I had heard of Juneteenth before June of 2020, but I wasn’t really listening or paying attention. Pre-COVID 19, a woman in my community was seeking engagement on our local Facebook Mom page. She had hosted an event last year, and this year a parade had been planned. When I read about the parade, I thought it sounded great. I never once thought about attending it. I didn’t think I would be welcome. I didn’t think it was for me.

Now, people are calling for Juneteenth to be a national holiday. I think it should be. We should celebrate a time when our nation actually did something right. In fact, I wouldn’t mind if we scanned the entire calendar of National Holidays and revised it. Cut out the ones that inspire ill feelings from any portion of Americans, and designate a list of days to honor that would allot us some time to reflect on the honor of being American.

I know. I just typed “cut out the ones that inspire ill feelings from any portion of Americans.” Oy. That pretty much cuts out all holidays. Christmas comes to mind. Not everyone is Christian. For others, it’s too commercial. From one angle, Thanksgiving is icky. The traditional portrayal of the Native Americans in Thanksgiving lore is precious and feels disingenuous when you think about the reality of our Nation’s treatment of the Native Americans. Easter is rough. Is it about bunnies that lay Cadbury eggs or is it about the resurrection of Jesus Christ (or zombies)? Memorial Day is the beginning of summer, right? Veteran’s Day is when we honor Veterans, but people who hate war don’t want to celebrate the people that fight them.

Maybe we should just keep Independence Day? Maybe all Americans could agree on that one?

It’s all just one ball of confusion.

Is anyone else as disturbed as I am that this song is 50 years old and accurately describes our current day?

So, yes, if anyone asks me, Juneteenth should be a National holiday.

And my hope is that my backyard can be an example.

On Friday, because I follow social media and the news, I was acutely aware that it was Juneteenth. We had a friend over for dinner in the back yard. She is our next door neighbor from the last apartment we had in Chicago before moving to the northern ‘burb. She lives alone. We have often had her over for dinner, but since the Corona Virus, we have made an effort to invite her to our yard for a social distance barbecue about once a week. She is white and Jewish. She is also gay and very liberal identifying. She is also made up of so many other wonderful and amazing things. I only bring up these identifiers for the sake of making a point. My husband is straight, white, conservative identifying. The two of them have the longest and best arguments, rarely agree, but have a deep affection for each other that transcends the constant need they have to prove each other wrong. What it comes down to is a willingness to meet someone who is different with good will in your heart.

Over dinner, we had an uncomfortable conversation about Juneteenth and race. I’m opting not to script that out for you because that really wouldn’t be a fair portrayal or the viewpoints of the players involved. My stance in the discussion is that it doesn’t matter what political flames are being fueled this close to an election or whether it’s only being brought up because it’s an election year. A segment of our human race is at a disadvantage because there are still people that place value judgement on the color of their skin. It got heated between the three of us.

I began to feel embarrassed because our neighbors were in their adjacent backyard, and I worried that a morsel of our conversation might be overheard out of context. My neighbors are wonderful. Their family is a good parallel to ours. Husband, wife, and child. They have a six year old daughter. We have a 5 year old son. They are Black. We are white. We’ve gotten along wonderfully since day one.

In our yard, we cool the conversation on race and change the topic. Night falls and the kids begin collecting fireflies in our respective yards (because social distancing, ya know?) Our sequestered dinners melt into a communal party as they seem to do every night in the summer. We have a laugh at how I realize that I can’t catch fireflies now without reading glasses. I see them light up in the distance, but when I get close enough to catch them, they get blurry and I miss.

Tonight, because it’s Juneteenth, I’m having an internal conversation with myself. I can’t believe that anyone, anywhere, would ever think that my friends next door are of lesser anything because of their skin color. We laugh at each other’s jokes, we help each other out in a pinch. We’ve left our kid at the other’s house when we needed it. We share tools. Our backyards are openly connected and before the pandemic, the two kids were welcome to run amok in either house.

