doing the work: from dizzy to equanimity

On the worst days, the city turns into an arcade room. Instead of pac-man it’s the heads of corporations eating air, water, and land.  Instead of wack-a-mole its cut-a-tree. Clowns dizzy on carbon exhaust laughing at me, puffing at the bar, want a drag?

I sit in the dark piss stained corner knees to chest, hands over ears, eyes closed, rocking back and forth, humming.

This is not how it’s supposed to be 

This is a bad dream

I will wake up not sea sick

We will wake up no longer an invasive species

Walls shifting. Machines bouncing. Characters cackling. Vertigo doesn’t allow me to know what’s up and what’s down. The screeching sounds of capitalism’s success yanks the delicate crystals in my inner ear and whips them into a cacophony unable to recalibrate. 

The forgotten infrastructure of earths vibrations has formed a daily pit in my stomach.  Waking up with morning sickness for a baby I may never know. There’s no island of refuge. No land unaffected by the global warming of our minds greedy eye.  We made a “thneed factory". I can feel the “oncelers” we once were. Dr. Seuss wasn’t the only one who prophesied this time would come. 

As a COVID long hauler for some 17 months with reoccurring neurological symptoms from a subarachnoid hemorrhage 15 years ago, I believe my illness has been a window into how the Earth must feel. Exhausted. Dizzy. Disoriented. Overstimulated. Aching. Melting. 

Maybe it’s just COVID. Maybe COVID made it worse. Maybe it had to do with the brain abnormality in my left cerebellum that ruptured so long ago. Maybe it had to do with the man in a hazmat suit spraying in Fort Derrick yards away from where I picked raspberries in our backyard growing up in Frederick.  Maybe it was made worse by drinking lead in the water while working as a sustainability coach in an elementary school in Greenpoint. Maybe it has to with emotional trauma getting lodged into my central nervous system and my coping mechanisms no longer serving me. Maybe the it doesn’t matter as much as the present day response to slow down and shift. To retrain for resilience. 

A neurologist interrupted my list of symptoms not that long ago to declare: Alison, I know what’s going on here, you had a hemorrhage in the balance part of your brain, you will always be dizzy. There is nothing that can be done about your symptoms.  I lifted my heavy head under the blaring fluorescent lights, looked her straight in the eye and said. I don’t believe that’s true. I believe in neuroplasticity. 

That’s like saying there’s nothing that can be done about climate change. Why resist the elasticity in the muscle of resilience? Protest the plasticity of the brain? Drop the possibility that life can be better? For all of us. During the consumptive pause as a result of the pandemic, wildlife grew back.  Nature growing without constant interruption. Life truly is conducive towards life.  It’s why I teach sustainable systems.  

Our university went entirely online during the peak of the pandemic, and though there were many challenges, there was also incredible innovations. Students made naturally dyed textiles using native tea species to their home town in China. Students shared photos of solar panels on their rooftop in Maryland or snow forts built in Boston. Every week, multiple students stayed after a three hour class to ask more questions, extend gratitude, cry in agony about their growing awareness of how we’ve treated our planet or share personal stories. We weren’t just surviving in this new territory, we were thriving and more intimately then ever before as a class.  This is significant to mention, because we forget how capable we are at adapting.

Illness, I believe, is an opportunity for innovation. It says something isn’t working. To me the work is in the unraveling. Connecting the dots. Tracking the patterns.  Listening. Sharing. Editing. I believe, as Kat Duff’s memoir title captures, that there is significant alchemy to illness.  My body, our collective body and the body of the planet are asking for rehabilitation. My fear is not that I or we don’t live forever.  It’s apathy. It’s turning our backs on the signs that silently scream something has to change. 

On day one in sustainable systems, we learn healthy systems have limits. This is a natural law, one we cannot argue with. As someone who has worked professionally in education for sustainability for over fifteen years, I live more sustainably now than I ever have, because of limits and systems.  

My body is telling me how to live. 

For eight months, I have engaged regularly in six different rehabilitation programs.  Cognitive therapy, vision therapy, vestibular therapy, multiple physical therapy programs and somatic therapy. I have special shoes with plastic pods on them I wear inside the house that have retrained myself to walk in coordination with my alignment and brain. I have two prescription glasses despite my 20/20 vision.  Every week I stand feet side by side, arms crossed with my eyes closed.  I couldn’t do this just eight months ago. I’m rooting instead of spreading myself thin. 

Recently during a boxing session applying different combinations on the bag - jab, cross, hook, upper cut, jab, jab, cross, upper cut - I could feel all the work clicking. My coordination, agility, endurance, and balance stronger than before COVID, stronger than before my hemorrhage, stronger than before a parents dysfunctional divorce.  When I stepped away from the bag as my primary focus, I didn’t feel like I was on a moving boat.  

It feels like my two feet are on the ground consciously, completely for maybe the first time. 

Every Monday night, my adopted grandmother and I have writing sessions over zoom.  She is 74 with chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia and post-covid symptoms.  Our parallels despite the obvious differences are always surprising. We’ve taken turns with our heads resting on pillows, trying not to fall asleep from fatigue.  Yet no matter what the degree of discomfort, we are for that time, our own ointment of relief.  I see her now over screen more than I ever did before in person.  Necessary boundaries of this time have inspired creative rituals in many relationships and it’s not something anyone gets paid for or is granted external recognition but it’s an emotional kind of labor that yields growth.

Living mindfully feels like a similar process.  The conversation around sustainability often gets put on the back shelf, a 15 min add on at the end of a meeting, a goal on a report not realized, a committee volunteering 1x a week in a cold basement, a required class that triggers a sigh of annoyance. It’s a fly to many.  To me, it is a way of being grounded in relationship.  One that incorporates illness, personal and planetary, as a transformational medium.  This is by no means a new concept.  Indigenous communities regard all of life to be a web of interconnected relationships and often believe illness as a shamanistic opportunity for communication with the spiritual realm.  

The planet is telling us how to live.  

Part of my job as a teacher is taking students to the edge of what could happen if we fall victim to the symptoms.  It’s to play tug of war with the curious and the angry.  It’s to be up against the hopeless.  We often hear about “doing the work”.  

A seminary dean once whispered through his tears, don’t fall asleep.  The world needs you as ministers, don’t fall asleep.  Maybe its the possibility of what happens after rest, instead of reverting to apathy, rat-race exhaustion or pseudo-optimism.  Dr. Seuss’ wisdom returns to me, “Oh the places you’ll go.” 

photo credit: self portrait in Spain