Are you taking care of yourself?

Really? Are you taking care of yourself? Are you remembering to drink water, eat nourishing food, connect with kind people, sleep? Are you creating space in your daily life to restore yourself in these exhausting and rather heartbreaking times? It is so easy to get swept up in the non-stop barrage of bonkersness, our adrenaline rushing 24/7, if we aren't careful, and this just isn't good for our health. As someone highly susceptible to clicking every post emblazoned with "BREAKING NEWS" (can everyone just stop with that headline already?), I've made it a conscious practice to step away when I feel my pulse rate increasing while staring at the screen, and I am encouraging you to do the same. We are ALL needed in these transitional times, but none of us is any use to anyone (especially ourselves) when we are burnt out. All living beings need restorative moments in order to thrive. We need some joy to balance all the grief and fury coursing through our veins.

Meeting hard times with softness - in praise of moss.

I dunno about you, but everything in the world feels really fucking BIG these days. And so hard. I listen to the news in hopes of detecting hints of a global shift in the right direction, but what I hear most often are the more 'reasonable' political leaders (ie - anyone who isn't the orange menace and his clown cabinet and bootlicking followers) bellowing about how we need to spend bazillions of dollars to build more bombs and a bigger army and more pipelines to fuel said bombs and army, blah, blah, blah. I mean, a piece of me gets that we need to be able to forcibly stand up to Putin and Netanyahu and Trump and all the ruthless tyrants, but mainly I just want to scream and go touch moss.

Moss is my go-to comfort zone. It is so tiny, so simple, so soft, so lush, so magical. Every summer all the moss dries up and looks, for all intents and purposes, dead. But as soon as moisture arrives, it is once more vibrant and life-affirming. I love the way moss makes itself at home anywhere and everywhere. I love the way it spreads its softness to encompass all the hardness in the world. Robin Wall Kimmerer wrote an entire book about the magic of this most simple life form. From her book Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses:

“There is an ancient conversation going on between mosses and rocks, poetry to be sure. About light and shadow and the drift of continents. This is what has been called the "dialect of moss on stone - an interface of immensity and minuteness, of past and present, softness and hardness, stillness and vibrancy, yin and yang.”

And, she's not wrong. When the world feels like nothing but relentless violence and war, moss reminds me that softness is our greatest power. Soft, simple, vibrant, resilient, beautiful, and oh-so ubiquitous, moss serves as a constant reminder of the power of softness, and that in itself brings comfort in stressful times.

My friends who know my love of moss often send me photos they've taken, making it all that much softer and more comforting.

Birds - they may be small, but they are tough AF.

I married a man who really knows nature, and one of his sweetest gifts to me was sharing his knowledge of the natural world around us. He taught me to race outside and look up when I hear gulls squawking because I'm sure to see a bald eagle. He patiently teaches me how to identify different birdsong. He taught me to study trees for the abundant life forms that inhabits them.

A few years ago I discovered this hummingbird nesting in the horse chestnut tree right outside our front door. I watched in awe that April as we endured outrageous storms that wrought havoc everywhere, and yet this little mama hung tight and hatched those eggs and raised her chicks. That little gal, probably weighing a grand total of 10g (equivalent to a teaspoon of sugar), withstood days of howling winds, hailstones the size of golfballs, torrential rain, and near-zero temperatures. Her little nest woven of lichen, moss (!), and spiderweb silk, was so robust, it never budged an inch throughout that stormy month. I still think of that wee hummingbird when I start believing that I might be too small and weak to rise up to the challenges of the shit show that is our new 'normal'. I try to channel her calm and resilience and determination when I start doubting my ability to face the storms of our current world.

I love that my husband taught me to notice and appreciate birds. They are so small (except for the glorious big ones like herons and eagles and owls and osprey...), and so delightful. Medical science says that we are all destroying our eyes by staring at screens too much, and that we should spend more time looking into the distance. I encourage you to step outside and look into the tree tops for birds. Good for your eyes and good for your mental health (unless you have a bird phobia like my daughter).

Talk about the power of softness!

Like most people, I love beautiful flowers. When I need a break from the harshness of the 'BREAKING NEWS', I take a stroll around my neighbourhood and delight in the beautiful gardens, both planted and wild. Something that really makes me feel at peace with the world is when I spy tiny, beautiful, delicate, soft flowers pushing fucking rock-hard concrete out of the way so that they can bloom in broad daylight and spread their glory with passersby. Talk about the power of softness.

Moss, hummingbirds and flowers - role models for the world we want to build.

When the world feels too hard, I turn to the softness that is so abundant in nature to restore my equilibrium and renew my commitment to keep fighting for a better world. The beauty and softness and strength of moss and hummingbirds and flowers don't just soothe my weary soul, they inspire me. We are watching the world we've known being kicked to bits, so now, while we fight injustice, we must also be working on building the world we want - a world that is kind and soft and strong and beautiful and resilient and generous and abundant. For me, moss and hummingbirds and flowers are the embodiment of these qualities, and they are role models for how I want to be in this world. What inspires you?

A different perspective.

So many of us are staring at our screens, feeling the outrage, and hopefully transforming that outrage into action. I recently wrote about how we cannot afford to turn away, and I stand by that statement. We must stay informed, but just enough to be educated on the issues, not to the point of traumatizing ourselves. We owe it to all who are under attack to know what is happening to them and do what we can to help. But we also need to be fit to face each day. We need to take care of ourselves. We need a different perspective from the horrors unfolding across our screens all day every day if we are going to maintain our stamina and strength in this crazy fight. We need to look into the distance at sunsets and cloud formations, up at the birds in the treetops, down at the flowers bursting through the concrete, up close at the moss and all around at the immense beauty that surrounds us. The world is a really hard place just now, but the softness is everywhere if we just look for it.

I hope that wherever you are, you are taking care of yourself - drinking water, eating nourishing food, connecting with kind people, sleeping. We need you in this fight for justice and in our collective efforts to build a world based on care not cruelty.

Hugs!

Jessica

p.s. For a serious blast of joy and some beautifully worded perspective on how to navigate this life, I recommend you follow Canadian icon Gurdeep Pandher.