Thinking with |
Thinking with |
It’s tough to capture in video what I do because singing is such a vulnerable experience. We’ve outsourced something as human as joining our voices in song to “the professionals” and we’ve become fearful of raising our own voices because many of us believe the lie that our voice is “not good enough!”
Many people I talk with have trauma around vocal expression:
These stories leave painful scars long after the abuse ends. These are the stories of shame and silencing that come from being taught to be quiet, nice, polite, small, demure, respectful, inauthentic, and false to our True Selves. The sad thing is that we come to internalize these false ways of being early, and, without examination, we stay small and live lives that squelch our true self-expression in so many ways. Singing is just one form of self-expression, but speaking and singing our Truth matters. I work with people who want to reclaim their authentic voice through joyful and judgment-free community singing. Your unique voice deserves to be heard…just as it is! Let’s sing more and worry less about how it sounds to the critics…even when that critic is one's self. *I’m grateful to @outshine.adventures for this short video clip from last night’s impromptu sharing of “Bele Mama,” a song from Cameroon, West Africa after a gorgeous hike and yoga practice in community on Earth Day as the Full Pink Moon was rising over the bluff!
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The Pillars of Traditional Healing are:
1) Connection to clan and the natural world 2) Regulating rhythm through dance, drumming, and song 3) A set of beliefs, values, and stories that brought meaning to even senseless, random trauma 4) On occasion, natural hallucinogens or other plant-derived substances used to facilitate healing with the guidance of a healer or elder In this excellent book published in 2021, Dr. Perry says that today’s medical model over focuses on psychopharmacology (4) and cognitive behavioral approaches (3) while greatly undervaluing the power of connectedness (1) and rhythm (2). Which is where Singing Circle comes in! Community Singing is one way to reclaim the 1st and 2nd pillars of traditional healing. Needless to say, I wasn’t surprised when I read this information on page 200 of this book, but I was encouraged to continue offering this opportunity to the Chattanooga and Knoxville communities. We need each other, and the science is over and over again providing the research that supports how much better we are when we are connected in healthy and healing ways. So, if you’re looking to connect to others AND rhythm as you heal from trauma and expand your resilience, I encourage you to try singing with us! It’s an intentional, safe, and welcoming environment where you can try something new, dive deeper into community, and practice building your capacity to tolerate discomfort and be witnessed in your process of growth. Hope to sing with you soon! The New AI: Artificial Intimacy is a conversation between psychotherapist and relationship expert Esther Perel and social scientist and vulnerability researcher Brene Brown. Esther Perel and Brene Brown are two of my favorite and most influential current thinkers on the topics of relationships, vulnerability, and true human connection in a world where digital, mechanistic, and virtual connections abound. Even me sitting at my computer to write this blog post that will land in your inbox is indicative of this liminal space between actual connection and pseudo-connection. I don't know about you, but I am hard-wired for human engagement. It's central to who I am as a person and what's important to me. And I am generally not satisfied with the "hi, how are you?" kind of generic connection that we get at the grocery store and the bank, although, as Covid taught us, even these seemingly innocuous forms of human interaction matter in our efforts at connection. One of the reasons I was so drawn to singing communities and the sharing of songs in circle when I first encountered them in 2014 was because of the dearth of meaningful human engagement that I was experiencing in my life at the time. I had chosen to leave the church community I was a part of because of some very narrow thinking that I had outgrown. I was in a very unsatisfying primary relationship, homeschooling my kids day in and day out in ways that were both joyful and exhausting, consciously walking first my mom and then my dad to the end of their lives as they increasingly struggled with the effects of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's respectively, and not really sure where to go and how to fill my own relational cup in meaningful ways. I was becoming exhausted and burned out in ways I wasn't really aware of. I didn't even know what was missing in my life exactly, I just knew that when I gathered in community and sang songs of aliveness that felt deeply true and connecting for me, I felt more at home and more at