Elizabeth C. Haynes | Elizabeth C. Haynes

The Big Pause

I was sitting on my patio this morning watching some rare summer rain rumble in from the east, the winds pushing through the neighbor’s trees as the sparrows flitted around my feeders, when I coined a new term for myself and my current reality: The Big Pause.

I’m in this weird place in my life right now where I’m sort of “in between.” In between then and now. In between health and sickness. In between joy and sorrow. And in between who I was and who I may become. As a result of all of this instability, I’m spending a lot of my time during this pandemic (and during this break in my work life) just sort of existing.

So this means I get up in the morning and I make some sort of breakfast, whether it’s oatmeal or eggs or gluten-free pancakes, and I follow it up religiously with a little cup of homemade vegan chai. I sip it from my pale green, polka-dotted teacup with a rim of gold that I bought myself after buying one as a gift for a dear friend of mine. I loved it so much – and she loved it so much – that I ordered one for myself, too. It not only made me happy, but it made me feel closer to her in a way. We are separated by hundreds of miles and many states the last few years, and I miss her dearly as a physical presence in my life.

When I’m finished downing the many pills and supplements I have to swallow in the first hours of my day, I use the mental notes I’ve taken on my body and my health since I woke up to decide what I’m going to do next. I have just a few choices these days and most of them don’t involve much.

Option 1: If it’s cool enough, I go tend to my plants in the garden or look for my squirrel (yep I feed a squirrel; I have named him Marley).

Option 2: If I have enough energy, I do a fifteen- to twenty-minute yoga practice by myself in the spare room.

Option 3: If I’m feeling creative, I sit down to write or maybe head to the kitchen to bake something.

Option 4: If I’m feeling sick, as is quite often the case in the last six months, I don’t do much of anything. I lay on the sofa and let myself reside in the “in between.” Or, as I was doing this morning, I sit outside with the rain brushing against the side of my skin nearest the wind, and I watch it form puddles on the ground.

I breathe. I wait. And I don’t rush whatever is to come next.

I’ve coined this time of my life “The Big Pause” because that’s really what it is for me – the biggest pause of my entire life. But also, I got to thinking about how most of humanity could really use a Big Pause sometimes. We go and go, and traverse a number of obstacles and heartaches, until we get to a point where we’re just worn out and have nothing left to give to ourselves or to anyone else. We’re tired from our hearts all the way to our bones and our skin, and we badly need to take a rest (although most of us rarely do).

Many of us have finally been given that bit of rest because of the pandemic (not a stress-free rest, mind you), and I’ve observed so many people talking about “making the most” of the time if you happen to find yourself in a pause because you’re jobless, or because you’re scared to leave your home, or because the world is crumbling around you and you aren’t sure how to handle it all just yet. And I don’t think becoming more busy is necessarily what we should be doing.

Well, not all of us anyway.

I think 2020 will unfold very differently for each person depending on their individual circumstances and their personality. And we should make room for every version of this unfolding in what is considered “okay” and a “successful use of time.” Some people might put immediate action and goals into place – and this is great – but some people can’t do anything but just sit and wait for a while.

I’m sort of in the latter category: I’m sitting and waiting. I know things are changing dramatically and that I’m getting closer to some truth about myself that’s been brewing for decades, but this process is not one I can push along. It’s not one I can write my way into or out of, or will my way into or out of, or otherwise tangibly manipulate until the time is right for it to manifest in my life. And on some days, when I feel particularly lost or worried about finances, it’s an exceptionally painful time to traverse.

I’ve seen many people building masterpieces in their Big Pause, which is great if that’s how life is unfolding for you – and I kind of wish it was that way for me. I honestly felt distraught in the beginning because I wasn’t able to do something of the same with my own free time. However when I examined the unique circumstances of my life rather than looking at the lives of others, I realized I was already at the end of my masterpiece (my first book). I’d been working on it for several years and was wrapping it up when the pandemic hit, so I wasn’t in a place to light new fires and create new contributions.

I’m still not.

And I keep wondering when I will be. Maybe in 2021?

I think most people mean well when they say you should take advantage of every moment you have right now (or in life in general), but I think we also need to examine what we define as “advantage.” For me, taking full advantage of this moment means I’m not doing much of anything that would be considered productive – not unless I feel like it, like I do right now. I’m in a period of desperately needed rest that I’ve pined for since late adolescence, and I’m not going to squander it.

