It’s been interesting to see the public discourse around Dolly Parton’s death. As much as people are lamenting the loss of a great songwriter – she wrote around 3,000! – they’re mostly speaking about her kindness and lamenting how we lost someone almost saintly.
She said in a personal interview with a Time magazine journalist and podcaster, “I just love people. When I look at the audience I see my family. I see the God light, the goodness, in everybody, even if they can’t see it.” And that sentiment showed.
It showed in her attitude and actions surrounding all the marginalized groups. In a 2020 interview, she said, “I understand people having to make themselves known and felt and seen. And of course Black lives matter. Do we think our little white asses are the only ones that matter? No!” And regarding queer people, in 2014, she told Billboard: “They know that I completely love and accept them, as I do all people. I’ve struggled enough in my life to be appreciated and understood. I’ve had to go against all kinds of people through the years just to be myself. I think everybody should be allowed to be who they are, and to love who they love. I don’t think we should be judgmental. Lord, I’ve got enough problems of my own to pass judgment on somebody else.”
And in 2024, she told Absolute Radio Country, “I love and care about people for who they are and for who they are to me. And believe me, like I say in my own immediate family, and my circle of employees: I’ve got gays, I’ve got lesbians, I’ve got drag queens, I’ve got transgenders, some of everything in my own family. I just enjoy people for who and what they are.”
She could have stopped there – said some quotable things – but Dolly put her money where her mouth was. This woman could have been a billionaire but she wasn’t because she gave so much of her money away.
Her father never learned to read or write, and in response, she provided $15,000 scholarships to high school students. To improve middle school literacy rates in her home county, she gave each child $500 in cash upon graduation. In 1995, she started the Imagination Library, which donates books to children under 5. She invested proceeds from Whitney Houston’s 1992 cover of “I Will Always Love You” into a Black Tennessean community.
When the Gatlinburg fires broke out across Appalachia in 2016, she raised millions of dollars and gave everyone who lost a home $1,000 a month for six months with a final surprise $5,000 check as the program wound down. She made a significant donation in 2024 to support the victims of Hurricane Helene. In 2020, she donated $1 million toward finding a vaccine for COVID, and in 2022, she began offering full college scholarships to every Dollywood employee.
Dolly Parton was loved because she loved. Whereas some people are so greedy that they only care about amassing wealth, Dolly cared about people. And upon her death, the internet is ablaze with tributes. There’s a quote that says, “When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.” That’s certainly true with Dolly. And for those of us still living, she offers a model of how to be. She shows that as much as divisiveness and discord seem to rule the day, kindness still counts and kindness will be remembered long after we’re gone.
I dream of a world where we understand fame and fortune are all well and good (or can be), but ultimately what matters is how we treat people. A world where we understand it’s the acts of kindness that leave a lasting impression. A world where we take a page from Dolly Parton’s book. A world where we remember kindness counts.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
The other day, someone told me I matter and am important. It felt nice to hear and so I thought you, too, would like to hear it. To that end, I’m recycling this post from December 2015. Enjoy.
Sometimes I get in a nihilistic mood and think it doesn’t really matter that I’m alive, that I exist. In the grand scheme of things, I’m a speck, a peon, a flash in the pan of life. Furthermore, I think of myself as expendable and exchangeable in the sense that if I wasn’t here, someone else would accomplish what is required of me; that the universe would work through someone else.
The other day, though, I read something in Richard Tarnas’ book Cosmos and Psyche that had me rethink my perspective. He posits two ways of grappling with the universe and uses the analogy of two suitors to explain them. In the first approach, the suitor treats the universe as if it has no intelligence and is something to be exploited for his own gain. In the second, the suitor seeks to know you (the universe):
“[N]ot that he might better exploit you, but rather to unite with you and thereby bring forth something new, a creative synthesis emerging from both of your depths. He desires to liberate that which has been hidden by the separation between knower and known. His ultimate goal of knowledge is not increased mastery, prediction, and control, but rather a more richly responsive and empowered participation in a co-creative unfolding of new realities. He seeks an intellectual fulfillment that is intimately linked with imaginative vision, moral transformation, empathic understanding, aesthetic delight. His act of knowledge is essentially an act of love and intelligence combined, of wonder as well as discernment, of opening to a process of mutual discovery.”
