Human Stuff is a free weekly-ish newsletter. You’re welcome to share parts of this letter that connect with you on social media, or send to someone you love. Thank you for reading, ‘heart’ing, commenting, sharing, for helping this newsletter continue by being here. In the midst of so much noise, your presence with my words truly means something.
Upcoming Workshop: HEART SPACE, 9/6 from 10-12pm PST
An incomplete list of things I’ve reminded myself of, remembered, or insisted upon lately:
Small kindnesses are one of life’s great treasures. If you look, you will find them all over the place; if you remember, you can offer them, too.
You are more fluid than stuck; I promise each reach toward something different is pulling you to the place you’re meant to arrive in.
Pay attention to your disillusionment because it might be a place grief is hiding, a place grief is asking to be known, a place grief is longing to be felt.
No, it is not delusional to want to write poems, and share poems, and live like poetry, and imagine yourself old and weathered and still writing with your shaking hands, still looking intently at all those small kindnesses and terrors of aliveness, still taking them in your shaking hands and making them into something more. It is a recipe. A blueprint to follow. A nudge to attune to.
Yes, it is your job to sift through which self-judgments are actually yours and which were handed down, insisted upon, or thrown your way by forces that never deserved your power.
Potent breaks from the swirl of seriousness: laughing with children. Going out for pastries. Dancing anywhere. Reading poetry you wrote when you were seven, twelve, fifteen. Getting film photos you took months ago developed and not knowing what you’d get in return. Telling your partner that cheesy joke again that makes his eyes roll with love. Moving your body as if you’re free. Painting nothing and watching it turn into something. Laughing with new friends, old friends, all friends. Listening to music that scored your life as a teenager. Making silly voices while reading children’s books. Lion’s breath. Shoulder rolls. Jaw massages. Light.
What if it works out? What if it works out? What if it works out? What if it works out? What if it works out? What if it works out? What if it works out? What if?
The world’s devastation is mirroring more than the ache, more than the suffocating unknown — it is mirroring who and how you want to be in the face of whatever beautiful and awful and surprising and illuminating world is begging us to build, imagine, and create it.
Notice how often you are doing the very things you say you can’t do. Notice how easy it is to slip into old suits that no longer fit, old narratives that no longer match, old ways of being that reflect a distant time and not the current you.
Perhaps becoming more irrelevant and less popular on social media isn’t a sign of failure but a sign of maturation, a sign of more vibrance in your actual life, a sign of untethering from who people thought you were, a sign of becoming truer, a sign of liberation, a sign of aligning with values instead of vanity metrics, a sign of something that needed to change, changing.
Notice the gift you offer yourself and others when you remember you’re often clinging to an idea of you, and them, far past its expiration date. You can loosen your grip and, instead of hanging on to what’s familiar, invite in the utter exhilaration of getting to know yourself and others over and over and over again, a forever introduction, a forever re-meeting.
Your longings are directions. Your longings are instructions. What would it take to listen a little more? What would the recipe of your longings contain?
Permission to get more weird, more strange, more undefinable, more obscure, more layered, more unboxed, more uncaged, more silly, wider & wider & wider.
Other people’s perceptions of you get to be theirs. You don’t actually need to carry them as your own, or mold yourself to prove anything, or shape yourself to fit a narrow vision that was never made for you.
Your trying matters more than the outcome of your trying.
Wow, look at all that grows in spite of all that crumbles. Wow, look at all that happens right within the decaying of what needs to go.
It is cool to stay enchanted. It is cool to be earnest. It is cool to care, to be seen wanting, to write and talk about measures of the heart, to be known within all that makes you you.
There is beauty in taking risks on behalf of aliveness. For you and for all.
Your aliveness includes the confusion, the circling around the same questions again and again, the noticing of light on the wall, the feeling of what the fuck is happening, the wildly bright drip of heirlooms and peaches all swirled together, the missing, the settling, the attention and lack thereof, the moon’s consistency, the persistent awe, the devotion to staying with it all, somehow, some way.
Here you are. Here you are. Here you are.
Thanks, as always, for being here.
PS. Next month, I’m offering a workshop I did two years ago that was so connecting, nourishing, and meaningful. A place to write, tend, and tune inward and outward. I’m so looking forward to being in a shared space of care and contemplation. I hope to see some of you there! More to come. Learn more about Heart Space here.
△ A new book coming from one of the greatest
△ The difference between curing and healing
△ A bright spot in my mailbox every month
△ And a bright spot in my email inbox
△ This book is expanding my heart
△ A beautiful and generative conversation
△ Sinking into home
With care,
Lisa
And because someone recently called me out, I will remind you my new book, When the Ache Remains, is available now everywhere books are sold. Deep gratitude for all the support.
Thank you for reading. Everything I share comes from my own heart; this publication, and all I do, is created without the use of AI.
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