Letter: Now is the time to rest and heal

It seems that regulating emotions is challenging in a time when nothing seems normal. Although we would like to pretend that there is some kind of state called normal, these times are anything but.

Especially in this area of the country, Western North Carolina, there is nothing normal after a devastating hurricane that wreaked havoc on the infrastructure and on people’s lives. Although we try to keep to routines, and we have been looking out for our neighbors, as we enter into winter and feel the cold air, it seems especially cold.

But what if we can accept that the world is especially unstable now, and expecting some kind of normality feels heavy and exhausting? What we need now is healing.

Healing can look a lot like what bears do in the winter: hibernating, being still. Our emotions need settling, and the relentless pursuit of normalcy through work, through achievement, through productivity (whatever that means) feels part of another world that exited a while ago.

Healing means healing ourselves, and then we heal others. Exhaustion is decaying; it is not freeing and is not noble when there is entropy. Rest, be still and don’t lose yourself to self-talk that tells you to do one more thing.

Most of all it is the earth, it is nature that can communicate to us, and as we listen to nature, we embody that nature, for we are part of it. It is a fallacy to believe that we have unlimited control. There is a time and a place for all.

Now is the time to heal, to go into winter so we can emerge, knowing and resilient and not defeated.

— Phil Okrend
Black Mountain