Feel it in your bones: you can be centered, graceful and strong amongst the chaos

How to care for yourself in a world where people are anxious and afraid, and in the process of liquifying from caterpillars into butterflies

A hollow bone, from a beach in Mexico, photo by Terra

There is a white bone near me. I found it on a beach in Mexico, while walking with my son. It is beautiful and pristine. Surprisingly light. It must be from the wing of a very large bird and somehow, it survived the ocean waves pounding against it. Instead, the pounding of the surf and the heat of the sun made it even more beautiful. Kind of like the process of life.

It feels like I could break it easily, despite its having survived so much. I don’t know if that is true, but I hold it carefully, nevertheless. It is so beautiful and seems unique somehow. I carried it here, wrapped in soft clothing in my suitcase. It reminds me of a magic wand and of the beauty of life. It reminds me how our bones hold us and support us, and how they are also shells with gelatinous, fluid centers of marrow. A place where life forms, where blood is made. Magic. They remind me of a flute and how empty space becomes sound. Every time I pick up this sun-bleached bone, it surprises me with it’s weightless grace and delicacy. But it is also a bone, that anchors things.

The world is tumultuous now. There is so much strife and controversy. There is so much anxiety and confusion underlying many things.

A friend recently spoke to me of primary and secondary feelings. He said primary feelings are what is happening deep inside us. They are the note our bones are playing. The note could be Joy, or Grief. Anger. Terror. Lightness. A sense of Clarity or Peace.

Secondary feelings keep people distracted from feeling the primary ones. The primary ones that are hard to feel because they are too painful. Because they feel like they are too much to be with.

So the secondary ones show up to help us out and distract us away from painful primary things. They are great for that. They say, “Hey, you are upset because that person did that thing.” They say, “Hey, why don’t you give that person over there some advice?” Or maybe they show up as general complaining or emotionally disconnected storytelling.

But under the complaining, storytelling, advice or blame, lurk some pretty strong primary feelings.

Another friend asked me if I think a lot of people’s behavior in the world right now is subconscious and part of a collective energy in the human race that is worried. Collective energy that is uncomfortable with the change and uncertainty now.

I wonder about similar things.

I told him I do think that is true. But I also think it is more than that.

I am an individual and I react to things based on my individual and soul’s past experience. I am also affected by how people feel around me. Often, I notice and feel the energy of it. I feel collective patterns. This is why I have not visited a concentration camp in Germany. This is also why I struggled with the thought of returning to the US from El Salvador.

There is a collective field of energy blanketing the planet we call, “humanity.”

And each country has its own feel as well, based on the people who live there.

We humans have divided the world up with invisible lines and called those places, “countries,” and inside these countries, we grow up and feel a sense of belonging, based on what we learn about how to interact with people around us. Each country has cultural patterns and historical patterns that affect the energy field there. And patterns affect the people, what they are taught, and how they feel and behave.

For me, understanding the motives of people’s behavior matters because it helps me respond to them and myself more consciously. I believe we are all faced with people who are coping right now. They are worried about their health, their relationships, money, and general stability. They are worried about paying their bills. They are worried about people they love. They are busy. Often too busy to have time to really take stock of things. Sometimes, they try to stay busy purposely so they don’t have to think about or feel those other things.

Sometimes it is me who is coping and I want to notice how I really feel. I want to be with my primary feelings.

So I will ask myself how I am doing. And recently, I started asking myself what would make me happy in the moment.

The first time I did this, I was walking on the beach and that question appeared in my mind like a little feather. I had been thinking about a few things and some of my thoughts troubled me. Then a different thought came: what would make me happy right then?

That is a different question than one I have suggested to you in the past: “How can I love myself more in this situation?”

“How can I love myself more in this situation?” is a good one to ask yourself when you are faced with someone who is blaming you for their general angst and discomfort. Or when you find yourself struggling in some way.

That question can help you stay centered. It can help you be hollow like the bone of the bird’s wing. Which isn’t empty. Because nothing is ever empty. That question allows you to fill up with the energy of your soul and self-love.

And then there is the very different question: “What makes you happy?”

Have you ever asked yourself that? In the moment? I am not talking about this kind of answer: “Well, Terra, I like to go on walks…I like eating this kind of food…I like talking to my friends…”

No, not like that.

Like this:

“What would make you happy right now?”

It is a question directed to the same place where those primary feelings like to hang out. It is a center-of-the-empty-bone kind of question. It is a question that matters so much.

