Tag: Daring

Daring to Trust

~ tmdvir ~ 2 Comments

Hello, dear readers. And a happy April to you all.

Fun fact: April is National Poetry Month and I’m really loading up on poetry anthologies to enjoy in the month ahead. Poetry is not my go-to style of reading or writing, but I have definitely found some poetry books that speak to me. My favorite poetry book so far is Warsan Shire’s Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth. If you have any favorites, please let me know about them! I’d love to keep growing my understanding and love of this genre.

Anyway!

With the start of the new month, comes the wrap up of the one before and always (on this blog) through the lens of find your word.

I’ve found myself struggling in my relationships again this month. But it’s interesting because I’m not in the usual space where I feel that everyone hates me and everyone is gathering without me behind my back. (A) With my new job, there is a lot of gathering without me going on and I’m doing my best to find peace with that because (B) the feelings coming up for me are mostly this awareness that things are changing. My friendships, their friendships, the network of relationships around me is slowly shifting. And that leaves me uneasy.

And being uneasy in my friendships, these relationships I’ve built and nurtured and relied on for years and years above almost all else (but not always and not all all else), leaves me uneasy in life and in my other relationships.

The thing that leaves me more confident, always, is being honest with people. Being really fucking honest with them. Being honest with them when I’m sure that being honest with them is gonna hurt their feelings, or make them bolt, or lead to their telling me that I’m too much.

Being honest when every bone in my body is screaming at me TURN THE FUCK AROUND YOU CAN’T SAY THESE TO THE PEOPLE YOU CARE ABOUT!

But the people that I can be honest with. The ones who can manage their feelings in the face of my words, who stay, who try to sit with my many feelings instead of minimizing them. When I find those people, and I can only find them by telling them those things I’m not supposed to tell anyone I care about, then for a moment I feel more sure in the world.

Today I listened to an etymology (yeah linguistic nerds in the houseeee) podcast about trust, and I loved the definition the host had for trust: “a confident relationship with the unknown.” And it is absolutely key that the outcome be unknown. Because if the outcome is known, then trust is not required.

Daring to trust people, daring to be horrifyingly, mortifyingly honest with them can be really hard and scary. And it is also so so worth it. Every time I have one of these conversations with a friend, a sibling, a stranger, anyone really, I feel like that relationship has leveled-up.

And that’s why daring is such an important word for me this year. Because I don’t always have that trust. Because my experience has taught me in different times and different ways to do the exact opposite of trust. It’s taught me to coddle and shove down my emotions for the sake of other people. But trust is something that can be relearned. It’s scary and it’s nauseating and sometimes the prospect of trusting someone makes me want to cry. But it’s also a key to the life I know I want to live.

So I keep daring.

Daring in February

~ tmdvir ~ Leave a comment

**This is a monthly update on Find Your Word.

Looking back on February, to be honest, I am exhausted. And most of the exhaustion, I feel in my bones, comes from the last ten days of this month. But looking back through my bujo, as I often do, and looking at the moments of joy I try to pick every day, I am reminded that in the darkest of times, there is some light the breaks through. Even if we have to squint to see it.

The focus of this month for me, needs to be, and will continue to be deserving.

After a difficult conversation where I felt that all the decisions of my past two years–to leave engineering, to go to school, to live without a long-term plan, to take this new job–were put under the microscope. It is taking time to get back to my place, to my set of values, to the conviction that got me here in the first place.

I deserve to create the life I want for myself. It doesn’t need to look like anyone else’s life. It doesn’t need to be approved by anyone else. It is mine to do with as I please.

I often find there is a distinct difference between standing up for myself and defending myself. The first is tied to my self-worth, my feelings of dignity and of being respected. The second is tied to proving someone else wrong. To showing them how wrong they are. Sure, in the process I am likely dealing with my dignity. But that is not the focus. And in proving to someone how wrong they are, it feels to me that I am proving to them how much I fear their rightness.

I wish I could live a life where the people I cared about supported me in my choices, instead of questioning how and why I’ve made the decision I have. I wish they could see that my choices are not a challenge to their own decisions. That I see us as separate beings whose decisions are our own. I think I deserve that. But that is not something in my control. I cannot force people to act this way. I can only do my best to tell them what’s going on, to ask them for what I need, and to accept that they may or may not give it. And that their decisions to give it or not often has little to do with me.

But I do want to get back to those moments of joy.

Because there was at least one for every day of the month. And I don’t think I often had to dig very deep. Especially on days I was at work. Because kids, even ones that are struggling, are kids. I get to go to work and play giant foursquare with a yoga ball or do origami or watch a movie or go back to middle school (minus the awkward social scene). And that can shift my perspective. And it can just make me laugh.

Because I have done a lot of work to build a strong network of friends here. Strong not necessarily in numbers, but in spirit and support. A network of people that I don’t always get along with seamlessly, but we’re there for each other even with that. A network of people that I can be daring with, eventually, when I’m finally ready to open up about the thing for real.

It is scary sometimes, because life ebbs and flows, and I am 90% sure I’m in an ebb right now. And I’m not so gracious in the ebbs. I’m not so convinced that things will flow again. I know it, but I don’t trust it yet.

I am scared right now that I will get stuck in the ebb.

I am trying to breathe into it and allow things to flow when it’s time.

