day nineteen: community
Day Nineteen of The When is Now
There is no social-change fairy. There is only change made by the hands of individuals.
-Winona Laduke
Before the coronavirus pandemic there was a classic, depressing scene we’d become desensitized to—a group of people out in public with their heads in their phones. A family at a restaurant. A group of teens at a park. Theater audiences during intermission. Travelers sitting side-by-side on a plane. We were together but separate. And now we’re all separate but seeking out innovative ways to feel connected, communal.
The etymology of the word communal is com, which means with. And we can see the togetherness of similarly rooted words like companion (to break bread with), compassion (to feel with) and community (to share space with). I’ve often been told that my superpower is creating community. Shortly after arriving in a new place, I have a routine, friends and regular groups I attend. I know my neighbors and local shop owners. I speak to strangers.
My need to create community came from feeling alone in my upbringing and from being a single parent. Not really a superpower at all but a survival method. The end result, however, has altered the quality of my life—I’ve made lifelong friends and colleagues on planes, been held in the arms of strangers when moved to tears by a play and eaten off the plates of random neighboring diners at restaurants. Creating connection and community have been some of the most fulfilling parts of my life.
In 2016, an essay I wrote was published in the NY Times. It spoke about how we might create connection in the absence of physical touch. The editor felt it was the message the country needed the Sunday before election day. To me, its message feels even more relevant right now, so maybe it planted a seed and I’m not done sowing that seed.
Back in January, when I first spoke of starting The When is Now, people asked if it was political. It was inspired by the divisive cultural climate of the world, but I knew it was non-partisan. Sure, it’s an election year and I’m concerned with what might be considered liberal principles, but from the beginning this has been intended for all people. It’s not either/or, you or me, this or that, but the connective tissue in between that interests me. I don’t believe that any perfect elected official can create the kind of change the world needs—it must come from all of us.
At the beginning of the pandemic I had a dream. Thousands of ants were carrying giant leaves on their backs, headed in one direction. Marching through a huge rainstorm, they persisted. In this same way, we’ll create change. Over these past weeks, we’ve asked ourselves what we feel, what kind of work only we can do and what we’re willing to fight for. The change we want to see in the world starts with us—it happens from the bottom up. It starts in our families, with our neighbors and in our communities. It’s time to put down our phones and pick up our leaves. It’s time to start walking to build something new with each other.
Reflective Journal Prompts
What kind of change do you want to see in the world and how can you start working for that change today with yourself, your family, your neighbors?
What could you accomplish if you hid your phone for one hour a day?
Discussion Prompts
Talk about what your relationship to community has been and what you would like it to be. For children, ask them if they were in charge of their city or town, what changes they would make.
Suggested Action
Despite social distancing, commit to three actions you could take this week to consciously create connection or community.
day twenty: love
Day Twenty of The When is Now
We are all part of a vast sea of love, one indivisible divine mind.
-Marianne Williamson
I started working in the AIDS clinic of Saint Vincent’s Hospital when I was 20. It was 1993, the peak of the AIDS epidemic. The hospital was overwhelmed with dying patients, and we were unprepared. On the worst days, one patient would die, and then our beepers would beckon us to the bedside of another. No break in between. On those days, there were two things that would replace the crushing grief that filled my lungs: I’d take the elevator up to the nursery and stare at newborn babies or I’d walk a block to the pet store and watch puppies play.
I’d breathe out pain and breathe in love. I’d breathe out fear and breathe in more love. Only then would my chest expand. I hear a lot of teachers and thought leaders talking about how we need to move from fear to love, especially right now, and I agree. You might agree too but may be caught up in the question of how. How do you love when there’s pain and suffering? How do you love in the face of so much fear? And then you might go existential and ask questions like—what is love?
Fear has to be fed. But love, love is our natural state of being. And the more you give away, the more expansive it gets.
While living in LA, I learned that succulents are the one type of plant I can care for. They don’t require much know-how, and so I planted tons of them, and for years we thrived together. When I left the west coast, I mourned leaving them. I gave away as many as I could. A friend came by and took tiny clippings. Recently I got a surprise text from him. Two years later, they now fill his terrace. The jade and the sticks on fire. The echeveria elegans and burro’s tail. The aloe and the portulacaria afra. This parting gift created life of its own. And I’m told by my neighbors that the original plants are bigger than ever. There was more than enough for everyone.
