Phone notes 2020:
Coronavirus…
April 5th (brother’s 40th)
Looking at pink tree in Arnos (park)
Yesterday went to Callington Rd Nature Reserve, walked fast away from home, really needed that!
I later wrote in my journal about this being the first proper walk we had, just my dog and me, as restrictions eased towards the end of the first lockdown. I was re-entering a forever changed world and also re-entering the world as my second child transitioned from baby to toddler and I could start to find myself again, but during such altered, awkward times. I felt such a dilemma when I reached some narrow steps and thought, ‘how do I socially distance here? What if someone comes?’ and gazing into the distance at the hills, trees, pining to be out of the city where I had felt trapped for months in full-time childcare exhaustion; yearning for space, the horizon, a cleansing forest
Met a small snake
Was thinking about how to start a story, vignette, whatever it is I’m writing…
Place + event (e.g. Snake)
Or Place + feeling (e.g. Freedom, space, escape, movement)
Or Place + memory (e.g. Jurassic cliffs, hiking & riding in Colorado)
I always start with place!
Found myself naming things yesterday – line of tall trees, forgetmenots, hills, etc. (grounding)
June – restrictions easing
The cemetery is open, this is the most joyful thing that has happened for ages, ironically. This is where I process, this is where I feel safe, can walk for ages and still be close to home, winding this way and that, it doesn’t matter if the baby kicks off or does a poo or something
Don’t even care that it’s raining
It’s wonderful
There are tadpoles in the pond
I miss my dog, the two go hand in hand somehow (the cemetery and the dog – he was having a holiday in the countryside)
Cuckoo
13th Nov 2020
2nd lockdown – not like the first
Magical mizzle in the sun and red leaf tree
Talking to people…
It’s about keeping momentum going and not giving in to apathy
15th Nov
Nomar (he’s back!)
Am I healed? Far from it, I have to work it like a muscle and never get complacent. However, the ‘worst’ traumatic memory is no longer right up in my face when I close my eyes, it’s further away, faded, as any memory should be…
Shapes – three trees, semi circle of trees, curve in the road, triangle roofs
Music is the next best thing to dog walking – couldn’t take Nomar into hospital with me for birth of second child (or the first, obviously) so the music I chose reminded me of trees, horses… e.g. The Cure (A Forest)
Walks in lockdown – 6 year old talking my ears off, 1 year old tugging at my clothes or dipping snacks in a muddy puddle and then into his mouth, bored Nomar disappearing into bushes and emerging with various disgusting trophies, me – stressed, tired, hungry, thirsty, needing a wee, muddy, craving adult company… while some days are haunting me, others were real gems – early summer evening sitting in the park sketching trees with my daughter, Nomar sniffing around in the early evening glow, relaxed and free.
Looking at tower blocks from a green space, thinking about people who don’t have gardens or parks/green spaces nearby…
30th Dec
Nearly the end of 2020, will 2021 be any better? Not at first that’s for sure. Robin singing… me watching (then flew off when I stopped), neutral, until teens play music – I instantly felt sad – it’s people who attribute emotion to everything, nature is a welcome neutral break, it helps just to be present and notice…
June 2021
Pram picture (please see ‘Fog & Willow’)... little did I know how isolating life would become in 2020
Trying to capture summer tree, a gateway back into this process
(I know this is a very lazy blog post by the way, I’ve had writer’s block for nearly a year! I needed a way to get back in, so I’m starting by just copying out my phone notes diary from the start of the pandemic, hoping it will ignite some kind of flow of writing again)
I want and need… (this is what my toddler says and what I don’t say)
Wales (in Llan-by-the-dog-eye, or however it’s spelt)
Laburnum trees and multicoloured hedgerows – wonder in diversity Daydreaming about being somewhere else, yearning for something ‘beyond’ vs noticing what’s on the doorstep – the challenges of being still and present and content just with what is… acceptance… I’ve been a long way from acceptance lately, I have often been ‘elsewhere’, (while my children and job demand me to be ever present) – in the hypothetical catastrophic future, or the glimpses of idealised past. Right now I really need acceptance, really want and need it, for myself. To get back to the basics, get all the old tools out of the box and probably source new ones too – a mindful meander with my dog, pushing toddler in the buggy for his nap time, feeling the soft spongy comfort in the moss, looking up at the patterns in the leaves with the gentle sun shining through, hearing the whispers in the breeze, breathing in the earthy scents of delicate dew on meadow grass, musty dried leaves, musk of cows in a neighbouring field. I don’t need to go far, to strain myself or try to achieve anything in particular.
I cannot ignore though, the distant aeroplane and the resigned resentment that I am not on it, not visiting the half of my family I haven’t seen for nearly 2 years and the somewhat hypothetical, yet fairly likely, nagging worry that there isn’t much time left to spend with my poorly father. His 9 lives are running out. And I always felt I didn’t have enough time with him, that he didn’t give enough of himself to me, even when he was there. And I have to accept that too, and that there is nothing I can do about it.
What is it that’s so special about being with another ‘being’ (i.e. my dog) in silence. I’m going much slower than he would choose, yet he waits for me, does a bit of noticing of the immediate surroundings too – sniffing the abundant air (which of course is a much more intense experience for a hound), feeling the difference in the grassy, mossy bank on his feet vs the gravelly track, hearing the chittering birds and distant lawn mower (I assume). Then he lies down and looks back for me while I write these notes… he doesn’t utter a sound, not a grumble, no impatient sigh. He just waits.
I guess I didn’t have writer’s block that day!
