I’ve missed you.
I’ve missed sharing what’s on my heart and mind with a hope that it’s useful to you.
And yet, I needed a break. I didn’t realize it at the time. At the time the break felt forced, but in the end it was needed.
I needed time away to appreciate what I was missing.
I needed to lose myself in old, unhelpful patterns, so I could come out of them as the latest iteration of me.
It reminds me of the fresh perspective I have when I come home from a trip. Nothing has changed in my absence. It’s me who’s changed.
As I come back home to my creativity and all that is swirling in me and wanting to be birthed, I’m returning with thoughts about what I need—and I believe we all need—to show up as my true self in this life.
We need to know what works for us…AND what doesn’t. And, we need to say it.
Sometimes that means doing what doesn’t work enough times to make it clear we can’t keep doing things that way. It means setting boundaries that support your well-being and communicating them.
We need to turn toward ourselves with care and kindness instead of judgement.
This one is tough—we’re taught to criticize ourselves and to constantly improve on who we are. But, there’s immense power in turning toward yourself with gentleness and simply being on your own side.
We need to devote ourselves to doing the things that fill us up.
It sounds like navel-gazing to the greatest extent, but it isn’t. It’s essential. We each have a special combination of things we need to feel like ourselves. Author Tara Mohr calls them core nutrients, and I like that way of seeing them. They are like air or water or food. And, when we meet these needs, we can help others without depleting ourselves.
We need to tune into the knowing that lies within us and to follow it’s direction, not the direction of other people, your family, the culture, etc.
You may not think you know, but I promise you that you do. Your being knows what’s good for you, what you need, and what you’re here to do. With a little practice, you can learn to let this older, wiser part of you take the lead.
We need to take what we have—what we were given, what we’ve cultivated and learned—and use it.
You have gifts that the world needs. What’s more important than praise and criticism? What keeps tugging at you or whispering to you? The callings inside of you are sacred, and we need to you to express them in small and big ways.
We need each other.
In a culture that values the individual over all else and loves to show perfected, curated faces, bodies, and lives, we can forget. I know I’ve forgotten this and believed it was my duty to do things—parenting, business stuff, you name it—by myself. If I couldn’t figure it out on my own, I was flawed, weak, not smart enough. But, this is a lie. We need each other. As humans, we’re hard-wired for connection. With connection, we thrive. Without it, life is harder and scarier than it needs to be.
We need to be ok with the mess and to embrace it, if we can.
Back to perfectionism…it doesn’t exist. It’s an unattainable goal that I’ve spent a good chunk of my life chasing. It’s about protecting yourself from imagined harm, and it’s a prison and the enemy of creativity. The more we can catch ourselves when we spin in endless improvement, the more likely we will keep moving toward the things that matter most.
We need to play. Yes, we need to play, not with an agenda and a closed fist but with an open hand that takes us somewhere unexpected…and delightful.
All good things come from play. When we play, we aren’t controlling outcomes, we’re allowing, we’re in flow, we’re present and enjoying what’s in front of us, who we’re with. A friend’s French mother used to say to her, "It’s not so serious." That’s exactly it. What if it actually isn’t so serious? What then?
We need to be bold.
To begin before we’re ready.
To listen to the callings inside us.
To play with what we have and what we dream of.
We need to simply start and remember the wisdom of "It’s not so serious."
So, here I am beginning again…and showing up in the way I wanted to from the start. I’m here to hold for you—and for me—that it really isn’t so serious. That we can try things and the world won’t end if they don’t go as we’d like. We can get back up, laugh about it, cry about it, and keep going.
The doing is what matters—in the doing, we learn, change, and live.
That’s what I want to do. Live. Live now and not hold back.
Life includes everything. The good, the rotten, the easy, the daunting.
The greatest gift we can give each other is to be honest about it and to show up in our brilliance and our flaws, just as we are.