By Roxanne Donovan - Wellness

Sadness, hopelessness, fear, rage, panic, minimization, rationalization, numbness, denial are just some of the reactions you might be having to the current moment. Whatever you're experiencing is your body's attempt at coping with a stressful and rapidly changing situation.

Being mad at your very human reactions or wishing you were responding in some other way will only increase your suffering. So try to be extra gentle with yourself. Treat yourself with love, warmth, and kindness, like you would a dear friend in need.

If you're caring for others, know that gifting yourself compassion enables you to have more compassion to gift others. And we all need more compassion to get through these challenging times.

Below are nine other ways of caring for yourself now. 

1. Lower your standards in all areas except social distancing, hand washing, and disinfecting commonly used surfaces - e.g., request extensions for upcoming deadlines, stay in your pajamas if you want, leave the bed unmade, check email less often.

2. Although it's tempting to bombard yourself with news and social media, set boundaries instead with the goal of avoiding completely at least two hours before bed. [Make sure to boundary your kids' access to news too.]

3. Sleep at least 7 hours nightly. This practice is good at all times but especially during stressful moments when your body needs rest to heal and reset.

4. Pay attention to being pulled into unhealthy avoidance behaviors - e.g., excessive eating, drinking, smoking, drug use. These behaviors amplify stress in the long run.

5. Make space for healthy behaviors that are soothing such as reading, drawing, art, mindful coloring, journaling, or yoga. 

6. Pause throughout the day to connect with the present moment. Doing so helps minimize time-traveling to the future or past, which can amplify your stress response. 

7.  Connect with loved ones via phone, not just text or email. While we may not be able to visit each other due to social distancing recommendations, talking on the phone can go a long way toward making the present moment feel a bit more manageable.

8. Start a gratitude practice by writing three things daily you're grateful for. Gratitude widens our focus beyond immediate or imagined threats, enabling us to see the beauty and wonder that are also present in our lives.

9. Finally, don't forget to play. Have a pillow fight with your kids, schedule a home movie night, dance around your house, sing some Prince at the top of your lungs, have a joke off with your partner...whatever you need to remind yourself sunshine lies behind the clouds.

I hope these practices bring a bit of peace in the chaos.

Stay well (and inside),

Author
Roxanne A. Donovan, PhD, is co-founder of WellAcademic, a licensed psychologist in GA, and Professor of Psychological Science and Interdisciplinary Studies at Kennesaw State University. She writes and teaches about health and wellness. For more reflections, follow Roxanne on Twitter or sign up for WellAcademic's newsletter.

By Joycelyn Moody - JMoody's Musings 

Note: I initially wrote this post on recognizing and honoring loving friends in mid-February, when the coronavirus first began to touch citizens in China. As Roxanne and I post this issue of the WellAcademic newsletter, the world is in upheaval, social media is abuzz with paranoia, and national borders are closing tightly. Since I’m drawing strength from sister-love to stay grounded during these first days of the World Health Organization’s declaration of the pandemic, I offer my blog post as solace to you; even in quarantine, we can remember we are cared for and we can support each other with kindness, laughter, and encouragement.
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On an afternoon in my campus office when I felt down—it was the day after I submitted a long-haul multivolume book project to the publisher and submitted my annual review using cumbersome online forms and the vexing software program Digital Measures and taught my 3-hour evening seminar—I texted a good friend, one I knew I could count on to reply with wit and hope.
 
Sure enough, two mountain ranges and a national forest away, she came through with sisterlove, and even ended her text with the opening lines of Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem “To Those of My Sisters Who Kept Their Naturals” (1991). Brooks’s title wasn’t the operative part, so my friend (who has kept her hair natural) didn’t include it. Instead, she typed these lines to me:
 
Sisters!
I love you.
Because you love you.
Because you are erect.
Because you are also bent.
In season, stern, kind.
Crisp, soft—in season.
And you withhold.
And you extend.
And you Step out.
And you go back.
And you extend again.
 
This gift moved me. So perfect, so timely. So resonant with appreciation for a whole lotta my women friends, especially my Black women friends, I’ve been feeling lately—lessons from my meditation practice. This particular friend has, as we say, a lot going on: a mother who knows her some days but not all, a husband in a city 100 miles from the bed she sleeps in on weeknights, office struggles, money’s tight.
 
But trust her not only to find the one pearl in a heap of oysters, but to extend that pearl to a gloomy sister. In my post-heavy push fatigue, receiving Brooks’s poem as a gift from my dear friend made me aware more deeply of how loved I am by so many sisters when I “Step out” and allow myself time to reflect, when I open my heart to receive a wide spectrum of gifts without doubts about my worthiness or the giver’s intentions.
 
