Things I Learnt in the Fire.

Human wisdom.

Dear Ones,

Yesterday, serendipitously, multiple people happened to call me wise. What a wonderful word to be allocated to yourself. Wise. I needed a bit of a self-esteem hit yesterday. It’s been a self-esteem rocking few months.

I’m not sure that I am wise. I think I have wisdom, but I’m also human. So maybe I am human wise. I will take that. I’m a human trying to navigate this life with some wisdom, sometimes getting it right and sometimes getting it wrong. I will take that even more.

But when one person mentioned the description to me yesterday, I said to them that anything that I have to say that may be considered wise was forged and discovered in the fire. And so, I thought I would share some thoughts here, wise or not, that have come from the fires of my life.

1. You can, and you will, survive everything that happens to you. I’m still standing. So are you. We have survived it. We are surviving it. Keep going.

2. Nothing has ever come from self-criticism and beating yourself up. Accountability, yes. But repeatedly telling yourself that you are a terrible person has not helped any human being. The only thing that makes real, and lasting change, is self-empathy and compassion. Switch the way that you talk to yourself in your head.

3. You will be many versions of yourself across the course of your life. Some you won’t be proud of and wish you had never been. Some will be the best version you could possibly imagine. Find a way to love them all and give yourself compassion for the circumstances that resulted in their being.

4. Life is a continual journey of coming back to yourself and unlearning all the shit you thought you needed to be, in order to go back to who you truly are. If you can find a way to tap into the feeling of a what an authentic life is, for you, and you follow that feeling where it leads you, that’s where the most fulfilling parts of your life will be found and lived out. Get familiar with that feeling. Let everything else be unpalatable for you to live.

5. Every single human being was born with worth, and so were you. You don’t have to earn it, or be anything, for it to exist. The moment my daughter was born, she was worthy, and she did nothing but be here. The same applies for you. Lean heavily into that innate worth.

6. You don’t have to live a life that makes sense to other people. People love to have opinions and judgements on the lives of others for multiple reasons, often as a prevention strategy for looking into their own lives and selves too closely. Quieten the voices. Have a few people whose thoughts and voices you trust. Use them as your wise counsel.

7. The only indicator of a well lived life is one that feels good for you and is in accordance with your most authentic self. It’s not a relationship. It’s not a specific career. It’s not a house on the coast of Italy. It’s not having invested in Bitcoin at the right time. A well lived life is inside of you.

8. Every answer for every question you’ve ever had for your life is within you.

9. Healing is not linear, it’s a spiral. It’s one of my greatest teachings. It may feel like you come back to the same thing over and over again and you aren’t going anywhere but trust the momentum. Spirals aren’t stagnant, they are dynamic and always moving. So are you within it. Each level that you hit has another deeper part of healing.

10. That being said, healing never ends. There is no checklist. There is no external indicator of it being completed. It’s a choice around how you will live your life and you will be doing it until the day you leave this earth. But there will be indicators of it everywhere, in the way you engage with the world around you, the choices you make and the way you feel within yourself. And it’s worth it.

11. There is always hope. Oh darling, my sweet sweet darling, there is always hope. When you don’t feel it, may that solid fact keep you buoyant.

12. Platonic friendships can be the love that will guide you home. Read “We all Want Impossible Things” by Catherine Newman for a magic example of this.

13. Every major transformational period of my life has come from pain. It is the defining ingredient for looking deeper into yourself. We so desperately try to avoid pain, but it is within it that we are fundamentally changed. We are, in fact, forged in the fire.

14. You can survive uncomfortable and difficult feelings. If we can trust that feeling things means that we can survive the hard ones, like anger, sadness, overwhelm, frustration, uncertainty, we can also feel the good ones so much more deeply. Don’t deprive yourself of either.

15. “You thought you had control, but you only had anxiety” – Elizabeth Gilbert.

16. You don’t need to be good to be loved.

17. Go to therapy. Now. Do it now.

18. A conscious life is a harder life. I have often sat in my own therapy thinking how much I wish I lived an unconscious life, just for the reprieve of it. But really, I would choose a conscious life over and over again, despite how hard it is. Because a conscious life is also more meaningful, more felt, it hits differently, it has texture to it, it remind me of seeing the Milky Way in the desert, or the feeling as you put your head under the ice cold ocean, it has clarity to it, uncertainty, at times too, but such beautiful, hard earned, clarity.

