This past week, I found myself muttering a phrase many of us know from Finding Nemo: Just keep swimming, just keep swimming… When life gets hectic and the to-dos begin to stack up, I’m often tempted to fall back into a “just keep going” mindset. Just keep working, just keep pushing, just keep giving, just a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit– And, if I don’t find a practice that offers me some space to breathe, I inevitably crash and find myself feeling adrift and purposeless. So…the practice is really important. Casper ter Kuile teaches that practices with the power to deepen our sense of presence, meaning, and experience have three common traits:
A practice that has all three, ter Kuile says, has the power to “make the invisible connections that make life meaningful, visible.” If you’re interested in creating a practice like this for your own life, I’ll be guiding folks (and myself) through the process at a workshop later this month! More details below. Questions
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Frameworks and practices to help you navigate the stories you’re carrying, embody practices that help you feel present, and begin to move into action. Delivered to your inbox every Wednesday morning before you even wake up.
Hey Reader, This week I wanted to share a short video from one of my favorite activists, Alok Vaid-Menon. You can watch the 40-ish second video here. (It’s an Instagram post, but should be accessible without an account.) The question they begin with, “who broke your heart?” is such a beautiful and frustrating question, in all its variations: Who showed you that playing small was necessary to survive? With whom was conflict so scary you learned to run from it? Who insisted you act in that...
If you're finding yourself overwhelmed, you aren’t alone. Of course there's the election results from last week, the uncertainty of our current circumstance; the crushing unease of it all. But even this isn’t happening within a vacuum. We still have to go to work, wash the dishes, give the doggos their medications, and call our moms or our children or others we love. Your overwhelm isn’t a personal failing or proof of your lack of resilience – it’s a feature built into our keep-on-producing...
Hey Reader, I’m writing this late Tuesday night – and I admit I don't have a ton of emotional capacity right now, so I'll keep this short. Following the election of Donald Trump in 2016, Sikh activist and lawyer Valerie Kaur took the stage at a church in Washington D.C. and said the following: What does the midwife tell us to do? Breathe. And then? Push. Because if we don’t push we will die. If we don’t push our nation will die. Tonight we will breathe. Tomorrow we will labor in love through...