I got home to 8 people.
It's normal now, but I'm still not used to it.
My room is full of other people's stuff
they knew when I would be home and they could have picked it up
they made a dinner with things I don't eat
and generally my house felt like it had no space for me
so I cried until the stories were joined by all the other stories from my childhood and forever
and I cried until they all dropped away
I cried until I found my responsibility, where I felt dropped by me.
It took MAYBE 5 minutes.
Then I cleaned the dish I needed to make the dinner I'd been planning on making, before I knew my family would be in my home cooking for everyone. (How quickly I can become entitled to a resource I didn't even know would be offered!)
I rejoined the vibe when I was matching it.
I was entitled in every way to bring these stories to my family members, or to just bring my grief, but what I really wanted was to be on their vibe.
They had no responsibility, because they have no *ability,* to bring me to their vibe. Like double-dutch, it is on me to jump in on time, ready to keep the rhythm.
If I were to share my grief with them, they would surely join MY vibe, but again, that was not my preference. I can be on my own vibe alone, when it's not matching theirs.
If I would feel righteous in asking others to join me in my vibe, it must be a sacred and worthy experience.
If I would want it for my loved ones, if I would want it as a shared experience, why wouldn't I want it all to myself?
Times arise when our griefs pour forth. I trust my family to be holding compelling vibes of grief now and then. I trust them so much, I don't have to call us there. We will be in that together when grief is the theme of our togetherness.
Tonight the theme of togetherness was a joy party.
I spent my whole drive back from a weekend of partying planning to get back to work.
Then I got home to a party. I wasn't on the same vibe, and my first move was to blame their vibe for not including me.
Me? What is me? I built this home. I welcomed these particular people. That was ME.
I knew the bullshit wasn't me. Just more grief, choking on love that is pouring into unloved places. Places that are only lacking for love because of how *I am protecting them.* I am guarding them from sight, where nobody has the opportunity to love them.
Some would say that's what I did when I chose to cry alone in my room instead of bringing 8 people to a whole other vibe.
The truth is, I have so much practice being met in my grief and "hard" feelings. I don't need practice with that.
I need practice with letting in the actual love, letting the party be for me, entering it with respect and THEN claiming the tuning that I want. I need practice with letting what is coming at me BE LOVE and not distracting it with my misunderstandings, misinterpretations, and existential-grief-based projections.
Because now it IS love.
Every single thing coming at me is love. The only way it stops being love is if I treat it like it's something other than love.
I can only complain it is not tuned to my VERY MOST EXQUISITE PREFERENCES, some of which I have not even truly shared or offered to myself lately or advocated for in any way. This is nobody's business but my own. Even *I* struggle to see it until I look slowly and patiently, witnessing the fullness of my own experience and preferences.
If I treat this *lack of tuning* as a lack of love, I am missing my own responsibility and disrespecting and distracting from the truth of all the love coming for me.
This is a way I used to regulate how much love was allowed. I literally pushed it away, acting like it wasn't love, rather than honoring it as love and tuning it from there.
I see it all over the place, all the time, in the name of authenticity, with respect for the economy of emergency, communication informed by the belief that the worst feelings need the most attention.
No.
No to the whole premise that there are "worse" feelings.
The way I see it, there are not even any "bad" feelings. I didn't keep my grief to myself because it is "bad." I kept it to myself because it was wildly off the vibe. With respect to the collective, I'll field this experience on my own.
I wanted what they had. I wanted it to be for me, and it WAS. It was for me as soon as I showed up to it and let it be for me. Sometimes this takes some curation on my part, curation of my inner world.
When we're addicted to receiving, to *getting* what we want, to extracting what we want from a situation, we go again and again to lack, back to wanting, because wanting is the precursor to receiving.
In this case, there was nothing other people were going to do to GIVE ME the experience that was already there for me. My reality was a reality of HAVING, which means if I arrive in an experience of lack, I walk myself through receiving to arrive at the ability to acknowledge my having.
And because I joined the vibe, we had a whole party going when three more people showed up, 11 of us in total, typical random weeknight, dancing in the kitchen, playing music on the porch, cuddling in the living room, baking dessert and eating ribeye with our fingers.
Five minutes of me crying, shimmying myself into my big girl pants, and now I get to remember that working and partying are the same fucking thing for me.
My job is to love people, especially this community. My job is to share about that, and I can type away while surrounded on the porch, while other conversations happen and guitar plays.
My family is not an inconvenience, the people I love are not burdens or nuisances. If it seems like there is no space for me, I may sit on top of someone else. I may brush against, overlap, squeeze in, squeeze by.
Of course there are times I need privacy, and privacy was available to me.
I knew it wasn't what I wanted when I didn't choose it, when I wanted more to complain about how my loved ones were NOT INCLUDING ME.
My obvious desire is to be included. I clearly want to be in the thick of it with them. (This is where negative desires stymie us entirely. When I complain, it's a negative desire. It seems like it's about someone else until I phrase it positively.)
When I recognized my positive desire, I looked at who could really make it happen for me—it turned out, predictably, I am the one.
"I am the one" is a core tenet of my interactions in relationship and community.
It sounds simple. It may even sound individualistic or selfish.
But this is a highly nuanced principle, in actual application.
This is the principle where I hold myself to exquisite standards of OFFERING respect and practical love to my (carefully chosen) loved ones.
I hold myself again to a standard of experiencing what they're offering to me AS LOVE.
I chose them.
I choose ongoing relationship with them.
I am not insane.
I chose them for a good reason, and if I'm experiencing something other than love, it's probably only on me to adjust my positioning.
I am the one. I am the one to keep my eyes on the REALITY of what I want to curate in my home and community.
If I want it to be more loving, I am the one to be more loving.
If I want it to be more forgiving, or to offer more repair, I forgive and I make amends for my own behavior.
If I want it to be for me I receive it, I receive what of it is for me, and I make sure that what I offer into the system is FOR ME. I cooked myself that ribeye and offered it around when it was done—it was for me, and it was also for everyone. It was what I wanted the party to have for the party to be for me, so I brought it.
I want to enjoy experiences with my loved ones. I don't want to rely on them for my needs and be righteously upset and depleted if they fail. I want to receive of what they abundantly offer, knowing my needs are ALWAYS provided for by redundant systems, most of them maintained playfully and easily by me.
I am the one. This simple principle girds my interactions with my community, the way I steward the investment of my time, energy, and attention.
"I am the one" is the first of three highly nuanced principles I'll be teaching on the Village Principles Masterclass.
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LOVE this Hannah. Thank you for all your writings and work.