5 things from past me
September 22, 2017
Five Things Friday, grateful for this ritual right now.
If the stories I tell myself are too small to breathe within, it's time to shed them and weave roomy new ones. There is the dream, and then there's the responsibility* (thanks for the reminder @mothershipsightings, and the source: Nayyirah Waheed
If there is anything I've learned about callings - beautiful they may be, they require absolutely everything. This may be the definition. If I can get away with less, is it really a calling? Or something else?
Practice: this is how to rewrite, build a stronger heart, a physiology that can hold the most beautiful of dreams - and the work required.
I know this. And when there's a particularly sticky spot - a story that hurts to unwind, I'll avoid it if I can. If I'm hiding from my practices it's because there's something else I'm avoiding - some truth I'm not yet ready to know. I'm not sure how many times I'll have to learn this before I have enough foresight to walk around that hole.**
Forgiveness. And beginner’s mind. Making messes is human. Walking through them takes courage. Beginning again is an act of faith - a gift we give ourselves and others. I feel like such a slow learner sometimes, but thank heavens, I am learning.***
Me, here from 2026, with the commentary/context I can't help but add:
* “There is having the dream. And. Then. There is being responsible for the dream” - Nayyirah Waheed. Text from the poet once scribed on the wall of The Mothership, formerly Mercury Studio, a space beloved and formative for years of my life. God, all the relationships that began there and ended or continue still and all the heart and effort I let myself bring to the space because of the dream it was; a practice ground for all I would bring to other projects.
** ‘walking around that hole’ is a reference to Portia Nelson’s Autobiography in Five Short Chapters, first encountered in my therapist self-development class during my massage training at the Body Therapy Institute.
*** An oracle from a past me both wise and naive. I had no idea how much more practice I would get at discerning between villainized or villain—it is often so much more complicated than that!—and how to make a stand, attempt repair, re-align with my values. In 2017 I was still trying to organize around rupture as inevitability rather than anomaly. As Thomas Beckett, a Co-op attorney/advisor and support to Durham Community Bodywork this past year said to us: "Conflict is as natural as breathing." When we accept this we can better learn how to do it well, and humanly, and keep each others dignity if we can.
