Pangs (How I Work)

I'm learning a lot about myself and how I work.
I can't say the stuff I'm learning is entirely new or surprising, but maybe it's just that I'm relearning myself through every new experience.
And I don't have all my "mirrors" here to reflect me and affirm who I am (the mirrors being all of you, my family and friends).
Dave and Dahlia are my reflections, and I am theirs.
So I find my reflection in the way I get through challenges, in how I experience each day.
This is what I learned about myself this week:

I am an emotional being - I experience and process everything through my emotions.
I've always been like this, and I don't really know any other way to be.
Nor do I really want to be any other way - that just wouldn't be me.
No matter how much I know that "it'll get easier, just give it time," "chin up, it's all about attitude," or "c'mon, get it together, be more positive," if I don't have the opportunity to feel my feelings, really go through them, and work through them... well, that's just not my way.
Because if I don't feel them and work through them, they will keep coming back up until I do.
Julius reminds me that my emotions are very much on the surface, that I am physically a small person with small bones and thin skin, incredibly sensitive.
This doesn't mean I am not strong.
It means for me that when I imagine that protective shield that protects me from taking everything in from all around - well, it's a good idea for that shield to be nice and thick and solid and resilient. Steel.
And it's a good idea for me to regularly adjust my chakras so that I'm not taking things in that don't belong inside me. (Second, fourth, sixth and seventh chakra almost shut, first and third and fifth chakra open. Grounding channel connected to the core of the earth. I know... I'm so Northern California!)

Jerusalem vibrates at an incredibly high frequency.
This place is an energetic hub, has been since the beginning of history.
Life is stressful here. It's noisy and busy and diverse and incredible and messy.
It's a "reptilian brain" kind of place - probably all of Israel is, but Jerusalem more than anywhere else.
This country was founded by survivors - Israel's independence came just after the Holocaust, so important because of that.
It's a tiny Jewish state surrounded by hostile Arab states, all those surrounded by a big and complicated world of politics.
It's tribal, always has been.
It's all about survival here - you really feel that everyone's in "work hard to survive" mode.
Maybe I'm exaggerating, but I really feel that.
I had "ice cafe" yesterday with my friend Devorah, who is American but has lived here for many years.
She's my age, and 9 years ago she founded a social justice organization that works with Bedouin communities
She's going to leave the organization in September, and needs to take some time to recharge her batteries, probably somewhere outside this fiery place.
We talked about the reptilian brain - the fight or flight response that courses through the veins of everyone here.
She said it is a good thing that I'm using my own reptilian brain - it definitely helps you survive here, without getting totally beat down and drained.
It's very different than California, where for the most part people are calmer, gentler, where feelings are felt and there is space for them.
(Although I vividly remember complaining before we left that things have changed in the Bay Area, that even there now it's every man for himself, that when you're stuck in traffic and everyone's irritated and irritable, people are nasty and that gentler California is hard to find...)

This is what I told Dave last night:
When I think about the world as a big vast place, when I think of myself as a citizen of this crazy planet, I get sad and overwhelmed.
I wish I could get on a space ship and go to another untouched planet, like The Little Prince.
Because it's messy in the world. People are really suffering in so many places.
The gap between the haves and the have nots just gets wider and wider.
Plastics factories in China keep spitting out toxins faster than we can imagine, exploiting their workers to make all of our stuff.
There is so much suffering, and when I connect to that on a deep level, I just cry and I want to scream.
It's easy to feel totally powerless. I want to retreat, I want to turn off those thoughts. I don't feel safe. Fear consumes me.
When I go to places like New York City, like Jerusalem... places that make me think of the comic book Metropolis - dark, messy, crowded, dangerous, eternal - it's so easy to tap into that messiness of the big vast world.
I could never live long-term in places like that; I think they would beat me down.
Not because I'm not incredibly strong and resilient.
But because I can't be constantly working to shield myself from their intensity.
Because if I am constantly looking at how messy it all is, I just get depressed and scared and want to hide.
I'm just too sensitive; it's too raw.
I need a lot of calm - you know, like the calm of the suburbs I grew up in. (Oh how I appreciate the boring homogeneous place where I grew up!)
Within the context of calm and quiet, I feel so much more empowered to make change.
To do things like plant my garden in organic soil, recycle and compost, sun dry my laundry, buy things that aren't made in China, or just buy less in general.
In the context of peace and a slower vibration, I don't feel the need to shut down, I'm not in survival mode, not constantly trying to protect myself.
For this reason, I'm looking forward to living in Cincinnati - it's a city, but it's small, and it feels suburban. There are quiet streets with sweet little houses with gardens.
Places where I can recharge my batteries without everything around me constantly sucking them dry, saying over and over, "HEY! LIFE IS MESSY!"
It's good to know this about myself - I think it will inform where we end up ultimately when Dave becomes a rabbi.
Luckily, the desire Dave has of being able to ride his bike to work goes well with my need for smaller and calmer.
And it's interesting to think about my desire to become a nurse, because I am choosing to do some very intense work.
But see, that's exactly me: As long as I have a context where I can feel calm and safe and held, I feel like I can do anything.
I am drawn to intense work - I think I'm going to be great at it.
But I couldn't be a nurse in a public hospital in New York City, then go home on the subway and live in a loud humming apartment building in a noisy neighborhood.
On my days off, I need to know that I can go home to my quiet house in my quiet neighborhood.
Then I can do anything. Drawn to intensity and craving calm at the same time.

So to come back to what I started with:
I've been letting myself feel pangs the last few days.
Pangs of homesickness, wishing I could be there to see all of the new babies born, hold them, welcome them close up.
Pangs of wishing I were still pregnant - I'd be 6 months pregnant right now if I hadn't miscarried. (I wonder what this whole experience of the last 3 weeks here would've been like if I'd been pregnant... more emotional, less? Harder, easier? I know my body knows best, I know I can trust it. I know when it's time, I'll get pregnant again, will have my own second child, Dahlia will have her baby brother or sister. And she'll be a great big sister because she'll be a bit older. I know I'm doing all I can right now to heal my colitis, get things working really well so that I can get there.)
Pangs of longing for the life I left behind, missing my friends and my family and my sister.
Missing the ease of it all, the familiarity, the completeness.

I've just been letting myself feel it.
And by going through all those emotions, I'm making space inside myself to welcome in the newness of what's here and all that is ahead.
If I don't let all these emotions out, if I don't give them their voice, they're just going to keep taking up space inside me, and my resistance won't let up.
That's how I work... it's pretty simple.