Pep Talk
On Self-Trust
Hi, Friend.
In this tiny weekend pep talk, I’m going to share something personal. If you’ve read my memoir, you’re probably thinking, “So what?” I mean, yes, I’ve shared a lot about my life, but there are also plenty of things I’ve held back. If you’ve read my book, you know that, too. Not everything is for others.
I’m sharing this moment because I’m seeing so much flux in my own circles: friends who are changing careers or facing health challenges; friends who are newly single again or whose kids are off to college. Maybe this is you. These days I’m a single, self-employed writer, and I’m raising two incredible kids. Months ago I told my therapist that I love my life as it is, but I still sometimes envy people who have spouses, or more stable careers, or both. That sense of security, that peace of mind, must be nice, right?
I needed to hear what she said next, even though it wasn't new information.
“That security, as you know from experience, is an illusion.”
She was right, of course. Anything can happen. Nothing is guaranteed. This is from Keep Moving:
I once wrote in a poem that the future is empty. The poem was inspired by one of those questions my daughter asked me when she was in preschool.
Future
What is the future?
Everything that hasn’t happened yet, the future
is tomorrow and next year and when you’re old
but also in a minute or two, when I’m through
answering. The future is nothing I imagined
as a child: no jet packs, no conveyor-belt sidewalks,
no bell-jarred cities at the bottom of the sea.
The trick of the future is that it’s empty,
a cup before you pour the water. The future
is a waiting cup, and for all it knows, you’ll fill it
with milk instead. You’re thirsty. Every minute
carries you forward, conveys you, into a space
you fill. I mean the future will be full of you.
It’s one step beyond the step you’re taking now.
What you’ll say next until you say it.What I mean is that the future is empty even though we tell ourselves we’ve already filled it. We plan as if somehow those mental blueprints fill the future. We have to imagine some control over the future so that we can bear going there, into “the great wild beyond,” but the truth is, it’s impossible to predict. The life you’ve lived for the past five, ten, or twenty years may not be the life you live five, ten, or twenty years from now. The partner you expect to be there may or may not be there. The work you do now may change. The money you’re saving, the house you’re paying down, the apartment you hope to keep, the children you’re raising . . .
You see what I mean. Is this freeing or heartbreaking? Comforting or terrifying? All of it, all at once?
When I was married, I’d thought of my future as being full….But the future had always been empty. The future is no less uncertain now.
Our lives are all subject to change, no matter how solid they appear. You can lose—or choose to leave—your job or your relationship. I know that. But then she said something I’m still thinking about.
“Do you trust Maggie?”
Oof. Have you ever been having a conversation with someone—a therapist, a friend, a parent, a mentor—and they say something that makes you feel sucker punched in the best way? This was one of those moments. I’m responsible for my life; do I trust myself with it?
Yes. I trust myself to show up consistently, to act with integrity in my relationships and in my work, and to keep my priorities straight. I don’t succeed at everything I try, but I’ve never quit on myself. I’ve got me.
"Let me fall if I must fall. The one I will become will catch me." —Baal Shem Tov
Maybe your life doesn’t look like you thought it would right now. Maybe you’re anxious, wondering how it’ll all work out. Maybe, like me, you’re at peace with your choices, but you’re also keeping an open mind about what the future might hold. If you’re sure of only one thing in this moment, be sure of yourself. Trust yourself. You’ve got you.
Love,
Maggie
I’m sure there are other ways to do it (though I suspect they are all traumatic-feeling as they’re happening), but I have to admit my divorce was the best lesson for learning that anything can happen, and having my own back is the only way to meet that great unknown with gladness. Before that, I had so little genuine sense of self-worth. I placed my sense of value and safety outside myself, in being chosen, in playing my part in the story of heterosexual nuclear family well.
Having that container shatter and feeling myself pour out the cracks was like the world ending, like tipping over the edge and plunging down a waterfall with no bottom. Like dying but also still having to work and parent and pay bills and do the dishes, which is a disorientation I wouldn’t wish to experience again.
It might seem strange, then, to recognize in hindsight the necessity of it all, but it does feel that way now. That I was gripping so tightly to the life I thought would save and redeem me, and the only way to get me to understand how to stop doing that, to stop imagining that someone or something else could, or should, do that, was to pry my fingers off and pitch me over the edge.
It is odd to feel so grounded in myself while also viscerally aware of how unknown everything is. It’s not unlike standing on a precipice all the time. But I also look around at my life now here at the edge of it all, which is so thoroughly mine, and which I couldn’t have imagined before, and I feel my hands open and face out. It’s a different prayer pose than I was raised to, but it feels deeply right.
Thank you for this. Have been having a very “wobbly” day and this was just what I needed to read.