I wanted to add photos of the forest in Wales and the dogs playing, from my first trip away from home after the pandemic started. Looking for these photos has added to the delay in getting this blog post done. I can’t find them, I have to accept it. As well as the forest and the dogs playing (Nomar and his Welsh friend), I was photographing obstacles and barriers; fences, big branches, gates, telegraph cables. I think this was in response to the gargantuan obstacle that is the pandemic and having felt trapped for months. I started thinking about obstacles to connection too and the Social Engagement System. I came across this from the blog “Don’t Try This Alone”, by Kathy Brous (1):
‘One way to get people back out of dissociation, aka freeze — aka trauma — says Porges, is to surround them with friendly mammals, and stimulate their mammalian social engagement systems to come back on line. He gives the fascinating example of play. “Real play, is not playing with a ‘Game Boy’ or computer; it is not solitary,” Porges says. “Play requires social interaction using face-to-face.” Notice how the two dogs above are looking each other in the eye’, Brous refers to a photo included in the post and goes on to explain,
‘Play requires an ability to mobilize with the sympathetic nervous system and then to down-regulate the sympathetic excitation, using face-to-face social interaction and the social engagement system. I have two little dogs; they chase each other, and nip. Then one will turn around to look at the other, a face-to-face interaction to ensure that biting was play and not aggression. In play, he says, we practice using our fight/flight systems properly – but we also practice to “diffuse them with social engagement. So play requires face-to-face interactions. We see this in virtually all mammals.” (Porges)
Perhaps the obstacles I was perceiving everywhere reflected the felt barriers to playfulness and social engagement, due to the stifling Covid restrictions. I recommend reading what Kohut and Winnicott had to say about playfulness (mentioned in some of my older posts). I also found it so very useful to read Porges’ article ‘The Covid-19 Pandemic is a Paradoxical Challenge to Our Nervous System…’ (2), which offers an explanation for how;
‘…the crisis elicits threat-related responses, disrupts our capacity to regulate our behavioral and emotional states, interferes with our optimism, and compromises our ability to trust and feel safe with another.’
This helped to normalise for me the co-existence of heightened threat response/withdrawal from social connectedness and the feelings of resentment, disappointment, lack of optimism and sentimentality about places visited pre-pandemic. I even found myself reminiscing wistfully about the lack of aeroplanes in the clear blue sky during the first lockdown, because at least then I wasn’t grappling with anger and envy about all the people travelling (for trivial reasons; I imagined), whilst dreading a situation where I wouldn’t get to see my father before he dies. Now the aeroplanes are back and the sky is cloudy again.
26th July – family lockdown
Garden obstacle course
August – went to Iceland to see half of my family for first time in nearly 2 years; it seemed roughly halfway between the UK and the US, albeit slightly north. Travelling towards the arctic, to a sparsely populated country, felt – in a weird way, to some extent – like leaving Covid behind for a while. I struggle to describe the head-spinning extreme contrast between relief and intense sadness that I felt on this trip; which kicked in only once all our documentation had been approved and we were officially out of the airport and in a new country. I will write a lot more about this trip at some point, but I’m not ready yet.
Writer’s block…
13th Oct – maybe ‘Mild Mild West’ post can be mostly photos: Colorado, Wales & Iceland. With an acknowledgement of writer’s block . About Disappointment, Obstacles & Permission. The leaning tree – support might be not as hard to get to as I thought, it’s the asking for help bit that’s really hard!
25th Oct – An easier day – some space – Brandon Hill – this is what I’ve needed (no far flung adventures, just a nice, safe park close to people). A nice park with water and a view, nothing to do for half an hour or so, not rushing, not stressed, not working, not doing anything for anyone else (for half an hour) – just for me
?Date – FOG – fear, obligation & guilt – gets in the way of connecting with people – an obstacle – also gets in the way of moving on, letting go – once the FOG has gone, is there anything left of the relationship?
It’s been nearly 2 years since the start of the first lockdown in the UK. As time went on and I had not produced another blog post, I was on the verge of giving up, so I set a goal for myself – to publish another post by the 2 year anniversary of the first lockdown starting. I’m about a month ahead of schedule, hurray!
Now, as I reflect on snippets of my experience of the pandemic so far, through finally finding the capacity to engage with this blog process again, I feel profoundly moved by the multiple moments of connection I did have and a bursting gratitude for ‘normal’ daily life. This, existing alongside the disappointment of cancelled plans. One big plan was to go back to The Wild West with my father and family one last time, as a ‘last hurrah’ while his cancer remained dormant. Instead, we had a very different experience – Iceland – where I found my grief on a solid rock beside a huge still lake, somewhere in the Golden Circle.
And as I think back to those early disorientating days of the virus; the desperate attempts at home-schooling, the interrupted naps (older child waking baby), the blur of sleep deprivation and resentment that my husband didn’t have a job where he could work from home. Groundhog day! Oh, and the visceral envy of my child-free neighbours drinking beer in the sun on a hammock in their garden in the middle of the day!!! Thank goodness for the ‘Lockdown Parenting Hell’ podcast (Rob Beckett & Josh Widdicombe), which I’m re-visiting and chuckling at as I write this – if only I’d found it sooner.
When I let go of all of that, I remember some really special moments of not worrying or resenting so much, just doing my best, settling for some creative, outdoor home-schooling instead (whilst walking the dog and getting the baby to sleep in the buggy) and this makes me smile.
© 2022 Psychodography Blog
REFERENCES
- Brous, K. (2014) Stephen Porges: Social Engagement Heals. “Don’t Try This Alone”: The Silent Epidemic of Attachment Disorder. Retrieved from https://attachmentdisorderhealing.com/porges-polyvagal3/
- Porges, S. W. (2020) The Covid-19 Pandemic is a Paradoxical Challenge to Our Nervous System: A Polyvagal Perspective. Clin Neuropsychiatry, 17(2): 135–138.
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