Beginning Again
Starting over as a personal practice.
In times of disorientation, grief, and upheaval it’s therapeutic to make something with your own hands. Focusing on the materials (or musical notes or words or ingredients), using intuition, and channeling the unspeakable aches of loss allows them to move through us. With so much disruption, in our world and in my life, I spent the summer in a pottery intensive at the Art Center of the Capital Region here in Upstate NY. Long before I was a fitness professional I was an actor, musician, and artist; but I’d let the practicalities of life shave those parts from me. I’d had a student residency at the Art Center over 20 years ago and intuitive part of me knew coming back would be healing. Perhaps the same intuitive place that creates.
I’ve struggled in the past to revisit things I was once good at. I’ll chastise myself for squandering talent and the oft-elevated “potential” my teachers, coaches, and instructors once praised. Yet, sitting at the wheel, trying to spin fancy mud into a bowl, it collapsed over and over. To inoculate against frustration and judgement, in the back of my mind I kept repeating the maxim of beginners mind: “begin again”.
Each collapsed side of a mug: begin again.
Each cracked piece that was too thin: begin again.
Each glaze that was too thick: begin again.
These translated into my life. Each failed relationship: begin again.
It’s difficult to admit as a “wellbeing expert” when you’re suffering and struggling. The influencer landscape thrives on the carefully crafted veneer of perfection with just the right amount of vulnerability to humanize them. Influencers! They’re just like us! This summer, in addition to playing with clay, a dear friend referred to me as an
“anti-influencer” because of my unwillingness to make it all about selling and my insistence on (the now buzzy) authenticity.
The truth is, earlier this year I had an intense burnout. After years of hustling to girl-boss my way into a new life, many of the reasons I’d been doing so came to a grinding halt. I needed to put a lot of things on pause. Including, and much to my embarrassment, this Substack.
Yet, one thing about beginning again that’s commonly missing in the conversation: pausing. When things go wrong - whether the mug collapses or the relationship ends or the business fails - we want to jump right back in. We want to prove we can. We want to spare ourselves the uncomfortable examination of what just happened. But when we seek growth, meaning, wellbeing, and truth there has to be a pause. A breath. A moment to reflect and gather oneself.
I’ve been on pause for a while. I believe many of us were in the shock of how much things have changed and how quickly.
There’s an allure to staying in the pause. The comfort of not.
It’s the same illusion that bed rotting is resting.
But, if we are to do what we have come into this life to do, we cannot stay there. That’s why I’m here, writing this for you. Completing the cycle of my own loss and grief, pause, and now to begin again.
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