While walking on the beach, I could feel the answer. I enjoyed looking at the beauty I saw and really noticing the details of things. The way the waves moved. The sparkles of the light on the water. What made me feel happy was allowing myself time to notice those things. That was my in-the-moment answer to that in-the-moment feather question that came to me.

Sometimes, I have shopped to get a boost of happiness, but it does not really make me feel happy. It is more of a fix. And I see people working so hard to make money to buy things, who still seem to feel anxious. That anxiety, if not diffused by shopping or similar things, often gets directed at individuals and groups. If you are a target, it can be uncomfortable.

Recently, someone targeted me. It was a person who has never met me. She was facing some really challenging things and she wanted to talk to me. She wanted me to help. I told her what I could do and what I am unwilling to do and why. I gave her what I consider very valid reasons for the unwilling part. But she didn’t hear them. Instead, she sent a voice text to me.

As I listened, I could hear the different strategies in it. There was a sentence where she tried to use guilt and wanted me to feel guilty. There was a sentence where she told me she came from an Italian family and they cared for one another. The clear implication was that they were very different from me. Earlier, she also predicted a likely negative future outcome for someone I care about.

My immediate impulse was to text her back. But I didn’t. I am no saint. I just do my best and I practice. This was a huge opportunity to practice for me and this particular time, I caught it. I caught the impulse to defend myself and explain myself further. I realized she wasn’t hearing me.

She was very much in that energy of secondary feeling space and my response wouldn’t have helped. And she was worried. She was feeling guilty. She wanted to do more and she was feeling overwhelmed. She tried her best to hand it all to me. In the end, she wanted to feel better and she was feeling a tremendous amount of anxiety. So she resorted to coping strategies.

I decided not to respond.

I just observed her pain and my own reaction and I allowed both, without engaging that secondary energy. If I had, I would have been resonating with it and that wouldn’t have helped anything.

So what can you do when you find yourself in challenging situations with people?

Well, first, you can touch in with your primary feelings. You can touch in with how you are. You can ask yourself how you are doing? And you can ask what would make you happy?

When I landed in the Los Angeles airport a few days ago, it was a shock. I expected a return to Los Angeles from a tiny beach town in El Salvador to be a big change and this was even more than I had imagined. I felt like a was walking through a futuristic movie. But it wasn’t. And it wasn’t a dream, although it felt like one.

I went towards the Global Entry area, alone. I may have been the only one on the plane who had a Global Entry option as there were no other people who followed me there and it was empty.

When I reached the customs area for Global Entry, I saw a sign that warned me about what I was allowed to bring in with me. None of it applied to me so I moved on from the sign.

There were two rows of small machines. I stood in front of one and it scanned my face and told me to proceed. I didn’t have to push a button. I didn’t have to take my passport out. I just had to walk up and point my face towards a screen and got an almost instant response: proceed.

There was one customs agent in a booth, chatting with a group of friends. She called over to me, “Welcome back, Terra.”

I was confused.

“Is that it?” I called over towards her.

“Yes, you can go on in.”

And so there I was. One face scan is all that was needed. I didn’t even need to speak to a person. She and I didn’t really look at one another while we exchanged those words.

I passed through some corridors lit with flickering fluorescent light and proceeded down a very large escalator where a huge, sparkling, multi-storied mural advertised one thing. A watch from Switzerland. I assumed it was expensive.

A loudspeaker made announcements that echoed in the cavernous airport. I got my checked bag and dragged it towards a large shuttle bus that would take me to pick up my rental car.

I had a lot of luggage. Three bags to be exact. I guess for someone who has been traveling for five months straight, it wasn’t really that much. But it was a lot to move on my own quickly.

I tried to catch the eye of a man in a uniform who I thought might help me get it all on the bus, which appeared ready to leave soon. But he wasn’t looking. He was busy. People are busy here.

So, I put my shoulder bag on the bus. I also set down the chai tea I had purchased. I knew it would be hard to manage it along with three bags and it was my first chai tea in five months. Please refer to question number two. It made me happy and I have learned to carry a lot with me.

After placing my tea carefully near one of the seats on the ground, I turned around to grab my other bags a few feet away on the sidewalk, just as the doors to the bus whooshed closed. I stared at my large suitcase, with my computer bag strapped over the handle on the other side and did the only thing I could.

I shouted, "“Stop! Open the door!!!!!”

