Surrender to Slowness:
I’ve been going full speed ever since the new year started. I like to think that I learned a thing or two about slowness after the wake of the pandemic in March and April of 2020 and after the way my health knocked me down in the fall. But, the truth is that slowness became scary. I craved distraction, “purpose”, and to prove to myself that I could get back onto my feet. I tied so much of my worth to my doing and I was ready to get back to doing, despite the work I was doing to take care of my health. My natural response to challenges in life has always been to work hard enough to move through it or beyond it. Sometimes it has worked. Most of the time though it has left me burnt out and worn down.
I’m sure I’m far from alone in feeling like this year been lived full-speed, busy, and to difficult to be slow within. Some of you may be thriving in the fast lane, others may be living in that lane as a mode of survival, and some of you may just be tired from trying to keep up with the expected pace of life. I’ve been a bit of all 3 at different times this year, but right now, I’m just really tired. I’ve hit my point of “burn-out” and my limits. In this place, I have been pretty frustrated; I’ve wanted to keep pushing through. After all, that is what resilience is right?
Last week I sat in counseling sharing a bit of these emotions. My counselor looked at me and said, “you are growing in a deep way.” She caught me off guard. The inner-critic in me wanted to tell me that I was regressing because I couldn’t keep up with the expectations I had put upon myself. She nodded, “yes, you are growing. Usually you turn to hard work. Now, you are beginning to pause and to turn to surrender. We want you to keep growing here.”
My inner-critic stood aside for a moment. I took a deep breathe, and nodded.
Oh, yes, surrender. Now that, that’s hard work.
…
Within the same week, two of my favorite authors, Brené Brown and Suleika Jaouad shared and wrote on the same quote. The quote reads:
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.” —Viktor Frankl
They both used this quote to ground what they were writing on for the week. For Suleika, she was in a week where it felt like everything was piling on and it wouldn’t stop. She spoke to how she used to take that piling on personally, but now she’s reminded of her agency and how we always have the ability to respond to the stimuli in our lives. It reminds me of what I’d tell girls I coached in soccer: soccer is a game of mistakes, it is not so much about the mistake, instead it is how you respond to it. If you get knocked down, you can choose to stay down and hit the ground and be upset. Or, you can choose to get up and chase after the ball you lost. You cannot change that you got knocked down, but you can always choose how you respond. Suleika reminded me of the freedom that lies in not sitting in self-pity of the piling. And that, even when much of your conception of control is stripped with hard circumstances, there is still an autonomy that exists. I, contrary to what I like to believe, can choose to disrupt the busy and can give in to slowing down.
Brené Brown used this same quote to share that she’s going on a three month sabbatical— something she has never done in her work. She shared honestly that she is worn down and needs this space to slow down, disconnect, and heal. She expressed how this may be the hardest work and most important work she has done.
I agree.
Like Brené, and I am sure many others, I keep telling myself I’m going to remove some stimuli from my life and slow down again, but then I don’t because of a self-imposed pressure to do and to achieve. It’s much easier to tell people about my health journey when I am also able to tell them about the ways I am moving forward from what has been stripped away. I feel the need to keep my foot on the gas to get on the other side of grief. However, even when I run out of gas and make it to my next step, the tank will need to be refilled and more grief will need to be run through. I’ve hit a place though where my tank is empty and I’m tired. I don’t have the energy to refill, run through gas, and make it to the next stop. I want to remain in park for a moment. Maybe even longer than a moment.
I forget that that is okay.
When we grow worn down, we forget how to stop. Or, stopping feels scary. Once the car that has been running for far too long without an oil change or a gas refill stops, we have to be attentive to what else will need to be repaired from the damage of pushing the car beyond its limits. We know that there will be a high cost and so we avoid it, only to later realize that avoidance only increased the cost.
It’s better to pause when the car light comes on and to attend to the issue right then and there. It’s better to fill your tank before you play the game of how long can you keep going on empty, even though you may feel like you lose time in doing so.
