When Impatience Becomes My Friend

Same song, umpteenth verse. I sit down to write, and fight to put one word after the next. Crafting any kind of sentence is torture. (and then my inner editor harps yet again about how I write in a passive tone, with too many gerunds and when am I going to step up to the plate and write something good "blah blah blah")
The two combine and equal too many pieces of half finished writing. Story plots scattered in multiple files, 15 unfinished (read: barely started) blog posts. This is the point at which it would be easy for me to quit. To declare that I'm not a writer and walk away from it all. But I'm not going to do that.

One of my major character defects is my impatience with myself. There's little compassion or grace for this to be a journey - whether that this is healing and recovery or coming alive or finding myself and my voice as a creative. My frustration with myself, with my limits sets me up for failure every stinking time. But I don't stay there.

That same impatience that steals my words, fuels my judgements, is the same drive that keeps me moving forward. That impatience, when it's not running my life, it turns into being driven, in a positive way. It means I show up yet again to write, to put one painstaking word after the next on the page. Impatience doesn't allow those story plots and fragments to get lost in my file system. It continues to pull them up, to stare at them, to write 50 words that are complete and utter shit because that impatience it motivates me.

Impatience tells me that this is not all that there is. This is not all that I will ever be. Impatience reminds me that I'm worth fighting for.

Breathe In, Breathe Out

Breathe in

Breathe out

Breathe in

Breathe out

This seems to be what I can do today.  I can breathe.  A couple conversations over the course of my day have brought some cracks in my walls.  I risked being seen and was welcomed with love.  I am grateful.  Grateful to have women in my life who see me and love me.  It's still so new and I'm continuing to learn how to open up these deep places in myself to others.

Letting go of the judging mind feels like letting go of knowing what could hurt us, surrendering our most potent weapon for survival.  If we stop judging ourselves and everyone else so rigorously, how will we know what is true? How will we protect ourselves from harm? (p64 - Legacy of the Heart, Wayne Muller)

 I've been re-reading Muller's chapter on Judgement and Mercy this afternoon and finding hope.  I'm hearing my own voice and seeing the damage that judgement has caused me over and over.  I'm hearing my own fears of letting it go.  It has been so important to me for so very long.  I'm brought back to Steps 6 and 7.  Once again I'm being asked to be entirely ready to allow my Higher Power to remove this from my life and then humbly asking for it to be removed.

Cultivating nonharming toward ourselves is a tremendous step toward allowing healing love into our broken hearts - especially for those of us who, feeling the sting of physical or emotional pain as children, have internalized much of that judgement and violence in our souls.  We are so in need of mercy and care, and so clumsy in allowing it to be born in our own lives. (p69 - Legacy of the Heart, Wayne Muller) 

I have a place to start. A place that begins with allowing myself the space to simply breathe in and breathe out.  In this way I can release my judgement and welcome mercy with every single breath that I take.