There is a line being drawn between the first forty-five years of my life and all of the years that are yet to come. Similar to the equator, this line is invisible to the naked eye but it marks where one half ends and the other half begins.
Up until recently, the GPS guiding my decisions has been the deeply rooted need to keep myself safe. Since realizing this truth over the last five years, I’ve been installing a new guidance system.
For most of my life, I didn’t realize that safety was driving the bus. Trying to maintain safety has often shown up as seeking approval from others or working hard to keep people happy.
Safety has meant avoiding failure at all costs.
Safety has also meant sticking to what has worked in the past, like using the same lipstick color for twenty-five years (yes, really). A lipstick sounds like such an inconsequential thing to mention, but it’s an indicator of how hard my system has been operating.
And, finally, in order to stay safe I’ve often let others determine my value and the value of my gifts, which has led me to doubt myself and dream small.
All along I was acting as chief safety officer for myself and for those around me, but my attempts to dodge potential threats hasn’t made my life safe. Even after I married the Great Christian Guy, had four awesome kids, and became a homeschool mom, safety never became a built-in feature.
My husband and I barely scraped through the early days of marriage and sooner than later we were parents of an infant requiring open heart surgery. Not too long after the second heart surgery, one of my parents headed down the deep dark hole of mental illness and we found ourselves tumbling after my Dad into the darkness. Even though I didn’t choose to take a lot of risks, danger found me anyway.
About five years ago, I ran into mysterious health issues and my anxiety all but paralyzed me. It was then that I first became aware that anxiety and fear were my pre-existing conditions.
This epiphany brought a lot of discomfort and discouragement. Truth be told, tuning into these freshly exposed parts of myself seemed almost worse than being ignorant of them.
The Other Side of the Line
After spending time getting to know the fear, I began to understand why my younger self had learned to be so vigilant and protective. This understanding led to the slow-growing but strong buds of self-compassion.
With compassion plus a newly emerging trust in myself, fear became a little less scary. Becoming aware of the fear, as uncomfortable as it was, turned out to be an essential step toward freedom from it. As fear became easier to deal with, a new option opened up, the option of curiosity.
Curiosity has enlarged my world in smaller ways, like starting this newsletter. And in monumental ways, like going overseas for the first time last September, even though I deal with a chronic pain condition that makes traveling a daunting prospect.
The weekly process of this Substack newsletter is a great example of what I’m talking about. When I sit down to write a post, fear sits down beside me.
What if you can’t come up with anything to write about?
What if what you write isn’t any good?
And then I offer curiosity to the situation and suddenly there is new energy in the room.
What’s been true for me this week?
Where has my heart been led this week?
At this point fear tries to wrestle back the controls as it did Friday when I sat down to write and the words came out in a jumbled mess.
And again yesterday, when I tried again. So I counterattack with compassion. I step away, I do some art, I extend the newsletter deadline I made for myself. And I wait for the voice of my heart to guide me, a voice that’s getting easier for me to hear with self-compassion and curiosity.
Now that I think about it, maybe it’s less like a line being drawn and more like a greater than or less than equation. Up until now it’s looked like this: Fear > Curiosity. But these days this sign has flipped and my curiosity is often greater than my fear.
Words to Remember
“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.”
-George Bernard Shaw
From the Sketchbook
Art Class with Lewis Rossignol
Favorite Finds
Podcast
This interview with Lore Wilbert on The Stories Between Us is the episode I was listening to when I began to envision a line being drawn across my life. It explores many of the topics relevant to today’s newsletter.
This episode of Kelly Corrigan Wonders: Mental Health Check on Interpreting Discomfort is a brief discussion on why discomfort isn’t necessarily an indicator that something is wrong. As someone who isn’t a big fan of discomfort, it got me thinking.
Film
Brian and Charles is a whimsical but full-hearted look at loneliness, courage, flying cuckoo clocks, and robot who yearns for adventure. The trailer did not draw me in but a recommendation caused me to give it a try. I loved every bit of it. It’s not like any robot movie you’ve ever seen before. Currently free with Amazon Prime.
Books
All Will Be Well: Based on the Spirituality of Julian of Norwich is part of a series called 30 Days with a Great Spiritual Teacher. Each day of this little book contains a paraphrased selection of Julian’s writings, questions to answer at the end of the day and a nighttime prayer. I plan to check out some of the other books in the series.
Blessings from the Guest Nest,
-Aimee