Angry Birds

Welcome to What’s Helping Today, a newsletter about the everyday work of staying alive on earth — written by author and journalist Sandy Ernest Allen. If you were forwarded this message, you can subscribe here.

Hi all,

Saw this earlier this week and now I’m obsessed …

Also saw these sentiments, which I nodded my trans head at vigorously …

This morning I woke up to headlines like this …

And meanwhile Malcom Gladwell has bravely spoken up in favor of: transphobia (👀) …

And I hear now they’re gonna try to strip trans folks of the 2nd Amendment? I’m not a guns guy myself but: Truly, so depressing, all of it. The constant dehumanization of my community, a first step on the way to genocide — as scholars like Brené Brown and others have long warned.

As I reflected on the recent Proxy episode: It’s exhausting, being a trans person right now. And sure, infuriating at times. I can sometimes get pissed off, even when I’d rather not. I usually try to not get pissed off. But I am a Hulk-type, by training at least. I can feel quick fury at so many people and concepts these days, is the truth.

So! I try to sit down and JournalSpeak everyday … but I’m not perfect. I do meditate everyday, have for over 1400 days now. But the other week I had to get a new phone because my old one was very much dying … and when I redownloaded InsightTimer app, I had lost my streak.

For a moment, I got furious and bummed about something as small and silly as that, my app streak — before filing a customer support ticket and they sorted it out, eventually.

For many reasons these last months, since surgery last December: I’m tired, I’m cranky. I’m wiped. I’m working with fewer spoons to begin with. And there’s too much coming at me often, so many strangers wanting my attention and thoughts and energy. Frequently I’m wide awake in the middle of the night steeped in anxious whirring thoughts, unless I take two of these.

What has me awake — is it the hellish era we’re surviving? Is it the stress and uncertainty of my career and other aspects of my one small life? Is it the night sweats and such that come with “manopause” as I tend to call it? Is it just that the heightened anxiety of these frightening times have me triggered, mentally back in childhood, when I was often awake at night and worried, not infrequently legitimately afraid?

(Probably all of the above.)

I am doing my best. I assume you are too, day to day, doing your best. Whoever you are, and whatever that looks like for you. It’s hard, lately. I know it is for us all, trans or cis or whatever.

Myself I try to tend to what needs tending to. I try to rest. I try to do those activities that I know actually replenish me, including being in connection and community with solid people who do care. But it’s all tough, the keeping up with it all — including the self-care and knowing of other human beings. At least it can sometimes feel like, for me.

Maybe I’m so tired because I’m very visible in the trans sense, for better and for worse. Also I’ve chosen a career also involves near-nonstop rejection (and I never take rejection well, in truth, no matter how often I faced it as a theater kid and beyond). That is if I’m brave enough to try and put myself out there, pitching and applying to things. For some years there I hid — no social media, never leaving my property basically. These days I try.

I do try to remind myself, if I’m getting rejections that at least this meant I tried … and that what’s even worse is not trying. What’s worse is inaction, avoidance, attempting nothing. The worst is giving up.

My wisest adviser often reminds me — if some “no” in my professional realm has really hurts my feelings — that this is “just business.” I’ll sometimes whine back at him that it doesn’t feel like ‘just business,’ that my own work is often so terribly personal to start. (But I guess that’s my fault of course, that I gravitated towards writing nonfiction, often including intimate personal essays.)

Then there’s the bigger picture, that as a trans person it feels like every day we are fighting for our whole damn lives … As a trans adult who’s got some audience, I can’t turn away, is how I often feel. Because of the kids; because of the other adults. Because maybe some cis folks are actually listening to me …

So it’s all challenging; the sometime failures and mercurial silences, the apathy, the outright cruelty. It can all come relentlessly, like some awful storm that never breaks.

Hence, as ever, I try to focus on my own “What’s Helping Today”: I try to tune into my here and now. I try to contemplate what I can and cannot control, of the things stressing me out (past, present, future). I do the daily meditation, even if it’s right before I fall asleep. I do JournalSpeak as often as I can, because it helps me pay better attention to myself.

I try to stay aware of how overwhelmed I feel by the stress itself. I try to notice if my temper is short or my patience waning. If that proverbial ‘reservoir level’ is getting high (borrowing therapist Nicole Sachs’ metaphor). Or if I sense my body is expressing an awareness of my stress in some other way (a pain, a rash) … I try to slow down. I try to do less, if I can. Sign out, boundary from who or what’s activated me (as necessary and possible). I try to get active, walk, do yoga, do garden work — all those other things I know are good for me.

This is all advice I’m often repeating, stuff I’m always trying to follow, myself. I try to stick with my regular self-care routines. Again: I’m hardly perfect, but I try to accept my own imperfections, too … another topic I’m often going on about. As Nicole Sachs often says, a big part of this work is having patience and kindness towards ourselves. If I’m very activated (with shame especially), I try to re-find my own center before I ‘talk, type or text’, to echo Brené Brown’s line.

I do all this to try to stay okayish — and in this fight.

Why I keep thinking about that canary in its resuscitator: That’s the point of the canary, that the miners cared about it.

The point isn’t to just let the canary die and for the miners to carry on, acting like that warning didn’t matter.

Because ignoring the canary’s death, that sucks for the bird of course.

But it sucks for everybody else, they who were supposed to rely on that warning to save them, too.

What’s Helping Today: Enjoying this lovely late-summer weather, doing some mulch hauling and other fall clean-up out in my garden …

Finally, for the new month, here’s my new monthly public playlist:

Thanks and take care,
Sandy

p.s. Those who took my survey for subscribers/fans/readers indicated highest interest in something recipes related, maybe with some tarot in the mix, amongst other possibilities. In brief, I’m working to launch exactly what you ordered up.

Launching a paywalled offering of quality is taking both resources and time, so: If you want to support my work with a single or monthly donation, meanwhile, that would be greatly appreciated.

To anyone wanting “writing feedback” for example, you’d be advised to please check out my upcoming fall writing workshop, see if it sounds like a fit. Anybody else wanting my one-on-one time and attention, consider other options like writing into this very newsletter’s advice column (info on how to do so here).

p.p.s. Just to mention other ways to work with me: I do now offer professional-to-professional consulting for those whose jobs relate to mental health (clinicians and fellow media types). Learn more here:

p.p.p.s. I’m also available for hire to speak …

p.p.p.p.s. Last thing but re: that brief, anonymous survey (which you can still take if you really want) … I wanted to add: also Helping Today, some people have said such kind words responding to my last question about how you heard about my work etc. Thought I’d share some with you all. To everybody who responded and said such things: Thank you!!!

Thanks for reading What’s Helping Today, a newsletter by author and journalist Sandy Ernest Allen.

If you like this newsletter, consider forwarding it to a few friends … or sharing it wherever you share things.

Once again: If you can, I hope you’ll consider sending me a few bucks (or more!) via my Buy Me a Coffee page. Your help in making my career sustainable is greatly appreciated!!!