18 Mar Witch Complex

Perhaps it is the focus on what could go wrong for 17 hours straight in the wilderness first aid training class this weekend, but today I feel sad and nervous.

for the fate of the world. for the fate of my kid. will she even be able to have a child? we go along every day with some blithe and willful denial of our crumbling world. but we all know. even if we pretend not to – we feel it in our cells. and our children do too. most especially they do. they breathe anxiety into their lungs just like we do every moment. but their bodies are smaller and their neurons think that this soupy stress is normal. perhaps the epidemic of sensory issues in children is just the effect of cortisol overwhelming all other systems.

I don’t want to be a downer. I don’t want to be that person who gets annoyed and shut down when groceries come home in clamshell packaging and sugar coated protein. I don’t want to be the mom who, in a fit of self-recrimination of bad momdom, texts her daughter’s friends after the ‘ding!’ of the iPad at 9:30pm that she can’t talk now!!  I don’t want to take out my fear and my sadness and my frustration about the things I can’t control on those who I most want to protect, on those I hold most precious.

but that’s what happens. and the circle of self-recrimination doubles over itself again.

I’ve debated in my head the threats and merits and fears and hopes of sending out a thread of self into the digital matrix. On one hand, the digital matrix is my nemesis – dinging and pinging and emoji-ing its sinister grip on my most precious creation, luring her into its fun! and dopamine-delivering trap that in my mind turns her away from the Alive world, the world of sunshine and trees – the Real world, the only world that sustains us in a physical, tangible, actual way.

And on the other hand, what of me not engaging in this digital transfer of energy across space? It is important to me that other humans hear the messages that the Redwoods, to name one, have told me. Their messages are deep, important, True, and urgent. If I only tell them to myself I cannot be the messenger They hope and need me to be.

A “Witch Complex”, as coined by my dear sister Melanie and Cat – “The fear that if you do Good for the world you’ll get burned.” Yes. that is true. You will. But perhaps the sparks generated might ignite minds and souls who also hear the voices of Redwoods, and Roses, and Mugwort, and Tigers.

It is time to be brave. May this tentative toe into the digital net, not be a trap, but a thread I can use to weave a web of more life force, not less.