You're Not Selfish; You're Surviving
a reminder to all who fight for a better world
Dear friends,
If you’d look through my journals, from adolescence through my college years, you’d notice some themes that come up again and again in my words:
apologies for not praying enough
how selfish I am for not showing up enough for others or for God
my need to change
frustrated that I can’t change
If you don’t know much about me (please read my book Native to know more about my story), I grew up in the Southern Baptist church, which taught me how to punish myself and to constantly chase after a god that I wasn’t sure really wanted me in the first place.
Thankfully I’ve grown into Love since then. I’ve found a Sacred, Cosmic Love that expands out of the bubble of my upbringing.
Still, some of those sentiments still remain, tucked into the back of my brain, streaming through my pen as I journal, hiding in the tenderly darkened corners of my childlike heart.
I still feel selfish.
I feel selfish if I don’t know what’s going on in the news.
I feel selfish if I’m not “checking in” with enough people.
I feel selfish if I spend each morning grounding myself for the day.
I feel selfish if I don’t write enough, produce enough, pray enough.
Isn’t this the same legalism I escaped earlier? Isn’t this the same pain, packaged differently?
I don’t know about you, but I am tired of these same cycles. The way we circulate our opinions on social media, the way we circulate the news, the way we circulate stories that don’t get us moving toward healing.
We try to remedy it, to care for ourselves, but if, deep down, we feel guilty because we haven’t checked our BBC app or Instagram in the last hour to see what the hell Trump has done now, something is off, and we aren’t going to get anywhere.
I am not interested in pretending that we don’t live in a globalized world. I want to care about what’s happening to people I will never meet, that’s what kinship is. I want to care about the global rise of authoritarianism and how a mountain in New Zealand is being granted personhood.
But I am very interested in trying to wrestle through this liminal space, together, of how to show up right now without falling apart day after day, without frying my nervous system by 10am, without feeling utterly hopeless in the face of it all before I get to the good stuff.
The answer, of course, isn’t to swing to the other side of the pendulum; that doesn’t do us any good, either. I can’t just plant my garden and ignore the world, and believe me, sometimes I wish I could.
But I can’t avoid my garden and endlessly doomscroll, either.
The answer is, then, in the dance, in the liminality itself. Of course it is.
And the reminder in this liminal space is this: you are not selfish, you’re surviving.
Whatever this is, whatever our future holds, we’re in it together. We’re holding this local, communal, personal, global space with one another. And we won’t let go.
Last night I met with a group of middle schoolers to share bout my work, and at the end, we talked about kinship. They’d never heard of it, so we did an exercise that I led in Ireland when I was there last year. We all stood in a circle with strings attached between people, and I spoke about how kinship ties can be broken.
One by one, I cut the strings, and in the most dramatic way possible, the kids yelled NOOOOOO!
But they understood. There was a sadness, as the strings went limp, this web we’d created destroyed. But then we repaired those ties, and talked about how kinship can be repaired, even with scars.
They got it. They understood.
And then I said to them, “And if you don’t care enough, you’re selfish, and you need to figure out how to be a better global citizen.”
….
No OF COURSE I didn’t say that to these kids I’m not a monster! So why would I say it to myself? Why would I hold it over you?
I wouldn’t. I shouldn’t. But sometimes I do.
There are many, many layers of survival. My survival today doesn’t look like the surviving of a mother in Gaza. My surviving doesn’t look like the surviving of the Amazon rainforest. But also, doesn’t it?
Does my survival, my ways of belonging in this world, connect me back to that mother in Gaza, that tree holding on for their life? Isn’t this kinship?
We can recognize things like privilege and the ways we prioritize some lives over others in all of this. We can and we should, while we hold our kinship ties to one another.
So let’s circle back, and this time, let’s approach all of this through rhythms instead of a to-do list, because that often doesn’t work, and often, when we don’t get through the list, we feel defeated.
So, maybe we need rhythms of eating that keep us going, like this beautiful list of ideas from
:
Maybe we need to read books that heal and care for us, like my friend
‘s book out today:
Or these ideas on how to reorient our inner world from
:
Or, as a little gift from me, some words to reflect on as you take in the cover of my upcoming book, Everything Is a Story:
Think of yourself as a tiny acorn held in the hands of a Creator, of The Universe, The Sacred. You are tenderly being cared for, as you grow, as you come to understand your full purpose, to become a mighty oak. Spend some time reflecting on what that feels like. How does it feel in your body, your mind, your soul, to be so tenderly connected to The Sacred and to the world around you?
Survive, friends.
Practice care and healing.
Love yourselves and others well.
Let this good earth feed you.
Stay liminal.
Onward.
Please join me for a European book launch of Everything Is a Story! In October, I’m headed to Iona, Scotland!
There is a special opportunity to join a wonderful community on a pilgrimage to Iona led by Interfaith Alignment:
Journey with a group from Alignment to the sacred Isle of Iona
to live and work and learn in community for a special week of storytelling. Meet authors from around the world and find space for your own practices of writing.
You can find all the information here, we hope to see you this fall!
Thank you Kaitlin. I wrestle with these very same feelings, and despite all the work, the ghosts of religion and cultural upbrging still rush out of the closet whenever there is a crack in the door. Thank you for caring about all of us.
Thank you so much for this post-- it made me cry. The last several weeks have been a really hard lesson in learning my limits, as I've been navigating a high-risk pregnancy that has severely limited my daily activity and my emotional energy. Thank you for the reminder that all we can do is what we can do, and that there is no shame in having limitations.