To be known
the practice of belonging
Human Stuff is a weekly-ish newsletter. Please feel free to share parts of this letter that connect with you, or send to someone you love. Thank you for reading, ‘heart’ing, sharing, commenting, subscribing, for being here. It means something.
A song I’m loving:
A note: hello, dear reader. My daughter is starting preschool on Monday (so many feelings…) so I’m sending this week’s letter early to give myself ample space with my family before the big transition. It’s such a tender time, this walking into a new chapter for all of us. Finding small ways to be fully available to it has felt important. Thank you for receiving these words today so I can stay present this weekend. Back to the usual Sunday schedule next week. xx
Two months ago, I had professional portraits taken for the first time in six years. Since becoming a mother in 2021, my face has changed. My body has taken on a new shape. The circles under my eyes seem to be a little more permanent. My hair is more wild, less tamable. My desires, curiosities, and spirit have shifted. I haven’t quite recognized myself. In other words, I haven’t quite known how to accept that this is my current self. I kept insisting I wait to get new photos taken until I seemed familiar again, until I shifted into a version I was more comfortable with. I put it off for years, waiting for the magical time I suddenly felt at home in my skin. I forgot home isn’t a place we suddenly land in but is instead a place we intentionally cultivate, make, build, tend to.
As it turns out, getting these portraits taken (by the incredible
) was part of the process of re-building home and belonging in my own skin — not something to do once I found my way back. Practicing is part of what creates new pathways, I keep remembering.
Having a large audience is strange for someone so quiet and introverted. It happened on accident and while I’m so incredibly grateful for the opportunities it has provided, I haven’t caught up to finding ease or relaxation in the face of being perceived by so many people. Seven years later and I still find myself constricting when someone recognizes me in public, even with such graciousness and kindness. I still feel the bubble of anxiety in my stomach when I move toward the projects I’m doing or the workshops I’m teaching. I’ve rarely felt comfortable being seen, but especially up close — it has always felt much safer to be witnessed from afar, still able to hide a bit. It has felt safer to not be truly known; if no one truly knows you, no one can see what’s wrong with you. It has always felt safer to let my writing take the lead than it has to be literally seen in the flesh; writing creates a buffer, a layer of protection that doesn’t require me to be truly known.
People often comment on how vulnerable my writing is, how transparent it is. In some ways, this is true. I write from the heart, from the very center of me. Yet most people don’t realize sharing my writing isn’t particularly vulnerable for me; being truly, deeply seen is. Being in public and having people look at me is. Putting my body in places that require me to be known is. Talking in front of others is. Sharing my heart in a conversation with someone is a lot harder for me than sharing it in writing.
In my personal work this year, one of my hopes has been to cultivate a wider capacity to be seen and known — to let people in — to put myself in places where I’m not just perceived from afar but witnessed up close. My desire to be truly seen and known has been profoundly moving as someone who long only feared it. To feel desire emerge in the place fear was once rooted has reminded me of what becomes possible when we reconnect to our own dignity, to our own belonging. Earlier this year, my therapist reminded me fear often points us toward our longings. She helped me more deeply understand that my fear of being seen was actually a budging longing to be seen — that my fear of being known was really a deep desire to be known. I am still integrating the gift of turning my fears upside down in order to find the root longing underneath. I am still integrating the gift of recognizing my own belonging as necessary in building the kind of world I want for my child, for all children.
When Joy took my portrait in the botanical gardens of San Francisco this past June, I felt part of myself unfurl. I felt my body’s ease as I was being witnessed, seen, known. I felt an opening take place in my shoulders — in the areas I often grip and guard. I felt my jaw loosen, my eyes lighten. I felt the softness of my own heart while their camera lens captured me. I felt a cellular welcoming to being seen, an invitation to feel the delight of it, to feel the presence that becomes available when our defenses and fears loosen in real time. This was only one experience, but the imprint of it helped me remember what is true: I wasn’t born to hide, and hiding isn’t what kept me safe: calling out to be seen is what kept me safe. It is safe to be seen. It is safe to be known. I am tracking all the moments I feel this to be true. My body is slowly remembering.
