, hello. it has been awhile🧡. i started a post mid-february after snow stopped by to briefly visit my pacific nw city. schools closed. kids squealed in joy sledding the slope in the scant 2” accumulation in the park out back (yes 2” will shut down our city…don’t laugh). white landscapes muffled the earliest signs of spring. my fingers hovered over the keyboard, words, brewing in my head like the tea in my cup, seemed ready to tumble out and then…

i sat and wrote a couple of paragraphs as the snow thawed. but for some reason, though the external weather the last four weeks has gone from thaw to short sleeve warmth to frosty mornings to atmospheric rivers back to jaunty sunshine and now back to march rain, my thoughts continued to be mired in post-thaw mud. nothing moved. it has been…frustrating. still, it seems time to move the fingers and see what comes out, like this Magnolia bloom that was, only a few days ago, still tight in its fuzzy bud scale protected from winter’s chill deciding to risk frost on the promise of spring.

winter is my co-favorite season alongside autumn. as i age i long to linger in winter’s dark nest. the call to quiet. to rest. to allow ideas and beliefs to ferment. spring’s enthusiasm, while endearing, can overwhelm this introvert’s senses. “please, can i have just a little longer before the song and dance begins,” i half-heartedly protest as those warm-up notes from song birds play pianissimo pre-dawn. they too, are waking up to the change in seasons.

yet the latter half of this winter i have struggled to settled into a deeper rest. my dreams are disturbing as i seem to link into a wider energetic field. though my living space is quiet, my mind is restless. i limit social media, but would have to live a cloistered existence to not be aware of the breakdown of structures in the country i call home.

it is easy to feel powerless in these unsettled times. and from my evolving studies in postactivism and learning more about paraontology (i’m not going to deep dive into these today) i “know” that systems need to breakdown, to compost, to be rebuilt. i “work” to hold multiple places of uncomfortableness and understandings. i can acknowledge powerlessness AND take small actions that empower those Beings (humans and non-human) i engage with. i have come to understand that to dismantle this world based on white structures of neurotypicality (white not meaning skin color, but longstanding structures of how the rules are defined) means this period of being unsettled is going to be beyond messy. deadly. that even calling for a return to “progressive” politics is still a return to the same structures that will gyrate back and forth within the same white structure. (i recently listened to a conversation between Báyò Akómoláfé and Erin Manning called: Becoming Unsettled: Why White Virtue Will Not Save Us…(you can watch it on YouTube).) i recommend if you want to dive deeper.

i realize the comfortable distance i maintain as i sit in my safe abode watching the House Finches, Song Sparrows, Black-Capped Chickadees, Robins and other feathered creatures revving up their vocals as Daffodils, Crocus, Camilias and other blooming beauties color the Landscape. while i ponder the destruction of the country i grew up in…knowing how many folks i personally know are affected, let alone those beyond my personal ripple, i fall into intellectualizing what is transpiring which keeps me removed in a way that disturbs my heart. so while i can “get” this unraveling, this cracking open that has been coming, it is another to be living in the midst of it still protected (for now) from the direct ramifications.

and so i shake myself to wakefulness. how easy it is to play “what if…” when it is all theory. have you ever done that? “what if my house was on fire, what would i grab as i went out the door?” or “what treatment choices would i make if i had an advance serious illness?” (having worked in hospice and now volunteer as a facilitator for those actually facing these choices, i “play” this game a lot). i ask myself a wide spectrum of “what if?" questions. what ones do you ponder? and no matter how “sure” i am of the answers, i can’t be. as someone who now qualifies for Medicare and in a couple of years plans to access my Social Security benefits, i want to say i’m comfortable with the disintegration of these capitalistic systems that need to compost so, eventually, something else more in tune to songs of Earth will emerge…but damn if i’m not comfortable. i like “my" cozy space. i am full of conflicts when i need to move from theory to practice.

so in my small little world, i remind myself to invest in my three c’s: community, connection, and create (from my prior post). at least that way i don’t become immobile.

some honest thoughts i’ve tried not to overthink, though i actually first started typing last week when the Worm Full Moon was tugging at me (then i would close my laptop and distract myself for a day…or two) and now, look the vernal equinox is upon us northern hemisphere folks!

