Stumbling Into Peace

by Johnny Solomon

About three years ago, I walked into a yoga class because it was freezing outside and I didn’t want to spend another winter hibernating at home. I wanted to get ahead of the coming three months of Christmas cookies and soup. I wasn’t looking to talk about chakras, though. And the last thing I wanted to do was sit through Yanni-inspired sitar music. My yoga goals were not lofty, but it was November and the promise of a polar vortex was right around the corner.

At that point, I had been sober for about three years. I also had my bipolar disorder relatively managed but still experienced bouts of anxiety that kept me isolated and unattached from the rest of humanity. I toured full time as a musician, so my schedule was pretty much the opposite of a “schedule.” And I was a year into writing my new record, feeling both crippling self-doubt and a sense of career-ending procrastination. According to everything I knew at the time, it was the kind of life an artist could expect.

Years before, I had pushed my way into some sort of success in the music world. Success is relative, of course, but I was making a living, which I figure is at least the ground floor. What I didn’t understand at the time was that my identity had become lost in my art. When I got sober and was finally healthy enough to commit to being a working artist, my sense of self got all wrapped up in my songs. I stopped being able to separate who I was from what I could create. I assumed every interaction involved the singer-songwriter Johnny of Communist Daughter. My neighbors didn’t see John Solomon; they saw the guy who wrote songs, and they liked me, or didn’t, based on what they thought of my latest record. I took commentaries on my music as commentaries on my very existence. The only time I talked to the outside world was before and after my shows, and that skewed my perception of daily life. I didn’t know where John Solomon ended and Johnny Solomon began.  

But that day in November, I took a step down a path I didn’t even realize I was on. What started as me counting minutes on the mat, became me counting breaths. And then simply turning off my mind and counting on that one-hour break from whatever else was outside. I showed up to lose weight, but then I stopped caring about that (#dadbodforlife). I went because it felt good. If I was anxious, I knew things would be better afterward. If I had a decision to make, I knew I would have some sort of clarity after class. And two years into practicing yoga, I realized I had friends that didn’t even know I was a musician. They liked me without any prior knowledge of Communist Daughter. I felt like I had my own identity again.

In the recovery world, many of us like to get together in groups to talk and listen to each other. One of the ways we share is by recounting “what it was like, what changed, and how it is now.” But life doesn’t stop changing when you get sober; that’s one of the first things I learned in recovery, so every time I go back to my story, it’s a little bit different. And three years ago, my life and story shifted without me even noticing. Three years ago, I walked into a room to lose a couple of pounds, but I learned patience and gratitude, and recaptured an idea of who I was. I found a community that didn’t know I was a musician. Even three years later, I suspect most of them have never heard a single one of my songs. I found a group of friends that are as likely to be sober as they are to be anything else. I’ve also listened to more Drake than I ever thought I would. Apparently yoga isn't just for sitar.  

I have a lot of feelings about yoga, and none of them involve an understanding of chakras (yet), a nirvana, or an ability to say Namaste without smirking. But they do involve getting anxiety under control, finding patience with myself and appreciating a whole new world of Drake-loving, earnest human beings.

Once again, I find myself thinking about life in terms of “what it was like, what changed, and how it is now.” Today, thanks to yoga, I’m a different, more content, and connected person. I love to show up to the studio and talk to the people around me and to listen to what they’re looking for and what they have found.

I’m not trying to sell you a spiritual awakening. But if you get yourself to a yoga mat, you might be able to learn how to say Namaste without smirking, and hopefully you can teach me that.

Want to try it for yourself? Check out our upcoming event called Breathing Through Dissonance on April 23rd.
 

John Solomon is a Dissonance Board Member.

In-Between Days

By Caroline Royce

I was crying — alone at home — for what felt like the thousandth time.

It was a few weeks before I was due to give birth to my first child, an occasion I had waited and planned for and wanted for a long, long time. Why was I crying during this happy time? Boy … take your pick.

My time being pregnant was one of eager anticipation but also cold, hard depression. It was both the most creatively stagnant period of my life, and the loneliest.

