Going Back In

What choice do we have but to keep going?

This is something I remind myself when I’m feeling frustrated by a (seemingly) impossible goal or project, slow progress, or lackluster outcomes - in my own life and/or in the collective.

When I hit a creative block, when I try something and it doesn’t work, or when I feel stuck on a project, there’s sometimes a moment when I wonder: is this the Universe finally telling me I’m a failure and it’s time to give up?

But I pull by myself back by 1) telling myself everything I know about how creativity, mastery, progress, and life work 2) asking: would quitting actually help anything? (probably not) 3) remembering that the trying itself has value.

There are times to reevaluate and change course around the details, but my intention to live a deep life means I need to keep going and always be stepping toward creativity, learning, and connection.

I think about this too in terms of our collective efforts to dismantle systems of oppression, respond to climate crisis, and build a more just society. Anyone who cares about these issues or is involved in movement work knows what it is to wrestle with despair and discouragement, to stare down impossibility and wonder where we go from here. But what would it even mean to give up on the vision?

When we’re aligned with our deepest values and moved by love, we keep going. We don’t even get to decide. We flow; we move; we engage; we connect. We find whatever hope and aliveness exist in the trying.

I’m finding more and more that living a good, deep, creative life is just a series of going’s back in, a commitment to following love to its obvious conclusion and steadfast directive:

Onward.

Cultivating Loving Feeling + Tools for Deepening Self-Love

I grew up with the maxim that love isn’t a feeling; it’s an action. Which I appreciate. Because love is gritty and hard and takes us to depths in ourselves and reveals truths about our human condition that can rock our worlds and shake us to the core. And when it comes to love, sometimes we just have to put our heads down and power through.

But somewhere in this pragmatic, sensible approach, I lost the truth that love is not only practical action and no-nonsense work, but also a feeling we cultivate with intention. And this feeling bit is just as important.

My relationships – with my partner, with my people, with myself, with the earth, with my creativity – all require my investment in creating feelings of connection, appreciation, and awe, as much as they require concrete action and commitment.

I felt this most recently in my relationship with myself, which had become all action, no feeling.  Even though I was loving myself with action – acting and advocating on my behalf, taking care of my body, mind, and spirit, setting boundaries, and going after my dreams and honoring my desires – there was a gap in feeling that left me with a missing piece and asked me to consciously nurture positive feelings toward myself to love myself better.

Because feelings aren’t just fleeting hits of emotional sensation – they are deep energetic compass points, transporting currents of power, and spiritual fuel. And my own tendency to dismiss feelings when it came to love was leaving my love relationships unbalanced and deprived of this essential ingredient.

So I’m welcoming feeling back into the mix and attempting to bring more warmth, appreciation, and wonder to love so that I can create energies that connect me with the world, feed and inspire my relational commitments, and ultimately make love an act of devotion, joy, and transcendence.

Here are some ideas for deepening your experience of self-love:

1) Let yourself feel all your feelings, even (especially) if they seem silly, contradictory, or nonsensical.  Give yourself safe space to feel, and let yourself laugh, cry, and rage.  Speak to yourself like you would to a toddler who is overwhelmed or tantruming.  

2) Answer the following questions: what do I appreciate about myself?  How can I cultivate feelings of warmth and connection with myself?  How might I deepen into delight in my own aliveness and being?

3)Give yourself experiences of wonder.  What takes your breath away?  What inspires and awes you?  Give yourself space to feel, experience, and allow those feelings, experiences, and memories.

4) Ask: What do I most need to deepen self-trust?  Maybe it's prioritizing your basic needs, fortifying your boundaries, cultivating positive feelings for yourself, or deepening your routines of care.

5) Honor your desire, and let yourself want what you want.  Too often, we push down what we yearn for, believing it's too big, too shallow, too frivolous, etc.  What might it mean to let yourself have it, and to allow that energy to pull you forward into mystery?

Wishing you all so much beautiful love and deep relationship.

Reclaiming Grief

I really wish our modern, western culture was more accommodating and literate around grief. As it stands, grief seems to be allowed only under certain circumstances and only for predefined periods of time.

I think because of our cultural bias against “negative” thinking and feeling, grief gets cast as a less-than-ideal feeling state we’re supposed to move through as quickly as possible in order to get “back to normal.”

But as anyone who has experienced loss knows, grief takes its time and there is no “back to normal.”

And in my experience, allowing grief is the way to not end up haunted, thwarted, or derailed after a loss. Because it’s the catalyst through which we compost and alchemize whatever was lost so that we can keep going, growing, and deepening.

So I wish grief was woven into the fabric of our culture as a unifying thread.

I wish we understood grief as an essential process and inevitable journey into the fullness, realness, and depth of what it means to be a human being who lives, loves, and dreams.