In the dark, one of the neighbors crossed over into our yard and hands my husband something. It’s a bunch of sparklers for my son. For the rest of our evening, my son and their daughter giggle and spell things in the night sky. Across the street another set of neighbors is lighting of Fireworks. They were a little too sparkly to be legal, and they are gorgeous.

It was simple. It was beautiful. It was a magical, fun and peaceful evening during a very trying time.

I still have a lot to learn. There is still a lot about the racial unrest that I don’t understand and struggle with, but here is what I know:

It’s not my place to asses the value of anyone, but I will always extend kindness at any first contact and foster any relationship that sees the value the kindness I have to offer.

It would be great if we could all humble ourselves and begin again from a place of kindness, curiosity, and vulnerability.

Showing and doing are two different things.

In acting, we call that telegraphing. It’s when you are deliberately showing everyone your intentions and making a display of your actions to the audience all the way to the punchline. In comedy, it’s the fastest way to kill a joke. In most work, it turns off the audience because it makes them feel like they are so stupid that you have to be “extra” for them the understand the point.

This behavior is an extremely easy trap to fall into on Instagram. In the early days of racial unrest, I watched reactions pour in. From my “people”…ugh I’m going to pause there. I hate being classified as much as anyone else. I am a white woman. Gifted with privilege at birth because of my skin, raised in a time when the generations before me had made solid strides towards equality. Maybe it was due to the work of my parents, maybe it was due to teachers that invested in me, maybe I’m just lucky and had the right combination of life experiences, but I have never thought less of a person because of the color of their skin.

In the early days, messages spread like wildfire. Post a black square. Profess your antiracism. Join the BLM movement, but wait, don’t take the BLM movement on your black square because it’s drowning out the posts that need to be seen. Send money here. LISTEN to these people. Mute your feed. We were all trying SO HARD. And many of us were messing up left any right because it was hard to keep up with the ever changing instructions on how to be antiracist.

I paused, but I didn’t post that I paused. To me, it felt inauthentic. It felt like a big show. I don’t have thousands of followers. I’m hardly an influencer. So for me, “presenting” that I’m muted and listening just looks like I’m hitching onto the bandwagon. At least those are the optics from where I sit. Isn’t the point of muting to give the stage to those who need to be heard?

I did feel the need to do something. So, here is what I did:

Connected to my neighbors, who are black. We had an open conversation about what it going on. I am grateful for them because my son will never have to find out unlearn anything. Our neighbors are wonderful and we have a very easy friendship. I didn’t meet my first black friend until High School.

Contacted my alderman. Learned about the details of the Evanston reparations program.

Contacted my PD and learned about the community review board that has advisory input on policing methods.

Journaled, journaled, journaled. I needed a space to sort out my thoughts free from judgement. You can’t weed out bad thoughts or behaviors if you have to always filter.

The metaphorical street is very necessarily one way right now. Centuries of hurt and rage are rolling out and the only thing that I feel right doing is letting it roll and try to stay safe in the process.

We have a long and challenging road ahead of us. I’m facing it openly, willing to get my feelings hurt, and ready to stand up for what is right, but I didn’t need to tell you that because I’m just going to do it. Activism is not a show. It’s action.

I am prone to finding messages in things that many call “coincidences.” I won’t even get into how most people interchange “irony” with “coincidence.” Alanis Morisette’s magnum opus to irony in the 90’s was just about a bunch of things that sucked. Most of them weren’t ironic in the text book sense…. but this blog is not about semantics keeping us apart as a nation. I am writing about what will keep us together.

Please know, I’m not saying that the anti-racism movement can be exclusively boiled down to a problem in linguistics. Yes, misunderstanding the meaning and context of what you say plays a huge role in systemic racism. I’ve already seen and will undoubtedly read more from exceptional scholars who can outline the problems in the divide using linguistic studies on the semantic and pragmatic analyses of “All Lives Matter” and the many other phrases that one population thinks helpful another population finds it hurtful. They hash it out much better than I ever could.

I’ve been reading a lot this week.

