the yin and yang of it all
With this time of reflection, I am finding memories of my past seep in with the present as I attempt to wrap my head and heart around what is happening in our world. What I’m noticing is the Yin and Yang of it all. Without darkness there cannot be light and within the darkness still lives a little bit of light. We cannot have positivity without negativity. And in the end, everything is inextricably interconnected in perfect balance. I see how we are now realizing our actions are interconnected with the health and wellness of others. To experience true joy and ease we also need moments of hardship and pain to truly grow and appreciate the good. There is often a misnomer that Positive Psychology is all about happiness, but it is so much more. In order to experience true flourishing we also need to give ourselves permission to be human.
As the news of Coronavirus began to break, my husband who is typically calm and collected began quietly preparing for the inevitable by stockpiling cleaning supplies in early February and incessantly talking about the implications this infectious disease could have as it spread on his job covering airlines in the stock market. He was all hands-on deck, and I found his behavior stirring emotions of anxiety and memories of past trauma for me.
A Familiar Experience
I recall a familiar experience five years ago that was one of the darkest days of my career. I was running a new hire orientation for doctors headed to West Africa and got tapped on the shoulder to meet with my boss. She informed me that our worst fear had happened and an American doctor of ours was sick with Ebola, and 10 other staff were exposed and being flown home for a 21 day quarantine. She needed me to pack my bags and head to the airport to greet them and offer support in Maryland where they would be monitored. As clinicians came home in twos and threes, I was forced to confront my deepest fears of risking my own personal safety and health. With the fear I faced, something shifted in me that felt like a true calling to serve. I knew deeply that it was a honor to support these clinicians who had put their lives on the front line to fight this deadly virus. There was nothing more meaningful I could be doing in this moment. As I began to meet each individual, my heart grew heavy with empathy and love because I started seeing the light behind the darkness, and the comfort of friendship and humanity behind the fear. I spent time dropping off supplies at their hotel room doors to chat at a distance and stepping in in place of the Department of Public Health social workers for supervised outdoor time (where I may have let them stay outside a little longer than the mandated 20 minutes).
We found humor among the grief and shared smiles to ease the discomfort of the restrictive measures. One night I was tasked with driving a rental car with a colleague to pick up one of our last arrivals at Dulles airport. To this day, it was one of the most heartbreaking and surreal experiences I ever had. We drove our Honda minivan onto the tarmac having to stop for commercial airlines landing in front of us in the pitch black. Finally we arrived at private aviation where we waited as we saw health officials dressed in full PPE doing a medical intake on our newly arrived colleague and friend. As she was released to us she simply hopped into our backseat with less than the suggested 3-foot social distance and was able to finally let her guard down to experience a flood of emotion. After we dropped her at the hotel room for the night safely checked in to begin her quarantine, my coworker and I went back to the rental minivan to Clorox wipe all the seats down.
Flash forward to March 3rd, I found myself in all too familiar of a setting boarding a commercial flight to Dulles airport from San Francisco. This time I wiped down my own airline seat with Clorox wipes taking precautions not to expose myself to a new infectious virus. Facing these past experiences head on while traveling to Georgetown for my final coaching certification residency, I knew deep down it would be my last trip to DC and could be the last trip in general for a while. Within 24 hours of returning home, I found myself coughing and looking to my husband with concern. We decided it’s safest for me to self-isolate and I went into quarantine in the guest bedroom. After calls with the doctors and Departments of Public Health, I found myself navigating the all too familiar politicized healthcare system in our country. I’m told that although I’m exhibiting many of the Coronavirus symptoms, my 99.4 degree temperature is not high enough, and to call back immediately if I begin running a fever because then they will test me. In the meantime, they recommend continuing to self-isolate in quarantine.
I’m also 20 weeks pregnant. After 10 days of persistent, but mild symptoms, I finally begin feeling more myself again and could resume my “normal” life although the entire Bay Area had just been put into a shelter in place. I begin to bounce back appreciating so many simple pleasures my renewed freedom offered to roam the house and go for walks outside. After only a couple days passed before darkness set in again. I received a call from my doula and a text from a pregnant friend letting me know that hospital policies are changing rapidly. I discovered that although my due date is four months out, I now need to make peace with some harsh realities that I will not have the birth I had hoped. My hospital was shutting down exclusively to treat COVID-19, visitors are restricted, and I realize now I will be lucky just to have a bed and a medical professional by my side to help me deliver my baby. I no longer have the luxury to even worry about whether it’s important for my husband and father of our baby be present in the room. I am experiencing a heaviness and grief that I have never imagined from these firsthand experiences these past two weeks. This isn’t even accounting for the looming doom we all are feeling about the next shoe dropping as I consider so many family members and loved ones at risk right now.
This is the dark side of what we are all experiencing as a humanity both individually and collectively.
And yet with this darkness, I find myself taking pause not wanting to engage in striving towards goals or future plans. Instead I am remaining deeply present to what is, and wondering what is the real lesson here for us and for me right now? In learning to sit still and just be (which is very Yin in traditional Chinese medicine) I am noticing glimmers of light that inevitably exist, just as do within Yin and Yang. You cannot have the dark or light, without each living within each other. And within the Yin energy that is currently prevalent, I am learning to sit still for a longer span of time while finding comfort in the discomfort of uncertainty. As a Yin Yoga Instructor, this is absolutely the intention of any class I teach for my students. To carve out space to move slowly, holding poses for long periods of time, and taking pause to just notice what arises. This is part of the balance of it all. Our world has been hijacked with so much of the light side, active Yang energy that now as a collective humanity we are being called to shift.
The Bigger Picture
As I look at the bigger picture, I am seeing mother nature rebalancing. The light comes through as I watch people disconnect from technology, the news, and their work, to enjoy their only outlet of being outside with loved ones and taking walks in nature along the ocean. I see random acts of kindness in my community as healthy and able individuals buy groceries for the elderly and as friends and even strangers reach out by phone or FaceTime just to chat and spend quality time together. I see us as a collective humanity feeling the discomfort, the fear, the heaviness of the grief, and yet showering each other with the most human stories of positivity, even with cathartic humor by posting hilarious internet memes that have left me belly laughing with tears. And I see the world becoming more intentional about our actions and how they affect the collective, not just our responsibility to social distance in order to protect our individual and our collective human health and well-being, but also as a positive consequence to protect our planet too. Carbon emissions have dramatically reduced over China, Italy, and the UK. With less cars on the road and planes in the air, we are making an impact by simply finding more stillness. With a quarter of the planet now taking quarantine, we are forced to face the humbling fact that all of us to need to take pause to spend time on what really matters, to find peace in the mundane, to be home with family, to create music and art, to write, to take naps, to find fun in playing games, to learn new skills in cooking or learning languages, and to rediscover such simple joys that will inherently keep us resilient.
A wonderful permission slip has been written for us. So the question remains, what light can you continue to discover amidst embracing these moments on the dark side?
