What's Killing Me, The Lazy Genius Way, Emily P. Freeman, and Kindest Rejection
It’s been a few weeks! Sorry. I’m not even sure why. This last week has been pretty epic and heavy, but before that… I had a newsletter written out, the weekend went by, I was going to do a final edit and send, but then I didn’t, then it was the weekend again and I was going to change it a bit and send… and so on.
A little ironically, given what I quoted to explain why I write what’s Saving My Life in the first issue, the biggest things saving my life these last few weeks have been the things helping me to articulate what’s killing me. Seeing and verbalizing it comes before dealing with it.
The Lazy Genius Way
I’ve really enjoyed The Lazy Genius Way by Kendra Adachi. (I’ll link to it on Amazon, but not with my affiliate link, Amazon doesn’t want affiliate links sent in emails, IIRC. After I launch the new blog I’ll have to set up a page for things like that. Mmm.)
I already gushed about it on Instagram, and… I am fully prepared to do so again here, and in more detail! Or at least different detail.
In fact… do you mind if I quote a whole bunch from one chapter, the chapter on living your season? (If not, you can skip or skim down to the next heading. But you know that. I’m not the boss of you.) It’s one of the less tangible principles in the book, and there have certainly been tangible principles saving my life these last few weeks, but the living your season chapter is so, so good.
“The guilt I felt over being sad about my pregnancy was crippling. How dare I grieve a loss that would be a gain to so many other people? How could I in good conscience share my sadness over being pregnant with friends and family who desperately wanted a baby of their own or who had miscarried or lost a kid to cancer or any number of horrible things?
“It’s enough to keep you privately resentful of your season.
“This is why thinking like a Lazy Genius is so important. You can desire things that someone else doesn’t. You can struggle with something that gives someone else joy. You can care about what matters to you even if it doesn’t matter to someone else, and we can all lovingly and compassionately exist together in that tension.
“If you move through a hard season of life without naming what matters and what doesn’t, you’ll be crushed under the weight of other perspectives and expectations of what your season should be. For example, working is such a privilege, and lots of other parents would love time away from their kids. But staying at home is also such a privilege, and lots of other parents would love time at home with their kids.
“The difficulty of a season grows stronger and more oppressive if you don’t name what matters. Otherwise, you’re at the mercy of others’ expectations and will either cram your season into another season’s box or disengage altogether. You’ll try hard or give up.”
“Living in your season means letting your frustrations breathe but not be in charge.”
Like I said, I know my Welcome email said “Most of us know what’s killing us, and can articulate it, if asked,” and this newsletter is all about what’s saving my life, not killing me, but turns out sometimes it’s not easy to name the things that are killing us, and doing so can save us. Who knew?
“You don’t have to be afraid of stress or sadness. You don’t have to panic when things fall out of order. You don’t have to run away from a season of life that seems to require more than you have to give. Staying engaged with the sadness but not letting it dictate your decisions is a practice in being a genius about what matters.
“Living in your season reminds you that beginnings, endings, and middles all deserve your attention and kindness and that you don’t need to rush through them.
“Just do the next right thing.
“Like our national treasure Mister Rogers once said, ‘Often when you think you’re at the end of something, you’re at the beginning of something else.’
“Maybe your something else is growing stronger in who you already are, one season at a time.”
There’s always been a stress and a weight about the season of starting school for me, ever since my oldest started going to preschool. I think this is common, but it’s felt a little beyond the norm. It’s been hard to put into words, and mostly I’ve told people that all of our birthdays are in the fall, which is true, or close (I’m counting fall as September, October, and November; and my youngest’s birthday is August 30th, my husband’s is December 5th, the other three out of five of us are in September and November), but isn’t all of it. Last night (a few weeks ago) I finally put my finger on it, and it’s actually kind of obvious now that I realize.
Ohhhh, I never went to elementary school. I was home schooled through all of elementary, so when I get school supply lists and dates for parent-teacher conferences and Back-to-School Night and all that jazz, it triggers a whole bunch of felt inadequacies. It feels like people are going to be expecting things of me as a parent that they’re not going to explain or even verbalize, because everyone else just knows.
