Dear Readers,
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I was reading Jennie Allen’s Get Out of Your Head.
I’m two “lessons” in and I have to take my time with it because there are a lot of truth bombs that hit me hard. My tendency would be to plow through so I can feel accomplished and check another book off my list. I am usually navigating three books at once—one physical book I can hold, one Kindle book on my iPad, and one Audible. So right now I’m cycling through some major mental health work, a book about a single mom who inadvertently becomes a killer-for-hire and Matthew McConaughey’s memoir (narrated by the author, which is basically the whole reason I chose it). I’m a little all over the place.
This last week was…rough. I’ve been feeling heavy. Unimpressed. Stuck. Bored. One of my childhood friends randomly texted me this and it made me smile, but it also made me sad.
There is a lot of joy on that little teenage face. I want that joy back. I want to laugh so hard I snort.
Jennie Allen says that in order to stop the spiral of toxic thoughts, we need to be authentically known. Not like 98% known…100% known. It’s that little bit we hold back—the 2%—that will get ya. So this last week, instead of responding with a 98% “I’m ok” when a friend inquired as to how I was doing, I went the extra 2%. It’s freeing and it’s scary. Sometimes I didn’t even wait to be asked, like when I called my sister from the aisles of Whole Foods (1$ Oyster Friday, y’all. Don’t sleep on it) crying after a friend’s funeral. Or when I crossed the finish line of a race this morning and my friend asked me how I was, and I told her I wasn’t good, and listed reasons why, then proceeded to cry in public while holding a free yogurt they handed out. Crying in public seems to be a theme here.
Instead of telling a friend about my Instagram detox and vaguely referring to why, I told him exactly the reasons. I told him unashamed, but also kind of wringing my hands and admitting that I wish I was stronger. I told him I wished that I cared less about what other people did, what they thought. I told him that Jesus didn’t care about these things, so why should I? His response was absolutely perfect:
“You aren’t Jesus, and that’s OK”
If I hadn’t opened up. If I hadn’t gone the whole 100%, I wouldn’t have given him an open door to tell me what I needed to hear. If, at the funeral, I hadn’t gotten over my fears and talked to old friends I had distanced from, I wouldn’t have heard beautiful words that gave me closure.
People can’t love you if they don’t really know you. So by choosing to be known, I am choosing to be loved. I am also potentially choosing to be rejected, and that’s OK. The love part is worth the rejection part.
I hope this next week is a better one. I’m getting away to the woods next weekend and doing my first trail race. It is 25k and I’m nervous. But I have to trust that my body knows what to do, that finishing is the goal, and that if my fellow racers are lucky, maybe they will get to see me cry in public.
In the midst of one of those weeks, I found comfort. Here are a few things that I loved this week.
The Denis Morton White Stripes Ride
Much nostalgia. I used to sing White Stripes to my 16-year-old when he was a baby and I was trying to calm him down. I was 8 months pregnant with my 15-year-old, front row at a White Stripes concert, my giant belly the only thing between me and Jack White’s sweat spraying off the stage.
Impermanence is where it’s at
Building on my ode to Salmon last week, this article says it even better:
The shadowy spaces are scary, but I don’t want to waste my life drawing circles of safety around me that are doomed to fall apart. I’ve come to realize that there is no one on Earth who has managed to avoid uncertainty or pain, no one who walks a perfectly lit path. And that, actually, is what does give me some relief — because I’m not failing, and this isn’t a matter of just not having found the right strategy yet.
My sister’s art
She is talented. I wish I had more money, I’d buy all of her stuff. Check out this exhibition and show some love to Robyn Dyer.
Easy steps for chilling about work
And, last but not least, a free pass to be emotional at the office
Sensitive people are proven to be the most effective. So, lean into it.
This memory from 5 years ago in Ile a Vache, Haiti came up on my phone today. It’s one of my faves and I had forgotten about it. Now I keep it saved in my favorites folder, because we can all use a reminder when our weeks get mundane, uninspiring… that we have had adventure, we have had love and joy. If we did it before, we can do it again.
xoxo,
Sarah
And when you go that extra 2%, you give others permission to go there, too <3