Last month, when I read Roxanne’s inspired invitation to name my year to remind me of aspirations I’d set, I decided on the Year of Love. So often, I feel sisterlove cradling me and guiding me, keeping me buoyed and brave. I’ve felt a keen sense of love for some months now—ever since one of my friends became my new interim dean and another my department chair, since our WellAcademic retreat reunited me with Roxanne, Nichole, and the beloved friend who typed out Gwendolyn Brooks’s lines to me in a text, and with our WellAcademic retreat sister community on the mountaintop last November.
 
I am privileged to be loved by many amazing women. The Black and Brown women I know who have my back where I live now, who show me in myriad, steady, and hilarious ways they love me “because [I] love me.” The badass women involved in the enormous book project I’ve just come through—and the sisters still hanging tough with me as we complete the remaining volumes. Black women like my cousin, older by four years and still showing me a righteous way, as she did when we lived on the same block in Mobile. Sisters I got to know better at academic conferences we all attended recently. I am loved by women in Seattle, Philadelphia, Boston, Tucson, Champaign, St. Louis, Houston, and beyond; I am wildly fortunate.
 
Early last January, stepping out from an academic conference, I had dinner with one of my earliest academic mentors, a brilliant Black poet who now lives half the year on the US West Coast and the other half of the year Down Under. This frail, elderly, and bold woman’s current dual residence speaks volumes about her adventurous spirit: half-a-lifetime ago she insisted I cultivate a yearning for possibility. Be lionhearted, she said, pushing me toward audacity with two firm brown arms, with uncompromising love and a big old laugh.
 
As the spring semester reeves up and makes more demands, I’ll need to remember to pause and remember my sisters care, they are close. Consciously recommitting to the Year of Love, I know I will find my sisters waiting, as Brooks says,
In season, stern, kind.
Crisp, soft—in season.
 
Throughout this year as well, I pledge in turn to be a woman sisters can look to for love and grace whenever they need.

​Until next time,

Nichole Guillory, PhD - Mothering in Color

I am fortunate enough to be on a research leave I was awarded through a competitive process at my university. This leave grants me time away from university teaching and service obligations for one semester to focus on completing some long-neglected research projects.

Because I’ve worked a continuous loop of fall-spring-summer semesters for the last 14+ years, I still have not quite settled in yet to my new research leave schedule.
 
Faculty readers, I know what you’re thinking because so many of my colleagues have told me the same thing over and over: You’re going to LOVE being on leave.
 
I have been on leave for exactly 14 days and 10 hours as of this writing and I have yet to feel the leave euphoria that my colleagues explained and radiated. (I’m talking about you, Anete Vasquez, and the leave glow we saw when you returned to work.)  
 
Mostly I’ve just felt tired, getting messages from my middle-aged body that it can no longer keep pace with the schedule I’ve been keeping for the last 14 years, sometimes by choice but more often by familial and institutional demands. Migraines. High blood pressure. Insomnia. My body is exhausted trying to manage these chronic conditions, especially with the more frequent episodes I am experiencing lately. My friends have heard me say more than a few times that (middle) aging sucks.
 
Before I move ahead here, I want to be clear that I still enjoy a lot of age (and health and class) privilege. I have healthcare benefits through a university system that so many others do not have access to that helps me to manage symptoms of what can be debilitating and life-threatening conditions for the under/uninsured.
 
What has been most striking to me in the early days of my new work schedule is just how physically fatigued I am. Add to this physical fatigue the emotional exhaustion that comes with being “on” all day every day because of (social justice) work, mom, and partner responsibilities (see my November 2019 Mothering In Color post “A Wish List for the Emotionally Exhausted”).
 
Now that the pace of my schedule has slowed considerably, I realize more than ever that I have been on automatic pilot, just moving from one responsibility to another, one set of projects to another, no matter what my body told me about slowing down, taking a break, or resting. I just kept going.
 
Whether it was professor-ing or mothering, I rarely, if ever, prioritized wellness. Clearly, this is not sustainable, and feeling this tired is a wakeup call for me. I have a twelve-year-old son who deserves more than I have been able to give. I cannot wait any longer to enact a more wellness-focused, and hence more (middle-aged) body-friendly, approach to scheduling my day, an approach that is doable not only while I’m on research leave but especially for when I return to my regular work responsibilities.
 
