The pieces we leave behind

On dusting off & reclaiming the parts of ourselves we miss most

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A song I’ve been enjoying:

A magical moon in Saguaro National Park, 2019.

As a child, I wrote the most wildly imaginative books — about mice that went to Mars, about how rainbows got their color, about a girl who went through great lengths to convince her mother to get her a kitten — stories that marked my depth of creativity and imagination, expression and whimsy. As a teenager, I filled blank notebooks with cutouts from magazines, with drawings and paintings, with poetry and imagery and the contents of my spirit. I wrote and recorded songs, played in a band and wore clothes almost exclusively from thrift stores, cut my hair with a Flowbee and carried my camera on me everywhere I went. I went to house shows and co-op art parties, collected zines and wrote prose on long bus rides. I dreamed of becoming a photographer for National Geographic, or touring with an indie folk band, or writing books and reading my work in bookshops and art museums, installations from the heart surrounding me.

My younger self had tangible markers everywhere of an ignited, creative brain that wasn’t yet tainted or tarnished by social media, by becoming a helping professional, by molding myself into who I thought I needed to be in order to be valuable and needed, by seeking productivity and giving as a form of feeling like I was enough. My younger self knew how to prioritize what she loved and what loved her back — she knew how important creative expression was to her, in so many forms — she knew it wasn’t a waste of time or space — she knew it was key to keeping her aliveness in tact.

And soon after, she slowly started forgetting. That expression got replaced with practicality, with productivity, with what she thought others wanted her to write or wear or make or do or be. That creative spark got replaced with school requirements and outward-focused goals, with fast-tracking her healing so she could help other people already, with positioning herself as needed. It’s really easy to not be left that way, isn’t it?

A lot of people go into helping professions because they held the role of “helper” growing up — it’s natural for them to maintain that role in some way. For me, I went into the role of “helper” because of all the help I needed when I was a teenager. My traumatized, ashamed self vowed to never need so much again; becoming the one who is needed — who is doing the helping instead of receiving it — was a fast way to fulfill that vow. What I didn’t realize at the time was that distancing myself from needing anything from anyone also distanced me from needing the things that fueled and filled me — the things that fed and nourished me. Cutting myself off from needing much also cut me off from receiving the abundance of doing things I love for the sake of experiencing the aliveness I feel while doing them.

I cut myself off from even more of my expression when I decided to become a therapist. Most of my energy started going toward helping people, toward understanding what others needed, toward studying and tests, learning and practicing, internships and grad school applications, supervision and licensure, building a private practice and maintaining CE’s, holding space, holding other’s stories, going to trainings and learning more ways to support people, to teach people, to help people. Most of my energy went toward losing myself in place of others. “Selfless,” as they often say. Less self. Less me.

Meanwhile, my creative self shrank and shrank until it thinned down to a mere thread I hardly knew was even there anymore. I stopped playing my guitar. I stopped drawing and painting, stopped making poetry, stopped writing songs, stopped making collages and film photographs and handwritten letters. I even stopped journaling in a journal, everything turning into the quickest form of output so I could make more room to learn about another theory and figure out another technique to bring to my work. Being a helper became everything. Those other pieces of me collected dust.

The grief of slowly losing parts of ourselves that feel most important, most beautiful, most alive, is potent and thick. It hardens and sticks. And the grief of not even realizing it’s happened until years later, when you look around and notice a whole chunk of you isn’t present in any facets of your life, might be even thicker. Confronting that grief takes heaps of emotional labor and depth — so much so that continuing to make excuses as to why you’ve let those pieces of you go might feel easier than reclaiming them, inch by inch.

I recently bought some Polaroid film and took out my camera from 20 years ago. I’ve been making pots with clay, with my hands, turning earth into something I can hold. I’ve been writing in ways that aren’t just aimed at “how can I make this the most helpful thing possible for everyone else, even if it doesn’t feel the most creatively alive for me?” I’ve been reading more poetry and writing on paper, dressing in ways that feel more like myself, singing more regularly and imagining new projects from a more expansive place, tapping into the inherent parts of me that for so long got left behind.

Every time I choose to center, open, pull and shape clay instead of figure out another Instagram post to write is a gift to myself. Every time I bring my camera with me instead of seeing it as unnecessary effort is a gift to myself. Every time I write a poem for myself instead of a meme for my followers is a gift to myself. Every time I explore the book I actually want to write instead of the one I think I’m supposed to write is a gift to myself. Every time I honor what has been waiting for me to reclaim it, to name it as important, to hold it as a key piece of my own aliveness… is a gift to myself.

God, it’s easy to let pieces of ourselves go when they don’t feel as productive or helpful or needed as other pieces do. It’s so easy to assume those past expressions were just a phase instead of a core part of who I am and how I express my truth. It’s so easy to look beyond what our own hearts and cells and souls want to do and to instead fill our hearts and cells and souls with the things that feel more important.

But when we choose to turn toward our callings, toward our expression, toward the things we love, toward the things that remind us of what it means to hold a spark within, outside of any roles we hold or any particular path we’re on… we remember what the whole point of being here is: to be fully alive, and to do everything in our power to live in ways that allow us to do that.

Coming face to face with who I am outside of my role as a therapist has been full of grief. When I stopped my private practice six months ago, I couldn’t pinpoint exactly why I was called to stop. I was a new mother. I was exhausted. I didn’t feel like I had the capacity to show up for clients in the ways I wanted to. But there was something else, too — something I couldn’t name then but am starting to find the words for now. And it’s this reclaiming that has been begging me to take on. It’s this remembering of who I am outside of what I do for others that has been asking for my attention. It’s this knowing of how important it is for me to reclaim my creative self in ways that aren’t always serving others that has been longing to be tapped into again.

Past versions of me, doing things she loved for the sake of it.

Helping others and being a person in service to others is incredibly important to me. It is important to the collective — to moving away from individualism — to pushing a new world forward. Yet when we lose ourselves in the process… when we forget about the things that make us come alive… when we help from a place of hollowness or selflessness… we forget we’re included in those who need nourishment, support, and care. We forget we’re included in liberation, in showing up fully to life, in accessing joy, in expressing our gifts outside of how they help. We forget the pieces of ourselves collecting dust, begging for us to remember how alive they make us feel.

I want to continue helping and holding space… for others and for myself. And I’m so devoted to listening more clearly to the pieces of me asking to be turned on again. I’m so devoted to doing things I love, even when they serve no one but me. I’m so devoted to slowly remembering who I am outside of what I do for anyone else. And I’m so devoted to trusting how okay that is — even when parts of me feel like I only matter when I’m in service.

May we rekindle the things that spark aliveness in us.
May we let ourselves pursue our wildly imaginative longings.
May we make time for self-expression, for singing, for play.
May we be in service to our own hearts as much as we are to others.
May we listen to what is being asked forth within us.
May we know we can always turn toward ourselves again, even after turning away.
May we know we can dust off the parts of ourselves we miss most.

△ On creativity

△ Expanding time by feeling awe

△ I was absolutely blown away by this Tiny Desk Concert:

△ Everything about Joan Didion's estate sale

△ Typed of veiled criticism

△ The Problem With Letting Therapy-Speak Invade Everything

△ This episode, and all the relieving wins & devastating losses of the election:

△ This sweet cover made me cry.

△ How to do your laundry when you’re depressed

△ Making things with my hands. Remembering myself.

With care,
Lisa