I know there will come a day when The Big Pause will be over. I know there will come a day when I’ll be ready to do something else or move in a different direction. But I’m not going to force it to come before it’s ready, and I’m not going to busy myself into creating something that others deem more valuable – like churning out another book when my heart couldn’t possibly be in one right now. I’m going to do what feels right for me. And I encourage you to do the same.

Times are tough for everyone and we are all processing things differently. Don’t fall victim to the idea that you have to be anyone other than who you are in this moment, even if that means you feel like an outcast or that perhaps you should order some bonbons with your next grocery pickup.

Remember that gardens need a fallow period in order to grow green riches that spill over the sides, with tendrils grasping at soil and air, climbing out to become the greatest expression of what they were meant to be. Don’t skip that part. Don’t be ashamed to not “produce” for a while. Don’t be afraid to take your Big Pause – especially right now. I think more people than ever need to stop and breathe for a bit so that maybe humanity can be different going forward.

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My first book, Halfway There: Lessons at Midlife, was released on August 18, 2020 by Warren Publishing and was re-released on February 16, 2021 by White Ocean Press. To read an excerpt, check out reviews, see the author Q&A, or find links to buy, click the Learn More button.

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by Elizabeth C. Haynes

Difficult Times

I’ve never lived through a pandemic before and I’m pretty sure you haven’t either. So each one of us is approaching our lives right now without a toolbox. Without an instruction booklet. Without a compass or a shortcut and without knowing how to make it to the other side.

Go easy on yourself.

I think we’re all having days where we’re struggling to maintain our positivity. Sometimes the dark thoughts completely char our world for a few hours, or sometimes we recognize keenly that there will be more collapse and death before this chapter of our history is closed. The ongoing daily trials of soldiering through so much uncertainty can make us feel very sad or very afraid sometimes. At least, this is what happens to me regularly now.

But I like to remind myself that my feelings are heavily influenced by my brain—the part of my body that thinks and plans and maps out a future that doesn’t even exist yet. It’s just one part of my body, true. But it’s a powerful one when it goes rogue from all the stress.

So when I feel like I’m drowning emotionally, I’ve made an effort to put my screen away and get quiet instead. I use that time to tune in to my essential self: the “me” that sits calmly beneath the ruckus, unbothered and unafraid. The “me” that knows humanity has been subjected to plagues and pandemics before, that many people died, but also that many people lived and went on to build new and different ways of being—often better than before—from the ruins of those experiences.

The essential me understands that we humans are mere specks on this planet and in this universe, and that although we think we are in charge, we really aren’t. We have an illusion of control because we conquer and destroy and consume, but we don’t have it, really. So then I ask myself, “Why, Elizabeth, are you worrying about a lack of control when you never really had it to begin with?”

I find it’s often best to let my fearful thoughts roll onward like storm clouds, and to just make the best decisions I can every day. You know, like washing my hands and staying safe at home. It’s also helpful to stand back a little and observe whatever transpires in order to discover the lessons in what I’m living through. I don’t think it’s an accident that any of us are alive at this moment in history.

Some of you know that I used to be a yoga teacher before my health issues hit. In fact, I’m a certified yoga and meditation teacher although I don’t wave it around obnoxiously. I tell you this because I think now is an exceptional time to learn how to get quiet. It’s the best way to maintain our sanity when we’re flailing around, because we remove ourselves from an unwritten future and instead focus on the present moment. And unless we’re in the hospital or being mugged or our cat is dying, the present moment is usually okay.

I like to take my lessons from the pages of Thich Nhat Hanh’s playbook. One of them goes like this:

1.Sit quietly.
2.Breathe in and out.
3.Notice that you are breathing in and out.

That’s it.

My favorite variation of this exercise, if you want to explore it a bit more, is where you say to yourself (while breathing):

“Breathing in, I smile. Breathing out, I release all my worries and anxieties.”

I find that even a few breaths like this can be grounding and will turn down the intensity of my emotions.

I know it doesn’t feel like it, but there really are so many things we can do despite living in a time of social isolation and perceived powerlessness. We can choose how we respond to the world and to our stresses, and we can choose to do this positively (to the extent that we’re able to, anyway). We can also breathe in and out, as I mentioned. Or we can think about our dreams and start sketching out a roadmap. Or we can write. Or we can walk. Or we can find ways to help others. Or we can just rest.

There is so much possibility in the pause.

My hope is that all of us take this time to not only contemplate what we might like to do differently in our lives going forward, but to learn something about ourselves and how we can continue to evolve. I know you’re hurting in one way or another; I’m hurting too. Even the people who still have jobs and whose loved ones aren’t sick are hurting and live in fear of what’s next.

You are not alone.

