Let Your Suckage Light the Way

Sometimes the only thing to do in worst of times, is to share it, in hopes it helps someone, sometime, somewhere.

So sharing this before I lose my nerve...



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#CreatingIsHealing🦋

Transcript

Watch me not hit record. Ah, here we go. OK, this is going to be really interesting because the last thing I want to do right now is to be here talking into a mic on camera. Um, I am having a crap day. And it's interesting because it's not necessarily. New stuff. It's more like I don't have patience for old stuff. My stomach is burning again. It hurts a lot as it gets better. It's been hurting for 15 years. I got really good at meditating about it today. I don't want to meditate about it. I don't want to be a grown up. I just want to throw a tantrum. I'm getting blood tests. I'm getting all kinds of tests done to see if the inflammation has come down in my stomach. These are all good things, but the last thing I want to do is wake up early to have someone stick a needle in my arm tomorrow. 

Um. I. Feel grumpy and ****** at the world's I. Tore my Achilles heel over the summer because I wore a pair of sandals. That were strappy and unsupportive for one hour in Brooklyn. And I have. Really. Crumb joints and I'm hypermobile and so I get injured really, really easily. I've been going to physical therapy. It's been going really, really well, so well that I went out dancing last weekend, which felt amazing. Haven't been in years. And I ****** ** my ankle again. And I just found out last week that I ****** it up again. And I. 

I'm really struggling with. 

Finding peace around that and finding the silver lining and the PTS office were like worried about me because I was really, really upset. And to them this is, you know, part of healing. You make mistakes, you start again. But what you told me was we've got to start the clock again on six weeks of healing on your ankle like rest and wearing lace up sneakers and being really, really careful about it. And I think there is incredible grief at how great it felt to go dancing and how I can't. I like I'd almost forgotten how good it was and what I was missing out on. I was really excited. I'd found a salsa group in Asheville and was going to go check that out. Um. It also just hurts. It hurts to walk. It hurts to climb stairs. I feel like I'm in a very old body that keeps breaking and has been breaking since my 20s. And I've gone through phases of my life where I've done a lot of thinking and work on myself and mortality and how all of us have imperfect bodies. I had a friend who used to say um ohh man, I'm probably going to butcher this, but he had this really great phrase that we we tend to assume that we live in able bodies, but we're actually just. 

We're just like disabled bodies about to happen. I'm sorry I'm butchering this, but this idea that the presumption is that our bodies are always going to function the way that we think they should or would. And how when we see someone who has an injury or has a disability, we tend to think that's another thing that's not mine. Which is a very human reaction because it's scary to think that your body is fallible and you also don't get to control what happens to it. Most people don't have to think about this stuff until they get way older and they start discovering injuries. Or that their body doesn't work the way that it used to, and I've been at it for a while. Anyway, feeling just angry at the world and. 

And I wanted to show up because, um, one because. I I think there's this really important. Habit that I want to build, that I think is important to being human and also to creativity, which is to let the suckage lead you. To not say I feel like ****. I've got nothing to wear. I can't figure out how to make my hair do something slightly human. EFF it. I'm not going to do this podcast. I'm not going to show up or I'm really angry. And I don't want anyone to know that I'm angry because I really want to be positive. I really want to be at peace. I really want to be in forgiveness with my body. I really want to be OK. And looking at um. Sorry, that's where I went off topic. The physical therapists were, you know, saying to me like, look at what you can do. Look at how much strength you're getting. Look at how much you're getting better to like. Intellectually, I know that's the place to get to is. I have so much gratitude for how much my body is healing. I have so much gratitude for how much function it does have. So much gratitude for the ability to walk and for the team of doctors and the health coaches that are helping me, and for the ability to get tests and for health insurance. I have all of that. And I'm also really angry and sad and tired. And I have this, like, deep desire to show up with people and in a way of service and in a way where I've already solved my stuff. I've I've meditated, I've, I've journaled, I've gotten coached on it, I've made my piece, and I'm really just coming from a place of. Love and rainbows and sunshine and. My friend said something to me that I love so much, I put it in my calendar as a reminder, she said. My brand is peppy on the outside and very dark on the inside. And I have really morbid humour and I have a lot of like dark. If you've ever seen Emily the strange cartoons, she's a cartoner or have her as a sticker, so she don't know her that well. But anyway, there's this incredible kind of grumpy teenager preteen called Emily the strange and I've always really related to her. Even though I tend to show up with a ton of energy, 

I tend to feel like a golden retriever most times. I'm like excited and peppy and celebrating everyone and excited for them and their project. Wanting to help and give solutions and um. Not great at sitting in the suckage. I think part of the reason I want to show up and like be happy and help people is because I don't wanna feel the pain that I feel. I don't wanna feel how much it hurts to be in this body. I don't wanna feel despair that my ankle will never get better. I don't want to feel. Terrified that my stomach will never stop burning. 

