Far more important are the laughter lines ….

Names and identity were a topic of conversation today on a walk with a good friend.  She is very wise and patient.  Why I have been blessed with such good friends is a mystery that i’m learning to embrace.  Another word of the day was ‘wonder’.  Said by second friend in a simple context, it hit me in a similar way to the word ‘mystery’.  Too long, I’ve loved wonder and mystery but demanded I be in a place of knowledge and understanding.  I know the reasons; at least some of them.  Honestly, on the journey through discomfort to joy, they’re irrelevant.

Far more important are the laughter lines I’m forming, the people who help me live fully while I put them there, and the daily opportunities to do so.

This year has some intentional and unintentional places of discomfort. I don’t need to pretend that I enjoy them. Acknowledge them, lean in, let balance re-establish itself. Be honest. Be kind. Be willing to find myself in the moment and not back away.  It’s the only way I’ll truly know and be who I am.  Breathe. It’s enough.

 

Language and Place.

Learning Guitar

Learning to Play

Learning to Breathe – long, slow, deep breaths of joy

Life Inhaled

Life Unfurled

Life reaching out – laying the possibilities before me

Dec 9, 2018

 

 

 

 

 

 

All discomfort comes from suppressing your true identity. Bryant H. McGillIn

In the past few years, I’ve allowed my identity to shift, to reorient; better yet recalibrate. Long after the fact, I’m learning to live, to remember to breath, and to support myself alone. Part of the shift involved going back to work. Finding space to write is a also a big part of it.

When I was looking for work, people spoke about imposter syndrome, learning to wait through its discomfort, to know everyone goes through it. It’s a struggle but it gets better.

Counselors have encouraged me to become more aware of my identity in the past few years. My current counselor suggested learning to lean into discomfort as a good goal, and that is one reason I found the above quote. Apropos. There’s lot’s of opportunity to practice!

I agree that learning to lean into discomfort will benefit me, but that doesn’t make it pleasant. I feel awkward saying so, but I find it very distressing. At times, I feel this stretching may break me. Just doing normal things may break me.

I felt it coming into Easter. The expectations, questions around how I would spend the time, they had my blood pressure up. And at its peak, I spent a few hours in emerg waiting to hear what I already knew; I was not having a heart attack. Every once in a while the pain that just never quite goes away, from old neck and shoulder damage, takes a journey down my left side rather than staying in its usual lodging on the right. Uhuh. Lots of fun.