ease than I did anywhere else in my life. No wonder I wanted more of that! What I now understand on the other side of Covid and all that has been revealed in the past 10 years, that I couldn't have possibly realized prior, was that I was desperate to be known, seen, valued, and a part of something bigger than myself. My daily experience had become unbearable and I wasn't able to make sense of it all yet. I felt deeply alone and lost inside a life where I was doing the very best I could to practice gratitude and joy while I was unraveling from the inside out. I was terrified of speaking the truth about my internal experience for fear that it would reflect poorly on the people I loved or worse still on myself for getting into and staying in what was an increasingly impossible situation. I was buried in shame for the ways I felt conflicted by walking down a path of growth and expansion while feeling more and more disillusioned and uncertain than I ever had before. I now realize that my cognitive dissonance was growing by leaps and bounds and my physical, mental, and emotional well-being was suffering under the weight of trying to hold things together that needed to fall apart. There was much in my life I could not make sense of and I was trying to balance what I thought (and had been taught) was the "right thing" with an ever-louder internal compass shouting for my attention. It became impossible for me to do "the right thing" by external standards AND continue to ignore my heart. As it turned out, doing the right thing for me meant being human, letting go, falling apart, learning more than I cared to learn about what was actually true in a variety of my relationships, and finally calling a recovery program and completing an intake process for a 4-week inpatient program that I thought might provide the support I needed at the time. Instead of checking myself into a treatment center for recovery from trauma, I began to prioritize my own well-being with increased rest, creative endeavors such as writing, singing, and art therapy, a growing discernment about who were safe people in my life and who most definitely were not, regular connection in a 12-step community where I felt seen and valued just as I was in the midst of all that felt so very messy, ongoing therapy, an ever-increasing awareness of the effects of ADHD and menopause on my overall wellbeing, and spiritual practices like meditation and yoga to ground into more presence and peace. I began to listen to and value my own heart and the loud and gentle ways my internal compass was guiding me into more of what I wanted most. Along the way my sense of isolation began to dissipate as I held my own heart close and continued to develop a greater tolerance for the unknown by being firmly present in the now. "There is only this inhale; there is only this exhale" was a mantra that came to me in yoga and began to carry me through tsunami-sized waves of uncertainty and internal turmoil as I tried to understand the inexplicable. As has been my lifelong practice, I asked for help and followed the breadcrumbs along a path that I could not have imagined, and as I've walked I've found my way...one little step at a time. So, last week when I listened to this podcast interview on Artificial Intimacy and heard Esther Perel talk about the power of singing in community, my ears perked up and I was reminded that what I have found to be true and what I feel called to create in the world is not just something "extra" to our lives, but is in fact something so central to who we are as humans. There is a kind of intimacy created in song circles that I don't find anywhere else in my life. Singing with others is for me a sacred experience. The best people I've encountered on the planet are those who are willing to dive in and sing with others. Yes, there is a degree of vulnerability and that can be scary. Yes, sometimes we're retraining very old patterning around our voices, our right to show up and be heard just as we are in this moment. Yes, there are elements of singing together and using my own voice that still feel unnerving to me, but as Esther sang in the song by community Songleader Ahlay Blakeley, "You do not carry this all alone. This is way too big for you to carry this on your own, so you do not carry this all alone." Whatever else happens in singing circle, one thing has been for certain in my own journey: I am not alone...and neither are you. This is a form of real intimacy. Being seen, heard, valued, held, and known just as we are in the circle we co-create. We can laugh, cry, and wonder together at the ways song and community meet us where we are and carry us when it all feels too big and overwhelming on our own. After walking down the eighty-eight steps from the road to the beach wryly named 1000 Steps Beach, I looked around and was keenly aware of a deep and internal recognition of this place I had never been before. It was a simultaneously strange and comforting feeling.
