Self-Care and Slowing Your Roll in The Wars to Come
There is a line I keep thinking of from Game of Thrones: “I wish you good fortune in the wars to come.”
Right now, I think quite a lot of us are ruminating and obsessively thinking (even though we may not want to) about “what’s going to happen when…” and you can fill in that blank. When you have people about to be in charge of the government who wish to gut government programs, it’s hard not to be fixated on worry about what it’s going to do to us. Not to mention inflation…recession…maybe even depression…it is just so overwhelming.
I’m the kind of person who lives with an anxiety disorder that is hard to treat since my body doesn’t like the typical meds given to regulate it daily, so I have to live with it and try to work around it. When you add to that chronic long-term stress in my life from financial instability, then sprinkle in the coming wars, it is a perfect storm that is constantly wiping me out mentally and physically. I think A LOT of people are in similar situations. If you have stress, past trauma, mental and/or physical health challenges, instability in any form that takes, and are aware of a lot of things in front of us right now, you’re probably scared.
Now a person like me, and maybe like you, in order to get a grip on the stress, may immediately want to jump into anything/everything as a way to gain a sense of control. Case in point: a day after the election, I found myself brainstorming of what to do and this is a list of what I came up with:
Buy food/house items ahead, in bulk, perhaps for a year (things like huge bag of flour, rice, learn to eat beans and get those, batteries, toiletries). Research what to buy, where to get best prices, figure out where in the house I will store said items, etc.
Start offering classes for sliding scale, do a 3-level pricing tier, to make knowledge available to all including those who may be struggling like I am to make ends meet.
Go a step further: if people are not able to afford college in the future, if education becomes super-devalued, remember that you have had 30 years of teaching experience and there is NOTHING STOPPING YOU from offering to teach some mini college-type classes. Like you want a class on magical realism, with a syllabus, readings, discussion, but no graded homework, I can give you that.
Volunteer for something (ex., I saw a call for volunteers of STEM and Humanities to get involved in this science education endeavor run by someone named Raven who has a huge following and a lot of sheer guts and energy who is aiming to bring science education to the masses, and I could offer editorial or proofreading work to what her organization does).
Start knitting stuff to sell if I need income (if one of my 6 jobs has less work available).
Look into buying ahead prescriptions for the cats in case the prices go up; maybe the same for some of my prescriptions.
Completely ramp up my spiritual work, i.e. finally do the rest of the Druid course, network with like-minded folks, etc.
Ok so that is a huge list. And that was all in my head, and then I got pneumonia.
What it comes down to is that my body is in NO position to carry out most if not all of this right now. And I’m spending time in my head beating myself up for that, and I was hospitalized, came home, thought I was fine and plowed back into working my main job, and days later…relapse.
So what does that all mean for me, and also for you, if you have been in this sort of triage mode, assessing what can you do, how can you be proactive in our current situation?
It means that what we’ve been through is a tremendous blow on top of bodies that were likely already under a lot of strain and stress. We are mostly in these perpetual stages of compounded stress or loss or grief, if we have had one thing happen that wasn’t great and before we recovered, another thing happened. And so on. So you have to ask yourself, then, can I really do all the things that my brain is telling me will give me a sense of control?
Probably not. At least right now.
It has taken me a long time to reach this point, and I still struggle with it and fight it, but it may be that the most radical thing we can do right now is shift a decent amount of our energy to self-care. And self-care isn’t just “oh let me do a facial mask” or “take a hot bath” although those things are good to do for yourself. But that one thing or two in a week of stress isn’t going to make a dent.
So how do we do it? One thing I see a lot of people doing is news fasts. Don’t get caught up in the clown show. Be informed but not overloaded with junk. I love that people are just walking away from the typical news outlets and saying “I’m just reading AP, NPR, or The Guardian UK.” Another thing is engaging with your hobbies. Or if you have a friend group, spending time with them. Making the time for these things that are positive and uplifting.
Binging a favorite show! This is a good one because it reminds me of fairy tales. Linda Sexton, daughter of the poet Anne Sexton, wrote once that she repeatedly read her copy of Grimms’ Fairy Tales because they provided solace and comfort (and control, as she knew how each tale ended) in times of difficulty, because her mother had several mental health difficulties to contend with and was unpredictable in her moods. Watching a favorite show does the same thing: it gives you a sense of familiarity and predictability.
Making art. The power that be in capitalism totally do not want you to engage in that. They’re the ones making AI do it for us. AI art is often theft of real art, and frankly it’s generally OBVIOUS and not as good as the real thing.
Read. Maybe read banned books. Remember them. Talk about the books you read. Look around for new things to learn, especially niche things, and increase your knowledge.
I think there are more things out there (and you can tell me what things you’ve come up with) but these are a start.
Bottom line is that you have to focus on some of these things to heal your body and mind, and we may expect that our bodies and minds will constantly need some form of healing. So these things build strength and resilience and will give you contentment, happiness, and joy, at least some of the time.
And yes you can make mental or physical lists of things you might do in the wars to come, things that help others, and sure you should do them, but SLOW YOUR ROLL. You can’t do all the things at once, and especially if you have any sort of compromised immune system.
What I have to keep telling myself is that there is no reason to feel guilty if you are engaging in self-care, and that it is actually a radical act. We are led to believe that if we are not constantly grinding, we are lazy or not trying hard enough, but that’s the belief system of capitalism and we don’t have to subscribe to that.
So the next time you get caught up in a cycle of what you should do and how fast you should do it, maybe try to make a second list, which will include how you are going to take care of your own mind and body, and get focused on THAT list. Because if you can carry out the self-care list, it’s going to give you the energy to start tackling the other list. And slowing your roll is exactly what they do NOT want you to do. They want you scared and making decisions out of fear, not riding the wave and staying calm. In the words of a former colleague in my department, who came to me when I was beyond stressed over a faculty fight with our department that I had to negotiate as the acting chair, we must first “Act without acting,” because THAT is how you gain good fortune in the wars to come.
Photo by Tuva Mathilde Løland on Unsplash