Reframing the Pandemic Race

As a devoted runner, I find life lessons from this movement that help me get through difficult times.

Journey with me for a moment…

We have signed up for a distance running race. For some of us, this is familiar territory. For others who consider paying money to cover long distances on your own feet a ridiculous contractual agreement, just play along.

As we nervously approach the starting line, our race director tells us that today we will be running a race with no defined finish line. Imagine the emotions we would feel together at hearing this news. Confusion. Frustration.  “I want my money back.”

Instead of a well-defined journey, say 5k or 10k, this race with unclear distance and unknown finish line requires us immediately to switch our mindset.

Running races, like much of life’s challenges, give us a clear finish line. At age 16, we can get a driver’s license. At 18, we can vote. We know how many credits we need to finish a degree. We have clear deadlines at work for submitting a given report. Many working people right now can cite for you the exact month at which they are eligible to retire, even if it is decades away.

So, as the gun goes off to start the race, we have a decision to make. Do we run the race disgruntled and depressed at our predicament? Or do we turn this into a chance to settle into a new challenge and enjoy the experience?

Is it possible that we could enjoy nature’s beauty, the chance to see what our own body can do on that day, and the camaraderie of runners around us even more because there is no finish line to distract us?

By detaching from a “finish line mindset” could we become more present, the goal now being to enjoy each moment?

Let’s now step into the race we are all running, the COVID race on the pandemic course.

This endurance event that has us at a point of exhaustion and fatigue has no clear finish line.

We are on the course, facing daily and weekly questions that runners often ask aloud on the race course.

How much longer?

Can I really finish this thing?

Why aren’t there more aid stations out on this course?

 

I offer a simple reframe as we all try to figure out our pandemic race strategy.

Let us change our gaze from looking for the finite end of the race, a finish line that is yet to be marked, and instead focus on the progress we are making.

Say these three simple sentences to yourself:

Today, we are one day closer to the finish than we were yesterday.

This week, we are one week closer to the finish than we were last week.

And this month, we find ourselves a month closer to the finish than we were last month.

We avoid the runner’s pitfall of incessantly asking “How much more is left” and instead focus ourselves on our journey toward the finish, one step at a time. Enjoy the moment, listening to life’s symphony playing its beautiful music through your children, your family, your co-workers, and the sounds of nature. Appreciate those in the race around you.

“One day closer” now our mindset, letting go of “finish line mindset” and its accompanying worry about where/when the finish lies. 

We might also look over our shoulder. Appreciate the year we have endured and struggled and overcome since March 2020 forced a new reality upon us. 

We have already run a long race together, and we should take moments to be proud of the ground already covered.

Brothers and sisters, we are getting closer to the finish with each passing day, week, and month. That is true regardless of when/where the finish line lies.

Sit with that for a few moments. Better yet, take this new mindset, lace up your shoes, and go run/walk/move with it.

See you at the post-race party!

This piece was first published on the DADvocacy Consulting Group blog. Check out the stories and tales on the importance of "daddying" on their blog!

 

Meeting the Team

 The “pop up socially-distanced social” this past weekend was a simple way to show thanks to our amazing volunteers with the Native Health Initiative (NHI). These young men and women have served with the loving service that NHI is known for, not using the pandemic as an excuse.

We offered to pay for food and coffee for whoever made it.

That’s when I had a pandemic moment.

We have all had them, over and over. Things that finish the sentence, “Only in a pandemic would ____”

For instance, think about pandemic moments from your Valentine’s weekend.

Virtual parties and cards.

A year without those crappy tasting candy hearts with sappy messages on them, the ones that sit in the breakroom tempting us to try them even though we promised ourselves last Valentine’s “never again”.

Ordering takeout in lieu of a nice sit-down dinner and then having that guts to offer a lame-o excuse like, “Dear, the reason I got the food to go is that I care so much about your health and safety. Besides, I don’t think either of us look as attractive wearing masks. Now where are those plastic eating utensils?”

Man, any other year that sentence would be a relationship-ender, right? This year, that gets you kudos and a kiss on the cheek for being so (COVID) considerate and (public health) grounded. It might even be considered (pandemic) romantic.

Back to coffee.

Eliana is a wonderful medical student. We asked her to help lead a program of NHI called Healers of Tomorrow. This program, known as HOT, requires an incredible amount of coordination amongst a team of leaders, and this year’s team has worked hard to support 50 high school students aspiring to be health professionals. The HOT leaders spend 20 hours a month coordinating the monthly seminars, 1 on 1 mentorship and service components of the program. (Remarkably, NHI operates this program on less than $1000 a year most years. The beauty of love-grounded activism and our incredible volunteers!)

