i sometimes feel i’ve recovered enough to not relapse — truth is, relapse is a discovery gift where recovery is still needed — i do feel exhaustion around psychosocial work being 4ever though i have not been practicing relational wellness as long as i have been communicating in ways unaligned with my values, so i call on grace to be the bridge between the 2 as well as approach this practice with gratitude instead of disdain. other times, i feel like i become the person i want to be merely because i say so and then just when i imagine my conditioning waning, it pipes up, festering, steaming — the lesson even louder than the last time.
emotional activation discomfort, coated in the milk of my conditioning, is what i imagine near death to be. dramatic, i know, but it do be feeling like that. what differentiates a feeling from a perception, interpretation, translation or read? is it the distance at which intention and impact live, intention not being irrelevant1? any of these do the work of providing information, even if some digging is required.
people keep telling me to open my mouth and say how i feel, but most times they are very much not into what comes out of it. i chalk it up [my discomfort with this] to people-pleasing or oops, codependency. kendall posted something very poignant on the internets that went something like “copedency is the inability to sit with other people’s discomfort”?
i turn 30 tomorrow, feeling a little slumpy that so much relational work is still due though triumphant in having the will to do it — amen.
xoxo, care ecologist
a note on intention/impact paradigm i learned from Mia Schachter