The Dismal Nitch

Seeking Meaning in the Mundane and Adventure in the Adversity

In November of 1805, Meriweather Lewis and William Clark found themselves cornered by bad weather in a tiny nook at the Ocean End of the Columbia River, only miles from their destination. Their 'dismal nitch' was the last stop before making history. Nearly two and a quarter centuries later, you can find us at the other end of the Mighty Columbia, sheltered from the storm and planning our own emergence in to legend. Welcome to Northeastern Washington and the Dismal Nitch. 

  • Fire Line Fables
  • EAT
  • The Big Voice
  • Hoppy B*tch
  • ESCAPE
  • Predictability
  • Places
  • Bendability
  • The Big Voice OG
  • LEARN
  • TALK
  • The Nitch Stuff
You can get this patch from 30 Seconds Out…

You can get this patch from 30 Seconds Out…

No One is Coming. Expect to Self Rescue

February 10, 2021 by Liv stecker in psychology, self help, survival

The last 12 months has been rough. Even if you didn’t lose your job, or your business, or your home or a loved one to the virus, it’s been hard. The toll on our mental health has been more than any of us realize, or maybe, like me, can admit. We’ve been cut off from family and friends, stripped of our usual social habits and denied all of the healthy coping mechanisms that we have, and many of the unhealthy ones as well. We’ve had nowhere to turn but internally, and only our closest family members to help to deal with the frustrations that arise, the stress of juggling new and different responsibilities, and learning to live in the altered landscape that the last year has painted for us.

My friend Liz posted picture of a morale patch with the words: “No One Is Coming. Expect to Self-Rescue.” It’s a phrase that keeps running through my mind on an almost hourly basis, for many reasons.

In January, I believe we saw one of the darker moments of American History. Not because I am a liberal and I think the rioters who stormed the capitol are idiots, although I do. And not because I am a conservative and I think the media narrative is wildly inaccurate with the intent to drive up ratings by turning Americans against each other, although I think that as well. I believe it was dark because it was the next rung on a ladder to the new peak of division in a these once United States. I won’t call it a climax, because I don’t believe we’re done. The knee jerk reaction of many Americans after January 6th was to point fingers in righteous indignation at the other side for perceived evil and stupidity. There is no seeking to understand. There is no empathy. No compassion for our fellow Americans. There is ridicule and judgement. Middle ground is no longer permissible in these United States. Choose your island. Pick your team, or be ousted by both.

My conservative friends mock me for wearing a mask. My liberal friends judge me for owning guns. It is difficult to maintain any relationship at all these days, even without a state that’s locked down endlessly and a virus that makes face-to-face connection so much harder. We can’t talk. We can only hurl vitriol and our lofty opinions from emotionless social media posts, left open for misinterpretation and twisting.

In many ways, I have never felt more alone than I do now. This has been one of the hardest winters that I can remember, when it comes to my mental health. I feel cut off and isolated from everyone, on many levels. Some of that is self-inflicted, some of it is circumstantial. Either way, no one is coming. Expect to Self Rescue.

I recently switched jobs at my work and my new task is to help write a regional economic recovery and resiliency plan. It’s a play book for what to do when all the “best practices” for our regional businesses, agencies and governments don’t work anymore, either because of a threat to infrastructure or an economic shock, such as the Coronavirus has wrought. The plan has to be built on the same idea: No one is coming. Expect to Self Rescue. What are the tools and resources we need to survive without outside help?

As I pour through plans from other regions and learn about this process, it strikes me that while each entity in the region has a responsibility to prepare internally for disaster, the fallout from any catastrophe is lessened by the strength of our regional network. The plan has to take into consideration all of the assets and tools we have at our disposal across the region in the event that no one from the outside: help from the state or federal government, etc., can reach us. The more we can rely on our neighbors, the better the outcome will be.

It turns out that the same is true for individuals. Even in my darkest moments this winter, feeling like I was painted into a corner, out of reach from any help or hope, that I still had self-rescue tools at my disposal. These tools were the words of friends and family logged into my memory banks over the years. The random acts of kindness and the example set by Good Humans throughout the course of my life. The resilience of the warriors that I work with who have faced adversity on the battlefields and at home that I can only pretend to imagine. Even when no one is coming, they are there.

