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A song I’m loving:

I want to tell you finding words has felt hard. My body has been asking me to feel instead of explain, to be with instead of make meaning of, to take space instead of put anything on paper. It’s been confusing as someone who has long relied on words as a map back toward myself, as a way of making sense of the world. Yet as I learn to make sense of the world by noticing the surge of heat in my throat, or tending to the softening of my heart, or witnessing the fallen leaves gather on the ground, or listening deeply to the way someone else is experiencing it, I am finding less and less desire to turn toward my journal. I am finding my body is doing the sense-making instead of my thinking self, and it feels like the kind of relief you get jumping into a cold body of water — the kind that is uncomfortable yet ushers you back to life, back to Here and Now.

I want to tell you any time I find myself saying, “as someone who…”, I question it. “As someone who” has changed shape so many times that I now hesitate to identify so deeply with any one part of me. I’m practicing not narrowing myself, not condensing myself into Who I’ve Been, not assuming I’m the same now as I was then… because I’m not. It’s exciting to step outside the bounds of who I’ve believed I need to be and into the realm of who I’m becoming. It’s relieving to remember we never need to land in one identity, in one marker, in one definition, in one way of being. It’s sacred to let ourselves exist beyond the confines of our own ideas about who we are.

I want to tell you my daughter turns three next week, which means I’ve been a mother for three years, and I still don’t feel like I’ve crossed the threshold through all the ways it has changed me. I’ve said “I’m just now starting to” so many times over the last three years, thinking I had finally made it through the fog, but I’m realizing life might just be one threshold after the other, which can sometimes feel like we never truly land anywhere. Right when I find some clarity or comfort in my skin, something changes: a new phase, a new development, new parts of me required to come forward. There is never a full landing, a true After, which is what I was searching for for so long, what I thought we were supposed to aim toward. To realize there is no landing place, no after, no final space of settling, can at times feel terrifying. Mostly, though, it feels like a reorientation toward true presence, which is all I think I’ve wanted all along.

I want to tell you these words from Pema Chödrön feel more true than ever before: “To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man's-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again.”

I want to tell you I still owe $79k in student loans and only have $3k in my bank account while I wait to get my first book advance check. I want to tell you I haven’t worked very much in the last three years, and that preschool is expensive, and that I sometimes feel like I’m failing for not figuring out how to monetize my large social media following or make multiple six figures like every other person with a large social media following seems to. But what I mostly want to tell you is that through working less and unraveling from my professional identity the last few years, I’ve beel able to truly be there with my child. I’ve been able to mother without juggling too much. I’ve been able to take time to heal, to rest, to practice finding love in presence, rather than fear. I’ve been able to clarify what I do and do not desire, despite what I or others have expected of me. I’ve been able to discover what having value means to me outside of my income, all of which I know will nurture the next phase of my career and path toward financial wellness again. I want to tell you how good it feels to not feel shame — how good it feels to sit in honesty and not have it eat me alive.

I want to tell you there is so much to feel despair over, there is so much to grieve, there is so much to feel rage for, and I am learning I can let all of this fuel my compassion instead of my contempt. I can let the despair urge me deeper into my heart. I can let the grief move me further into my capacity to see others as fully human. I can let my rage drop me lower to the ground in humility. I want to find the medicine in what hurts not as a way to minimize or bypass it, but as a way to remind myself we are capable of not weaponizing our own pain. I want to find courage to stay with what hurts not as a way of getting so swept up in it I can no longer see clearly, but as a way to embody being the kind of person I say I want to see in the world. I want to be honest about my rage not as a way to let it excuse my actions, but as a way to point me toward what I most care about and what right actions I want to take on behalf of that care. I do none of this perfectly. We can’t do any of this perfectly. I am simply committed to trying over and over again to align my values with how I show up in the world, and it at times feels impossible, and it also feels like possibility.

I want to tell you that last week, I experienced a tour of every part of myself I’ve ever disliked, judged, hated, criticized… and was asked to love it all. I held up secret things I had done, things I was ashamed of, things I hadn’t ever told anyone. “Even this?”, I asked. “Yes, even that.” I found myself searching and searching for the one thing that would prove my unlovability, the one thing that would prove some part of me right… and I didn’t find it. Every single part simply asked for love. I speak of this experience generally because I am still integrating the depth of it, but what I am taking with me is that there is lovability in the parts of ourselves and others we’ve deemed as bad or broken or wrong, and what would it look like to remember that? To see that? To trust that? What would change if I knew in my marrow that everything I had ever done was simply an attempt to receive love or safety? I am slowly finding out.

I want to tell you about how my family went to a pop-up bakery last week and my daughter got a croissant; on the way home, I heard her say “look mama, I have croissant gloves!” and turned around to see this, which made me laugh from my belly for many minutes and truly made the whole world feel more beautiful for a while:

I want to tell you there are so many moments like this — moments we can return to delight, to connection, to sweetness, to silliness, to play.

I want to tell you it’s hard to keep my phone away, but I am trying.

I want to tell you there’s so much uncertainty and yet the moon, and yet the new crisp mornings that I somehow forget do indeed return each year, and yet the season’s changing tides, and yet the inevitable quieting, the inevitable invitation to slow down.

I want to tell you how good it felt to write this, to let it flow without thinking too much, to imagine each of you who will read it as part of its web somehow, as part of bringing it alive — how grateful I am for that, even when I am not quite sure how to hold it all or how I’ll keep writing. Somehow, I do. Somehow, we keep going.

Thank you, as always, for being here.

△ J Wortham on AI and the dehumanization of the internet

△ A brilliant, compassionate, weaving conversation that moved my heart

△ A glimpse at the future if we get climate action right

△ adrienne maree brown on making loving corrections

△ Perhaps the best piece I’ve ever read about burnout

△ Managing energy for creative work

△ Sit. Feast on your life.

△ This is post-roe America (NYT)

△ Crying in the coffee shop

△ The wisdom of trees, forever

With care,
Lisa

Human Stuff from Lisa Olivera is generously kept going by readers. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber. So glad you’re here.