What's the kind thing to do? 💗

“I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I will give myself to it.” - Rainer Maria Rilke

“We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes a habit.” - Audre Lorde

In these deeply divided and polarized times, it’s easy to make others bad. There’s a saying: The world is divided into people who think they’re right (and that’s the whole saying). It’s easy to get into “us versus them” dynamics. It’s easy to become defensive when we feel threatened by people with different views.

Forgetting our shared humanity, we dehumanize others. We exclude rather than widen the circles to include others. We become more reactive in our relationships.

I’ve seen this play out in my own life. Since I was a child, I remember wanting to be “good.” It felt like a prerequisite for love, acceptance, and belonging. In my pursuit of perfection, I became quite rigid about what’s right and wrong along the way. I was quick to judge myself and others for falling short of my impossibly high standards. I got caught in anger when I saw injustice and unethical behavior. I was afraid to show vulnerability and truly let others see the real and messy me. I often felt disconnected from others.

What’s helped me counter our “us versus them” programming is practicing lovingkindness. It involves actively cultivating an attitude of kindness, friendliness, and openness toward others and ourselves.

How do we make being tender with each other a habit?

In lovingkindness practice, we try to look for the good in ourselves and others, beyond our negative qualities and conditioning, and acknowledge the complexity of being human. We start by sending friendly wishes for health, fulfillment, safety, and peace to ourselves. We then gradually widen the circles, sending kind wishes to a loved one, more difficult people (gradually working up to more difficult people), our communities, and all beings. When I have difficulty seeing the good in someone, I often envision them as a little child to better get in touch with kindness and compassion.

As we send friendly wishes, it’s helpful to get in touch with our actual experience of kindness when we feel it. What does kindness feel like in the body? Through the body, we can get in touch with a deeper level of connection beyond emotion. With practice, this can help us connect more easily with kindness as we move through the day.

Lovingkindness practice is proven to decrease stress and anxiety, decrease negative feelings toward yourself and others (i.e. anger, judgment, self-doubt, unworthiness), and enhance social connections with others. An attitude of kindness allows us to respond to people and situations in more intentional and friendly ways rather than being reactive.

And, importantly, cultivating lovingkindness does not mean condoning hurtful behavior and injustice. Without closing off our hearts, we can better discern the appropriate response which might mean creating clear boundaries to protect our safety and wellbeing, holding others accountable, and taking action to address injustice.

What if we led with an attitude of kindness? What’s the kind thing to do?

With lovingkindness,

Sarah-Marie

What's the next best step you can take? 👣

Happy New Year! We’ve officially graduated from 2020. Maybe you’re feeling tired, relieved, sad, grateful, hopeful, or anything in between. I know 2020 has pushed me to my edge many times. So many of us have experienced loss and hurt this past year – I hope you’re creating space for what you need right now.

2020 was an extraordinary year: from the promise of starting a new decade, to the pandemic, to rapidly shifting how we live, work, and connect, to reflecting on and reckoning with systemic racism, to grappling with record-breaking natural disasters, to experiencing a divisive US election – with many big and small moments in between.

It has stripped us of our “normal” ways and unearthed so much that needed tending on an individual and collective level. It has broken us open to create new possibilities for how we live, work, and relate to each other and the planet. It has made some things simpler and others more complex. It has invited us to consider what truly matters.

Upon reflecting on 2020, I wanted to share four (of many) lessons and big questions I’ll be carrying into 2021 below. I welcome your thoughts, reflections, and living some of these questions alongside each other.

I’m deeply grateful for you and this community of wildly curious, purpose-driven, and kind people. Thank you for reading and your support. I hope 2021 brings more joy and ease than difficulty for you.

With love and gratitude,
Sarah-Marie

Turning the Page on 2020 with Four Lessons & Big Questions

1. Embrace our shared humanity.

While 2020 was the most physically isolating year of my life, it has also shown me how interconnected and interdependent we truly are. While I’ve intellectually known that we’re both separate and not, 2020 gave me an embodied sense of our shared humanity. We all experienced difficulty and hurt to some degree. We may have felt lonely and disconnected at times. And we all wanted safety, wellbeing, and connection for ourselves and loved ones. No matter what we go through, we are never alone in our experience. This knowing has given me comfort and allows me to access more kindness and compassion for myself and all beings.

How might compassion and kindness inform your actions in 2021?

2. We heal in relationship.

Most of us have our first experiences of hurt and trauma in relationship with others. And yet as social creatures, we also heal best in supportive relationship with others and ourselves. Our inner work and societal work are intertwined. We make up the communities and systems we’re a part of, and our actions matter and have ripple effects. 2020 has amplified a lot in our collective consciousness – from systemic racism, to polarization, to climate change, to collective trauma. We’ve got a lot to work with in 2021 and beyond.

To heal and address all that’s unjust and broken, we need to be in right relationship with ourselves, each other, and the earth. Reverend Jennifer Bailey said: “Relationships move at the speed of trust, but social change moves at the speed of relationships.” We need to recognize our shared humanity and meet each other across difference. May we remember that we’re all products of our conditioning and look for the goodness underneath. May we approach each other with respect and kindness in all of our interactions. May we honor and protect our planet.