I started writing this over a month ago. I was in a dark, almost bitter place and I imagined the take-away being some resolute toughness aligning with my “nobody cares, work harder” mantra, but as I write, and sit, and think, I realize that it is the care of people, past and present, that make the work possible. It's is the others in my life who have taught me how to self-extricate from the darkness.

We need each other. We need our differences and our solidarity. We need the empathy and compassion that only humans (and most dogs) are capable of. When I started trying to understand how to be effective in helping veterans a few years ago, I asked almost every one that I met what made the most difference for them when they faced their moments of darkness, or what kept them from spiraling downward. Without exception, the veterans that I talked with said it was having the camaraderie of someone who knew. Another vet, another Soldier, Sailor or Marine. Someone who had been there, regardless of the conflict or generation - someone who knew the value and necessity of team. I realized I didn’t have the tools to help these veterans - they needed each other. It’s what drove me to start the shooting team, connecting the vets to each other for the healing and the understanding they need.

We are all veterans of the last 12 months. Those of us left standing have survived the politics, the lockdowns, the virus, the insult to our economy. We’re all still here and we can find the healing and understanding we need from each other. We don’t need to look to Washington DC or Olympia for our salvation, we need to look to our neighbor, our friends, our families. No one is coming. We can self rescue.

February 10, 2021 /Liv stecker
COVID19, coronavirus, politics, family, mental health, depression
psychology, self help, survival
Love can build a bridge?

Love can build a bridge?

On Self- Approval

November 01, 2019 by Liv stecker in life, psychology, self help, survival

I can’t stand being disapproved of. In fact, the fear of disapproval has made me a coward. I feel like most of my childhood was immersed in disapproval, which is status quo for the religious world. “God” was so busy disapproving of what I said or wore or did that he had no time to remind me of my worth, regardless of my shortcomings . We’re still working that one out.

I’ve been fairly successful in avoiding conflict since I moved out of a conflict-riddled “Christian Community” nearly 16 years ago. I have steered clear of politics, religion, and CrossFit to avoid any discussions that get past a level 1.5 intensity, which is to say, an episode of The Brady Bunch.

But life is conflict. It’s struggle and strife and finding yourself on the opposite side of an issue from other people. Sometimes you’re across a sea of discord from people you love and respect very much. That’s hard. I hate it. HATE it. Because when we don’t agree, it seems oversimplified to say that we have different perspectives, but we literally are not able (or in some cases willing, but I think it’s usually able) to see the logic or righteousness of their position. For me, disagreement has always meant disapproval. If we disagree, then you disapprove of my viewpoint, or vise-verse. It’s so much discomfort I would rather eat a bowl of lima beans or be forced to watch a marathon of Janette Oke made for TV movies.

I am learning to hold the anxiety of disapproval and discord at arms length. To look at it and make it’s acquaintance. To see what is there for me. Almost always, I am expanded. Almost every time I can embrace conflict, I grow as a person.

I feel like my life right now is nothing but disagreement and discord. In fact, the only person that I think is fully supportive of me is that one drunk lady I met at the bar last weekend who told me tearfully that I could do anything if I put my mind to it. (Fist bump to you, drunk lady.) I feel unsupported, but I also feel sure of my own thoughts, and that’s a new feeling for me, and one that to be honest, wasn’t allowed for most of my younger life. I am relatively intelligent (especially in the context of the geographic area where I live), I have some education and some experience and I have formulated ideas and opinions, that contradict people on all sides of my life, but they’re mine. I have to own the discomfort in the confidence of my own mind and heart. That’s a tough thing for me, but I am learning.

I am figuring out how to be comfortable under the microscope of disapproval. I have to learn that disagreement does not have to negate love or respect. I know many people whom I love but also disagree with. I respect many human beings but don’t see eye to eye with their position on things. This is the beautiful tension of life, and the secret to unconditional love. I don’t have to like it all, I don’t have to enjoy it all, I just have to accept. I suck at it, but I am getting better, I hope.

