Blog: Grace?! She Passed Away Thirty Years Ago.

For someone who doesn't believe in New Year’s Resolutions I sure am writing an awful lot of blogs about them, this being my third I think. When I sat down today to try & figure out what I wanted to write about I kept coming back to the idea of “grace.” I have made my own set of adjustments going into the new year in an attempt to get ‘back on the horse’ & have already, six days in, found myself falling short. Resolutions aside, I think we are often too hard on our short comings & falterings & I believe that a little self inflicted grace would do us all a great bit of good. I know for some of you out there the idea of grace has religious connotation or even triggers a religious trauma response but I hope by the end of this I can help to shed new light on the idea of grace & being gracious.

Let’s start out with a definition shall we? According to Merriam-Webster grace takes many linguistic forms. The one I’ve already addressed is:

“1: a: unmerited divine assistance given to humans for their regeneration or sanctification
b: a virtue coming from God
c: a state of sanctification enjoyed through divine assistance”

— Webster's Dictionary

And I can already feel those of you on the other end of the internet recoiling from the fear of having that definition & need for repentance nailed into your head. Let’s explore further shall we? Let’s look at the next set of definitions from M-WD.

“2: a: approval, favor
b: mercy, pardon
c: a special favor, privilege
d: disposition to or an act or instance of kindness, courtesy, or clemency
e: a temporary exemption: reprieve”

— The Dictionary

It’s interesting to me that the five of these definitions fall within the same subset of definitions. In what way is a favor akin to mercy? How is an act of clemency the same as a privilege?

Much as the various religious texts would indicate grace is not something afforded to all but that exists at the same time in abundance, available to those who seek it out. Whether you seek an act of grace, of mercy, from that which you deem almighty, a ruler, a supervisor, a friend, a family member, or what have you, it is not something guaranteed or afforded without the permission & intent of the party to whom you are at the mercy of. It is a privilege to be reprieved of your guilt, shame, penance, or punishment.

So how does this tie into ourselves? How do we exercise grace when the judge of our falterings is the same person as the one requiring forgiveness? How do we set aside the shame, the guilt, the should’ve, could’ve, would’ves, of it all & release the anguish we feel? How do we afford ourselves grace? Well, I think to answer that question we have to briefly shift our focus to shame. For this I’m going to turn to Brené Brown.

In Atlas Of The Heart Brown defines shame as the following:

“Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed & therefore unworthy of love, belonging, & connection.”

— Atlas Of The Heart By Brené Brown, Page 137.

According to Brown shame thrives on several things, one of the primary being judgement. What dispels shame? Empathy. Self-Compassion. These allow us to look at our perfectly imperfect selves & see the humanity that lives within us. It blows perfectionism, another type of shaming, out of the way & makes way for grace. It gives us the leeway to learn from our mistakes & grow instead of festering & derailing.

“Grace means that all of your mistakes now serve a purpose instead of serving shame.”

— Brené Brown

I’m trying to get back on the wagon after the holiday. After eating poorly, not exercising my mind, body, spirit enough, not flexing my creativity enough, & definitely not drinking enough water, I decided to push myself for twelve weeks of evening out the playing field. Will I fall off as I’ve done already? Of course! Does that mean I should give up now & return to a place of discomfort & unhappiness? Absolutely not. We are human, at the end of the day, at the end of your diet, your abandoned workout equipment or stacks of books that have gone unread, we are human. Perfection is an unattainable goal that striving for will ultimately leave you feeling empty & unfulfilled. Having the grace to recognize your humanity, dust yourself off, & try again will be your saving grace & the thing that makes your spirit soar.

I want to leave you with one last anecdote this evening before I sign off & let you all get back to giving yourself grace in your day to day life.

I was recently told of a practice that many of the Native American tribes of the southwest observe. It specifically revolves around art & the pursuit of the perfect. Anytime a native artist from one of these tribes goes to finish a piece they’ve been working on; be it a knit, an item of jewelry, a painting, etc. they intentionally leave a flaw. Why? Well, two reasons. The first reason is that it allows the trapped bits of the artist’s soul that they’ve poured into their art to have a place to escape from. The second reason is that it allows a reprieve, a grace, from perfectionism & the never ending quest for that which is unreachable for us. It find this sentiment beautiful. It adds levity, humanity, & yes, grace, into a piece of art & allows the artist to free themselves from the shackles of shame.

