1. Truth: I’ve been thinking a lot about the lifecycle of a butterfly. It started because I was thinking about how it’s becoming clear to me that while I’ve done lots of study and made efforts to “heal,” I’ve skipped a step — a big step. I gathered all the information, the knowledge, and the help, I’ve done the practice, read all the books, but I didn’t actually allow the unraveling, the breakdown required to breakthrough and transform, to internalize and embody what I know, what I’ve experienced. I’m afraid I’m a caterpillar who put on a pair of fairy wings, those kind you can get at a costume store or in the kid’s toy section, made of wire and mesh and glitter and ribbons that you strap on by putting your arms through elastic loops. I think I’ve evolved but I’m still a caterpillar, wearing fake wings and believing I can fly. 

2. Truth: For a long time, I’ve thought what I’m feeling is burnout. And it was, in the way Andréa Ranae describes it: “Burnout is the result of consistently overriding who you are and what you need.” It’s the “why” that I got wrong. I blamed my job at CSU, then came COVID and losing Sam & Ang, then it was menopause, then my Dad dying and his death, which coincided with my mom’s stroke and resulting dementia. And yes, those things all contributed, but they aren’t the true source. It’s me, my insistence that I’ve dealt with it, that I’m through it, that I’ve “moved on.”

3. Truth: The only cure is to feel what I am feeling. Stop running from it, stop avoiding it, and let the crash happen. I have been afraid to feel the true depth of all those things that happened, thought I could name them, see them, and be done without the full heartbreak, the ruin and reorganization required to undergo a complete metamorphosis. I wanted to skip all that, the mess and the discomfort. And yet avoiding it is exhausting and no longer even workable (if it ever was), certainly not sustainable. 

One wish: May I keep my heart open to all of it, the grief and the grace.

We are so achievement-oriented that we often surge right by the true value of relating to what’s before us, because we think that accomplishing things will complete us, when it is experiencing life that will.

~Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

1. Truth: I have goals and make plans, and then life happens. I wish I was more accepting of this, met this truth with more grace and flexibility. Instead, I typically initially feel frustration, disappointment, and self-pity. I find myself asking “what if the things I dream of having and doing, the person I hope to be, the effort I’ve put into this ‘project’ that is my life is never realized, never manifests?” The past six years, in particular, have presented obstacle after obstacle, so many detours, so much starting over, beginning again — or at least that’s what it has felt like.

2. Truth: My only real option is to “go with the flow.” Life is going to keep happening. There will always be things I can’t know, understand, or control, causes and conditions that are simply out of my hands. All I can do is meet what arises, what is in this moment, as my whole authentic self. Be self-aware, pay attention with curiosity and without judgment, keep showing up, keep trying, keep my heart open and stay tender, trust myself. And, hopefully, maintain my sense of humor.

3. Truth: They don’t really matter, these little goals and plans of mine. I know that could sound like the bad news but it can also be good, a huge relief. The losses I’ve experienced and the chaos I’ve witnessed in the world have made me realize that accomplishing and striving and having and producing and succeeding (whatever that even means) ultimately have no meaning. In the end, it’s all empty. There is no there, there, and the cake is a lie. All that matters is easing suffering, in myself and in the world, in the ways that I’m able while also forgiving myself for the ways I can’t.

One wish: May we gently put down our agenda and with purpose pass through the portal into the mystery, surrendering to it without resistance or regret.