Radical Grace : A Case for Self-Compassion

or - a year-end love letter to the dreamers, the creatives, the doers + you

Well, Happy New Year, everyone.

I haven’t written in a while. I have sat down at this desk with its perennial view of this farm I love over and over . . . leaving each time empty-handed.

Life right now feels . . . heavy. Under the weight of grief and what - I don’t know. See? I can’t find the words, even now. Try again.

There is grief and uncertainty and the shattering of a window into the future I thought was waiting for me.

( Before anyone asks, please do not worry - I will be ok, we will all be ok; the sky is not falling. Proverbial rugs have been pulled and it is all at once both the worst and possibly, maybe - eventually - the best thing ever. As these things often are.

I am attempting to write through it, however clumsily. It’s important for others to see how Slowness unfolds when things are difficult, not just when they’re coming up roses. Slowness is much more powerful when the road is rough than when it’s paved with wildflowers. So here we go. )

And yet, even in the pain and disorientation and overwhelming sense of vulnerability there is something else . . . A tiny spark in the darkness that feels familiar.

As the year draws to a close and we’re bombarded by the noise of New Year, New You! I’d like to offer you this more beautiful question.

Make of it what you will.

What if, instead of looking back at the year that was with a critical eye or the year to come with expectations of certainty . . . we just gave ourselves grace?

Would that be so terrible?

What if the smashing of that window into the future was the needful thing? What if we’re not supposed to have it all figured out? What if they key to a big, bold, brave life is sometimes the opposite of certainty, safety, firmly planted feet?

What if you don’t need to do or be anything other than who and what you are in this moment?

What if in this season of goal setting and looking forward and making plans, you simply made space for breath? For the coming and going of hopes and plans and dreams?

What if you could look back at where you’ve been and celebrate the fact you’ve traversed the path, regardless of where it seems to lead? Even if where it leads is an ending, a letting go?

Can we sit, just for a moment, with the beauty and challenges of the year gone by without raking it over for morsels to optimize, prioritize, critique or hack?

MHN says, Let July be July. Let August be August. And I wonder if there’s something in that we can nourish, support, sustain ourselves with - here, now.

Maybe there’s an in-between we can claim - quietly, slowly, intentionally.

Someplace between the culture of commodified-self and endless striving and waving the white flag of apathy and nihilism. A place where we can strive for more. To want to learn, grow and be more expansive versions of ourselves AND find compassion for the places where things go ‘wrong’.

Maybe that’s not even the right word. (See, I told you, the words are as tangled as my 9 year old’s unruly hair.)

Maybe it’s not about things going wrong, or not the way we’d hoped or planned. Maybe it is simply acknowledging and accepting the fact that we were never really in control.

In holding in one had - I am the captain of my ship. And in the other - I am not in control. Both are true.

If you are at the end of the year wondering if you did enough, accomplished enough, WERE enough …

Let this be a reminder.

There will always be room for growth. There will always be more you could have done.

That doesn’t erase everything you DID accomplish, do, feel and experience this year. We can strive for more for ourselves and give ourselves grace.

And if all you did was survive this year, that’s ok, too.

Some seasons are for sowing, some are for reaping, some are for laying quiet and fallow under a blanket of snow.

It is ok to not have everything figured out. Just remember, from time to time, to look back and appreciate how far you’ve come.

Keep going.

In a world where we are asked to lead with our feelings and seek safety at every turn, it’s no wonder we feel disoriented by change.

We are taught to avoid obstacles and discomfort, smooth the path ahead, for both ourselves and our loved ones.

What if they were right when they said - The obstacle is the way?

Our mantra as parents seeking to cultivate Slowness and resiliency in our children has been -

Prepare the child for the path, not the path for the child.

Why are we so often reluctant to offer the same gift to ourselves? We trust in our children’s resilience, why not our own?

Maybe we forget the truth that smooth seas never made a skilled sailor.

If you’re heading into a season of stormy seas, or if you’ve spent this past year madly bailing your boat, please know you’re not alone.

Turn your face and your sails to the wind. Forget about looking graceful while you do it. Let go of expectation, just for a moment. Relish the feeling of the wind in your hair. Give yourself permission to simply be with the wave. To be the wave.

To maybe, even, find beauty in the storm.

One of the greatest gifts Slowness has bestowed upon me is the ability to crest the wave.

Whether the wave is grief or change or the unknown or fear or crippling clinical depression and anxiety . . . slowing down gives us the tools to meet it, surrender to it, embrace it, even. To allow ourselves to careen up and over and into the churn and out the other side.

Before Slowness, I couldn’t do this. I resisted the wave.

This has become like a meditation practice, one I must return to again and again and it is, more than anything, an act of radical self-compassion.

You’ll stop fighting the waves once you realize you are the ocean. - J. Mike Fields

You are the ocean.

Vast and ever expansive, your inner rhythms moving with the moon. At times smooth as glass, others a tempest, others aglow with the indescribable dance of miraculous phosphorescence, echoing the stars above.

So this season of big plans and resolutions and all the rest, be gentle with yourself.

Give yourself grace. Go gently.

If the year ahead will look different than you hoped, give yourself permission to ride whatever waves come until you crest the other side.

Which you will, by the way. You always do.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labours and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. - M. Ehrmann

Wishing you love and grace and the courage to offer yourself self-compassionate curiosity in the coming year.

I’ll be bailing my boat right beside you.

xo

As always.

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Stacey Langford is a writer, renegade farmer and slow business mentor living and working in Canada’s Fraser Valley. In 2010 Stacey ditched her cubicle in the city to turn her attention homeward, farm and help others craft a simple life, from scratch.