You Already Got the Job
These words, from early in the pandemic, have been speaking to me this week:
“Even if your puny little ego wants to contest the enormity of your soul, the smaller self can never for long subordinate the larger Self. In matters of death and rebirth, you have surpassed the benchmarks many times. Believe the evidence of any one of your past testings and trials. Here it is: Are you still standing? The answer is, Yes! (And no adverbs like 'barely' are allowed here.) If you are still standing, ragged flags or no, you are able. Thus you have passed the bar. And even raised it.
In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. Do not make yourself ill with overwhelm. There is a tendency, too, to fall into being weakened by perseverating on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails.”
~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés
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I’ve jotted down notes here and there — things like “puny ego” and “nostril hairs” (wtf!) and "perimenopause" and “Ram Dass” and “humans human-ing” — but actual writing feels elusive. Still, I find myself with a rare open afternoon, and since last night’s storm cleared the humidity making it comfortable to sit in the shade with my laptop, I have come here to write something.
What that something is — that is the question.
Clients often ask me about my writing practice. The perception, I think, is that I write a lot. And I suppose it’s not untrue; I write lots of bits and pieces, snippets, moments, observations, sometimes poems. Clearly I have some notion in my own head, though, of what “writing” means and what “a lot” means, because I often find myself surprised at that perception. I don’t feel like I’m writing a lot. Maybe it’s because those kinds of short bits are so second-nature to me that I forget to “count” them. Maybe it’s because I rarely sit down these days for a long stretch of writing. Maybe it’s because I’m not working on a capital-T Thing, like a book. Regardless, I know there is a particular kind of writing I’m missing and needing, which is this.
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Two nights ago, we were talking about gender, as we often do. Something about being “hyperfemme” came up. Now, when you hear the word “hyperfemme,” what do you picture? I picture make-up and dresses and someone who makes things beautiful and catches the eyes of strangers as she passes them on the street. I picture someone who is at home in her body, perhaps in love with her curves, nurturing and soft. What I don’t tend to picture, to be honest, is myself. Except for the nurturing and soft part — I will cop to that. But I certainly didn’t get the make-up gene, if there is such a thing.
On the other hand, I shave my legs and love the feeling of smoothness, and delight in natural, wild beauty — think spring blossoms on steroids, lilacs and jasmine scenting the air, a chickadee whistling sweetly in the trees that line the edge of our driveway. I cry often and easily, want everyone to be happy and feel loved and cared for, and have shaped my life and work to be a gentle place to land for folks.
On the inside, I so often feel rougher than any of that. I feel clumsy, self-conscious, awkward, undeveloped somehow, as if I didn’t get a series of memos other femme women got (even as I know this is silly and absurd, but so often these kinds of thoughts are just that). I don’t have a knack for fashion.
I generally think of myself as being independent and — dare I say — strong. As if this was in any way in opposition to femme! (Hello, binary. Goodbye, binary.)
One thing that came up while we were talking was that I also like having other people do things. Not because I don’t want to break a nail — they never grow long enough to break — but because I enjoy being taken care of. I enjoy someone else installing the a/c, changing the oil, and shoveling the driveway. And it was then, as we touched on that, that tears welled up. I felt defensive. Those things I just listed? I can do them. Through my own insecurities, I misinterpreted being seen as being diminished, though this was the furthest thing from my person’s intention and she immediately apologized for inadvertently hurting my feelings.
I ended up having a good cry, the kind that brews for a while without finding external form or expression before finally spilling over, like a series of tributaries that haven’t yet found their outlet, that bigger body of water into which to spill that can hold them all. I turned onto my right side and she held me for a while, just us two in silence, breathing, being. After a bit, I turned back over and shared with her some of what has been stirring for me.
And what is that? Something like the opposite of radical self-love.
It pains me to say this, since there is definitely a voice in my head, a “should” voice, telling me that I’m supposed to have this part in the bag by now. I’m in my late 40s! We talked about how I have been swimming against the “not enough” current the past few weeks, and how tiring it is, how tyrannical really.
We talked about Ram Dass, who himself experienced anxiety and depression and all kinds of neuroses, and through his practice came to see all of this as his human predicament, one he could observe neutrally, even lovingly, without the harsh judgment that only makes those already difficult states of being more painful.
Can I embrace the aspects of my being that are hyperfemme AND know I am deeply capable? Of course! So why would I take the former as criticism? My wife certainly didn’t mean it as such, quite the opposite.
