It’s been ten years since my first post back in July 2015, and I’ve been thinking for months about how to mark occasion. How do I capture all the threads that have emerged and intertwined, and how do I celebrate with you as honored witness and co-creators? What I’ve discovered in the process of multiple drafts is how many ways there are to tell a story that are all true. The question I’m left with – as perhaps we always are – is what version of the truth I want to tell and therefore live by?
Enjoy this 10-minute post – with links to stand-out posts over the past decaded – or click the title to let me read it to you via the link at the top of the webpage.
There’s the story of my outer life – the things that would make it onto a resume or into conversation at a dinner party. In this version, I embarked on a journey of courage and surrender and believed I’d be rewarded with health, a vibrant and resonant community, and a meaningful vocation. I wanted to chronicle the struggles and victories of my journey so I might later pull threads of wisdom for illuminating the path for others.
I remember the moment I decided to leave my career. I was sitting at my desk, agonizing over how much responsibility I carried alone for a barely livable wage, feeling like a fraud advocating to professionalize a field no one seemed to take seriously, and resenting the tedium for taking me away from teaching and writing about more meaningful things. “I have to believe there’s another way to live,” I thought. “I have to try to find it. If I don’t, I can come back to this and accept that’s as good as it gets.”
In many ways, that’s exactly what happened. Many days I sit at my desk, uncomfortable with the responsibility I carry, feeling like a fraud, and wishing I could just teach and write about meaningful things. My acceptance wavers from begrudging to relieved, but I don’t agonize about it. I now know what it’s like to lose everything in pursuit of a dream. I opened places in myself and bonded with the spirits of nature and the divine in ways I don’t believe would have otherwise been possible.
I value those experiences and the way they’ve deepened and broadened me more than anything. I also had to let go of a lot and make a lot of difficult decisions – and mistakes – through deep isolation, illness, and addiction. And the grief, fear, and isolation of the journey almost killed me. I don’t take a single friend or paycheck for granted anymore. And to me that’s worth missing out on a few adventures and failing to bring some pieces of poetry to life.
That version of the story is perfectly accurate, meaningful, and noble. But there’s another deeper layer that feels just as real; a more unfamiliar and subversive narrative that embodies a way of being instead of just talking about it. As I read back through the posts that you liked and commented on the most, I began to see perhaps what you have been seeing all along: a voice that emerged from time to time with something illuminated and trembling, like a deep sea diver surfacing breathless and radiant with a treasure in their palm. These are not moments of exploration or understanding. These are moments of grace, of contacting the essential unchanging and unchangeable spirit in the core of each of us and pulling something through from the other side.
I read these posts and I am stunned – perhaps as you have been – not by what I am, but by what can come through when I am open, available, and let myself be taken. They are like those late-night conversations – raw and real – when the space between the words trembles with possibility and leaves us peering behind the veil at the great beyond. They are a balm for the one who doubts, forgets, and devalues. And we fall to our knees, as before a beloved guru, with a song of praise in our hearts: “Yes! This is it! This is real and good and true. That is what life is for.”
We want to own these moments, sustain them, recreate them. We try to find the right words to describe them, gather the right people, come up with the right prompts, set the room just right. But whether we contact the divine through solitary writing or conversation with another, at some point we much accept they are divine visitations. And if there’s anything we can do to encourage their presence, it’s embracing a state of breaking – breaking down, breaking apart, breaking open. So I ready myself with courage, honesty, and openness. And when the thing arises that threatens to shake and unsettle me, I let myself break a little – over the beauty of the night sky in winter, over the degraded landscapes, over how I compulsively reject the love and belonging I crave, over how I grasp at those moments of feeling and expressing the divine.
Far from the linear story I imagined of self-improvement and progress, these last 10 years have been a cyclical journey of breaking and coming back together, of despair and redemption, of forgetting and remembering, over and over. It’s a continual descent into the depths of myself from which I’m reborn with a deeper felt understanding of something I’d forgotten and somewhat better equipped to navigate my shifting limitations and the emerging realities of whatever world(s) I inhabit. Through this process, I’m gradually becoming a stronger container for feeling and experience with a more solid central mast in the midst of chaos and uncertainty.
