The Tending Tent: "Twas the night before the New Blood Moon..."

...literally and metaphorically that is and a night that registers at about a 4 am level of darkness and quietude.

I reached out to a friend this weekend during the protests over the confirmation of Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court and asked, "Why am I not out yelling in the street right now?"

"Outrage fatigue" was her reply with no punctuation at all, let alone an exclamation point.  I knew what she meant.  We are getting drained.  We are nearing what I remember a mentor warning me about when I was a facilitator in in-patient recovery:  We know how serious things are.  We know women are dying.  We see them starving themselves to death.  And because of that knowledge we have to be ever lightening up, or we, and those we are helping, will not have sufficient energy to see this momentous journey of recovery through to its promised outcome.  Recovering takes tons of energy.

That workshop with Dr. Anita Johnston was a turning point for me. Up until that moment in my work I had been carefully hemming in what was a very natural instinct for me, humor in the face of horror.  I thought levity would come off as insensitivity and that I wasn't taking our situation seriously.  Once I trusted Dr. Johnson's  guidance however, and started regularly allowing my outrage to blaze in a way that felt light and energizing rather than suffocating - everything in my work and my own life changed.

Another lesson from my days on those front lines is to never underestimate the benefit of being useful.  Whether we are very personally or sympathetically experiencing this moment in history, if we care we will continue to feel the urge to act, "what can I do?"  From my personal experience with victimization the need for an outlet to be of purpose, to fight rather than freeze, is everything.  Healing this cultural wound will be a fight, like personal recovery, that requires massive amounts of endurance.  When I look at the two coping techniques, continuing to rise up and lighten up while being of purpose, I think of women doing what I dare say they do best - circling up and tending.  Tending to themselves, tending to each other, and in our case tending to a culture long in need of an intervention.

Although it is our natural instinct, fueled by that amazing hormone Oxytocin, it has been my experience that since the red tent has long vanished from the common cultural landscape women tending together is something that must be taught and modeled.  The most common reflection I remember hearing under the red tent that I hoisted in the name of recovery was, "I didn't know it could be like this..."  The blank was filled in seemingly endless ways; that I could feel so safe, that other women aren't my competition, that I'm not the only one.

Although the red tent I'm raising this time around is not in the name of recovery but rather prevention it is tethered to the same principal - tending.  It will be a place where we can model ever lightening up and rising while being of purpose  along with many other things.  In fact, my notebook has quite literally exploded at the seams with ideas of how I can help make our daughters' lives different.  This and a recent internal broken binding has convinced me that now is the moment to fight.  Counter-culturally, but not counterintuitively, by the act of tending.

In the name of purpose and lightening up I'm inviting you to grab a guy line with us and pull with all your might.  Starting this Monday, on the new moon, I'll be pulling hard every week to unravel the guy line "I'm pitching a tent" from base locker room talk to a new inspired way of living that will benefit not just our  daughters but all that they touch.  You can join this weekly "Tending Tent" we're raising in person or by starting your own and sharing your ideas and stories with us.  We will be posting all of our ideas and experiences under "The Tending Tent" blog entries.