19. You will lose people that you love deeply. It does not mean that you should ever choose to not love again or love more. Love as much as you can. Whether it be close or far. Whether you have been hurt or loved in return. Love people. That doesn’t mean free access. It just means you choose love. Choose love.

20. You have needs, that doesn’t make you needy. You have emotions, that doesn’t make you over emotional. You are sensitive, that doesn’t make you over sensitive. Your needs, emotions, and sensitivity are valid.

21. There will be people who are your people, and others who aren’t. Stay close to the people that are. Don’t use energy on making those who aren’t stay.

22. Sometimes sleep can fix a lot of things.

23. You do not need to be continuously stiving. The true magic comes when you can stop looking too far forward and be present in what is right in front of you. This moment, this day, this season, this breath, this experience. That is the essence of surrender. Be still and surrender.

24. Your life may not turn out the way that you planned. It likely won’t. Life doesn’t listen to your plans. What your life becomes will be better. Or maybe it won’t. It’s okay to not know right now and to hold out that regardless, it will be okay.

25. Shame will keep you stuck. Reflect. Learn. Move forward.

26. You may not want to ever hurt people. You will. You may never want people to hurt you. They will. Be human and connect with people despite this fact.

27. At the end of the day, the only thing that you have control over is yourself. You have no control over other people, how they feel or how they behave. You do have control over what you do and how you respond to those around you. Be responsible for that.

28. Kindness goes a long way.

29. Empathy without boundaries is self-destruction.

30. You are a nuanced human being. Get comfortable with the grey of your humanity.

31. Most healthy behaviour, like putting down boundaries, learning how to regulate your emotions and getting comfortable with hard feelings, are like muscles. The more you work them, the easier they come. In the beginning it takes a lot of effort and is damn hard. Eventually, you are doing reps without even noticing. Practice them until they become strong.

32. Things that are good for you do not always feel good. I don’t think I know anyone who likes going to the dentist.

33. People can actually meet you where you are at if you hold onto who you are. They will need grapple with what it brings up for them, and then work really hard to meet you, even if it’s really difficult. This is called love. We all deserve this kind of love.

34. Dancing in your bedroom will continue to bring you joy if you let it.

35. Everyone in the world has a very different nervous system. Learn what your nervous system needs and create a life that supports it. My nervous system is sensitive. It needs down time. Swimming and water are deeply regulating. Meditation lets it know it is safe. Reading and solitude give it time to reset. It can’t take too much stimulation. Learn the indicators of when your nervous system is going off check and use it as wisdom for what it needs to feel held and nurtured. Practice it frequently.

36. We all just want to feel safe. And seen. And loved.

37. Having a child will be the most triggering life experience but it will also be a healing mirror. You will learn to love the parts of yourself that you wish you could hide by seeing them and loving them in your child.

38. Loving yourself is a regular practice. I talk to myself with love when I can. I say things like; “I love you, Jess”, I call myself “Honey” with tenderness and I try to care for myself like someone I love.

39. You are not something that needs to be fixed. Yes, please grow my darling. Growth is beautiful. But don’t ever believe that you are broken. You aren’t. Nor have you ever been. You are an onion, peeling back the layers, each mistake, each misstep, each hard period, each trial, each self-questioning question, each messy and magical moment at a time.

40. You are never alone.

You may notice that there are 40 things. I know someone who ran 40 kilometres last year as a celebration of her 40^th birthday. I really wanted to do something along those lines for my 40^th birthday as an honouring of myself. I didn’t. My 40^th was during a particularly hard time last year. I just wanted to survive it. But I mentioned to a friend last night that I might just do something momentous for my 41^st. You see, things don’t work out according to the random criteria that life throws at us. Who said a 41^st can’t be more important than a 40^th? I certainly didn’t. May I be surprised by the next 40 years and the wisdoms that come with it.

Good Bones – Maggie Smith

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.

Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine

in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,

a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways

I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least

fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative

estimate, though I keep this from my children.

For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.

For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,

sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world

is at least half terrible, and for every kind

stranger, there is one who would break you,

though I keep this from my children. I am trying

to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,

walking you through a real shithole, chirps on

about good bones: This place could be beautiful,

right? You could make this place beautiful.”

All my love,

Jess