“I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.”
—J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
Friday night, I sat with a friend in her driveway, many feet apart from one another, as dusk gave way to night. Around us, her once beautifully wooded neighborhood looked like it had suffered a bomb blast. The roar of chainsaws and beeping of heavy equipment gradually gave way to the more accustomed sounds of cicadas and neighbors’ televisions. For the first time in weeks, I was with a dear friend in a moment of rest. Despite our rawness, despite the depth of emotion—despite our tears—it felt good.
As I acknowledged to my friend, in the face of everything 2020 has brought, I feel my resilience slipping. I’m struggling to bounce back with the same elasticity I’ve shown in the past. I feel unequal to the needs I see before me.
If a friend confessed this to me, I would offer her words of encouragement and compassion (as my friend did to me on Friday). It is equally important, perhaps, to offer that compassion to ourselves.
In that vein, I offer two things that have helped me in recent days as I work to refill my own depleted emotional reserves. The first is a beloved Mary Oliver poem that reminds me that it’s okay to feel how I feel right now. The world continues to hold my place in the “family of things” until I’m ready, once again, to step forward.
Wild Geese
by Mary OliverYou do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
The second item I’d like to share is a scene from an admittedly schmaltzy film (hey, feel-good movies are what my body loves when I feel diminished!) called Last Christmas. In the movie, a young woman healing from significant trauma discovers that the time and space she needed to heal eventually had to give way to a return to engagement. This scene reminds me how lucky I truly am to not only be alive in this world, but to also have a community that needs my gifts—when I’m ready and feel replenished enough to share.
—Jenifer Hanson, Prairiewoods director