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In my heart of hearts, I love myself. I really do. I love that I am loving. I love that I am silly and serious and shy and enthusiastic and attentive. I love that I have devoted my life to being as honest as possible, including with myself. I love that I always come back to practice, and that practice is what saves me from my own tendencies towards perfectionism and all of the suffering that brings.
My puny ego, though? Whew. It is a small but mighty beast. A dictator that hijacks my nervous system and bellows, “Do more! What’s next! Look at what they’re doing! You’re behind! You’re not thinking big enough!”
It is, as I said, exhausting. Emotionally and mentally, contending with this barrel-chested inner general leaves me feeling insufficient, too needy, too scattered, not this or that enough — the pendulum of “not enough” and “too much” in full swing, trapping me in an endless-feeling round of self-imposed battering.
Instead of focusing on all of the things I love about my life, all of the ways in which I feel deeply grateful and blessed, depression nips at my heels, like a school of tiny fish — harmless but unpleasant. I try to keep swimming, but when I’m pushing against old currents of self-criticism, tire quickly. Then I just want to abandon my to-do list and go nap all afternoon.
Now, you know I love napping. But there is a difference between taking rest in a genuinely restorative way and shutting down to a degree because it seems easier than getting centered again.
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Yesterday morning, a little emotionally hungover from crying, I felt better. I made a new list and followed through on some things I’d been circling around or putting off. That felt good! It also felt good to let my wife love me. To let myself be loved. And to return, again, to knowing that loving myself is essential. It’s an inside job, as the saying goes.
I ordered “The Body Is Not an Apology” as well as the accompanying workbook, by Sonya Renee Taylor, which I’ve been wanting to read for some time now, and recognized (again) that there is, in fact, nothing “wrong” with me. Being human is not wrong. Being human is, as Ram Dass taught, the curriculum we’re taking here in Human School.
The key — for me, anyway — is to remember that this particular school doesn’t have grades or awards. It has learning, connection, struggle, ease, grief, joy, laughter, sadness, moods, confusion, peonies, allergies, honeybees, frozen pizza for dinner again, and change. Always change.
One thing I hear from clients across the board — people of different genders, ages, and reasons for working with me — is the fear or belief that they’re not enough. From afar, meaning with anyone who isn’t me, I’m able to hold space for people to look at where that is not actually true. Nobody ever has to look far; it’s like sweeping a layer of dust from a beautiful surface — the shine is easy to uncover.
Of course, here I am, in classic fashion teaching/practicing what I have to learn: No one can do self-compassion for us. No one can tell you who you are or who you’re not. No one can know what you need or want or fear or hunger for better than you — unless you tell them.
So it becomes my job, in addition to my job of working to support others in untying this holy knot, to give myself the same grace, the same spaces, the same time, the same radical acceptance that I extend to others. And while this is work I may choose to do quietly, offline, sharing some about it here also feels important to me lest I cater to a belief that letting you see this “side” of me is somehow wrong.
God, we humans! We are something. That’s for sure. When I can see myself in this light, with a grin even and a shake of my head, wow does that help lighten the load.
I remember seeing a bumper sticker a long time ago: “Don’t believe everything you think.” Maybe its counterpart would be, “Enough,” a word, a message, that (perhaps ironically) I can’t seem to get enough of. Maybe the day will come when that’s no longer true, and if I’m completely real, I have had a good number of those days already. They just get lost in the static and the storms.
So this is me, coming back, again. Returning, again. Practicing out loud, again. Not believing everything I think, again. And saying, I am enough. Even if I never create another single thing (unlikely, but still a good thought experiment), I would still be enough.
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It reminds me of being a few months into a new job and a colleague noticing my tension around my performance.
“Jena,” she advised, “You already got the job. You can relax now.”
Now, if I broaden that message out and imagine G-d or some other messengers telling me that I already got the job of being Jena and it’s ok to just relax, I would like to think I’d listen.
Maybe that’s what this is really about. Permission to relax. Permission to take time to just listen. Permission to be me, all of me — the hyperfemme parts, the responsible and responsive parts, the creative parts, the boring parts, the shaky parts, the imperfect parts. All the parts make up a whole. They don’t need to be parsed out, laid bare, fixed, defended, or improved.
Imagine that, comes a little voice. OK, I say. Better yet, the voice says, embody that. Be that. Be you.