I’m also coming to understand what it means to be connected – not just with my deep self and the more-than-human world, but with you – my fellow humans – in all our wounded, confounding complexity. My past relationships have been primarily about how others supported my healing and ambitions. I wasn’t aware of how vitally connected we are or how profoundly my movements affected you.
Now I better understand that the best of what I give is inextricably bound to you, how the moments in which you and I come together in our honesty and our breaking is what allows the divine to come through to move and guide us all. How we express ourselves and reflect each other enables us to mine our own depths and emerge as fuller versions of ourselves, better able to carry and share the truth we’ve remembered.
I spent a decade moving from one management desk to another. But instead of feeling myself a peripheral actor on a journey of self-actualization, I now feel myself as an inextricable node on a web of mutual care and service. And this is how I believe the earth is trying to heal through us.
May all the words I’ve written serve our greatest and highest good, and the greatest and highest good of all things. May we be ready and willing to recognize and serve it with whatever strength and blessings we’ve been gifted. May we always remember we aren’t the orchestrators, we’re the witnesses and story tellers. And the way we tell the story determines how well we live, die, and remember within it all.
Nancy
As a little anniversary celebration, I compiled a list of the posts with the most likes and comments over the past decade. They cover all the themes of my writing and the outer chapters of my life: transitioning out of a life in Portland, living in spiritual community, moving to San Francisco for wilderness apprenticeship, addiction and auto-immune recovery.
The best part was rereading comments from all of you – what you related to, what you questioned, what moved you, and your encouragement of my writing and my struggle. I read them with a sweet mix of gratitude and sadness. There are so many wonderful people who have moved into and through my life. Whether circumstances changed, mistakes were made, or we simply grew in different directions, I am deeply grateful for you all.
If you’re still reading, it would be wonderful to hear from you in the comments below or via email at nancy@innerwoven.net. I’d love to know what you see and celebrate in my writing and journey, whether you’ve been reading for years or are just catching up. And I’d love to know how my words are moving and serving you. I’ve shifted to sharing less personally about my life and more about our connection with the planet and each other, but I’m always wanting to speak to what you find most meaningful.
- My decision to trust my gut and walk away from my life: https://innerwoven.net/hello-world/
- The cab driver in Sarajevo who protected me in a vulnerable moment: https://innerwoven.net/an-ode-to-being-thin-skinned/
- Early reflections on addiction: https://innerwoven.net/sobriety/
- Learning new ways of being: https://innerwoven.net/stillness/
- Humor and wisdom from working at the grocery store: https://innerwoven.net/apology-gratitude/
- Conflict and growth living in spiritual community: https://innerwoven.net/holding-on-listening/
- Deep nature connection: https://innerwoven.net/presence-reality/
- My first offerings of guided visualization: https://innerwoven.net/stepping-aside/
- Sexuality, judgement, and ecstatic dance: https://innerwoven.net/maybe-im-the-asshole/
- Soul song & loving what we love: https://innerwoven.net/the-center-of-all-things/
- Nature apprenticeship and releasing obsession: https://innerwoven.net/depression-the-caterpillar/
- Preparing for the vision fast: https://innerwoven.net/the-death-lodge/
- Autoimmune diagnosis: https://innerwoven.net/hashimotos/
- 12-step and trauma: https://innerwoven.net/protected-obscured/
- The Predator & being consumed: https://innerwoven.net/being-consumed/
- A car crash & receiving nourishment: https://innerwoven.net/mana/
- How to live on the earth: https://innerwoven.net/what-is-truly-sustainable/
- Unexpected insight & connection with a desecrated agave: https://innerwoven.net/ode-to-an-agave/
- Facing and making amends for planetary harm: https://innerwoven.net/making-reparations/
- Answering the earth’s call to be transformed: https://innerwoven.net/we-are-waiting/
Plus, here are two longer articles I published on Medium (If you don’t want to set-up an account to read, please email me for a PDF: nancy@innerwoven.net)
- Being Human in an Era of Collapse: A Mythological Approach to Personal & Planetary Regeneration through Addiction and Autoimmunity https://medium.com/@nancy-alder/being-human-in-an-era-of-collapse-65093db6c49b
- How to Be Sick: The Hidden Gifts of Giving In https://medium.com/@nancy-alder/how-to-be-sick-the-hidden-gifts-of-giving-in-99ddaa3e76c7
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