How You Remember Yourself at Your Lowest Point May Be Worth Revisiting
a greatly comforting truth I want you to absorb today [AUDIO MESSAGE]
There are moments as a parent when the passage of time hits so forcefully it feels like a medicine ball thrown at my chest.
‘Wait… wait,’ I gasp, struggling to keep myself upright in these bittersweet moments.
Barely breathing, I manage to stay upright because I don’t want to miss anything.
On Saturday, that moment was Avery wearing a high school graduation cap and gown for senior yearbook photos.
On Tuesday, it was Natalie carrying packed boxes to the car as she prepared to move into her first apartment.
I stood there gripping the sturdiest thing within arm’s reach, wondering how we got here so quickly… and if I am being honest, longing for a few do-overs because I’d do some things differently if I had more time.
As humans, we tend to remember the times we failed rather than the times we prevailed. One of the worst periods for me was after a brutal uprooting from the city and people I knew by heart to a state in which I knew not a soul.
I yelled a lot at my young girls during that unsettling period. My safe place was an inclusive church that had a back row of cozy pews with dim lighting.
That is where I cried the hardest.
About seven years and another out-of-state move later, my daughter Avery shocked me with her recollection of that time.
“I remember laying my head on your lap at church when I didn’t want to go to the childcare room,” eleven-year-old Avery recalled as I tucked her into bed one night. “You would run your fingers though my hair, and I’d look up at the high ceiling and pretend I was walking on the wooden beams. You lifted me up there, Mama. I was on top of the world.”
I was rendered speechless.
In the same moment my child felt my love supporting and lifting her up, tears had dripped down my face because I felt I was failing and letting her down.
The disparity between Avery’s memory and my memory was unbelievable—but given the details she shared, it was very real and greatly comforting. Avery’s memory allowed me to grasp a healing truth that forever changed how I perceived myself in my lowest points:
I can feel like I’m failing and still BE LOVE.
I can feel like I’m in the dark and still be someone’s light.
I can feel like I’m going under and still lift someone up.
I have faithfully clung to these reminders over the years, but most especially in times of change and transition, like the one my family is facing right now.
Right now, I see clear indications that certain life chapters are closing; my role in my children’s stories are changing. My default response is to panic, cling, overthink, and underestimate myself -- but I know those responses are not only unhealthy but also a waste of precious time. So instead, I will return to a simple truth that holds me steady:
I am love.
And the following passage is my daily intention. I have recorded it for you, so simply push play on the audio at the top of the post. Close your eyes and absorb these words as I read them aloud…
🗣 YOU ARE LOVE: A Stabilizing Intention for Unstable Hearts
If uncertainty is causing you to feel unable to handle the change that’s ahead, take a deep breath and remember:
You already possess what you need take this day in a promising direction.
You already possess what is needed to create a fulfilling and memorable life for yourself
and the ones by your side:
AND THAT IS LOVE.
It’s in your fingertips when you smooth away stray hairs.
It’s in your voice when you apologize and when you encourage.
It’s in your tears when you hurt, worry, hope and pray.
It’s in your view when you choose to look forward, not back.
Listen…
You don’t have to change a million ways.
You don’t have to re-invent yourself.
You don’t have to prove anything…
BECAUSE YOU ARE LOVE.
You can feel like you’re failing and still BE LOVE.
You can feel like you’re in the dark and still be someone’s light.
You can feel like you’re going under and still lift someone up.
Love prevails over failures, flaws, and disastrous days.
Take a big exhale and release the weight of yesterday, so you can set your sights on the highest beams of today.
My hand in yours,
Rachel
Join me tomorrow for a bonus LIVE chat….
🗣️Tomorrow, Friday, August 2nd, I will be in conversation with the luminous Kelsey Daniels in an Instagram LIVE. Kelsey is part of the phenomenal staff at the Art of Living Retreat Center and one of the big reasons I LOVE coming back to teach there every fall. Her gentle spirit and vibrant light are unlike anything I have ever encountered. Please join us as we share our best nuggets of inspiration on self-compassion and reclaiming inner peace. We will also answer any questions you might have about what my retreats are like. Simply pop on to the @handsfreerevolution on IG tomorrow at 1pm Eastern to join in!
🌄 On October 4-6, I will return to the Art of Living for my fifth time to teach Soul Shift. Each workshop experience is uniquely different because my retreat draws participants from various backgrounds, locations, and walks of life. Yet, they all share the commonality of being loving humans eager to reconnect with themselves, learn from one other, and gain tools that will enhance their lives and relationships going forward.
