Gutted and grounded.

Heartbreak, beauty, and the comprehension of paradox.

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On election night I received a portal message from my gastroenterologist at 10:04 p.m.

Consider that this kind doctor chose looking at pictures of an ulcerated colon over watching the presidential results come in. Perhaps we were both thinking,

Anything, anything but this. 

I too would take a peruse through colonoscopy photos over this new reality we’re stepping into, but if you’ll permit me to stretch this metaphor a little further:

I’ve had Crohn’s disease for over 20 years and lately have been feeling well, actually. Unhindered by symptoms, surprisingly energetic. I went in to the procedure optimistic, like perhaps some invisible tide had turned. Not out of disease - I’m not naive on this - but onto a gentler path.

But the scope revealed something else: inflammation I wasn’t aware of, a roiling beneath. I had been anticipating celebration, instead was thrown into conversations around new interventions and medications, a different level of alarm. And this disjointedness - what I hoped/expected against what was found/collected - sent me into a quiet, dark place.

Perhaps you can see why I’m sharing this story.

And why, when I describe how I feel the day after this reckoning, the word that comes out is gutted.

Perhaps you are too. Awake in the night, afraid for us all. At 3 a.m. I wonder if this is the fly in the ointment of the American Experiment: We enshrined the pursuit of happiness rather than the embrace of kindness, and so here we are.

When sun comes up I remember to breathe. A friend - someone who’s devoted her life to service and local politics - writes and says she is trying to stay grounded in the unwavering: dog walks, drinking water, light.

This is a kind of endurance I can embrace. One that doesn’t shake me out of grief but takes me to Octavia Butler:

“The world is full of painful stories. Sometimes it seems as though there aren't any other kind and yet I found myself thinking how beautiful that glint of water was through the trees.” — Octavia Butler

How beautiful that glint of water was through the trees. I hold the words like a reminder, a stone in my pocket.

This fall has been marked by a kind of beauty that’s seemed extra, somehow. A loveliness startling in its abundance. A few weeks ago, walking through the woods with my red dog, I looked up in the trees and saw this flaming heart amongst the pines. 

Friends, neighbors, clients, we all kept turning to each other. “Have you been outside?” “Have you seen?”

And then yesterday, in Maine in November it was 75 degrees. We are so beyond what we know, into the fire of something else. Painful stories unfolding everywhere.

Someone once told me that the mind can’t comprehend paradox, but the heart can.

And so. I am noticing the light on the water, moving my body. Writing when I can. Trying to remember to choose connection over rumination. That we can be gutted and grounded, both.

I’ll end with Clarissa Pinkola Estes, whose Do not lose heart, We were made for these times is offering much needed solace:

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times.

The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires … causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these – to be fierce and to show mercy toward others, both — are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it.