So while you try to cope, make sure to breathe and pull yourself back into the present moment every once in a while—where you are okay, where you still have food, and where you still have a roof over your head. None of the catastrophes in your mind have happened yet. And anyway, you’ll figure out how to persevere through everything once “everything” finally gets here. You have infinite knowledge in the quiet place inside of yourself…that non-thinking place. It’s where the answers to the hardest questions in life lie.

And if all of this doesn’t work on a particular day? Just go to sleep and try again tomorrow. Shutting my eyes and starting over with the sunrise works miraculously for me when even breathing feels too hard. Mornings have a way of bringing new perspective and a fresh start.

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by Elizabeth C. Haynes

Being Authentically You

I was listening to a podcast the other night and it really resonated with me because I’ve struggled for decades to find meaning and my place in the world. There was a specific quote from Oprah that has stuck with me, and she said, “Whatever is holding you back in your own life, whatever is preventing you from being your authentic self, is also keeping you from your truest, greatest power.”

When I look back at the last 17 years of my life (meaning the time I entered the professional workforce after college), what I see is that graduating from college was the point at which I began rejecting my authentic self. Up until that point, I’d followed my heart and did what I wanted to do. I wasn’t worried about bills or the future or choosing a practical field; I wanted to study literature and Spanish—so I did.

After that, as real life hit, I almost always took whatever jobs were available regardless of whether or not I wanted them. I was afraid to change trajectory and afraid to examine what could be, and I was also afraid to walk away from any opportunity to earn the money I needed to pay bills. The result is that the last 17 years have been a complete and total loss of myself despite material advancement and professional success.

The podcast was looking back to 1997, when Ellen Degeneres came out and when I was 16 years old and still being me. It examined how the negative fallout of her telling the truth morphed into something beautiful and impactful, and ultimately became the best version of Ellen’s life that there could be.

I’ve found myself in the same space lately. I’m forcefully rejecting who I’ve pretended to be for so many years (a corporate professional) and instead am seeking to become who I truly am (a writer and a teacher). If you’re out of a job like me, it’s the perfect time to contemplate whether or not what you’re doing is authentically you. Are your life and/or career choices allowing you to not just grow your bank account and skills, but to grow into the greatest version of who you were meant to be?

I said to someone the other day that I’ve been chasing money for a long time. I’m not a materialistic person at all, to be clear; I’m a person who spent her childhood and most of her young adulthood hurting for money. So I live in fear of returning to a feeling of lack. I live in fear of running out of food, of losing my home, of not having even fifty cents to spend on anything extra. So my response to that fear was to use my liberal arts degree as a way to chase increasingly larger paychecks in the absence of a meaningful career path, and therefore avoid finding myself in a bad financial spot.

But what happened was that, while I avoided becoming financially poor (although I did become poor again for a while in 2010), I instead became a different kind of poor. I became poor in spirit, because I was doing jobs that sucked the life out of my soul. I became poor in health, because the stress of my work was taking a daily toll on my body. I became poor in emotional happiness, because the turmoil of doing something that was not “me” was a constant gaslighting on the inside.

I’ve spent years insisting that everything is fine, that I’m making good money, that I should be grateful instead of perpetually discontent. And I’ve also reasoned that life is pretty darn good and that I really have nothing to complain about, so I just need to soldier on because nobody really loves their job anyway.

But lying to myself is pushing the real me down into a black pit. It’s dimming the light inside of me that has always strived to do and to be extraordinary, and instead has caused me to settle for what is instead of striving for what could be.

As I sit at this juncture in my life (as an unemployed person who’s lost yet another corporate job that was antithetical to who I am), I feel like Ellen probably felt in 1997: I can no longer continue living a life that isn’t actually who I am. I have to tell the truth about me. And the truth is the complete opposite of the life I’ve been living.

“Me” is not the managing editor in charge of digital marketing programs to make a corporation money, like I most recently was. “Me” is not the technical writer or the project manager or the marketing consultant, which I’ve been too.

No, “me” is the writer who creates meaningful blog posts like this one and who also has a book coming out about how to get through life. “Me” is the 5th grade teacher that I was back in 2010-2011, who wanted to make a difference in the lives of kids but was dismayed to find it was just too hard.

“Me” is also the Student Body President I was in high school, leading other students in activities such as painting an old man’s house with Habitat for Humanity, or cleaning up garbage along a creek, or tutoring elementary school kids who needed help. “Me” is the lit major focusing on American lit and African American lit before life hit, and having in-depth conversations with professors and students about humanity and all its flaws.

So that’s me.

Now, who are you?

