Category Archives: love

Holding Stories of Humanity

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My intuition knows.

“My TBL is so long, I should only listen to new books.”
“I should listen to my open non-fictions and keep learning–The Fourth Turning, Man’s Search for Meaning, Born Liars.”
“I should start something relevant to now, to help me help, like I Never Thought of it That Way.”

Nope. Beastly Beauty by Jennifer Donnelly wins, and it’s all good. I can only engage with this story in this moment, and I know exactly why. My review from earlier this year:

Donnelly retells Beauty and the Beast with astute and imaginative gender role reversal. Such exquisitely clever writing, an intricate and stimulating story, and so many life lessons intertwined and artfully presented–HIGHLY RECOMMEND!
Heroine is nerdy, kind, and complex, caught between her own strong, gifted nature and toxic, choking social norms. Hero steals a reader’s heart with his own one of gold, his fortitude and loyalty. Ancillary characters provide depth and elaboration to the twisty, always engaging story arc–11 hours of audio went by in a flash–I could hardly put it down. I have admired Steve West’s solo full cast performances in books like For Love of Magic and the Queen’s Thief series, but his talents shine forth on even brighter display in this piece more than any other: Men, women, children, and personalities that span all of humanity and our full sweep of emotions, quite literally.
I have purchased the book in print now to annotate and consolidate lessons in self-awareness, self-regulation, effective communication, and emotional integration… All from a reinvented fairy tale. BRAVA!

Sometimes we can approach politics from a new and different angle. Tonight I approach by way of excellent fiction. Thank God for gifted writers like Donnelly, who show us our hearts, traumas, demons, and foibles with compassion, humor, and grace. Fiction’s paradox is that it provides escape and introspection all at once–freeing us from while also bringing us deeper into ourselves. Themes from Beastly Beauty that speak to me in this moment:
-Rigid and destructive assumptions based on convention, expectation, and limited information
-Despair and Hope
-The healing forces of deep, abiding Love
-Faith in self, others, and humanity in general
-To be known in one’s wholeness
-Invention and co-creation
-Urgency for action lest the world as we know it ends
-Collaborating with ‘the enemy’
-The slow turn of trust
-We, together, are the answer

“…Self-awareness, self-regulation, effective communication, and emotional integration…” How many of us think we do these well, and ‘they’ do not? How many of us believe the ‘others’, about half of the voting population, are unworthy humans, willfully, destructively ignorant, and otherwise unfit to wield a vote? We are sure, just based on how they voted, right? Of course this is true, just look at the facts, we insist. We forget that our perceptions are already half formed in advance of information input, and shaped by more than just ‘facts.’

How do our self-delusions of superiority and attitudes of disdain keep us separated, miserable, and collectively utterly dysfunctional? I ask this of myself and us all, my friends, Red and Blue alike. We are all emotional beings with the capacity for reason. Our decisions are emotional at their core, filtered, mitigated, and moderated by rationality, unless and until we get hijacked. Our degrees of awareness and self-regulation are directly proportional to our degrees of intellectual humility, openness to perspectives other than our own and thus openness to change, and the psychological safety for vulnerability provided by those surrounding us.
How well do we provide the latter for one another, even in our own tribes? Try expressing a dissenting view among friends one day and see.

I had meant to recommend this book to you all tonight, even including spoilers to make my case. Again, nope.

I Hold Stories of Humanity for Us all tonight; this one happens to speak deeply to me.
I Hold Stories of Humanity for Us so we may all feel seen, heard, understood, accepted, and loved, no matter who we are, how we voted, or anything else about us.
I Hold Stories of Humanity for Us because these are the stories that save us from and for one another. I hope you find stories that do this for you, too.



Holding Space

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“Between stimulus and response lies a space. In that space lie our freedom and power to choose a response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness.“

This quote is most often attributed to Viktor Frankl, psychologist, Holocaust survivor, and author of Man’s Search for Meaning. I see it also as a central tenet of stoicism, though I’m not sure stoics would agree. Regardless, this is where I land tonight. Donald Trump has won the presidential election. I hold space for us all tonight, breathing deeply, grounding body, mind, and soul in my deepest core values, life purpose, and the Infinite Game. I know exactly what I’m here to do, and I intend to persevere with clarity and conviction. But tonight is not the time to push my own agenda on anyone.

