(This voiceover is an audio version of the newsletter below. It’s unedited, so includes things like our washing machine and the wind outside. If you like/need to listen to these posts I hope you enjoy it anyway!)
Wanna hear something “hilarious”?
After I hit publish on last week’s letter – all about the stress-reducing powers of diaphragmatic breathing – our overzealous, highly-reactive pug/beagle, Joey, put both of his front legs through our glass door when the postie knocked.
Cue shocked postie, shocked dogs, shocked me and Ben. Blood on the floor, shards of shattered glass everywhere (and not the safety kind either, the slicey kind), a huge hole in the door and the kind of weird laughter that bubbles up from your stomach in the face of something ludicrous that could have gone very badly but thankfully didn’t.
“How did this even happen?” were the words I kept saying because, “Holy shit!” proved unhelpful.
I often say that I write about slow living not because I’m good at it, but because I need it so much.
Turns out the same can be said for the stress-reducing powers of diaphragmatic breathing. I wrote about it, and BLAM! (or rather, CRASH!) here comes an opportunity to put my own advice into practise.
But I can tell you right now I was not thinking about my breath as I was checking on the postie (he was more worried about the dogs) or patching up Joey’s feet (he’s fine thankfully, and PRO-TIP: Bandaids work just as well on puppers as humans) or sweeping up glass or helping Ben tape sheets of cardboard over the door.
It wasn’t until I was hanging the clothes on the line later that I noticed my breath at all – how high it was in my chest; how it felt faster and shallower than normal. I realised I could feel my heart racing too, and my shoulders were sitting high and tight around my ears.
Even then, my response wasn’t to say, “How wonderful! An opportunity to use the tools I just wrote about!” No. Instead, I took myself on a spiralling little detour to Shame Town.
The inner-voice told me I was ridiculous for writing about stress-reduction when I was experiencing stress. She told me I was cringe for writing about slow living when I often don’t feel like I live slow. (Then she told me I was double-cringe for using the word “cringe” like a Young Person.)
I mean, when you look at it, she continued, who am I to write about anything at all? I don’t have the answers. I don’t know what I’m doing most of the time. I walk around led by a messy mix of intuition and values and emotion and rationality, never entirely sure where I’ll end up. Just a big, chaotic, dog-smashed-door mess of a human. How dare I take up space?
For past versions of myself, this would have been an invitation to continue on past Shame Town, straight down Imposter Syndrome Highway before making a sharp left into the sleepy little hamlet of A Bulleted List of All the Reasons I Suck.
(Told you I write about slow because I need it…)
But the current version of me decided to do something novel. Something I’ve been playing around with lately. Maybe born of getting older and giving fewer shits, maybe born of the past couple of years of pent-up frustration. I don’t know. But current me decided to get over myself.
To do something that might make me feel a little bit better, and then get on with my day. As messy and chaotic and door-smashy as it might be.
So, I stopped hanging out the clothes for a minute. I breathed in deeply. I held that breath in my belly, felt the sun on my head, listened to the finches in the shrub nearby, and slowly let my breath out. Then I did it again. And again.
And do you know what changed? Not a whole lot.
But I stopped spiralling. I chuckled at the ridiculousness of it. I bent down and gave Joey a head scratch and told him he was a silly boy. Then I came inside and wrote this.
Would anything really have been different if I didn’t take those thirty seconds to breathe into my belly? I’ve got no idea. But I know my breath didn’t hitch quite as high in my chest afterwards. My hands stopped shaking. My shoulders still felt tight, but that’s not unusual. I felt as though I left something behind when I breathed out.
I think sometimes that’s all there is to do. Breathe in, breathe out, leave something behind and move on.
Because we’re not obligated to repeat the same patterns of behaviour forever. We can grow and evolve. We can notice things about ourselves and change accordingly.
Now, that was supposed to be a delightful segue into the actual purpose of this letter. I was going to tell you that the first episode of The Tortoise podcast was ready for your ears. I was going to tell you how excited I was to share it. About how fun it is to reimagine the podcast with Ben and look at slowness through a different lens. How clever and intentional we’re being by committing to only one episode a month.
That’s what I would have told you in a perfect world, anyway.
But we don’t live in a perfect world. We live in a world where everyone in this house except me has been sick in bed all week (the fact that it wasn’t me in bed was, I’ll admit, a nice change). We live in a world where dogs smash glass doors and you burn the sweet potato and stain your favourite jumper and things happen that throw you for a loop.
And so we breathe, leave things behind, and move on.
The Tortoise podcast is coming, I promise. And it will be good and fun and slow. But in the meantime, should you ever need to know, yes, bandaids do work on dogs’ paws.
Currently…
Looking at my bedside reading pile with much excitement. Jane Doe and the Quill of All Tales by Jeremy Lachlan came out last week and I can’t wait to dive in. Then I’ve got the first book in Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight series, The Way of Kings, lined up next. I’ve always been hesitant to read his books (I’m trying to read books from a more diverse range of authors because I’ve noticed a tendency to pick up the same names over and over) but have had a few people recommend them recently, so we’ll see how it goes. I’m deep in a fantasy genre run at the moment and am pretty happy about it.
Wanting more book recommendations (always). If you have any good fantasy or magical realism recs, throw ‘em my way. Bonus points for middle-grade and YA!
Loving Ali Vingiano’s substack,
. Ali is a screen-writer who has decided “the suffering writer trope is out. taking care of yourself creatively & spiritually is in.” Sign me up.Putting this savoury cashew cream all over everything. I made eggplant schnitzel the other night (sub breadcrumbs for almond meal *GF chefs kiss*) and then used the leftovers (plus leftover pizza sauce and cashew cream) to make eggplant parmigiana the next night. Winning.
Reminding myself to be patient. Always. And all ways.
Join us for a Values Workshop
Just a reminder that all paying subscribers will get Week 2 of my Values Workshop delivered straight to your inbox on Sunday morning. The conversation around the first week’s exercises has been brilliant and thought-provoking, and I can’t wait to see how this week goes.
If you’re not yet a paying subscriber, you can join us by signing up below. It costs $5/month or $50/year and is one concrete way to help support my work and gain access to the workshop and my full archive (plus regular bonus posts).
Okay, that’s it for the week. Here’s to breathing, leaving things behind, and moving on.
Take care,
Brooke xx
Why my dog is wearing bandaids
Sounds to me like you are nailing being an adult. I’m continually telling my 20something kids adulthood is having no idea but acting like you know what you are doing. If you are confused, unsure just winging it you are nailing adulthood. You get bonus points for stopping the Shame cycle before the crash landing at the end of the ride.
Hi Brooke, A magical realism book that I can't get out of my head after reading it a year ago is Lonely Castle in the Mirror. It's translated from Japanese and is wonderful! Em x