Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray)

I always do more than one Reverb at a time, so there are sometimes prompts that repeat. It’s to be expected. However, this is the first time I’ve ever had a situation where the multiple prompts were the same on the same day.

Project Reverb prompt: “Write a letter to your future self, telling the future you about what you hope for you.”

Reverb14 prompt: “It all starts with kindness. Everything I have learnt, everyone I have interviewed, every word I have studied has guided me to this simple but profound conclusion: true happiness begins and ends with self-kindness. No more guilt. No more shoulds. No more comparison. And the very best way to give your weary soul some kindness at the end of this year? A love note. Write a letter from you to you… filled with forgiveness, love, and a big bear hug.”

Dear Sugar,

What I have to tell you is any one who knows you very well sees how hard you work, how determined you are to do good things, how depleted and exhausted you feel from pushing yourself so hard. What they might not know is the aggression that you direct inward to force yourself past your limits, the criticism that happens when you don’t meet your own expectations.

It’s time to forgive yourself — for waiting so long, for thinking you needed permission, for losing your sense of yourself, for not trusting your own intuition, for keeping quiet, for having to rediscover your voice, for saying yes or okay or that’s fine when you should have said hell no, for making yourself small, for not letting yourself feel what you feel, for abandoning yourself.

That is the past. You know better now. You had to live that, experience it, suffer it to fully understand it and find a way out so you could help others like you. You know from conversations with other women that your experience is actually quiet common, and there is a real need for guides, people who have made maps and can offer support.

The part you are just now recognizing is how important it is to care for your self, the ways in which you are embodied. Focusing on this is the next step — getting well so that what you offer is centered in sanity and health. And yet, don’t allow this to hold you back. You don’t have to wait. Offer who you are, including what you struggle with, what’s messy and uncomfortable, be an example.

Your future is so bright. It’s just as you’ve imagined and so much better. Don’t give up, but at the same time let go and allow yourself to surrender to it. Lower the bar, rest, take care of yourself, simplify, slow down, allow ease and you will find contentment but also your power. Don’t be afraid of yourself.

Love you.
Love,
Me

1. Getting to see the sun rise. This is good in the smaller sense of being up early enough to see it, how beautiful it is, but also in the larger sense of how lucky I am to be alive for another day, to be here with eyes that can see.

2. Sweet Sam. He turned five this week. We don’t really know when he was born, only when he was found roaming a tiny town in Wyoming with his brother. No one claimed him so he was sent to Fort Collins. We saw an ad his foster mom posted on Craigslist and picked him, adopted and brought him home. When he lost his first baby tooth, we counted back 16 weeks and gave him his birthday. He is so patient and sweet, but also so strong.

3. The end of Fall semester. Today is the last day of classes and next week is finals week. Even though I’m not teaching, there’s still a particular energy on campus this time of year — a mix of relief, exhaustion, and joy. People are giddy with the almost being done, the promise of a break.

4. All the cool stuff we see on our walks. Just the normal stuff — the trees and the river and the sky — is amazing, but then we get the added bonus of things like deer, wild turkeys, beaver, and the occasional fox or owl.

5. Christmas music. Not all of it. For example I had a doctor’s appointment last week and some of the stuff they were playing was awful. But there’s other Christmas music that’s so good I could listen to it all year, like Daniela Andrade‘s Christmas EP.

Bonus joy: the way you can call anyone at anytime if you have a cellphone with you, mashed potatoes the way Eric makes them, long hugs in the kitchen, cuddling with Sam, how cute Ringo is when he’s asleep or couching, good news when you’ve been worried and waiting.