I have been thinking lately about all the things I have not mastered. Not in a self-critical way, more in the way you might empty your pockets at the end of the day and look at what’s actually there. Curious. A little amused. Mildly surprised by some of it. The list, it turns out, is not short.
I have not mastered silence in the face of injustice. I know all about the pause, the breath, the considered response; I teach it, for goodness sake. And still, there are moments at a dinner table, in a conversation that suddenly takes a turn, where something in me rises so fast it completely skips the pause altogether. I have said the true thing at the wrong moment more than once, and then spent the drive home having a very long conversation with myself about it. The radio off. Just me and my good intentions, sorting through the wreckage.
I have not mastered knowing when to stop. I am a woman who teaches rest, who genuinely believes in it, who has built a whole practice around it, and still I will finish one more thing, send one more email, rearrange one more paragraph at an hour when any reasonable person would have closed the laptop long ago. The irony is not lost on me. I live with it daily, usually sometime around 4:00 am, when the house is quiet, and I can’t sleep because that unrelenting creative thought won’t let me go.
I have not mastered receiving a compliment without immediately redirecting it, offering something back so quickly that the gift barely lands before I’ve wrapped it up and handed it to someone else. I’m working on simply saying thank you. Letting it in. Just sitting with it for a moment before moving on. It is harder than it sounds.
I share this not as confession, and not as false modesty, but as relief. For myself, and maybe for you.
Because somewhere along the way, we absorbed the idea that people who write about healing must be largely healed. That grace is a destination and not something you practice, imperfectly, in the middle of an ordinary Thursday, with cold tea and an unmade bed and the best of intentions.
It isn’t.
Grace is the moment you catch yourself mid-spiral and think, oh, hello, I know you, and instead of pushing through or pretending you’re fine, you sit down. Put your hand on your heart. Just long enough to remember that you are not the spiral. You were never the spiral. You are the one who noticed it.
I am not a finished person. I am a person who keeps turning toward herself, sometimes gracefully, often not, with curiosity, and something that is slowly, steadily learning to be kinder and gentler to myself in the middle of the beautiful, terrifying mess.
That’s all I’ve got. And on most days, somehow, it keeps being enough.
The list continues. I expect it always will. And I have decided that is not a problem to solve, but a life to live.
From my corner,
Sarah