What kind of context do you want to create for your relationships in 2021? What will most serve healing?

3. Give yourself permission to feel and be with. 

"'Free' is not free from feelings, but free to feel each one and let it move on, unafraid of the movement of life." - Jack Kornfield

2020 allowed me to experience the full range of difficult feelings. Fear visited often. As did Anxiety, Grief, Shame, Loneliness, and Anger. Maybe they came to see you as well. Whenever I resisted and turned away from the feeling, it just kept asking for my attention. It wanted to be seen and acknowledged for trying to protect me. Emotions have a beginning, middle, and end. Exhaustion happens when we get stuck in them - when we don’t complete the full cycle. When we fully allow what is to be here, we create space for our experience to change naturally.

For example, when we notice Fear (and associated negative thoughts), we can meet it with curiosity and explore our embodied experience of it. I often ask myself: What’s happening inside me right now? Can I be with this? Where do I experience Fear in the body? Then I try to stay with the changing sensations. I ask myself: What does the fearful part of me most need right now? And I extend kindness inwardly (and often place both hands on my heart to add a soothing touch). In this way, we can expand our capacity to be with more and more of life. We can be free to respond creatively instead of being reactive.

What do you need to give yourself permission to feel/be with in 2021?

4. Everything is workable.

2020 has humbled me. I’ve realized just how much is outside of my control. The year has changed plans for all of us and asked us to be creative and adaptable within new constraints. In my case, I tried settling in a new city while being physically isolated from others, adjusted to being in place after years of frequent travel and movement, adapted and moved all of my offerings online, …

I’ve realized that life becomes more workable when I don’t let the small, fear-based self run the show and make it all about myself. Every day, I affirmed my intention to let life use me well and be a contribution (inspired by my mindfulness meditation mentor). I've grown to trust that everything is an opportunity to grow and that we can pause and respond with intention no matter what happens.

We may not know the whole path, but life will always show us the next best step forward. We can trust in the self-generating mechanism of life. When in doubt, I’ve learned to go further in. Our body knows. We can take a moment to pause and sense how the whole of a life situation feels in us without judging or analyzing it. We can notice and cultivate our body’s innate “felt-sense” capacity—a subtle bodily sensation of a situation that lives somewhere between our conscious and unconscious mind. From this place, new awareness can emerge, and new perspectives and actions become possible.

What’s the next best step you can take in 2021?

Permission to Feel

These are deeply emotional times. Many of us are experiencing a range of emotions - fear, anxiety, sadness, grief, frustration, anger, ... as we're facing the consequences of the pandemic, the ineptitude of leaders, systemic oppression, injustice, precious lives lost, ... It's heartbreaking and enraging. 

As Ruth King writes in her book Mindful of Race, "anger is initiatory, but it's not transformative." It can point to what's important to us and help us take action. But we have to go a step further to investigate what's underneath it. What's underneath the anger? Maybe it's fear. And underneath that a deep care for others and ourselves.

Grounded in our caring, we can respond and act in a more intentional way and think about what's ours to do and contribute. 

As Pema Chodron said, "the emotions we have, the negativity and positivity, are exactly what we need to be fully human, fully awake, and fully alive.” It took me many years to learn this lesson as I sought to avoid negative emotions as much as possible. The result was that I felt numb much of the time. I felt less alive. 

I've found it helpful to check in with myself and ask: What am I unwilling to feel right now? Can I be with this?

When we name our emotions, they gradually lose their power to take us over. While we can't stop the waves, we can learn how to surf them. And the good news is that no emotion is final. Emotions are always changing. 

We can stop, take a deep breath, and acknowledge and honor our fear and other strong emotions with compassion. We can realize that it's really the Fear, the Anxiety, the Sadness, the Anger... that's paying us a visit and moving through us. It's not for us to hold alone - it's part of our collective human experience.

May we seek to recognize our emotions and use them to respond wisely to the circumstances of our lives and the world. 

Below are a few resources to support you. 

With love,

Sarah-Marie

Resources

[READING & LISTENING] 

• [Book] Permission to Feel by Marc Brackett - Explores how we can cultivate greater emotional intelligence, understanding our emotions and using them wisely.

• [Podcast] Here's a great Unlocking Us  episode with Marc Brackett and Brene Brown. 

• [Book] How Emotions are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett - Explores the science of how emotions are constructed (an interplay of brain, body and culture) and the real-life implications.  

• [Article] What is this Feeling? Anticipatory Grief and Other New Pandemic-Related Emotions by Esther Perel - Describes pandemic-related emotions and helpful strategies and practices for moving through them. 

• [Song] All Together Now by OK Go 
  Love this song! We're all together now alone in the chrysalis (where the caterpillar dissolves and assembles into a butterfly).  

[POEM]

On Joy and Sorrow by Kahlil Gibran 

Then a woman said, Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.
     And he answered:
     Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
     And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
     And how else can it be?
     The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
     Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
     And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
     When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
     When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
    
     Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”
     But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
     Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

     Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
     Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
     When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.