My intention this year is to embrace more. Embrace my life. Myself. My decisions, passions, needs. The moment. The one who's right in front of me. My feelings (including the light ones). My hopes (as well as my fears).
So I’ve been thinking a lot about what it really means to embrace these things. And—as I’ve realized is a bit of a pattern with me—I’m mostly thinking about what it doesn’t mean.
‘Embrace’ is not always synonymous with ‘accept’. Sometimes it means making room for something else. Releasing. Letting go.
Embracing that which makes me discontent is to acknowledge it. Look it in the eye. Call it by name. Wrestle with it. And determine which needs to change: its presence or my perspective on it.
My aim is to find more contentment in my discontent. To embrace even that which is uncomfortable. And to more honestly and courageously call things by their actual name.
after kavanaugh
It was expected. Not surprising in the least. And yet, even still, I am devastated. Wrecked. Sobbing. Nauseated. I cannot seem to process the what/why/how of it all, but it does not matter.
Because tomorrow the sun rises. And tomorrow the fight continues. And tomorrow the need to stand up against injustice remains just as sure if not surer.
And so I cry. I vent. I console. I drink. I unplug. I pace. I rock. I reach for connection and camaraderie. I get angrier. I get sadder. I get feistier. I get more determined. I get more courageous. In the face of what feels like hopelessness, I dig in my heels.
Sometimes you have to say a thing until you believe it:
I will not be moved. I will not be moved. I will not be moved.
hope blooms
Hope. That (damn) thing with feathers. I see it in the trees coming back to life after a long winter. I see it in the clear blue sky after unending days of grey. I see it in springtime more than anytime. Hope.
The man wasn’t even speaking directly to me, but the words I heard him say bounced around the walls of my heart as though they were meant for me alone. “May your dreams be greater than your memories.” Even now, I can feel my chest constricting and my breath shallowing all over again. Because I’ve lived the last decade of my life with the very real sense that my greatest days are behind me.
I had dreams in my former life. All kinds of them. And when I lost everything, I lost not just my dreams but also, seemingly, my ability to have them. Even while I’ve embraced this new life of mine back on American soil, dreaming—hoping—remains elusive.
My realism and pragmatism seem to war against the notion of hope. I *want* dreams that outweigh my memories. I’m just not sure how to get there...
So I look and I listen and I feel. I pay more attention to the flowers at my feet, the budding trees above my head, the whimsical chatter of the birds, the blue skies and popcorn clouds, the wind rustling through my hair...
I watch springtime as it blooms hope all around me, and maybe—just maybe—also in my heart.
twenty years
Twenty years ago today, I moved to South Africa with a couple of overweight suitcases, $200 in my pocket, and a heart-cocktail of naïvety, faith, passion, and foolishness. I was only 19.
Thirteen years later, I moved back Stateside with even heavier baggage (both literal and proverbial), more debt than cash, and a heart-cocktail that had been diluted by life and loss and longing.
Even with all the complicated layers and conflicting emotions, Africa will always be my first love. I met her when I was just 15, and, in that way that only she can do, she swept me off my feet and stole my heart. She was my high school sweetheart, and she holds both the bests and the worsts of my life in the years we spent together.
Twenty years. How is that even possible? Two decades seem to have slipped through my fingers like the Kalahari sand...
My present life looks so different than the one I lived on African soil. It confounds me, really. Many who know me now didn’t know me then, which only widens the chasm I often feel exists between my former and current lives. And yet, I know, it’s all one. One life. One incongruently interconnected and magnificent life. It confounds me, really.
No matter how long I’ve lived Stateside, this day still feels beautifully and painfully significant to me. And so I stop to honor it. To embrace it. To celebrate and grieve it.
Happy Africaversary, love. Twenty years is worth dancing and crying over. So let’s do a little of both, shall we?
when badassery looks mostly like vulnerability
I knew badassery wouldn't be easy. (I’m not that naïve.) But I expected it to at least come with a side dish of quiet accomplishment. Or, at the very least, a small serving of relief in simply knowing I did the right thing.
Instead, my badassery was served with heaping portions of risk and vulnerability and uncertainty.
There were no grand moments of heroism. No victory marches. No Wonder-Woman stances to commemorate an overwhelming sense of satisfaction.
No, this wasn't a year of bold triumph. It was a hard-fought twelve months of standing up, speaking out, making hard choices, and putting my heart on the line. My badassery looked like trying and trusting and hoping yet again, even when I didn’t want to and even when my experiences told me I knew better. It looked like saying difficult things, fighting to be seen, taking chances in work and relationships and heart.
I knew badassery meant doing those things without guarantee of a positive outcome. But, unknowingly, I still half-expected that there would be one—not every time, but surely more often than not, right? Isn’t that the reward for the risk?
No...
What I learned is this: The reward for risk is merely the risk itself.
The point isn’t the outcome, even though that’s what motivates the risk to begin with. The point is simply the willingness (and, I dare say, the courage) to roll the dice and take a chance.
That alone is the victory.
Though, I assure you, it doesn’t feel like one. There’s nothing glamorous or stately about this kind of “win”. It certainly doesn’t feel good. It's disappointing, exhausting, frustrating, painful….
I’m not “owed” a break simply because I’ve risked repeatedly or tried so hard or been through so much or any other reason I can come up with. And that is a bitter pill to swallow.
So the big, character-shaping decision is whether or not to keep climbing back into the ring.
And all I can do is sigh wearily, and shake my head, and mutter the words, What other choice do I have?