006: How To Regulate Your Nervous System
Real Answers Based On Absolutely No Research
I have discovered the meaning of life, and it is renting a big house with your friends on a remote portuguese island.
To be fair, I discover the meaning of life every time I rent a big house with friends. But this time, it seems, we’ve really figured it out.
When we wake up in the morning, windows already open, we hear the birds and see the sea. We drive roads overflowing with sequoia trees and blue hydrangeas. We walk trails with more shades of green than our eyes know how to process. We swim in naturally heated thermal pools next to the ocean, whose waves intermittently cool us down.
I was going to research and write this week about cortisol, the vagus nerve, and managing stress. But I’ve been busy investigating drops of dew on tiny flowers, so I couldn’t really tell you a single thing about either of those except for that mine right now, are probably doing great. The other day, after going on a hike or swimming in the ocean - i truly forget - my friend Mary said, wow, my vagus nerve must be so released right now. Or maybe its activated. I don’t know, whatever the good one is.
Yesterday I went kayaking and then fed some baby cows and then took a nap on the beach. So I can’t tell you exactly what cortisol is or what yours or mine should be, but I know that my cortisol, today, is indeed whatever the good one is.
And the reason why I know that to be true – not just hypothesize or think maybe it’s possible – isn’t because I read about it on tiktok or actually tracked or measured it. But because… and this is crazy… I FELT it! In my body!!!! Not in my head where I typically live and hide and bury myself in stress and overanalysis. But in my BODY where, I realize, I also exist??? What a finding, what a discovery.
And boy does that thing love to frolic in nature with friends.
The way I’ve been describing this feeling all week is that my inner 10 year old has the reins. She is positively unbothered: changing from hiking clothes to swimsuits in the car, forgetting we even packed makeup, remembering all the words to colors of the wind, asking mosquitos to kindly pick another target. She has reached that elusive, mystical peak of existence the prophets only whisper of… in the ancient language I believe they call it ~living in the moment.~
The people selling ‘make america healthy again’ nostalgia would have you believe that finding peace and quiet and healthy food and happy living requires turning back the clock to the 1950s or so. When our lives were simpler, and women were happier (and definitely not drugged out of or into melancholia). But they don’t own the patent on nostalgia or simple living and TBH I think they’re doing it wrong.
I’m not against a time machine, a phantom tollbooth, or a portal of any kind, but hear me out. Instead of squishing the whole world into a time machine and cranking it back to when we didn’t have rights or reality television or proper anti-depressants, we each pop into our own individual time machines once in a while (i’m picturing like steve urkel’s1) and stop the clock a wee bit sooner. To, say, when we were 10 years old. Extra points if you calculate it to when you might have been at summer camp.
Summer camp! All the allure of the past, no pesky pantyhose or cuban missile crises!!2 No overflowing inbox, hustle culture or constant video ads, sure, BUT ALSO no cooking pot roast for your husband’s boss3 or asking him every time you need to use a credit card. Woof, shivering.
Anyway, back to our chosen time. Remember when your knees worked and you wore that Limited Too flower power top to play in the field behind your house every day? Maybe there was a discman in your Jansport, locked and loaded with a freshly burned backstreet boys mix.
The fake time machine won’t bring back your pre-teen ligaments, but you know what, Y2K is back baby, and we have spotify now, so good enough. It’s not mandatory to get yourself a vintage von dutch tank top on eBay (it might be for me), but it is mandatory to get to a park, or a field, or a river, or a creek. To sit criss cross applesauce with your friends in a cabin upstate or someone’s grandma’s lake house or your bushwick apartment. To play kickball or SPIT4 or make beaded necklaces or sing IM MISSING YOUUUU LIKE CANDYYYYYYYAAAYYYYYEAAAAAA at the top of your lungs in the car on the way to get a McFlurry.
You Pick Two, panera bread style, any of the above. And that, my friends, is how you regulate your cortisol and release your vagus nerve. (I’m pretty sure.)
Take it from the nation’s expert, Girl Who [just went on vacation and thus] Is Going To Be Okay.5
Xoxo,
D.
P.S. See how powerful nostalgia is? See how I’m using it for good and not evil ??? beware tradwives, we see you!
P.P.S. Sorry for sending a whole vacation screed on a Monday. I hope at minimum you take a long lunch and text the girlies group chat “Azores next summer????” and maybe see a few cute birds today.
speaking of nostalgia:
Yet.
Why were they always doing this??? Or why do I think they were always doing this????
I went to find a link to this card game and found the phrase “Spit is a card game of the shedding family” which I guess makes sense but I hate it, ew. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spit_(card_game)
it’s important to cite your sources