It’s not as bad (besides that whole pesky pandemic thing…) now that she’s in second grade; and overall preschool, kindergarten, and first grade were pretty gentle with me, much better than they could have been, but the feelings are still there.
And… well, tomorrow (a few weeks ago) we have (had) a small backyard birthday party for my girl turning three. Then in September school starts (started), there’s the one-year anniversary of my dad’s death (and talk of suing the hospital, unfortunately with reason), and then my middle child turns five. Nothing much in October (oddly or ironically, that was the biggest birthday month in my family of origin, there’s one a week, gah), just Halloween, which yeah, has its own inadequacies — I never went trick-or-treating as a kid, either. I think we’ve developed a pretty good rhythm, but yeah, it’s more FEELINGS. In November my oldest turns eight, I turn thirty-eight, then there’s Thanksgiving, and then the one-year anniversary of my mom’s death. Then John’s birthday and Christmas. Aaaaaaaaaahhhhh.
“Fall brings beloved bouquets of sharpened pencils and the restoration of routine, and the holidays wave from around the corner. Fall gets the most love by the masses because of scarves and boots and pumpkin-spice lattes.
“While I love the shift in weather and outfits as much as the next person, fall has a secret underbelly of stress. Everything starts shouting for your attention, and suddenly you’re neck deep in the urgent once again. You go from the slow pace of summer to the scheduling gauntlet of fall, and it’s easy to quickly feel like you’re drowning.
“Yet all seasons have something to teach us if we pay attention, and fall is the perfect time to decide what matters in your schedule and on your to-do list. You can’t possibly do everything everyone else is doing, so choose on purpose. Use the natural rhythm of the season to give you permission to let go of what’s bogging you down so you can put your energy into being a genius about what really matters.”
Okay. Time to grieve and let go of other people’s imagined expectations of me. Embrace casual birthday parties, connecting with my people, and generally not having everything all together and that’s okay.
Ooh, and then this part:
“So often, I try to create a system to get through a challenging season of life, and the natural world responds, Dude, I’ve been cycling through life and death for a while now. I understand change, so let’s be here together.
“The sun rises.
“The snow falls.
“The baby starts kindergarten.
“The parent passes away.
“The job transfer happens sooner than you expected.
“The kid who once thought you were everything doesn’t talk to you much anymore.
“The husband who chose you changes his mind.
“I’m not trying to bring you down, but life is hard. You’re wounded and tired and have stories no one knows, just like I do and just like the pretty stranger at Target does.
“You also might have the tendency to see your circumstances as the be-all and end-all and forget that so much is happening within and around you, whether you notice it or not. The more you focus on what your season doesn’t have, the more you’ll despair, compare, resent, and feel generally bummed out. You also miss out on the good that’s right in front of you.
“Instead, be where you are.
“Do the next right thing.
“Live in the season you’re in with open hands so you can receive what it has to offer.
“I’m not saying it’s easy; that’s a flat-out lie. But seasons are bigger than you are. They come and go, and they always invite you to become more of who you already are.
“Being a Lazy Genius doesn’t mean loving every season; it means welcoming each one kindly and letting it teach you something.”
So yeah, isn’t that pretty amazing?! Ooh, and also:
“The situation isn’t ideal, but ideal isn’t the goal.
“Pursuing the ideal forces you to either try harder because your season isn’t enough or give up because it will never be enough. Instead, live in your season and be content where you are. Whether you’re in the throes of caring for a new baby, waiting for a new job, being at the mercy of your very talented daughter’s gymnastics schedule, or simply waiting for the lady in front of you to find exact change, be content where you are. Lean into what’s happening around you, and don’t assume how you live now is how you’ll live forever.
“Seasons change, and so do you.”
So yeah. And then she told me to look out the window, look at the sky, and notice what the season wants to teach me in this exact moment, so I looked at the dark sky and finally went to bed. :D
Emily P. Freeman
Speaking of sky. On the Sunday before Labor Day, September 6th, my family enjoyed a rented boat on Detroit Lake, Oregon. It was the most fun I’ve had in a long time. Especially the part after the little girls left for their naps. :D (We went faster then. Which was painful at the front of the boat, but quite tolerable and fun at the back.)
Plus, Oregon is just so beautiful.