The pause is hard, yet sacred. It’s where we reground ourselves. It’s where we open up space for our creative thought to actually flow. It’s where, yes, we may break down because we are slowing down and coming out of auto-pilot. However, only then can we begin healing. Only then can we begin to hear the birds again. Only then can we remember our autonomy to really respond to the stimuli in our life with patience, agency, and thought.
Words that have been sticking with me:
I just finished Kate Bowler’s book No Cure For Being Human on the plane. It has been the first book in a while where I fought back tears many times. As I read it, I could tell she had walked more through her grief since her book Everything Happens for a Reason (And Other Lies I love). It was written from a different place; yet, it was still written from an incredibly honest place. It’s why I am so drawn to her work. For those of you who don’t know Kate Bowler or a bit of her story, she’s a professor and a historian at Duke Divinity. She walked through some tumultuous years battling Stage-4 colon cancer and has lived to write about it. She has an uncanny ability to sit within the tension of pain and beauty without belittling the pain. For that, I keep returning back to her words.
Towards the end of her book she writes,
“Someday we won’t need hope… In the meantime, we are stuck in our beautiful terrible finitude. Our gossip and petty fights, self-hatred and refusal to check our voicemail. We get divorced, waste our time, and break our own hearts. We are cobbled together by the softest material, laughter, and pets and long talks with old friends. By God’s unscrupulous love and by communities that give us a place to belong. And there is nothing particularly glamorous about us, except that we have moments when we are shockingly magnanimous before forgetting about it the next day.
How lucky then, that we are not failing. Our lives are not problems to be solved. We can have meaning and beauty and love, but nothing even close to resolution.”
Just in case you need to hear it twice: You are not failing. On this side of life, there is no resolution. But boy is there beauty. Let’s help one another slow down enough to grab a hold of that beauty and to also sit with one another in the pain.
List of Attention:
A kid with two very different shoes on at the farmer’s market and their freedom to do so
The magic of community gardens
The flood of green in May in Georgia
The way wall-art changes a space
The joy of getting to read, drink a beer, and exist with others at a Creature Comfort’s Wednesday market
Live music in a park and how it brings people together
Marigold flowers and how happy they make me
Prompts/Questions:
At the end of every newsletter, I want to leave you all with some questions/prompts to think on. My hope is that these can encourage you in some form or fashion.
Questions:
Reflect back on a time where you were able to be pause and slow down. What came out of that time for slowness for you? What was scary about it and what was healing?
Creative Prompts/Celebration Tasks:
Your task for the week is to write down at least five things you would like to do (make them realistic) if you were not as busy and could slow down. These tasks cannot be work related, chores related, or for the sake of efficiency and/or productivity, Instead, let them be about enjoyment and joy. Maybe you haven’t watched a sunrise or sunset in a long time. Maybe you want to lay in a field and look at the stars while laying next to a friend talking about life. Maybe you want to pull out the skateboard or the skates and head to a parking deck. Maybe you want to pick and arrange some flowers. Whatever it is, your next task is to then, on your calendar, block off a time for you to do at least one of those things.
One Word Prompts:
Stimuli
Letters:
Write a letter to busyness? Be curious with it. Ask it why you depend on it. Or, as it why it demands so much of you. Be gentle with it too.
Closing Words:
As you’ve made it through these words of mine, I hope that in some way that met you where you are. I hope that, if you too are tired, you have space today and in the weeks to come to breathe. I hope that you give yourself the permission to be honest. If you are angry, spend time with your anger. If you are burnt out, allow yourself to rest. Although your inner-critic may tell you otherwise, you have nothing to prove. You, my friend, are enough. You can slow down in the ways you need. You can surrender your need to fix everything. That is the hard and worthy work.
…
As you carry on into this week, may your days ahead be filled with words that encourage you, laughter that heals you, and moments of beauty that pull your attention in and bring you to slow down.
May you know that you, yourself, are worth paying attention to.
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Thank you all for continuing to read my words. It is a joy to share this space with you all.
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