Well, you certainly know how to make a person feel loved. Thank you all for your kind comments and messages this week, after I posted about my slow return. I have read them all and let them fill my heart up in a way I haven’t really allowed in years.
Coming back here, even tentatively, has felt like a homecoming of sorts. A return to somewhere familiar and somewhere new. I’m sure there’s a word for that feeling in another language but I don’t know what it is.
Side note: English seems so inadequate a lot of the time, don’t you think? I mean, just look at these words for which English has no equivalent and tell me they’re not perfect:
pelinti: a Ghanian word meaning to move hot food around in your mouth, like when you take a bite of pizza that’s scorching and you do that weird thing with your jaw and breath and try to cool it down while not letting it touch the inside of your mouth. (We’ve all been there.)
shemomedjamo: a word from the Georgian language that means “I accidentally ate the whole thing”. Which, funnily enough, often follows on from a moment of pelinti in my world.
treppenwitz: a German word meaning “staircase joke”, otherwise known as thinking of the perfect, witty reply after the fact. Maybe even on the stairs as you’re leaving. This one feels deeply personal to me, although I never come up with the perfect reply on the stairs, more like weeks later. (#slowliving #slowthinking)
boketto: the Japanese word meaning the act of gazing vacantly into the distance without thinking. Let’s be honest, this is more my speed.
gigil: A Filipino word meaning the urge to pinch or squeeze something that is irresistibly cute and a feeling I must supress every time I see a floofy little boopy boi (otherwise known as a dog, if you’re normal) on the street.
Anyway…
I felt something resonate when I hit publish on my last post and felt it again every time I read one of your replies. At first, I thought it might be because I know many of you are travelling your own path of living with chronic illness. But the closer I looked, the more I saw it went beyond that.
What I saw was a common thread that wound through everyone’s words. And upon closer inspection, I saw that the thread was actually made of twin strands, wrapped so tightly around each other as to be almost indistinguishable.
The first thread? A sense of lostness.
So many of us feel adrift right now. And of course we do. There is so much difficult stuff to contend with in the everyday, on top of the challenges and traumas the past few years have brought us. These look different for everyone, but not so different that we can’t relate to each other.
Which is precisely what makes the other thread so beautiful.
Because that second thread? It’s hope.
We’re hopeful for community, so we show up in these corners of the internet with kind words and open hearts.
We’re hopeful for connection, so we offer our own experiences as a way of saying, “You’re not alone.”
We’re hopeful for better days, so we start by creating better moments and we share them with each other.
Lost and hopeful.
It’s as succinct a description of how I feel as I can find right now. I do feel lost, but I also feel hopeful when I look alongside me, and see you.
You’ve reminded me that it’s okay to feel all at sea. It’s human and valid and probably necessary. But it’s also okay to find hope there. Twin threads, wrapped so tightly around each other as to be almost indistinguishable.
So, thank you, again. For embodying kindness and compassion and lostness and hope and the messy, joyful, tear-stained, delight-tinged pain of being human, and then directing some of that my way.
Here’s to you this weekend.
In hope and love and bucketloads of care,
Brooke xx
PS. Quite a few people asked me to re-open paid subscriptions after my last post, so I’ve turned them on this morning. If you were already a paid subscriber (thank you 💚) you will be charged again as normal starting this month. If you’re not a paid subscriber and would like to be, or if you would like to change your subscription type, you can do so below:
Something slow and sweet for your weekend
on napping letting go tumbling in drifting off to, the heavy warmth the stretching breath the gentle rhythm and, ringing quiet leaden limbs slowing heart until, tender hands pull me slowly from the depths. b.m.
I’m currently:
Reading: Fairy Tale by Stephen King and it is wonderful
Listening: to my dogs’ gentle snores and the currawongs outside
Feeling: grateful
Looking: forward
Letting: go of the shoulds and tossing out the rulebook
Goodness, Brooke you have hit the nail on the head! Which makes me think...
You know, you changed my life! In 2019, struggling and VERY lost I did your online retreat. The very first exercise of discovering my values was a game changer for me. Then, during a later podcast you briefly mentioned Elaine Aron's book The Highly Sensitive Person. This led me to discover my own sensitivity and make sense of so much of my life. The 'lostness' and effort of constantly striving led me to completely burn out and at the beginning of this year I walked away from my 30 yr nursing career at 50. Now poorer but so much happier! AND, it has been returning to the notes I made during the Slow Home Retreat, my values (which include simplicity, home and nature) and my new awareness as a HSP that gives me hope. This is a really hard world to live in at the moment. I have stepped away from social media, from watching / reading too much of the news cycle and from political / activist space I felt I had to be involved in to make a difference. I just can't do it anymore. What I can do is take care of myself and my family, be a friend and participant in my local community. I don't know what the answer is to 'coping with life'? I just know that I'm doing the best that I can and that you have helped immeasurably in getting me to this point. It is life affirming and validating to read your words and be in a space that is filled with kindness and compassion. xxxx
Wonderful words, in every sense, thank you Brooke 💕 I think lost and hopeful resonates with so many of us right now. My favourite word atm is metanoia which I am using to give me courage on my “journey of changing one’s heart, mind, self and way of life” and this will include enjoying naps ! 👏👏👏💕