I've heard about Bonaire my whole life as it was home to my parents and three older siblings for six years in the 1960s. There are many family stories of life on this paradise island in the Netherland Antilles. "The Caribbean" was an everyday word in my childhood, and a place that the other five members of my immediate family were intimately acquainted with, and yet it was no more real for me than a make-believe land in my favorite fairytale in terms of my experiential knowledge of this magical world. Until last week that is. Our parents are now both deceased, and it's been 55 years since my family lived in Kralendijk, Bonaire. My three siblings have never returned together to their childhood home, and when they decided to finally make it happen after years of contemplating the possibility, I wanted to tag along. After all, what do younger siblings do best if not tag along behind the "big kids"? After arriving on the island we drove to the northern end where the infamous 1000 Step Beach is. The small hand-painted rock on the side of the road that indicated we were indeed at the right place was tricky to spot, but between my brother's memory, the assortment of vehicles parked alongside the road overlooking the beach, and the bright though fading yellow rock with "1000 steps" in view, it was apparent this was the place. It was surreal to finally be here - in this place I had only heard about in oft-repeated stories and shared memories. These were tales I had heard throughout my childhood, but which, for the first 48 years of my life, had no visual place to land in my experience other than in my imagination. After all, this was the place where my father, seeking shade from the relentless sun, spent an afternoon under a scrubby little tree where all of him but his feet managed to escape the rays that scorched his feet turning them a bright and painful red. It was also the place where my brother was "lost" as he played happily and alone in the ocean out of view of my parents. After some time of searching in vain for him, dad began to conclude that the inevitable and unthinkable must have occurred. Yet, here I was, walking down those "1000 steps" with the ocean in view and the multitudinous coral beneath my feet, and it felt oddly familiar to me. In part, it felt familiar because of all those many stories I've heard through the years, but it was also recognizable to me because in my childhood my mother had on display a large wooden mixing bowl filled with shells and coral from Bonaire. I regularly played with the various shells, feeling their differing textures, shapes, and sizes and "listening" to the sound of the ocean in the large conch shell that was among her collection. As I walked on that beach and swam in the ocean last Tuesday, I saw in their native context the shells and coral rocks that were part of my own childhood in ways I could not appreciate until that moment. It was a moving moment of "belonging" and "connection" to this particular family and this unique history that was both not mine and very much mine. Isn't life like that? The juxtaposition of the places where we feel both part of and apart from the larger story of humanity is fundamental to our experience as humans. We may or may not be aware of the tension inherent in the paradoxes that confront us on a daily basis, but they are no less present for our lack of awareness. Much later that same day I was wandering through the streets by myself and taking pictures of tropical flowers that struck me as beautiful and reminded me of my mother, an avid gardener who regularly said that her favorite flower was whichever one she was looking at in any given moment. I recognized and could identify many of the plants I saw including this hibiscus and bougainvillea, and once again I realized that my mother carried Bonaire as a part of her in ways I did not know as a child and could not have understood until now. I never considered that her love of these particular plants, which are not native to the hills of East Tennessee, was probably due in large part to the years she spent living in a tropical paradise and the connections she made with the flora of that special place she called home as she and dad were raising their own three young children. Although there were many moments during my hours on Bonaire that made an impression on me, perhaps the greatest gift I received from this sibling trip was a deeper, richer, and more felt experience of belonging and connection to this place and by extension this family thanks to my mom's subtle but very impactful ways of bringing bits of Bonaire into my childhood in ways that made it recognizable to me all these years later without ever having been before. Thanks, Mom, for sharing with me the gift of belonging to this larger family story in ways I could not have imagined. Thanks, Dad, for making this trip possible by your careful management of your finances through the years and the money that enabled us all to go on your dime. I'm grateful today that I can see, feel, and experience with more depth this part of my family history, and I am growing in my lived sense of connection as a result. I was introduced to this Rebecca Spalding song by Maggie Wheeler in a workshop several years ago and the minute I heard it I was in tears. The lyrical line, "before you throw the stones of judgment" transported me to the religious world of my past where judgment was often preached against while simultaneously being levied on everybody and everything "not like us." It was a strange dichotomy and one I have been unpacking continuously at ever-deepening levels since leaving the church.
I realized recently that shame cannot exist without judgment. If there is no one judging me for my decisions, thoughts, behaviors, or perspectives then I won't feel shame. The more judgment I experience the more shame I will feel, even if that judgment eventually comes from myself as I internalize the voices of judgment and shame that have resounded loudly in my ears for a lifetime. About the same time that I learned this song I was also introduced to the idea that anything a person does, says, thinks, or feels is a direct response to their lived experiences. Or as Shakespeare put it in his tragedy, Hamlet, and a friend has on her outgoing voicemail message, "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so." Although not at all a popular view from within the fundamental Christian world of my past, today I understand the wisdom of this truth. We are all products of the cumulative effect of the inputs, perspectives, cultural norms, family stories, and opportunities we've had in our lives. As children we are taught to judge and be judged, and the harsher the world in which we are imprinted, the harsher our judgment of ourselves and others and the louder our sense of shame at not measuring up to the harsh judgments we feel. I have been struggling for years to reconcile seemingly irreconcilable pieces of my life and I have sensed judgment consistently from all sides. The only thing that has effectively minimized my sense of judgment and shame