It pains me to admit that the only true-to-me things I’ve done in my post-college career are writing a book, starting this blog, and teaching school. Everything else was a boldfaced lie that I told to myself and to the world so that I could avoid that poverty thing I’m so afraid of. And I suspect this is probably why every single one of my corporate jobs imploded—even the ones that started out with promise. They just weren’t who I wanted or was meant to be. I only did them because of fear, every single time.

Change is hard, but when I look at Ellen and how her life completely transformed after she had the courage to just be who she was, I can’t help but think my life will be the same. All of our lives could be the same if we just had the balls to figure out how to be more truthful about ourselves. Sometimes it’s hard to stand vulnerably in front of the world, waiting to see if you will be accepted or rejected for who you are. But there is no other way to live fully except to be whoever you happen to be.

To discover our true selves, we can start by listening to our guts. I think if you have a nagging feeling that something isn’t right in your life, or if you just can’t seem to be fully content in your days, or if you think you would love to do (or be) something else, then you’re probably living some form of a lie that you know is there. The question is, how long can you continue living it before you just can’t do it anymore?

I turn 40 in November and I’m at a point where I cannot, for one more second, continue to live the lie. I cannot work in places I am morally opposed to. I cannot participate in capitalism when the real me is not a money-making machine. I cannot give so much of my creative and physical energy to jobs such that there is nothing left for myself. And I think if I just follow “me” wherever I go, as long as I really do follow my truth, things will turn out ok. I’ll make it. Life will unfold in a magnificent way.

So I look forward to stepping boldly into my next chapter with naked authenticity. I look forward to finally being myself and experiencing the magic of living a life based in truth. I also look forward to seeing who will accept me and who will reject me, and finally deciding I just don’t care about anyone’s opinions anymore.

How about you?

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by Elizabeth C. Haynes

I Know You're Angry

I woke up this morning to a friend messaging me through Instagram about her anxiety around the news and all the civil unrest. It was good timing because today is one of the rare days when my anxiety is mostly under control, so I was able to console her a bit.

As a mostly white (I’m honestly all mixed racially, though) woman who is married to a black man, and as someone who studied African American literature in college, issues of race are really important to me even though they don’t usually affect me very much. I’m not going to get all pedantic about the state of the world and try to lecture people one way or the other, and I’m also not going to go into why I think what’s happening in the streets right now is predictable. But what I will say is that whatever you believe is the correct behavior for the moment, what’s actually happening is that humans are really hurting.

When I went through my divorce many years ago, I passed through a stage where I was so angry that I couldn’t say enough F words to get it out. I was not a person who had ever cussed much, and I certainly never said that word because it felt like the worst of the worst, but an accumulation of negative experiences began to change who I was and how I behaved. I was looking for a valve to release the pressure and that word was the best one I could find.

I’d also started to go through these mini rages at home alone when I’d never been a particularly angry person before. After each storm finally passed through my system, my true emotions would start to take over and my eyes would rain buckets as I realized I was actually deeply hurt. People who are angry are hurt. Remember that. An angry person is someone you could potentially be if your life circumstances had aligned in a certain way.

Most of us can surely recall times when we’ve exploded. We usually explode with words and use them to wound those around us, but sometimes we take a step beyond words into physical action. This may mean we throw something against the wall or punch a hole in it because we recognize that hurling objects (or fists) at humans isn’t a good way to go, and thankfully most of us engage in these escalated explosions sparingly.

When I used to explode particularly badly, my favorite behavior was to use a pillow to beat the arm of the sofa or the footboard of my bed. There was also one time, again during a divorce-era mini rage, when I took a big wine glass and shattered it in the sink so as not to create a huge mess for myself after the explosion was over. At least I had the mental faculties to contain the glass to a small area rather than spewing it across my kitchen.

Even with all of the work I’ve done to be a happier person and to heal myself, I still beat the bed or sofa with a pillow on the rare occasions when lifelong hurts get the best of me. And I wonder if that’s how some people with lifelong hurts are feeling right now? And then I think, what if my own hurt/anger was amped up by centuries of abuse and pain rather than just a few years or decades? I wonder, then, what sort of explosion I might have?

I don’t condone violent behavior. I never do, because I don’t think violence is a good solution to anything and it usually brings about more violence. But I do understand it at this juncture in our history, and I encourage you to try to understand it (understand it, not condone it) instead of judging people for their explosions—especially if you’re a white person like me.