This photo will make sense later. Photo by Shannon Potter on Unsplash
Wow. That paragraph. Reading it, I realized it does matter that I’m here, that I’m alive at this moment in time. Not because I exist and therefore I matter – I can’t get behind that just yet – but rather because me being here, now, I am able to co-create something with the universe that otherwise would not have been birthed. Posted on my bathroom mirror is the question, “What does higher power want to work through me? And what part of self needs to step aside in order for that to happen?” God, higher power, the universe is working through me in a mutually fulfilling way whereby we both benefit. I, you, we have special gifts and talents that are not expendable, not exchangeable, and not unimportant.
My spiritual teacher says, “If one ant meets a premature death, it will disturb the balance of the entire cosmos. Therefore, nothing here is unimportant, not even an ant.” Later on, my spiritual teacher affirms that “Nobody is unimportant, nobody is insignificant. Each and every existence is valuable.”
I matter, you matter, we matter. We are here for a reason. If I remain stuck in an inferiority complex of sorts, I miss the opportunity for higher power to work through me, and I miss out on the creative synthesis Tarnas mentions. Part of that synthesis means valuing my part and not giving more significance to higher power’s because we are in a co-creative dance with the divine, and as they say, it takes two to tango.
I dream of a world where we recognize, yes, it’s true, we’re only here for a short time but that doesn’t mean we’re insignificant. A world where we understand our existence is important because through us, new things are being birthed that otherwise wouldn’t exist. A world where we realize our lives are more than a flash in the pan. A world where we understand that we matter, even when we think we don’t.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
You can’t throw a rock without hearing someone or something say, “Be present. Stay in the moment.” It’s one of the most frequent pieces of advice. There are books about it. Courses. Practices. I, myself, have written about it. I find it’s a lot easier for me to stay in the moment when I enjoy the present moment, but what about when I don’t? When my big toenail has been removed and it hurts to walk? When I haven’t slept well in three months? When instead of my dreams coming true, they’re stalling out? What then?
Yes, what then? My friend Ada Pembroke is an astrologer and she touched on this in a recent email. She wrote:
“We may say that we don’t believe that the body is the idiot step-sibling of mind anymore, but the story that embodiment kind of sucks is just part of the air we breathe. Personally, as a person living in a body with chronic pain, it’s especially easy for me to accept the story that the physical world is kind of a pain.
“I have good reasons for having this particular filter. It matches my experience of reality. It’s validating on mornings when I wish that I could roll over in bed and return to my dreams. It gives me a pass on days when I can’t remember a single thing I physically did because I allowed myself to escape into the life of the mind.
“And yet, the story the Chaldeans told about idols refuses to give me a pass.”
The story she’s referring to is one where spirits desperately want the chance to participate in the physical world. It’s so desirable that gods will willingly possess a carved block of wood just to experience a small snippet of the physical world. They would give anything to be on the rollercoaster of what it means to be physical.
The gods would love to blow dandelion seeds. Photo by Herbert Goetsch on Unsplash
It boggles my mind to contemplate that. To think the hardship, the pain, too, is something the gods would envy. And while I could tell you that by slowing down and noticing the breeze ruffling my jasmine plant, or hearing a bird chirp in a faraway tree branch that life doesn’t seem so bad and is maybe even enjoyable, I won’t. Instead, I’m going to quote Kierkegaard, who said, “Be with what is so that what is to be may become.”
I know it’s not the most present-moment quote I could choose from, but it’s the one that feels most true for me right now. When I’m complaining about the present moment, I decidedly do not want to be with it. I would like to run away from it as quickly as possible, thanks. And that may work for a little bit. I may find some temporary relief, but it won’t last. A saying I hear frequently in 12-step communities is, “What you resist, persists.” That means whatever I’m resisting doesn’t go away just because I want it to. It only changes when I stay, allow, and be with it. Only then does it become something else, even if that “something else” is just a fraction more tolerable than the moment before.
I dream of a world where we recognize being present isn’t always enjoyable. A world where we understand that despite the hardship, there’s value in widening our lens and taking in everything. A world where we realize even the hard things, gods may envy. A world where instead of wishing things were different, we stay with them until they become transformed.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
A member of my spiritual community just died, and so it seemed appropriate to recycle this post from March 2023.
Members of my spiritual community are at the age where they’re starting to die. It seems like every three months or so, someone passes away. Some people I’m closer to than others, but regardless, each death leaves an impact.
