I finished an 8-week-long Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) class last Wednesday. I am not new to MBSR but wanted to increase my formal mindfulness practice since it had waned over the past year, with my dad’s cascade of health problems and death last July.

It was a wonderful class. I haven’t been writing much. As my meditation practice has gotten deeper, I have longer times when I am experiencing sensation more than language. This is something I knew could happen in meditation, but as a person who typically has a running monologue in my brain, it is a rather magical and new experience. It is not, however, easy to write about.

I feel some loss about the class ending. To prevent my being totally adrift, I have also started seeing a mindfulness psychologist, Bonnie, who specializes in working with cancer patients. I had actually sought her out first, her practice was full, and she recommended the class. In the mean time, space opened up and I have been seeing her. She also happens to be a friend of my dear friend, Nancy. This is not surprising since 1) Nancy seems to know almost every other psychologist in Seattle and 2) Nancy also works with cancer patients as well as being a breast cancer survivor herself. (Nancy, you may remember, is the dear friend who cleared her schedule to be with John and I for my first breast cancer appointment, back in 2012.

I feel pretty fortunate to work with Bonnie. She is very skilled and worked for many years as a researcher at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. Bonnie did mindfulness classes with cancer survivors and the classes were associated with reduced recurrence.  This is why I began my mindfulness practice in 2012, by the way, after following some Canadian research on a specific mindfulness class for breast cancer survivors.

But wait, I was intending to write about endings, not beginnings. The other thing that ended was the U.S. Midterm elections.  I did a lot to prepare myself for dystopian outcomes and good thing the worst case scenario did not occur because I was not successful in my preparation. They were not horrible, not great, and maybe not even good. Not horrible. That is the current benchmark for success in current U.S. national leadership. Actually, some really great things did happen. Lots of women were elected, especially women of color. Some of the people elected were LGBT/Q. Eight scientists were elected. Two women of color who are also Muslim, were elected.

So the election ended but as I had anticipated, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done. Our republic is very much in peril and so many people are suffering. I am exhausted by the news but I am also mindful of the fact that experiencing exhaustion is one of the best outcomes of our current situation. As I said, many people are suffering from abhorrent treatment and some have died or are dying due to lack of access to basic human needs or violence.

One thing ends. Another thing begins. Sometimes it is tempting to jump from one thing to the next without acknowledging the ending. Today, I feel the endings and the beginnings. I had put myself, intentionally, in a protective shell of self-care practices for the last few months. I come out for periods of time and then retreat to a thinner shell, for a shorter period of time, but it is a shell, nonetheless.

Overall, I am doing well. Most of the time, I feel happy. In the last week or so, I’ve felt not so much a wave of grief, but a persistent lapping at my toes. I have reacted more strongly to situations than normal, for example, feeling shame at times, over minor incidents. It is as if grief takes me back to a much younger time of my life. Bonnie says that the energy I am using to cope with my dad’s death is leaving me with less to cope with the normal daily stresses and that I am going back to older ways. That makes sense to me.

Working on grief is helping me define the edges of the persistent lapping at my toes. It turns out that today, they are not lapping at my toes. I am standing in the middle of the ocean. I feel sad today and a bit angry.

I don’t like to be in the middle of the ocean but I am grateful that I am standing, for now.

Peace to you, friends. I hope you are well.

-Elizabeth