softening through the thick of it
creating art in tumultuous times, openness vs. vulnerability, and softening through fear <3
Hello <3 It has been a while and I miss this so much and I need to rip the bandaid off of posting again. In sharing this, it feels like I’m allowing guests to come over to my house with dishes in the sink, books/papers strewn across every surface, a few jackets hanging over a chair, an empty package by the front door that has needed to go to recycling for 5 days, and a light pink ring in the toilet. It’s me saying hi, welcome, here I am, here I’ve been, I hope you will still love me. It is tinged with uncertainty and insecurity but because it is forward-moving, because it is technically taking action, there is a dash of raw bravery as well, of fuck it, I have nothing to lose at this point and I’m scared, but the payoff is worth it to me.
“Art is a way of saying, ‘Carry this, don’t lose it. It has me in it. It’s better than me.’ Writing can sometimes allow us to organize our lives and to give ourselves the kind of chronicle that our real lives cannot have. You can’t put the pieces together in real life—they just don’t fit. But on paper they can. The paper does things to life. It kind of argues for you—for a better version of your life.”
– André Aciman
I have been in the thick of it and putting that onto paper has felt like I have had to bend my life to fit said paper, to squeeze it into a tidy narrative that can be a great little fucking Substack post. I was trying to, like André says, argue for a better version of my life by finding the common threads and weaving them together into a perfect storyline with a sexy conclusion, but it felt like I was lying to myself. I was trying to tie a bow on something that was wild and unruly and confusing and not clear and never meant to be a neat parcel.
This whole conundrum has been another one of perfectionism’s clever disguises, a lesson that keeps spiraling back to me again and again. It may seem like I’m scrambling to explain why I’ve been away, but getting intimate with our excuses helps us observe all the self-imposed things that get in the way of the discipline/devotion to our craft that we know ourselves capable of.
Living life as an artist is dancing with the double whammy of: 1) art creation already being a process that requires stepping into the unknown, and 2) the overall figuring-it-out/in-the-inbetween energy that we routinely experience as part of the divine human dilemma. Despite alllllll the not knowing, the one thing my soul knew to be certain was that art production should not stop and that this was actually a ripe time to create profound work because the universe is funny like that. Not because of capitalist non-stop-production bullshit, but because the act of creating art always brings us into closer connection with ourselves, no matter what. It is the most worthwhile way to truly be in the thick of it (after presence of course).
And yet I naturally wasn’t doing any of this because it was very easy for me to blame the medium, to blame the paper for not being able to hold all my gunk. But after remembering that constraints can in fact enhance creativity, I knew I just needed to go deeper. Was it possible to successfully translate the thickness of my gunk onto paper without losing the gunk’s good good? What even was the gunk’s good good?
During the investigation of the gunk’s secret spice, I began to ponder the difference between openness and vulnerability. It’s one thing to be open in reflecting about the traumas of your life, to share a processed experience that gives others a deeper, juicier view as to who you are, but it’s another to talk about something that you’re in the thick of and to let the tears roll down the cheeks if they may come and to sit in the unresolved feelings and acknowledge them and maybe not try to fix it right away. Openness isn’t the proper fuel for true intimacy to take place because there’s a packaged-up energy about it. Over time, you will feel connected to an open person, but you will long to see them shed a tear, or to show up disheveled, or to simply witness them in the middle of something, in the mucky unknown that comes with any process ever. We want you to spill your guts out, please.
Of course, vulnerability must be earned, not just anyone deserves the you that spills your guts because not everyone knows how to hold your guts, or rather just witness your guts and not try to fix a thing. Witnessing my gut spilling is earned by me feeling safe with you. But with writing it’s a bit more complex because I must be the one that makes me feel safe when spilling my own guts. I am the one that holds the guts as they squeeze and slip through my fingers and I’m in awe at what is before me because it’s a newly raw part of me from within that I’ve never held out in the light of day.
