You may have wondered last summer: Why is Kate forced to continue to be here? Why not sell what's left of Wit & Delight and move on like so many of his peers?
My answer to you disappoints. Because really, I don't know. But I know that the roads showing writing felt likely to be sucking in a black hole. I had the choice of which abyss I would fall in.
The question that came –What else can I do? –had an answer: This is what I do best.
While the road far from Wit & Delight was the ultimate authorization, I refused to face it for months. Because even if I knew that I could not let go, I could not bear the shame of staying either.
Stay required, I pay a price: to which I face the questions I have not made any answers.
How can I?
How can I be who I am when the price is daily criticism?
How can I be who I am when I don't know who has the switch: me or you, the reader?
When the armor falls
In JuneI listened to a Interview with Brené Brown On one of my many walks, his words floating on the vibrations of my steps that sound between my ears.
In the interview, Brené talks about the armor that we all collect throughout our lives. Armor is the protective behavior and attitudes that we adopt to protect ourselves from the vulnerability, shame or perceived judgment. These behaviors can include things such as perfectionism, cynicism, dishes that please, emotional numbness, over-production and withdrawal of relationships.
Armor serves its goal to help us feel safe when you venture into the world and free ourselves from our family unity – to find love, work and life outside the comfort of the familiar.
The cost of this armor is vulnerability; Armor was often born from the fear of being considered inadequate, imperfect or unworthy. We think that will protect us from the pain of this vulnerability: rejection, criticism or disappointment.
It works until it becomes too heavy to transport. Then he falls.
Brown says that this fall process occurs between the end of the thirties and the mid -fifties.
I take my rhythm. No, no, no. I'm not ready.
I was about to get a lesson on the difference between understanding the concept of vulnerability and in fact life he.
My armor turned into dust and evaporated from my body in the heat of July. I felt naked, frightened and exposed, and I wanted to shelter the house and the naivety of my childhood. I found myself crouching with my children, my eyes at their level, barefoot, rolling in the grass, asking them questions about their imaginary worlds. We have done damage, cookies and sculptures Gloopy Play-Doh, let's stand up late and feel salt, earth, sweat and love. Their worlds were not imagined. They were lived.
Children are not half -cooked from adults. They are whole and intact, but to be folded and crushed and shaped in versions of themselves, they will come to undo later in life. As they are wise; How much we should not see them as teachers.
I threw them into the lake, I jumped quays and I precipitated the water slides. They blocked me with my eyes to me, little Buddhas of joy and joy. Children are not half -cooked from adults. They are whole and intact, but to be folded and crushed and shaped in versions of themselves, they will come to undo later in life. As they are wise; How much we should not see them as teachers. A guide at home.
Kiss what human being means
I started looking at my social media flows differently. I celebrated the successes of others – I really celebrated them. My heart exploded with joy when I saw longtime peers to make huge achievements. Like any cohort, we have moved the same specific trials and tribulations of our industry, and I know how the sausage is made. I know what they are made to get there. And I saw a glow of what I was done too.
When I became hot under the collar, I gave way to anger, I owned it and I let it go. I looked at what bothered me or badly rubbed me and I learned the virtue of saying: “No, it's not for me.” I learned to see the desire, disgust and jealousy like light tags on a misty shore. I swam towards them with curiosity, developing dark caves for pieces extracted from myself hidden under the rubble and ashes of my armor now disappeared.
I told my husband what I really felt when he asked. I have not chopped the words. I did not worry about the heaviness of my humanity or if I was a burden to endure. I did not keep the comments intended to hurt. I did not keep the comments that I did not understand.
I felt peace and I realized that I did not have to express all opinions on my language. I didn't have to play for anyone. I learned the virtue of keeping a large part of my private life. I learned to support criticism and maintain space for nuances. I learned to live with multitudes and expansiveness. I had a lot of space to give others once I learned to give myself space. We can all be courageous, frightened, petty, lubricates, brilliant, brilliant, stupid, idiots, frivolous, deep, loving and cunning – humans with permission to develop fully in our humanity.
Look at authenticity – and everything that comes with
Part to allow you to be who you are is open to all the implications of your authenticity. You will find people who are for you, people who are against you and people who do not see you at all. But you will never know who is who unless you allow them to meet.
I was looking for answers to How to be me.
I was looking for my next chapter to avoid facing the end of it.
I found neither.
What I found was the courage to be open to unanswered questions.
The courage to contain multitudes.
The courage to extend the grace to others.
The courage to live and write and be here Without armor.
Part to allow you to be who you are is open to all the implications of your authenticity. You will find people who are for you, people who are against you and people who do not see you at all. But you will never know who is who unless you allow them to meet.
We can weave a tapestry out of the rags of our failures. We can assemble new houses from the wreckage of what collapsed. The cost is that to build again, we have to face. We have to face the implications of our pain. We have to accept the strength it takes so as not to turn away from everything. The gift of this discomfort is the pearl – the knowledge that you are not designed to break. You can be who you are, collapse and lose nothing at all.
It was then that I knew why I was not do here.
Flowers cultivated from cracks
When I think back to the woman who started this site, it is me but is also a version of myself, I no longer look like. She is nestled in my heart. She needed this place to express the seeds of her pain, a pain so compressed and hard in her chest, she was merged for her organs. This pain was vital for its survival, an inoperable mass in it. Year after year, this pain has given way to the natural erosion of life and love, like the rock on the side of a mountain, dotted with small flowers pushing between cracks and crevices, delicate and proud in the hardest climates.
Then the cracks gave in and the mass collapsed. This is what remains.
Am I courageous enough to create the conditions for a field of flowers to grow, in a place where only the most robust tend to survive? Just maybe.
Kate is the founder of Wit & Delight. She is currently learning to play tennis and is forever Test the limits of his creative muscle. Follow her on Instagram at @WitandDeLight_.
