Four Offerings for Quarantine Self-Care

+CBD Quarantini Care Kit

In today’s post, a guided meditation for the new moon in Libra, and some healing recipes for quarantine self-care!

I. I’ve recorded a 22-minute meditation for you in honor of the new moon in Libra. It wants to wrap you up in love. Find yourself a cozy spot and click on the player at the top of this post.

II. Seth and I have put together some Quarantini Care Kits for you! These are packed with goodies to help you relax, stay healthy, connect with loved ones, and fill your space with love and beauty.

Each kit comes with hand sanitizer, herbal bath salts, cottonwood bud massage+first aid oil, resilience tincture, and five joyful greeting cards. You can add CBD products and Wild Forest hydrosols, and everything in them is 20% off their regular price. They make grrreat gifts!

III. I am offering 20% off all of my astrology + tarot readings and books + cards for the duration of this quarantine! I’d love to soothe your soul with some of their sweetness. Use code SOULCARE at checkout.

IV. I wrote you a letter. If I were to give it a title it would be: Accept. Find Meaning. Feast.

My Loves,

Six years ago, when one version of my life had abruptly ended and a new one had not yet begun, I heard the Buddhist teacher, Pema Chodron, say, “We’re always in transition, sometimes it’s just more obvious than others.”

I realized then that the obvious transition I was going through was an opportunity for me to learn how to live with the inherent uncertainty of life all the time. And so, I stepped over the edge of my fear, let go, and fell into the exhilarating and terrifying expanse of the Great Unknown—something I feared would be a bottomless black hole but was actually a portal to new personal paradigm, one that put my life in closer alignment with the truth of who I am than it ever had been before.

And now, those words ring true as I launch into another obvious Great Unknown. But this time, I’m not alone. This time, I’m traveling through it with my whole human family. With you.

As we tumble through its mysteries, I think most of us are asking some version of the same questions: How long will we have to distance ourselves from one another? Do we REALLY have to stay at home? Will my sister and her family be able to visit us this summer? Will I lose beloveds to this virus? What’s going to happen to the economy and the planet and our social order? When will this sucky suckfest be over already!? And nobody has a straight answer for us. Because nobody knows.

While we don’t get to choose whether or not we want to take this disorienting ride, we do get to choose how we move through it. We can choose to move through Uncertainty like it’s a restrictive tunnel leading to nowhere but doom. And that’s a natural response. 

But it’s not our only choice. We can also surf the gravitational field of this Great Unknown knowing that it is a portal to a new paradigm. And we can use the journey as an opportunity to create it along the way.

Because we are traveling through a Vast Unknown, we need great courage, which, at its core, means “heart.” There are no mileage markers on this route, no signs saying End of Precautions: May 3rd, no way of predicting exactly when or how this portal will deliver us to our new world. But if we engage in the process with loving presence, it will bring us to something more magnificent than any old “normal” ever was… a deeper engagement with here and now.

I recently listened to Brene Brown’s interview with David Kessler, a grief expert who worked closely with Elisabeth Kübler Ross. He discussed the stages that most grieving people go through as they cope with terrible news and loss: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance, and eventually, Finding Meaning.

These stages are by no means a linear progression, nor a prescription for how to be with grief. Rather, these stages describe experiences that most people have, and give us a way to understand why we’re feeling what we do as we move through painful portals.

Like the one we’re in now.

Manzanita blooms.

I started out in denial a few weeks ago, thinking everybody was making a big deal about a little flu that would surely have little impact on me, but that quickly changed. My heart’s been on fire toward our government for a million reasons, and also toward people who don’t believe it’s important to socially distance ourselves in order to protect the vulnerable and reduce unnecessary deaths. I’ve felt depressed, cried more tears than I knew I was capable of, and wanted to sleep and weep for days on end.

Though waves of tears still come and go, I now find myself mostly in acceptance. I accept that THIS SUCKS. I accept that there is a novel coronavirus to which we have not yet developed resilience as a species. I accept that people are dying unnecessarily. I accept that the economy is tanking and scary things are happening within our social order.

By accepting these things, I do not condone them. I am simply acknowledging the truth of their existence, the same way the sick and their beloveds accept a scary diagnosis so they can do what it takes to heal, or allow death to come with grace.

I also accept that, inside this Great Unknown teeming with things outside of my control, I do have some agency. I limit my exposure to others and the news. I get lots of rest and take my herbal potions and eat garlic, ginger, and fresh spices. I take walks and pull tarot cards and write and feel and connect with friends. Sometimes I even remember to breathe.

And it turns out that the more I accept the truth of this sucky, no-visits-with-friends, mask-and-glove-wearing time in conjunction with the truth of my own agency, the more fully I am able to stand in the wide open landscape of Finding Meaning here and now. It’s a wildflower meadow with a clear creek flowing through it and I want you to join me here. I want you to feel all the feelings it takes to get here. I want you to know that, even once you’ve arrived, those feelings are always welcome.

I want you to take some time to see where denial lives in you, if it does.  I want you to ask your denial—without judgment—how it’s serving you, and to find out if it’s protecting you from something.

I want you to feel angry, if you are. Feel angry that your trip was cancelled, that the people you live with are asking you to take precautions you feel are unnecessary, that you’re struggling financially because our economic system is not built on compassion. 

I want you to bargain, if that’s your inclination. Make deals with Love or God or The Universe. Haggle the shit out of them!

I want you to feel depressed, if you do. I want you to feel the depth of your sorrow, your sadness, your blahs. To mourn the loss of the rhythms that you are accustomed to, the carefree embraces and easy visits with your people. Cry. Nap. Journal. Repeat.

 And I want you to accept. Accept that life has changed without your permission. Accept that many of the societal structures that are supposed to support us don’t.

I also want you to accept that the current constraints on our daily lives will end. They will! I want you to accept that the more diligently we practice physical distancing from one another now, the sooner we will be able to engage freely with each other in the future. And I want you to accept that nobody can tell us exactly when that date will be.

And then, in full acceptance of it all, I want to hang out with you in the spaciousness of Finding Meaning here and now! In this open expanse, we hold space for fear, anger, depression, laughter, joy, and everything else that arises. And we hold it all in larger attentiveness to the beautiful world we are creating on this unbidden journey.

In full acceptance of what is, we let the Great Unknown teach us how we can show up for ourselves and one another in all times of uncertainty. We practice listening, and we practice reflecting what we hear with love and compassion. We connect to the parts of ourselves that know how to breathe Love into the depth of our beings and exhale fear and anxiety. We laugh and we cry.

And as we travel through this great, mysterious expanse, we find meaning in it by asking one another, What kind of world do we want to live in? What small steps can we take in our daily lives to launch us toward that reality? What new, caring systems do we want to build? How can we support each other along the way?

We do this because we are human, and our ability to imagine worlds into being is one of our greatest gifts.

We do this because it feels better than focusing on the discomfort of freefall.

And we do this because we know that the visions we offer are actually seeds cast before us. And the more seeds we cast, the more comfortable the portal will become because beauty and nourishment will spring up all around us. They already are.

And when we make it to the other side, we will hold each other close and breathe deep. We will toast to the new world we created from the depths of the Great Unknown.

And then we will feast.

In much love and bottomless beauty, xoxoxo Becca