I remembered again this past weekend, when I spent four days in-person with a group of 30 humans practicing somatics and Embodied Transformation. On the last day, I stood in the middle of the room with wobbly legs and shared my declaration out loud: I am a commitment to letting myself be seen and known so I can more fully embody my inherent belonging and share my heart’s work with greater presence, confidence, and connection. Everyone cheered.
I ask, how might hiding less allow me to contribute more? How might been truly seen and known allow me to more deeply see and know others? How might continuing to emerge from the shell allow me to offer my gifts, my nourishment, my heart more freely? How might I keep practicing?
To reconnect the dots of being seen from a place of feeling unsafe to a place of inherent belonging is the practice of a lifetime and the gift of many lifetimes. Living into our innate belonging is a method of honoring our ancestors, honoring our connection to one another and the earth, honoring our aliveness. It may happen in a nurturing photoshoot. It may happen in the choice to share just a little bit more in a conversation with a loved one. It may happen in saying yes to an invitation you might be afraid to let in. It may happen in sending the newsletter, or signing up for the program, or apologizing to the person you miss. Wherever it happens, practicing our belonging feels imperative and necessary in these times of disconnection and fear. It feels like an antidote to othering, to assuming, to dehumanizing, to isolating. It feels like an avenue to creating a more beautiful world, first for ourselves as an anchor to stay tethered to as we build with and for others. It feels heartbreakingly new for me, yet even newness means there is an avenue, a beginning, an opening.
The world I want to live in is one where everyone knows and embodies their inherent belonging. It’s a world where none of us feel the impulse to do alone what requires community. It’s a world where sharing ourselves is an invitation to deeper knowing. It’s a world where there is space for everyone to unapologetically shine, knowing there is truly room for the light each of us brings. It’s a world where safety is a given in the face of showing up authentically. It’s a world where love is the ethic. It’s a world where we can take our time in unfurling — where rushing isn’t rewarded as much as listening deeply to the self is. It’s a world where our inherent belonging is mirrored to us everywhere we look. It’s a world where we don’t have to do so much work just to return to our truest nature. It’s a world that widely and beautifully supports our becoming. It’s a world with clean air and resources aplenty and deep repair. It’s a world where our fears get tenderly witnessed so we can move forward with them, rather than live from them. It’s a world where being seen doesn’t feel so scary but instead, feels like entering into a wide river of interconnectedness, of aliveness, of connection, of heart.
I know I must include myself in this world — I know I must let myself become part of this world. I start close in, as David Whyte says. I step into the river I want to be part of. I practice.
Thank you, as always, for being here.
ps. even sharing photos of myself here feels like an edge… one I am imagining as a contribution to my own practice. May we each contribute to our own practices in all the ways we’re able to, even when it feels uncomfortable. May we let discomfort be a portal to growth.
△ Always grateful for such grounded wisdom from Prentis Hemphill
△ On not being afraid of hard work
△ These student letters to save a community garden
△ A poem I keep returning to: All the Hemispheres
△ The gorgeous work of Bread + Puppet Press
△ The courage of everyone saying no to violence everywhere
△ The coastal headlands of Mendocino
With care,
Lisa
There is strength in softness <3 thank you for sharing this! Your vulnerability invites us all to be more honest, vulnerable and truthful with ourselves and with our audiences too.
It feels like “not belonging” to write this and that’s exactly why I need to write it. I’ve almost never been shy to be seen. I’m comfortable in front of the camera. I love speaking in front of a room full of people. And I honor you Lisa for your truth and where you are. It must’ve taken great courage to share your pics. and I’m glad you did because they’re gorgeous! Also the idea of being “visible” is so layered and nuanced. Why can’t it be okay to be witnessed through our words, our art, our calligraphy instead of our face? For some that can be enough. And that’s fine too.