I write this blog for a general audience, and try to be cognizant of any reader’s political leaning or other identity. Tonight, however, my thoughts are with those who wanted the other result. I see, hear, and feel the pain, fear, despondence, shock, numbness, disbelief, rage, and so much else–so much, so much. For those who are happy with the result, I hope you can also hold space for us. We are in grief. I hope we can self-regulate and not lash out and off-load. And if we do, I hope you can hold space for that too–space for empathy, compassion, grace, and shared humanity. It’s what I would want (indeed admonish) us to do if you were in our shoes.

I hold space for us to RAIN the hard feelings, as Tara Brach teaches–Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture–if we want. I can also simply sit (stand, hunch, squat) with us, hold it all with us, be with us. We don’t have to do anything else right now.

The future is uncertain, no matter how fervently we may believe we know the ending today. What is certain is that we will all have to live it together. How will we be with one another–what will be our response to this most intense stimulus? We can figure that out later; it will emerge and evolve, maybe explode, who knows. We will get there when we get there.

For now, the space. We can settle here a while, be still, breathe. Whatever you feel tonight, I validate it. Whatever you need right now, I hope you have it in spades.

I Hold Space for Us tonight. I breathe my deepest breaths, over and over, with and for us all. I hold arms outstretched, palms up and open. I hold posture upright and supple. I hold mind and heart open. I Hold Space.

Until tomorrow, friends. See you then.

Holding Regret

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What are your best and worst regrets? What is the difference?

If we pay attention, regret is inevitable. Living life with ‘no regrets’ is unrealistic at best, oblivious at worst. I’ve thought and written about this a lot, as evidenced by my birthday post in 2022 and the 12 (now 13) times I have tagged it subsequently.
How does regret feel? In my body it feels tight at the neck, shallow in breath. My head hangs, my lips purse. I avoid eye contact–don’t want to be seen–that’s shame, right?

“I would rather regret being too kind than not kind enough.”

I have said this for some years and now, in this moment of writing, I know why. As I realized and wrote in 2022, my worst regrets are relational–times when I have caused a rupture, especially when repair was incomplete or impossible. I could easily substitute honest, empathetic, compassionate, generous, humble, and forthright for ‘kind’. These memories still sting, and I will carry them forever. Thankfully, I pack them better now. They occupy a smaller, more condensed compartment of my life baggage, less damaging when they leak.

Holding regret well, I have learned, requires both accountability and self-compassion. Accountability makes me reflect, learn, and commit to doing better in the future. Self-compassion helps me step out of shame (I’m such a bad mom/friend/doctor/person), and stand instead in guilt (I did a bad thing). The difference: Shame seizes; guilt activates.

Brené Brown wrote yesterday on Instagram:

My research and my life have taught me that regret is one of our most powerful emotional reminders that reflection, change, and growth are necessary. In our research, regret emerged as a function of empathy. And, when used constructively, it’s a call to courage and a path toward wisdom.

The idea that regret is a fair but tough teacher can really piss people off. “No regrets” has become synonymous with daring and adventure, but I disagree. The idea of “no regrets” doesn’t mean living with courage, it means living without reflection. To live without regret is to believe we have nothing to learn, no amends to make, and no opportunity to be braver with our lives.

In our work, we find that what we regret most are our failures of courage, whether it’s the courage to be kinder, to show up, to say how we feel, to set boundaries, to be good to ourselves, to say yes to something scary. Regret has taught me that living outside my values is not tenable for me.

Regrets about not taking chances have made me braver. Regrets about shaming or blaming people I care about have made me more thoughtful.

Sometimes the most uncomfortable learning is the most powerful.

Discomfort: What actions do we take to avoid it? When does this lead to regret down the road, and which of these discomforts would we choose, if we had it to do over? Vulnerability is extremely uncomfortable–a risk of variable magnitude, depending on context. The reward, however, can be transformative. I regret causing others discomfort with my vulnerability; I’m better at attuning to that risk as I age. I regret when my vulnerability is met with dismissal, invalidation, or minimization. Still, deep human connection cannot occur without real vulnerability, risks and all. Since I live for connection, I have a very high tolerance for the discomfort of vulnerability. Expressed alongside kindness, honesty, and humility, likelihood of connection rises and regret declines. How lovely.

What regrets would you rather carry forever?

I Hold Regret for Us that shows us our core values, that keeps us honest and accountable. I also hold love, compassion, and deep connection that lightens regret’s perpetual load on us all. We walk on, my friends, all on the path, all doing our best.