At least, when it isn’t looking like this. Most of the time it isn’t.
The most surreal thing to me about these fires this last week is that we were just there. A week and a day ago, now. The place we rented the boat from has probably burned to the ground. Or the water line.
My own personal pain and loss over that fact is minuscule compared to the residents’, compared to what others all along the West Coast are experiencing, let alone stacked up against the pain and loss caused by wildfires throughout history!
But I keep thinking of a podcast episode about grieving by Emily P. Freeman. (Adapted into a blog post for that link, don’t worry if you don’t have time to listen right now. And sister mine, don’t be turned off by the title! ;-) ) It’s easy for me to rationalize certain griefs and certain reactions away — “Well, I didn’t really know them” or What does it matter that we just saw him? That’s how sudden death works, it’s sudden! Emily gently brings out some of the collective grief over a celebrity, and also:
“The first thing we try to piece together when someone dies is that last interaction we had with him, the last time we saw her face, the last words we exchanged. It seems the more recently you’ve seen a person alive, the more difficult it is to believe that they’re gone.
“So the first thing we often say is, but I just saw her. Will Smith’s response to hearing the news of his friend’s death rings so familiar. But I just spoke with him last night.
“Our brains try to reason with reality. This person can’t be gone because they were just talking to me yesterday. We aren’t accustomed to not being able to trust our eyes and our ears. Our eyes and ears say they were just right there.”
Thank you, Emily Freeman, for helping me to understand how I’m feeling about Idanha and Detroit, Oregon, even though I didn’t live there, even though I only just met them, so to speak.
It’s all burning down
Towns by the lake where we played
Warm water and green
How can it be gone?
I was just there on Sunday.
First and only time.
First and last visit
(what will be there will be changed)
to that exact place.
Chehalem Mountains
Sparsely populated, loved
Smoke streams from your sides.
The skies are yellow
I adjust the white balance
Grasping for this sky.
Idanha, Detroit
Just two among so many
But I just met you.
Tired but restless
Couldn’t sleep, got up again
Wrote me some haikus.
And this led to processing and writing about other griefs…
Grief piles on grief
Highs and lows crashing on me
Sleep flees my body.
You’re vivid, alive
And then suddenly you’re gone.
Minds can’t hold absence.
Can’t cease to exist
I beat my fists at the dark
Can’t picture nothing.
We didn’t just speak
Didn’t know what was coming
I had no idea.
And yes, I know, “we don’t grieve as those who have no hope.” But we still grieve.
Kindest Rejection
I just got the rejection back for my essay on The Goose Girl as personal canon, and it was the kindest personal rejection ever. (Just now. Like an hour ago. Well, originally. A little bit more by the time I send this.) Er, I don’t mean “personal rejection” like she rejected me rather than my essay, I mean as opposed to a form letter. It was really lovely. I’m not going to post up a screenshot here, because hello that would be weird and cross some personal boundaries, as it was a personal email she wrote to me and not to be published, but the words “I admire how deftly” were used, among other complimentary words, by a published author I admire, and wow. I knew she was going to have a lot of submissions and have some hard choices to make, and that it was very very possible mine would be rejected, whether that was a hard decision or not. I did not think to expect that rejection to be so kind and encouraging. Not over it.
Instagram Roundup
The Tuesday after the last issue, I shared on Instagram that I’m trying again to remember to treat my children’s interruptions as calls to prayer, monastic bells to remind me my time is not my own. It took me a while, but I finally found where I’d heard that before, on the Bridgetown Audio Podcast, a sermon by John Mark Comer.
I’ve written it down in a bullet journal module for mantras, and it’s helping. It’s easiest for me to remember to think through my mantras when I’m driving, so these days I don’t go through them as much as I used to, but I have one section where I remind myself to “approach with curiosity, treat them like Jesus, like my teachers,” so a reminder of kids as calls to prayer fits in naturally with that, makes it easier to remember.
Also I shared about stove popcorn.
Your Turn
How was your week? Any unexpected gifts in it? What’s your favorite season? (Absolutely any season that’s not Fire Season?) Are there some big or small things you love to do that other people hate, or vice versa?
Love in Christ,
Marcy