in this note:
tender interconnection
a tender ritual you can try in your home or your learning environment
Hi folks,
When you have a moment and your vessel is ready, I invite you to meet me at the well - it’s full of tenderness today!
We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes a habit.
- Audre Lorde thank you, Audre Lorde.
Tender and Here
Sometimes I wonder if it matters if I have my own children or not? To be able to share with families about their children.
Every time this thought comes to me, I feel the responding awareness that being here for someone, whatever that person’s age, is really about seeing them. And I see children quite clearly.
It’s a seeing that goes beyond what I see with my eyes and what I see based on my education, qualifications and experience with other children. I see children’s intentions, desires, setbacks, edges of growth, dynamic thought processes, and emotions. I look forward to the day that I am a mother to children - it will likely be a wild one.
Until that day, and after that day for many moons I hope, I get to witness the children in my neighborhood. Witness the children of the caregivers I coach. Witness the children and students of the educators I support. Witness my young niece and even younger nephew growing and smiling, sometimes a bit shyly and sometimes practicing yoga with me, through Zoom. As I head out on long, rainy walks with Ernest, I get to witness the neighborhood twins toddling in their snowsuits on the other side of the street with their nanny, waving to them and shouting ‘hellos’ from Ernest and me.
Something trips me up often though when connecting with and supporting families. It’s the barrier of individualistic separateness I sense when I’m out and about, making my way through the world.
The path that I see around / through / over / under this barrier of isolation and separateness is called collective care, community care or communal care.
I prefer the term ‘collective care’ since, to me, it illustrates the ability and need to support someone simply because they are a part of the collective of humans, whether or not they are in your community.
The more we walk this path of collective care, the more the suffocating overgrowths of isolation and individualistic separateness can be held back. It’s like English Ivy, an invasive species here in the PNW. As more beings walk these paths of collective care, the ivy is held back, away from the paths; over much time, the paths become clearer, wider, and softer underfoot.
I got tripped up by this English Ivy mess of individualism a few weeks ago. I was walking into Target to stock up on toilet paper and detergent and a woman rolled out her big, red cart with a kid hanging onto the front and another, younger child wailing his brains out in her arms, on the ground, back in her arms…
A split second thought of “could I go over and ask if she wanted me to push or hold the cart as she attempted to soothe the younger child?” passed through me.
I didn’t do it. The invasive species of separateness tripped me and thwarted my internal desire and need to tend to the collective through offering a hand to this woman and her children.
So how could I (you! and we!) get tripped up less often by this norm (and illusion) of separateness? Especially during this time?
How could we tend to each other and ourselves in supportive, nurturing, kind, generous, life-giving and -affirming ways?
I’d love to hear your ideas and how you’ve been heeding these calls. (I read and respond to every comment)
One Response, a Tender Ritual
Here’s something that I created a few months ago that’s now become a habit. It’s been helping me be tender with myself and with others.
It’s been helping me link the soothing arms of the weekend with the getting-things-done arms of the work week. It could help us link arms with one another, too, I think.
Monday is a transition day. So is Friday.
My partner’s work week is (usually) Monday through Friday. My work week could be Saturday through Sunday. My partner’s could be, too, and sometimes is, since we both run our own businesses. But for the most part, we try to keep work to M - F and weekending to Sa. - Su. Sometimes I actually get my most valuable work done on the weekend since my creativity enjoys being contrarian.
Nevertheless, I had been finding that Monday was especially hard for me, since he went off to his shop to work and I went to…. the corner of our living room to work with a sweet and often energetic dog (that’s Ernest!) nosing me in the butt. (Well it used to be the kitchen table (our one table at the time) though now I’m thankful to have a swanky Ikea adjustable standing desk in the corner of the living room.) Making my way to my work, those ivy tendrils of isolation would creep over to my heart, having me believe that I was on my own in all the bad ways and none of the good ways.
So I declared Monday a transition day.
And threw Friday in too, because, if I was going to slowly shift into the work week, it might be good to slowly shift out of it, too, right?
Monday and Friday get about half work and half weekend vibes. For me, that might mean I sleep in a bit more on those days. Or I do some house cleaning that I try to reserve for the weekends (because if I didn’t I don’t think I would get any work done at all beyond cleaning). On Monday, I might not plan out the whole upcoming week but rather just the day.