In the meantime, I’ll remind myself of all the things I am deserving of, of the kids that bring me delight, and of the friends that give me space to be daring when I’m ready. And I’ll breathe.

 

How to…

~ tmdvir ~ Leave a comment

How to cope when someone you love and who loves you questions your entire life philosophy in 21 easy (and sometimes repetitive steps)

  1. Take deep breaths
  2. Stop yourself from crying cause you know they just can’t handle your tears
  3. Regret step 2 and wonder if you’ll be able to get in touch with those feelings again
  4. Try to redirect
  5. Try to redirect
  6. Try to redirect
  7. End the conversation trying to remember that this person whom you love who loves you means well
  8. Remind yourself that just because someone means well doesn’t mean you have to put up with their bullshit
  9. Talk to your friends about it
  10. Talk to your friends about it some more
  11. Talk to your friends about it until you get in touch with the feelings from step 2 again
  12. Cry
  13. Remember that you’ve intentionally picked people for your life who do not do this
  14. Revel in that intentionality
  15. Talk to your friends again
  16. Embrace the funky mood you’re in
  17. Remind yourself that you knew when you started this journey that some people (including ones you love who you know love you) wouldn’t get it
  18. Remind yourself that you are happy with your life and it’s working for you
  19. Count down the days until therapy
  20. Keep living your life doing yoga, reading, seeing friends, writing blog posts, going to your new job
  21. Remind yourself that you’ve got this

Find Your Word 2019

~ tmdvir ~ 5 Comments

Happy New Year!

For the last couple of years, I’ve been choosing a word to hold onto throughout the year. A friend first told me about this at the end of 2016. It was something she had done for that year, and she wanted to know if I would like to join her for 2017. After a break up that came as a painful shock to me, even as the instigator, I was ready for something to a little bit more spiritual. Something I hoped that would help bring meaning to the life I was slowly shattering. My word that year was surrender. I wanted to learn to give in. Give in to the pain and the hardships, yes, but also to the joy and the ease. I wanted to reclaim this word that I had always seen as weak. I wanted to make surrender a courageous decision. And I believe that it is.

For 2018, my word was embrace, and it quickly fell out of my life. When I chose it, I had been hoping for a more active word and a lot more hugs in 2018. While I got the latter, I found embrace left a bitter taste in my mouth. 2018 felt like a lot for many of us it seems and embracing it felt like the farthest thing from my truth. I lost touch with my word, but looking back there were important things that I embraced this year. I embraced with fierceness new and strengthening female friendships this year. I clung tightly to my belief that the best relationships are strengthened not weakened by the tough conversations. And I accepted begrudgingly that some of the members of my family, while well-intentioned, loving, and supportive, were not willing or able to partake in the types of relationships I wished to cultivate. Most importantly, without even knowing it was happening, I learned to embrace those things that brought meaning and joy to my life (writing, friendship, storytelling events, and many more) while letting go of those things that did not.

I’ll continue to carry the lessons I learned from past years with me. I’m excited as ever for my word for 2019. I can’t believe this year is already here. I remember going back to college a year after I graduated and seeing a sign welcoming the incoming class of 2017. That year passed by in some kind of a blur. And here we are. 2019.

This year I have chosen three words. A word supported by two others.

Daring

My main word for 2019 is DARING. For me, it is a word that brings to mind Daring Greatly by Brene Brown–a book I intend to reread this year. It brings to mind being willing to fail miserably in pursuit of something great. It’s defined in Merriam-Webster as “venturesomely bold in action or thought.” And that’s what I want to be this year. I want to be bold and adventurous. This word, via Brene Brown’s work, reminds me how much I value being vulnerable both with loved ones and people I’ve just met. And finally, it’s bringing to the forefront my intention to take more risks this year. That doesn’t mean I’m going skydiving this year (probably), but it does mean that I’ll try to err on the side of adventure more than the side of caution this year.

My support words are deserving and delight.

Deserving is a difficult word for me. I don’t always believe I am deserving of the things I want. As a Millenial, often being attacked for being entitled, even when I do feel deserving, I start to question if I should. But I’m taking on a big task this year. After leaving my career as an engineer and returning to school to study psychology, I’m in the process of creating a life that looks the way I want it to look, not the way I’ve always been told it should look. And to do that well, I believe I need this word. A word that means “appropriately having or being given something specified.” I don’t know exactly what my life will look like. I can’t. I don’t want to. But I do have ideas of what I value, what’s important to me. I think remembering this word can help me nurture these knowns while I grow my meaningful life.

Finally, we’re left with delight. I wouldn’t be surprised if my friends described me as a deep and thoughtful person. Maybe even eloquent. And I think often I lose track of pure joy in pursuit of deep discussions and meaningful relationships. And so this year, I’d like to remember to enjoy myself. I want to find laughter as I try new things. While my goal in life isn’t to be happy, I think my life would be made more meaningful by the presence of joy. So delight, “a high degree of gratification or pleasure,” is something I’d like to cultivate. I think it will bring warmth to a year that may be very testing. Also, I have two friends who uniquely use the word delightful and it never fails to put a smile on my face.

With these words in mind, I hope to make 2019 a scary and productive year of experimentation, learning, and joy. I’m hopeful today and plan on enjoying the view from the top for as long as I can before this wave crashes and I’m momentarily drowning again.

P.S. This Find Your Word business is based on Susannah Conway’s work and I highly recommend you look her up if you’re interested!