So, why is Eliana beaming so bright as she walks out of the coffee shop? I know how nice a small treat can feel when you are in medical school. Been there.

And I know how nice it is to be able to have live human interaction after 11 months of virtual living.

But Eliana’s smile was about something else.

“This is the first time I have actually met my HOT team!” she exclaimed.

I had to think. When we asked Eliana to step up amidst her medical school duties, it was over zoom, April 2020. Indeed, she had developed an intense working relationship with people she had never met. This team has worked so seamlessly together that I had forgotten they had never sat in a room together, never met over coffee. Their friendships and incredible work had been built on and in a virtual world.

Maybe you have had similar pandemic moments as Eliana was had at the coffee shop?

Maybe I was the one having a pandemic moment, being jarred from my pre-pandemic world where I was always the one imploring our NHI teams to meet in person, feeling this was the only way to create strong teams.

And as the sun peaked out from behind the clouds, I caught a glimpse at the beautiful resilience that epitomizes all of us over this last year.

We have found new ways to be.

        We have found new ways to serve.

                We have found new ways to love.

Happy (belated) Valentine’s. Next year, I promise to tell you this in person with a hand-made card with a few of those crappy candy hearts taped to the front.

Three of our incredible HOT program leaders (L-R): Talyia Torres, Lorenzo Silva and Eliana Garcia. Meeting for the first time in-person after 10 months of incredible virtual work together.

Moving Ahead

 

Like a dog driven by sense of smell exquisite, I am drawn to the inspiration of life with intensity. My kids and family, my patients, my experiences in the woods and mountains as a runner. Probably more so over the last year, I seek the sweet scent of inspiration, having been changed by the process of writing regularly. Not a good speller, but I do enjoy writing.

As I moved on the bike path, I began to pick up a smell of something beautiful.

Crossing under a tunnel, the aroma was stronger still.

And suddenly, it was before me.

A sign. Like, a real-deal sign. Obviously planted there by a talented artist, a do-gooder, or a person looking to make the word a brighter place. Maybe someone fitting all three.

I gave thanks.

“Moving Ahead”

That’s what the sign said, for those who chose to see.

Obviously the work of a skilled artist.

Placed there just for me.

I thought about my bike ride. Movement is indeed sacred, cure for stagnation and all that threatens our vitality.

I thought about the pandemic and all of the moments where we have all wallowed, wondered aloud: “Are we moving at all? And if so, is it backward or ahead?”

Moving Ahead!

I trembled with fear and hope, alchemy instantaneous.

And then I trembled from a machine trembling not too far away.

And smelled the sweet smell of fresh-cut grass.

Kinaaldá

running

                       2

                           sunrise immaculate

                                  rise

                                                  2

                                                        Higher Selves

                                         image of Holy Ones

 

sand gathered

    clay sifted

        fire started

            cake envisioned

                delicacies created

                    K'e' alive and breathing upon us

                                                           thru us

after a year infectious

it is love and joy and ceremony now spreading

isolation the curve flattened

shot in the arm

2 immunize against despair

any symptoms 2day?

Yes

                       joy

Yes

                       soul elation

Yes

                       centered again

This week's inspiration for writing was my daughter, Nizhoni. She made a big leap toward womanhood this past week, celebrated in a 4-day Navajo ceremony known as Kinaalda. It honors the sacred moment of first menstruation, of leaving childhood and becoming a woman. Doing Kinaalda in the pandemic was different - Zoom for people to join the ceremony virtually, COVID protocols meshed with ceremonial protocols. This piece was written on day 2 of the Kinaalda as we prepared for the Navajo cake to be made using an urban modification - didn't want to hit underground gas lines using the traditional fire pit in the ground. 

The picture shows Nizhoni after one of her 13 runs that are a central part of the Kinaalda, with running used as a prayerful, spiritual exercise. The runs are meant to strengthen her as she moves from girl to woman. Snow was gifted to us during the ceremony and was a beautiful part of that morning's run.

May we keep ceremony, in all of its forms/languages/rituals/religions as part of our days and weeks!!! Today, this week, next week, and beyond. Doctor's orders.

"I am not you"

 

“I am not you.”

Those four words have stuck with me for over the last fifteen years.

Let me take you on a quick journey to explain.

