Grounding in Place
or becoming “a relaxed woman”
Things feel a little different this summer: the heat already breaking records in June, the continued and increasingly weary calls for ceasefire in Gaza, new anti-democratic decisions from the Supreme Court alongside legitimate concerns about Biden’s decreasing capacities, and a growing recognition that social media and smartphones have not, in fact, made our lives better, and are instead doing damage to ours and our children’s souls. In one sense, it’s more of the same gradual disintegration of modernity that we’ve been experiencing for a while. But, perhaps since the 2016 election, each year the slope we’re sliding down seems to be getting steeper, the feeling of bewildered grasping—toward the familiar, toward sense, toward the safety we privileged few were promised—a bit more frantic.
Looking around at the media dialogue as well as at my personal connections, I’ve noticed a divide between two very busy camps: there are those of us who are trying to somehow understand and process every new bit of troubling information and then turn it into some kind of emergency action, and those of us who are tuning most of it out as we cling to our version of normalcy, focusing on our personal lives and individual challenges (of which there may be plenty). These two groups don’t include everyone, mind you, and there are lots of variations, but on both sides I see in common an anxious drive toward constant activity, to be perpetually occupied.
In case you’re wondering, I tend to fall closer to the first camp: those who feel an ethical obligation to know and to act, to do something in response to injustice and harm. However, as a poet and writer who also needs lots of time and space to dream and create in order to feel like myself, parts of my doing something may not fall under the heading of traditional activism or social engagement, and include things like writing poetry (and this Substack) connecting with a friend who needs support, or taking my child on foraging walks in the forest behind our house. Other things I do are more recognizable activities, like my work through The School for Living Futures, volunteering, writing and calling politicians, showing up for rallies and marches, and giving financial support. Balance doesn’t come easily, however, and I often have to make a conscious effort to slow down and be present.
I arrived at this train of thought yesterday morning when I was catching up on my Instagram notifications after a couple of weeks away, and the algorithm served me a video by a woman re-using text from Nicola Jane Hobbs (@nicolajanehobbs) about never having known “a relaxed woman,” but growing up with plenty of models of “successful,” “productive,” and “anxious and afraid and apologetic” women. The text ends with the commitment to become the type of woman who gives herself permission to relax, and who prioritizes rest and play. The video in question accompanies a voiceover reading Hobbs’s viral text with clips of this person (I would tell you her name but I can’t find the video now) living a crunchy, cottage-core dream-life—churning butter on her front porch, lounging on the grass, holding her baby up overhead and twirling it around, walking along the beach.
My complex reaction to the video included recognition and deep longing alongside the usual social media cult-of-lifestyle eye roll, and I pulled up the comments to see how people were responding to it. Dear reader, I can report that the comments were not kind! Comment after comment accused this person of staging her life, and dismissed the message by suggesting that relaxation is the domain of the rich and of people who have spouses to support them. It’s out of touch, they said, to believe that normal folks could have the luxury of relaxation or unscheduled time, and they appeared to be angered by images of a woman bonding with herself and her child. “Just admit it: You’re an influencer,” one angry commenter wrote.
Obviously, there are different aspects to this issue. But it saddened me to recognize that people are feeling so oppressed by life that they’re not just disconnected from but actively hostile to the idea that they could engage in rest and play. Yes it’s hard (and legitimately harder for some than others), but rest doesn’t have to look like an Instagram reel (see Trisha Hersey’s fantastic, important work on rest with the Nap Ministry and her book, Rest is Resistance). For example, it could look like closing one’s eyes or gazing out the window for ten minutes between meetings or in the moments before sleep instead of scrolling and leaving angry comments on social media. Ironically, many people seem to feel too busy to take some breaths, but have no trouble finding time to watch and comment on strangers’ videos.
As someone who is often trying to do too much, I need reminders to rest just as much as the next person. I also recognize that for people experiencing high-intensity struggles related to safety, food, and shelter, thinking about prioritizing rest and resisting the ambient sense of urgency in modern culture may be low on the priority list. But for those of us living with what Vanessa Andreotti calls low-intensity struggles—largely those of us living in the Global North—our general distress from issues like the climate crisis, loss of reproductive rights, racial justice, and a fascist-leaning political faction is further intensified by information overload, isolation, and distrust. This concoction has become so unhealthful that some of us now disdain those who appear to live in a less hurried and more spacious way.
As Bayo Akomolafe writes, “the times are urgent: let us slow down.”
