Hello! This is Yearning, a newsletter reflecting on belonging, culture and connection.
I had a frank conversation with two of my housemates today. The kind where they pinpoint in on exactly what you have been struggling with and in a caring tough love kind of way, tell you exactly what you need to do to remedy it.
In short, the answer was 'Eden, if you say your career matters to you and you want it to be in writing, then you've actually got to put your writing out there and maybe lay off stressing about the other job you have which you started to give yourself more time to build your career in writing, and maybe it can matter a bit less to you, and maybe you need to reassess how high you set the bar before you let yourself feel satisfied with your actions in that job.' Just the reassuring existential dregs, you know.
I felt unearthed and uprooted but, yup, I really needed it: jittery arms, pounding heart, over-activated. Once upon a time feeling that anxious energy would have led me to properly freak out, to expel the discomfort I didn't know how to regulate. It's taken some practice to understand those creeping physical feelings as helpful signs telling me ‘this matters’. I am alive!
So here I am, Reader, writing this silly little newsletter. Not spending hours after bloody pained hours crafting the most elaborate piece of critical analysis ever (I have tried and the perfectionist that exists within me repeatedly makes me miserable, taking the spark out of my great idea until I am so repulsed by it that I no longer want to continue). I am here writing because I can, and I hope that it will breed more writing, and make the hard conditions of my own creation, well, easier.
In increasingly more areas of my life I am open to learning, and that's something I want to apply to my creativity. Like many people, I shroud this important life energy in protective layers as I learn to handle it myself. I don't want that bit of me mishandled or dropped, it would feel ‘a bit too much’. Like I could crack, haha! I doubt my own strength. My therapist would probably say, ‘what if you bounced?’ and I would be frustrated at this not fitting a narrative of brokenness that hangs out in the back of my mind.
No, in reality, my therapist would probably understand the desire to hide away that creativity as an old strategy to keep me safe from perceived threat. Times change, though, and we outgrow those protection mechanisms. In fact, today she went as far as to say that ‘perfection is the enemy of excellence’. I agree.
Indeed, as much as I would have you believe I jumped out of my mum's head, fully grown and literally the goddess of wisdom, that’s the wrong book. Nope, while my name means paradise, if you’re into the Bible that little old thing called The Original Sin happened didn't it, and now I have to learn like the rest of you peasants. It's quite ironic that Eve went all out in pursuit of knowledge and now we're doomed to learning, making peace that enlightenment rarely comes. I wonder if she and Adam experienced emotional regulation before they condemned generations with inherited trauma. It always goes back to that bloody serpent story doesn’t it; no wonder 'the work' is so difficult.
Anyway, welcome to my newsletter. I’ve racked my brains, and settled on ‘Yearning’. It’s a telling verb, active, full of desire and hope. It acknowledges that we are all reaching for something within ourselves or others, and offers up the potential for connection when we see past our own individual pain and find space to hold one another. It opens the question, what happens when we stop yearning so hard and attend instead? I did consider ‘On Connection’ as a name, but of course the powerhouse that is Kae Tempest has written a book on the topic that I must now read.
I love culture, in the widest sense of the word: how we use it to connect and ground ourselves, construct an identity, and both celebrate and condemn our experience. And so, this newsletter will be a coming together of personal reflection and cultural exploration, as I muse on how and what we yearn for (spoiler: it’s always belonging), and how we build meaning. Following my interests, this work will be examined through the lenses of gender, vulnerability and mindfulness.
In its truest form, I am hungry to share my thoughts and ideas, to reassure people they are less alone than they feel, and more seen than they know.
I end this entry with feelings of expansive hope as I think about this lil newsletter. Because for all the times we grumble out of default fear and stress, there are new moments when we learn past old-worn grooves and take a detour into newsletter land. This one’s for me, and my friends this week, for holding something vulnerable and not squishing it.
Take care,
Eden
Balm for the week
I now worship the ground that meditation teacher and psychologist Tara Brach walks upon. Thanks to my friend Leila for the recommendation. Alongside her very soothing voice, Brach’s (free) podcasts offer up space for self-compassion. In a culture that encourages us to shame ourselves into action, Tara makes space for radical care, arguing that it is not survival of the fittest, but instead survival of the nurtured. She’s on Spotify too, folks.