On Roxanne’s suggestion, I’m giving a name to 2020; it’s my Year of Wellness. I recognize the power in naming, especially in communities of color where naming is linked to being/becoming/calling into existence. Thus, by naming this year (especially in this very public way), I am conjuring a healthier year for myself and by extension my family.
 
I’m starting with only a few changes to my work schedule so that I’m more likely to enact these changes more consistently over time. I have other goals, but I’ll work on those later in the year.
 

1. When I have choices about what to do first in my day, I will use wellness to guide my decision-making, which means that answering emails has to be an afternoon task. I begin most days—I’m still working up to every day—by writing in my gratitude journal. Just as research indicates, a gratitude perspective positively affects physical and mental health. (Thanks, Roxanne, for introducing this practice to me a few years ago.)
2. Where two options will result in a similar outcome, I’m choosing the one that is healthier for my family and me.
3. I’m committing to some kind of movement before I write. For this one, I’ve asked one of my writing accountability partners to walk with me for 30 minutes before we sit down and write at our favorite coffee shop.

 
I’m no wellness expert, but I am a determined mom who is tired of being tired. I write this post in hopes that naming my intention and committing to it publicly will push me toward more long-term wellness habits.
 
Wish me well!

Author
Nichole Guillory, PhD, is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Kennesaw State University. She publishes on the experiences of women of color in the academy. She is mom to Nicholas, the love of her life. We couldn't be happier that she has agreed to pen the Mothering in Color series for WellAcademic.

Joycelyn Moody - JMoody's Musings

“It’s coming on Christmas,” as the song says, so, of course, as a mature Black lesbian, I am facing a dilemma, not to say a crisis. What to do during a bereavement visit with my father that falls close to Christmas but wasn’t meant to be a Christmas visit? How do I handle the inevitable painful memories of past Christmases and my family’s coercive reinterpretation of my trip?

Against my goals, I’m going “home for the holidays.” The last time I tried to visit my parents for the holidays, I was warned the door would not be opened for my life partner, Lorraine, and me because “Christmas is a time for family, and she’s not my family. If you come, you’ll be sorry.”

Based on past incidents, I believed Lorraine and I really would be sorry, so, as badly as I yearned to see my mother that last time, I changed course. The year was 2009. 

At Christmas 2018, after taking fresh stock of my values, I sent my father a white-handkerchief greeting: I forgave all, and I asked forgiveness. He granted forgiveness. We’ve spoken a few times since, superficially only until he endured a health scare last September, then a series of deaths in October and November. Because I couldn’t attend those funerals with him, I’ve taken the first opportunity to visit him and my mom. That’s this Not-Christmas visit I'm anticipating, as I write this. 

Since 2002, when my only sister first hosted family Christmas but declared “no room in the inn” (Luke 2:7) for the 2 of us, Lorraine and I have made—or not made—Christmas in myriad ways. Sis’s daughters were ages 8 and 4 then, and she told me she didn’t want to expose them to lesbianism, for she considers it unchristian and ungodly. 

The thing is, I meant my forgiveness last year expansively. I don’t want to hold onto old grudges. At the same time, I will not walk knowingly into an abusive situation—or remain in one. I dishonor, rather than honor, my beloved elders and ancestors when I allow myself to be abused.

Recently, watching this short video on neuroplasticity, I wondered if I could reimagine my upcoming visit with my parents, transforming it from a dreaded re-immersion into unbridled African American homophobia into opportunities for me to practice compassion for elders and self-compassion. 

I know it’s distorting the point of the video, but I trust watching it often enough will help me resist traumatic family patterns and triggers and instead shape-shift as needed from a sad and “queer” daughter into a grown Black person eager to honor their 85-year-old parents. May it be so.

The video reminds me of the many tools in my kit. Just a few:

• Just a few weeks ago, I revitalized my Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction training by joining my initial teacher in an all-day silent meditation retreat in community with others. (Yes, I’m aware of many critiques of MBSR, and as I’ve noted in earlier posts, I even agree with some of them.)
• I gained a range of valuable insights as a student of Cognitively Based Compassion Training, studying intensely at Emory University with my treasured friend Roxanne.
• I reunited with Roxanne again last November to create intimacy with a third group of open-hearted participants at our most recent WellAcademic women of color retreat.
• I keep working toward compassionate community with smart, devoted colleagues.
• I stay connected to my friends—and my therapist.
• Paramount tool: Lorraine’s love, solid as flint.

I also just finished teaching Roxane Gay’s Hunger, which stirred dormant feelings I’ve had as an African American queer academic and Black feminist daughter. Besides arousing sorrow and anger I’ve felt as weird, isolated, recalcitrant daughter, Hunger reminded me of the power of the written word. It reminded me of what efficacy writing, journaling, self-expression and self-representation can endow. So, two tools more: reading and writing.