I wish we were all taught from the beginning that living a big life means allowing grief and joy, success and failure, disappointment and celebration to coexist in our lives and selves.

I wish we knew that grief is both allowed and necessary, whether the loss was small or big, clear or ambiguous, chosen or not.

I wish we understood grief as evidence we said yes to love – and that love is far from finished.

Art as Hope

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that art reemerged in my life at this particular moment – that my impulse to begin tinkering with watercolors happened in the midst of deep grief, hard uncertainty, and painful despair.

There have been some really hard things happening in our country and world, and I realized at some point along the way that denying, minimizing, or bypassing any of it would never work. I had to accept its realness. My task is not to make the horror other than it is. My task is to find a depth of beauty that matches the depth of despair – to find a goodness that can stand its ground and hold its truth in the presence of swirling grief.

When we have been pulled into new depths of despair, it simply means we have to go deeper to find a love that can meet it.

Art helps.

When I’m tempted to believe I’m powerless, creativity reminds me that no, actually I am still in possession of immense power. Because when I’m creating, I’m using the power of my aliveness to dream up visions, put energy into form, and recognize beauty. Art – my own and others – reminds me that aliveness is thriving, as is our collective power.

In other words, art is an answer to despair and creativity is an act of hope. Because it’s hard to keep believing there is no possibility when I am literally creating it inside of me.

So please keep creating, friends. Your art matters.

Claiming Power

In a time when we are seeing power at its most abusive, malformed, and tyrannical, I am reminding myself that at its core, power is sacred energy.

Power is our life force uncorked. It is our capacity to love, create, discover, connect, and grow. It is the aliveness and possibility that lives within each one of us.

When we filter our power through love and then allow it to transcend the borders of our being to touch the world around us, something happens. Things shift, alchemize, and revolve - often in surprising ways. I’ve seen this again and again - in my own life, in my DV work, with my coaching clients, in the collective.

It’s easy and tempting to shrink from power when we see and feel the ways oppressive power - force fueled by fear - is inflicting pain, trauma, and havoc in the world around us. It makes sense that we might want to run from our own power, fearing it may be twisted in the same way.

But I believe we must do the opposite. We need our power, and so does the world.

So let’s remember to re/claim power as a holy and necessary energy that lives within us and between us, always, and then set it loose in the world.

Our Rage is Necessary

I want to talk about rage.  This emotion is often misunderstood and villainized – pushed away or misused in ways that cause harm or hurt.  But we need our rage, as it serves so many important functions and is a natural response to injustice, oppression, and brutality of all kinds.  Now more than ever, we need the full spectrum of emotion – including our rage – to navigate the world, discern paths forward, and care for ourselves in the midst of hard times and difficult circumstances.

First, I believe rage serves an important function in not letting us forget what’s real. It tethers us to reality, reminds us who we are, and calls us to live in integrity. As an ambassador of the truth, our rage is holy and important.

Rage helps us call out and resist gaslighting (attempts to disconnect us from our truth and groundedness in reality through manipulation, isolation, and denial because we are easier to control that way). Because in addition to the violence, injustice, and villainy that’s happening in the world, we also have to sort through and deal with the cacophony of voices that are minimizing the horror, denying reality, and refuting basic facts. Our rage helps us do this by pulling us back to center, empowering us to set hard boundaries, and connecting us with others around shared purpose and values.

I believe rage does not want to be fixed. It does not want to be controlled, forced, coerced, or judged (to be clear: this is different than choosing our words and actions responsibly in response to our rage).  Rage wants space to move and permission to be.  It wants to be loved and accepted as a valid energy that deserves to exist - that often needs to exist in order to name injustice, transmit information, inspire action, and move energy.

I notice that when I push against an uncomfortable or painful emotion, including my rage, it fights me back, often refusing to let me go until I listen. But when I acknowledge its presence, accept its company, and trust that I’m big enough to hold and be with it, the emotion can more easily do its alchemizing work and keep moving.  Feeling rage is often still difficult, but trusting myself (and remembering my emotions mean me no harm) brings relief and helps me more easily access the gifts that come with surfing the rapids to the other side.

I also believe rage and joy can coexist. More than that, they have to.  Over the past few days, I've been in a constant state of rage - everything from outright fury to despondent anger to steely resolve. I have also intentionally made space for joy, care, and connection.  Last week, for instance, I painted walls with my sweetheart, coached a client I adore, and went dancing with a friend. This was essential.

Rage is a powerful energetic source that we can use and channel into all sorts of goodness: just action, true words, fierce care, creative projects, and bold resistance. So where is the energy of your rage calling you next? What truths are underneath it? What love is fueling it?  And how will you answer the call of that love?