“When you feel anything unpleasant, that’s the only way that you understand what other people are going through. You breathe it into the heart, and there’s a sense that the heart expands and expands as wide as it needs to expand in order to hold it or open to it, relax with it.”—Pema Chödrön
Are you resisting your own power?
Your own pleasure?
Your own expansion?
Because you don’t want to feel the pain of inadequacy you have to walk through to get there?
I know I have. And I know it’s f—ing painful!
Today I wrote and sent a letter to a poet/writer I’ve admired for years. Her name is Terry Tempest Williams and I’ve been deeply moved by her work. No—what I mean to say is, her work gives me permission to more fully be myself as a writer and as a human being.
Writing her a letter was a powerful moment for me.
I’ve wanted to do it for years. I’ve started several letters on my computer and never finished any of them, and of course never sent them.
Today I wrote it by hand in my journal so I wouldn’t over edit. I sealed the envelope and walked to the mailbox and dropped it in.
I should feel good. I should feel glad to have done something I’ve wanted to do and put off for so long. There is a part of me that does, but mostly I feel sick to my stomach.
It’s because I’m telling myself I could have done better.
I’m telling myself there is a perfect letter.
I fumbled my way through the end of the letter. I didn’t ultimately know what I wanted or what I was asking of her, except simply, “Would you be my friend?” or “Can we be in conversation together?” But I didn’t write that.
I was afraid to ask that. Instead, I wrote in a way that presumed that she would not want to be in conversation with me. My body held the assumption that she would perceive me as someone who was weird, stalkish, a freak-fan, invasive.
I wrote with an energy, and with words that were in the form of an apology for myself.
I felt, deep down in my bones, that I could not put myself on equal footing with her, despite the fact that she is a woman who writes in a style similar to mine, who lives in the very places I have lived, who enters territories of the heart and spirit that I intimately dwell in. She is a human who lives and breathes and struggles and feels her own aliveness just as I do.
But no, how could I be her equal? She’s well-published, well known, better, and more than enough. And I am not.
I know that isn’t true, but it’s how I felt.
Coming to this realization was excruciating. It was precisely the reason why I knew I had to send the letter no matter what.
The truth is, there is no perfect letter. There is only the real letter. The written letter. The sent letter.
My letter was not the vision of perfection I wanted it to be. It was messy. It had scribbles and squeezed in words. It held an energy that has been operating in me since I was young—an energy of not being powerful, of giving my power away, by assuming that I am not worth being in conversation with.
But I know it contained my truth.
As I walked back from the mailbox feeling this awful feeling, I asked myself—is this what others feel? Is this how painful and hard it is to reveal your truth and let yourself be seen as you are?
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Is this what it means to desire the shit out of feeling my own goodness, power, pleasure, and expansion, while simultaneously being held back by the question:
Am I good enough?
In that moment I had compassion.
Compassion for myself.
Compassion for every human being out there who might even come close to feeling the inadequacy I was feeling.
Connecting to this brought me pleasure. I expanded.
This horrible feeling became a source of power.
I don’t know if Terry is ever going to write me back or if I’ll ever get to be in conversation with her in the way I would like, but what I do know is that by writing it and sending it, I stepped more fully into my own power and enough-ness.
This afternoon, I wrote a new segment for my book that I’ve been struggling with for quite some time. It is about the delicate intersection of power, sex, and spirituality, and how they have shown up in my life.
My letter allowed me to have an intimate encounter with myself that I’ve needed and wanted to have. That encounter opened me up to write a story I have been resisting and unable to write up until now.
Do you want to step more fully into your power and expand into the pleasure it brings?
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What vision of perfection is holding you back?
What might open up for you if you feel what you don’t want to feel
and you do it anyway?
How might this feeling be a source of power?
Get out your notebook, or open a new document and answer these questions knowing that the horrible feeling you feel as you step toward what you want can be the source of your power.