What I Learned | Winter 2021

This year, my little mountain community has seen the snowiest season that it’s had in the last handful of years. In fact, most of the country had a few snow or ice-covered days last month. The silence of the falling flakes made us pause and rest after the tumultuous year we’ve endured, and now, with the warming temperatures and the thawing ground, comes a new season, one of growth and fresh beginnings.

I’m feeling a wave of motivation as spring unfolds. I want to purge and clean and stretch and move and write. Oh, how I need to write. There are many things to be said, but I’ve been in a season of reflection and haven’t had to words to convey it all. Soon. First, along with Emily P. Freeman and her amazingly supportive community, a farewell to winter and all of the lessons that it showed me.

Science is really cool.

A year ago this month, the term “Covid-19” was just beginning to get national news coverage here in the States as the first cases of the virus were being detected in states on both the west and east coasts. Tragically since then, millions have been infected and hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost. Scientists have been working hard in the last twelve months to produce not one, not two, but three vaccines that have now been cleared by the FDA for emergency use. Normally, vaccine study and creation takes years, but to see how diligently these groups have worked to research and roll out a prophylaxis for this virus is inspiring. And in the age of social media, those who are in the labs and on the front lines are able to share real data so that we can all better understand the impacts this virus has on all of our lives.

Inclusivity and representation are imperative.

For years, I’ve heard from BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and disabled friends how important representation is in books and art and music and media and politics. I understood it, but I don’t think I fully grasped the urgency of the need until I saw deaf and hard of hearing friends (and the community as a whole) react when seeing Captain Andrea M. Hall deliver the pledge of allegiance in American Sign Language at the inauguration of President Joe Biden. Hall is the Fire Captain in Fulton County, Georgia and is the first African American woman to hold that position. She is the child of deaf parents, so she understood that unless there is an ASL interpreter or captions provided on the televised event, it would be inaccessible to those who cannot hear.

More and more, in the comments of social media influencers who do speaking videos in their feeds and stories, I’m seeing requests for captions, and many are now including image descriptions on web and app platforms for those who are blind or visually impaired. Delving deeper, I think about how children are impacted by inclusivity and representation. When they see others who look like them represented in the media that they consume, it makes them feel seen and shows them that their lives are valid. Not everyone in the world is white, straight, cis-gendered, and able-bodied and it’s important that we support representation for all.

Not doing the trendy thing is okay too.

There was recently a trend that swept across all social media platforms. The point was for women to post a black and white photo of themselves and use the trending hashtag before challenging a few friends to do the same. The problem was, the original intention behind the hashtag was to raise awareness about a specific cause and that tag was ultimately hijacked by selfies. This also happened last June when the #BLM tag showed nothing but black squares on a day that everyone put their feeds on silent to amplify Black voices. In both cases, it silenced the cause we were supposed to be promoting and filled the space with nothing helpful for those who were interested in finding valid information about that cause.

It’s fun to be doing the next cool thing. It’s fun to be part of the collective group, and it’s okay to enjoy that. But sometimes, not doing the trendy thing is okay too. This winter, I learned that instead of perpetuating the hashtag hijack, it’s better to just share valuable resources with links and facts and to be candid with your thoughts in a post about a specific topic that has moved you to speak. Like my granny always said, “Just because your neighbor is doing it, doesn’t me you have to as well.”

There is absolutely nothing better than baby giggles.

My niece is now five months old and her personality is really beginning to shine. I can already tell that she is a skeptic like her aunt. (She is my namesake, after all.) She sits back and watches things before deciding if she’s interested or not. She loves to sing and clap and she already has lots of stories to tell, cooing away to anyone who will listen to her. But something she enjoys most and does often is giggling. If you’re singing to her or playing peek-a-boo or tickling her, she bursts into these fits of bubbly laughter that will brighten anyone’s day. She certainly has been my quick fix when I’ve been feeling down the last few months and I cannot wait to watch her and her sense of humor grow.

I must have a good strategy to block distractions.

The last year of pandemic living has not been good for my workflow, as I’m sure has been the case for many others. I began 2020 with a hardcore “no tech while working” rule and between doom-scrolling and web-surfing to numb myself, my phone has been glued to my hand. I’ve unfortunately gotten back into the bad habit of getting sidetracked while trying to work, letting every notification ping steal my attention away from what I should be focusing on. It’s a difficult addiction to break, but I’ve learned that I must have a good strategy to deal with distractions.

