Tiny Joys, Pt. 5: From (MRI) Gown to Clown

On holding grief and gratitude together.

Hi friends! lovers! Old therapists that still maybe follow this newsletter! Happy Friday.

It’s been an interesting, joyful, painful past few weeks, so, just life I suppose. But when it comes down to it, I can always say that I really am so grateful for all of it. Which brings us to our monthly Tiny Joy roundup!

My ecstatic dance event - I helped facilitate and DJ an ecstatic dance event this past Saturday and it was so much fun. One friend described it as “fun and feral,” which to me is the best feedback I can receive. If you aren’t rolling around on the ground, I haven’t done my job. Anthea, the owner of the yoga studio, started us off with a wonderful yoga warm up. Then, I led the ecstatic dance and guided journaling prompts at the end.

Ultimately, it was such a lesson in gratitude because it was so wonderful to be able to look around the room and be surrounded by love and community.

But I also felt encouraged to keep creating more spaces that allow people to be joyful and express themselves and move their bodies freely. I want to keep holding these spaces for others, and it looks like we’ll be starting to host these dances every month!

Another big source of joy has been weekly Shabbat. Ever since coming back to New York, I’ve started observing Shabbat weekly with a group of friends that has been so welcoming and warm. And while in the past I’d observe Shabbat with family here and there, or maybe the rare Friday I was feeling homesick, I’ve never had the opportunity to honor it every week. It’s become a really grounding source of my week, and an important reminder to reflect.

Since October, these Shabbats have felt even more significant, even necessary. Tensions seem higher than ever, and it has felt very isolating and confusing to be Jewish these days. When Jewish students are unable to safely go to campus, and fear violence brought against them. When the rise of anti-semitism makes it difficult to walk through the world without fear. When many people I know, including myself, feel they cannot speak up for fear of alienating others, I cling to traditions like Shabbat more than ever. I feel it is my duty to speak up, but I don’t want to do it on social media. (Maybe Substack counts, but it feels like the most human of all the options). I want to have conversations with people, face to face or on the phone, and share our perspectives. So, I will leave it at that, and please feel free to reach out to me to talk.

Another huge highlight was being reunited with Oreo over Passover! Even though it is one of my favorite holidays (after Halloween), seeing him after several months and feeding him matzah under the table was a big joy. I actually don’t think I took a single photo from the holidays that did not include him.

One not so joyful thing that happened to me this week was I woke up and accidentally stepped on my glasses and broke them. This started to send me into a panic, because not being able to see is stressful, and also anything surrounding my vision is just triggering for me. They’re also specialized glasses for my vision, and I depend on them a lot. When they broke, I just couldn’t stop crying. Something snapped in me, and I felt so overwhelmed. I tried to tell myself it was not a big deal, but my body just shut down.

Sometimes, I think nothing else can scare me after what I’ve been through, and then something as innocuous as glasses breaking just tears me apart, and I think, hmmm, maybe there’s still some work to be done here.

I eventually, calmly made it to the glasses store (ugly cried on the subway until I made it there) and they were able to fix them. But I still felt unsettled. When I was at the glasses store, the manager of the store kept going, “Why do you cry so much?!” And I got choked up trying to explain.

I got overwhelmed at the glasses breaking, but then when they fixed them and had me test the vision, I could see 20/20. And I cried again, so grateful that I can see. By this point, I thought they’d be really scared of me, but instead the three people in the store brought me in for a group hug and reassured me I was okay. I was sent on my way and passing by the subway, I saw these beautiful radishes formed into flowers at a farmer’s market! Maybe things weren’t so bad after all.

Sometimes, it turns out, it’s hard to just shake off ten years of medical trauma. I tried to articulate to myself, then, why I was feeling this way. I was so lucky to be able to see. It has taken me by entire life to get to this point. And yet, I was still crying about such solvable problems. And I felt guilty for that. I was finally better. What was my problem?

After I got over my mild breakdown, I hurried over to cover a preview of The Confetti Project. It’s an experietnail, mindful workshop that involves embodiment and lots of confetti. They’re having a public event called the Spring Self-Love Celebration Lab on May 11th, and I highly recommend it!

One of the questions they asked us to think about was our relationship to grief and gratitude, and I think it took me until that moment to remember that both can exist together. I usually tend to see it as more a cyclical nature - you go through grief, life improves, and you’re grateful it improves. But I could also be okay feeling deep grief and hold those feelings alongside gratitude as well. I could cry over feeling overwhelmed and saddened from my glasses experience, and cry from gratitude at the same time. In fact, I did, within the same minute. Man, I feel so bad for that glasses store.

But it was freeing to be reminded of the duality of grief and gratitude — that I don’t have to choose one over the other, or feel guilty. I can just embrace both.

I then ended off the week with a classic evening MRI.

I need to get these for my MS in preparation for my next infusion, and I have another MRI scheduled for Monday. I sometimes feel alone going to these, even though I don’t find them painful or anything. It’s more that moment of looking down at your body in a hospital gown as you’re lying down in an MRI machine, and feeling so small and scared. Thankfully, my mom was in town and waiting for me in the waiting room outside. My mom and I have been through a lot together, but throughout these past ten years of appointments, she’s been at every single one, no matter where I’ve lived in the world or what is going on. I don’t even quite have the words for how grateful I am to have her by my side. I can sometimes be bad at asking for help, or at least I’d like to think I’ve improved a little. But she has always, no questions asked, been there to help me. But while we’re talking about asking for help, little texts when I go into MRIs or infusions go a long way and make me feel so much less alone in this. So, if you’re bored on Monday evening, it would mean a lot💗

After they finished with the MRI, I got dressed and headed straight to Brooklyn. I was attending an event called Clown Cult, and transformed from MRI gown to Clown in just two stressful hours!

Some would say this is a chaotic way to live, and they would be right. I got very sleepy in that MRI machine, and considered just having an easy night in. But I ended up going, and having a great time. I love choosing radical joy, and making that extra effort, especially when I’ve had a hard day. It takes more energy, but it’s always worth it.

Because both can exist. Grief and gratitude. Loneliness and joy. MRIs and clown cult parties. I don’t want to choose, and it’s good to remember I don’t have to.

That’s all for today! Thank you for reading, as always.

Love,

Julia