Yesterday was St. Patrick's Day and I didn’t wear a lick of green, which would have demonstrated a terrifying lack of judgment in my elementary school days. Punishment was swift, brutal, and repetitive, kind of like getting spanked and slapped around for your birthday.
Did the entire world forget to wear green? The stories my students have shared have been particularly brutal. Death by suicide, overdose, sexual violence, the terror of war, childhood disease, and other unimaginable horrors too close to home. I’ve been checking in on people every day, emailing links to self-care for empaths, soothing meditations, discussing emergency self-care.
It has also been a week of conflict on a minor scale. Saying no. Setting boundaries. Asking for what I need.
After writing a vulnerable story about my Dad, a woman in my class wrote about having had an affair with him when I was little and hoping she wasn’t one of his girlfriends that I hated. My throat burned, my cheeks flushed pink. I looked at her and I said, I am not able to comment on your story. Next?
That night I got an email inviting me to lead a second workshop in a government-funded space. I’d loved my first workshop…the stories were hot, fresh, jumping, raw. I'd love to come back, I wrote. But this time I’d like to get paid. And then I didn't hear back. Oh no. Was I being a money-grubbing bitch? Should I continue to volunteer? But wait…..doesn’t the government have money? At least more than I do? How can they expect people to work for free? In a moment of panic, I wrote back and apologized. And then I felt bad about not having asked earlier, and then for asking at all, and even worse, that I apologized for it.
One of my friends says the planets are especially crazy right week and maybe that is true. Dogs shake their entire bodies when they need to process something, a reset to adapt to a new experience. I have been resetting a lot this week, repeatedly wrapping myself in an energetic shield, like my mother taught me to do when I was small.
A few days ago, I finally figured out what we all need. A psychic condom. Protection against easily transmutable and highly contagious toxic disease, aggressive energy, bad vibes, and unacceptable worldwide scenarios circulating around just outside our bodies, trying to force their way in. Stay tuned.