How will I care for my father and myself on this bereavement trip that happens to fall on a holiday laden with grief for us?

• Live music, jazz clubs, a jook joint I’ve scoped out
• A couple of Black history museums he loves but doesn’t frequent alone
• Their city’s internationally renowned art museum
• Board games and cards, Bingo 
• I’ll teach both my parents some MBSR meditative movements—and maybe we can get some younger Moodys to show us a few dance moves
• Neighborhood walks, as Daddy and I used to take alone together on Sundays in my girlhood
• And should hurtful words begin, I’ll walk away.

​Until next time,

By Nichole Guillory (WellAcademic Guest Blogger) - Mothering in Color

It’s that time of the semester when students and faculty alike are exhausted. This time is always the point at which my students start to break down. Their absences are more frequent. Their requests to extend assignment deadlines increase. They start to panic about their final grades.
 
This is the time that exhaustion also creeps into professors’ bodies. We start to get sick. We hit snooze more often. We need extra shots of caffeine to get through the workday (and in my case sixth grade homework).
 
Sound all too familiar?
 
I am feeling more emotionally exhausted than usual, and when I considered the reasons, I realized that I could not point to one cause. What I realized instead is that I’m feeling the cumulative effects of a consistent stream of challenges, including macro and micro aggressions.
 
Because there are so many, I chose a list format to catalogue them in this post. As a restorative to my own emotional well-being, I decided that a wish list was an appropriate way to remind us all how we might be/do better for each other.

1. I wish my son’s sixth grade teachers would read what Alfie Kohn says about how useless and damaging most homework really is.
2. I wish I were disciplined enough to write outside the company of my adult baby-sitters. (Wink, wink, I meant to call them my accountability partners.)
3. I wish my Georgia peeps would stop wishing for warm weather to go away.
4. I wish for a public show of support for those who take great risks to speak up rather than the private thank you they often get when no one else is around.
5. I wish truth mattered to all people, especially presidents.
6. I wish I committed to exercise with the same intensity I have for eating.
7. I wish people did not pretend my voice matters when it really does not.
8. I wish people would start calling their friends more for no other reason than to just listen.
9. I wish women of color academics were not greeted with suspicion when we ask hard questions.
10. I wish my Generation Z students would not try to argue with me that any rapper since the early 2000s belongs on a Greatest-Rappers-of-All-Time list.
11. I wish my students evaluated my teaching effectiveness on my actual teaching rather than their racist assumptions about Black women professors.
12. I wish more brilliant Black women were not leaving academe because their institutions did not value their many significant contributions.
13. I wish I had more emotional energy right now because my son deserves more support from me as he navigates a constant barrage of unfamiliar middle school expectations.
14. I wish women of color faculty good luck as they navigate higher faculty ranks and take on administrative roles. I hope you remember that we are supporting you to make decisions based not only on your personal gain—which we celebrate—but also on our collective interests.
15. I wish for more bowling Tuesdays with my university friends. You know who you are.
16. I wish meeting time was spent engaging in vigorous intellectual debate about how best to support students.
17. I wish Black women in the academy were not mammy-fied into fixing other people’s messes, feeling forced to smile through our pain, and agree even when we disagree.
18. I wish fake social justice scholars would take a seat and get out of the way of legitimate social justice scholars doing the hard work of dismantling oppression. 
19. I wish I had more time and space to write about social justice education instead of constantly having to protect myself and my son from social injustice.

 
I have one final wish, and this one is big. It’s my wish for everyone reading this post because it’s why I continue to stay in academe.

1. I wish more people had a set of scholar-teacher-activist friends like I have, who love me unconditionally, who always tell me the truth even when I do not want it, who do not construct me as the angry Black woman, who value my work as significant, and who see me in my full humanity. You know who you are.

 
For those of you who have such friends, you know the deep gratitude I feel every day. For those who don’t (yet), keep looking because authentic, compassionate friendships are possible. And we need each other now more than ever. 

Author
Nichole Guillory, PhD, is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Kennesaw State University. She publishes on the experiences of women of color in the academy. She is mom to Nicholas, the love of her life. We couldn't be happier that she has agreed to pen the Mothering in Color series for WellAcademic.

By Roxanne Donovan - Wellness

​Stress is bad, folks. Like bad, bad.

"Okay," you're thinking, "I already know that." But do you really?  

