Can I say?

missives on being here now

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.

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A song I’m loving:

This path, 35mm film

Can I say everything I have to write feels so laughably inconsequential compared to hurricanes, to continued violence, to executions, to bombs, to hungry children, to illness, to what so many human beings are currently facing the very moment you read these words?

Can I say how challenging it is to be a walking contradiction — to hold so many different truths at once — to know what I write is nothing compared to what we’re facing and, at the same time, what I write matters in the small, ant-like ways it moves in this aching world? That our tiny individual parts are part of something bigger?

Can I say I cut my daughter’s bangs way too short yesterday and moved between guilt and laughter for a few hours? How her bangs are akin to those of Lloyd in Dumb and Dumber and what I care most about is whether or not her teachers at school tomorrow will be wondering what the hell her mother did to her? How I know they will grow back and we will one day laugh at the photos of her sweet, sweet face with these silly baby bangs, and how hard it is to constantly meet & mend the hundreds of ways I will forever be an imperfect parent?

Can I say how lucky I am to get to cut her bangs? That I’m grieving as I watch her get older, as she needs me less in some ways, as she becomes more of herself? How I will spend the rest of my life witnessing her move away from me more and more, the joy and sadness of that? How I know much of this grief is tied to my own personal aches, nothing to do with her, yet how easy it is for our own aches to weave with those we love the most? How her face becomes impossibly bright when she notices I’m witnessing her living, being, breathing?

This presence, 35mm film

Can I say I’m in a stuck place writing my book, wondering how I will ever finish it? That if I’m not careful, the stuckness makes me question whether I am meant to do this at all? That I am practicing the skill of remembering what’s true in moments of forgetting? That sometimes, writing is fucking hard?

Can I say how tender it is to miss someone who is still alive? How comforting it is when my husband reminds me of my heart, my integrity, how much I care in the face of heartbreak? How much grief comes with realizing you can never convince anyone of who you are, but perhaps even more when you forget you shouldn’t need to convince them?

Can I say how inspired I am by all the people tending to this hurting world, all the people making their own corners of it brighter, all the people doing work no one will ever see, work they might never get credit for, all the people praying and working and softening and questioning and organizing and unlearning and learning and witnessing and listening and trying?

Can I say how badly I need fall’s medicine? How I crave walks in the fog, the cool air turning my cheeks red, evenings lit by candle and quiet? How it’s going to be 100 degrees again on Tuesday? How it gets hotter every year? How I wonder what the trees think, what the land thinks, what their grief must feel like?

Fading, 35mm film

Can I say how grateful I am for birds? How yesterday at the pumpkin patch, dozens of black birds flew together in a choreography of presence, speckling the sky with their bodies, and I watched in amazement? How their seemingly effortless coordination encouraged me to ask myself how I might coordinate with those in my life more openly, more effortlessly?

Can I say I’ve been off Instagram for a week and I feel more relevant in my own life? How not checking or scrolling or knowing what everyone else is up to seems to clear the way for more capacity to be with what I’m up to? How I wonder what will happen if I stay logged out longer, if I keep leaving my phone in the living room after 8pm, if I continue this experiment of building more aliveness outside of the app that once gave me so much?

Can I say I’m imagining myself at 80 years old and what I see myself doing is being a therapist and writing? That when I think about my future self, she is wise and humbled and absolutely weathered by her life, with so much to give? That I envision myself doing my heart’s work despite all the ways I’ve become distanced from it for a while? That the distance is getting shorter and shorter?

Can I say I’ve realized the ways having a large Instagram following distracted me from my heart’s work in many ways? That being pulled in that direction kept me from being able to fully tend to my work as a therapist, in my own quiet life? That there is still some shame around this my own therapist is lovingly guiding me through? That we can meet our realizations with love? That we can always return to what we got swept away from?

Fading light, 35mm film

Can I say how healing it feels to be so deeply held in friendships? To feel so seen and known, crevices and all? To be loved through change, through uncertainty, through mess-ups and triumphs and questions and unknowns? To not need to become better before being met with dignity, with reverence, with loving care?

Can I say I haven’t been on a plane in five years, when I flew to Colorado for my sweet honeymoon? How I feel more ready now to take flight, to move, to be uncomfortable, to see?

Can I say I’m in awe of people who practice compassion even in the face of hatred, cruelty, misunderstanding? Of people who turn toward curiosity instead of contempt? Of people who are so wholly committed to embodying love in a world so thirsty for it?

Can I say I’m working on being one of those people, working on building my own compassion, working on staying with the questions instead of assuming, working on turning toward love in every moment I can remember? Can I say how much harder it is to do with those closest to us than it is to do with strangers? Can I say I want to understand that more, tend to that more?

Can I say I know less than I ever have? That this truth feels relieving? How lucky I feel to get to keep unwinding from thinking I’m supposed to have more figured out?

Can I say there is room for deep grief and wild possibility, growing alongside one another, making a garden of aliveness in the heart? Can I say I want to be with all of it, even when it requires facing pain? Can I say nothing has freed my heart more than facing pain? Can I say that’s where so much beauty has grown from? Can I say I’m working on putting it into words, into my book, into my life, into my practice? Can I say I didn’t edit this newsletter at all, that I sat down and wrote it in one fell swoop, how unhinged yet needed it felt to do it this way? Can I say the sky outside my window is blanketed in fog and it feels like a soothing balm before the heat comes? Can I say I want to keep turning toward the soothing balms of this world as it burns, as it cries, as it asks us to take care of it? Can I say my daughter just walked into my room and said, “Mama, it’s breakfast time!” and when I told her I’d be there in just a few minutes, she responded with, “But mama, you need to eat to be healthy! Let’s go!”, so I’m ending here, heeding her advice and grateful for the reminders that come from those who love us most? Can I say there is somehow room for all of this?

Thank you, as always, for being here.

△ Adrianne Lenker’s magic forever

△ This short doc about adoptees and nature made me cry with resonance

△ Scratch That: parenting and reparenting off the script

△ The grief and rage that result from systems of violence in all forms

△ Counterintuitive strategies for navigating turbulent times

△ A new & nourishing conversation with Elizabeth Gilbert

△ What to do when you lose it completely

△ A question I keep thinking about: “Whose mind, heart, motives, and experiences have I decided I can know without the inconvenience of relating to the person in whom they reside?”

△ Flowers, always

Gratitude for this beauty.

With care,
Lisa