How to Find Comfort in a Discomforting Season
When my Mum was diagnosed with cancer, lentil soup showed up on her porch. Friends picked her bouquets from their gardens, baked her bread from their sourdough starter, sent letters quoting Rumi and Wendell Berry, which she perched on her windowsills.
And my mother whose spine was straight and fierce with independence said to me, Of all the ways this experience has changed me, one is I've gotten better at receiving care.
Another way you could put it is softening into care.
The thing about fear is it can be so rock solid that care and comfort bounce right off it like a tennis ball on a backboard. But an unsung way we may find comfort in a discomforting season is to soften enough to allow ourselves to receive comfort.
It's not always easy. A friend recently reached out for some suggestions around how to feel better about the world. I offered up a few ideas for him to respond to. What's the point? he asked. Those are so small and piddily in the face of all this awful.
Are you ready to feel better yet? I asked. Or do you need someone to bear witness to the pain you're in?
Maybe, he said. Well, let'er rip, I said. I'm all ears. And he unspooled the fear and rage ripping away at his generous heart.
If we can't soften into comfort, it's possible there are some feelings that need to be felt first. As the old saying goes, Have your feeling and then get on with it.
The comfort I'm talking about is not the treacle of people blithely saying, "It'll all be ok." All is not ok, how can we say all will be ok?
I'm talking about the comforts of a beloved wrapping you up in a bear hug, catching a sliver of moon hanging in the sky, a belly laugh with an old friend.
On the subject of a good chuckle, "Humor," Viktor Frankel wrote, "was another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self-preservation. It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford...an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds."
The comforts of poets, like Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh who wrote after the bombing of Ben Tre, Vietnam:
I hold my face in my two hands.
No, I am not crying.
I hold my face in my two hands
to keep the loneliness warm—
two hands protecting,
two hands nourishing,
two hands preventing
my soul from leaving me
in anger
The comforts of writers, like Toni Morrison who wrote from her own despair after the 2004 election:
"I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence."
The comforts of action, whether calling your Senator (my favorite guidance on that here) or thanking the politicians who're fighting the good fight (one of the most underrated ways to make a difference). Spring cleaning or getting your knees dirty readying the garden for April blooms.
Not long ago, I got a dog. And of course, she lived gingerly with me at first, uncertain if I could be trusted. But as she learned that I would feed her dinner, towel her off after the rain, give her rice cakes and scratches behind her ears, she began to feel more comfortable.
And comfort - which is not naive or indulgent, but hearty and necessary sustenance for the road ahead, however long it may be - goes hand in hand with confidence. Stairs the pup initially skirted she now clops up. Strangers she avoided she now allows to come towards her.
Amidst the despair over the lack of courageous leadership this year, we can wait for the cavalry to rush in. Or we can be the cavalry (more on that here). To do that, it helps to have the confidence comfort can afford.
I once drove my Mum to the hospital for a risky procedure with an unclear recovery. In the car, she watched a compilation of friends and family sending her love for this leg of the adventure, letting her know they were right alongside her. And when she finished it, she looked out the window and said, That just filled all my depleted parts back up.