Tendrils

Tendrils.

Last week a friend came over to help me with meal-planning... a conversation that I expected to be all about more affordable, healthier, easier one-pot dinners, because I don't even think about things like breakfast. My friend gently pointed out that not thinking about breakfast is a sure way to keep one's self stuck in a state of not-thinking.

"Look," my friend said, opening my fridge, "You have cottage cheese, you have yogurt, you have good protein options here. What's stopping you from eating them?"

"I can't eat those," my brain replied, "I have to save those for my husband and son to eat if and when I get too tired to fix anything."

I stood there like a deer in the headlights, frozen with horror at my own thoughts. Three years of one of the best women's studies programs in the country, and I've been unconsciously "saving the good food for the menfolk"?

Later the same day, I realized that part of the reason I have not been making progress on Jewish liturgy (which is sung) is because I have stopped singing the songs I grew up singing, because they weren't Jewish. I have come through multiple health problems that have left me badly short of breath, and when I can sing at all I push myself for "progress"-- working on my singing while working on my Hebrew while working on my prayer life. This means I'm not rebuilding my breath and tone by drawing on the songs that go down to my bones... which is part of why I'm getting nowhere.

Today I woke up and fully recognized that one barrier to my productivity is that I have so few clothes, I need to change out of my street-worthy outfits as soon as I come home. Any little thing that requires stepping out the door also requires getting dressed.

I once watched my friend discover a place where a neighbor's morning glory vine was invading the vegetable trellis. Tendril after tendril had to be discovered and painstakingly unthreaded without damaging the fruitful vine. It would seem as though all was done and then another one would be spotted, and working on it would reveal another three...

The shift between a "Thrive" mindset and a "Survive" mindset is like that. Inspirational speakers talk about it like flipping a switch. It doesn't work that way. There are so many sacrifices that had to be made in the moment that became habits that have become invisible, like a rubber band that was popped around the wrist for a moment that has cut its way down to disappear beneath the surface of the skin. Like a hundred rubber bands all over, too many to even find them by the pain.

There is no switch to flip. Each needs to be discovered. Each needs to be unthreaded.