A medical student in North Carolina, I decided to use spring break to create a Civil Rights pilgrimage, gathering a diverse group of undergraduate students in a rented van for the journey.

I had grown up studying the places and faces of the movement in the 1950s and 60s, impressed at how these freedom fighters worked for change at so many levels of inequity – ballot box, lunch counter, schools, buses, and legislature.

Over the previous spring breaks, I had made a few trips from NC south to Birmingham, Tuskeegee, Montgomery and Selma and had gotten to know a good number of veterans of the marches and activism of many decades prior. Fred Gray, who defended Rosa Parks and Dr. King, used his law degree to litigate for justice. Johnnie Carr, a close friend to Rosa Parks who helped lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Congressman John Lewis, who led a pilgrimage of his own each year to teach members of the U.S. Congress about the civil rights history that he had helped lead as a young man. 

For a medical student stuck far too deep in books, the trip to Alabama where history was alive with these heroes was invigorating.

So, in 2005 the pilgrimage was set. Using my contacts from the previous years, we headed south. Selma, Alabama was the center of our attention, in part because of the annual Jubilee celebration held each March to commemorate “Bloody Sunday”. Joanne Bland (pictured below with John Lewis) who marched with her sister on that fateful day, was our gracious host, finding enough spare rooms for us to have a place to stay.

Bloody Sunday

On March 7^th, 1965, 600 marchers set out from Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma, led by John Lewis and others, a march to protest the systematic ways African Americans were kept from voting. (In Dallas County where Selma sits, more than 50% of the population was African American, yet they made up only 2% of registered voters.)

The marchers met a violent attack on the Edmund Pettis Bridge that day, a bridge named after a leader of the KKK. The scenes of crazed officers attacking peaceful protestors shown on TV sets across the country and world. (Side note: ABC interrupted “Judgment at Nuremberg”, a film exploring Nazi bigotry, and the moral culpability of those who followed orders and didn’t speak out/up, to show breaking footage from Selma...interesting parallel for Americans watching that evening to consider). 

Bloody Sunday awoke the nation to just how strong racism’s chokehold was in the deep south, galvanizing support for the Voting Rights Act that passed in August 1965.

Back to those four words.

The scene is a packed Brown Chapel AME Church for Jubilee 2005, and at the pulpit is Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, a leader of the Birmingham civil rights movement. He is one of many heroes who stood with Dr. King on the frontlines.

Reverend Shuttlesworth is a very different orator than Dr. King. Soft spoken, in a way that almost makes it hard to imagine him leading marches. But soft in a way that begs you to listen, to inch toward the edge of your seat. He commands respect in a remarkably calm way, not needing volume or intensity.

As he began to close his sermon, he used that gentle voice to say.

“I want to tell you one more thing before I get out of here.”

He described the 16 sticks of dynamite placed within feet of where he slept at night, presented to him on Christmas night of 1956. A terrific explosion rocked the house and neighborhood. Remarkably, the wiry hero walked out of the house un-harmed, amidst a house that was reduced to rubble.

A police officer at the scene known to be a KKK member approached Shuttlesworth and said, "If I were you, I'd get out of town as quick as I could."

Fred paused in telling the story, as all elders do at those perfectly timed moments.

“I looked at the officer and told him simply and firmly…”

Another pause as he looked out to the audience.

“I am not you.”

L to R: Shuttlesworth, Ralph Abernathy, and Dr. King

He went on to tell the officer that he should relay to his fellow Klansmen that he had no intentions of leaving town.

Those four words say so much. They fit so perfectly with a spiritual leader steeped in the methodology of non-violence.

In those four words, there is more said than if the good Reverend had proceeded to put the officer in his place with an all-out sermon.

“I am not you.”

Embers of your house smoldering behind you, your life having just flashed before your eyes at the hands of bitter racists, imagine the words you might have come up with for that same officer.

Brothers and sisters, that voice is very much alive in our 2020 moment. It is on the news, in our politics. Fight, fight, fight. Divide, divide, divide. Us vs. Them.

But listen close. The loudest voice telling us “If I were you…” is likely between our ears. It may have even grown louder as the pandemic wears us down.

When we hear that voice, internal or external, we might just pause. We might just imagine Reverend Shuttlesworth 64 years ago on that dark night.

Our response need not be lengthy.

It need not be spoken with great presence or poise.

“I am not you.”

May the best you rise up, today, this week, and this year.

May the best us rise out of the rubble as we collectively heal injustices, divides, and our ailing people + planet.