has been doing the tough personal digging to understand the roots of my shame and judgment and make peace with my story as a human among humans. As a participant in a 12-step program for children of dysfunctional systems (and who among us doesn't qualify to some degree or another for that program?!), the solution that we read at each meeting and attempt to learn to practice regularly is "to become your own loving parent." A year ago I had a dear friend and wise elder remind me that my job was to love, understand, and comfort myself. As an adult, my spiritual work is to show up for myself with the love, understanding, and comfort that I longed for as a child but didn't receive in the ways I needed it. THIS is a human experience. None of us had perfect childhoods. We all have hurts and patterns of relating that are more harmful than helpful. I don't believe that there's a single person on the planet who hasn't experienced judgment and shame to some degree or another, and as I understand my own story better I am far less judgmental of myself and others. I am learning to recognize and hold myself in my places of pain rather than to hope that someone else will ease my discomfort. I am understanding that the miles I've walked have been in shoes unique to ME - partly what I came wired with and partly the experiences I've had away, but uniquely my experiences nonetheless. The results of those experiences are part of our shared humanity. I can love and understand others to the degree I grow to love and understand myself. My healing journey is far from over, but I'm grateful for the ways I see and feel progress along the way. How are you holding your heart as you heal? Here we are at the end of 2023 and on the cusp of a brand-new year with all the usual turning of the year rituals...gathering, celebrating, reflecting, resolving, setting intentions, selecting a word-of-the-year, and considering what we want to let go of and what we want to call in. Despite the fact that time is a human construct and there are not clear and clean lines in the passage of our days as the calendar might lead us to believe, there is still much value in these rituals of acknowledging the change of seasons as winter encourages rest and reflection in preparation for a spring of planting and new growth.
This year I'm considering the concept that "Every experience is compostable." What if even the toughest of years are ones that can go on the compost pile of life and eventually contribute to the rich, fertile soil in which new life and growth can flourish? Maybe not this spring, but some day. There's a common image that has been circulating in recent New Year's of the old year in a sack of stinky garbage and headed to the dump. I confess that there have been recent years when I've been tempted to see the previous 12 months as mostly trash. When I do this, however, I buy into the belief that somehow it's my fault and if only I could have been better or done better then somehow the pile of trash would be less large and less stinky. This year I'm realizing anew that I'm simply not that powerful. I'm not always as responsible as I think I am for the tough things that come my way. Sometimes shit happens and there are many factors that contribute to the tough seasons, but by and large, it's not my fault. Tough seasons are indicators that I'm a human being...or that I'm quite literally being human. I make mistakes; people I love make mistakes; random strangers I don't even know make mistakes. Those mistakes have real life consequences and those mistakes always make sense from within the larger context of my life experiences, brain chemistry, family background, cultural conditioning, and internal wiring. What if I could see all my mistakes as stepping stones to more of the growth, freedom, understanding, and depth of character that I long for? Maybe my experiences can be put on the compost pile of my life and, when raked together with time, understanding, forgiveness, self-compassion, and distance, I'll discover the fertile soil that has been being developed in my heart along the way. I am grateful to look back at previous years and experiences that I once viewed as a waste of time and full bags of trash to be carried to the landfill and recognize them today as the scraps that have been cooked down by the sun of time, winds of patience, and rain of my tears into a rich loam that is ready for planting. Sure, there's still a pile of compost that's waiting to be turned, but today I see a few heaps of beautiful dirt from my life that are ripe for new seeds of hope, life, and growth in 2024. How about you? How have your challenging life experiences been composted into the beginnings of a new and beautiful garden that you couldn't have imagined? And if you're in a season now that feels dark and cold and you can't imagine anything desirable coming from it, be gentle and patient as you wait in the dark and cold. And know that you're not alone. Often, when I tell people that I facilitate Singing Circles, I am asked if it is like Kirtan. Until a couple of months ago, I said I didn't really know since I had never experienced Kirtan. I have had the opportunity to attend several Kirtan events in the past several months and have mostly enjoyed my experiences. There were times when my discomfort with not really knowing what was happening was challenging, but as I've learned to do with discomfort, I stayed put, breathed deeply, and found myself dropping more and more into myself and the communal experience as I did. Upon arriving at Kirtan, I was warmly welcomed and offered a card with printed words, and then we've jumped into chanting with the use of at least a harmonium to assist the voices. In every case Kirtan has been led in a call-and-response style with the caller singing a line and the participants echoing it throughout each chant. I've also learned that the syllables used in Sanskrit are all connected to the chakra system in our bodies and therefore are uniquely designed to tap into different aspects of our bodies and psyche in ways that are intentional and effective whether or not we know the meaning of what we are chanting. Kirtan has been a nice space to drop into a very different type of vocal meditation and I am grateful for my experiences with it, and I intend to make it a regular part of my own vocal practice. I can also now give a better answer to the question, "Is Singing Circle like Kirtan?" I encourage anyone wanting more vocal experience to try both. You'll find what works for you, and the process of using and expanding your voice will bring unexpected and delightful gifts along the way! This is the third time I've written this only to have it disappear in an unsaved abyss of my laptop's elusive Neverland. An irony that is not lost on me after a lifetime of attempting to speak my truth and repeatedly receiving messages that what I have to say is unimportant in the world. I have for years experienced the shame, fear, disgust, judgment, and ridicule of others in my efforts to say what I want and need to say for my own understanding and healing.