Thanks for reading following dandelion seeds! This post is public so feel free to share it.

books worth your time (i think)

in early february Reading the Waves by Lidia Yuknavich arrived and was soon subjected to marginalia as i underlined and wrote notes in the margins at the raw wisdom of her words. the heart of it all. while Lidia’s circuitous embodied path is different than mine, much of how she wrote into this book resonated. the theme of how we “carry” our stories in our bodies and what perspectives we can allow to shift as we age resonated. written not only to be a memoir, but a way for anyone to reflect on the possibilities of their life. what do we chose to carry…willingly or unwillingly? can we rewrite the story? are we willing to?

the last chapter of the book is titled Solaces. brief thoughts about how you, i, might engage with what she has offered. here is one on “carrying” that resonated:

“YOU MAY HAVE to lay some bodies down; you do not need to carry every body forever. We take turns moving the burdens from body to body to dirt to water to sky. Sometimes people who have the bodies for carrying life forget that carrying life is not the only way to be in a body. We have to remind each other there are many ways to carry life, to share life, to transfer life, to let go. Ask the animals. Ask the trees. Ask water.”

another book i picked up and, again, marked up, was Sophie Strand’s, The Body is a Doorway (follow her Substack: Make Me Good Soil). i have followed Sophie for a few years now, finding her initially through SAND (Science and Nonduality)presentations (she has several available now on their website).

if you know anyone with a chronic illness, have a chronic illness, have felt beleaguered trying to navigate the health and wellness industrial complex even if you are “healthy” in our culture, i recommend Sophie’s book. yes, it is a memoir (i do like memoirs), but she weaves in in-depth research in mythology, science, and i would say mysticism, alongside her personal narrative. she avoids binary thinking, acknowledging that, yes, we do need to engage with the western medical model while also understanding its exhausting limits. Sophie memoir ends, but her story, which continues on her Substack, is ongoing as she continues to journey with her illness. i have learned so much from following her. as she writes toward the end of the book:

”But I do not want to lie. … I never planned to write about being sick. I worried—still worry—that labeling myself as sick is the kind of self-capture our capitalist culture so readily encourages. Is writing a book about being sick a nocebo? Does it convince my body that it must continue to live into the disease?…But my body is bigger and wilder than even that superstition….
[…]
“I run into an acquaintance in the grocery store as I try to decide what food is not going to kill me today. My safe foods are dwindling again….’Congrats on all your success with you books! You’re really glowing. I’m glad you’re feeling better.’ ‘Thanks…’ I swallow back bile. My pain. I erase the complexity of my experience to pacify someone else’s inability to stay with pain and sorrow. I am not feeling better, I want to say to her. And I may feel worse. But I am feeling every part of me. Can you feel with me?”

somewhere between these two seep-into-the-marrow-of-my-bone books, i read the classic Illness as Metaphor and Aids and Its Metaphors by Susan Sontag. while some reference were outdated, still a fascinating read about how we have used the language of illness in our culture over last few centuries.

my other reads tend toward women who roam the wilds or were told “no” and said “yes” anyway to their inner voice. my “hold” list at the library and TBR continues to grow. even as my words are mired in my brain for my own writing, i feel nourished with a variety of readings. maybe i am over watering my “knowledge garden?” nah.

wisdom that still lingers 10 years on

i listened to a resent series of interviews with Stephen Jenkinson, author of Die Wise, a Manifesto of Sanity and Soul—which has reached a 10-year publication anniversary. Die Wise was one of those books that radically shifted my beliefs about dying and death and how i consider my own mortality (though see theory vs reality above.) the recordings are available for purchase for a short time (until March 24) and includes four conversations between Stephen and folks that have been given terminal diagnoses, plus two interviews with Stephen, who himself now has an advanced serious illness. here is a short video about Die Wise. i also recommend the movie “Grief Walker” (available on YouTube) if you would like to get a sense of Stephen’s work.

in our western world we are adverse to talking about death and dying. and Grief. (though we have made a few small improvements.) if you are wanting to be more open to these conversations, watch the video, read the book, perhaps purchase the recordings.

sometimes Grief sneaks up on you

one other item has touched my tender heart unexpectedly. when i was much younger i read the “All Creatures Great and Small” book series by James Herriott. then i watched the first tv series years ago when they ran on our local public tv station…i think even some with my folks. i just finished watching season 5 of the current rendering. the world is at war and the small Yorkshire village is contributing and influenced by the war effort in ways large and small. my parents were from England. as teens they lived in London during the war. yes, bombings. rations. my grandad serving away from home. my mum, younger than my dad, was even sent to Wales to school for a time.

i have found this season particularly touching, often finding myself in tears. as those in power ceaselessly pursue war as if children’s lives (if they survive) are not effected, i thought of my parents. the stories they never shared. and the few they did.

in considering the children, this poem, [You were so small in my hands] by Mosab Abu Toha in Poem-a-Day speaks to the ongoing heartbreak of Gaza. i hope you will take a moment to read it. please let your heart be broken. maybe that will allow this unsettled world to begin the work of composting into something beautiful.

for your reflection

what is breaking your heart these days?
what conflicts dance around in your inner world?
when has your “theory” of what you would do become a “reality” and what did you discover about yourself?
how are you taking care of your tender heart? how are you staying connected to others? remember, being part of a caring community (human and non-human) is (hopefully) nourishment.
let me know what else is on your mind and heart.