Pandemic Book Club

I’m coping.

This seems to be a very typical response to a typical question in recent days. It suggests a state that says, I’m not great, but I am dealing with it in an ok way.

I’ve been dealing with a great deal of personal loss this past year and the pandemic has certainly exacerbated my feelings of isolation during this time of grief. When someone asks me how I am doing, “I’m coping” is not always my sincere response.

In an article in VeryWellMind about coping with uncomfortable emotions in a healthy way, Amy Morin writes that you should ask yourself, “Do I need to change the situation or change how I deal with the situation?” Great. It’s that ugly reality that it’s not the thing it’s your response to the thing. The ColesNotes is that emotion-based coping requires us to change our feelings because we don’t want to change the situation or the circumstances are out of our control (like grief or this pandemic). Problem-based coping asks us to change our situation by removing that stressful thing in your life (like a relationship or a stressful job).

I know I’m not the only one that tackles their uncomfortable emotions with [insert unhealthy coping mechanism here] but I think we all know that that is just temporary relief. During this pandemic and during my time of grief I knew I’d have to find a better way to deal with all the turmoil in my head and heart.

Reading has been one of my coping strategies throughout life.  Escaping into a book can be just a temporary relief but my pandemic reading has resulted in both emotion-based and problem-based strategies for dealing with loss in my life and with this pandemic. I am not a self-help book junkie – indeed I am not much of a nonfiction reader at all – but I have found a few books this past year that have truly helped me say “I’m coping” and really mean it.

Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics by Dan Harris, Jeff Warren, and Carlye Adler

I can say without hesitation or shame that the TenPercentHappier app has my helped me through not only the uncertainty of this pandemic but also a very difficult period of significant loss in my life. The founders of TenPercentHappier are also authors of a great book called Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics. It’s a fun and funny read for people who are not only skeptical about meditation (the science is there, people) but who can’t figure out quite how to do it.

I fantasize about meeting Dan Harris, a journalist for ABC news and a Nightline news anchor, in person and telling him he changed my life (but he’d probably call security)! The book and the app have resulted in an ongoing, albeit fidgety, meditation practice which has been positive coping practice for me. The result of this fidgety practice has spilled over into my life and my relationships with family, friends, coworkers and the clerk at my local grocery store. If you don’t have time to mediate, that’s the sign that you absolutely do need to mediate.

As Mark Twain is reputed to have said:

Oh my God! How true is that?! That argument I had with you in my head last night?? It was epic!

When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön

This book became known to me through the 10PercentHappier app mentioned earlier and is probably the most Buddha-shy book on this list of recommendations. Born Dierdre Blomfield-Brown in Michigan, Pema Chödrön is Thibetan nun and, until just recently, director and principal teacher at Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia. If I met Pema and told her my story, I imagine she would slap my face and say, “Snap out of it it!” but of course she’s a Thibetan nun and wouldn’t do that, so her readings have helped me snap out of it all on my own. If you don’t read this book, at least Google Pema Chödrön quotes and I swear it will help you get through that difficult moment you’re going through right now. Honestly.

To which I answer, “but I don’t want to know the truth”; but of course we all do.

Stitches by Anne Lamont

In the writing circles, Anne Lamont is a somewhat of a god, for the way she captures the messy parts of life in words. Her talent as a writer has made her famous; her use of humour to navigate the good, the bad, and the downright ugly, have made her my friend (that I haven’t yet met). Though she does have a more recent New York Times bestseller on the market at the moment (Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage), reading Stitches helped me find some meaning, and no small measure of peace, during a chaotic time in my own life.

It sucks that I may never find the answers to the meaning of Life but comforting to know I have family and friends to share the uncertainty with!”

True friends are your life’s investment and richest currency.

Think Again by Adam Grant

Adam Grant first became known to me via two TED Talks I shared with my coworkers titled The Surprising Habits of Original Thinkers and Are you a Giver or a Taker? (For the record, I do not possess too many of those surprising habits and I am most decidedly a giver). He is an organizational psychologist and a professor at Wharton; he also coined that now-famous term languishing to in a recent New York Times article to describe that blah feeling we are all experiencing as this pandemic intensified. In the book, Adam makes the argument for it really being ok to be wrong. Rethinking our own mindsets, skillsets, and firm positions in life is critical to our productivity and creativity (and our emotional intelligence). I’d like to say he too became my imaginary friend during the pandemic, but everything that he writes and says is so damn smart that I feel like if I met him I would just sit there and say, “Yeah! What he said!” (that would probably just annoy him and he’d walk away!).

It’s just a feeling and this too shall pass.

Untamed by Glennon Doyle Melton

Speaking of friends that I have not yet met, I’ve read two of Glennon’s books but this one truly made me realize how much of my authentic self I suppress for the sake of keeping the peace, being a good wife, and not rocking the boat (and believe me, I read her first book trying to keep the peace, be a good wife and not rock the boat). I’m not sure if it’s a self-help book or a manifesto to all women out there but it was one of my go-to’s during this pandemic. I admit there were passages in this book that made me put my hand over my heart and say out loud: “I can’t say that, or I’m not that brave, but it opened my mind to all the compromises I’ve made in my life for the sake of others. Compromise is good, don’t get me wrong, but I recommend this book to women who are tired of carrying the weight of everyone’s expectations.  

I’m still working on this one.

I hope you find some solace and strategy in these books (or perhaps like me some new imaginary friends!) Believe me, the irony of developing healthy emotional strategies but writing about some new imaginary friends is not lost on me. There are a great many of us humans who sadly did not survive this pandemic, but there are a great many more of us who will.

Stay safe – as we are not out of this mess yet.

Stay healthy – for your life depends on it.

Stay connected – with books and friends.

And cope – do your best to cope.

~Astra

Photo credits to:

Baurzhan Kadylzhanov

Anatoli Kiriak

Austin Guevar

Pixabay