A few days ago, I cried on my husband’s shoulder and hugged his neck, spitting out words in between sobs about how I didn’t want him to be next and how I was afraid he’d get hurt. He reminded me that he’s had to watch his back his entire life, and that what we’re seeing isn’t all that much different than the things he’s had to be aware of for more than four decades while I was blissfully privileged to be born a different color.

As I’ve caught up with the news about fires around the White House and extreme unrest all across the country today, I’ve wondered again if there’s a better spot on planet Earth for me to live out my days. For now, though, I’m going to continue to stand with the oppressed in whatever way I’m able (through my writing, through petitions, through awareness) and just wait to see what transformation comes (or doesn’t come) out of this moment of chaos.

Sometimes big changes come painfully, and I do wonder if we are in the last few pages of a dramatic chapter in the human story. I also think that humans, as a species, can’t seem to get where they need to be without first creating destruction. I’m not sure why this is the case.

But if you’re reading my work, you’re probably one of the humans who is striving to be better. You’re probably a kind person with a good heart; you’re probably introspective and thoughtful; you’re probably someone who would help your neighbor as much as you can. These are the types of people I try to connect with through my writing because we can work together to become a beacon in the darkness. We can still be angry ourselves (my anger is deep and scarlet, believe me), but we can express it constructively while also understanding and holding up our fellow human beings who simply cannot restrain themselves in the same way.

I invite each of us to save our judgment of one another for a different day and instead work together to find solutions. And when we can’t do that – either because we’re emotionally exhausted or because we have no idea what to actually do to help – let’s at least stay in our own bubbles and do no additional harm to humanity while the world is swirling. As I said in my poem, Morning Trash, “We are one people. Two eyes, two feet. Two hands to hold or to steal life.”

Be well and be kind.

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by Elizabeth C. Haynes

Letting Go of What Was

I’ve spent the last few days finishing up a redo of my business website—the one that promotes my digital marketing services. It took weeks to complete because of my ongoing procrastination, so it seemed appropriate to step back and examine this unusual reluctance to work on something that’s mine. And in doing that, I got super honest with myself: I really don’t want to work in my field anymore.

It’s an unsettling moment when you realize you no longer want to do the thing you’ve built your life and livelihood (and business!) around. In fact, I was just getting really good at my job after spending almost a year being in charge of everything. It wouldn’t make much sense to walk away from something that I do well and that pays me well, right?

But I’ve been graced with a break over the last few months. I was on medical leave for my health issues first, which created a lot of thinking time on the sofa, and then I became unemployed and transitioned into the thoughtfulness of pandemic life. And I find that I’m exponentially happier now that I’m away from my job despite the swirl of uncertainty about what lies ahead.

I took a walk several months ago (well maybe it was a good six to eight months ago; the pandemic has distorted everything) and I remember making a pact with myself. I told myself that by the time I turned 40, I was going to be done with corporate America for good. I had no idea how to make it happen and also had no idea that I’d be unemployed anyway just six months before said birthday, but I set it as an intention and decided I’d figure it out in the coming months.

I took another important walk a few weeks after that. It was a late-morning speedwalk meant to disperse a buildup of negative energy and frustration about things going on at work, and about fifteen minutes in, as I rounded a corner while lost in thought, I started screaming inside of my head, “I HATE business!” I continued those screams, with my fists clenched and my eyes wide, for probably a good thirty seconds before heading home with tears rolling down my face.

I knew my truth. It was coming through loud and clear.

I think each of us already knows our truth if we just listen carefully. It’s not always what we want to hear because it can contradict our lifestyles or our plans, so sometimes we ignore the quiet voices until we end up having a breakdown on the sidewalk on a random weekday morning. Then we go home with our hands still shaking, and we tell our spouses that we just cannot keep going like we are and that we’ve got to find an exit route. And then we cry some more.

I deployed my new website into the world today despite all of the above, because it cost a lot of money to create and because I need it as a sort of insurance policy in case finances get worse. But beyond that, I plan to just let it sit out there like a business card that I can pull up and share on demand if I need to. I think it’s finally time to walk away if I can, since I’ve reached the point of screaming inside my own head.

From a logic (and logistical) perspective, however, this seems like a really dumb thing to do. I have a ton of experience and I actually really know my stuff, so I’ve spent a lot of time trying to convince myself that it wouldn’t be all that bad if I just took a part-time gig that paid well and then did whatever I wanted on my own time. And then I think about the last decade of my existence, and how the continued drudgery of corporate work hampered my progress as an artist.

I remember how I’d wanted to set my Fridays aside for writing but that it pretty much never happened. My paid clients consumed every single weekday despite my best efforts, and the intense copywriting I had to do for them often stole every last bit of my creative energy. I had nothing left for myself.