Have you ever played that game where you stand in a circle and hold a piece of yarn while also throwing it to someone else in the circle? In the end, you wind up with a giant web that connects every person to everyone else. That’s what I think life is like. When someone dies, the metaphorical yarn is tugged and creates a ripple effect so everyone feels it, some more deeply than others. As for me, there are layers of grief. There’s the grief I feel from the person’s death, but there’s also the grief I feel for their family members, their friends, their colleagues. There’s up-close-and-personal grief, and there’s also more removed grief.
In my spiritual community, we have a ceremony to honor the passing of people. It’s purely for the mourners, meaning we don’t believe the ceremony has any effect on the recently deceased person. One of the things we say in tandem is, “You have freed us today from all the social responsibility we bore toward our dearest so-and-so.” At one point, we all pour water into our palms from the same pot and take a sip from our cupped hands. It’s the bookend to a baby naming ceremony.
Eventually, we all become this. Photo by Casey Horner on Unsplash
With the baby naming ceremony, we are pledging responsibility to the baby symbolically by adding water into a tub, and with the mourning ceremony, we are taking it away. While the responsibilities are gone, the impact is not. There are people gone from my life that I think about regularly. I may not have been close, but every reminder of them hurts my heart.
I don’t have anything profound to say other than every person who is gone is not forgotten. We carry them with us in our hearts, and they’re with us in another form. I’ll close here with an edited excerpt from writer and performer Aaron Freeman, who in 2005 explained on NPR why you want a physicist to speak at your funeral:
“You want a physicist to speak at your funeral because they’ll explain to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind them about the first law of thermodynamics: that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. All your energy, every vibration, every BTU of heat, every wave of every particle that was you remains in this world. The physicist will tell your mourners that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you.
The physicist will tell them the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives. The physicist will explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. The physicist will let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely, the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable, and consistent across space and time. Your energy’s still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly.”
I dream of a world where we remember every person’s death creates a ripple on the spider web of life. A world where we understand a person may be gone, but they aren’t forgotten. A world where we remember when a person dies, their energy is still around us. A world where we take a physicist’s view of death.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
I’m still entranced by Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass and am thinking about how animacy/animism dovetails with a concept from philosopher Martin Buber. He wrote a book called I and Thou, which I haven’t read, and I only conducted a cursory search on the internet about it, so my apologies to the philosophy nerds who know way more about this than I do.
Anyway, from what I understand, Buber says we engage with the world in one of two ways: I/it and I/thou. In the I/it relationship, we collect data, analyze it, classify it, and theorize about it. The object is viewed as a thing to be used or put to some purpose. This makes sense when we encounter something like a hammer: “What can I do with this? What do I need it for?” It also makes sense when we’re conducting research, or any time when detachment is necessary.
In the I/thou relationship, we engage with the encountered object in its entirety, not in pieces. The I/thou relationship asks us to make ourselves available to another, to understand them, to share with them, to have a dialogue. In essence, to see the other as a human rather than an object.
This plant isn’t an “it.” Photo by Samuel Austin on Unsplash
Wall Kimmerer flips this object/human perspective on its head when she writes:
“Imagine seeing your grandmother standing at the stove in her apron and then saying of her, ‘Look, it is making soup. It has gray hair.’ We might snicker at such a mistake, but we also recoil from it. In English, we never refer to a member of our family or indeed to any person, as it. That would be a profound act of disrespect. It robs a person of selfhood and kinship, reducing a person to a mere thing. So it is that in Potawatomi and most other indigenous languages, we use the same words to address the living world as we use for our family. Because they are our family.”
They are our family. They are our siblings, even if we struggle to recognize them as such. We are in relationship with all of them, whether we want to admit that or not. My spiritual teacher says, “Why should the love and affection of developed human minds be restricted to human beings only? Why should it not include all living beings, including plant life?” Why indeed? Because there’s a sort of speciesism occurring where only certain species are deemed worthy and valuable to the detriment to all the rest.
Later, my teacher says, “[W]e never realized – and still do not – that this wanton destruction of the animal and plant worlds will be of no benefit to human beings. Rather, it will be a great loss for human society.”
He calls this philosophy neohumanism because it includes love, care, and respect not only for humanity but for every living being, whether animate or inanimate. Wall Kimmerer calls this philosophy indigenous wisdom, or perhaps animism. And Buber calls it the I/thou approach. Whatever you call it, I see the benefit. Humans are not separate, alone, or isolated from other species. We are not apart from nature; we are nature itself. Whatever we need to do to feel that is fine, just as long as we feel it.
