How are you beautiful?

 
Sarah-Marie Hopf

I wanted to share about a great gift I’ve been given to reflect on and honor my journey and unfolding vision through my dear friend Alexandra Booth’s project “Inspiring People I Know.” I’ve been deeply moved by Alex’s generosity - her life-giving questions, the way she held space for my truth, and her deeply kind words. Having been so focused on “improving” myself, it took some time to fully allow myself to take in the enormous gift of being seen and affirmed in my essence. Through sharing our conversation, I’m leaning into the vulnerability of letting parts of myself and my story be seen in a very free flowing and unscripted way ...

As I write this, I remember David Whyte’s words: “To be human is to become visible while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.”

You can watch, listen, or read the transcript of our 50-min conversation here: https://inspiringpeopleiknow.wordpress.com/sarah-marie-hopf/

I hope you’ll find value and resonance in some of what I share. May it remind you of your own innate wholeness, goodness, and resourcefulness.

And I invite you to honor and celebrate your own journey and reflect on some of the (paraphrased) questions Alex asked me for yourself:

  1. Who are you?

  2. How are you beautiful?

  3. What about your story is important for you to honor or is maybe less known to others?

  4. What do you feel is most important?

  5. What’s the context you seek to create for others and yourself?

  6. Where do you see beauty in this world?

  7. Where do you feel you are expanding? Where do you feel you are grappling?

  8. What support might the universe offer to you?


With love,
Sarah-Marie

 

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

 
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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?

 

Defining choices

 
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“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves ... Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” - Rainer Maria Rilke

On August 1, 2006, I left the certainty of my small-town life in Germany for the possibility of a new and better life in the US.

I had been sitting with the question of moving to the US for a couple of years after learning about meditation through a book when I was 13. Intuitively, I would sit cross-legged on the thick blue carpet in my childhood bedroom and drop the question into my mind again and again. I felt myself expanding and contracting between deep fear of leaving all I knew (no matter how difficult) and the possibility of freedom and thriving. With time, the answer became clearer and more urgent. So I mustered all my courage to make the move right after my freshman year of high school.

Every year since, I've been honoring the day of my "rebirth" and celebrating that life-giving choice. It started a journey of deep inner work, healing, and coming home to myself. While life has its ups and downs, I never imagined my life could be this full of love, joy, wellbeing, community, contribution, and possibility.

I've continued my practice of living and holding big questions which has been informing my choices. It feels like collectively we are in a process of sensemaking and living the questions as we find our way forward amidst uncertainty.

What have been some of the defining choices in your life? How are you honoring them?

What big questions are you currently living?

Below are a few resources to support you.

With love,

Sarah-Marie

Resources  

Poem

The Open Door from Root to Bloom by Danna Faulds

A door opens. Maybe I’ve

been standing here shuffling

my weight from foot to fot

for decades, or maybe I only

knocked once. In truth, it

doesn’t matter. A door opens

and I walk through without a

backward glance. This is it,

then, the moment of truth in

a lifetime of truth: a choice

made, a path taken, the

gravitational pull of Spirit

too compelling to ignore any

longer. I am received by

something far too vast to see.

It has roots in antiquity but

speaks clearly in the present

tense. “Be” the vastness says.

“Be without adverbs, descriptors,

or qualities.” Be so alive that

awareness bares itself

uncloaked and unadorned.

Then go forth to give what you

alone can give, awake to love

and suffering, unburdened by

the weight of expectations.

go forth to see and be seen,

blossoming, always blossoming

into your magnificence.”

Guided Meditations