I've said it before, the best part of my "job" is meeting people and building community, finding connectedness and the shared threads that make us human. Like Lindsey, I am in a place where I seek to be lifted up and encouraged by those I give my love and time to and I truly hope this blog is a place where we can get to know and support each other. So, that said, please enjoy our latest guest blog post and photos by Lindsey Lowe.
Safety+Gratitude
Sometimes all we really need is to feel safe. Even as babies, new to the world, we crave that feeling of being wrapped tightly, swaddled, protected from the abyss of the unfamiliar. And we all seem to carry our own rhetorical safety blankets into adulthood. Sometimes that safe feeling finds us through a phone call to mom or hidden in the pages of a well-worn book. Other times we find it in uglier forms; at the bottom of a bottle or even in an ill thought out night with someone we used to love. If we’re lucky, we grow into ourselves enough with time, so that we can bear our own weight without these crutches. I’m not saying we outgrow the need for people or human contact, but we can learn to be selective, to guard our hearts from things that feel safe, but in the long haul are doing us more harm than good.
In attempt to better guard my own heart, I’ve been cleaning house in the friend department lately. I guess you could say I’m at a no-bullshit place in life. I find that I don’t really have space in my world anymore for fair-weather friends (aka: drinking buddies), people who only know how to take or even just those overtly negative humans who can’t seem to recognize good even as it slaps their faces. I used to feel safe with these “friends.” I used to feel at home with boyfriends who didn’t think twice about yelling in my face or calling me “bitch.” I had grown accustomed to a life in which I didn’t really value myself much, so why would I demand to be valued by the people in my periphery? But years and life experience have shown me a different way to be. Though the thought of being alone used to terrify me, I know feel a kind of comfort in solitude. Perhaps it’s a growing up thing, that ability to be alone with your own thoughts. Maybe it comes with accepting who you are, whereyou are and where you intend to go. Even more so, I think it comes with the decision to be grateful along the way.
My mom always told me growing up that happiness was a choice. I’m only slightly ashamed to say it has taken me 28 years of getting it wrong to recognize the truth in that. I think she meant it more in terms of being happy in the moment, rather than long-term happiness, but what a revelation. When we can wrap our heads around that almost absurdly simple fact, what a difference it makes! Even when it seems that everything around us has turned to garbage, we should be hard-pressed not to find something to be joyful about. Sometimes we just need to get Peter Pan with it. Find a happy thought, guys. Life is weird. It’s hard. It has a knack for tripping us up. And for some of us, we trip A LOT. But shitstorms aside, life is a lovely thing. Every day we waste pouting or spewing our negativity is one we can never reclaim. So just today, I petition you to think of three things that make you unequivocally happy. Dwell on these things, for life is short. Find beauty in the everyday, and let those simple daily joys be your safety.
I am thankful for…
-My spirited and imaginative son, Cohen and our time together each day.
-Music that makes me feel something!
-Books + words + word games
“A thing of beauty is a joy forever. Its loveliness increases. It shall never pass into nothingness.” John Keats
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