The silencing of my voice has happened in three primary places: My Family of Origin, the Church, and my Marriage. My learned silence began in my family when I was a very small child. I was a LOUDLY talkative, insatiably curious, enthusiastically gregarious, wildly active, deeply thoughtful, and extremely outgoing child. I now understand that in addition to these characteristics, I also had ADHD, although it has only been in the past two years that I have come to understand and accept that as part of my truth about myself. As a person who verbally processes as a way to know and understand my experiences, I talked incessantly as a child while my active brain attempted to deal with all the stimulation that was part of life in my body. Understandably, I was a lot for my parents, ages 45 and 48 when I was born, to handle. My father responded by disappearing into himself, his work, and the television and simply being present physically and absent emotionally, verbally, and relationally. I'm told, that as a child, my father didn't talk until he was 6 years old himself, a delayed progression he seemed to never really overcome as he navigated the world of relationships and connection with others with as little significant conversation as possible. My mother, on the other hand, was confident, self-assured, and firm leaning toward harsh in her communication as an English professor and studious sort. As my mother was 45 when I was born, she was determined to be sure I felt loved and wanted and regularly told me how wonderful I was. She did not know how to give me tools to allow my verbal processing self to flourish, so when she was exhausted or shocked by my never-ending chatter, she said so in ways that were shaming. Comments like, "Naomi's never had a thought she hasn't said out loud" were common occurrences in my childhood. I remember in middle school and high school sitting on the kitchen counter as mom made dinner and telling her all about my day. She mostly patiently listened, but when her patience wore thin as it inevitably did at times, she would make a shaming comment to indicate it was time for me to move on to some other activity. When I wasn't talking I was moving. Playing basketball, riding my bike, hitting a tennis ball against the brick wall of my childhood home, and running or walking were all regular physical outlets for my active brain and body. I recognize that I absorbed a lot of Shame for having a busy brain whose primary outlet was to have lots to say about my world, experiences, thoughts, and observations. Of course, I did not recognize this as Shame, but I did learn that I could be LOUDLY happy, pleasant, and even talkative in ways that most often gained for me the approval of my mother, but anytime I expressed fear, pain, or anger I was immediately corrected and overtly shamed for feeling those unpleasant and consequently unwelcome feelings. So, as a little girl I learned to shut down my feelings of fear, pain, and anger and share only the welcome aspects of my life - my joy, enthusiasm, gratitude, and love. Those other feelings were neatly and summarily tucked away as I navigated my active brain, expressive self, and larger-than-life presence in the world with happiness and contentment. My family, and particularly my mother, benefitted immensely from my silence about the harder aspects of my life as my siblings were all young adults, navigating the world in new marriages, having their children, and relying on my mom as the matriarch of our family for emotional support and through their own challenges. I adapted to keep things peaceful and "positive" in my little nuclear family of me, my mom, and my dad. Thanks for being here and reading. I'd love it even more if you engaged in some way. Feel free to comment or email me if this resonates with you. Consider reflecting on these questions: Where have you experienced the Silencing of Fear and Shame?Who has benefitted from your Silence? In what areas have you been LOUD in your words or actions even while still suppressing what you really needed to say? Where have you progressed toward freeing your own voice and speaking your truth? Recently I've been thinking about emotional intelligence, empathy, and how we evolve as humans. Just as crossword and sudoku puzzles, reading, and in-depth study of a topic we want to learn more about exercises our mental and intellectual capacity and regular physical exercise trains our body and our physical muscles toward health, I've learned in my meandering way that with regular exercise I can train my emotional self to develop a greater sense of wellbeing and connection.
