What I Have Lost

A reflection in this most reflective time

"The book reads like a mean girl's diary and lacks the compassion of other great memoirs." I read the book review, which was left not for me but for you. She wanted you to know why you should or shouldn't spend your time with my story. Ouch. My defenses activated, and I began wanting to defend all the instances where I had shown compassion and explain how I am not a mean girl at all. And then, just as quickly as my defenses rose, they crashed back down. I had a thought that surprised me: I bet someone like me really hurt her. My words and actions must feel familiar in the worst way. I hope she has space to heal. This response is somewhat out of character for me, as I am usually quick to react and choose the petty route myself. It is the reaction of my best self, and I usually would have to coerce it out in therapy. But it just showed up on its own, and I felt ok again.

In every unfolding there is reflection. Photo by Jason Leung

I have taken the past few weeks to soak in all that comes with putting yourself out into the world in a wildly and perhaps recklessly vulnerable way. I stopped trying to create and produce alongside the necessary season of receiving. I have wanted to allow myself to process things at a leisurely pace. And what a process it has been. Over the past few years, as I got closer to the finish line of this book and, with it, the intense process of coming clean about who I truly am, I have imagined what these days would feel like. I imagined myself scouring the internet for critical book reviews, and when I found them, rolling around in the critique and making it my identity and my sadness. I imagined my best friend would stop responding to my messages, now knowing what kind of person I truly am. I imagined it might rain day after day, mirroring the gray expanse in my mind. But that has not at all been my reality. Not at all.

Change is a slow and constant process; it is hard to notice it fully until you feel it. Sharing my whole and unguarded self with friends and strangers has shown me the very thing I set out to solidify with the torturous reliving of my best and worst moments- that I am enough. Are you tired of hearing that? I am not. And I will have to say in some way every day forever to let it be the baseline from which I operate. Because, let's be honest, I am an infant in this new life of self-acceptance. I am barely rolling over in my newness of this basic understanding of self-worth. And I am learning so much every day, much of which drifts across my heart and mind as a gentle surprise. When I offer myself kindness instead of berating. When I casually defend a critical review with genuine compassion. When I allow people to tell me how the book has impacted them, and I feel proud instead of making a self-deprecating joke. These are the real-life embodiments of my understanding of my Enoughness. It is weird to think that I spent so many years obsessively trying to be something and do something that made you all think I was good and good enough, only to be disappointed again and again. And when I stripped it all away and stood, fully flawed, but fully me, I could somehow take the critique that used to destroy me. If someone told me this is what would happen, I wouldn't have believed them, so I don't expect you to believe me either. You may have to discover it yourself, as we mostly do. But when people ask how I am doing with my book and how I feel about it, only one word comes to mind: liberated.

Photo by The Cleveland Museum of Art The Green Tara: The Mother of Liberation coming for me again.

All that I have gained through this process is truly remarkable. But it certainly has come with some losses, both big and small. Somewhere along the way, I lost my need to prove something (I hesitate to write this because I fear it may be temporary). I lost the mental load of trying to be something I wasn't. I lost the tiredness accompanying the endless work to build the illusion of something around me. These are the losses I celebrate. These are the things I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't slowed down and spent some time observing the state of things both in and around me. But not all the loss has been good. More on that next week when I summon the bravery to reveal a little more. I hope letting you inside my mind as I go on this journey is useful. I can be a mirror for you. Maybe I can share a little secret and only you can see because it is just between us. We can all, together, commit to showering our own selves with the genuine knowing of Enoughness. That is what this is all about.