It’s dizzying and overwhelming.

It should be.

This is important stuff.

Trying to bring millions of people onto the same page is an impossibly enormous task.

So what will do it?

Love.

Back to the coincidence….On the first Sunday of protests and rioting and looting, May 31st, our Church and many other celebrated Pentecost. In the Bible, 40 days after Easter, the Holy Spirit descended on the disciples. Of course, it happens very dramatically:

When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. Acts 2:1–4

From there, they are able to go out into the world and understand ANYONE speaking ANY LANGUAGE. The disciples could emerge from hiding and tell their story. It is so easy to look any passage from the Bible and just see a bunch of magical things happening that couldn’t possibly be true, but if you dig into it, you have to question if there is a way to speak to someone without using the same language.

There is.

The universal language that we all share is within our hearts. It is our bare, raw need for other people. The desire to be seen and respected.

There are an infinite amount of words written about love. So many of them are wrong.

To me, love is unconditional acceptance of what is inside any living thing. It is patient. It is kind.

It is when 2 or more people come together and choose not to hurt each other.

It is when two or more people join together and sacrifice things that don’t serve or could harm the whole.

We make it so hard, don’t we? We set up all these definitions and prerequisites to love. We build invisible fortresses around ourselves to make sure that another person is worthy of our internal life. We hurt those that we think will hurt us.

Why? It never works. All of these protections just leave us in a nervous little bubble wondering why we can’t find love, wondering why the world doesn’t see the magic inside you the way that you do.

Maybe it’s time to stop fluffing our inner lives and open our eyes (and hearts/fortresses/cages) to those around us. Receive and respect others.

I’m choosing to believe that Pentecost falling on the first Sunday of this swell of unrest was not a coincidence. It was a message to me on how to approach these times we live in.

Don’t choose to think this is the end of days.

Every day is our opportunity to find the beginning.

I cleared my Outlook calendar today. For a long time, I’ve simply left all my recurring clients and meetings on my calendar. At first, it was because I planned to return to business as usual once we had this Corona Virus thing all sorted out. Then, it served as a reminder of my work life that I nostalgically scrolled past on my way to other information in my email. Now, as I emerge from the haze of two whole months on unemployment, the appointments on my calendar seem like relics from the past. So, I have deleted them to make room for my schedule of webinars, online clients, and zoom play dates and parties for my son and his friends.

There is only one appointment that I was able to keep. Every two weeks on Monday morning, I complete payroll for my staff. I kept the appointment, but I changed the name to “Certify for Unemployment.” Oddly enough, the two things are on the same schedule. At work, I make sure others are paid the appropriate amount. Now, I make sure the State of Illinois is reminded that I’m still not working every other Monday morning at 9am.

It feels good to clear my schedule. I’m looking at this blank space with hope. As I fill it with sparsely spaced, intentional dates with self improvement and personal connection, I like seeing my daily, weekly, monthly itinerary with joy. I can stay calm when I look at it. I don’t hear the din of low grade stress in my heart that I normally have when looking at it. I can’t wait to get my haircut in June.

There are things to look forward to. Right now, I like what’s on my horizon.

Overwhelmed. It’s an emotion that I feel on the regular these days. My only connection to the outside world is social media. When I log in to Facebook or Instagram, I’m inundated with more fitness, yoga, Pilates, and GYROTONIC professionals than I ever knew existed. Before the pandemic, these outlets were reserved for those that had the time to put into it or the money to pay someone else to coordinate and edit their posts. Now, social media has become the only way that we can easily connect to those outside of our homes and has become a necessary tool in the “great pivot” of 2020. It was a convenient tool to maintain the personal relationships that are the foundation of all physical training businesses.

I knew that these industries were vast, but when you see everyone publicly existing in the same feed on your phone, it’s exhausting. Imposter syndrome creeps in, and what was once a light resource for inspiration is now making me feel like a very small minnow in a very large pond.

But before I ride this spiral down to the basement on insecurity, I realize that these people were all working before. Like me, and like most trainers I know, they had their nose to the grindstone helping people. Before their daily classes online, they were showing up every day for people.