I also remember how my creativity always dried up and cracked like scorched earth when I was subjected to work I didn’t want to do—even small bits of it—because the negative emotions snuffed out all of the other parts of me. I think I’ve spent so many years in jobs I’ve disliked that even a small dose of one makes me recoil on all levels now. I become paralyzed and sink into a heavy depression.

So I can’t help but ask myself, do I really want to spend another decade of my life feeling broken simply because I didn’t have the courage to finally let go of my established career?

This decision isn’t easy, of course. Right now we have a pile of bills and I still haven’t heard if I’m going to get unemployment. But then I also want to vomit when I think about going back to what I was doing a few months (and a few years) ago. In fact, the “not wanting to go back” is a lot more powerful than the “not having money to pay bills” at this moment in my life, and I think it keeps me grounded on my more fearful days.

When I made the vow during walk #1 that I’d be out of corporate America by age 40, I didn’t understand that what I actually meant was I wanted to be out of corporate activities by age 40—out of marketing, out of tech writing, out of social media (except for my own use), and out of anything related to making money for a business. Because, remember? I hate business (walk #2).

I’m trying really hard to be okay with that decision despite the recent loss of money on my website and the ongoing uncertainty about finances. But I have to let go of what was in order to make space for what could be. There’s no other way forward if I want to finally change my life. So let’s say it together now:

We have to let go of what was in order to make space for what could be.

And what could my life be? Well, I know that I’d like for my literary magazine to take off and for my book to sell. I know that I’d like to spend my days alternating between my publication and my personal creative projects, which would allow me to make my living in an authentic way by doing the things that feel right to my soul.

Sometimes we’re forced make hard decisions when we’ve hit rock bottom with our health or our emotions or our jobs (or all three, like I recently did). Letting go of who we used to be could mean we lose a little—or a lot—financially or otherwise. But I think this losing is temporary if we’re following what we believe is right for us. I think we lose more of ourselves by staying on the wrong path, even as our bank accounts grow and our prestige increases, than we do by taking a risk to make a change. And that’s what I’m holding my hopes on today: that I’ll lose a little by letting go of what was, and gain a whole lot by reaching for what could be.

What about you? Could you dare to step out of the life you used to have, and into the life you truly want to live?

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by Elizabeth C. Haynes

Shifting Out of the Dark

When I was in my mid-late twenties, I’d sit down at my computer and spew my emotions onto a public blog that I ended up keeping for about nine years. I always wrote from a place of negativity during that time because, when the pain got too intense, I’d suddenly find myself able to write when I couldn’t most of the time. I guess I didn’t have space to judge myself in those moments.

But as I grew older and as the waters calmed a bit, I noticed the negativity of that blog was settling around my new life like a thick fog. It no longer matched where I was or where I wanted to be, so I decided to change direction and start a new (and less emotional) blog about my struggles as a writer.

My second blog wasn’t a full-on rebirth; it was somewhere in the middle—not totally negative but not totally positive, either. It wasn’t until I started my third blog in 2019 (this one) that I made a more permanent shift.

I tell this story because it’s a really good illustration of how reframing your thoughts can be a long and iterative process, especially when you have a lot of emotional baggage. It took me a full 12 years of slow steering to move from a negative space into a more positive one—and that’s just in this part of my life.

I’ve really struggled to craft a post for this blog over the last couple of weeks. And I realize now that it’s because I’d shifted back into a negative emotional place with the ongoing pandemic, and that everything I produced was tainted by it. I think many of us are waffling a bit right now, going up and down emotionally and thinking a bit too much. Or perhaps we’re stuck entirely in the down, as had been the case with me lately, because our natural tendency is to land there during times of stress.

What I learned over the last few days is that my internal state can have a dramatic impact on how I engage with loved ones and how I participate in the world. I also learned that, much like I shifted my way out of a negative writing space and into a more positive one, I can shift myself out of a mentally distraught place and into a better one. It just takes a herculean effort right now.

I opened Instagram the other day and stumbled upon Rainn Wilson doing his live TV show on SoulPancake. I didn’t tune in for long because I’d missed a lot of it, but I did hear the part where he said focusing too much on all the bad going on will spin us into a negative abyss. That yes, there’s so much of it right now, but that we can’t focus on it or we’ll drive ourselves crazy.

It hit me in that moment that I’ve been driving myself crazy.

