No longer waiting to live fully

Thoughts inspired by the bigness of the universe

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A song I’ve been enjoying:

A serene scene at Drake’s Beach in Point Reyes, 2010.

“Not everything needs to be about healing, betterment, growth, and evolution. Healing is also letting yourself just live. Noticing sweet connections. Making a warm cup of something delicious on a Friday morning. Reading a nourishing book. Spending time in a garden. Going on day trips and putting flowers on the table with breakfast. Wearing your favorite outfit to the grocery store. Being present for the smallest moments, the tiny interactions that make you feel human, the micro-experiences of the day to day that make you feel alive. Playing music in your space to create an atmosphere. Phone chats with loved ones. Visiting neighborhoods that bring back nostalgia and thick memories of goodness. Hanging art. Thrift store visits and forest walks and long drives, just because. Pausing before scrolling. Creating for the sake of creating. Getting extra rest because it feels good. Hugging longer, staying longer, lingering in moments that feel whole. The obsession with growth and healing often keeps us from actually living, when living fully is the whole entire point. May we remember this when "healing" feels like it's becoming a barrier and a point of stress instead of an opening to fully living your life.”

I wrote & shared this on social media the other day and I’ve been thinking about it since. I’ve been thinking about how many things we believe are “healing” that might actually be getting in the way of living (consumption, constant betterment, making ourselves projects, being glued to Instagram instead of to our lives, looking for the next post or course or modality or a-ha that will somehow fix it all…). I’ve been thinking about how the world we live in makes it feel impossible to live our healing sometimes, yet what does it look like to do it anyway? I’ve been thinking about time and how quickly it is passing, how fast it seems to be moving. I’ve been thinking about those NASA photos. I’ve been thinking about the decades I’ve spent focused on healing, on growth, on trying to work myself into some version I think I need to be in order to really embrace it all, in order to accept it all, in order to live.

It isn’t possible to opt out of healing — because healing is a lifelong process and one that requires a lot of our energy during some seasons. Healing is necessary for remembering ourselves and facing the world, for finding new nooks of compassion in our bodies and being open to letting in love, for understanding how we work in order to better serve our idiosyncrasies and needs… for so much. And… when does it become too much? When does it morph from something helpful to something keeping us from fully living? When does healing actually stop us from being present in our lives and open to the moments that are actually so good, so sweet, so special?

For a long time, healing needed to happen in my brain. I needed to shift my thoughts, and practice self-compassion, and practice practice practice shifting the way I treated myself. In recent years, healing has shifted to a body practice — to one that doesn’t actually require more processing, more awareness, or more understanding, but more feeling. More being with my body. More trusting myself to move through harder moments without hyperfocusing on them (hello, neurodivergent brain). More practice of presence instead of staying stuck in my thinking self. More connecting to where my shoulders are instead of reading another post about codependence or nervous system regulation. Healing has been about moving away from continuing to stay in the loop of information & consumption, and instead moving into practice, which really just means in living.

It is easy for us to get stuck in striving, in inching forward to some “better” version of ourselves, in believing we’re supposed to be someone or somewhere or somehow different. But what happens when we consciously choose to opt out of engaging in those beliefs? What happens when we give ourselves permission to find joy, beauty, and sweetness in our lives right now, in the versions of us we currently occupy? What happens when we drop this notion of being obsessed with healing in the way we’re programmed to be and look outward more than we look inward for once? And what happens when we allow ourselves to step off of the conveyer belt of betterment in order to see what it’s like to just live, right now, as we are, and to remember this all ends?

Looking at the photos from NASA this week really re-centered just how small I am, just how insignificant some of my own “stuff” is, just how obsessed I can get about things that don’t even matter. It allowed me to look at myself and my life from a different vantage point and gave me an inner push to reorient toward all the ways I’ve already healed, all the ways I already have access to goodness, all the ways I’ve already done the work. It reminded me of the fact that small can be enough; it can be everything. It offered me solace in not needing to figure it all out, not needing to know why everything happens, not needing to dissect and analyze and process everything in order to let myself just live right now. And it reminded me that this is all just a speck, just a blip, just a tiny part of a bigger whole. That I don’t need to take it all so seriously. That I don’t need to be a hero or leave a legacy or become anything bigger than what I already am. That I can just move through my day in ways that feel good and let that be the whole entire point.

I recognize all of this is easier said than done. I know letting ourselves just live isn’t easy in the world we live in right now. I know our nervous systems don’t always work in the way we wish they would, even when they’re doing what they think is best for us. Yet I can’t help but wonder what could be possible if we start orienting away from healing as a project, and toward healing as a natural result of living in alignment as often as possible. Maybe healing can just happen without the efforting and forcing. Maybe it can blossom when we pour into our lives instead of constantly picking at ourselves, picking at our childhoods, picking at our patterns, picking at our flaws. Maybe it can become itself when we let go of thinking we need to (or can) control it. Maybe healing is a result of living instead of a thing to do all the time.

I don’t need to heal more or get better in order to put my phone away and fully engage in the joy of being with my daughter. I don’t need to dissect my childhood more in order to go for a walk instead of doing the thing that doesn’t support me. I don’t need to continuously analyze myself in order to know what choices are available to me right now. And while these aspects of healing are needed in some ways, they don’t need to take up all the space in our lives.

Some reminders about letting ourselves just live:

Healing is always available to us but it doesn’t always need to be the focus.
We have the power to orient toward our lives in a way that feels supportive.
There is no destination. No arrival. No place to get to. There is just here.
We don’t “become healed” — we practice showing up for ourselves over and over.
We don’t need to wait before we do the things that bring us joy and fulfillment.
When we make ourselves a problem, we forget so much of the “problem” exists outside of us and we are just naturally responding. Forgetting ourselves and looking outward can be deeply helpful sometimes.
We get to choose what we make more time, space, and energy for.
There is beauty to be found where we are if we slow down enough to find it.

And some questions to explore:

Where are you consuming when you might need to be integrating?
What have you already integrated and how can you lean on it more?
How might you let go of the constant striving to betterment in order to meet yourself where you are?
What does “just living” look like for you right now?
What makes you feel most alive?
How can you orient toward the universe as a reminder of what truly matters to you?
What can you add or subtract from your days to bring a little more ease?
What do you want to make more space, time, and energy for?

I have no idea if this will make any sense now that I’ve written it all out, and I am sharing it anyway because it is what is here, and that is enough. May you name where you are and what you have to share as enough, too. And may you look to those NASA photos any time you need to re-orient toward what right-sized looks and feels like for you, what living fully looks and feels like for you, what allowing yourself to show up to your life looks and feels like for you. I’m right there with you.

△ This children’s book makes me cry every time I read it

△ What to know about the new mental health crisis hotline

△ The art of Hilma af Klint

△ Thinking about gardening (next step is doing more of it)

△ Joni Mitchell’s Blue

△ Into Light

△ I have complex feelings about Goop in general but really enjoyed this episode:

△ The joy of exploring a community garden in West Marin yesterday morning:

Joy found in a garden.

△ Juliana McCarthy’s beautiful astrology writing

△ July is Disability Pride Month

With care,
Lisa