Along with the flux of people posting, there is also an increase of usage. Forbes reports that usage is up 61% across several platforms. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanholmes/2020/04/24/is-covid-19-social-medias-levelling-up-moment/#322039946c60

So, for now, I’ll stop worrying about all the other people who are doing the same thing I am and circle back to focusing on what is right in front of me: clients that still care to hear what I think, and all the added time with my family at home, which was long overdue.

Parents of young children. I see you. You’re between a rock and a hard place here. Children crave routine. They thrive when they know what’s coming next. A reliable routine should mean less acting out. I find myself spending the last hour before I go to bed every night making sure I have the elements of our plan squared away, worksheets printed, art supplies prepared, everything in it’s place so that I can give my little one a routine that is fun but predictable. The next day, my beautifully imagined, thoughtful, perfect magical day feels like it’s playing out on a roller coaster that I am riding while wearing a blindfold. Everything will be moving along smoothly. Then, with zero notice, the bottom drops off and we are both careening towards and emotional abyss. My son and I are both willful and stubborn. There will be voices raised. There will be frustration and tantrums. There will be time outs. We might get back on track. We might not and I’ll give up schooling for the day. Most days are good and reasonable. We fall apart about every 3 or so days.

Does that sound overly dramatic to you? If so, I’d hazard you are not sheltering in place with a 5 year old only child.

In my fantasy, he’s be a perfect little side kick while I take online courses and teach my clients. He would sit with educational programs on his tablet when I needed him to. He would make charming well placed appearances in my Zoom calls. He would color while I read. Sadly, he’s 5. Some days, he complies, but he’s still so young that his endurance and concentration for behaving has a shelf life of about 1/2 a day.

AND HE HAS NO ONE ELSE BUT US.

I have many friends in similar boats. The common worries expressed are that we are doing emotional and psychological damage to our children by isolating our children from others their age. I understand the concern. They need each other. We do our best. We set up Facetime calls where they can make silly faces at each other on the screen, but it’s not intimate enough to allow them to practice the social dynamics of getting along with others.

I, personally, envy my single and childless friends to a certain degree. I have lists of continuing education courses I would love to take, workouts I would love to do, and books I would love to finish and other books I would love to start. I have very little time for any of these.

Here is an outline of my “unemployment” due to COVID-19:

I wake, make us breakfast, catch up on the news, have one or two hours of zoom meetings or emailing. Even though I’m furloughed, I still take pride and ownership of the club, so there are things that I can’t abandon. I sit down with our son to do some sort of Pre K home school for about an hour. I make lunch. We eat lunch. I take my son out of the house for some fresh air and exercise, hoping to get some, too. I’ve managed to get him hooked on Pokemon GO as I motivation to get outside. I try to steal 30 minutes to do something for my own strength. We work on a craft. We have our daily dance party. I make dinner. We eat dinner. I wrestle our son into the shower and through his evening ritual. This week, that ritual has expanded to exploring a Disney movie each night. Disney buys me about an hour and forty five minutes with my laptop to answer emails, blog, research with a snuggly kid on my hip. This means that he’s not going to sleep until 9. It also means that he’s not getting up at 6:30am, either, which is nice. I spend the time from 9pm until midnight on my own, but I’m not getting everything in that I would like. I usually spend an hour prepping for the next day: dishes, cleaning, laundry folding, school lessons, an hour in a hot bath mindlessly thumbing through social media, and about an hour watching something grown up to escape into a story. Some nights, I’ll write. Some nights, I’ll read. Some nights, I’ll think about practicing yoga, but go straight to meditation for a spell because I’m just so tired. Oh yeah, I have this guy in the house called a husband. He needs attention, too.

These days the constant attention my son needs is exhausting.

