Monday, September 27, 2021
Dear Friend,
This print has had two places of honor in our house: over my writing desk and over the changing table, cycling through as each of our three babies has grown and then outgrown diapers, shifting locations like the moon, in the tidal flux of creativity alongside motherhood.
Always we begin again, says St. Benedict. It is both encouragement and admonishment for the perfectionistic and prideful among us. (Hi.) It's about mercy, and humility, and God's desire for us to step outside the rush toward achievement, and see ourselves as the beloved children we are.
Yesterday I yelled at my kids; today I can begin again. Yesterday my pen was on fire; today it's gone cold. Hello, blank page; so we begin again. Yesterday I changed all the diapers, washed all the laundry, wiped the counters, swept the clutter into a box and shoved it into the closet, and Lo, all things return to chaos. Always we begin again.
Part of September's glamour is its newness, with shiny lunchboxes and fresh academic calendars creating a lovely counterbalance to crinkling leaves and frost on summer crops. Suddenly, we're driving home from soccer practice in the dark, and my heart catches for just a second, realizing it's happening all over again— this shift from light to dark, warmth to cold, pulling us deeper into the turning year.
Everything ends and then begins again. One theory holds that the well-known Taoist taijitu, symbol for the principle of complementary opposites in Chinese philosophy, was based on the image of a sundial, which traces the slow shifting of shadow from solstice to solstice. Inside of every new beginning, an ending; inside of every ending, a new beginning.
This fall I've returned to school alongside my children. Like my preschooler and first grader, I'm practicing a new alphabet, as I step into a routine as a community acupuncturist in training. It is equal parts hard and gratifying. Last week, I spilled a pack of needles and it took me what felt like ages to come up with an 8 point treatment for a patient in pain. This week, Iris has a new tooth breaking through, waking her from her naps much sooner than I’d like, and cutting short my already-too-brief study hours.
How is this supposed to work exactly? Mothering three young children, managing a full school schedule to learn this ancient medicine, holding space for the growth of my children, my patients, and myself— was I wrong to think this is possible?
Breathe, center, start again. Maybe this is possible through trust, when I let go of expecting myself to get it right away. People have been practicing and receiving acupuncture for thousands of years, and even though receiving the medicine is familiar and life-giving for me, practicing it is brand new.
This is a brave space, my clinic supervisor told me. I love that. To me, it means going slow, and being okay with starting over. That’s what nature does, and what growth looks like.
My prayer for you and me this fall is that we would have the courage to enter the brave space of beginning again, whatever that might mean for each of us.
Love,
Melissa
What I’m making
Destash update. I finished my 180-day destash project, sewing through a stack of fabric and unfinished projects before my self-imposed September 1st deadline. More thoughts on the blog.
A few essays. I recently published “Some Imperfect Thoughts on an Imperfect Faith” on my blog, and “Unlocking my Mother’s Diary” on the delightful new site Emily D. Tea Traveler.
This yummy granola is easy to make and a great way to use up the giant bag of buckwheat in my cupboard, for the one dish I thought my kids would love and which they barely ate.
Garden tea. The beans and cucumbers are gone, and this weekend we dug up all the potatoes before the rain sets in. But there’s an abundance of herbs still flourishing in our garden, and the house smells wonderful when we bring in armfuls of lemon verbena, lemon balm, mint, chamomile, and stevia leaf to dry in the dehydrator. There is something so special about growing and brewing your own tea. Do you make your own herbal blends? What are your favorites? What should I grow next year?
What I’m reading and learning
Acupuncture history in the US.
As a community acupuncture student, it has been eye-opening to learn about the history of community acupuncture, which has its roots in Lincoln Detox, a community-organized detox clinic at Lincoln Hospital, founded by the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords. Watch Dope is Death for a closer look at this part of Liberation Acupuncture’s history. I’m also grateful for 5th-generation acupuncturist and scholar Tyler Phan’s research on the history of acupuncture’s professionalization in the United States. This podcast in particular is worth a listen! As I learn about the ways in which race, class, and power have shaped and continued to shape who gets to practice and receive this powerful medicine, my commitment to the movement deepens. (There are some new subscribers to this newsletter. Thanks for being here! If you’re curious about how I got interested in community acupucture, go here.)
Self-care and trauma stewardship.
Self-care has always been a tricky phrase for me. I prefer Resmaa Menakem’s term “growth routine.” Still, no matter the name, I’ve struggled to meet my own commitments to myself. Reading Trauma Stewardship, by Laura van Dernoot Lipsky has helped unlock some of that. She lays out a process of inquiry called the five directions to help people who work in fields where they’re exposed to trauma, and encourages people to develop a daily practice that is doable: start by setting an intention for meeting your purpose each day, and cultivate moments of mindfulness. In Lipsky’s framework, self-care is not “just a healthy option,” but a way to create a sustainable life for ourselves, so that we can do the work we want to do in the world. These two pieces together— self-care is not optional, and it doesn't have to be complicated and time-consuming— are helping me develop and stick with a growth routine I love. The concept of trauma stewardship is essential for me, because it roots the role of self-care within an ecosystem of community care, in a larger framework of systemic oppression and liberation theory.
Mindful nursing, exercise, writing.
So what does that growth routine look like? I am sharing it here because it has been helpful for me to hear how other people build mindfulness and stress-relief into busy lives. Since our days start pretty chaotically in our house full of children, I use the time when I take my first sip of water to set an intention for the day, and I practice mindfulness when I’m nursing Iris. So simple, but so life-giving because I’ve decided it counts. Anybody else struggle to meditate consistently because you think it has to look a certain way? A wild statistic I heard recently: a year of breastfeeding equates to a conservative estimate of 1,800 hours of a mother's time. I use those hours trying to be present to my breath and my growing girl (and watching my thoughts jump all over the place, of course.) The other piece of my routine is getting a half hour of stress-busting exercise first thing in the morning, either running or swimming, and then finding a 20-minute window for strength-training a few days a week. I really love this 20-minute weight routine and am starting to explore some of the other free videos on the site. I also just started writing with a friend over Zoom one night a week, and that feels like an important part of showing up for my own growth.
Do you have a growth routine? I’d love to hear how you take care of yourself.
Thanks for reading! See you back here in October.