Hello Friends,
It is August! I am on the airplane on the way to Vermont to visit my parents, and I had a whole newsletter planned about how our lives are in orbit and we keep passing by the same fixed objects in space which are lost and abandoned parts of our selves. It was going to be brilliant, I've been thinking about it for weeks.
I am literally in space at this moment, careening toward two fixed objects on the East Coast, and for some reason a little bit terrified of this trip even though I've taken it every year of my life and it's always fine. Maybe I'm terrified because I am finally so much closer to who I wish to be, which is pretty far from who I used to be, and there's a giant bridge to build. Maybe it's because at the start of summer a Tarot reader told me I have unfinished business out there, that it's important to get things sorted so the channels can open for all of my hopes and dreams to come true between January and March of next year. I'm laughing, but MAYBE???
Anyway, I had this whole email planned but something has come up which is much more important so the thoughts on orbit will have to wait, hopefully bracketed by some really profound discoveries from this summer's walkabout. For right now, I'd like to talk about saying the thing.
Friends, I hate feeling feelings. WHO NEEDS THEM. Feelings get in the way of my productivity, my goals, they get in the way of my sleep and they are embarrassing and so awkward. My feelings are an early teen who doesn't play sports and has not yet discovered The Theatre and has, like, really long limbs but their torso hasn't caught up or something. My feelings are so unevolved and so uncool and unsophisticated and I'm so averse to them that I have spent most of my life dressing them up as thoughts and trying to think them. My therapist will love this. Hi Rachel! I've had all of these feelings trapped in the thinking place for all of these years, and god bless Rachel who has been incredibly patient with me and has slowly coaxed the feelings back into my body where they belong and it turns out I'm not bad at knowing how I feel, I'm bad at feeling how I feel. Except I'm not bad at it anymore. (Right, Rachel)?
And here is an insane discovery: Feeling things, it turns out, is the most direct path to getting what I want.
Learning to feel has been hard. Is this ridiculous? Did you all learn this as kids? I have to constantly remind myself to check my body for feelings, like reminding myself to take a pill or drink water. I have to run through a list of feeling words to find a possible match; I have to set aside time to focus on the matched feeling word, and sit in discomfort for what is sometimes a very long time before I know where it came from or what's true underneath. Did you already know this? Am I the Bella Baxter of feelings? What's amazing is that the process has built, brick by brick, an entirely new life for me. It's brought my most precious and aligned people closer to me, it's ushered out relationships and situations that hurt me, it's brought actual work, money, joy, even a stronger body and better hair, I'm not kidding.
All it takes is that I say the thing. I just say the thing! You know how this works, you have a feeling and then you just say it out loud, along with a correlated preference, to someone who can help, it's no big deal. All you do is, see, you just package up the awkwardest, wobbliest, grossest, most fragile parts of yourself, and send the little package out into the world to REPRESENT YOU and then you just wait around while someone EVALUATES it. !!!!!!!!
Oh friends it's so hard, it's so brutal, and every single time, I do it fucking scared. And yet. And yet!
In making the leap toward vulnerability, I have been constantly reminded that people are basically wonderful. If someone has earned my trust, what is that trust for other than to try to heal? We spend our lives in orbit, passing by the parts of ourselves that we have lost - I may have mentioned this? We keep coming back to the same hurts, the same achievements even, the same chunks that flew off into space and left us in the shape of our current identity, and we often need the gentle push from an outside hand in order to bring those parts back home. Why stay abandoned? Why not ask?
Start by telling the truth to yourself. Start in your home. Start with your things. I am holding on to these silicone cups because I used to serve car-ride hot chocolate in them after swim practice and that made me feel like a great mom, and the truth is that the kids are older and parenting is more complex and I often don't feel like a great mom and that makes me really sad. And also the truth is I don't need the cups to cover up that truth anymore.
Happy Wednesday, Happy August, happy last stretch of summer break. I wish you the most beautiful, vulnerable truths that precipitate all of your hopes and dreams coming true. by March.