For the last two weeks or so, I’ve spent hours scanning the news every day because I’ve been searching in vain for a sense of safety. I’ve been distraught and frantic because that safety is just not there, and as a trauma survivor, I have a deep need to find it during chaos. My automatic responses (panic and fear) can overtake me if I’m not careful, and that’s exactly what had happened as of late.

In fact, I’d been focusing so hard on everything that felt threatening to me that I’d lost sight of the experiences I was relishing a few weeks back. Things like the quiet, the breeze, the downtime to think and to change. The peaceful feeling of watching the earth slow down for a spell and maybe even heal itself a little, as we humans step back and stop wreaking havoc all over the place.

As I go into this next week of quarantine, I want to shift back into positivity despite the utter devastation on the other side of my window. I’ve been working really hard on it today by digging bermudagrass out of the dirt for a new garden bed. I know it sounds crazy, but I find getting on my knees and digging in dirt is really grounding for me. It reminds me that I’m on a solid foundation and that whatever is going on will just go on around me; I don’t necessarily have to participate. Well, I don’t have to participate in the emotional insanity.

I also need to protect myself better from the people, things and activities that throw me off and shift me in the wrong direction. So what I need to do more of is to turn off the news. I also need to ignore the people who are not following protocols, and remember that I’m only responsible for me. I cannot control the situations that come or how other people respond to them—I can only control my own responses.

I can also remind myself that, today, I’m safe in my home with my husband. And I can sit down with him for dinner, both of us ratty and unkempt, and be proud of my continued efforts to shift into positivity when I’m hardwired to remain stuck in the dark.

Like many people, I’m fighting an internal battle that is exacerbated by the pandemic and that nobody understands but me. You may be fighting a similar battle because of your specific circumstances, be it health or financial or family or disability. But I say, let’s forgive ourselves for not being perfect. Let’s forgive ourselves for experiencing temporary anger at other humans. Let’s forgive ourselves for our bitterness or our snappiness or our tears flowing onto the pillow.

The ups and downs are just part of a process of transformation that often comes out of catastrophes like the one we’re in the midst of. Just keep moving, day by day, to the best version of you that’s currently buried in the muck. You’ll eventually get where you’re supposed to be as long as you keep trying. It’s just how life works.

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by Elizabeth C. Haynes

Beyond

“What do I want most in life?” Have you ever asked yourself that question? I ask myself often, but I’m usually too scared to state the answer out loud. Because what I want most in life is freedom to be myself. Freedom to think. Freedom to be. Freedom to breathe and to pause and to take the time I need to be the person I came here to be.

What I find is that, for many of us (including me), the obligations of daily life stomp out our courage. Make us fold and put away our aspirations. Make us forget that we will not fall if we move in the right direction, and that everything that gives us life—the sun, the trees, the stars—will catch us and cradle us. Will keep us from tumbling into a sad demise. Will ensure our basic needs are met.

And that’s the thing: we want more than what’s basic. We want special. We want extraordinary. We want extra. We want that pretty house and that leather-smelling car. We want those fully-catered trips to turquoise waters and those glasses of red wine on pristine white tablecloths. And sometimes we want sparkly things on our fingers or on our ears or around our necks – to make us feel beautiful or to make us feel valued? Maybe we don’t even know.

Right now, I want less. I want what I have. I want this pace, this peace, this quiet. This limited food supply in this (still) mostly empty house.

I want this green yard and these visions of flower beds and creeping tomato vines. I want snuggles with my cats, and lavender Epsom baths, and sitting on my patio with a good book while the breeze whispers in the trees. I want big birds soaring through the sky as I write, and smaller ones landing in my yard to peck at scattered seed.

And for once, I see that I have what I want the most. I’m living it in this time of reflection and quarantine and solitude and sadness. And I couldn’t feel more blessed by the basic. More blessed by the simple. More blessed by the lack, which fills my life with an abundance beyond measure. Beyond words. Beyond time. Beyond everything my life used to be that, despite its recent influx of “more,” really wasn’t so abundant at all.

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by Elizabeth C. Haynes

Plague

by Elizabeth C. Haynes

While they die, the wind blows.

The birds sing
The trees sway
The rivers flow
The creatures sigh

The sky is bluer, the stars are brighter.
The waters clear, the air more kind.

While they die, more humans sit
in shielded bleachers,
waiting…

And looking on, they
finally see
what it truly means

To live.

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by Elizabeth C. Haynes

Morning Trash

by Elizabeth C. Haynes

(Author Note: “Morning Trash” was originally published in a literary anthology under a pseudonym. Permission has been granted to publish it elsewhere.)

Age of hate. The color of our skin. Intolerance.

