Christmas Eve Eve.
I listen to the latest We Can Do Hard Things podcast. I cry.
She talks about the ache in our hearts. She says we are “nostalgic for something we’ve never had, that’s beautiful. We have it, and we know that at any moment, it could go. And so we don’t really have it at all. We’re yearning for the permanence of the thing that we only have in fleeting doses.”
She reads a passage from Untamed. “We can do hard things like be alive and love deep and lose it all, because we do these hard things alongside everyone who has ever walked the Earth, with her eyes, arms and heart wide open. The ache is not a flaw. The ache is our meeting place. It’s the clubhouse of the brave.”
I’ve had an ache in my heart this week (this year, this life), and I needed this invitation today. I’ve been sorting out what courage looks like this week (this year, this life) and how to show up in my values . . . from how I interact in a work meeting to the way I wear my hair and everything in-between.
Christmas Eve tomorrow.
I’m seeing Spider-Man again in the evening. And I have an ache in my heart. The last time I felt this way after watching something, I moved across the country. (It was She-Ra, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t think, and suddenly I understood something about myself that I hadn’t before).
Earlier in the podcast episode, a caller asks about how to deal with their internalized homophobia. They ask, “I feel like I’m being ripped in two deciding whether I deserve to be happy or I deserve to be loved by my entire family. How do I choose, when I can’t choose both?”
As part of Glennon’s response, she says, “If you do not fully accept who you are in all your gorgeous queerness, whoever you are on the inside, if you do not choose that, you by default are not choosing love. Because it’s something else, okay, it’s acceptance, and we all know it. It’s not rocking the boat. It’s choosing your family not to be angry with you, not to misunderstand you. But love is, by definition, to me, a radical acceptance of who someone else is at their deepest humanity.
“And so if you choose to ignore who you are, you are also choosing not to be loved. So you can keep [your family’s] acceptance and abandon yourself. And if you choose that, you will have neither yourself nor the true love of your family. Or you can choose radical exploration and self-love of who you truly are. And then you might lose the acceptance of your family, but it is the only way you will ever even have a chance at the true love of your family. Because if they cannot see you, they cannot love you.”
Because if they cannot see you, they cannot love you. I sit with that; it’s slow to settle in my tossing thoughts.
With Love,
Natalie