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: Vulnerabilities & Rejection

There will be times in your life where people will come to you in their most brazen & honest moments. They will intrust you with information about who they are, what they stand for, who they love, what they do, etc. It is your job as a friend, parent, sibling, lover, mentor, etc to remain as judgment free as humanly possible & make that person feel seen & heard & accepted in those moments.

I’m sure many of you have already had such encounters in your life. If not, there may be a reason why. There is a lesson I came across a few years ago that has stuck with me to this day. I can’t for the life of me recall where I heard it, if I could I’m sure it’d be linked below., but he point of this discussion was “testing the waters” specifically where the ‘parent/child’ relationship is concerned. In the discussion it was brought up that children will often, as the name would imply, test the waters with their parents. They try to gage little bits of information on how their parents may feel regarding certain topics or use hypotheticals to see what the outcome would be if they were blatant, honest, & authentic with their parental units. Often parents fail the test, they give their child an answer that builds a wall or creates a divide & all of the sudden, several months or years down the line, these parents feel like they don’t know who their kids are anymore. That’s because their child has decided it’s in their best interest to stay resigned because they no longer feel safe sharing information with their parents.

So too do we do this to the people we care about. Our friends gage our responses on how we feel about certain things or our willingness to be openminded before they confide in us. If we don’t pass the test, the relationship remains shallow. I pride myself on being able to be the keeper of the true lives & selves of many of those I hold dearest to myself. You see I’ve built up an err of compassion. My friends & loved ones know they can come to me with anything, as their true & authentic selves & know that I will be grateful for their vulnerabilities & embrace them as who they are, accepting the information they’ve told me as their truth, knowing it may have been a conversation, confession, or thought years in the making.

We never know how long these machinations stew in the minds of our peers. It may have taken them years to have the courage to voice exactly what they’re trying to say, it may have taken years for them to even come to the conclusion themselves & they felt safe making you privy to this new found part of self. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that this person felt it pertinent enough to tell you, they saw you as a large enough part of their life or even someone they thought they could receive counsel from. You have been honored with vulnerability, the worst possible thing you could do is respond with judgment or rejection.

The more occasions that your loved ones come to you with their vulnerabilities, the more you meet them with love & understanding, the deeper your relationships & bonds will grow. As a friend we can easily let those who reject us go or cut them from our lives but when it’s a family member, it becomes much harder. When holidays & family gatherings are still a thing for the member who feels estranged or like they can’t be authentic in those spaces, the time spent wearing that mask of “the perfect family member” can be exhausting & disheartening.

We are social beings, creatures of community, & when our chosen community meets our authenticity with a cold shoulder it scars, deeply. Feeling the outcast in an environment meant to cultivate & embrace your humanity gets very lonely very quick.

My challenge for you this week is to be honest with yourself. To look at the times where maybe you fell short of being the perfect confidante, friend, lover, or mentor when someone chose to confide something deeply personal in you. I then want you to reach out to those people, to mend the gaps, & in turn, to share your own vulnerabilities. I also want you to find someone you deem “safe” & foster a space to be vulnerable with them. Fortify that relationship, for as the song goes, “we all need somebody to lean on.”

I hope you have a fantastic week going ahead!

Much love to you all & appreciate you taking the time to read my thoughts every week.

Thank you, truly,

-C