Tag: Words

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.

Surrendering is Not Doing Nothing

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Something really interesting has been going on in my life lately. Something that makes me wonder. In the past couple of months, I have had opportunities open up for me in the most interesting ways. Some are career related. Some are more about my personal life. But all of them brought to mind something I’ve been contemplating since 2017 when my word of the year was surrender.

You see, at that point in my life, the concept of surrender was totally foreign to me. I was used to planning, to being in control, and to believing that the only way to a fulfilling life is to plan and be in control. Of course, that was challenged at times. Like when I decided to move to Portland with the hopes of getting into a more creative field, but the only job offer I got was not creative and not so different from the job I had just left. I had a plan, but alas that’s not what turned out to happen. And when I got the offer I did, I was wary but excited. I had a good feeling about it. So I took it, even though it was not what I had planned.

The last two-plus years of my life have been a more intentional exercise in surrendering–ironically seeking surrender instead of letting it come to me. They’ve been an exercise in recognizing that control was at the very best a harmless illusion and at the very worst a lie I was using to hold myself back.

But in these two years, I kept struggling with the balance between surrender and action. Could I surrender and still work towards my goals? How can I be both an active participant in my life and passively surrendering to my lack of control?

And I think this week it dawned on me. Maybe.

I am starting to realize that surrender is more about trust than about not doing anything. Surrender is more about believing that there isn’t a right way, a right answer, a right path. It’s about recognizing that there are many paths and trusting that any path will lead you somewhere worthwhile and interesting.

The balance between surrender and action is that surrender is trusting that the doors will appear and open and action is trusting yourself to choose the one that fits you best at that moment. It’s also trusting that more doors will open regardless of the decision you make.

Before I started considering surrender, I was doing all the work. I was designing the door and getting the materials and building the door that I believed wanted to walk through. And I did it because I thought I was the only one that could design the right door for me. The thing was though, sometimes by the time the door was built, I didn’t want to walk through it anymore. And because I was so freaking focused on my door, and so sure that no other door would be good enough, I felt that I had no other options but to walk through the door I was no longer particularly interested in.

Now, I’m letting the doors show up and I’m considering each of them. I’m thinking about what feels right at the moment. I’m gathering information about each door. And I’m making a decision. And the doors keep showing up.

Just to keep it real, though, I don’t want you imagining me peacefully walking through my life by any means. I don’t think that’ll ever be me. I’m still anxious at times that I’m making the wrong decision. I still worry that if I say no to this door now–even if it’s something I think I might want in the future–I won’t get the opportunity again. I’m still scared sometimes that my life will not turn out to be worthwhile or interesting.

And I still keep walking. I still keep picking the door that feels right even through the fear. I still keep letting other doors shut even if I hope to see them again someday.

 

 

Daring in February

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**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.

 

When in Doubt

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What is doubt? I’ve always thought of it as one of two things:

  • A lack of confidence
  • A lack of belief

But when looking up the definition the other day, I found, no surprise, a much more complicated answer.

Doubt

Sure there is reference to a lack of belief or a lack of confidence. But the other thing that comes up is uncertainty. Ah my favorite topic, uncertainty. That which is most uncomfortable and yet is most common. I am not surprised that doubt, an often reviled thing, is somehow closely tied with uncertainty.

Last year I read A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit and as has happened every time I’ve read her work, I came away with some awesome realizations. She wrote in this book: “Worry is a way to pretend that you have knowledge or control over what you don’t–and it surprises me, even in myself, how much we prefer ugly scenarios to the pure unknown.”

We would rather be anxious and nervous and assuming the worse than just acknowledge that we don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m not shitting on this tendency. It’s often not in our control. But I do find it telling. That we are so uncomfortable with the unknown that we’re more comfortable with assuming the worse.

So how does this all tie to doubt?

I struggle with self-doubt often. Apparently it’s a result of years of being gaslighted. Years that left me often unable to trust my own perceptions of situations or of the world. Knowing this, a part of me wants to urge myself to just trust my instincts. Believe my mind. Give it the benefit of the doubt.

But on the flip side of that, I’m also plagued by some serious mental distortions. I’ve written to my suspicious brain on here before. And that’s just one of my mental distortions. Being aware of these, doesn’t it make sense that I sometimes doubt my perception? After all, what we perceive is not reality but often the stories we tell ourselves to explain a set of facts. If our stories tend to be distorted, isn’t it right to approach these stories with a lack of confidence of belief?

And so all this winds down with what I’ve chosen to be my favorite definition of doubt: a deliberate suspension of judgment.

Of course, like anything else I write about here, there is a time and a place. Should you doubt yourself in a given situation? That depends, do you have a tendency to misread those situations? If yes, then doubt. Decide to make the decision later, after you gather more information, maybe from friends and other sources who are not plagued by your distortions. If, on the other hand, it is something you tend to be right about. There’s no need to doubt yourself. Give yourself the benefit of the doubt.

What I’m trying to say, I guess. Is that like most things, doubt is not always bad.

 

Verbal Exactitude

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Being precise with language is so interesting.

Considering what I’m really trying to say and how to best say it.

Unfortunately, often I’m speaking too fast to be precise. I’m trying to learn to slow down. I think I would enjoy giving myself more time.

Unfortunately, often I use go-to phrases that are harmful, but that I don’t even reconsider. Phrases I may have heard often growing up. Or phrases that I use as shields to protect myself.

When I’m about to share a feeling that I’m still judging myself on, I might say something like “I don’t know what’s wrong with me but…” as an introduction. So someone else doesn’t have to wonder “what’s wrong with her?!” So I don’t have to worry they’ll tell me that something is obviously wrong with me for having the feelings I’m having.

Last week in training I was introduced to a mind-blowing shift in language.

We were urged to ask “what’s happened to them?” instead of “what’s wrong with them?” when working with anyone really.

And my world shifted.

My eyes got watery and my throat ached the way it does when I’m trying to stop myself from crying. It’s a sharp ache, concentrated on a single small point in my throat.

I heard, in a dramatically sudden flash, all the times I’d said out loud or thought to myself “what’s wrong with me?” and it made me so so sad.

It made me sad to realize how deeply I believe there is something wrong with me, and how that belief is supported so easily by the language I use without thinking.

I believe that less now, by the way.

Even less in the last week since this linguistical revelation.

A lot of things have happened to me in my twenty-eight and a half years, some of them wonderful, some of them bad, some sad, some neutral. And they’ve shaped the person I am and the way I behave and the stories I tell myself and the feelings I have. It’s fascinating really to break it down in this way.

I love telling stories, and in telling them I often uncover the stories I’ve been telling myself for months, or years, or for what seems like forever.

I used to tell myself most every day a story about a girl who is broken and abandoned and unlovable and too emotional and much much too needy. That story still comes up, but less often now. It’s a much more complicated story now and I like it that way.

I am emotional and sometimes more needy than other times.

But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that now.

It’s who I am because of the things that have happened to me.

And that’s ok.