Holding What Didn’t Come to Be

I’ve been thinking a lot about the forgiveness we do or do not give ourselves as we make our way through our lives.

It is a choice we have to offer ourselves forgiveness, a choice that is easily and often bypassed in the name of whatever it is we are striving for.

The question I’m sifting and sorting is:

What makes forgiveness—of ourselves, of others—feel easier to access in some moments, and so much harder in others?

As I build my doula practice I am creating something that feels so meaningful. Not just for myself but for others. I am creating a community of “mortality practitioners” - and with every passing day my efforts inside this community building - well. The stakes just keep getting higher.

By stakes, I mean that the level of responsibility I feel increases, and my attunement to the needs and hopes of the collective community (our mortality practitioner community!) increases. I have become more and more aware of how RIGHT death care work is for me, and I simultaneously become more and more aware of the deep unmet need in our culture and society of centering a conversation around death and loss.

I’m aware how much this work is needed and I’m finding deep joy in encountering meaning and purpose inside that need.

It is a calling.

Back to the stakes, ever growing higher. Well, you may or may not have noticed that this newsletter is arriving at a longer interval than the last few have.

Last month I did not send a newsletter as I usually do, the week before Threshold Circle.

It was agonizing to strive for it, then - to experience an anticipatory loss inside of this effort: to run out of time. To recognize, as I did - that I would not have time to make it happen with the care and love that I typically pour into writing a reflective piece and weaving it into an offering to you.

As the days ticked by, and my internal deadline for getting that newsletter out came and went, I started to realize: I would need to hold myself with compassion to move through this moment.

And there was a difficult choice. Either I was going to hold onto getting it out at all costs, and sacrifice the quality of what was written.

Or - I was going to let it go, and not send out anything at all.

Now, there’s something you need to know about me to appreciate my decision and the difficulty of the path that I took.

Showing up consistently, regularly and predictably is a core value of mine.

It’s something I like to expect from my family and friends and of course, as with all core values, I expect it from myself most of all. Especially in service to my calling, especially in service to building my doula practice. 

It was an agonizingly hard decision and not without lots of hand wringing that I decided that I just could not force it - I decided I must let it go.

I felt as though I had given up on myself. I felt as though I had given up on my value of showing up with consistency.

And I also felt (and clearly I still do!) lots of doubt mixed with a hefty dose of remorse - should I have just sent it out without my writing? Should I have prioritized the regularity, the consistency, the predictability to you, my community of readers - and gotten something out anyway, left out the reflection?

Yes, I could have done that.

And yes, I could put myself endlessly through the cycle of what ifs and should haves.

But I didn’t.

And do you know what I found instead?

Yes, that’s right. I was able to open to self-compassion.

It was a wholesome, full-bodied forgiveness. I held my heart [I held my quiet and unfulfilled yearnings to show up with what I call consistency] in the tender soft place of my cradled arms. Metaphorically, of course. The same place where I held my three babies many years ago.

And I found my way to giving myself the grace of forgiveness. I found my way towards making peace with myself.

It comes after many years of self-imposed shame and suffering for the things on my to-do list that I don’t get to. And I still struggle with these acts of micro-inner-animosity.

If you are still reading along with me, I encourage you to think of some way you have held yourself hostage to your own standards. Maybe something you said you would do, or something you promised yourself you would follow through on. Something where you let yourself down.

What might help you soften into the crook of your own cradled arms? And offer some peace and love?

Yes, this is a practice.

A practice of showing up with imperfection.

And loving myself anyway.