I like this a lot. The deep work, the real work, we can’t fake that. We can pretend, and even have connections with people who don’t know our real core. We can hide from it. But at the end of the day, we need to be with ourselves. And if you haven’t done that deep deep work, it’s impossible to find peace. To be comfortable. To love you, fully.
Sometimes you get the life you want to live and it’s taken from you. Sometimes the life you want wants you back for the briefest moment and then you’re forced to completely regroup. My husband is dying (we’re writers, so we’ve been writing about it in my substack and his blog) at only 39 and the question I’ve grappled with is: how do you plan a future with a man who won’t be in it? We are so compatibly odd that we have grown into each other over the years. The core of who I am will remain in a way, but now it will always be missing one of its central components. Will anything ever fill that space? What happens when our core takes permanent damage? I hope it’s like a liver, capable of regeneration. Unfortunately, I’ll find out soon.
Nice post! That which we label our idiosyncrasies, quirks, or "toxic traits" may in fact be just the opposite: an attempt to hold on to a version of ourselves that is precisely what we are not.
The life I want to live is not the life I have lived. At this time in my life, I choose to change my life's direction. I choose to live my life for myself, now that I have the time for it. We can say all we want about our life being this, or that, but our lives are not ours alone. Once you take on a soul mate, a spouse, a wife, you no longer have control of what you thought your life was going to be. Once you have children you give up on what you need because it's what they need that matters -- or should. Life is about giving to those you love. You have to love yourself, sure, but you have to face the changes that life brings you. Sometimes, those changes are unexpected. You might lose your job, or go on strike and have to figure out how you're going to pay the bills. You might lose your house. How you handle adversity in life isn't something you can see coming, it's something you look back at in hindsight. It comes down to how your parents raised you. Did they instil the core values of love, compassion, empathy? Did they punish you out of love, or anger? My neighbour was beaten by his father; his wife was beaten by her first husband. I can practically count the number of times I was hit -- and each time, well deserved. And yet, my life's greatest adversity was just recent. An industrial fatality has changed my whole outlook on life.
I think on the surface this is about right. You have to deal with what you can't change in terms of genetics. But I also think you'll get a lot of folks who rightfully believe you can become who you want to be within the framework of some limitations. No, you can't fake being 7'2 NBA player at 5'10 or become a emotionless stoic as a deeply emotional person. You're stuck with some presets. But you can establish habits and routines over time that eventually feel natural that make you calmer / more stoic than you were. I think people maybe focus too much on the end goal and vision of who they want to be, and it therefore feels like a failure every time they leap and try and it doesn't just materialize. You don't get fit overnight. You don't change the grooves of habit in your mind in a month either. A year of trying can go by, meditating daily, and you don't even realize how much calmer you become or how differently you handle stimulus. When your mind and brain are literally changing slowly, you only notice the pain of effort and not the actual baseline change unless it's physical.
"Because I am the one who has to live in the life I’ve made, who has to be accountable for my decisions. Every morning I look around and I am surrounded by my own detritus on the most literal level. As in: did I put the laundry away. Did I throw out the empty cans of sparkling water on my nightstand. And of course that’s a metaphor for the emotional decisions."
The fact you can even step back and examine this means that you can alter these things. It just won't look like magic, it'll look like climbing a mountain. It's not simply just responding differently automatically, it's identifying your own natural response, and actively pushing against it like training a muscle. Eventually the muscle gets big. For most people and situations, that strain isn't worth it.
> I've mentioned this on my Substack "about" page, but I find it amusing that I write self-help because I often feel completely out of my depth.
The only words I can think of to describe how I feel when I read and reread these pieces are "beauty" and "craft." They both revolve around a feeling of "awe," not the awe that comes from something being so far beyond my capabilities, but the awe of feeling seen and heard. It's the awe of sitting on a sunny Sunday in Soho, dining on the patio of an Italian restaurant with a friend, and having a shared experience.
Self-help comes in many different forms; for me, these are warmth.
At a phase in life where I'm witnessing myself unintentionally learning to let the "sleeping dogs" parts of me bark and whatnot. It's slowly unraveling and that feels more good than bad. I don't think I ever really felt this much like myself before. Recently, some of my poems exposed hidden unpleasant parts of who I am; parts I "trained" myself to never express. There are no short words for the self-alienation I counterproductively nurtured or how hard it's been to admit that I don't like myself to let me be me.
I loved reading this. As a therapist it truly resonated. And whilst I’m proud of every single one of my clients for doing the brave work there is something rather wonderful that starts to unfurl when they bring the parts of them that they know have some qualities that may be viewed as toxic - and I use that word lightly - because it’s here that some much deeper self-work can be done. Thank you for sharing your words here. They were beautiful and insightful 🤍✨
Surrendering to who we are instead of who we want to be is a hard process but one that’s as worthy as any other. Instead of faking it, just loving ourselves.
Thank you, Ava. So true. People don't want to change. They want to be told that it's okay and not change. But the core work is something that we must do. Along the way, we must balance acceptance with non-acceptance, and that to me, is the real work.
I like this a lot. The deep work, the real work, we can’t fake that. We can pretend, and even have connections with people who don’t know our real core. We can hide from it. But at the end of the day, we need to be with ourselves. And if you haven’t done that deep deep work, it’s impossible to find peace. To be comfortable. To love you, fully.
