Values: an evolution
I belong to a couple of writer’s groups, both of which focus on creating space and listening, rather than critiquing. I need some critique, but these spaces nurture connection and time that allow me to feel heard and seen, with other women who value writing and creating.
My monthly group meets at a member’s home. We drink tea, check in, and then one of us leads. We go through several writing periods and a couple of shares. Occasionally we dabble in art. When others share, we just nod our heads, or make a knowing sigh, or say wow. We do not hold the writing under a microscope to examine it; we just let it reverberate. We listen, acknowledge, validate. This is incredibly freeing for someone who leads analysis of writing all day. I look forward to this monthly ritual - we are a homogeneous group, women in their 40s-60s, overly educated, some mothers, some not, some partnered, some single. It feels empowering to meet with like-minded women for two hours and create something profound, to gather in a sacred feminine shared space and to pour it on the page. I have only missed a couple meetings due to sickness and I felt off as if I had forgotten my underwear or my cell phone. I have grown to cherish this time, not so much as a source of material, but as one of connection.
This week, we focused on values. Sometimes we have a creative, playful prompt, and others are serious. I had completed a values exercise within the past year in therapy - and this was similar. You start with a list of about 100 values or more and check every one that speaks to you. Then you whittle it down to groups and then five main values. The fun thing is that each time you do this exercise, it’s a little different because you have grown or you are tired or overly caffeinated, perhaps, yielding varied results.
My top five values this week were: Compassion, Curiosity, Thankfulness, Mindfulness, and Community. The first two were easy for me to group - while I do not always act compassionately, I try to. It is my core value from day one; I have a heart for the marginalized, the underdog, the less privileged, the other. That compassion is what kept me in public schools, teaching when I might have been doing something else. To my mother’s chagrin, I always align myself with people who are struggling. Is this compassion or is this me seeking adventure, real experiences, an unpredictable encounter? I like to call it compassion. This same value gets me in deep trouble in relationships as I am too much of a giver - of my time and my self - and I tend to focus on the other person’s happiness, emotionally outsourcing my sense of worth. I am happily single now, for two years, breaking this pattern, learning to love myself on most days, finding validation within not without. It was a hard lesson learned. I wish we focused more on meditation and emotional literacy with the youngsters, giving them the real tools they need to live in the world, rather than testing them in third grade to extract data. Maybe one day schooling can be more compassionate too. Lately my work in this area has been on learning how to extend that compassion to myself, to give myself permission to have failed at certain things, to own those experiences without shame.
Curiosity is a no-brainer for anyone who knows me. I don’t know anyone who voluntarily goes to graduate school in English to make money. Do you? My favorite part of teaching English is enabling students to hone their voices, to empower them to speak up in their lives and their worlds - whether through reading literature or researching a problem or an interest. I am a lifelong learner - a nerd, always reading several books. Instead of checking my social media, I check The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and my favorite Substack accounts to feed my mind. I love to travel and experience new cities and cultures, and often I go alone. I love meeting new people and trying new adventures, new recipes, new restaurants, museums, art galleries, a local band. I live for newness and hope to one day find my inexhaustible equal who also loves to do and see and go as much as I do. Although I am learning that I can and should do this on my own as well.
In my writing time on Monday, I dove into Mindfulness and Thankfulness, which are relatively new partners in my family of values. Ones I have cultivated in my solitude and through many hours of therapy, journaling, and self reflection. I am saving my thoughts about Community for another day. This is what I hatched out:
Gratitude journals aside, I’ve recently become more aware of my need and desire to dismount from the treadmill of hustle. To step back, relax, and inhale the fresh, crisp air, and give thanks to each moment that has cascaded into now. To let go of fear and shame, to cast them aside like old cassettes which no longer loudly play in the dissonant boombox of my cluttered mind. To own each moment as a gift, centering my stance, still feeling - maybe more so - the rough winds of a spectrum of emotions, yet remaining fixed in the simplicity of the NOW. Knowing I have weathered so much, to name it, confront the worst - all dark fears dressed in terrible black rags clawing at my memory’s door, scraping but not dragging me down. To let them pass, breathing in and out for a little longer, to exhale negativity like poison into the atmosphere, cleansing the space, making room for a simplicity of existing, accepting the quiet - woodchimes clanging back and forth - a sound bath of peace. When once there were footsteps, a flurry of frenetic activity - a joyful burden, to guide, to exists alongside such brilliant, radiant souls - to package them up, send them off into the world and to ever so slowly let go. To learn the mechanics of the body, instead of trying to drown them out,, to harness the complex tools of physiology giving insight - a flaming torch - into my soul,, my sweet self, who for so very long sat upon a shelf, waiting for the noise to stop, wondering if it was finally safe to come out after the strength of the storm has passed.
It is with all measures I will protect this sacred space. By never sourcing myself out to another, I become a more steadfast mother, daughter, friend. Reclaiming myself, excavating my tired body from the rubble, nurturing her back to health becomes the work of my present in which all other mundanities fall away. Papers will get graded, dust will be pushed away, bills will be paid but not before I am at peace. I will guard this fortress with my heart, never abandoning my true nature. My wisdom surfaces, rising to the top of this existential pond,, guiding me to the light, warm and inviting, as if my grandmother were sitting beside the fire, beckoning me to join the divine feminine, coming into HER power after a fierce battle of far too many years.
And in the spirit of my writing group, I’ll just let that reverberate, like ripples in a pond. Maybe you will nod your head or sigh knowingly.
Peace.