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.
Taking your next halting step: The Wednesday 1-2-3
Happy Wednesday Reader!
I really struggled with knowing what to share this week.
I had written and re-written this email a couple times, and the teaching I had planned for this week just didn’t quite feel “right.” Intellectually, it was fine, but in my body there was a quality of “offness,” or unease. I experienced it as a numb but deeply obvious and visceral, "meh."
And so on Monday, which is when I usually finalize these emails, I hopped on Instagram and found myself staring at the poem below by my friend and Tacoma-based poet, James A. Pearson.
Unlike the teaching I had planned, these kind words from James reverberated within my story and within my current questions.
And and I knew it would be the teaching this week.
1. Teaching
If the image doesn't appear, you can access it here.
2. Questions
- What is the next "halting step," however imperfect or poorly planned, you are being invited to make?
- How have your grand visions kept you immobilized, frozen from any movement at all?
3. Resources
- "A Door in the Dead End" by James A. Pearson (article)
- "6 Tactics to Help You Aim for Progress - Not Perfection" by Marie Forleo (article)
- The Practice of "Noting" (short meditation)
⏪ If you missed last week's email:
Sending you good vibes,
Andrew
The Wednesday 1-2-3
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...