Barefoot Boating Blunderment
(BBB) Jane Chevous Jane and her husband Ivan try to follow the BBB principles on the sailing boat Chantey: #1. Go with open arms; #2. Walk barefoot and tread lightly on this earth; #3. Blundering or random wandering in the flow; and #4. Take only friendship, leave only delight.
Overcoming together We are in our second month of lock-down as I write this, and like everyone we have been trying to make sense of these strange times that we are living through. Can I even write about ‘barefoot boating’ when we are trying to overcome a global pandemic? I pondered this during a few sunrise yoga sessions on the foredeck; and actually, I think sailors have a lot of insights to offer right now. In fact, the BBB principles seem to chime with the times.
Go with open arms: Hold on to hope I’ve been continuing my online course on mental health as we travel, and there’s lots of wisdom to glean from trauma studies, as well as current Covid-19 research. Something is traumatic if it makes us fear for our lives, and that is true for many people now. What helps our resilience to survive this? Welcoming a nasty virus with open arms sounds a daft thing to say. And I don’t mean that we should ignore the suffering, or pretend it isn’t happening. Having open arms means being real and fully present in our situation. If someone says they’re scared, don’t rush in to reassure them that it will be alright. Rather, acknowledge and explore the feelings — ‘tell me more about that.’ Talking about our fears and realising we’re not alone, helps us to stop feeding the big anxiety monster inside us. Acknowledging the feelings enables us to move on to release them. There’s a lot of mourning right now. We need to find ways to grieve all the different losses – not just people we know who have passed, or the current isolation from family and friends, but our sense of safety, our plans, separation during key life events (we are missing the SisterShip 53