And more than the actions, it’s the expectations I have for myself on those days. They are lower. They are looser. They are less set on earning money and more on tending to self. It’s like I’ve decided to just tilt my head slightly to the left rather than to the right, choosing to look at the day differently, with weekend-ish-colored glasses on rather than work week blue-tinted glasses.
Maybe try it out yourself, with your class, with your family. Declare Monday - and maybe Friday, too - transition days?
It’s funny too. Once I declared this I realized it was already happening in one form long before my pronouncement. I have almost always thought about the weekend on Mondays and Fridays, whether it’s the one that just passed or the one coming up so- so- soon. And I’m certainly not the only one who does this, right?
But the declaration served as a personal reclamation of my time and how I move through the week, rather than a leash pulling or pushing me through the week.
I don’t want an abrupt kick in the pants when the Sunday to Monday shift happens. I want it to be a more me kind of transition. I want Mondays and Fridays to be more grainy, fuzzy, and zig-zaggy like weekend days often are and then maybe I’ll have more energy and wherewithal for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday to be more crisp, clear, and straightforward.
Now, I have full recognition that - given that I work for myself - my set-up is inherently different than many. But I do think we can all, in our own ways, reclaim our time through integrating transition days.
Is this possible with kids?
Yeah, I think so. It’s definitely possible with young children (ages 0 to 6) since seriously, you’re the only one who is developmentally ready to know and remember what day it is (whether or not you actually do remember what day it is is up to you).
Inviting in unique routines and rituals that you do only on certain days of the week helps signify to children (and to us adults). Friday has been homemade pizza night in our home since last March. Sometimes pizza night gets moved to Saturday if something odd happens in the week but it is hardly ever skipped entirely.
And even beyond having the transition tied to a specific day or two, acknowledging and implementing intentional transitions and rituals attached to the transitions, can greatly support children. The pace of our culture seems to hardly ever authentically match that of children, with them either moving and growing more swiftly or much more slowly than their surroundings or the clock.
When we intentionally observe, acknowledge and implement transitions that meet our children, in my experience, space and time can become more expansive for our children, and often for the caregivers present, too.
I wonder what habits, routines and rituals you already are enacting that support the weekend to work week transition? Which ones might be calling for a bit more sparkle and intentionality?
Which ones could you expand to hold an entire day as a transition somehow?
And what brand-new ones might you want to call in to your unfolding new year?
They could be really small and only noticeable to you. They could be just for one child in your family or your group. Or they could be loud and flashy and include your whole family or learning community.
A suggestion: however big or small, please include gentleness and tenderness as the foundation of your new transition habit, routine or ritual. It’s what so many of us desire and need.
One dear woman and mother I know, as she was initiating her family’s journey into home schooling decided to keep Friday as pajama day. It had been a pandemic ritual that she wanted to intentionally hold onto as they stepped into the new school year, and new ways of learning altogether at home.
Is this possible when you work for someone else?
Yeah, I think so. Maybe your deliverables or your to-do list for the day is slightly smaller or more simple on Mondays. Maybe you’re able to adjust your hours at work on Mondays and Fridays. Maybe you’re able to wear something extra cozy on your transition days. Or bring something special for lunch.
What could be shifted just ever so slightly to invite in more spaciousness into your weekend to work week transition?
It might not even be noticed by anyone but you. And it’s for you, any ways, so it doesn’t matter if anyone else observes it.
Again, it’s about expectations much more than actions so finding a way to shift your expectations, and maybe even your boss’s expectations, for those transition days would be really swell.
Is this possible if you are not working right now? Or are retired?
Yeah, I think so. Right after I was laid off last March, I still found it necessary to have what I thought of as a work week and a weekend. At the time, it helped that my partner’s work schedule wasn’t negatively affected, if anything, he was working more rather than less at the time. The structure of his work schedule lent a bit of steadiness to those overwhelming and mushed-together days.
There is a need to have certain times for productivity and other times for intentionally not being productive. A job isn’t the only way of being productive! It seems doubly important to give transition time in between productivity and non-productivity (hibernation? rest? inhaling? simmering?).
How could you invite in a transition between completing tasks at your desk / at your computer to being unproductive?
Perhaps it’s simply a loud clap of your hands or a soft rubbing of your hands on your thighs?
Tell me what you find in this offering. It’s one big and small playful experiment.
Til next time,
Cassandra