Fourteen days after Bloody Sunday, with National Guard now protecting the marchers, the 54-mile march from Selma to Montgomery for voting rights took place, with an estimated 25,000 people gathered at the state capitol to hear Dr. King and others speak.

Epilogue: Take a listen - "Glory" by John Legend and Common, from the movie Selma. Watch this movie if you haven't yet done so!!!)

Shepherd's Journey

 

One day closer

One week closer

One month closer

 

The shepherd, tired and weak, shielded his eyes from the gusts of sand as he climbed yet another hill in the vast desert.

He did as he had done every day since setting out on this journey – peering as far he could into the distance ahead of him, he looked desperately for signs of the oasis that was his destination.

And like every day prior, his visioning led to disappointment, with nothing but endless sand in view.

He walked on. Sheep bleating. Shepherd stick beating with a rhythmic thud on the desert sand.

Around mid-day, with sun scorching, a terrible gust of wind came blowing across the landscape. He could see it approaching from in front of him. Airborne tunnels of sand served as the trumpeters announcing the impending arrival of the king. In this case, the wind.

To this point, he had taken these moments head-on, not wanting to waste time in his quest for the oasis.

But today, tired and weak, he made a different decision.

“I will not give the wind the satisfaction of slapping my face today.”

With that, he stopped and turned away from the wind, so that he was facing toward where he had been on this journey.

To the sheep’s and his surprise, he sat down.

Thud. Not a gentle landing.

Shepherd’s stick rattled until coming to a rest.

Sheep confused.

He assumed a fetal position. And began to weep.

No one knows how much time passed, but a good while later, he awoke. The winds had battered his back and he noticed a stinging sensation over his spine. Still sitting, the shepherd uncurled from the fetal position, stretching his legs out in front of him. The wind has passed.

“I have beaten the wind today,” he sighed.

He gazed upon the rolling desert over which he had traveled over the last days. And his mind began to wander.

Looking a good distance toward the horizon, he saw where he had been a day earlier. He smiled.

Squinting still further, he could see where he had been this same time last week. He smiled bigger.

And with his mind’s eye, he looked further still, to where he had been exactly one month ago. You could now see his teeth with the smile.

“I am here. I can go on. My victory today is simply moving forward, one step at a time.”

These words appeared to him.

He rose, shook off sand, and awakened the sheep. “Such lazy animals,” he thought with a chuckle, turning back to face his unknown destination.

His journey continued, but it was different now. There was hope, even joy as he took each step forward toward the oasis. Yes, tiredness as well.

And each day, around mid-day when the sun was scorching and even if there was no headwind, he would turn 180 degrees to whence he had come and say softly to himself and the sheep:

One day closer

One week closer

One month closer

Vaccinating Despair, Injecting Hope

 

Vaccinating despair

Immunizing against virus

       and

viral fear and isolation

Inoculating resilience

Injecting hope

Inspiring immune response

                                           and

infectious optimism                     

I had some other thoughts for this week’s piece, but the energy brought on by the arrival of a vaccine has truly been infectious. I couldn’t ignore it. As a writer, I know that you speak to the moment. It might not be there next week. That has been my guide through this blog’s existence.

I asked a group of first graders this morning about what they were going to do over winter break. Okay, okay – I actually asked them what healthy things they were going to do over break. A few students answered that question with “I think we need to get back to going to school”. Some answered with a question of their own, “When is this going to be over?”

I agree with these 6 year-olds that it would be great for our health and wellness to get back to a normal existence. And while I don’t have an answer for where/when the finish line is of this endurance challenge, it is a wonderful place that we find ourselves this week as the first covid vaccines are given.

The vaccine is a holiday present delivered with dry ice and stored at negative 70 degree Celsius. Batteries sold separately. Restrictions apply. Not available in all 50 states…yeah, we know the verbage of latest, greatest holiday gifts all too well. 

Playstation move over, Pfizer move in. 

Asking partner “Can we afford this?” replaced by questioning health insurance, “Will you cover it?”

The vaccine is a small bit of light cracking through the end of the tunnel. Do you see it? Look closer. Squint if you need to.

The vaccine is a reason to smile, sigh and maybe even cause for tear ducts to open.

The vaccine is an invitation for all of us to move past despair and 2020 and all that we need to leave behind.

Let us roll up our sleeve and accept the injection of hope.

UNM's healthcare workers show off their "boo boos" on first day of vaccinations this week.