About four months into my pregnancy, I was let go from my contract job at General Mills, where I was a graphic designer. It was well paying, and I had a flexible schedule. Most importantly, I enjoyed the work. Suddenly unemployed and pregnant, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to find another job before my October due date. Finding a job, in my experience, was a demoralizing task, even without the added pressure of pregnancy.

Long before I was pregnant, or even had a regular job, I still knew that when I had kids, I would be a working mom. I am a feminist, and while I know that doesn’t mean you’re obligated to work when you have kids, it’s been a motivation for me to be my own person; I don’t want to be solely defined by being a mother. I want to show my kids that there is value in working, and that both mom and dad have an equal role in providing for the household. Plus studies show that mothers who work are generally happier, as they have social interactions outside the home, and aren’t totally bogged down by the stress of raising children full time.

The decks are stacked against women no matter what. Mothers who work, on average, make less than women without children. And we already know women make less than men.  Truly a damned-if-you-do scenario. Even though I’ve always wanted children, I’ve never been totally sure what it means to be a mom. The image that seems most prominent in our culture is that of the mommy blogger; the woman who quietly puts aside her job and hobbies to become fully devoted to her “LOs” (Little Ones) and writes self deprecatingly about how hard it is (ok, guilty). On the flip side, there is the super cool, J. Crew-wearing mom who continues her fast-paced marketing job and somehow is wearing skinny jeans three weeks after giving birth. I was worried about becoming the mother whose life became completely dominated by being a mother.

On top of all this--losing my source of income, and my main creative outlet--I’d lost something that could’ve kept me sane: a social life.

Not only was I unemployed, but pregnancy had profoundly changed my circumstances. As someone who already has suffered from lifelong depression and anxiety, this new element to my life was crippling me socially. I didn’t know how to relate to people. I couldn’t go out drinking. I was usually too exhausted even to hit up an early trivia night. Here and there, I would do the occasional lunch with a close friend, even once or twice going out after 10 for dancing. The buzz you get from seeing friends sustained me for a while, but eventually I slipped back into a deep despair, feeling guilty that I had all this free time, and no earthly idea how to enjoy it.

I would think back to what I would do with days off from work, and the answer was usually along the lines of lunch, movie, shopping, errands. If every day is a day off, those once-enjoyable activities become tedious, almost an obligation (i.e. “Maybe I should go see a movie, but I don’t want to, ugh”). Then I would start to think how pitiful it was that I couldn’t come up with any ideas for how to spend my time other than to go to the mall again. One particularly difficult night found me hunched over my desk at home, sobbing into the crook of my arm while my husband stood next to me, totally helpless to console me. I was stricken with self-pity. I didn’t know what to do with myself, and that made me depressed.

I was trapped between two lives. There was the happy, creative career gal, who went out drinking and smoking with friends--some great days to be sure. Then there was the woman with great days ahead, raising a child and getting to know the little person that I made. The time between these two lives though was agony. It felt like a life without purpose.

In my third trimester I began to see a therapist--a cool, compassionate woman specializing in Postpartum Depression. I had a feeling that I would be extremely susceptible to this form of mental illness, but what I had not anticipated was that I would suffer greatly from Prenatal Depression, which I’ve hardly ever heard anyone talk about. Have you? Would you want to listen to a woman complain about how sad she was all the time? Basically nobody does. People asked me all the time during my pregnancy, “How are you feeling?” Lonely, existentially conflicted, in constant discomfort, waiting for my life to have purpose again. I was pretty sure nobody knew how I was feeling--and I didn’t figure they were actually interested in the messy truth--and that is the worst, loneliest feeling of them all.

Now that I’m on the other side — blissfully exhausted and constantly overwhelmed with new motherhood, I think about all the things I should’ve done. I should’ve reached out to my friends. I should’ve gone swimming more. I should’ve reorganized my kitchen. I should’ve written a ton of blogs or done some photo projects. It’s easy to look at a time of depression in hindsight and solve your problems. Harder to see when you’re in it.

Caroline Royce is a freelance graphic designer, photographer and blogger living in Minneapolis with her husband Alan, son Alexander and cat Arya.