Hannah Brencher once shared that when she’s writing, she turns her phone on silent and places it in a box on the other side of the room. What can’t be seen can’t be a distraction, right? So, the new routine looks like putting my phone on airplane mode and only checking it during breaks. Ideally, I’d like to get back to using the device only for what it was originally intended, calls and texts, but that still seems like a long way off.

A dangerous line is crossed when leaders are idolized.

Without making this sound like too much of a political rant, I started thinking about this topic after seeing this TikTok video. Then I watched network news coverage of two men rolling a large, shiny, gold-colored statue of Donald Trump into the CPAC venue and wondered if any of my ultra-conservative, Bible-believing friends and family members caught the golden calf vibes oozing out of the book of Exodus. Earlier the same week, I read several articles about two very well-known ministers being accused of sexual misconduct. Then I binged the docuseries, The Vow, about the NXIVM cult leader Keith Raniere, whose followers treated like a god-incarnate. The combination of all these things got my wheels turning.

Regardless of where you fall on the spectrum of political and religious identities, we tend to put leaders of all sorts on pedestals without really thinking about what that means. Political leaders, for instance, should be viewed as public servants elected to represent a population and work to solve the problems of that group. They should not be seen as celebrities or gods. On the same note, religious leaders should be viewed as flawed humans like the rest of us rather than spiritual beings who have some divine celestial connection and can do no wrong.

We are treading on a very slippery slope when we start to see and treat our leaders as if they are a step above the rest of us and overlook behavior that would not fly if it was Bob or Julie from down the street. And I think it’s because there has been this historical elevating of anyone in a higher rank that has made space for egregious behavior often making headlines, the disclosure of which, usually signals the downfall of that particular person from that particular pedestal.

It’s dangerous when we idolize leaders, no matter who they are. We need to step up and be constituents and congregants instead of fans and followers. We can and should critique our leaders, because if they are abusing the power they’ve been given instead of serving the interests of those who elected them, then we need to find better leaders.

You can be the star in your own show or a supporting character is someone else’s.

In the words of Arthur Abbott from The Holiday, “In the movies, we have leading ladies and we have the best friend. You, I can tell, are a leading lady, but for some reason, you’re behaving like the best friend.” I’ve watched this movie hundreds of times and have heard these words just as many, but this Christmas, with the help of this scene in Shameless, it clicked. I don’t have to be a supporting character in the stories of everyone in my life. I can and should be the star in my own show.

Instagram is a goldmine for mental health assistance.

Maybe this has always been the case or maybe it started at the beginning of the pandemic when widespread isolation caused depression and anxiety rates to skyrocket, but Instagram is loaded with psychotherapists, counselors, and social workers who are sharing a wealth of free information in posts, stories, and reels. Dr. Kreft helped me identify and understand some childhood trauma that I experienced and Nadia Addesi helped me better understand my anxiety coping mechanisms. Just two examples and they certainly don’t take the place of personalized help you can get when consulting with your own specialist, but they have provided a lot of aha moments.

Only you can enforce your boundaries.

In 2019, I began working on setting and re-establishing some boundaries after reading a very thought-provoking book on the topic. I’ve been a work in progress ever since. This winter, after creating some boundaries and having them trampled on, a close friend reminded me that no one is going to enforce my boundaries for me. Only I can do that, and sometimes it’s necessary to walk away from a relationship when the other person isn’t respectful of the lines that you’ve drawn.

This was an important lesson that encouraged me to look at the bigger picture. In the age of social media, when oversharing is often misconstrued as vulnerable authenticity, I noticed that we aren’t very good at setting boundaries. In fact, I’d bet that a lot of young people who have grown up in this social media era don’t even understand how to set boundaries or why they are important. Perhaps this is a topic that could be covered in a life skills class, but for now, I’ll continue my work in self-preservation.

There is always light.

“There is always light. If only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.” And basically everything else Amanda Gorman said in The Hill We Climb.

Things are allowed to be good.

2020 was a hard year with everything that was going on in the world around us, and with nothing going on in front of us as we collectively sat in our living rooms waiting for isolation to end. Probably one of the most important lessons that I learned this season is this: things are allowed to be good. Even though the world was chaotic and scary and we were bored and anxious, I was still able to have good days. I found delight in little things again, learned to appreciate quality time with those I love, and realized that I can experience multiple feelings at one time. But there were good moments and good days. I hope you had some good days too.