A handful
of what's been revealing itself
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A song I’m loving (truly on repeat):
A few things today —
On Friday, an album I’ve been anticipating was released. I had a free morning (thank you, childcare) so I got in my car and planned a drive just a few minutes longer than the length of the album — the loop from Tomales to Point Reyes and back home. Listening to an album from start to finish felt like an act of care, like a way of slowing time down and lingering in someone’s art for longer than a blip. Making space to really be with something for longer than a scroll or a flip of the page changed how I experienced it. It seeped in deeper, affected me more, made me think and feel more than I would have if I had listened while doing dishes or not paying such close attention to whole experience of it. The choice to plan an hour around listening to something made me ask: Where else can I do one thing at at time? How else can I fully be with what I’m doing as a way of really experiencing it? What would support me in giving what matters to me the time it deserves? What conditions would make it easier for me to feel, absorb, and truly take in what I’m doing/listening to/reading/watching/experiencing? Because that is the kind of relationship I want to have with the world and all it holds — I want to really take it in, not half-assed or distracted but fully, with care. More of that, please.
So much of life feels in flux right now, both internally and externally. I suppose it always does, but especially lately. I’m awaiting clarity on next steps, considering big shifts professionally, deepening some personal relationships and grieving others, wondering how this election year is going to unfold, wondering when the violence will stop, integrating deep deep personal work, trying to reorient toward being of service after needing time tending to myself and my family… a lot is shifting. Instead of processing it all through writing publicly, I’ve been keeping a lot of the shifts occurring private, just for me. It feels different, like a secret, like I’m being dishonest — when what’s really happening is my desires of what and how to share my writing are changing alongside me. And I’m allowing the change instead of bypassing it for the sake of continuity.
This experience, one still taking shape, has made me think about what happens when we create certain expectations or Ways Of Being In Public, and then we change… inevitably, yes, but sometimes in ways that don’t quite fit what we’ve been doing, what people have come to expect. It’s made me think about how to get more comfortable disappointing people by following our own compass instead of continuing on the road others know to find us on. It’s made me think about what it means to close chapters that don’t fit anymore, even when it seems like a “bad business decision” or looks like failure from the outside. It’s made me think about the difficulty and necessity of being in integrity. It’s made me think about how being in integrity isn’t always what others actually want from us. It’s made me think about the roles we play, and the roles others want us to play in their lives, and what happens when those don’t line up. It’s made me think about how to truly listen to oneself, how simple it sounds but how hard it can be to execute in the world we live in. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and don’t have clear answers, but even the contemplating of these themes has given way to an internal orientation toward my own truest path and what it takes to stay on it.
“Just when I thought I couldn’t feel more, I feel a little more.” Adrianne Lenker
Part of what has caused all the above thinking I’ve been doing is the feeling I’ve been doing. Learning how to feel instead of think — be in the heart instead of the head — has shaken up my idea of what it means to be alive. Learning to be in my body more after a lifetime of living from the neck up has provided insight into myself and what I want that I couldn’t ever find trying to think or force my way to it. Just when I thought I couldn’t feel more, I feel a little more. There is a lot of grief in realizing you’ve been cut off from parts of yourself for so long that you didn’t even know they were there. There’s grief in realizing you’ve been leading from places that don’t contain the fullness of you. There’s grief in unfolding from the shrinking. Yet there is also a lot of opportunity in the reintroduction, in the meeting of ourselves. I feel like a baby giraffe on wobbly legs, learning how to be in the world in this new shape. I feel afraid of the changes that are occurring, the unfamiliarity of it all. I feel afraid of being seen in this phase, in the process. But what I feel most is awe — awe at what is possible when we learn to get out of our own way and step into the world a bit more whole. Is that cheesy? Sure. It is true? Yes.Letting go of the belief that it all needs to get better before I feel okay is a process that sounds obvious but is actually really hard, and really profound, and really against the things I’ve been taught to believe about growth and wellness. Knowing not everything needs to get better before I can fully inhabit myself and show up in the world has obliterated what I thought I knew. This obliteration continues to reveal new ways of seeing and being. This obliteration continues to show me what matters most, and is is so often the opposite of what we’re taught matters most. This obliteration is teaching me to trust what I feel.
Something I keep telling myself: “Maybe it’s really okay to be seen not knowing, to be seen truly in process without the crystallized wisdom yet, to be seen walking the path instead of at the end of it. Maybe that’s your medicine, actually.”
Another thing I keep telling myself: “Maybe going against the path that would be most outwardly successful and choosing to lean into your deepest medicine, which might not be the most booming work you could do but is the most true, is actually okay.”
Another thing I keep telling myself: “Bless you for trying so hard to control what people think of you; bless you for remembering you cannot.”
Another thing I keep telling myself: “You are not a persona; you are a person.”
Another thing I keep telling myself: “Your quiet and gentle nature doesn’t need to be toughened or fixed. Your quiet and gentle nature just is.”
One last thing I want to tell myself, and maybe you — let things take the time they take. Let yourself start in the mud where flourishing comes from. Let your heart lead the way, outside of the bounds of judgment. Let clarity come on the timeline it needs, rather than the timeline you want. Let people wonder. Let yourself wander. Let the unknowing be a place of what could be, of what could happen, of what could go well — not just a place of fear. Let yourself feel like a wobbling baby giraffe. Let yourself need help. Let life occur outside of your own narrow vision of it. Let yourself not need to know what it all means yet. Let yourself be. Let yourself be. Let yourself be.
Thank you, as always, for being here.
△ This new album on repeat… tender, joyful, stunning
△ I really loved watching this for moments you might feel the urge to refresh your home/space but don’t necessarily have much energy to… lots of sweet tips
△ How the war in Gaza changed this poet’s work
△ The practice of sitting underneath a tree every day
△ Ever-grateful for the work of Bill Plotkin
△ This view out the passenger’s side —
With care,
Lisa
This Ways of Being in Public line of thought makes me think of Bob Dylan going electric, and changing again and again, and how hard it can be to do that publicly at any level, and how the stakes are both higher for a huge public figure and also higher for those of us who have just a handful of people that we are afraid on some level to disappoint/lose/whatever.
A friend mentioned recently that he had really appreciated when someone he was speaking with started a thought with, "I'm just thinking this in pencil ..." It's hard sometimes to even know what our changes are as we are going through them and we put a lot of stuff out there that's half-formed or murky and people respond to that and that makes the figuring out even murkier sometimes. So, I think it's great that you're taking space to make changes privately .... and also that you're putting some of it out there like this, in pencil, as you figure out your new shapes.
Very much feeling like a wobbly baby giraffe 🦒🥹❤️
And this line, I’m gonna write it down and pin it on the wall: “let the unknowing be a place of what could be, of what could happen, of what could go well - not just a place of fear”.
Thank you, as always, for your words and your being.