Navigating a Crisis

...with grace.

I’ve been faced with a few crises just in the last year, as have many people I know. It’s got me deeply considering how we humans navigate a crisis, both in the immediate sense as we are confronted with the event(s), and in the aftermath and recovery periods. A true crisis can arise suddenly, or build up slowly. It may often be dangerous and/or pivotal, it can involve great instability and discomfort, and it often requires critical decisiveness. A crisis, and how it evolves, can be a major, future-determining turning point. There’s a lot of weight in that!

Usually, the only real training we get is right in the moment, so we are always out of our comfort zone in some way when a crisis hits. Ever noticed how some people stay calm, grounded, decisive and effective in a crisis, while other people freak out and either freeze with inaction, or over-react emotionally and add to the stress (and sometimes danger) for all involved? Where do you find yourself on that spectrum? For many of us, it depends on the crisis, and whether it directly hits one of our soft spots, and it may also depend on what state of relative balance or imbalance it catches us in at that moment, or whether we had any forewarning.

I had an intense crisis experience when my children were very young, and I was startled out of a dream by the phone ringing in the morning. It was my husband, saying briefly in a panicked voice, “There’s been a terrible accident. Get here as quick as you can!” As he suddenly hung up, the details of my dream flooded my mind: my youngest child had been run over by a car in the dream, just as the phone had awakened me. You can probably imagine how this affected my reaction, as I flew out the door without getting properly dressed, chanting hypnotically in the car all the way to the scene, “not my baby, not my baby, pleeeease not my baby.”

When I careened into the schoolyard where my kids were waiting with their dad for the bus to take them to their summer day-camp, and I ran barefoot toward the crowd, I saw firetrucks, and a stretcher with my child laid out on it (my middle child, not the baby). A fireman, looming large in his bulky uniform gear, stopped me before I could approach the stretcher, putting his strong hands on my shoulders and looking directly into my eyes as he said, “He’s going to be okay.” I’m thankful for his grounding presence. I’m not sure if I was breathing.

My 5-year old son, along with a few other small children, had been run over by a car in a truly bizarre, slow-motion accident. He was conscious, and I was instructed to keep him awake and out of shock during our ambulance ride. Eric was treated for some serious 2nd degree burns in several places (from the car’s hot exhaust pipes), and released later that day. I would never forget one of the other firemen at the scene, who was shaking his head while exclaiming his sheer amazement that there had been no head traumas.

Clearly, this was one of those crises that seared right into my fierce and tender mama underbelly. The medics beat me to the scene and made the critical decisions, so my job was to love and reassure my child through his pain and fear. I was suddenly able to do that with great strength and calm. Once the triage was done though, and Eric was safe and out of the woods, in a private moment I was able to feel the up-rushing of my pent-up fear and grief (and all the “what-ifs!). And also to feel the awe of my psychic connection to the events through my simultaneously occurring dream, which had uncannily revealed many of the actual details of the strange accident.

In another, more recent crisis, the threat was to myself and my property as Hurricane Ian ripped through my southwest Florida community (see my posts from December 11 and 18, 2022). This crisis approached slowly, with lots of warning, though nobody knew just where Ian would make landfall. We were able to prepare, yet the storm was bigger, wilder, and longer than anyone could be ready for. Despite what preparations we made, I was way out of my comfort zone, having never directly experienced a hurricane, and I was scared. Once we made the decision to shelter in place, there was ultimately no option but to surrender to the ferocity of the storm. Even as the power went out, the trees were falling, and the wind raged with incomprehensible fury for 8 endless hours - I kept myself relatively calm by focusing on my breath, swaying, singing chants, and massaging my frightened dog.

Following both of these examples of crisis - the car accident and the hurricane - there was a prolonged recovery period which called on me to remain strong, courageous, and resourceful. After the car accident I had to care for my son’s significant injuries, both physical and emotional, while also tending to my own and my other children’s emotional healing. After the hurricane, there was overwhelming immediate emergency clean-up and repairs for the first few weeks (without power or water), and then still months more till full recovery. Pure stamina and a positive attitude of gratitude was a necessary quality, in order to navigate this in good form. Writing about that experience was part of my intentional emotional healing.

With every crisis, there is the moment-to-moment call - first to navigate the immediacy of the crisis itself, and then to move through the aftermath and consequences, in a transition that ultimately brings us through to the other side - perhaps forever changed. All along the way, the stories we are telling ourselves determine whether we are able to stay in our power. Every crisis is an opportunity, and many ask of us to stretch our perceived limits. Often, if you are willing to take a hard hindsight look, there are powerful lessons for you in how you navigated a crisis. Did you stay in your power? If not, why not? Do you truly want to stay in your power (even surrendering, with grace, when that is what is called for, is a form of staying in our power)? Or do you have still some attachment to frightening yourself with your fear-stories? Do you truly want to stretch and grow? What would you be willing to trade, to step into your real power?

Can you imagine what a commitment to excellent daily self-care (mind, body, and spirit) could do to strengthen your capacity to navigate any crisis with courage and grace? In a crisis, we need to be resourceful and wise, and those strengths are much harder to access when we have become unhealthy, exhausted and out of balance. Life has inherent stresses, and every one of us faces a crisis sooner or later, and often many times. The best defense we have, the best preparation we can make, is to invest consistently, day by day, in our health and well-being. There is nothing that builds our confidence, stamina and resiliency more, than to feel competent and strong in mind, body, and spirit. This puts us in the best place to adequately meet whatever life brings our way, without succumbing to self-destructive or self-sabotaging thoughts and behaviors. And often a crisis demands that we put our own fears and weaknesses aside, in the service of protecting someone else. We need all of our strength on board!

Plant-based, raw vegan nutrition has naturally cleansed many layers of negativity, friction and dissonance from my body and mind. These days, being cleaner and clearer gives me a definite edge in a crisis. I still get frightened sometimes, but I have found that sticking with clean and simple natural foods, and grounding in nature and mindfulness practices daily, definitely increases the immediacy of my access to higher wisdom and perspective - a must for navigating any crisis and its aftermath with grace and poise.