Choose and trust
Five things
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A song I’ve been loving:
1 — “The time for deliberating is done… I’m ready to just say yes.”
I overheard someone say this at the coffee shop the other today and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.
Deliberation is defined as long and careful consideration or discussion. Goodness, I think I’ve been deliberating my entire life. Constantly spiraling through potential outcomes, what could go wrong, whether or not something is the “right” choice, often not choosing anything at all. Deliberating has been a mask for protection, for hesitation, for letting fear fester much, much longer than it needs to. Deliberation has been used when right action could have, when Knowing was actually present, when what I really needed was to choose and trust, choose and trust, choose and trust.
Hearing this person confidently claim no longer deliberating… claim not wanting to waste any more time… claim the preciousness of how short our moment here on this earth truly is… it urged me to lean deeper into my desires, into Going For It energy, into trying. It helped me insist upon doing the things I say I want to do. It reminded me sometimes, the best time is Now… not when we’re more ready, or when we have more expertise, or when we’re farther along, but Now, when the longing is strongest and most present, in the only time we truly have.
I’m exploring how I can be more choiceful without assuming long, drawn-out deliberation time is required to do so. I’m exploring the power of choosing and trusting instead of waiting until every facet of that choice is clear. I’m exploring the inspiration I feel when I see others just going for it, even if they fail, even if they change their mind, even if it doesn’t turn out the way they hoped it would. All of it is teaching me something about self-trust, about aligned action, about being willing to be seen trying and failing, about being willing to allow for the possibility of it all working out in ways I might not even let myself imagine.
2 — “I want the face I had before I knew it was beautiful. I would know what to do with it now.”
I read this essay from Melissa Febos with a lump in my throat. I’ve been noticing more creases on my forehead, the sides of my eyes, more loose skin on my neck, more spots, more signs of not being young anymore. I’ve never done botox; I don’t wear makeup; I barely have a skincare routine and I’ve been wondering, should I? Should I find some method of lessening the unfolding of these markers of age? Should I be more concerned about these lines, this flattening, this drooping? Am I supposed to try to fix it, re-young it, keep myself trapped in adolescence while trying to also become more wise? How does that work?
I want to know what to do with myself now, with the version of my body that is real and true in this season. How often do we wait to give ourselves what we truly need, only to look back and say “if only I had known then”? How often do we wish we could go back and tell our younger selves how lovely they were, how capable they were, how enough they were? How often do we forget to do that right now, in this body we’re currently in, in this messy humanity we’re presently living? I know it’s inevitable that I will have more wisdom in the future than my current self has, that I will look back at the me now and wish I would have known this, trusted that. There is something comforting about knowing my future self will have a wider perspective than I have now, about trusting she’ll know something I don’t, about working on clearing a path for her. There is something comforting about remembering some things only come with time, with age, with moving farther away from the beginning.
3 — After two and a half years away, I’m stepping back into my psychotherapy practice in the new year. It feels so tender, a little scary, and deeply aligned to be moving into this new/old work again. When I stepped away in 2022, I honestly wasn’t sure if I’d ever return. I was so lost and without capacity to hold space in the ways I used to. I had ambivalent feelings about therapy in general. I thought I’d only want to write or do public work. My book had just come out, I was newly postpartum, and pouring from an exhausted, burnt out cup wasn’t working, no matter how much I convinced myself it would/should.
I’m deeply proud of myself for making that hard but necessary choice to leave behind the work I had spent so long cultivating. It required me to unhook from my own ego, to let go of who I thought I needed to be, to unravel from the identities I held and live with uncomfortable spaciousness. It required disappointing people, putting my student loans into forbearance, and letting mothering be the place I poured most of myself into. It required detaching from the role I had become accustomed to defining myself as and learning to see that role from new vantage points. It required throwing myself into lostness instead of pushing through a performed clarity. It required a disrupting, a confronting, a grieving.
I felt the call to return a year ago, and I’ve been slowly listening for right timing. My heart’s clarity and longing to do more intimate, quiet, private, tender work again feels like a homecoming in a way, yet I know I will be re-entering this work from a very new place, in a different shape. I will be creating an updated kind of home. I know I have so much more to pour now, such a greater depth of access to my own body, so much more capacity for presence, for mystery, for being with all of it. For that, I feel so grateful and eager, inspired and awed. And I’m reminded that we get to change, quit, start over, start again, move away, move toward, and shift how we engage with our work and life as many times as we need to. I can’t think of anything more human than change, than allowing it to unfold, than letting ourselves discover something meaningful in the lostness.
4 — A life made smaller is often a life that feels bigger. This learning has deepened over the last few years as I’ve become a mother, as my ambition has shifted, as my following has decreased, as my output has lessened, as my dreams have seemingly shrunk. Yet there has been a beauty found in the intentional Small-ing of life — in the stripping away — in the shift from never-ending growth to right-sized presence. There is such relief in realizing a profound, meaningful, impactful life can be found in small, in less, in not Being The Best, in not Doing It All, in not staying stuck in the constant race toward the top. There is such nourishment in seeing myself as part of a wide, wide web instead of assuming I need to move beyond the web, in seeing my role as a tiny, tiny piece of a whole. It feels like a gift to have this register in my body more and more, to trust the power of small.
5 — How natural to turn in and in right now. To feel the dark expanding internally as the night lengthens outside. To want to tuck away. To feel overwhelmed by the news, the motion, the flurry of activity. To feel repulsed by all the consumption, all the pressure. To need to do less. How beautiful to allow it all. To say yes to what you’re actually needing. To tend to what is arising, even when it doesn’t match up with any external expectation. To trust your body’s pace. To turn toward what you feel with reverence, with allowance. To invite in your own nature. To let What Is be.
Thank you, as always, for being here.
The fallen leaves still living on the ground.
Friendly faces in the coffee shop I frequent.
Birds of all kinds, everywhere, flying and landing.
The deep joy and comfort of making a pot of soup.
Re-reading Emergent Strategy per the nudge of
Finding moments of solace and peace, even here, even now.
Taking a breather from ingesting so much information online.
The power and potency of allowing grief.
My partner leaving an “I love you” note for me to find in my laptop.
Finishing updates to my website that feel closer to current me.
Getting new film scans back and remembering beauty I’ve been with.
Feeling the permission to change, to take on new shapes.
Not giving you more links to consume or read this week. :)
With care,
Lisa
I feel a baffled by how often your writing triggers an “ahhh, yes!” Inside :-)
Deliberation has derailed me so often, and looking deeply, it’s most often rooted in fearing loss of approval, more so than the black and white of success or failure.
In the end, I realize how this ends up giving others power over my direction, destiny. Ugh!!
Lately, I’ve been inviting choices from my inner movements, and it feels so simple, so good.
I’m learning the power in saying the following to myself while deciding to act.
“I will support you, john, whatever the outcome. I will not abandon you.”
Simple but powerful. So much here to learn. I’m grateful to you, Lisa, for your reminder that we are here to contribute as Us, not some image drawn for us!
I loved this post! Thank you! I too am trying to make my life "smaller" and to shape-shift. Lovely insight and beautiful writing.