I hope, thus far, you’re having an awesome new year. I wish you all the greatest one imaginable going forward. I want to challenge you to find little moments of grace in your day to day, not just for yourself, but for others as well. These little moments will eventually snowball into medium moments which then become larger moments & I’d be intrigued to see where that snowball leads you.

As always, much love to you all!

-C

Blog: Seeking Movement

This blog was actually a suggestion of a fan & friend of mine who reached out earlier this week to ask my thoughts on Brené Brown. Truthfully, I’m not as familiar with her work as I probably should be or would like to be but that’s not to say she hasn’t drifted in & out of my orbit from time to time. The ask was if I had read Brown’s new book “Atlas Of The Heart.” Truthfully I have not, but, his point is the ask was that I, over the holidays, had written a blog outlining the reasons why sad holiday music is the preferred holiday music for so many of us. You can read that one here. In said blog, aside from outlining the reasons behind the sadness felt during the holidays I also talked briefly about wanting to feel something, to feel connected or seen through these musical pieces. He had just come across the section of Brown’s book in which she talks about grief, he sent me a few screen shots to read & I immediately felt seen by what Brené had to say.

My first adult introduction to Brené happened due to my friend Leena who put together a writing camp. In this camp she used Brené’s example of empathy vs sympathy & how that relates to the cowriting space, I later wrote an entire blog on that which you can read here. I was also advised to give her book “The Gifts Of Imperfection” a read which unfortunately I still have yet to begin. From there it seemed that Brené Brown was popping up all over my life or at least the lens of it. Jake went on Brown’s podcast, I wrote the blog & had a bunch of people talking about Brown directly to me, I had several other people suggest “Gifts” to me, I had people posting her quotes all over my feed. It truly began to felt like a sign that maybe her thoughts were worth investing in further!

The screen shot in question that I mentioned in the first paragraph talks about the reason we as consumers love sad movies. In the section Brown takes about how a researcher by the name of Julian Hanich & his colleagues were investigating something they called the “Sad-FIlm Paradox.” The questions the researchers proposed was "how can a negative emotion such as sadness go together with “aesthetic liking” & even pleasure? Their findings? People like to be moved.

The beauty in the sad films, sad songs, sad books, etc. is that “we feel connected to what it means to be human, to be reminded of our inextricable connection to one another,” Brené explains. It shifts the mindset of the individual into one of “us.” From “me” to “we.” The study further revealed that there is a “highly significant positive correlation between sadness & enjoyment." This process of feeling sad or lonely or want makes us feel moved which then turns into enjoyment. “Hence sadness primarily functions as a contributor to & intensifier of the emotional state of being moved.” -Brené Brown, Atlas Of The Heart

This really stuck a chord with me! You see, if the above is to be believed, we as humans consume art to feel something, to feel connected to the community around us. We, in a manor of speaking, go out to concerts, to movies, to art shows, to the library & bookstores, to our streaming services seeking movement. We desire a shift from one emotion to another in a form of escapism from the mundane. There’s a quote from Stage Coach, Tom Jackson, in which he says exactly this, “audiences go to shows to feel something or else they’d stay at home & listen to the record from their couch.”

I truly think that’s beautiful, that the reason we as human beings consumer art, specifically sad art, is out of a desire for connection, for understanding. As a lover of all things sad media wise there’s something incredibly therapeutic about the experience of being moved. I am a self proclaimed cinephile, I love movies, deeply. I go to the theater seeking movement, seeking joy & tears & pain & wonder as I’m sure many of you reading this do as well, there’s no shame in it. It also allows us to flex our “empathy” muscle which I think we all could use from time to time.

At the end of the day love the art you love, you don’t have to justify it to anyone, there’s a reason it clicks with you & most likely it’s because it makes you feel seen or connected. It has succeeded in providing the movement you sought out. Relish that, feel the way it makes you feel & be grateful for that experience! Great art is hard to come by so love what you love & do so boldly!

As always, have a fantastic weekend!

Much love to you all,

C