Have you checked out my new series, Somebody That I Used to Know?
I’m interacting with my own blog posts from the early days of my writing career, holding a conversation with Old Me as I process who she was and is today. Please check it out here if you haven’t already.
Along this same vein, today I’m starting a thread on how we hold space for ourselves to change. In so many ways, I’m the opposite of who I was when I was younger, but at the core, she’s still there, and we are learning to love each other.
What about you? Do you talk/commune with your old self often? How do you process who you were before, and what has allowing for change felt like?
I’ve been facing many different versions of Younger Me in the last couple years, really seeing them for the first time and trying to hold compassion for each one of them…
That sense of continuity/discontinuity is remarkable, something I think about a lot (you're "In so many ways..." sentence resonates 100%...so well said).
Life makes me think about life. All living things are contiguous. Life is passed from life, creature to creature, splitting cell to splitting cell, womb to womb, in an endless stream. But like all streams and rivers, they are never the same twice. Life is continually emerging in radically divergent, sometimes cooperative, sometimes conflicting and even predatory forms -- but it is all life from a single stream. So also with me in some mysterious way.
A more practical reflection to the point of your question...as an organizer, I'm constantly telling my story through the process of building relationships with all different kinds of people with a goal toward building a communion with the power to change things. Those I-Thou / Subject-Subject encounters push me to uncover new aspects of who I am. People are continually probing me back, asking me to flesh out details of my story (particularly now in New England, telling people I grew up a conservative evangelical in rural Texas turns heads). While I have other practices, it's these relational dialogues with an-other more than anything that press me to relate to who I was in relation to who I am and who I'm becoming.
Here's a relevant quote: “We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.” — Joan Didion
I remain acquainted with my younger self if only to be reminded that there was a time I was pretty sure I knew what was what with the world and, now older and (hopefully) wiser, realize just how arrogant and foolish that idea was. It helps me relate to people younger than me suffering similar circumstances and keeps my ego in check against the things I *think* I have figured out now.
Late last year I wrote a letter from my 8-year-old self to me with fun hand drawn art and a special Star Wars Fan Club patch I've kept safe all these years. I mailed the letter to myself and have it sealed, unopened and in a safe place.
One way I try to commune with my old self is connecting with activities that brought me a lot of joy, but I may have not been practicing for a while.
I’ve been facing many different versions of Younger Me in the last couple years, really seeing them for the first time and trying to hold compassion for each one of them…
That sense of continuity/discontinuity is remarkable, something I think about a lot (you're "In so many ways..." sentence resonates 100%...so well said).
Life makes me think about life. All living things are contiguous. Life is passed from life, creature to creature, splitting cell to splitting cell, womb to womb, in an endless stream. But like all streams and rivers, they are never the same twice. Life is continually emerging in radically divergent, sometimes cooperative, sometimes conflicting and even predatory forms -- but it is all life from a single stream. So also with me in some mysterious way.
A more practical reflection to the point of your question...as an organizer, I'm constantly telling my story through the process of building relationships with all different kinds of people with a goal toward building a communion with the power to change things. Those I-Thou / Subject-Subject encounters push me to uncover new aspects of who I am. People are continually probing me back, asking me to flesh out details of my story (particularly now in New England, telling people I grew up a conservative evangelical in rural Texas turns heads). While I have other practices, it's these relational dialogues with an-other more than anything that press me to relate to who I was in relation to who I am and who I'm becoming.
Here's a relevant quote: “We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.” — Joan Didion
I remain acquainted with my younger self if only to be reminded that there was a time I was pretty sure I knew what was what with the world and, now older and (hopefully) wiser, realize just how arrogant and foolish that idea was. It helps me relate to people younger than me suffering similar circumstances and keeps my ego in check against the things I *think* I have figured out now.
Late last year I wrote a letter from my 8-year-old self to me with fun hand drawn art and a special Star Wars Fan Club patch I've kept safe all these years. I mailed the letter to myself and have it sealed, unopened and in a safe place.