We all pulse red. You shoot me, I bleed the same. My God. My soul. Different and yet not at all. It’s not the color, the direction of the prayers, the partner in my bedroom.

We are one people. Two eyes, two feet. Two hands to hold or to steal life.

It’s a choice, this thing. This monster of the psyche. That grows with age, inhales the world and spins it, spitting it out as a fallacy. Where humans are divided by kind. Categorized like the grocery store. The black bags kicked to the corner, to be put out with the morning trash.

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by Elizabeth C. Haynes

The Things We Fear

This year for Christmas I asked for An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo, Poet Laureate of the United States. I’m an avid reader and a proud lit. major, but I’ve never asked for a book of poetry in my life.

If I could take you back in time, I’d drop you into a college classroom in the basement of a cold building in Springfield, Missouri. You’d see a 19-year-old version of myself yawning and rolling my eyes as we discussed Yeats or Plath or Frost. I hated poetry. I loathed it. I often skimmed or skipped my poetry reading assignments, and let my thoughts float away during those long-winded discussions.

Now let me drop you into my life a year or so later. This time you’d find a 20-year-old version of myself sitting in a poetry writing class. I’d be at a tiny desk in a second-story classroom, with a small window in the corner and a big whiteboard at the front.

Shocked that I ended up there? I know. Me too.

But my degree plan required me to take one creative writing class and so I chose poetry as the least painful option. I lacked the confidence to write anything longer than that, and I thought perhaps I had enough smarts to write a few lines of verse and get it over with.

I didn’t flunk out of the class or fall madly in love with the genre. I also didn’t discover myself as a writer or even come coasting out with a solid B. What I actually did was become stifled for the next 15 years or so, because the professor hated my work so much that he held it up (literally, on an overhead projector) as a model of what NOT to do. Every other week, which is how often we had to turn in a poem for his review.

People tell me now that maybe he saw something in my writing. That maybe he was envious or otherwise intimidated, as he’d published a lot of his own work (most of it dark and depressing) and that perhaps I was able to write what he couldn’t. Of course I can’t say if that’s true or not, especially since those poems are stored on floppy drives and are inaccessible without some major effort. But it’s nice to think about it that way on my really bad days.

I went on from that class and I never wrote anything until my late twenties outside of some sparse journaling and some tear-filled personal blogging. It wasn’t until I approached my thirties that I began to realize my violent emotional scribbles were actually birthing a writer. And from there I discovered that I’d actually written some poetry along the way. In fact, I’d even written a rhyming poem called “I Don’t Write Poetry.”

How had this not registered in my brain?

I think it’s interesting how sometimes the things we’re most repelled by are actually the things that are truly “ours” once we get past the wall of fear. I started to realize I was a sleepwalking poet only a few years ago. I called myself a sleepwalker because I’d written poetry without seeing it or knowing it was happening, and it wasn’t until I’d flipped through my scribbles a year or five later that I’d noticed patches of words emerging from the page and forming verse.

So these days I have a new thought about my college experiences: that maybe I actually took the poetry writing class because it was part of my DNA, not because it was the easiest way through. And maybe I actually ran away from Wordsworth and Keats because I was deeply afraid of my own abilities (or lack thereof).

I think as we try to figure out what we’re here to do, we can sometimes find clues in those things that we turn away from or avoid – especially if they keep popping into our lives from around this corner or the other. For me, my “thing” kept resurfacing in my writing without my even being aware of it.

Do you have anything like that happening in your life?

I’ve also learned that when we claim to hate something, it’s often because we’re afraid of it. We’re afraid of its effect on us or we’re afraid of its latent power. We’re afraid that maybe the “thing” will be our undoing or conversely that the “thing” will be a rocket that launches us onward to success. And then we recoil because of the intensity of what that might be like.

Last night I was flipping through a special black notebook that I keep in my nightstand to jot down my creative ideas. It contains some of my most important musings from the last four years, and it turns out that in 2016 I wrote a helluva lot of poetry (that I didn’t particularly notice at the time). And you know what? Some of it was crap. But some of it was really good – maybe even profound.

The other part of this story is that my first-ever publication credit ended up being a poem that was selected for inclusion in a literary anthology in 2017. I sent just one poetry submission to one publication, and it was selected from the masses. Easy as that, apparently. What was I so afraid of?

The lesson in all of this is to invite the “thing” into your life that you find yourself running away from. Invite it in like I invited in An American Sunrise, which arrived wrapped in paper and ribbons on Christmas Day. You may discover what it truly means for your life once you stop and take a hard look.

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by Elizabeth C. Haynes