Sometimes you get the life you want to live and it’s taken from you. Sometimes the life you want wants you back for the briefest moment and then you’re forced to completely regroup. My husband is dying (we’re writers, so we’ve been writing about it in my substack and his blog) at only 39 and the question I’ve grappled with is: how do you plan a future with a man who won’t be in it? We are so compatibly odd that we have grown into each other over the years. The core of who I am will remain in a way, but now it will always be missing one of its central components. Will anything ever fill that space? What happens when our core takes permanent damage? I hope it’s like a liver, capable of regeneration. Unfortunately, I’ll find out soon.
Nice post! That which we label our idiosyncrasies, quirks, or "toxic traits" may in fact be just the opposite: an attempt to hold on to a version of ourselves that is precisely what we are not.
The life I want to live is not the life I have lived. At this time in my life, I choose to change my life's direction. I choose to live my life for myself, now that I have the time for it. We can say all we want about our life being this, or that, but our lives are not ours alone. Once you take on a soul mate, a spouse, a wife, you no longer have control of what you thought your life was going to be. Once you have children you give up on what you need because it's what they need that matters -- or should. Life is about giving to those you love. You have to love yourself, sure, but you have to face the changes that life brings you. Sometimes, those changes are unexpected. You might lose your job, or go on strike and have to figure out how you're going to pay the bills. You might lose your house. How you handle adversity in life isn't something you can see coming, it's something you look back at in hindsight. It comes down to how your parents raised you. Did they instil the core values of love, compassion, empathy? Did they punish you out of love, or anger? My neighbour was beaten by his father; his wife was beaten by her first husband. I can practically count the number of times I was hit -- and each time, well deserved. And yet, my life's greatest adversity was just recent. An industrial fatality has changed my whole outlook on life.
I think on the surface this is about right. You have to deal with what you can't change in terms of genetics. But I also think you'll get a lot of folks who rightfully believe you can become who you want to be within the framework of some limitations. No, you can't fake being 7'2 NBA player at 5'10 or become a emotionless stoic as a deeply emotional person. You're stuck with some presets. But you can establish habits and routines over time that eventually feel natural that make you calmer / more stoic than you were. I think people maybe focus too much on the end goal and vision of who they want to be, and it therefore feels like a failure every time they leap and try and it doesn't just materialize. You don't get fit overnight. You don't change the grooves of habit in your mind in a month either. A year of trying can go by, meditating daily, and you don't even realize how much calmer you become or how differently you handle stimulus. When your mind and brain are literally changing slowly, you only notice the pain of effort and not the actual baseline change unless it's physical.
"Because I am the one who has to live in the life I’ve made, who has to be accountable for my decisions. Every morning I look around and I am surrounded by my own detritus on the most literal level. As in: did I put the laundry away. Did I throw out the empty cans of sparkling water on my nightstand. And of course that’s a metaphor for the emotional decisions."
The fact you can even step back and examine this means that you can alter these things. It just won't look like magic, it'll look like climbing a mountain. It's not simply just responding differently automatically, it's identifying your own natural response, and actively pushing against it like training a muscle. Eventually the muscle gets big. For most people and situations, that strain isn't worth it.
"Choosing the life that wants you back".
I'll remember this.
Great post!
Love this. Summarizes a lot of the breath, movement, and relating practices I’ve been attending recently.
Just curious, have you heard of The Center or Heartlab in SF?
> I've mentioned this on my Substack "about" page, but I find it amusing that I write self-help because I often feel completely out of my depth.
The only words I can think of to describe how I feel when I read and reread these pieces are "beauty" and "craft." They both revolve around a feeling of "awe," not the awe that comes from something being so far beyond my capabilities, but the awe of feeling seen and heard. It's the awe of sitting on a sunny Sunday in Soho, dining on the patio of an Italian restaurant with a friend, and having a shared experience.
Self-help comes in many different forms; for me, these are warmth.
Wow, thank you for referencing my piece here. I'm just now seeing this. Beautiful post.
At a phase in life where I'm witnessing myself unintentionally learning to let the "sleeping dogs" parts of me bark and whatnot. It's slowly unraveling and that feels more good than bad. I don't think I ever really felt this much like myself before. Recently, some of my poems exposed hidden unpleasant parts of who I am; parts I "trained" myself to never express. There are no short words for the self-alienation I counterproductively nurtured or how hard it's been to admit that I don't like myself to let me be me.
I loved reading this. As a therapist it truly resonated. And whilst I’m proud of every single one of my clients for doing the brave work there is something rather wonderful that starts to unfurl when they bring the parts of them that they know have some qualities that may be viewed as toxic - and I use that word lightly - because it’s here that some much deeper self-work can be done. Thank you for sharing your words here. They were beautiful and insightful 🤍✨
Surrendering to who we are instead of who we want to be is a hard process but one that’s as worthy as any other. Instead of faking it, just loving ourselves.
Loved this Ava :) as always
Thank you, Ava. So true. People don't want to change. They want to be told that it's okay and not change. But the core work is something that we must do. Along the way, we must balance acceptance with non-acceptance, and that to me, is the real work.
that’s tough to remember
Such a good one, Ava!
a little bit too real but so very necessary. thank you!