Engaging with our raw flesh must be a gentle practice. In order to spill one’s guts and to spill them in a sustainable way, one has to soften through fear. I will no longer push through fear because that is not what my body needs, that is not what any of our bodies need. Physical force never lasts, but softening does. And so I have been becoming a gushy mushy ball of softness over these past few months, sitting with the writing resistance/procrastination, which was always fear, and more specifically my inner child’s and turning it into a ritual I now call ‘The Softening:’
I cross my arms across my chest and hold my shoulders tight and rock back and forth, back and forth. Her presence in me, in all of us, is so clear when the movement that calmed us as infants still works on us now. We begin to melt into each other when I say to her, ‘hi babes, what’s coming up?’ She is looking down at her small feet and I’m looking intently at her eyelashes with blonde tips until her big green eyes look up to me and well with tears. In this shared exchange of looks, so much is already healed simply through acknowledgement of this fearful state. We accept its existence and in doing so say without saying, “it’s okay that this is here, we don’t have to shun it away. This can be here, with us, right now, and we will be okay.” She cuddles into me and starts to share more: “It won’t be good enough so why even try. Those other posts were a fluke, I got lucky, I’m not actually a good writer.” I help her pull all the woes out of her body and notice that these ones today come primarily from her throat area, the home of self-expression. She coughs them out, heavy gelatinous chunks that begin to liquify into a dark purple substance as we observe them. I start whispering soft things into her ear. (~ You are always enough, in fact you are plenty. Your self-expression is as much (if not more) for you than it is for the reader. You can enjoy this act of creation and reduce the pressure by just doing it for yourself. Your soul was drawn to this medium for a reason that you don’t need to understand, you just need to trust. ~). The purple liquid starts to transform into an opalescent medley of colors and begins to evaporate into a pastel mist that gently holds us snug. Her breathing gets deeper as she inhales more and more of this medicine that now surrounds us. Her tears have dried to small salty lines across her cheeks and I hold her small hands in mine and remind her that that no matter what she does, she is loved, safe, and supported, and that I’m never going anywhere.
(~ Soften, melt, liquify, evaporate. Soften, melt, liquify, evaporate. Soften, melt, liquify, evaporate. Soften, melt, liquify, evaporate. ~)
We look at the beautiful mist around us and giggle together because we realize we are witchy chemists with a magical, alchemical bunsen burner in our back pocket.
And then suddenly I’m reaching for my laptop instead of the remote. I’m pulling over on my walk because I’m receiving mini transmissions on how to better built out a point and must scribble it down in my mini notebook. I’m eagerly designing the Substack banner and having a blast finding cute gifs to plop into the body text. I’m sitting at cafes, deep in flow and remembering how much I enjoy the art of contemplation––when conscious, focused thought can become a form of meditation. I’m feeling satisfied as my head hits the pillow at night and tearing up at that forgotten sensation. And then, finally, I’m clicking publish and knowing in every cell of my body that I’m back.
333 Messages
3 symbols, 3 authentic moments, and 3 quotes that all came across my path in some way or another and have had profound secret messages when examined.
🪲 – luck, healing, fertility, abundance
🐌 – slow and determined movement, patience, perseverance
🍂 – change, shedding off the old to usher in the new, death and rebirth
“Things don’t have to be perfect to be valuable.”
– unknown participant angel from a Zoom workshop I recently joined
“It does not matter what you write, but how.”
– Oscar Wilde
“In conclusion, drink tea, together with your friends; pay attention to the tea, and to your friends, and pay attention to your friends paying attention to the tea. Therein lies the meaning of life.”
– Sarah Perry, The Essence of Peopling
Love,
Kristen 🪲 🐌 🍂
Just stumbled across this beautiful piece, feeling so connected to the feelings you’re sharing. Working up the courage to hit Publish on my latest, tackling my own lessons around perfectionism. Thank you 🙏🏻