Dispatch From My Covid Bedroom

Dispatch 1: Feb 13, 2025

I have Covid and Trump somehow still exists and it’s freezing outside. But it’s also sunny and we have a home and a heater that works and I’m not afraid ICE is going to knock down our door, so our windows are open. Count your blessings.

I briefly tried feeling sorry for myself, missing my mom extra hard when I’m sick, but then this morning happened. My heart burst open as I watched my little kids struggle in their snow gear out the door, carrying their big bags of homemade Valentines - personalized with drawings and messages created specifically for each friend. Saxon scraping the freezing ice off the window shield, hurrying them into the backseat, masks on, excitedly telling him things at the same time. He needs a break.

But I can’t give him one, yet. I’m in my room hiding and no one can ask me for anything, so, my heaven. Except for the fatigue and loss of smell and horrid dreams and coughing and sneezing and missing the outside world, where most people really are good and decent. In fact, since the nazis and white supremacists were elected - cruel, unhappy and ugly in the most vulgar ways - most strangers I meet have been more kind. Have you noticed that? It’s like we know for real that we only have each other now.

Official caring is illegal now - taking the most from those who have the least is happening on purpose - so we are more caring, more kind to one another. Since November, I’ve noticed more smiles, more eye contact, more honest conversations, more humility, more hellos, more listening, more softness, more humanity. Have you?

I need my people more than ever, so I am really trying to practice softness with myself so I can show up this way for them. (Besides constantly packing a go-bag and looking for AM-FM radios anywhere but Amazon and researching property and land in Merida and Ghana and making sure the kids get their passports renewed and researching homeschool and chickens and bees and gardening. “Should we stay or should we go now?” I’m calm! So calm!)

I do miss kissing my babies. I miss picking them up from school, after sewing or yoga or cooking, to take them to martial arts, which they love. It’s like they know they’re going to need these skills in this harsh, fiery world, where they were already going to have to work twice as hard - and now, how hard? Try to breathe, Britt.

This morning, I am loving the excuse to do nothing - fare niente - which I learned from my cherished time in Italy many lifetimes ago. Can we please center enjoyment? “We are so bad at that in this country,” says my friend from Mexico City. She’s so right it hurts. I want to be from somewhere else…

Last night my husband made me popcorn and brought the TV into the bedroom against my pleas (“but Kendrick said to turn the TV off!”) so I can study TV pilots (thoughts on Paradise/Hulu anyone?). I’m letting him love me, finally.

I’m in here with my altar and offerings for the ancestors and my paints and my crossword puzzles and humidifier and Desert Rose tea and Crime and Punishment and Octavia’s Brood and Toni Morrison’s Paradise and Midsommer Murders. It helps. My friend brought food to my doorstep. Another friend sent me the “willpower to rest!” They help. It takes courage for me to allow myself to be cared for. Thank you.

This enforced time-out is helping me face these dreadful times with a little more clarity, a little more distance. So I can respond with the great mother energy. Not react like a small child, which feels so easy to do, especially if I’m online. So I’m not. Today.

When I first felt this sickness, I pushed through, pushed my body to go harder because I assumed I was just depressed. Ashamed I’m paying for these workout classes and not going. I already signed up for so many things - to sub at the girls school, to get these pages done, to get these grants in, to get money in, to get the website done, to pay to look younger, to get everything done on all the lists, which has never happened and never will.

I refused to listen to my body, assuming this was all emotional, and really beat myself up for being tired, for having no energy to clean the mess, for not doing enough to be happy, for not expressing more to avoid depressing more, for having big emotions and hormones. No amount of coffee helped. I thought I was doomed! And then I went to urgent care. You have Covid. Oh! That makes so, much, sense. My therapist shrieked with joy on Zoom when I told her I had to cancel everything (except therapy) and stay home this week. “Good for you!”

What? Who am I without achieving? Who am I without being cute? Who am I without caring for someone else? What is my value without these things?

Welp. I’m in this bedroom finding out. Also doing my therapy homework, finally: writing my eulogy, and writing my value-based vision for my family. And yes, watching TV. And yes, applying for scholarships for summer camp in February. And yes, eating the leftover Kit Kats from their Valentines in the bathtub, because we are all going to die and the future is now and aging is the goal not the enemy and pleasure is critical and perfectionism is so 2024.

Relaxation is harder than working. So here I am confronted with it all. I’m listening to the audio from my latest Life Review interview with an elder, and she said: “To be a grown up is to be responsible for your own happiness.” I played it back. I like this. And maybe SSRI’s help? Still too scared to find out but that day may be coming. Will keep you posted. In the meantime - tofu, sunshine and creatine!

