What's not wrong?

and four things

May 19, 2024

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A song I’m loving:

Four things.

One. // I’m in a waiting period — waiting for news on next steps, waiting for big changes in August & October, waiting for future shifts that can’t quite be enacted upon right now. In periods of waiting, I tend to feel paralyzed, like there’s “nothing to do” if I can’t get to the big things yet. I tend to feel stalled. So right now, when the big things are swirling out in the distance, I’m practicing finding momentum by returning to the tiny things. I’m doing my 20 minute dumbbell workouts in the garage and letting it be enough. I’m making granola with J (my daughter) on Sunday afternoons. I’m getting coffee with friends. I’m driving to the coast and walking along familiar paths, taking photos of the changing landscape. I’m going to my therapy sessions and being honest and the hard stuff and the good stuff. I’m having dance parties with my husband and daughter after dinner, where she says, “play dancing on my own by Roybn!” over and over. I’m staying devoted to writing my newsletter, even two years later. I’m plugging away at my upcoming writing gathering. I’m noticing how all of it makes waiting a little less frustrating, a little more spacious. I’m finding relief in orienting toward the every day instead of the big things. I’m noticing the way all these tiny things and moments are actually what life is.

Two. // Two years ago, I closed my therapy practice. I needed to, and I’m so grateful I did. I’m so grateful for what’s opened up within me these last two years of truly taking time to tend to myself, my healing, and my new life as a mother. And now, I am feeling more ready to return to the work of my heart, to the work I needed to leave behind for a while. I’m not ready to share much about this yet, but what I do want to share is how okay it is to stray and return, to leave and come back, to take the time we need to take even from the parts of our work or life that matter deeply to us. It’s okay to take time to become the versions of ourselves we want to be in the things we do. It’s okay to let our work and life shift and change as we do. It’s okay to return to what we once needed space from. It’s okay to come to new understandings of ourselves in the midst of having space to do so. It’s okay to reorient toward our desires and gifts, again and again, in new and similar shapes. These are reminders I’ve needed during the swirl of the last few years, as I explore returning to something I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do again, as I forge old paths in new ways, as I try doing it all with the kind of tenderness required to do it wholeheartedly. It feels good to get to remind myself of what I know to be true, even when parts of me aren’t quite sure how to receive it all. It feels good to practice.

Three. // “What’s not wrong?” I recently came across this question while re-reading ”Peace is Every Step” by Thich Nhat Hanh. It struck me as someone who has to work a little harder to see what isn’t wrong. The simplicity of the question almost makes it easy to gloss over or skip past, but I’ve been trying to stay with it lately. I’ve been trying to look for what’s going well, what’s gone right, what isn’t hurting, what isn’t wounded, what has never experienced harm, what has pleasantly surprised me, and it’s creating some necessary space in my heart. What’s not wrong? Some of my answers recently: The Mellow Classics playlist on Spotify. Accepting my admission to a ten month program starting this fall. My daughter sleeping past 7am several mornings this week. Watching a moving conversation between Gabor Mate and Angela Davis. Afternoons spent tidying and reorganizing. Evenings out front with neighbors. Less black and white thinking. Catching up with friends who knew me when I was 20. My favorite bakery starting to serve pizza. Noticing more room for empathy. Biscuit, the neighborhood cat, coming to visit my daughter in our backyard. Asking for what I need. Writing what I have to write instead of forcing something else. What’s not wrong? Ask yourself and notice how it feels to answer.

Four. // I recently started making lists of ways I am practicing staying with my heart, which has felt hard amid the grief of personal losses and the landscape of the world we’re looking out at right now. Yet it feels more important than ever to me, this practice of re-finding my own heart’s center over and over, and forgiving myself when I forget, and then finding it again. It’s the place I want to live from. It’s a place I want to stay in close contact with, a place I want to be informed by. Here are a few ways I’ve been practicing, a few intentions I have for my own heart; perhaps some of them overlap with what your own heart is practicing, too:

I will let my senses become wisdom keepers. I will see, hear, taste, smell, and touch what is real. I will let my body’s knowing lead the way.
I will let the smallest steps be enough momentum some days.
I will honor my complexity instead of trying to simplify it away.
I will look out at the world with clear eyes. I will seek out clear eyes when mine are fuzzy. I will let what I see move me, let it inform me, let it guide me, let it teach me, let it remind me of who and how I want to be amid it all.
I will practice seeing the parts of myself I didn’t think were worth looking at. I will practice letting those parts receive love, too.
I will water the roots within that need growing, the ones I want to strengthen. I will stop watering what is ready to die, to be let go of.
I will stop pretending not to know what I clearly know. I will stop pretending to know what I clearly don’t know.
I will practice the art of slowing down when slowing down is needed. I will practice the art of moving faster when moving faster is needed. I will practice the art of honoring the pace this season is asking of me.
I will keep my heart open, even when impossible ache enters. Even when there is more joy than I know how to hold. I will let the openness teach me something a closed heart never could.
I will stay with tenderness.

May we all remember the kind of heart we want to live from.

As always, thank you for being here.