Category Archives: personal growth

Holding Connection

Posted on by
7

“It’s a beautiful day in Chicago.
“Gratitude stands in front today, sadness pressed right up behind. They hold each other like twin toddlers: Intimate. Knowing. *Connected*.
“Holding.”

If you follow me on Instagram, you know I post photos of a mug by my laptop every weekend. Normally this gives the page a semi-coherent aesthetic of mug shots alternating with blog posts, with occasional other stuff sprinkled in. This month I’m inserting a mug picture when I think of it, to break up the daily blog tiles. The caption above emerged spontaneously today. *happy sigh*

Had a leisurely morning before and after dropping Daughter off at school. Got some work done, then made it to Ethos for the start of a new training block (barbell front foot elevated split squats and pull ups, oh yeah!). Did my first class with Coach Arianna—ROCK STAR. Caught up a little with lovely friend James, then had a wonderful lunch with dear Jacob. Chatted with the beautiful Kasey, picked up a little jar smile for myself on the way out, and felt a good little tingle. I generally do not cry easily, but tears verged more than once on the drive home. Gratitude in front, sadness right behind. I write ad nauseum about the community at Ethos–I promise they do not pay me. It’s just a unique community where relationship is a core value. It is their ethos, expressed right there in their tagline: TRAIN. RECOVER. CONNECT. And let me tell you, they (we) walk the talk. I drive up to 45 minutes each way, three times a week, to commune with these amazingly generous and kind people who hold me in my strengths, my vulnerabilities, my weirdness–in my wholeness.

Today my friends held me in my sadness. They held my heart close and tight. They were so present. I am not happy about a second Trump administration, not at all. But I could accept it on Wednesday. I am confident in our institutions at the moment and I see the slow groundswell of collaborative efforts across the aisle in credible party leaders to uphold them. I see popular legislative efforts across the country to protect the rights I care about. Policy will always be a give and take, one and two steps forward and back ad infinitum. The sadness set in only after seeing repeated expressions of vehement relationship rupture and abandonment, of harsh judgment with complete lack of curiosity and empathy. I see it on both sides (nobody is asking relationally meaningful questions), and more from the left. I understand and empathize with the intense emotions–the shock and disappointment, the outrage, even the hopelessness. I share some of them. But above all, it’s the active, volitional relational desertion, collective or individual, that distresses me most.

In the afternoon I spoke to Jon, my high school classmate, a conservative. We last met at our ten year reunion, 23 years ago. We have stayed connected on Facebook, mainly to discuss our divergent political views. It has always been respectful and loving. He messaged me on Wednesday to ask how I was. He is the friend I wrote about who hugged his tearful colleague after Trump won in 2016. We spoke for an hour and agreed on many more things than we disagreed on–mostly relational, behavioral, and pragmatic things. We held space for the really complex issues. We agreed strongly and wholeheartedly that in the most emotionally charged, most intense disagreements of identity and personal beliefs, that is when and where we must exercise the most attunement, kindness, empathy, and humility–basically the opposite of what we actually do.

So grateful. So sad.

I am okay. I am not surprised or disillusioned, necessarily. I am not hopeless. We are human, and this is how we do under severe stress. Relationship ruptures can be repaired. It is a choice. That does not mean it is easy, and wounds leave scars, some large and disfiguring.

“You got hurt,” Dear Friend said to me so lovingly once, after I attempted to connect to someone and missed. Yes, I got hurt. That can happen when we risk connection. It was worth it. My friends showed me today that every time I have taken this risk, the reward has consistently far outweighed any cost or pain. There is so much pain right now, my friends–it rolls over us like the darkest thundercloud. And it will pass. Throwing away our relationships now will not make it pass any faster, nor make the light any brighter afterward–quite the opposite, I’m convinced.

I Hold Connection for Us, my friends. I hold it like our lives depend on it.
Because they do.

Holding Stories of Humanity

Posted on by
2

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 Awareness

Posted on by
2

What an aberrant week.

Eating, sleep, movement, and mental activities are all deranged a little, and more than a little resistant to intentional redirection. The only function fully intact, if not heightened, is talking and connecting with people. Text, email, social media, FaceTime, in person. Many pages of journaling. Lots of music, no book input in any form–that is definitely aberrant. Fascinating.

I wrote last night about the work of connection across difference getting harder. It starts now. Already I feel the apprehension, the tension of engaging with both Blue and Red friends (not yet in the same gathering–that’s next level at this point). I have some general impressions of both groups formed over the years, not yet articulated formally on this blog– generalizing is not an ideal way to approach humans, especially individually. Still, if I’m going to talk politics with anyone, I will benefit from clarifying some things for myself–identifying and monitoring the assumptions I make and querying the assumptions that others may make about me.

I spent an hour today replying to comments from this month–thank you for your patience, dear readers and friends. I wrote to Donna, “Those of us in bridging spaces and mindset have our work cut out for us, no question. The path turns harder uphill and more rocky for the foreseeable future. And, this is what we have trained for. I feel excited, like an athlete looking to PR a different movement every couple weeks (which I’m actually doing at Ethos regularly! [emoji string])… Ya. Keep going. Slow and steady. Bend that long moral arc.”

I have trained for this, yes. And the terrain before me is both familiar and new. I have my usual equipment and skills. The path ahead will require new tools and movements. I may get hurt; I will fail to anticipate weather and obstacles. So I proceed with cautious confidence, awareness, and respect. I’m making my way slowly through Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, as I borrowed it on CD from the library and my only working CD player is in the car. Might there be parallels here? I’m an experienced relationship and communication ‘hiker’. Engaging and connecting across difference through the next presidential administration may be my Pacific Crest Trail. So, I will pack smart and walk with fellow proficient hikers. I bet we meet some pretty awesome folks on the journey, see some breathtaking vistas, fall down, sustain some cuts and bruises, and get our egos handed to us at least a few times. The learning and connections will be worth the costs, I am convinced, especially if we can help others on the trail, too.

This hiker is tired tonight, friends. So:

I Hold Awareness for Us of our own energy, tolerances and limits–these are dynamic.
I Hold Awareness for Us of the call to connection.
I Hold Awareness for Us of every person’s full humanity and value, no matter who they voted for.
I Hold Awareness for Me of the resistance that my words, attitudes, and admonishments may evoke. I will monitor my own reserves and boundaries. I will rest and find alternate routes when needed. Connection across difference does not necessarily need to occur in explicitly political conversations.
I Hold Awareness for the paths of possibility before all of Us.