I dream of a world where we recognize non-humans are not objects, even if the English language doesn’t recognize that. A world where we approach everything we interact with – whether animate or inanimate – as a being worthy of care, attention, respect, and consideration. A world where we embrace egalitarianism of all species rather than hierarchy.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
I planted a “fairy meadow” mix in a pot outside my front door and the first flowers to bloom are California bluebells. I am utterly enchanted by these royal blue, purple flowers. Is the fact I’m so enthralled a happy quirk or is it by design?
I’m finally reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass, where she talks about this phenomenon. Her book blends scientific knowledge with Indigenous wisdom, exploring the reciprocal relationship between humans and the natural world through essays on botany, ecology, and Potawatomi culture. In it, she describes how much she adores the combination of goldenrods and asters. The vibrant purple and yellow combination attracts her eye. Is that just true for her? Or for everyone?
Scientist and poet Goethe wrote an 1890 treatise on color perception and said “the colors diametrically opposed to each other … are those which reciprocally evoke each other in the eye.” Purple and yellow are one such reciprocal pair and that means our eyes are more drawn to them. But does it really matter what we humans are attracted to? Don’t the flowers care much more about the bees and other pollinators?
There is a reason for all this beauty. Photo by Ingo Doerrie on Unsplash
Wall Kimmerer writes:
“Bees perceive many flowers differently than humans do due to their perception of additional spectra such as ultraviolet radiation. As it turns out, though, goldenrod and asters appear very similarly to bee eyes and human eyes. We both think they’re beautiful. Their striking contrast when they grow together makes them the most attractive target in the whole meadow, a beacon for bees. Growing together, both receive more pollinator visits than they would if they were growing alone.”
That means beauty serves a purpose. Beauty keeps us alive. My spiritual teacher says, “Each unit being is vulnerable to attraction but the cause of this attraction is the imperative urge for self-preservation . . . And this urge for self-preservation, too, arises due to the desire for happiness in every living being. So it is clear that behind every attraction between one entity and another, which we call by the name of káma, lies the pure desire for attaining happiness.”
“Kama” in this sense isn’t the sexual or sensual passion that we so often think of when we hear that word because of the Kama Sutra. It’s attraction in its simplest form. It’s the attraction of a bee to a flower or a moth to a flame.
Returning to beauty specifically, when I’m in my low moments, it’s beauty that pulls me from the depths. Beauty is an enchantress that brings me closer to the feeling of magic, joy, happiness. Noticing the soft petals of a California bluebell, or the play of shadows on the wall, reminds me there is good in the world, that there’s more to life than the horrors we witness with far too much frequency. And that’s something I think we could all use more of.
I dream of a world where we understand beauty isn’t just beauty – it’s also self-preservation and a gateway to something more. A world where we understand nature is beautiful by design. A world where we not only stop to smell the roses, but we acknowledge them for what they are. A world where we can say hello to beauty.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
I’ve been writing about transformation so much lately because that’s the phase of life that I’m in, but the shadow side is I keep bracing for the worst-case scenario. It’s perfectly reasonable, sensical, even, but that also means my hope for things working out or going the way I’d like is at a nadir.
Hope is so tricky. We’re told, “Don’t get your hopes up,” but also, “Expect the best and get it.” We’re told, “To live without hope is to cease to live.” But also, “Hope, in reality, is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.” Hope is dangerous, hope is life-affirming. Which is it?
I wish I had an answer but I can only speak for myself – it’s extremely difficult for me to live without hope and this week was a tender reminder that maybe it’s OK for me to hope again. I’ll give a small example. I’ve been pitching my novel to literary agents and keep hearing “no” or nothing at all, which is the same thing. It’s gotten to the point where I expect to be rejected. And listen, I know that’s the reality of publishing, I understand it’s rife with rejections from basically every angle, but that doesn’t make it any easier to handle.
Maybe things will work out? Photo by Marc-Olivier Jodoin on Unsplash
In this state, I went to my Network Spinal Analysis chiropractor, who makes gentle contacts on my spine that cue my body to notice and then resolve tension. I started wriggling and writhing on the table, and after I sat up, burst into tears because I felt like maybe I could have hope again. Maybe it’s possible for me to not experience the worst-case scenario. I’m pitching to two literary agents in person next month and I started to feel excited about the similarities in what they’re looking for and what I’m offering.