If you are in need of a true, restorative pause from life in the company of supportive human beings, there is a spot for you this fall.
🌳❤️ COMING SOON… a live gathering in the treehouse! What days/times would work well for you to connect next week?
Hi Rachel,
Boy, I needed this today.
Here's the excerpt you wrote that pierced my heart with recognition: "My default response is to panic, cling, overthink, and underestimate myself -- but I know those responses are not only unhealthy but also a waste of precious time. So instead, I will return to a simple truth that holds me steady:
I am love."
I don't tend to think I AM LOVE. I try to love. But I also tell others (and have journaled furiously about this lately) that MY default response is to panic. I use the exact terminology you used here. Whenever I feel that a relationship is threatened, or someone ghosts me, or there's transition on the horizon, my chest tightens, and impulsively, I want to hold on, to clutch the thing or person. I've done this many times in the past, to the detriment of losing friends, because I suffocated them. I was terrified of losing them, and in the end, I did lose them from trying too hard to keep them around.
Lately, I've challenged this in myself. Not harshly, but curiously. I simply stop myself when I hear the abusive inner critic start its diatribe in my head. And then I ask myself, "Is this true?" Usually, it's not. What seems to quiet my critic the most is when I tell it this: "You might be right. I might lose this friend. Or maybe they are upset with me. Maybe I am too controlling or I haven't been around enough or I offended them. Maybe. But maybe not." Instead of leaping to contact the person and barrage them with questions, I'll sit with the tension of my discomfort for a bit.
This is a HUGE SHIFT for me.
What I mean is that, when I first began writing and speaking ten years ago, I shared about the importance of moving through our dark emotions and what that looks like. I helped people recognize that their grief could mentor them, that its intent was not to destroy but to teach and that they could find healing by listening to what their sorrow and losses were trying to tell them. I believed it. I believe it still.
But the part I didn't quite get was that BEFORE we can find our passage THROUGH the difficult, challenging adversities we all face, we FIRST have to sit WITHIN the tension of that emotion--anger, panic, fear, frustration, anxiety, sadness, loneliness. Meaning: don't make any decisions or act on impulse during the height of that discomfort. Instead, lean into it (this part is sooooooooo hard for me), because IT WILL PASS. All feelings crescendo and decrescendo, and it's at their peak when I have, in the past, reflexively tried to control a situation or person. Now, I am learning to recognize the impulse but not give in to it and instead yield to the deeper issue - which, for me, always originates with the fear of abandonment or the abandonment wound. Perceived rejection (even real rejection) contributes to this feeling that I never have been enough, never will be enough.
But I am noticing that when the emotion settles and I return to a place of stasis (harmony: connection, compassion, centered, calm), then I am more apt to see things clearly. My perception isn't muddied by the critic's attempt to defend me from being hurt. Instead, I can look at the situation from a neutral stance, and more often than not, I am able to freely release it altogether without the nagging feeling that I must resolve it.
The bottom line, for me is this: Not all problems have solutions. Not all questions have answers.
It's been a long road of learning how to accept this, Rachel. For me, I've needed answers and solutions in order to feel safe and secure. Living in the uncertainty, in the haze of gray instead of the assurance of black and white, creates havoc inside of me. It's that age-old wound of feeling I will be left behind somehow, that I am unloved and unloveable.
But it really does come back to the truth that love dwells inside each human. I can see it in others, and I am learning to see it in myself.
It's not about perfection anymore for me. It's about being human and being honest about both my triumphs and my tragedies. That's what I try to do in every relationship in my life and through my creative writing.
Thank you for reading my (once again) long answer, Rachel.
Through tears and a trembling within I am responding to this power full post. There is a Re-remembering deep within when I first read your words years before Rachel about “feeling like I am failing and I can still be love, lost in my own darkness and I can still be someone’s light.”
These words were bread for a weary, hungry soul that was starving for Hope, these words were a lifeline in that love doesn’t have to be all prettied up to pull us from the depths.
Your words nourished my spirit and gave me strength to keep loving even though I did not feel felt. I trusted in this love I was sharing, what I spilling out each day into my hardest of hards and held the possibility that I was building something foundational for my family, a forward though I could not see it or feel it I just kept showing up because that’s what loves does.
In a whispered prayer on bender knee, in the next breath inhaled so the next step could be taken, I just need to keep doing love though I saw no difference because I found breath and life in the hoping part.
I learned grace that saved me was not only found in the what was happening, it is held deep inside the hoping part too.
Thank you for naming this so I could know it for myself and claim it for my family and I could believe in a day that Love Wins.
And it did .