When you get the news that your children’s schools are cancelled for not two weeks but two months, you will text your husband Bahaha! from the bedroom where you are working with the door closed. Closing a door counts as doing.
Each time a door closes, the rest of the world opens up. — Parker Palmer
At the start of every week, you will write a list you cannot keep. You will not text one person a day to ask if they’re okay. You will not write three thousand words worth saving. You will take half of the vitamins you hoped for. That’s okay. Making a list counts as doing.
It seems impossible that desirecan sometimes transform into devotion;But this has happened. — Alice Walker
Some nights you will go to bed and forget to brush your teeth. Some mornings you will get up and leave the bed unfurled. You will not heed the holiest of all work-from-home advice and wear. real. pants. Noticing the nosedive is a place to begin. Paying attention counts as doing.
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. — Simone Weil
It will be both a perfect and terrible time to grieve. The slow burn will start in your nose. Move like an ocean behind your eyes. Crest like a wave in your throat until you swallow or sob. And you will have all the time in the world to welcome it. After just one more episode, you will have all the time in the world to welcome it. Talking to grief counts as doing.
Ah, grief, I should not treat you like a homeless dog who comes to the back door for a crust, for a meatless bone. I should trust you. — Denise Levertov
Invitations will land like manna at your feet. To virtual dance parties and book readings. To tiny concerts and home workouts. You will decline nearly all of them in favor of learning to live with yourself. You, despite your complaints about your fellow crew, are the one you must learn to survive. Contemplation counts as doing.
I believe we feel safest when we go inside ourselves and find home, a place where we belong and maybe the only place we really do. — Maya Angelou
When your pastor reminds you that rest is a form of resistance, that rest is actually anti-supremacist, that rest is what makes us human, you will feel validated. You will feel so validated for being doing-repressed that it will actually free you to be doing-released. To name the pain that is paralyzing you. To speak the feeling that would free you. To choose the micro-move you can do. Moving forward counts as doing.
Take this on faith: the mind may neverfind the explanations that it seeks, butyou will move forward nonetheless.
Let go, and the wave’s crest will carryyou to unknown shores, beyond yourwildest dreams or destinations. Let itall go and find the place of rest andpeace, and certain transformation. — Danna Faulds
XO,Erin
Want more tools for practicing purpose?
The term “doing-repressed” is Enneagram speak for personality types 4, 5, and 9 who can get locked into a sort of “thinking about their feelings” or “feeling about their thinkings” loop. Never heard the word or model? Now is as good a time as any to get to know it—and yourself. Suzanne Stabile’s work is a place to start.
Checklists are our friends, friends. Check-out these checklists for challenging times from Alexandra Franzen. Bonus: sign-up for her newsletter or download the new season of her So Obsessed podcast for a bit of bubble gum in the bleakness.
Do you have what you need to maintain your mental health during this pandemic? The Radical Wellness Collaborative is offering lots of rad resources and community hangs to meet the moment. And, for the next two weeks-ish, they’re also offering a FREE scaled down, modified version of a wellness plan to get you started in your work.