Then, still at the chiropractor’s, I pulled an oracle card that said, “Faith in the process,” and I burst into tears (again). The meditation to accompany the card is saying aloud:
“I now ask that all disappointing experiences of the past that have led me to believe that life is not trustworthy or that faith is a silly or immature way to deal with life, be released from my mind, body, and heart. I ask for help to accept that I can and will attract all that is needed into my life, at the perfect time and in the perfect way. I ask to be empowered to absolutely receive all that can assist me with gratitude and without shame or guilt. In doing so, I dedicate myself to be a clear, loving, open channel for the flow of life. I know the benefit in doing so is not limited to me, but will flow so that life can benefit others through me. I trust in this now, through unconditional love, so be it.”
I think you can understand why I started crying. And at the same time, it still feels scary to hope for what I want. I’m so tired of being disappointed. But what I’m coming to, again, is summed up by that quote from the Bhagavad Giita: “You have a right to perform your prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions.” I can keep taking actions in every arena of my life, but what happens later? Not in my hands. But that doesn’t mean I have to shut down hope altogether.
I dream of a world where we understand it’s not helpful to become attached to certain outcomes. A world where we take inspired action but let go of the results. A world where instead of getting rid of hope, we allow ourselves to reconnect to it in a soft and gentle way.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
I’m at the point where most of my friends are talking about getting older, and they’re grieving the fact they no longer have the same sense of possibility about their future like they did when they were younger. The essence is, “The world is no longer my oyster.” But have you actually thought about that expression? Oysters are closed, tight, dark. They’re not warm, open, or inviting.
Does that mean when we use that expression, we’re saying the world is a tightly closed, dark place? Or are we saying that we’re the precious jewelry formed in oysters, a pearl? If so, that’s not particularly flattering either. Natural pearls are formed when a parasite works its way into an oyster, and as a defense mechanism, the oyster coats the irritant with layer after layer until voila! A pearl.
That’s kind of gross to think about, but honestly, where I’m at in my life, that tracks. The world can be scary, uncomfortable, uncertain, filled with irritants, but through that experience, we emerge as pearls. We come out different from what we were before, and without knowing the exact shape we’ll be in when we emerge.
Seems kinda irritating. Photo by Thomas John on Unsplash
It’s not only pearls that come from hardship. There are wildflowers that only grow because they were exposed to high heat from fires, which is called scarification. Spiritual teacher Tosha Silver talks about this, too. She says, “True surrender to Love isn’t just about being ‘guided.’ It’s a freakin holy alchemy that you can neither control nor predict. You are ravished. You are changed.” I wish this weren’t true, and I wish I were changed and shaped in the ways that fit with my vision, but, well, that’s never happened.
My spiritual practice is about finding God in everything – the mundane and the extraordinary, the suffering and the ease. There is nowhere I can go to escape the divine, and that means God is here, too, in the transformation process, in the wars, in the famine. In all of it. How will we be different on the other side? Will we be bright and shiny pearls, stronger as a result of living in the dark, confined, irritating spaces? Maybe. It’s something I, personally, am hoping for.
I dream of a world where we remember that if the world is our oyster, that means we are the pearl. A world where we understand beauty and transformation arise from hardship, and that’s always been so. A world where we recognize life is a path of change. A world where we understand, in essence, we are all on the path of the pearl.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
You may already know this, but AI safety researcher Mrinank Sharma resigned recently. That’s not really news in and of itself – people leave their positions all the time. No, the newsworthy part is that he left Anthropic, best known for its chatbot Claude, to study, drumroll please: poetry. Yes, poetry.
The context is what makes the whole thing fascinating. My friend and narrative astrologer Ada Pembroke sums it up nicely: “[S]omeone who spent years trying to build AI safety guardrails has decided the answer isn’t better guardrails. The answer is wisdom. And he’s going to look for wisdom the way humans always have: through art, through language that means more than one thing, through the practice of courageous speech.”
To be honest with you, I struggle with poetry. I’m a highly literal person and I want people to say what they mean and mean what they say. But Ada suggests poetry is powerful precisely because it’s not that (mostly). Poetry collapses multiple symbols all into one. It encourages us to dive deeper, to look again, and that’s what AI cannot do because it, too, is very literal. And per her second point, poetry can be courageous.
The pen is still mighty! Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
I’ve known for ages that journalists are frequently jailed for their writing. Reporting the truth can be dangerous in a time when governments want to function on lies. What permeated my brain less is that poets are also jailed. In 2024, 375 writers were jailed in connection with their speech, according to PEN America’s Freedom to Write Index, and 67 of them were poets. In Myanmar, poets led protests with poetry readings to support civil resistance following the military’s February 2021 coup; several were arrested and detained.
