A shattering, a beginning

notes on being with a truer story

Human Stuff is a free weekly-ish newsletter. You’re welcome to share parts of this letter that connect with you on social media, or send to someone you love. Thank you for reading, ‘heart’ing, commenting, sharing, for helping this newsletter continue by being here. In the midst of so much noise, your presence with my words truly means something.

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[ A song I’m loving ]

blending in, 35mm film

Hello, dear reader. I want to tell you there is a rearranging happening inside. Did you know we can change shape, move, be altered, shift into something else? Over and over again? Did you know we are fluid, more like river than stone, and yet our truest essence is more stone-like than the performances that often flow on top? I am remembering this, again and again, as skins shed and something more raw and alive is being revealed.

I want to tell you I’m not sure I’ve ever fully allowed myself to feel the impact my work has until I found the courage to do in-person book events. And I’m sitting across from you while you share with me what my words have meant to you, and you’re bringing me cards, and you’re nodding along, and you’re offering hugs & warmth, and you’re deeply present, looking me in the eyes, and somehow, finally, I feel it all seeping into my bones in new ways, and it is changing me.

I want to tell you I’ve long held these stories about myself: I’m not a good speaker. I’m not someone who can be in front of an audience. I’m too shy/quiet/awkward/etc. I’m not cool enough/loud enough/confident enough/______ enough to hold a room. I’m not good at sharing through talking. And yet these stories are being actively disrupted time and time again, and I’m noticing the ways Who I Actually Am is in direct opposition to what I’ve long insisted were true about myself, and it is shattering versions of myself I didn’t even realize I was still clinging to. I want to stop clinging.

I want to tell you how unsettling it can be to recognize how some of who we’ve thought ourselves to be is actually false — a lie we conjured to keep ourselves from stretching outward more fully — a safekeeping of our hearts afraid of being broken — a gesture of protection — so sensible and caring when it was needed, and so stifling when it no longer is.

a sunset spell, 35mm film

I want to tell you the grief and gift of setting down what is no longer needed, feeling the wind reaching hidden-away corners of you, feeling yourself stretching wider into the world, feeling yourself filled with more of your aliveness. The grief and gift of needing to do this curling in and stretching outward for a lifetime, not once but countless times, not a finishing but a devotion.

I want to tell you I can feel the world asking each of us to devote ourselves more fully to generosity, to offering our hearts, to leaning into the gifts we have to share, to thinking less about what others are thinking and more about what we have to offer, to extend our hands and arms and hearts out and out and out, into widening circles, into what is asking to become possible through our willing participation.

I want to tell you I can also feel the world asking each of us to learn to fully receive: to receive reciprocity and care, to take in the impact we have on others, to feel the reverberations of what we offer, to allow love to enter, to let beauty wrap us up, to feel connection, all of which actually invite us into deeper relationship with our ability to love, to relate, to give. Not as a bolstering of ego but as an igniter of courage. Not as self-centering but as web-building. Not as inflation but as right-sizing, which, for many of us, is actually about finally becoming bigger, from which so much more can flow, move, be held, be made, be felt, be transmuted, be given.

I want to tell you how long it takes to feel what is obvious.

I want to tell you how human it is for it to take so, so long sometimes.

rising + fading, 35mm film

I want to tell you this isn’t easy, and is often painfully confronting, and gets to bloom slowly, and also, we don’t need to keep building altars to what we didn’t get.

I want to tell you everything gets to be a practice, something to fail at and try again, something to forget and then remember again, something to be utterly imperfect at, because that is the only option, and oh, what relief to know this.

I want to tell you there is always another season following this one. The continual welcoming, the continual letting go, the continual opportunity for something different to unfold.

I want to tell you it in many ways feels like I am just beginning something. And perhaps there are endless opportunities for us to let ourselves begin.

I want to tell you how strange it can be to write from the center of change, and yet perhaps that is the only place we can write from, as ever-changing beings.

I want to tell you how strange it can be to feel myself loving being alive when it once felt so scary. How beautiful it can be to notice the ways we’re already doing what we didn’t know we could do. How telling it is of our capacity to remember who we truly are. To let this remembering be part of our life’s work.

Thanks, as always, for being here.

No links this week — just an urging to find more of what you long for.

earthly delights.

With care,
Lisa

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Thank you for reading. Everything I share comes from my own heart; this publication, and everything I do, is created without the use of AI.