How I Made a COVID Vaccine Decision
Hi, I’m Jennifer. I’d like you to know a few things about me before I begin, because these facts will mean something, even if they shouldn’t.
Politically, I’m fairly progressive. I tend to vote democrat. I believe in the use of government to help correct unfair systems and to take care of those who need it most. I support the Black Lives Matter movement, I am pro-choice, I give money to food banks, I listen to NPR.
I’m also white, well-educated, upper middle-class, straight. I drive a diesel Volkswagen for the high gas mileage. I am somewhat obsessive about recycling. I like to camp, a lot.
This article is about the COVID vaccine and how I navigated my own decision regarding it. But I start here because I want to name right up front that we have a highly politicized environment regarding not just the body, but science and information and health, too. Which means that when individuals are seeking to make informed decisions regarding their own bodies, they are not just navigating their own experiences and needs and neuroses alongside available information, they are also required to navigate an incredibly complex environment that already tells them who they are and what they should be.
Case in point: based on my description of myself, we can assume that I was a thousand percent comfortable with the vaccine, right? According to the media, just being a white Democrat should take care of that. And THAT MATTERS.
I’m going to take you on my inner journey about the vaccine, but I’m starting here because my inner journey is not separate from the forces at play in my environment, just like the health of my foot is not separate from the forces coming from its shoe or from the ground beneath the shoe or from the strength and mobility or lack thereof in the body above it.
I’m also starting here because I’m going to end with a discussion of informed consent and, as a wise friend put it, you’d best know something of the river’s current before you step in to cross.
When you think you’re flying solo...
In early 2021, I found myself unmoored by the conversations I was seeing out in the world regarding the COVID vaccine. The conversations I was having in my head, the questions I was asking, the feelings bubbling to the surface...they were largely unmatched in the world around me.
I felt like the newborn baby who is smiling at her mother, waiting for her to smile back so those mirror neurons could fire, only to see some other, confusing reaction occur. Wait, am I happy? If I feel good and I’m smiling, why isn’t she smiling back at me?
Or, in the case of the COVID vaccines, wait, am I unsure? If I am unsure, why isn’t anyone else like me unsure?
When I went to research conflicting viewpoints to the mainstream policies surrounding COVID/lockdowns/vaccinations (because how else might one have a more robust understanding of the problems and solutions?), the world got weird. Information wasn’t available. What was once available would disappear. I’d read articles that would name something really relevant to me only to see a few paragraphs later that a conclusion was drawn about it that didn’t make an ounce of logical sense to me. Then, when I’d follow what was remaining of dissenting voices, I’d end up in some strange netherworld of conspiracy theorists, which only made me discount those initial voices, even if they weren’t spouting said theories.
I felt sure that fear and profit were deeply embedded in this entire reality of COVID/lockdowns/vaccinations, because fear and profit almost always have a hand in both public policy and in modern medicine. But that didn’t mean that the government was trying to embed me with a tracking device if I got a COVID test or that just because a free speech issue existed around vaccine information, there was a conspiracy to harm through healthcare. Likewise, just because an article on Vitamin D or Ivermectin or even hydroxychloroquine has loads of support from QAnon supporters doesn’t mean those therapies aren’t to be considered or that vaccine injuries aren’t real.
But why wasn’t any of this a part of the national discourse?!? Why was I pacing around the kitchen with my sixth cup of (herbal) tea, ranting to my husband after scouring Pubmed, while everyone else seemed totally content with their decision to either get a shot or not?
Just how babies feel distress when their experience is not mirrored by caregivers, I found I, too, was feeling distressed by having my own silo-ed experience. I couldn’t see in the outer world any reflection of what I was feeling in the inner one and I was left on edge, confused, hypervigilant.
Furthermore, the lack of transparency and goodwill and dialogue around this topic meant that I kept hearing two very familiar things over and over again:
You can’t trust anyone.
You can’t trust yourself.
Sometimes, it’s also about the past.
Let’s take a brief “detour.”
When I started remembering my childhood sexual abuse, I was 32 years old. It was a shit storm. Hell. I don’t even have words to describe how disorienting and debilitating that time was.
And you know what came up a lot during that time, especially as I came out to family? I can’t trust myself.
I can’t trust myself to know myself.
I can’t trust myself to know what happened to me.
I can’t trust myself to make good decisions for me.
I can’t trust myself to...
And you know what else came up a lot during that time? I can’t trust anyone.
I can’t trust anyone to actually get me.
I can’t trust anyone to not hurt me.
I can’t trust anyone to really see me.
I can't trust anyone to…
None of this was new to the experience of remembering the abuse. In many ways, they were the result of the abuse. These had become deeply embedded beliefs that were only starting to get a bit of light, have a bit of narrative with which to connect.
They also weren’t exclusive to the abuse. For a variety of reasons, like most of us, I had stopped deeply knowing myself. When you stop deeply knowing yourself, you can’t trust yourself. You also can’t determine well who is trustworthy.
Do you know what that feels like? Hypervigilance. Mania. Like being a caged animal.
My personal vaccine freak-out was leading me into my wound. It was showing me the ways that I am still not trusting myself, that I still feel deeply unsafe in the world, that I still believe hypervigilance is needed in order to survive. It was both cover for the real pain and a road sign pointing the way to it.