More and more, I find that the best approach for me to stay balanced, purposeful, and supported is to focus on the world right around me—on local political, social, and environmental issues, but also on my physical body in place—the land, the living beings—with whom I share soil, air, water, and weather. The writer
is an inspiration to me in this regard, as she makes place-connection an intentional daily practice. In a recent interview on the podcast For the Wild, Strand describes how, each morning, she goes outside and calls, by name, all of the animal and plant species she’s aware of who live in a five-mile radius of her home, and offers herself as a vessel for their purposes.I don’t have this particular practice, but I’d like to share a couple of recent examples of grounding in place from my world.
Founding the School for Living Futures has been my version of connecting with the local, of building relationships here where I live, in my hometown, and dedicating my time and creative energy to partnering with and spotlighting the folks who are building good, beautiful futures here and beyond. Most recently, one of these wonderful folks, Paige Polk of the Not Yet Wellbeing Library, partnered with us to offer a community garden workshop that introduced folks to seedling prep and planting. The workshop was held at a local therapy practice, Radical Healing, in their Trans Liberation Garden–a community garden space that needed some tending and care. Thus, there was a beautiful alignment between the needs and offerings of all three partners: Paige providing the impulse, organization, and gardening know-how, SfLF serving as hosts and guiding conversation and reflection with the group of participants, and Radical Healing offering space and supplies. The result was a beautiful morning of learning and connection around the themes of plants and abundance, and left me with a sense of gratitude and fullness as I came home sweaty, with dirt under my nails. Even though I was doing something at this workshop–planting seedlings and seeds in the ground, but also working to co-host and organize the event–I would say that I felt relaxed in this experience due to the wonderful human and plant companionship, the sunlight and shade, and the sense of mutual support amongst everyone involved. We were working, but we were working together in the real world.
Then last week my family made the two-day drive each way to visit my 96-year-old Swedish-American grandfather’s home in rural Wisconsin for a few days, as we do most summers, and to roam a small portion of the over 400 acres he husbands there. His relationship with the land is one of privilege–he bought the land in the early 1970s, and has been living on it full time since he retired 20 years ago–but also one of deep care. He knows the native plants and creatures there deeply, doesn’t allow logging, has worked with the local land management department to restore native plants, and has planted many, many trees. During our five days with him, he instructed me numerous times to plant a new tree by my home as an act of environmental care, and didn’t seem to believe me when I said my yard was already fully forested! Walking the land there–picking wild blackberries, watching the red-tailed hawks diving–so different from my home here in the piedmont of North Carolina, I felt a deep admiration for the ways my grandfather has committed himself to a single place on the planet and, in his way, been a good shepherd for it.
All of this is to say that if you’re feeling overwhelmed by the state of the country and the planet right now and you’re feeling powerless, or if the idea of becoming a “relaxed” woman/man/person seems out of reach, there may be both purpose and play to be found close to home amongst the human and non-human critters rooted with you in the same soil.
Thank you for thinking with me here if you’re still reading, and I’d love to hear your own examples of grounding in place, or of how you think about relaxation these days. Meanwhile, here’s a poem from the wonderful Lucille Clifton.
cutting greens
curling them around
i hold their bodies in obscene embrace
thinking of everything but kinship.
collards and kale
strain against each strange other
away from my kissmaking hand and
the iron bedpot.
the pot is black,
the cutting board is black,
my hand,
and just for a minute
the greens roll black under the knife,
and the kitchen twists dark on its spine
and I taste in my natural appetite
the bond of live things everywhere.Subscribers: You may or may not have noticed that I’ve fallen off my usual posting schedule this summer as I’m slowing down and taking on projects around family time and travel. I thank you for your patience, and look forward to resuming with more regularity in the fall.
This post resonates profoundly with me as someone who believes in the power of rest and relaxation, yet has seen it as incompatible with a productive life connected to people and action. Recently, I thought about weaving relaxation into my life rather than seeing it as a separate event requiring hours of my time. I feel it now in small bursts, like when I am in front of my computer and close my eyes for a moment to breathe deeply and exhale audibly. Or when I am walking down my stairs and feel the muscles in my legs lengthen and contract. Even when I am drying dishes and tucking them away, I love the few minutes where I settle into a sole focus, seeking out and absorbing every drop of water with my towel before gently stacking bowls and flatware in cabinets and drawers. I have also recently realized how active relaxation must be for me to allow its benefits; sitting in front of a television provides a buffer for my churning mind, but does not provide my thoughts with the guidance they need to notice my body in space and time. All this to say, thank you for sharing your experiences and musings!