Being a better human doesn’t mean being more agreeable. It means being tolerant in spite of differences and defending liberty for every person, regardless of my approval ratings for them, or the other way around. It means mutual respect and compassion,

November 01, 2019 /Liv stecker
relationships, friends, family
life, psychology, self help, survival
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Nothing could have prepared me for this…

Nothing could have prepared me for this…

The Surprise of My Life

July 02, 2019 by Liv stecker in psychology, self help, life, be merry, survival, travel

When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a sailor. I wanted to join the navy, like my dad, but mostly because I really liked the hats and I had this adorable sailor-suit romper that I remember wearing on my 8th birthday, when I unwrapped my very first bible from mom and dad. That bible is filled with scribbled notes, especially one giant highlighted one, announcing the fact that “I WILL DISCOVER THE ARK OF THE COVENANT!” - the next of my future ambitions, archaeology, and one that would circle back around later in my life. 

The only colleges that I applied to during my senior year (at home) were bible colleges with mission aviation programs. I wanted to fly planes into jungles and drop important things that tribal people needed, like bibles. I met a girl who fought fire and thought it was the baddest ass thing that I could Never Do. But I told God to send me anywhere, the remotest, most destitute place on earth for Him, I was ready. 

Growing up, I don’t remember imagining a family, or kids. If any thought of offspring crossed my mind, I could imagine tolerating a small herd or rowdy boys. I remember only one specific thing about a wedding that I wanted: a ride in a sleigh with a red velvet, fur-trimmed cape. Instead I got married in October between two bonfires, surrounded by torches and a church congregation hand-clapping to one of my least favorite church songs EVER. 

I never fantasized about the little blonde girls in princess dresses and cowboy hats that would fill my life from the age of 19 until now. I never imagined canning quarts of peaches or cooking casseroles. I never planned out the domestic bliss that was in store for me. I had fantasies of dorm rooms and best friends and road trips with loud music and lots of snacks, not an SUV covered with crushed Goldfish Crackers and a steady diet of Rice and Beans and cheap Macaroni and Cheese. 

I had waited anxiously for 17 years to meet the One Man that I would spend my life with, traveling the world, studying intellectuals and philosophers, tromping through ancient ruins and up breathtaking mountainsides. I never could have anticipated what was actually in store. At 17 I was too young to see it coming, and it’s a good thing, cause I might have bailed. And then where would I be? God sent me to Northport. He gave me four little girls and a dud of a marriage. You don’t get much more remote or destitute. But you do get adventure.

When my kids were born, I guess I was too preoccupied with survival to spend time imagining what they’d be when they grew up. Now I know that it would have been a silly waste of time, because these four are nothing I could have seen coming. Wild and brilliant, beautiful and weird, if my life was never anything more than the ledge those four needed to jump off in to the world, it was worth it.

Every turn in my life has been a surprise. Some tragic, some amazing, and all of them necessary. There is no point of my life that has turned out how I pictured it. Sure, I studied some anthropology and even did some archaeology work. I’ve fought the fires. I’ve been on the road trips, but it’s usually my kids riding shotgun in the SUV with the loud music and the crushed Goldfishes. I didn’t land the One Man for my Whole Life (yet). But I’ve done more than my share of tromping and traveling without him, and with plenty of other amazing people. 

I never got to be a sailor, but I get to work with a few and I love them AND their hats. I actually did drop bibles in a jungle, just not from a plane, and it taught me more about what I was in need of than the people who lived there. I’ve canned peaches and studied philosophers and met heroes and poured beers and drank whiskeys with greater human beings than I ever thought I’d get to meet. 

The Surprise of My Life IS my life, with all of its twists and turns, with four little women who are four times the woman I could have dreamed. Every day is another surprise, and just when I start thinking I might know what’s coming next, life comes up with a better idea, and I’m ok with it. Wonder what’s next?  

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July 02, 2019 /Liv stecker
family, life, destiny, career, education, travel
psychology, self help, life, be merry, survival, travel

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