How is it I can be a champion of women’s leadership and be brought to my knees by the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett? How is it I can be so full of gratitude for this time we’re in and so full of despair? How is it I can feel so connected to people at a time of such intense disconnect? How is it I am such a silver-lining optimist and yet feel like Debbie Downer? How is it I am a woman of such deep faith and great cynicism at that same time? I have no answers to these questions, nor do I want them if I’m being honest. Because it feels like what’s being asked of me these days is to feel all this, not make sense of it. “Reconcile” is word I hear often in my work with clients, and it always catches my ear. It’s something we do with checkbooks and disagreements, balancing them out and putting them to bed. But I don’t want to be balanced right now. And I sure as hell don’t want to be put to bed. I want to feel it all. Another one of my clients who is a writer said it beautifully the other day. She likened herself to an oceanic cycle, with large slow whales swimming, stirring up the shit at the bottom, letting it come to the surface, to the light, to the birds who eat it, carry it off and transform it into another form of energy. She said, “I am the whale, the shit, the light, the birds.” Well said. All of that at once. Thank you to my client for her gracious permission to use her story and quote here, because surely we are all feeling our way in this together.
Want to know what these daily verses are all about for me? Read here to learn what inspired this practice on my birthday post, November 1st.
