The last few years have been crazy. Throughout this pandemic, life has been stressful and intense. So many days nothing seems to be right. I have so many questions. Am I living in the right place? Am I a good enough mom? Why am I doing this work? Why have I made the choices I have made, and on and on and on.
Then there are these moments. I'll be sitting in the car. My kids are all good. The route that I am driving on happens to be beautiful. Things at work are working out and there's a feeling of contentment that everything is exactly the way it is supposed to be. Everything is in place.
The feeling doesn't always last for long, but when it's there, there's something so calming about it. It's not happiness or elation. It is a composed, relaxed feeling of things coming together. And then there is insight into why things happened. Suddenly everything that made no sense makes sense. What I love the most in those moments is the understanding of why I had to go through that.
“Ohhh,” I think to myself, “That happened so this could happen. Now I get it …” It is looking at the puzzle and seeing all the pieces fit together. Everything is in its place.
The thing about things being in place is that we get greedy. We want things to be in place for good. The truth is in order for things to be in place there has to be a lot of motion prior. Things actually need to move around. There inevitably has to be confusion and some distress in order for things to fall into their place.
“Ms.,” she said to me. “Sometimes it feels like my place is in the camps.” (She meant the LA county probation detention camps.) “I can’t find my place on the outs.” (Outs is what they call the outside world.) This was said to me by a young woman years ago.
She participated in my group multiple times because she kept coming back to the detention facility, the “camp.” It didn’t help that she was always sent back to the place she came from, a place that was not caring, loving, or safe. That place was filled with drugs, crime, and chaos. This place, the camps, took her freedom but also gave her shelter and food. The world can be a really messed up place sometimes.
Another student of mine struggled desperately when she finally graduated high school and started at a local community college. “I can’t find my place,” she told me.
And then she cried “I feel so out of place.” I remember my heart sinking when she told me that. I knew her days in that college were numbered.
“I don’t know what to do, Ms.,” she said. “How do I find my place? How do I get things to be in place?”
I felt incredibly guilty with her struggle in college. We pushed hard for her to go there. I wasn’t sure we prepared her enough.
One of my mentors told me, “It’s not your place, Nomi, to feel guilty. A fish out of water has to figure out how to swim!”
“What?” Frustrated, I said to her, “They are out of the water! A fish out of water can’t swim.”
“Nomi, as a creative person you are thinking small. Find a new source of water. Renew. Evolve. Find your new place.”
In this life of mine, I have been lucky to have been pushed hard by mentors that make me think out of the box and sometimes beyond my understanding. Finding your place means you might move to another place or you might feel out of place until that place is your place.
I see so many displaced kids. They don’t belong. They don’t “fit,” primarily because they have never been loved unconditionally. I think loving and being loved makes you belong and, ultimately, makes a place become your place. I see youth that don’t have food, don’t have clothes, don’t have the basics. I mean the basic things to feel safe. If you don’t feel safe, you cannot feel in place. The truth is for things to be in place, you do not need a lot. It is not about huge success or money. Being okay is enough for things to be in place. Really? Okay is enough. Okay should be enough.
“Ms., you know why this is my place?” she asked me. “Cause here I can dream. You feel me? When I sleep, I can dream about all the things I want to do.” She smiled at me.“Can’t you dream when you are not here?” I asked her. “Nope,” she says. “My mind be busy thinking about what I got to do, who is behind my back and I can’t find my dreams.” She laughs. “Here, they come to me.”
I think about what she says. Not everyone who is locked up feels like that. I love that in that place, a place that to me is depressing and harsh, dreams can come to her. I have to say that some of the places The Advot Project is working in right now are far from a place anyone wants to be in. I cannot imagine any dream coming to anyone there, but that is a different story.
When she said that to me, I put my hand around her and said, “You can always dream.”
She looked at me. “Yeah, guess so, Ms. Just need to keep people out of my head.”
“That’s right,” I tell her.
After a few weeks of everything being in place in my world, I get a text that one of my daughters, who is on a summer trip, tested positive for Covid. Just like that. Things fall out of place. “It will be okay,” I tell her. We work our network. We get everything in place for her to be as comfortable as she can be. I remind myself that it could be worse, and that okay can sometimes be enough.
I know how fragile this world is. I also know how unkind the world can be. I have learned and am reminded every day how lucky and privileged I am. My work teaches me to keep things in proportion and have perspective in the deepest of ways.
In the moments in time that things in my life are in place, I thank God again and again. I know how lucky I am. For this, I am deeply grateful.
Things cannot be in place all the time. So, for those of us who are lucky to have things in place, enjoy it when you have it. Be grateful. Do not take it for granted. But seriously, when things are in place, know you have been blessed.