In spite of the exhaustion, I am 100% grateful for the gifts that have come to me out of this global tragedy. For his entire life up to this point, I was the working parent while my husband stayed home. Deep down, I have never liked being the novelty to my son. I frequently came home late for dinner. I often had to do things that were work related on weekends. I knew he wasn’t getting enough time with me because I wasn’t getting enough time with him. I didn’t realize until I was home all the time, that my son hardly knows me. Until we started doing our daily dance party, he had no idea what kind of music I liked. He didn’t know stories about my childhood. Now, he knows a lot more about the characters that were in my life before he existed. I’m cooking wholesome meals for us every meal. I’m serving up family recipes. He’s learning about how to make pasta and sauce. He’s beginning to understand baking. He’s even picking up the subtle nuances of certain ingredients.These are daily occurrences, and not special things that happen on Thanksgiving and Christmas. The mother he knew before the pandemic was always tired and trying to whip up a loving happy spirit out of any scrap of energy I could muster.

BUT HE HARDLY EVER LEAVES ME ALONE.

This means that the videos I want to make for the club and my clients fall by the wayside. Any reading is short lived (lasts about as long as it takes him to bore of a TV show or his tablet. And many days, I am more spent than after a hard work day. I’m choosing not to struggle to accomplish ALL THE THINGS, and that is going to have to be okay. The only other option is to raise the stress level and try and get everything in. Inevitably, that will inspire more trantrums and more rough parenting moments. The cost of doing that outweighs the reward. NO ONE IS HURTING FOR ONLINE WORKOUTS RIGHT NOW. So, why fight to get into that sphere? Also, THERE IS NO TEST OR GAIN FROM CONQUERING A RECREATIONAL READING LIST. So, I’ll focus my energy on what has will have the most value in the long run: embracing this time with my son.

I’m not going to deny that I am lucky. While I envy people who are on their own, I am fully aware that this comes with sadness and depression from being alone. They might be able to do A LOT more writing, studying, thinking, but I have the human medicine that I need right now in my home. So, my heart will stay strong.

But I might not get very much done.

My last post was a downer, but I don’t feel bad about it. It’s where I was at the moment and I knew other people would be feeling the same.

Today is a new day. I had really solid night sleep last night, and I woke up feeling cheerful and refreshed. I did manage to drop about two pounds of flour on the kitchen floor and down the basement steps, and I may have broken our vacuum trying to clean it up. It ruined my fairy tale of making muffins for us on this sunny morning, but I was still lighthearted when I got in the shower after breakfast.

I normally solve all the worlds problems when I’m in the shower.

Today’s question: Should I do my hair?

I have this debate with myself every time I wash my hair. “Doing my hair“ usually involves a blow dryer to smooth it out and make everything a point in the right direction. I’ve been arguing myself out of doing my hair the entire time that I’ve been home because my vanity doesn’t override my common sense. I give my bangs a quick flat iron if I have to Zoom with the outside world, but why inflict heat damage when the only people that are going to see me could care less about my weird bangs?

However, today as I showered, I stopped ragging on myself for being vain and started thinking about what it feels like inside when my hair is right. I have good hair. I also have a genius hair dresser who ALWAYS does something great with what I’ve been given. When it is styled, if feels nice to run my own hands through it, and I feel good on the inside when my hair looks good on the outside.

Culturally, the human race has had an emotional, energetic and spiritual connection with hair since the beginning. In many eastern traditions, hair is relevant to the crown chakra and some believe hair to be an extension of the nervous system, able to collect and send out energy to the universe. In the Bible, hair is the source of Samson’s strength. Native Americans consider hair to be their connection to Creation.

Historically, hair has been shaven off to take away someone’s power. When Ghengis Khan conquered China he forced his captives to cut their hair into bangs that covered their foreheads in order to inhibit their third eye. Slaves in many cultures were shaved when captured to take away their power and make them subservient.

Over 40 billion dollars was spent in hair salons in 2019. There is power in good hair.

So today, I am styling my hair to connect with my own power. Staying at home doesn’t have to mean hiding. If you feel like doing your hair or putting on makeup, it’s not as pointless as you might think.

See you next time, friends.