Sometimes, Because I Am an Adult, I Sit on the Counter
Where do I turn in my anger and exhaustion?
Hello Beautifuls,
Welcome to everyone who is new here this week. ❤️ There are so many of you! And I am delighted and honored you are here.
Welcome back to everyone who’s been here before. I am grateful for you presence and humbled by your generosity and love.
Thank you, thank you.
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Dear Love, what would you have me know about this season of my life?
You, our sweet, sweet earth angel, are in the season of forgiveness, which is also the season of fruitfulness and abundance.
You are in the season, sweet peach, of letting go of the stories you've told yourself all your life.
You are now in the season of listening to all the other stories that could be possible.
You are in the season of discovery, of being the child you forgot how to be.
You, my love, are in the season of wonder, of optimism, of play.
You are in the season of loving all of life, all of the ways in which it is both wondrous and expansively beautiful and of the ways in which it is devastating and slam-you-down horrible.
You are in the season of forgiveness and surrender, which really, sweet peanut, is the season of freedom.
We love you so much.
Love
I wrote this letter last Sunday. Well, let’s be clear. I listened to what Love had to tell me and wrote it down. Because these letters aren’t really from the mind, they are from something the heart knows, something deeper and bigger than mind.
So I should say I wrote down this letter, something like transcribing, but I’m not a medium, or, I don’t know maybe I am, maybe we all are if we are willing to listen hard enough or soft enough, quiet enough or long enough.
These words came to me and I read them and thought, how buoyant! How easy! This letter isn’t heavy at all—as sometimes Letters from Love are.
But then I reread it this morning and I thought, this letter asks a lot. To be in a season of forgiveness, surrender. To allow myself to feel free, even when.
Even when friends have lost homes, and my beloved California is in desperate need of help it isn’t getting. Even when my skin puckers and dimples and my eyesight is slowly getting worse. Even when the talking heads won't give us even an hour of peace and the strangulating news from Washington astounds and devastates.
Even when.
And then, I get this message to forgive and surrender. That in those things is true freedom. But who do I forgive? Where do I turn in my anger and exhaustion? To whom do I wave my white flag?
My husband and I were in the kitchen last night. We are not cooks. Well, he is, but he's not in a cooking season. That passed a couple of years ago and now we are in a season of sandwich dinners, nachos eaten out of the pan while standing. Sometimes, because I am an adult, I even sit on the counter. But last night I made this chicken dish. It is the only chicken dish I make. Party because raw chicken. Party because I will spend a delighted two hours making a cake and decorating it, but cooking? Just no.
As I rinsed the chicken, Brian put dishes away and made almond-flour banana muffins from a box (from a box!). We are trying to eat less wheat and refined sugar and I offered to make some from scratch, but he said he'd rather try something premixed to see if we liked it, then find our own recipe. Okay, I said. Who am I to argue with a man who wants to make banana muffins?
We moved around each other fairly well, but you know, if you've ever cooked in the same space as another human, if there are two of you in the kitchen, one of you is always standing right where the other needs to be. And one of you is always putting things away in the wrong place. I was standing at the sink, on the other side of the kitchen mind you, washing dishes and he tried to blame me for making a mess on the muffin tin. I know this move well. Several times a week, when something goes awry or I can't find what I'm looking for, I call out, "Damn it, Brian."
Nine times out of ten, he's had nothing to do with my situation (unless it's when I'm looking for the whisk, because that man puts it in the wrong place every time), but it's so easy to blame someone for my mistakes, my mess.
Brené Brown has a line in one of her talks where she says, “I'd rather it be my fault than no one's fault." She's telling the story of how she blamed her husband, who wasn't home at the time, for her spilled coffee that's splashed all over her white pants and pink sweater set. She goes on to say that we blame instead of sitting in discomfort and pain. And that she'd rather blame anyone, even herself, in order to have a semblance of control.
If there's no one to blame, or rather, if I choose not to blame right now, in this current moment of devastation and chaos, but instead choose to sit in forgiveness and surrender, that means I also have to sit in discomfort and pain. And beyond that, it means I have to be brave enough to allow others to see me experience joy, wonder, optimism, play. Even when.
And who am I to allow myself those things when the world is collapsing?
Here's what I'm coming to believe. We are all allowed. We all need, especially those of us in devastating circumstances, in pain (who isn't), to be the people who are also willing to experience joy, forgiveness, freedom.
Because the energetic scales right now are tipped towards chaos, fear, anarchy. Like a subdued fire that lives in little pockets, just waiting for enough oxygen to burn again, chaos needs to be fed. And that energy does not need anymore fuel.
The energy that needs our fuel right now is the energy of optimism. Of play. Of childlike discovery and wonder. Our freedom, I am clear, lies in forgiveness and surrender, to ourselves, to our tender hearts. It lies in finding the play and joy, buried in small pockets of ash and waiting for enough oxygen to burst into undeniable possibility, reminding us we are just a breath away from the divine.
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I’ll leave you today, my loves, with a new favorite song. New to me, at least. It Ain’t Hard to Tell by Will Sessions. It’s got a lovely Michael Jackson sample in there and the whole thing just makes me happy. Makes me move my body, even when I’m sitting. I think we need this kind of thing in our lives right now more than ever.
With so much love,
xoxo
j
Here's to holding it all. Thanks for reminding us.
I do love that sentence, "You, my love, are in the season of wonder, of optimism, of play."