Tao for Travelers: The Flow of Healing

When we travel, we place ourselves in the hands of strangers. We depend on them to accept and help us. When I woke up last Saturday morning (May 6) with a scratchy feeling in my throat. I did a Covid test and was pleased it was negative.  However, the cold came on like a Mac truck, and I feared the home test was wrong. I wrote to Dr. Bora Lee, who has been so kind to my family and me, and asked for advice. She wrote back immediately and said if it got worse, she could see me. Monday I was feeling a little better, but went for a PCR test. I got the test down at the Yongsan-gu Community Center, which is an imposing building around the corner from where I'm staying. As opposed to any other Covid test I've had, the young man who did the test jabbed the back of my nose fast and deep and said, "OK, that's that." He said I'd hear on Tuesday. Could one jab like that work, I wondered.

Tuesday morning I got the result that I had Covid. It came with a certificate saying that I was quarantined for 7 days from Monday, the day the test was done. The long text message, in Korean, was followed by a phone call from a public health worker who spoke English. She asked a lot of questions and explained the procedure. I said, "Well in the US, we only quarantine for five days, so can I go home on Saturday?" She laughed at me, and said, "Quarantine ends Sunday at midnight and then you're free to go." 

Happily I really like my apartment in Itaewon, and I had enough food, assuming I ate rice three times a day. I texted the results to Dr. Lee and she said she would see me that afternoon. She had the day off from her job in Incheon because it was her daughter's K-pop dance recital. She was squeezing me into her busy day. I was enormously grateful. She even picked me up and took me by cab to the National Medical Center where I was seen by a pulmonologist. My oxygen saturation was normal, which was reassuring. I explained all the symptoms, and got Paxlovid for the virus and painkillers and antihistamine for the rest. I left with all the medicine I would need. I went back home by subway -- happily it was not crowded and I kept distance from others. 

After that, there wasn't much to do except make a chart for taking medicine and set alarms to remind me to take it. I had no energy and my mind was cloudy. Professor Eunju Hwang wrote that she would order groceries for me and what did I want? I said I had food. She wrote again and said, "I'll order groceries for you." So I sent what I could think of -- not brilliant -- all I could imagine was chicken soup! Happily, the groceries came, I made chicken soup and the healing began. 

A lot of the healing involved me NOT doing, so that I wouldn't get in the way of Nature. The body knows how to heal -- I am fully vaccinated so my body was sending antibodies into the fight against the virus. the body knows how to use the food for energy and sort out the essential vitamins that are crucial to the metabolic process. The conscious me -- the Ego -- really had no part to play except to calm down. It was quite intimidating to be alone -- truly alone -- in Seoul, and feeling so sick. I tried binge watching a K-drama, but picked Dodosolsollalasol -- which should be called Dodo, after the extinct bird -- which irritated me. Rather than tackling the central issue and sending people off stronger, that K-drama refuses to tackle the issue, passing the problem on to the next generation. As a family therapist, I was incensed. So I had to quit that drama. Just don't watch it, is my two cents. 

So instead, I stared out the window, texted with family and friends, and slept. And slept. And slept. What weird, technicolor dreams with the most vivid, amazing images. I didn't really like them. As the days went by (really 1) the Paxlovid taste accumulated in my mouth. Granddaughter Lily said to get cinnamon candy. I'm really at a loss in Seoul because I don't know enough Korean to work the apps. She said, "Just ask Eunju." I was feeling like this was an imposition, but I did anyway. Eunju ordered them for me, no problem, and that worked like a miracle. Not only did cinnamon candy take the Covid taste away, but also it enabled me to eat, which gave my body energy and vitamins I needed for the fight. Eunju even wrote to ask again what food did I need? She thought the chicken soup might be running out, which it was. And she asked, "How about bread? do you need bread?" The truth was that the loaf I had gotten on Saturday was a bit stale and I was eeking out the last slices, so I said yes. And in a bit more food arrived, including the most glorious half loaf of whole wheat sourdough bread I ever saw! I kissed it and cut a slice.  

