Am I alone in still needing time to thaw by the start of summer? I don’t mean this in the classic thermal sense; these days, Vermont is plenty warm enough for me with temperatures stretching into the eighties and nineties. Rather, I feel as if I’m moving through life on a permanent delay, as if my mind’s closed captioning is consistently five seconds behind the audio I receive from the world. The more I concentrate on this sensation, the more I’m reminded of the following prompt from a certain patient health questionnaire: “In the last two weeks, have you experienced moving or speaking so slowly that other people could have noticed?”

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately—it’s difficult to access my feelings on the matter—this freezing state I’m experiencing seems to be indetectable to others. I suspect this is because when I’m responsible to someone else, if they need me to do something for them, the work will get done. But if I owe myself something, if the motivation to complete a task must solely originate from within, I’ll prolong it indefinitely. When I try to articulate the nuances of this feeling (and, I should say, articulating anything feels especially laborious during the thawing process) to my partner, therapist, friends, and coworkers, I’m always met with surprise, usually some amalgam of “You seem fine!”, “I wouldn’t have known if you hadn’t said something,” or “Are you sure you’re not just burnt out?”

While researching this condition for which I had no satisfying name, I stumbled upon a podcast titled Feminist Wellness—I know, terribly on the nose—with nurse practitioner, life coach, and breathwork facilitator Victoria Albina. More specifically, I landed on a three-part series she produced on the nervous system state of “functional freeze.” Initially, I was skeptical. I can get woo woo with the best of them, but Victoria’s ultra-cheery vocalization, her insistence on referring to her listener as “my love,” and frequent tangents gave me pause. But the more I listened, the more my hesitations lifted away neatly as she defined “the mixed state of functional freeze” as “somatic-self disconnection.” She referenced the work of bodywork and somatic psychology experts Kathy Kain, Judith Blackstone, Peter Levine, and Pat Ogden before applying her lens to the subject: “[Functional freeze] is a state of chronic dysregulation or imbalance between the sympathetic (fight or flight) and parasympathetic (rest and digest) branches within the . . . automatic nervous system.” She continues, “You’re full of adrenaline, eventually, you’re full of cortisol . . . Meanwhile your self-same nervous system is saying, ‘Shut this party down. There is no way I can survive this experience. Freeze. Disconnect.’”

Albina goes on to describe the exact texture of dissonance that I am experiencing: “You’re in ‘sympathetic’ about the world, and you’re in ‘freeze’ about your inner life, your emotions, your true desires, your inner voice, your wants, your needs . . . ” Bingo. So, what’s the remedy? What’s a feminist interested in wellness supposed to do when they’re stuck in functional freeze?

This is where things get a little foggier, most likely to get listeners to sign up for a paid somatic workshop or webinar on polyvagal theory. What I have gathered from Albina’s free content on the subject is that one needs to reestablish a connection with their body and emotions. Think: practicing mindfulness, daily meditation, and breathwork, establishing and enforcing one’s boundaries. The standard wellness practices that seem impossible to accomplish in the steroid-fueled hustle culture of modern American life. 

So, what does any of this have to do with the New England Review? While I’m no good at meditating in the traditional sense, I am practiced at marinating on the different compartments of my life and what they afford me, spiritually and otherwise. When I feel most safe, most grounded, I’m either cuddling with my beloved longhaired cats, Julius and Chowder, and/or immersed in literature. Given my difficulty with saying “no” to things—a trait Victoria Albina says is characteristic of perfectionistic people-pleasers, who are the prime sufferers of functional freeze—a considerable chunk of my engagement with contemporary literature comes from my work as NER’s managing editor. 

When I read poetry submissions for the magazine, I feel as though my lung capacity increases. When I find something in my queue that challenges and excites me, it’s as though my blood warms and thickens. When I collaborate with our contributors to ensure their work looks exactly as they intended in the print art object, I’d swear the soles of my feet could safely touch the earth’s inner core. I’m made more alive by this work: more considerate, more possible, more patient, more strange. It’s a lifeline to my inner voice and desires.

Issue 45.2 is warm-blooded. It’s Nigerian slang, survivor’s voice, and Korean poetry in translation. It’s coyote lycanthropy, sacred rage, and cutting onions with a butter knife. It’s chronically ill and proud, bird skins preserved in borax, the history of polygraph tests. It is so much more than this, and more than you bargained for at a damn good price. Let it confront your inner life, let it quicken you. Let it get you hot. 

—Leslie Sainz, managing editor

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