Week by Week #2
more thoughts on middle spaces & taking ourselves with us as we grow
Hello all,
This week I’m on a restorative holiday with my family in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. This is our first time to really get away as a family since we moved from the UK and our time here has felt like a deep exhale. We are a few hundred miles south of Kansas City, so the daffodils are already in bloom and trees are regaining their color. Spring is indeed coming!
A couple of weeks ago after the last Viriditas newsletter in which I shared about some of my faith shifts & process of reconstruction, I received a private message from a friend who described her own longing for a former place and how it shapes her. She resonated with my longing for Cambridge and shared some of her experiences with me. She said the advice she was given was to let that former version of herself die so that a new version could take root.
I’ve been chewing on this a lot since then, and there’s something of it that I like and am challenged by, but I am struggling with the idea that we need to kill off former versions of ourselves, or our loves, to survive and thrive in something new. This is not Survivor Island. There is room for all of you wherever you are. And if for some reason you find there isn’t enough room? Maybe it’s not the right space for you. I think of Glennon Doyle who said something like “you are not too much for people. And if you are, those aren’t your people.” Oof.