In Iran, poets who posted and recited poetry on social media were arrested by authorities looking to silence support for the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. In a few places, poets are jailed not for months but for years. As PEN America puts it: “Authoritarian leaders target poets because their words – filled with lyricism, story, and feeling – can expose the cracks of oppression in daily life.”
My spiritual teacher encourages people to make art not for art’s sake but for service and blessedness, meaning, to spur their love of the divine. He says artists are pioneers and can lead society forward. Literature in particular is “that which moves together with the society, which leads society towards true fulfillment and welfare by providing the inspiration for service,” he says. “People seek deliverance from the whirlpools of darkness; they aspire to illuminate their lives and minds with ever-new light. In all their actions, in all their feelings, there is an inherent tendency to move forward; therefore, if at all they are to be offered something, the creator of art cannot remain idle or inert.”
What my spiritual teacher is pointing to is the power of art. It’s not merely commerce, a way to make a quick buck, but a tool for good or evil. Art influences people, whether they want to admit it or not, and in this age of AI slop, original, human-created art that speaks to the times we live in is potent.
I dream of a world where we remember that art still matters. A world where we understand there can be more to art than just amusing people or trying to capitalize on a trend. A world where we remember art and literature can be a tool of service and inspiration. A world where we recognize the power of art and use it accordingly.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
I wrote this post in April 2019 after I was fired from a job that wouldn’t let me work from home two days a week, despite having a doctor’s note saying I needed that setup. Oh, the irony that a year later everyone was working from home. . .Despite different circumstances, this post is still relevant today. Enjoy.
You know how people say most of the things they’re afraid of never happen? The opposite is true for me – most of the things I’ve feared have happened. Not the fleeting, “I’m scared I’ll miss my flight” things, but the “I’m scared I’ll be broken into” things. The recurring fears, the ones that cause my stomach to roil and my chest to constrict.
I want to take a moment here to recognize my fears are those of a privileged white woman. I totally understand that other people lead tougher lives than I do, with fears greater than mine. I understand I have a relatively easy, cushy life. I’m not here to get into a competition about that. Rather, the point of this post is to talk about fear and resilience.
For much of my life, I’ve braced myself for terrible things. I’ve done my best to ward them off, but they happened anyway. And because they happened, I feel less afraid now. I no longer have to fear the worst because the worst has happened and I’ve lived to tell the tale. It also means I know how to take care of myself in challenging times. If I have to endure a hardship again, I will because I did before.
We are more powerful than we know. Photo by Felix Mittermeier on Unsplash
Researcher and storyteller Brené Brown writes about this character trait, resilience, in her book Rising Strong. She said, “While vulnerability is the birthplace of many of the fulfilling experiences we long for – love, belonging, joy, creativity, and trust, to name a few – the process of regaining our emotional footing in the midst of struggle is where our courage is tested and our values are forged. Rising strong after a fall is how we cultivate wholeheartedness in our lives; it’s the process that teaches us the most about who we are.”
Check and check. I used to think of myself as a scaredy cat. As someone sensitive and fragile. And I am, but at the same time, I’m also tough. I’m brave. I’m strong. I’m resilient. I pick myself up again and again. When life kicks me in the teeth, I collapse, I cry, but then I do the hard thing and move through it. I’ve already surmounted many obstacles in my life. And I know if I don’t currently have the tools to get through whatever is before me, I will hunt tirelessly to find the right ones. This ties into spirituality because the backbone is faith.
My spiritual teacher says over and over again if a person takes shelter in the Supreme, they need not be afraid of anything in this world. That the divine is “more courageous than the most courageous and braver than the bravest. Those who take shelter in [the divine] are therefore bound to acquire these qualities: courage, bravery, chivalry, and so on. Once endowed with such qualities, what is there to fear?”
I’m a human being, so I still fear many things, but I know the more I lean into the presence of my higher power, the better I feel. The more I surrender, the more I recognize everything is an expression of an infinite loving consciousness; the more relaxed I become, and also the more fearless. There’s a quote floating around about how the devil whispered in a warrior’s ear: “You’re not strong enough to withstand the storm.” And then the warrior responded, “I am the storm.” That’s what it feels like right now. And if you’re going through a hard time, I hope you can muster up that same spirit.
I dream of a world where we recognize our resilience. A world where we understand we’re able to tackle all the challenges coming our way. A world where we become more and more fearless because we understand not only are we strong enough to withstand the storm, but that we are the storm.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.