You know what really makes me happy? Kendrick. For the whole family. Thank you Kendrick. For showing us what real power looks and feels like.

Note - Nya secretly grabbed the mustard from the fridge in anticipation of this moment. Hell. Yes.

Before the Super Bowl, we went shopping at Five Below for Valentines and to the Botanic Gardens for sanity. Before Kendrick gave us a big dose of real power, we were driving, talking about life and death and “Trunk” and power and goddesses and Jesus and how the word God means “higher power.” And Seylah from the backseat said, all sassy with that knowing twinkle in her eye, “The owner of Amazon owns our house because so many packages come from him and we wouldn’t have anything without him so he’s the highest power, and in all the TV shows the villains always say ‘money is power’ and he’s the richest so, yeah. He’s God.”

Breathe, Britt. I know we were made for these times, but god damn we have so much work to do. She likes to read in my bed as I chant in front of my altar to the Navadurgas, so she knows real power in her spirit and body, but boy does her brain fight it. I get it.

It’s complicated right now. On purpose. I’m making sure there’s always gas in the car and cash under the mattress, but I’m also figuring out how to get the Asbestos out of the crawl space in case that’s our 4-year bunker. Planes are falling from the sky as I make plans to travel on these points to combat my winter SAD.

Most women I know have gotten sick recently. Most women I know are re-arranging furniture and purging their closets and dying their hair a new color - straddling the here and now with future plans to combat anxiety. How do you make plans in the groundlessness of the unknown? How do you decide which way you will resist when there are so many ways? How do you stay connected to your people without using oligarch tech?

Get those annual exams in now before they take away our insurance? Eat this fish even though I’m apparently vegetarian? Get a horse? Prep for a black-out? Do this science experiment with the kids that calls for food coloring even though cancer? Why memorize phone numbers if the phone system will go down? Who is my new emergency contact for the school since I took my mom off the list? How can I be in honest relationship with loved ones who voted for this?

Last night, I woke wide awake at 3:30am. Hi mom. I put on my mask and checked to make sure my babies were breathing. Hold their hearts. Whisper “I love you” over and over so their bodies and spirits remember.

To be happy and responsive to what actually needs getting done during these times will be our greatest feat, and will defeat the cruelty. To be clear and steady will be the real gift to our community. So we need to rest and say no to a lot of the stuff we used to say yes to.

Maybe my words for these times are: Try A Little Tenderness.

Maybe this illness is my blessing. Be careful what you ask for. And be specific. The goddesses are listening.

YOU’RE INVITED!

Do you listen to our Unsent Show Podcast? It’s free and drops every Thursday. Listen on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It helps us so much if you subscribe, write a good review and give us 5 stars. Plus, it’s fun to hear an unsent message read aloud on stage every week!

March 3rd - and every 3rd of the month going forward - we have our Three Things Free Womxn’s Meet Up in Denver. We are re-imagining mutual aid and community-led care. We each bring 3 things we need and 3 things we can offer. If you are not a cis-man, join us in Denver every month. It’s really fun and healing. Plus we’re going dancing at on March 3rd, cuz joy is resistance!

Unsent Show: Money Edition is Friday, April 25th 7pm at Town Hall Collaborative - tix on sale now! Join us!

Unsent Sex Show Presented by Sexploratorium is Friday, September 26th 7pm at Town Hall Collaborative - tix on sale now! Join us!

CONNECTIONS

Some of you may receive occasional emails from Three Things Co! That is me and Saxon! Please read and join us on our journey to bring the healing arts of music, storytelling and performance to the community. He dropped his first video sharing the inspiration for starting Healing Futures, a hip-hop workshop for kids to help them live longer. Let me know what you think!

I’m so proud of him. And of us. Everything we’ve gone through up to now has led us to this point and this is what we’re made for. We’re finally doing it. We’re just getting started, and I trust the timing. I hope you’ll join us on the journey in any way that feels good for you.

Lastly, if you or anyone you know is a grant writer, we are hiring! Please connect us: connect@threethingsco.org.

Thank you family. Here’s to showing up for our community, asking for help, resting, practicing joy, and lots of saying no so we can say yes when it counts!

Love and boom from my Covid bedroom,

BB

PS - if you’re looking to stay informed but feel overwhelmed by news, I appreciate:

Jon Stewart’s Podcast and Heather Cox Richardson’s Substack - both free.