A NEW NORMAL

Crisis is a terrible time.

In crisis, there is no foundation, 

you can't get your bearings, 

your life is turned upside down.

Every nerve ending is raw and on fire.

Often your heart or your body or both are in chaos.

The supports or crutches that you've used no longer 

allow you to numb or distract.

In crisis, you forget how

 to perform the most basic functions.

Breathing, eating, speaking-all might be too much.

Crisis takes us out of Normal.

What is Normal?

Normal is the place where we know everything that will happen.

A place where we know the rules and have already lived some version of the consequences.

Normal is whatever we are used to experiencing.

Normal is the place where we feel comfortable.
Normal is not necessarily healthy, loving, or safe.

Are these Normal places?

Where drinking daily means you don't have to feel anything.
Where your relationship with your spouse bears an uncanny resemblance to North and South Korea.

Where smoking in spite of your lung disease relieves your anxiety.

Where you say the same prayers, like the same statuses, 

vote the same way to prove you belong.
Where you show up at every event wearing a mask-so no one sees the real you.
Where judgement and labels make everything easier to navigate.

Where your relationship is defined by a birth or marriage certificate-

not by any shared experience.

Where you deserve a cupcake (or a few) to make up for the hurt you felt.

Where someone else's discomfort is diminished by your silence.

Art by me...Change is messy.

Humans are incredibly adaptable.

We can get used to anything.

Other animals have to remain in specific habitats or eating the 

bark of  a certain tree-
but humans have populated most of the globe.

We can persevere-through hatred, war, climate destruction, 

and lack of dental care.

Our evolutionary superpower is that

we can tolerate the intolerable.

We can turn that Wasteland into a Normal.

We can love the things and people and circumstances that are killing us.

And pine for it when it changes.

What happens when you can't ever go back to Normal?

When rock bottom is the place that you can't stay anymore,

you're usually evicted by factors
 that you can't control or circumstances you would never choose.

Very few people would leave their normal-

no matter how unhealthy, toxic or boring that normal may be.

The road to a new Normal looks like this....

So many people I love are in need of

and hoping to move towards

a new Normal.
It is painful to watch.

How do you formulate a new Normal?
Where is the path?
Why are the steps so hard and debilitating?
Why can't you carry some of the old Normal along with you?
Just to ease the burden a little.
I don't know.
It just doesn't seem to work that way.

I've been on a journey to a new Normal for a few years now....

and if I'd known what that would look like

how messy and torturous the path to something new would be

I am not sure that I would have continued.

I wish that I could package a healthy, thriving Normal on a map

and show these folks that I love how to find it.

But I suspect that part of finding a healthy Normal

means wanting to leave the old one behind.

Not everyone is ready for that trek.

Update for 2020:

The old Normal is gone-

washed away in a sea of face masks and 

state-sanctioned murders, and

statues thrown to the ground.

What will the new Normal be?

We'll see.