People on the bus turned their heads. Thankfully, the driver heard me before pulling away and complied with my request. The doors swished back open. I heaved my bags aboard like marlin onto a fishing boat.

The uniformed man who didn’t notice me when I needed help made his way to the back of the bus where I was standing and stood near me. The bus was crowded. I stood so I could keep my suitcase from tipping over by bracing my leg against it.

The man began to tell me a story about how he was training the driver. I think he was trying to explain why he didn’t notice me and I am not sure.

That is because he talked and talked without really connecting to something in himself or to me. It was like he was connected to that place of secondary feelings. I couldn’t understand some of the words. The bus, chugging through the streets of Los Angeles, was noisy.

I smiled at him and he thought I comprehended his meaning. I had lots of practice with that after months of living as a non-Spanish speaker in a Spanish speaking country. I am not trying to be inauthentic. It is just the best I can do when I don’t understand: smile and look at the person talking— which is my best attempt at connection.

This time, it was frustrating for me. He paused for a moment and I thought he was done. But this is rarely the case when people have someone to listen and a boatload of feelings they want to avoid through talking to a captive audience.

However, thankfully, there were a few pauses when he stopped to breathe and I took the opportunity to observe the other people on the bus. Most of them were quiet. Once in a while, someone would say something and there would be a moment of connection between a few people. Then they would go back to staring down towards the ground, their bodies swaying, faces solemn. Feeling. Something.

And whatever they were feeling, they seemed very alone with it.

That is how things are in the world now. People are distracted, or feeling alone, or disconnected from how they feel and talking “at” people and things instead of to them. Sometimes, they see their primary feelings outside themselves, as faults in others.

I am sure you have noticed this.

And so what do you do?

Well, noticing helps.

Then you can be kind to yourself and find people who are willing to connect with you a little bit.

And when you don’t, or you are with those people who are blaming you for things, you can remember the bone I mentioned in the beginning. Allow your energy to flow and see what is happening in front of you for what it is. A coping strategy.

You don’t have to react. You can respond. Maybe your response is doing nothing?

How are you feeling?

What do you need?

What makes you happy?

Those people who are difficult around you? They are feeling a lot and likely avoiding a lot of what they feel because they don’t know how to do anything differently.

That is not your fault. And I have learned that it is not up to me to change anything. Just like any addiction, people cling to their coping strategies tenaciously. My job continues to be to learn to see them for what they are, coping strategies, and not take things personally.

So, I do my best to question what people say to me to see what resonates and what feels like it is something sent my way that doesn’t fit me.

It is important to discern things for yourself. I don’t think it is by chance that there is a saying we humans have, about feeling things in our bones. Bones have space inside them for this. They hold things. They resonate like finely tuned instruments. What do your bones say?

“Is what this person saying to me true?” “Does this feel right to me?” “Are they telling me something about myself that might actually have to do more with them than me?”

You are a soul in a body. And you are more than that.

You are the center of a hollow bone.

You are a magic wand. Your energy, just like a spell from a bone-wand, resonates into the world and it matters.

You are worthy of love.

There is a lot of gaslighting out there. It is a common coping strategy both individuals and collective energy fields use.

Some of it, I believe, is unconscious. Some of it is intentional.

There is pain.

People are uncomfortable. They are afraid. They are struggling. The human collective field holds energy that people feel. Family fields also affect people. Your lineage has energy. Cultures and countries have energy fields. We are all feeling a lot of things and it can be overwhelming. It can be easy to take things personally.

So, how are you?

How are you doing?

What makes you happy?

Can you be like a hollow bone and feel your center, your soul in your core and trust that you are worthy of love?

That you are here to vibrate your energy into the world like a flute and that the music is the most clear and beautiful, when you can own and allow your deep feelings?

It helps to observe people and things.

It helps to love and care for yourself as much as you can.

That is how you can be like a hollow bone, and stay centered and strong. That is how you can be the flute you are.

With awareness and compassion for yourself and others, you can choose to respond rather than react.

You can embody love and empathy without becoming a doormat. Sometimes, you may choose to not respond to someone. Or sometimes, you may choose to leave a situation.

Other times, you may notice that what people say is about you or advise you to do is truly helpful; sometimes you may notice that it is less so than it might seem.

That can be freeing.

That can be centering.

That can be calming amidst the chaos that may at times wash around you like waves in the sea.

Trust yourself and as a teacher, Bev, used to tell me: “Trust what you get.” She also would tell me to feel things in my bones. You can do that just as well as me.