People are afraid to be around the dying, but the dying are often masters. They give away their love like succulent clippings. They taught me how to let go of what doesn’t matter. For them, the everyday stuff they worry about evaporates. Regret and indecision wither. Shame and grudges, gone. Petty arguments and misunderstandings, irrelevant. They don’t worry about how they look. Or what they’ve accomplished. So, with all that shedding, what’s left? Love. Love is what’s left. Love is what remains. The dying told me love is what matters.
Spoiler Alert: You and everyone you love will die someday. Don’t wait till the wisdom and urgency of death or dying are upon you—do your loving now. And do it BIG!
Reflective Journal Prompts
When you’re contracted, compressed or in fear, what brings you back to a state of love?
Cornel West said, Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public. Write about what love looks like on a national or global level. If countries loved their citizens the way you love your children, what would they do differently?
Discussion Prompts
Talk about how your idea of love has changed over the course of your life. For children, ask them what love is and where they feel it in their bodies.
Suggested Actions
Watch this short video. Observe what happens to the love you feel in your heart.
Watch this short video. Consciously work on expanding the force of love you feel.
day twenty-one: now
Day Twenty-One of The When is Now
Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed.
-Wayne Dyer
We’ve reached Day 21! I’m so grateful you came on this journey. Please respond to this email with your thoughts or comments.
When we completed the first round of The When is Now - Day 21 fell on April 19th which was a strange milestone for me. Twenty years earlier I was 35 weeks pregnant, sitting at my desk at work, when I had a stroke—a bleed in the left frontal lobe of my brain took away speech and right side control. I was on the phone, confirming a reservation for my boss, and the woman on the other end of the line couldn’t make out what I was saying. I hovered above my body and observed what was happening. I was thinking the right words, but they were coming out of my mouth in gibberish. There are few things like a neurological event to thrust you into the present moment—the past and future disappear.
But something became clear: my body and the consciousness that witnesses my body are separate. There are some things in life that you cannot un-see. You cannot be as you were before. There is no going back. Right now, people say that they want things to go back to normal. But when was it normal? Was it when we were stealing land or when we had no civil rights? Was it when women couldn’t vote or could be raped in their own home without laws to protect them? There are great things about this country and our world, but there’s no past place of perfection we want to return to.
Some people called some aspects of this last year a retreat or even a vacation. Vacation has the same word root as vacant—empty. What if this time is an opportunity to empty out everything we know? To de-educate ourselves. We’re told that if our computers don’t work, if the internet goes awry, turn them off. A hard reset does the trick. What do we want resolved when we get turned back on? And what do we want to leave behind? We don’t have to do things as we did them yesterday. With care, we can pick and choose.
Re-doing the past is impossible. Worrying about what might come to be in the future is futile. I know you may have experienced loss or have legitimate worries about your health or the health of your loved ones, the economy and so much more. I don’t want to diminish those concerns. Yet, there’s no way to know what will come to pass. I had so many worries during my pregnancy, but a stroke—the thing that actually happened—was not on my list. Worry only robs us of today.
Some of us, especially as children, have experienced the sublime feeling of being in our bodies. Full of wonder, glee and delight. The rest of us are in our heads too much, mulling things over. Why do we outgrow the best parts of being alive? Why do we forget that presence—being fully embodied in breath or dance or touch or taste—is ours for the taking? And it’s available to all of us.
In the present, anything is possible. The moment is always here beckoning us, waiting for us to come out and play. Right here is the only place where the magic happens. It’s the only place where we can feel the sun on our face, smell an orange blossom, taste a perfectly ripe peach, listen to music and have an orgasm. Being in the now is our birthright.
It took a stroke for me to realize there is only this moment. Maybe something made you realize this too—that everything but the present is an illusion. What will you do? Right now? Right here? Life doesn’t happen when this is over. This pandemic. This pregnancy. This pause. This problem. Life happens here. Life happens now. The when is now because now is all there is.
Hillel the Elder said, If not now, when?
Our lives have been waiting for us. The start date is today.
Reflective Journal Prompts
Do you tend to be a look-back person or a worry-about-the-future person? What keeps you from living in the present moment? How could you live here more?
Describe three moments when you felt firmly rooted in the now, fully alive.
Discussion Prompts
Talk about what’s perfect about the exact moment you find yourself in. For children, ask them this same question.
Suggested Action
Locate yourself in the now. Feel your feet on the ground. The sun on your face. Breathe. You are here.
Please listen to this song which sums up so much of what we discussed these past few weeks. If you don’t have Spotify, listen on YouTube.