As I near the end of my quarantine, and get ready to take the Monday flight home, I am reflecting on this twist of events. I started to study K-drama because I was sheltering-in-place to avoid Covid. I came to Korea as part of that work, knowing that there was still Covid in Korea and that my plan to be out and about would put me at risk for the infection which I'd so diligently avoided for three years! So here I am, with Covid. But I am able to appreciate how different it would have been for me, if I'd gotten it earlier -- I was exhausted from overwork in March 2020, we hadn't worked out treatments, there were no vaccines. We have all these tools now and Korea has a well-developed system for connecting people with the treatments they need. Dr. Lee and her colleague looked at me with experienced eyes -- they'd seen a lot of Covid and knew what they were dealing with in my case. And people had discovered such arcane things as cinnamon candy is the trick to handling Paxlovid. This is the result of worldwide effort, carried out at every level of scale. 

I've been studying the Tao, whose founder, Lao Tzu, observed, 

If there is to be peace in the world,

There must be peace in the nations.

If there is to be peace in the nations,

There must be peace in the cities.

If there is to be peace in the cities,

There must be peace between neighbors.

If there is to be peace between neighbors,

There must be peace in the home.

If there is to be peace in the home,

There must be peace in the heart.

"Making peace" -- as he points out -- is a complex project, and one we talk about all too little. But in the achievement of the world's fight against Covid, we have demonstrated these steps: an international effort to find a vaccine, a national effort to distribute vaccines and treatments and institute an array of public health measures, local efforts to help people understand what was happening, household efforts to adapt to the demands, and the call to each of us to have peace in our hearts as we went through this. 

I am a beneficiary of all this worldwide effort. Not that we did it perfectly, but that we did cooperate to control a pandemic, perhaps the most international cooperation the world has had to date. 

What was left for me, in between the alarms reminding me to take my pills, was to have peace in my heart. To go with the flow of Nature's healing, leaning on the kindness of strangers who'd become friends, supported by family and friends from around the world, supplied with food, shelter and medicine, and aware that no further action was required on my part -- I was to let Nature take her course. 

I'd wanted to know what the Tao of K-drama was, and this illness has been my own little mini-drama, revealing not only what it was, but how it was at work in my own life. As we say at Faith + Works UU Congregation of Orange, "Amen!"

Sorrow in Seoul

This evening I took my "constitutional" -- my 30 minute walk around the neighborhood -- at around 5 pm, when hordes of kids were out, going from house to house in the rituals of Halloween. I was reminded of my love for a neighbor who gave us little bags of candy. The serenity of a New Jersey early evening, dressed as in your Hogwart's uniform, with a wand in your hand, or strange skeleton features drawn on your face, the leaves crunching, the piles of candy, the neighbors recreating this event from the memories of our own joy at so much sugar! A friend in France, incensed that Halloween was infiltrating their country, berated the commercialism of the holiday. I tried to explain, but she just got madder and madder. "What is good about a holiday on which children are given too much candy?" 

I tried to explain about the satisfaction to the human spirit of this strange festival -- deciding what to be, where to go, how to say "Trick or treat." Halloween is the ultimate city festival, a triumph of the collective imagination and an expression -- as all events are -- of the fears and joys that are on our minds, like the explosion of fake tombstones this year, which must be because we are in collective mourning for more than a million Americans lost to Covid. 

It is against this backdrop of our custom, which has been embraced by Seoulites, and especially this year, after two years without this moment of the human spirit, that the profound tragedy hit: More than 150 dead, and an equal number injured. And thousands more who were there, some of whom will be haunted by their own role in the tragedy: the ones who yelled "Push" and the ones who stepped on others. Like Lady MacBeth, they will be wiping the death off to no avail.  

Korea is a country is with suspicions of mental health treatments -- they are only coming to have and use them. Yet they have other resources. The national government immediately declared a week of mourning and lowered all the flags to half mast, erected public mourning sites, with the traditional white carnations, opened a vast investigation into what happened so that they might prevent it. 

While people might not think of it as a resource, K-drama is surely playing a part in this moment. The show, Just between Lovers/Rain or Shine, is concerned with the torment experienced by people in the aftermath of a building collapse -- not the same dynamics as the crush of a crowd, but nonetheless carefully showing the suffering. To be trauma-informed as a society is not a small matter at a time like this. The tormented souls who scream in their sleep or can't concentrate at work will be understood by their family, co-workers and society. People may not know the way out of pain, but they will know that there is pain. 

This is fundamental because it prevents all the harms of secondary traumatization when people are told that their pain is not real or not important. I don't think that Korean society will fall into that trap, because they have been so clearly and consistently shown the harms of trauma through their nightly television programs. 

