Last summer, you may have wondered. Why should Kate stay here? Why doesn’t she just sell what’s left of Wit & Delight and move on like so many of her peers?
My answer will probably disappoint you, because I really don’t know, but I do know that my path away from writing felt like being sucked into a black hole. I had a choice as to which abyss I would fall into.
The question that came up wasWhat else can we do?The answer was: This is my specialty.
Leaving Wit & Delight was the ultimate self-betrayal, but I refused to face it for months, because while I knew I couldn’t let it go, I couldn’t bear the humiliation of staying there.
The constant demands have a cost on me: I am faced with questions I don’t have the answers to.
How can we be ourselves?
How can we be ourselves if we pay the price of being criticized every day?
How can I be myself when I don’t know whether it’s me or you, the reader, who holds the switch?
When the armor comes off
In June I An interview with Brene Brown On many a walk, her words echoed in my ears, carried along by the sound of her footsteps.
In the interview, Brene talks about the armor we wear throughout our lives. Armor is the defensive behaviors and attitudes we adopt to protect ourselves from our weaknesses, shame, and criticism. These behaviors can include perfectionism, cynicism, agreeableness, emotional numbing, overachieving, and withdrawal from relationships.
This armor helps us feel safe when we venture out into the world, free ourselves from the constraints of family, and find love, work, and life outside of our familiar comforts.
The price of this armor is vulnerability. This armor is often born out of fear of being seen as inadequate, flawed, or unworthy. We believe this armor will protect us from the pain of vulnerability: rejection, criticism, or disappointment.
It works until it gets too heavy to carry, then it falls off.
Brown says this decline process happens between the late 30s and mid-50s.
I pick up the pace. No, no, no. I’m not ready yet.
I Understand The concept and practice of vulnerability living that.
In the July heat, my armor turned to dust and evaporated from my body. I felt naked, scared and vulnerable, and I sought the shelter of home and the innocence of childhood. I crouched with my children, eyes at their level, rolling barefoot in the grass, asking them questions about their imagined world. We made messes, made cookies and sticky Play-Doh sculptures, stayed up late, smelling of salt and earth and sweat and love. Their world was not imagined. It was lived.
Children are not half-forms of adults. They are whole and intact, yet bent and crushed and molded into the image of themselves they will later revert to. How wise they are. How shortsighted it would be not to see them as teachers.
I threw them into the lake, jumped off the pier, raced down the waterslides. They blinked back at me like little Buddhas of joy and rapture. Children are not half-forms of adults. They are whole and intact, yet bent and crushed and molded into images of themselves that they will undo later in life. How wise they are. How shortsighted we are not to see them as teachers. Guides home.
Embracing what it means to be human
I began to look at my social media feeds differently. I celebrated the successes of others more wholeheartedly. My heart was filled with joy when I saw longtime colleagues achieve great things. Like the rest of my colleagues, we had been through the same particular trials and tribulations of the industry. I know how the sausage is made. I know what they did to get there. And I got a glimpse of it myself.
When anger rose up, I surrendered to it, accepted it, and let it go. I learned the virtue of looking at the things that bothered me or that I didn’t like and saying, “That’s none of my business.” I learned to see envy, hatred, and jealousy as beacons of light shining on the foggy shore. I swam towards them with curiosity, exploring dark caverns to find parts of myself hidden beneath the rubble and ash of my now useless armor.
When my husband asked me, I told him how I really felt. I didn’t skim over it. I didn’t worry about the weight of my humanity or whether I was a burden to him. I didn’t obsess over comments that were meant to hurt. I didn’t obsess over comments that I didn’t understand.
I found peace and realized I didn’t need to voice my opinions. I didn’t need to perform for anyone. I learned the virtue of keeping much of my life private. I learned to tolerate criticism and leave room for nuance. I learned to live with diversity and spaciousness. When I learned to give myself space, I had more space to give to others. We are all human beings who have permission to be brave, scared, petty, lustful, brilliant, intelligent, foolish, silly, flirty, deep, loving, cunning, and fully expanded in our humanity.
Authenticity and what it entails
Allowing yourself to be who you are means opening yourself up to all the influences that your true nature has to offer. Some will agree with you, some will disagree, and some may just not be interested in you at all. But you’ll never know who someone is until you meet them in person.
I was looking for an answer How to live your own life.
I was searching for the next chapter to avoid facing the end of this one.
I couldn’t find either one.
What I have found is the courage to be open to questions that I don’t have answers for.
The courage to accommodate large numbers.
The courage to show tolerance to others.
The courage to live, the courage to write, and the courage to exist here Without armor.
Allowing yourself to be who you are means opening yourself up to all the influences that your true nature has to offer. Some will agree with you, some will disagree, and some may just not be interested in you at all. But you’ll never know who someone is until you meet them in person.
We can weave a tapestry from the rags of our failures. We can assemble a new house from the wreckage of our collapse. To build a new house, you must face yourself. You must face the meaning of your pain. You must embrace the strength to not turn away from it all. And out of that discomfort comes a pearl: the knowledge that you were not made to break. You can be who you are and lose nothing when you fall apart.
At that time, I wondered why I end here.
Flowers growing from cracks
When I think of the woman who started this site, she is both me and a part of me that no longer resembles her. She is nestled deep in my heart. This was the place where she needed to let out the seed of her pain, the pain that had been compressed in her chest and hardened so hard it had fused with her organs. This pain was essential to her survival, an inoperable mass inside her body. This pain has been replaced with the natural erosion of life and love, and like rocks on the mountainside, tiny flowers dotted among the cracks and crevices, standing delicate and proud in the harshest of climates.
Then the cracks crumbled and the chunk collapsed, and this is what’s left.
Would I have the courage to create the conditions for a flower garden to grow in a place where only the hardiest tend to survive? Probably.
Kate is the founder of Wit & Delight. She is currently learning tennis and will forever be Testing the limits of her creativity. Follow her on Instagram Follow.
Source: – witanddelight.com