Once I saw the road sign, I ran right down that road. I kept going back and back to my younger selves, listening, holding, tending. I brought my therapist in to this. I cried in the arms of my husband. I shared with close friends who get this kind of work. I let myself tremor on the floor. I journaled again and again and again.
And within a very short time, the freak-out stopped. I no longer felt compelled to read articles and walk around uneasy, drinking copious amounts of tea all day. I ceased feeling attacked when the words vaccine or anti-vaccine were mentioned. No longer did I feel reactive to my past, but simply informed by it.
Coming Into the Present
When the pain of the past stopped being so firmly overlaid on to the present such that I could arrive in the present, a few things became clear:
My wounding can be useful. Whenever someone tells me they know what’s best for my body, I know to slow down and pay really good attention.
I don’t actually have substantial trust in the players involved and that’s not a failure of mine, but a response to documented harm done by them.
My lack of overall trust doesn’t necessarily mean harm is being done at this moment.
I want to hear from people I deeply trust.
Overall, I found I could trust myself and I could trust others. Not ALL the others. And not just the others that these people said I should trust or those people said I should trust. But I could feel my own ground enough to navigate this with integrity and openness.
That Come-to-Jesus Moment
I feel really good and clear about my decision regarding the COVID vaccine. I don’t feel a charge when someone makes a different choice than me. Only occasionally, due to the generally harsh internet climate, do I feel the tug of uneasiness. Mostly, I feel adequately informed. Not perfectly informed (because that’s decades away), but adequately Informed by my inner self and by those I trust outside of me and by my capacity to make decent sense of the information available.
So what did I decide?
I’ve spent quite a bit of time pondering whether or not it’s worth me answering that quesiton. I know there are a lot of you out there who are looking for guidance or affirmation and you might want for me to be that source of affirmation. You also might feel really disappointed if my path is different than yours.
My decision isn’t a secret, but I’m not sharing it here because I could easily become another unnecessary voice in your head telling you what you should do.
What matters most is that you understand the forces in play on your decision-making, whether that’s current fear-mongering, prior traumas, capacity to read literature, the media, the people around us, old belief systems, etc. When you can step back (or in) and observe these forces with equanimity, intelligence and intuition, you can respond more appropriately in order to meet your own needs.
But that takes work. For real.
Maybe you need to increase the load of pubmed discernment or maybe you need to decrease the load of your parents’ belief systems.
Maybe you need to discharge the activation that’s happening in your nervous system around entirely unrelated areas of your life.
Maybe you need to curtail your media consumption.
Maybe you need to increase your capacity for hearing your own voice, period.
Maybe you need to become aware of how you respond when someone in authority tells you what you need to do.
Maybe you need to set limits with that response.
If your caged animal self is making an appearance, I can bet you most certainly need to attend to some earlier wounds.
Are you struggling, too?
For those of you having a hard time with this, I want to invite you to consider that your own personal dis-ease is likely a pretty reasonable response to your (inner and outer) environments. And I want to invite you to get really curious about the deeper pieces that are in play and how they are loading your system such that you might be feeling kinda freaked out.
Specifically, if you’re feeling uneasy about making this decision for your own body, I want to recommend some combination of the following:
1. Give yourself permission to have a hard time (hopefully, reading this helps with that!). There are always many layers involved when we are feeling confused and it’s okay to take space to sort through it.
2. Track what’s coming up emotionally, mentally and physically around the vaccine. Write it down. Talk it through with people who are good at holding space.
3. Notice what instigates your heightened responses. Is it when you imagine sharing your decision with a specific person? Is it when you’re tired? Is it after you read something particular?
4. Time travel until you find prior experiences that felt similar to what you are experiencing right now and DO THE WORK around those experiences. Journal, go to therapy or coaching, re-parent yourself. Take the light from your prior wounds and let it inform you now.
5. Get really clear on what you need and then seek it out. Do you need more information? Do you need less information? Do you need quiet? Do you need a long, long walk? Do you need to learn how to access your own knowing? Do you need smarter people to weigh in?
6. Be circumspect when accessing information and learn how to read the lines and between the lines. Know your sources of information. Know to whatever extent possible the organizing principles for those sources of information.
7. Access your inner wisdom through meditation, movement, writing, dreams, etc. Listen, listen, listen.
And if you need help with any of these, seek out help.
It’s About True Informed Consent
Having spent many years in the birth advocacy world, I think often about the notion of “informed consent,” the idea that anything done or not done to your body happens only after you’ve received all the necessary information and can make your own choice.
It’s easy to think of informed consent as being only about information coming from outside the self - you know, from your doctor or a study or a pamphlet or a waiver. And, with COVID and its vaccines, I really, really think you should dive in and get educated with this sort of information. Still. One year later. Maybe especially one year later.
But there’s an even more important piece. The first step (and, for you, it may be your last), is to let yourself give you the deepest information about you available before saying yes or no to the vaccine or about any other major decision for your body. This is the inner work. This is coming home. It is only when you also know yourself can you truly give informed consent.
Do you want to learn how to access your own wisdom to help you figure out anything?
Want one-on-one help discerning your own way forward with a major decision about your body? Click here to connect.