But in walking my neighborhood -- which is not a mile from where I grew up -- what was on my mind tonight were all the Halloweens of my childhood when I roamed for candy, crunching Snickers bars and fall leaves. These events that happen year after year all live in our bodies. A few weeks ago, seemingly out of the blue, I started to remember how the shaking of the building I was in during the 1989 World Series Earthquake felt. A few days later, Bob Fullilove, who was also there, reminded me that it was the anniversary of that event. And so next year, when Halloween comes, this will be on the minds and in the bodies of Koreans, not with the joy that I have, but with horror and grief. 

For the first anniversary after 9/11, our NYC RECOVERS project created a month of observances -- mainly to keep us from freaking out about the single horrible day. We called it "September Wellness" and people created all kinds of events that felt right, from walking labyrinths to free yoga lessons. From that experience we were all convinced that collective recovery held promise for keeping the population well through very difficult times. It is why we proposed it to so many colleagues as we went through the fear and loneliness of Covid.  

Sending love to Korea, that they be healed and that Halloween be healed for them, and that it grow into the kind of day of the human spirit that we have enjoyed for so many decades.  

Coronavirus: India Under the Hammer

The New York Times has run a special section devoted to the lives of those we've lost to Covid-19. Today, in the print edition, it was devoted to people in India who have died, including a young American who was living there. 

As has been true throughout the year, we have lost dynamic people whose talents were devoted to making the world safe and fun for all of us.  It brings the tragedy home.  

Several of my friends are closely connected to organizations in India that are responding to the crisis and here's their advice on organizations worthy of support. 

Nupur Chaudhury recommends these:

ARCH

This org is near and dear to my heart, and I continue to do service work in honor of Daxa Patel, who passed away recently. Working with her in rural health camps was my first job out of college. They work deep in the rural areas of Gujarat and Maharashtra, and were very involved in helping displaced families during the construction of the Narmada Dam. They continue to hold my heart as I continue to work to integrate service in my life. 

You’ll see that their website is bare bones. Don’t let that deter you from donating. 

The org: https://archgujarat.org/

Where to donate (USBased 501c3 to accept donations ): https://www.friendsofarch.org/

If you do donate through PayPal, feel free to include a note saying that you were “referred by Nupur Chaudhury” so that they know it’s a legitimate donation—they don’t have a ton of donors. 

Manav Sadna

I worked with this org in the slums of Ahmedabad, Gujarat. They work mostly with the dalit commuity, and work out of Gandhi’s old ashram.

The org: https://manavsadhna.org/

Where to donate: https://www.ketto.org/fundraiser/ManavSadhnaforCovid?fbclid=IwAR2jLmA-o359Jr1evS46486YQMe4LG1zV6J18I6gXu6Oah1xj-Viv7B-YwA

Latha Poonamallee shared this:

If you are looking for a trustworthy grassroots organization to help rural India, I would strongly recommend Tarun Bharat Sangh in Rajasthan, India. 

I have been involved in this organization from 2001 and know them intimately. Their ground game is exemplary and they have the infrastructure to reach nooks and corners of their part of the country through their networked parallel governance organization. Their leadership is morally upstanding and you can be assured that your donations are being put to good use.

Coronavirus: Yellow Daffodils on a Gray Day

Yesterday it was gray and sometimes rainy.  Sitting in my kitchen, I caught a glimpse of yellow daffodils, their bright color intensified in the setting of dull skies.  It seemed to me a metaphor for what I have looked for every day in this long year of Covid-19.  A year ago, in the first shock of lockdown, I took photos every day of the lilacs that were coming into bloom.  It was, I thought then, a spiritual exercise to follow the small changes, appreciating each day's advance to full bloom, full perfume.  On the Kdramas I watch, the practice of saying "thank you" -- like the practice of saying "I'm sorry" -- is emphasized.  People say, "Thank you for getting well."  Or "Thank you for being here when I got home."  It's very much gratitude for the grace of presence.  And so yesterday I said to the daffodils, "Thank you for being here."  And as the daffodils fade, the lilacs will bloom.  I didn't know, before this year, why gardeners think so deeply about the flow of bloom and form throughout the year.  Now I know that it means that everyday there is something to remind me of hope, something that gives me a chance to say, "Thank you."