Love Note #9: The Awkwardness of Emerging
Ok…it's time to talk about it.
Is it just me or are any of you finding it awkward, uncomfortable, or weird to be back in connection and relationship after the last two years of wearing masks and social distancing?
Are you fully back out in the world? Inching out? Still mostly home?
What are you noticing as you emerge back into community and intimate connection?
As I wrote last week, I’m beginning to get out more and as I do, I’ve noticed sometimes the social awkwardness that comes with it.
Little things like when someone gets on the treadmill right next to me or hugging people not in my former bubble, or greeting new people with a hug or handshake.
It is as awkward as a teenager’s first kiss.
Not because of the newness of the circumstance but I am noticing a newness in me.
I’ve changed.
The shifts in the last two years reconfigured my core and foundation. I know that sounds extreme and dramatic, but let me share what I mean:
I broke through a deep unconscious pattern of unworthiness that had been running my life.
I healed connections with my family and other relationships that allowed me to increase my unconditional expression of love.
I grieved (and still am) the way I have unconsciously participated in the cultural paradigm that undervalues Black people and people of color and I am deep in the unwinding of the ways I have internalized it.
Self-loving and nourishment is no longer something I get to when I’m done with the important things.
I discovered myself as a Writer and prioritize nurturing my creativity and its gifts.
I know myself in a way that I didn’t just two years ago.
And so as I am emerging into the activity of the world, I look similar yet feeling completely different on the inside.
It is both exciting and sometimes awkward and tiring because of the attention it asks of me to make sure I am updating my situations as I go along so I don’t fall into old habits.
It is easy to be impatient in this kind of emergence and growth - wanting to jump quickly to result, to bypass the discomfort of things forming, to just get onto the next phase of things.
That would be however, like rushing something that’s been slow-cooking.
It takes the time it takes to grow, to birth, to emerge.
So in what ways can we be with ourselves in life in the emergence?? What can support us as we allow ourselves and others to be new, to meet them again like the first time because none of us are the same.
Can we hold the ichy tension of our own full and authentic emergence?
This month I’ve decided to take on this question as a monthly theme.
Each Sunday Love Note I’ll explore an aspect of it, and every Wednesday I will go live to talk about an aspect of it in my evening prayer and reflection practice group.
You are invited. Here’s the link. Bring/post your questions your comments your thoughts.
What a perfect time on this first day of the month to ask ourselves – “What is emerging in my life that I currently cannot see?”
Let’s explore what’s emerging…together.
As always…
Let love guide the way,
Angela