Recently my therapist introduced me to a nervous-system regulating concept called the Window of Tolerance. As I understand it, Window of Tolerance is very similar to what I call “margin” and what some folk call “emotional bandwidth.”
It is a way to talk about our capacity for regulating our nervous system and our responses to stress, trauma and trauma triggers, and to being overwhelmed.
In the past five months, my window has been cracked only a very tiny amount. I started graduate school/seminary in January, made two international trips within two months of each other, traveled more than I have since early 2020, and have been managing a very large work (ahem, gargantuan) project.
Oh, and I hit the “it’s-been-6-months-since-we-up-ended-our-life-to-move-to-New-Jersey-and-it’s-harder-than-I-thought-it-would-be” wall and entered peri-menopause.
So, yeah. My window was barely cracked, let alone open, and for months I did my damndest not to turn into a puddle of hot lava and leak out onto everyone around me.
But then, somehow, right when I thought I might actually break into a hundred tiny twitching pieces of anxiety and dread, I finished my first semester of school. And suddently whole room in my brain opened back up, and my window inched open a bit more.
A few days later, I travelled to Arkansas, where I went on a grand tour visiting so many of my very favorite people—the people who know me and see me and love me, heart and soul. As I am. For who I am.
And I didn’t just get to see these people. I got to have sleepovers.
Y’all. Sleepovers as an adult are my favorite thing. I think that is part of why I am drawn to the idea of having a retreat house, or why I have always dreamed of having a sort of shared land commune (with my favorite people of course.)
Of all my living arrangements during college, my favorite was the communal dorm. (Shout out to everyone in Perrin West @ OBU ’93-’94! )
That year – and that dorm – was special. We kept our doors open. We padded down to the communal bathroom in our robes, towel hair wraps, and fuzzy slippers, toting our shower caddies filled with Bath and Body Work products (Plumeria anyone?)
In those days, we moved seamlessly from room to room, sharing notes from class, swapping clothes, and consoling each other as we slowly, but steadily, broke up with our high school sweethearts. They were halcyonist of all the halcyon days. And getting to guest-room hop during my trip felt a lot like those days.
Here is the thing – and it’s why I think group Airbnb’s are a huge hit, (and why summer camp is such a special time for kids)- there is a different level of friendship intimacy that happens when you see each other with bedhead, when you stay up until you are too tired to pretend to be fine (instead of going to your own hotel room at a sensible hour,) and when you all do the dishes together and everyone figures out who needs to wash and who is better off drying (because maybe they just don’t quite scrub hard enough, because they got distracted talking about Queen Charlotte…).
When you cohabitate with folks, when you share bathrooms and thermostats – even for just a day or two – you cross some sort of time/space continuum that invites a different kind of knowing. A knowing that changes your whole being on some kind of cellular level. A knowing that affirms that you are loved and seen and accepted as you are – bedhead and all. It is the kind of knowing that opens our windows of tolerance – for our own imperfections and self-inflicted chaos, and for the imperfections and chaos of others – a little bit wider. It is the kind of knowing that produces gentleness and kindness, patience and self-control. It is the kind of knowing that is rooted in very source of Love itself.
My trip to Arkansas was a whole week of this kind of knowing, and it healed me in places I didn’t even realize where wounded.
When I got off the plane in Little Rock, my window was opened just a smidge more than cracked, but by the time I boarded my return flight, it was wide open again, with perfect summer breezes blowing gentle through. And it was all because I had seen and been seen, I had known and been known, and I had loved and been loved. Bedhead and all.
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