To be the one that nurtures
On being the adult now
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A song I’m loving:
There has been senseless violence and death for six months, for years, for lifetimes, the kind I can’t seem to remove from my heart. The universe is doing some wacky stuff right now — earthquakes, full moons, an eclipse tomorrow. It is an election year and, somehow, the same two old white male candidates will apparently be facing off again. There has been more observable rage on the road, cars whooshing in and out of traffic as if there was some secret way around the waiting. An energy seems to be looming for everyone I talk to: “it’s like I’m walking through sludge,” says one person. “time is both dragging at an impossible rate and speeding by,” says another. “When will clarity finally reveal itself? When will the violence end? When will things settle?” another shares. Things feel t e n d e r.
The tenderness is close to home, too: I find myself walking on a perpetual ledge, a younger version of me lingering on one side and the adult version of me on the other. I dip my toes into the younger version’s side and find myself reacting in ways that are reminiscent of my teen years. On that side of me lies a bubbling hot rage and angst, a desire to isolate and hide, a desperate clinging to the future as a savior. I dip my toes into the adult version of me and find someone I can trust to do what needs doing, someone who has Done The Work, someone who contains wisdom, but someone who desperately wishes there was another adult who would come save me from it all, who would rescue me and lift the burden of being human off my back. I realize I am the adult now, the one who needs to do the saving of myself, and part of me wants to return to versions who could wait around for someone else to do it. Most versions of me need a lot of guidance to get back to the Here and Now.
During times of chaos or unpredictability, I at times find myself feeling more like a child or teenager than an adult. I forget where, and who, I currently am. I yearn for someone to swoop me up and swing me around in their arms, whispering how okay everything will be, how they’ve got me.
These days, I am more often than not the one doing the swooping up and swinging, the one whispering to my own child that everything is going to be okay. I tuck her one wild blonde curl behind her ear when I notice it falling into her eyes again. I cut the crusts off her peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I sing songs I’ve made up over the last two years, songs she asks for now to soothe her. I put one tiny dollop of lotion on the tops of each of her feet because it’s comforting to her. I feel the weight of her body on mine when she collapses into my arms after stubbing her toe, or after her friend forgets to share, or after I tell her we can’t watch Ms. Rachel right then.
And sometimes, in those moments of meeting her tenderness with my nurturance, I feel rage rising — not because I don’t want to show up for her, but because I need to be met that way, too. Because all of us need so much nurturance, often in ways that feel heartbreakingly unfamiliar when we finally get it. And a lot of the time, we are the ones who need to nurture ourselves moment to moment. All of us need so much nurturance, and it at times feels farther and farther away when I look around at the ever-unfolding unknown, at the earthquaking, violent world we’re all navigating.
I am learning to stay in my adult self — to become the one who can hold the bigness of this world, both within me and around me, with grace. I am learning to stay more fully in my maturity, in my Current Self, in the wisdom I’ve gleaned thus far. I am learning to be the version of myself who participates in change, rather than waiting for someone else to do it. I am learning to nurture my own heart in ways that feel new, unfamiliar, tender. But it is hard, and doing so often brings pain. It brings the pain of knowing I may never be nurtured in the ways I need to by people older than me. It brings the pain of longing for all of it to be a little easier. It brings the pain of learning to let the people in my life do the nurturing, too — the pain of truly opening up to receive. It brings the pain of past generations not knowing how to hold their own hearts. It brings the pain of seeing how many people don’t know how to stay in their adult selves, how to access true compassion, how to do the work required to build more beautiful worlds in our homes and on our precious earth.
With the pain, though, is a fledging beauty — the beauty of feeling myself morph into who I’ve needed to become. The beauty of getting to speak to myself in ways I wish I had been spoken to as a child. The beauty of passing down new ways of being to my own daughter. The beauty of taking responsibility. The beauty of interrupting cycles I no longer want to be a part of. The beauty of learning to use my voice, even when it upsets people. The beauty of not cowering. The beauty of remembering what hopeful change feels like in my body, right alongside the fears, grief, and sadness I also hold. The beauty of witnessing how many people are standing up to systems of oppression within and around them and saying, no more. there is another way, a better way.
So many of us are learning to meet ourselves and others in ways that feel unfamiliar. We’re learning to meet our children, our partners, our neighbors, and our earth in ways that feel new or different. We are drawing blueprints that include a depth of compassion and curiosity we might not have been given. We are imagining new possibilities, alternatives to the Way It’s Always Been, fresh paths of exploring the pile of collective and personal challenges asking to be sorted through. So many of us are taking this on: this rearranging of how we do things, this responsibility of breaking ancestral patterns, this deep knowing that things could be different if more compassion, more nurturance, and more care were planted into the hearts of everyone. So many of us are choosing to start with ourselves, to start close in. It is beautiful and it is hard. It is beautiful and it is hard. It is both.
If you find yourself in this growing edge of learning to stay in your adult self, of becoming the one who nurtures even when you haven’t always been nurtured in ways you’ve needed, of looking out at the world and asking what we could be doing differently, of leading with compassion when leading with rage feels easier… know you aren’t alone. Know your trying matters. Know the growing edges of it all aren’t a sign you’re doing something wrong, but a sign you’re traversing something important. Know you don’t need to get it perfect, nor can you. Know you are allowed to receive nurturance, even when it is surprisingly uncomfortable. Know the grief and beauty all swirled together makes so much sense. Know the work, maybe even the surrendering, of allowing your adult self to lead the way is worth the discomfort of it. And know you don’t need to do any of it alone. These are the things I tell myself, too.
Thank you, as always, for being here.
△ Toni Morrison’s rejection letters
△ This moving conversation with Gabor Maté
△ Always returning to the wisdom of Francis Weller
△ Movement with Range has been so nourishing
△ A sweet nook I spent time in this past week —
With care,
Lisa
Did you watch “All Us Strangers”? This film allows us to to be in both our child selves and our adults selves and it’s perfect mirrors this yearning of wanting to be held and wanting to hold
this melted my heart that feels the same way. thank you for speaking this.