Further Reading
The Power of Now | Eckhart Tolle
Be Here Now | Ram Dass
about michelle
A complete bio of Michelle Fiordaliso
Photo Credit: Debbie Zeitman | LA Women’s March, 2018
Michelle Fiordaliso, MSW is a psychotherapist and executive coach who has been committed to human growth and development for nearly thirty years. She earned her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Social Work from New York University. In 1994, while working on the AIDS unit of Saint Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village, she was appointed clinical director of one of the first women’s AIDS clinic in the country—she was twenty-one years old and it was the peak of the AIDS pandemic. She went onto acquire extensive experience with birth, death and other major life transitions by being a first responder crisis intervention counselor after 9/11, a birth doula, a death doula, a reiki master, a certified nutritional consultant and a licensed marriage officiant. So much exposure to life and death at such an early age gave her an invaluable and unprecedented education.
In her work as an executive coach, Michelle has worked with c-suite executives and administrators at major companies and institutions including Nike, Uber, A&E and the VA Hospital. From 2015-2018 she was the in-house executive coach (think Wendy Rhoades on Billions without the stilettos) and VP of Marketing at FastPay, a Fintech company where she coached the CEO/Founder since its inception in 2009.
As a writer, Michelle co-authored Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Ex (Sourcebooks, 2009) as well as ghost writing and/or editing many other published books. Her writing has earned her numerous awards including a PEN Center USA award for literary fiction. She is one of under 10 writers to have been published twice in the Modern Love column of The New York Times. Her writing has also been featured in other national publications including The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Huffington Post and Self. And she has appeared as a relationship expert and coach on Today, Tyra, Oprah Radio with Gayle King, Leeza Gibbons, KTLA and more.
The Streets Are Ours, the short documentary she directed about world-renowned Pakistani activist Sabeen Mahmud, won five awards including the Gold Plaque for Best Documentary Short at The Chicago International Film Festival.
In her life, Michelle recovered from a stroke at 27, was a licensed skydiver, ran the Los Angeles marathon at age 45, walked the Camino de Santiago in Spain and raised a 19-year-old son who now attends college in NYC.
Testimonials
Having worked with dozens of therapists and coaches in my adult life, the serendipity of meeting Michelle Fiordaliso on a plane in 2009 just one month before launching my company and then having the great fortune of benefitting from her coaching methods for the past decade has been the #1 contributing factor to the success of my business. No one can synthesize psychology, philosophy, western and eastern medicine and modern culture the way Michelle can, and the results are astonishing. The world would be a MUCH better place if there were a way everyone could experience her teachings and processes.
Jed Simon | CEO/Founder, FastPay
In addition to providing wise counsel on my own book projects and general writing process, Michelle's brilliant work has been a constant source of inspiration and motivation. I can’t recommend her writing, and her general approach to life, highly enough.
Annie Jacobsen | 5x New York Times Bestselling Author and 2016 Pulitzer Prize Finalist | Writer/Producer Jack Ryan
Michelle Fiordaliso is one of the wisest women I know. She continually grows as a human and is so generous in supporting others on all sorts of journeys. She gives the best advice—I don’t take anyone else’s!
Kirston Mann | Costume Designer, The Good Place, Brooklyn 99 and Parks and Recreation
Michelle was a perfect career coach for me. She listened, she heard, she spoke from her heart and she suggested innovative techniques to help me find myself. If it were not for Michelle’s guidance I would not be where I am now. My process involved shedding a home, belongings, a marriage and a successful career. Our work together put me on a course that feels authentic and aligned—a state that felt impossible, is now possible.
Allison Case | Flourish Integral Health
Working with Michelle brought so much clarity and organization to my thoughts. She constantly challenged me to think bigger and outside the box. She also did a great job of getting me out of my own way, when things seemed too daunting.
Sarah Armand | Business and Operations Strategy, Makers
I run a private healing/meditation studio in Los Angeles and host high profile clients from the entertainment industry as well as creatives, artists and writers. Michelle Fiordaliso is a force to be reckoned with. She maintains a personal set of values, ethics and morals, which are unwavering. These solid roots combined with her insights and capacity for compassion draw many people to seek her advice and counsel. People trust their soul to Michelle and they are wise to do so as she helps them on their path to healing. Michelle has led countless people to my studio, from all over the world. The reach of her influence is enormous. She extends energy to anyone she can help, and receives an abundance of grace, and success in return.