Four Tips from Your Grandma During Coronavirus
Yesterday I bought a bunch of seeds from my favorite supplier of all time: Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. As some of you know, growing vegetables, watermelons, hay, and beef cattle was something Sam and I did in Colorado and Texas. In fact, we’ve been farming and ranching our whole marriage.
But now we live in a city. One that’s perhaps headed toward lockdown because of the Coronavirus.
Certainty is one of six primary human needs…
And right now it’s in shorter supply than toilet paper, which makes people panicky and irrational. That happens when we operate from our amygdala - the fear center of our brain, responsible for the fight or flight response.
The wise person, however, operates from the prefrontal cortex, which is the rational, thinking part of the brain responsible for present moment awareness. We make better decisions out of this place.
But how do we get there?
I bring up the seeds for this reason: Our grandmothers and great grandmothers knew 100x more about hardship and suffering than we do, and if they were standing here, I think they’d give us the following advice.
Grandma Tip #1 - Action is the antidote to obsession.
Even if your grandmother had an iPhone during and after the Great Depression, I doubt she would have sat around staring at it, using it to debate strangers about the future. She was too busy for that. She had mouths to feed, clothes to wash, a farm to run, a garden to tend and neighbors to check on.
She understood that she was one thread in a wide, intricate fabric, with a part to play in maintaining its integrity. You are too.
So what needs doing in your space?
Can you teach your kids to make bread, balance a checkbook or plant a garden?
Can you check on your neighbors to see if they need anything?
Is there work around your house you always put off? Painting. Mowing. Gutter cleaning.
Can you get your financial house in order?
Grandma Tip #2 - Go to church.
Now, maybe you have serious God and/or church issues, I get that, I did too for years. And maybe you want to skip this part. Please don’t. Keep reading.
Your grandma went to church just as much for spiritual reasons as mental and emotional ones. Of course, she had conflict with people there, of course she didn’t agree with everything said from the pulpit, but she knew the value of gathering. Today, we call that co-regulation.
We are neuro-biologically wired to participate in tribes of 30-40 people. Our culture no longer values that, but our brains do because they haven’t evolved as quickly as culture has. We still long for connection and people are literally dying early from a lack of it.
Can you get co-regulation in a bar? Of course. Is it high-quality? Sometimes. A lot of it depends on the environment and what you bring to it. In churches, the environment, for better or worse, is fairly predictable.
If a church you visit insults your soul, don’t go back, but at the same time, be open to being challenged, be willing to take inventory because the real gospel (not the religious or political ones) will challenge your thinking. Here’s my church by the way. I love it.
Grandma Tip #3 - Cultivate faith in something higher and more powerful than you.
Your grandma likely had faith handed down to her from her grandmother. This is the way the Jews and most other cultures have done it for millennia. My grandmother would likely have read things like:
For you O Lord bless the righteous man - the one who is in right standing with you - you surround him with favor as a shield. Psalm 4:12
Or the one right after it:
You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness. No evil person dwells with you. The boastful and arrogant will not stand in your sight. You destroy those who tell lies. The Lord detests and rejects the bloodthirsty and deceitful man. But as for me, I will enter your house through the abundance of your steadfast love and tender mercy. At your holy temple, I will bow in reverence. Psalm 5:4-7
Those and a thousand other scriptures, hold me steady in present moment awareness. I didn’t always have it. I chose it at age 37 after many other choices made my life feel like a burning, trash heap.
Grandma Tip #4 - Take time to be still (when you have it.)
The day Sam and I bought the ranch in West Texas, we stopped by the nearest neighbor’s house - across a former peanut field in the far distance - to introduce ourselves.
It’s was about 3 pm and our soon-to-be, best-friend-neighbors, Durwood and Aletha, were drinking fully caffeinated coffee with two friends.
They may have been playing dominoes or just sitting around the table, I don’t recall, but over time, we became regulars at 3pm coffee time, which may explain why I didn’t sleep for the two years we lived there.
So much good stuff happens in stillness, over coffee, on porches, during a game of dominoes. Easy solitude and boredom are lost arts in our culture, but your grandma would have savored them as rare moments of rest. Maybe you can do this same this week.
ICYMI -
I’m hosting a live chat in my Zoom Room this Friday, March 20th, for anybody who needs a little connection and a safe place to process what’s happening in the world. I’ll also do a brief teaching on staying sane while the world panics. Join us at noon CDT.
Drop me a message for the log in deets. hello@girlcatchfire.com