What I'm sitting with
A compilation of current contemplations
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, sharing, commenting, subscribing, for being here. It means something.
A song I’m loving:
The experience of being wobbly in public… of not being a solidified identity, not having a known offer or “thing”, not quite knowing what’s next, not staying as consistent as I’d like, not following anyone’s road map to success, not having a constant upward trajectory, not being the being people might want me to be, not rushing toward figuring all of this out in a timeline succinct enough to write an inspiring essay about it in a month or two.
The experience of my inner wobble undoing itself in ways that feel like wholeness, in ways I can’t quite describe with words.
How quiet and private the act of mothering is. How no one will ever see the most intimate acts of care I provide. How little this care is valued by society. How I’ll never get validation for the ways I show up for my daughter in moments only her and I exist. How I’m learning through mothering the importance of acquiring validation from within, from the only place it will ever truly register as real.
The process of unfurling and all that comes with returning to ourselves.
What happens when I let my feelings complete their cycle instead of interrupting them with my small narratives, my beliefs, my fears, my (I could go on).
The reality that sometimes, when our worst fears come true, we might still somehow be okay — that some of the things we assume will break us actually don’t; the power in this, even amid the grief.
Hours of sunshine after days of gray. Wow. When I think I need to throw it all away and move to a new country, I usually actually just need to go outside.
The fact, no matter how much I wish it weren’t true, that I really cannot make a choice that will please or be enjoyed by everyone, and the energy spent trying to do the impossible might be better spent practicing trying to stay true to myself.
Children losing their parents. Parents losing their children. The horror.
This poem by John O’Donohue:
I would love to live
like a river flows,
carried by the surprise
of its own unfolding.The deep breath that comes with saying what needs to be said, feeling what needs to be felt, imagining what needs to be imagined, making way for what needs to be let in or out.
The delight of sitting at a café with my journal, something I wasn’t able to do for a long time until recently, something that makes me feel more like myself.
Noticing the things that make me feel like myself. —even the inquiry alone.
How to truly be okay with change — how to tend to myself when I don’t feel okay with change — how to let change be something other than just scary, or just hard, or just too much.
Learning to stay suspended in not knowing instead of jumping to a conclusion or hurried answer before I am actually ready.
The tenderness of being a beginner: quivering knees, not knowing how it will go, questioning, following the breadcrumbs, not being as competent as others, wondering what the fuck I was thinking, wondering why I waited so long, going for it with no guarantees of what will unfold as a result of trying.
How calling a green vegetable sauce Monster Sauce has made my child crave a dish with vegetables (“I want monster pasta!)”; how naming something changes the way we might relate to it; how a little creativity can shift the energy of something.
Psychedelic therapy — the ways it has shaken up so much of what I thought I knew about myself, about healing, about medicine, about aloneness, about what’s possible — how it has changed my very cells in ways I am still integrating.
How hard I’m clinging onto Winter; how parts of me don’t feel ready to emerge with Spring; how readiness is rarely needed to keep moving.
The older couple who saw my daughter laying on the sand at the beach and said, “she knows close to the earth is the best place to be.”
The lemon blueberry scone I had at Lightwave Cafe yesterday.
Remembering the core essence of who we are stays the same even amid waves of change — the comfort of recognizing parts of ourselves while other parts morph.
What the world I want for everyone requires of me — what I might need to bolster and build within myself in order to show up in all the ways I want to.
The questioning of being a “public figure” – the reality that I don’t desire fame or Being Somebody or centering myself in what I do – my growing distaste for celebrity worship and individualistic ideas of success – the increasing longing for more intimate, close-to-home, non-publicized ways of supporting people and working – what all of this means as someone who is currently a “public figure” and has built a loving readership/following/audience/whatever the right word is over the last seven years.
What happens when we let ourselves want what we want.
The preschool tour on my calendar this Tuesday, and the reality that my baby isn’t a baby anymore, and the way her evolution shapes my own, and the way some transitions seem to build epically slowly and then, suddenly, all at once.
How kind strangers can be — how interactions with people I’ll most likely never see again can stick with me for so long, knitting a new narrative into my body of how we can be with one another.
Moments of ease, and the way noticing them seems to create more of them.
How being with grief can expand the heart when I long assumed it would only harden it. How being with grief can make love more obvious. How being with grief can clarify what matters in ways avoiding it never will.
The fact that 22 years ago, I was sitting on a creaky hospital bed in Vallejo after trying to end my life. And here I am, writing this newsletter from my cozy bed at home, learning to fold all of my past selves into who I am now, slowly finding distance from the pain that long sat in the center of me and narrowed my vision of what was possible. How far away I feel from my many encounters with not wanting to be here. What a miracle it is to want to be here, to soften into more aliveness even amid the hurts of this world. What a gift it is to believe there is always a way forward, even if the way is blurry or unclear. How I want to keep leaning into this belief, keep using it as a method of imagining, keep remembering it as a form of hope, an act of defiance against a culture that wants us to believe only this (motions everywhere) is possible.
The view I have of my dresser right now, covered in toddler books and yesterday’s clothes and an empty can of sparkling water and Everyday Oil and cheerio crumbs and a framed photo of the cabin we stayed at in Mendocino last year and old receipts; the way the light beaming in through the window is highlighting the dust I keep forgetting to wipe up, the way real life looks: at times cluttered, at times spacious, at times overwhelming, at times simple – how maybe the dust and the eventual clearing are all part of a full life.
Thank you, as always, for being here.
△ Feeling Deeply and The Beauty of an Ordinary Life
△ Devouring this sensational book
△ On patience and trust in writing (and life)
△ Potion Party for Palestine — a fundraiser happening tomorrow!
△ Forever re-listening to this conversation
△ Moonlight and the Magic of the Unnecessary
△ I’ll be listening to this today
△ Yesterday’s rainy forest walk —
With care,
Lisa
"How hard I’m clinging onto Winter; how parts of me don’t feel ready to emerge with Spring; how readiness is rarely needed to keep moving."
Just this week I was telling a coworker how much I like the dark and that daylight savings doesn't actually make me giddy the way it seems to effect others. I love, love the cocooning of winter; the dark mornings, the candlelight as I journal, the layers of wool and warmth. I'm not really quick to do anything, and winter always feels like permission to move at my own pace. I suppose one of the lessons I'm currently learning is how to maintain my own rhythm, even when the days grow long and everyone around me wants to get out in it. And that forward movement isn't necessarily about accomplishment, but integration and honoring.
“…not rushing toward figuring all of this out in a timeline succinct enough to write an inspiring essay about it in a month or two”. Um, yes. So much of my life feels like this urgent quest to figure it all out and fix it all in a million different ways. There’s something incredibly freeing about giving into the wonder and the mystery. I’m convinced, this is the way. It just has to be.