Hello!
In addition to my usual ramblings, I want to send you occasional round-ups that may help with any number of things.
Living through this pandemic has been A SLOG and as of now, it looks like we’ll be at it a bit longer. If it feels hard, that’s because it is. Let’s cut ourselves some slack.
Jen Hatmaker has a podcast called For the Love. The series she’s running now is called For the Love of Reconnecting. There are two podcasts, in particular, that may be of some help (at least they were for me).
Rewriting the Stories We Tell Ourselves with Lori Gottlieb. “Lori explains that we are the narrators of our own stories, and how we talk to ourselves and tell the story of our lives shapes who we will become.” The podcast is great. If you want more from Lori, you can check out her book, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, and/or her TED Talk, “How Changing Your Story Can Change Your Life.”
Making Good Use of Our Emotions with Hilary Jacobs Hendel. “It’s so hard to feel your feelings—especially when you have all of them all at once, and it’s never a convenient time to process them. For the past year, we’ve all been stewing with anxiety, stress, anger, loneliness, grief, and fear. Ignoring our hard feelings might seem like the easiest way to cope and get relief—but it’s not the only option available to us. . . [Hilary] and Jen talk about the freedom we find when we realize emotions just are, and we don’t have to judge them. In fact, instead of shutting down, Hilary shows us how we can walk ourselves toward self-compassion and healing, which gives us real resilience—not the kind that we *think* we have by stuffing down our feelings.” After the podcast, you can check out Hilary’s book, It’s Not Always Depression: Working the Change Triangle to Listen to the Body, Discover Core Emotions, and Connect to Your Authentic Self. And you can read more about Hilary and her work on her website.
You’ll notice a theme here, which is intentional. Some of the primary themes I’m exploring this year are how we can offer more grace, not only to others BUT TO OURSELVES. And how we can recognize that struggle doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with us or that we are lacking in some way: It means life is hard. And it is not only okay to admit that, it’s important to admit that. One of my favorite writers, Anne Lamott, says that the best gift we can give to another person is to say, “me, too.” We are not alone in either our suffering or our joy — but there’s no way to know that for sure unless we’re willing to be brave enough and vulnerable enough to say “me, too.”
I’m also interested in exploring the stories we tell ourselves. I’m convinced that most of them are all wrong and would fall to pieces under careful examination.
Let’s start with the story that we are loved and worthy and enough and rewrite from there.
GRACE
#Truth. I would also ask us to stop keeping score on ourselves. Grace isn’t just for others.
I liked this bit from Susan Orlean’s essay, Why I Love My Calendar. I think it echos what a lot of us are feeling about time and fresh starts.
“There is nothing as optimistic as a calendar — it takes the endlessly unfolding nature of time and gives it structure and circularity, offering us a sense of fresh starts and soft endings. . .
. . .Calendars, of course, are an invention. In truth, time is a linear thing, marked only by the recurring seasons and the arc of lifetimes. Otherwise, time is a long march, ever forward. Calendars are comforting; it’s reassuring to feel that time exists in predictable, familiar units rather than in an undifferentiated existential sprawl. . .
. . .We need to feel that time is a narrative that unspools and renews frequently. In particular, we want to be able to package a bad stretch and be able to tie it up and believe that it ends. I can barely count the times I’ve declared that I’m having a bad week, as if it’s a predetermined stretch that will end magically Sunday night.
One thing about the pandemic has been the strange, smooth nothingness of time. Every day seems the same as the next, a muddied blur. We’ve lost the narrative — our narrative of how time has texture, the narrative that we aren’t on an endless, shapeless journey but are traveling through a series of manageable, distinct periods that have highs and lows, entries and exits, in a cycle that is human-sized, that is comforting and concrete rather than stretching without end into eternity.”
But wasn’t it nice to open a fresh page on a new calendar on January 1 anyway?
Speaking of Anne Lamott, I was reminded of these words of hers this week.
We must remember that in all the caring we do for other people, we cannot forget to live our own lives. Loving and serving others is beautiful and necessary, but let’s not waste our own “one wild and precious life.” So I will leave you today with this poem by Mary Oliver.
xo,
Beth
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