Are you aware that prolonged stress damages mind, body, and spirit? Sure does. I'm talking:

• forgetfulness
• indecisiveness
• overwhelm
• insomnia
• hair loss
• migraines/headaches
• body aches 
• hypertension
• heart disease
• fatigue
• gastro issues
• irritability
• anxiety
• depression


I could go on, but you get my point.

Stress, though, isn't an issue without stressors - i.e., the stuff in our lives we perceive as maxing out our resources. Unfortunately, there are lots of those around, according to a recent American Psychological Association survey (and anyone who's awake). The top five: future of our nation (63%); money (62%); work (61%); current political climate (57%); and violence and crime (51%)​.

Umm...yes, to all that.

For academics, add to the list deadlines, grading, finding time to write, demanding students, those demoralizing comments from reviewer two, and service overload.

That's the bad news. The good news: high stress and its negative consequences are NOT inevitable. There are tools - a.k.a. coping mechanisms - that when used correctly can reduce stress.

In fact, you have one of these stress-busting tools with you right now.

Your breath.

Yep, that thing your body does mostly outside of awareness to keep you alive can also provide much needed stress relief.

Consciously slowing and deepening your breath sends messages to the brain to relax which turns down the sympathetic nervous system's fight or flight response and turns up the parasympathetic nervous system's rest and digest response - exactly what's required to halt a stress spiral.

There are several deep breathing techniques to choose from. Whichever you try, stick with it. Regular practice equals better outcomes.

So let's all take a moment to inhale slowly for the count of five (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)...hold...exhale slowly for the count of five (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). ​Now repeat for the next three minutes. Your body will thank you.

In peace and solidarity,

​​Joycelyn Moody - JMoody's Musings

I really hate it when my therapists leap out of their seats. I’ve had leapers before. I have a leaper now. Earlier this week, my therapist—first man in many years, a straight white guy at that—leapt out of his seat when I thoughtlessly uttered, “I’m seriously overcommitted.” He was on his feet in seconds, and I was kicking myself.
           
“You’re the last person I meant to say those words to,” I groaned. He was actually pacing.
 
“I thought we were in re-cu-per-a-tion mode,” he chided. Stern voice. I scrunched lower on the lumpy sofa.
 
I did wonder how I have gotten back to this place in my professional life again so soon. It seems I blinked and my calendar filled itself.
 
Nah, I’m taking full responsibility. In August, I returned to campus from eight months off. Last November, I fell ill and spent the winter and spring of 2019 recovering. My current psychotherapist specializes in rehabilitation from physical ailments producing significant emotional and psychological effects. I’ve had the good fortune to be his client since February last.
 
Besides my fall illness, I have a deep trauma from institutional racism I’ve endured, witnessed, and fought on my campus, so my therapist and I spent the past summer working on my return to campus and to teaching.
 
Over the summer I also completed and submitted a book manuscript draft that had been long overdue. Because the manuscript had hung over my head so long, in August, I felt true liberation to wave goodbye to it, even knowing it’s eventually coming back with demands for many editorial changes.
 
The send-off elated me, filled me with the illusion of “bandwidth,” the prize the project’s editor had held out as the plum for completion.
 
The thing about my being overcommitted isn’t simply that I caved in to the illusion of having more time than I do, now that the book manuscript is momentarily gone. It’s that I returned to work (in a toxic workplace) already overcommitted.
 
Besides probing psychotherapy these past 11 months, I’ve relied on cardio workouts, personalized gym training, and meditation to heal. In other words, the grandiosity of a professional calendar expansive enough to contain and accommodate multitudes flowed from all the endorphins aroused from both physical exertion and emotional quieting. I thought I had it made.
 
In the meantime, though, two more things in my life of late have brought reality full slam into my growing awareness.
 
One is my Bullet Journal: it’s known by some as BuJo®, founded by Ryder Carroll, and rooted in David Allen’s Getting Things Done. It’s a personal calendar-cum-diary system that works exceptionally well for me. My handwritten accounting of the things I’ve sworn to do and the dates they’re due is the first chronicle ever to shock me into no-ness. I literally see the price of yes will simply be too high. It’s made me able to recognize and utter to a therapist I knew would leap: “I’m seriously overcommitted.” It’s made me aware.
 
The second thing that’s happened is the accumulative effect of my daily meditation practice: I’ve gained a higher level of self-awareness through this means, too. Not enough yet to keep me from becoming overcommitted, I hear you saying with me, but I’m thrilled by the insight itself and the self-compassion it inspires. Insight. Self-compassion and hope.
 
Let him leap. Awareness is its own reward, and, like Robert Frost, I have miles to go before I sleep.

Until next time,​