Hello Brains!
I’ve been posting a bit on Twitter about what I’ve been going through lately,
and, um...it's not great.
A few of you said that it’s helpful to know that I struggle, too.
I do.
And I forget sometimes that you guys can’t see that.
(intro)
I watched Into the Woods for the first time last week and I loved the metaphor of
the woods as this place of change, this slightly scary, kind of exciting place that you venture
into so that you can go after whatever it is that you want.
I think I spent a lot of my life living at the edge of those woods,
or encouraging other people through their woods, just being there to support them…
but the last few years, I’ve been getting really comfortable with going into the woods
myself.
The way was clear, the light was good, and over the last few years, I started this channel,
I learned about my brain and how to even enjoy it sometimes.
Um...
I got engaged, I got married, I got to give a TEDx talk,
I got to quit my job waiting tables and do this full time because of the support that
I get on Patreon, and...it really felt like I had everything figured out.
Like I had done the work and I was being rewarded with my happily ever after.
But sometimes the pursuit of change doesn’t just come with the change we want.
You learn things in the woods, you change, the people around you change, and sometimes
you learn that what you wanted isn’t good for you.
Sometimes you set actions into motion that you can’t predict.
I won’t go into details but a lot of you already know
I’m going through a divorce.
And having to leave home felt like the earthquake that happened in the story (sorry, spoilers)
when everyone thought that they had found their happily ever after.
It was a sudden change, but like in the story, it didn’t come from out of nowhere.
There was a lot that led up to it.
But when something big changes, especially that quickly, there’s this desire to
figure out why it happened and whose fault it is, and so you retrace your steps and their steps
and you place blame but the truth is it’s never one person’s fault,
it's always a joint effort
and the fact is however you ended up here, you’re here --
and suddenly the way isn’t clear, the light isn’t good, and none of the paths look familiar.
Suddenly the story you’re in doesn’t make sense.
The narrator is gone.
And you find yourself lost in the woods with no way back to the life that you knew.
When this happens, you might be angry — with yourself, other people, the woods —
you might try to bargain with them, you might try to pretend everything’s fine and
nothing's really changed,
you might want to give up and leave the woods entirely.
You might feel like you’re not cut out to handle any of this and have no idea how you’re
going to make it through.
That’s grief.
And that’s what I’ve been dealing with.
Um...
Accepting that my life isn’t the same anymore has been really challenging for me.
Letting go of what I had, what I would have had.
Starting over when I thought I would never have to.
I chose to leave, but I didn’t choose the reasons why I felt I had to.
So there's grief.
A lot of grief.
And dealing with this grief has brought up past grief, past loss.
My grandparents, my dad, important people that have guided me in the past
who aren't around to guide me anymore.
Sometimes my grief feels like it might be slipping into depression, because I feel useless
and there’s a part of me that doesn’t care, that doesn’t see how getting through
the woods even matters, because I’ve lost the thread of why I’m even here,
what my role even is in this story.
Which is why this movie was really powerful for me.
A few takeaways that I love from Into the Woods were these:
1. No one is alone, and even those who aren’t around anymore can still guide us.
2. Even when things don’t go the way we want, we learn things, we gain resources.
We’re never truly starting over.
3. And when we have no idea what to do, or we’re overwhelmed by it all to the point that
we're ready to give up, we can start with the small actions we can take.
The father left alone to raise a child can start with “calm the child.”
I can start with “talk about grief.”
It’s going to take me time to make sense of my life again.
And after the emotional earthquake that I’ve gone through, I can’t move through the woods
as quickly as I used to, which is really frustrating.
But there are actions I can take.
It's not hopeless.
I can’t have the life that I knew,
but I can build a new one.
And it won’t be the same.
But it doesn’t have to be the same to be good.
And while the woods aren’t as friendly a place for me as they used to be,
I know I don’t have to face them alone.
No one does.
Thank you, Brains.