Our emotional quotient (EQ) has been defined as "the ability to understand, use, and manage your own emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathize with others, overcome challenges and defuse conflict."* Empathy is one such muscle that I get to exercise as I grow my capacity for emotional connection. One of the first places I intentionally began training my empathy muscle was with my husband. As we have together faced more of the truth of who we are as people and what is challenging in our relationship, I have been naturally fearful and confused. As we evolve, it's often not clear what the reality of our personal growth might mean for our marriage. I consistently know that I love him and that at his core he has always been the person I fell in love with and married. I know his story; I see the places of his pain and hurt; I share in aspects of his heart that long for healing even as I face similar places in myself. The deeper awareness and capacity to hold space for the pain of his story alongside my own as we have created an "our story" has allowed me to cultivate compassion and increase my empathy, first for him and eventually for myself. Developing empathy for others has, at times, come easier than extending empathy to myself. I tend to hold myself to a pretty high standard and can judge myself mercilessly for not having made more progress or being further along than I am on some imaginary timeline I create for myself. I can also explain away the pain I experience along the way by rationalizing, justifying, and excusing the behavior of others that have contributed to my own pain. Seeing my experiences clearly and knowing my own story more deeply is part of my process. Cultivating empathy for myself and continuing to strengthen my empathy muscle is a practice that I lean in to daily. The first step in cultivating empathy both for myself and others is recognizing where my Judge shows up by learning to hear the language my self-critic effortlessly employs. The internal comments about what I "should" do or where and why I am not "better, faster, higher, stronger" in any area of life are places that I have come to recognize my Judge hiding with a relentless critique. As my awareness increases I have a choice to gently identify my "Camouflaged Critic," as I've christened her, and to kindly replace the messages of doubt, criticism, disdain, anger, self-pity, and regret with support, encouragement, understanding, compassion, and love. Sometimes I even ask myself "what would you say to a friend in this situation?" In this way I exercise the muscle of empathy to overcome my challenges by holding myself gently along the way. As I get to know myself and my own story better I am more easily able to hold space for and even celebrate my growth because I see and understand more clearly where I have been. I remind myself that I'm perfectly on the path and that everything is as it should be. These challenges that I face personally, in my marriage, and in my family are where my healing, growth, and evolution can happen, and I am better able to determine my next steps when I feel supported and loved through the process than when I am berated and belittled...especially when that critical voice is my own. Where and how does your Judge show up in your life? What is the language and tone of your own self-talk and what do you want it to be? How can you choose to give yourself and those you love the gift of empathy today? Source: *https://www.helpguide.org/articles/mental-health/emotional-intelligence-eq.htm As I continue to deconstruct and decondition my automatic responses and ways of being in the world, I recognize how little emotional safety I had as a child...and how difficult it is still for me to engage with emotionally unsafe situations. I am also increasingly aware of places I tend to re-create emotionally unsafe circumstances for myself and those around me, and the many ways I want to continue growing in this area.
Of course, this all begs the question: What is emotional safety in the first place? How can we cultivate more of it? Emotional safety is about being supported to know and to share our true feelings in any given moment and to be heard, validated, and accepted...wherever we are, without being: a) shamed for having our feelings, b) told how we can feel differently, or c) given simplistic solutions to the complex situations that comprise life as a human. When someone shares their story with you, what is your response? Do you listen without interruption? Are you aware of your own feelings as you listen? Do you know how to name and validate your feelings and support the other person in doing the same? Are you eager to share your opinion or convince someone of how they "should" or "shouldn't" feel about their experiences or what they "should" or "shouldn't" do in order to live as you would live? Does your own discomfort require that you leave the feeling space altogether and go to a "logical" response that is argumentative, case-building, self-righteous, or judgmental? Do you find yourself falling into scripted responses that don't support the person who has bravely and vulnerably shared their life with you? These questions are ones that I have come to consider for myself when I am listening to others who for whatever reason choose to share their experiences and their feelings with me. All of us can increase our capacity for emotional intelligence, and as we do, not only do we become more whole people ourselves but we are also exponentially more available to create emotional safety for those we love. I recently read The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson. There is much that could be said about this insightful and moving book, but in thinking about emotional safety, this line on the back cover that struck from a review by The New Yorker pretty well sums it up: "What Wilkerson urges, finally, isn't argument at all; it's compassion. Hush, and listen." Where would you like to grow your compassion today? What does it feel like for you to receive the gift of emotional safety in conversations? |
Naomi SelfThis Extrovert's Attempt to Use My Words to Make Sense of My Life Archives
April 2024
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