And. What I am learning? Is there's this next level human scale. I thought like Zen Buddhism meditating your way out of like your body and into your mind was like the. The Nirvana achievement and what I'm learning instead is there's a next level. One level is to sit with the Suckage and. Not yell at people and not punch anything. Not curl up in bed and give up or curl up in bed for a little bit, but maybe not the whole weekend like I just did. So sitting with it and allowing it to be. But I think there's this other thing which is, um, not just. 

Holding it at arms distance. Like being aware that I'm angry, but also just really wanting to get out of my own head. Being almost too afraid to feel how scared I am that I've been sick for so long and may always be sick. Um. There is this level that I'm trying to get to, of really allowing myself to feel those things, to be inside of them. To not just intellectually figure out all the ways in which I'm going to pep talk myself or I'm going to meditate, or I'm going to astral project myself out of this body that is breaking and broken and hurting, but that I'm going to stay. And what's weird is it's actually not even the pain in my stomach or the pain in my ankle that's the hardest. Part of staying, it's how intensely? I feel the rage of what I thought my body was going to be versus what it is and the the overwhelm and the fear that I will be trapped inside a body that is in pain for another 40 years and. The grief of the past 15 years of undiagnosed. What this has taken from my life that I haven't even really dipped a toe in because it's just so overwhelming. And. 

The reason I bring this up here? Aside from it being a personal challenge to myself. Um is twofold. twofold. is. There's a podcast I listen to, not Glennon Doyle. You'll be shocked to hear I love her and I talk about her all the time. There's another podcast that I really, really admire by Kate Buller. It's called everything happens and she wrote a book by the same name. She's a professor of divinity at Duke University and she was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer at age She was married, had a young kid. And was being told a lot to. I don't know to to pray and to be happy and to look for the silver lining and to and and what I remember from her story is she's like I I'm I'm not ready to leave you know and go be with God I want to be here I want to be with my son and raise son. I want to be with my husband who I love dearly. And what she talks about in her podcast is this grappling with mortality and pain and suffering. And her intro, I don't know if it's still there. The season that I was listening, her intro was fantastic and she talked about how. We live in this culture of just over this next thought, I'll be OK, just this next diet. I'll look the way I want to. Just this next app and I'll find the love of my life. Just this next right, just over whatever this hump is, whatever this thing that I don't want to feel, I don't want to be and I don't want to. I don't want, I don't want this. So I'm just going to keep over there. There's like a magical tomorrow where this is all headed. And it's really problematic because we have lost the ability. 

To be with disappointment, to be with loss, to be with sorrow. And she talks about how faith communities are one of the last few places where you can bring your grief and your despair and. Your need for prayers in whatever way you pray. Um, and talk about those things and we have this very. And, and I'm very pretty to it. Like I love the self development. I'm a I'm a walking encyclopedia of self development help. I love that stuff. I love working on my brain. I love learning new things, in part because I've been in pain for a long time and I've been doing the thing of trying to get out of it. But also they've given me a lot of life skills and. And so there's a lot of good that can come from that, but we also really live in this kind of Instagram happy life where. I'm always thinking, oh, everyone's already overcome their stuff and we're all OK and they look so happy and they figured it out and they have the same disease as I do, but they're doing really well and like, what's wrong with me? And so there is this need, I think, to talk about the things that are hard without having to fix them. Which is the hardest part, and I'm a fixer so I understand this, but to really just sit. And be in pain and be angry and be sad. 

And let the suckage be. And the other reason I bring this up is because this is part of what I find hard about being an artist, especially an actor. Because I have such a sense of. Actors are meant to be beautiful and your prettiness is what your most important selling point and you always like. I just have a lot of thoughts that are not useful about how I'm supposed to look as an actor. And so this, this need to be, you know, what is it? The plastics. Forget what movie it was but sort of, you know, the perfect veneer shellacked version of myself that nothing is wrong. Nothing hurts. I'm always OK. And again, in most of the things that I bring to the podcast, that is the exact opposite of what being an artist is being an artist is sitting with. Your stuff, but also sitting with whatever showed up today and I think so many of us get stuck. I know I do this all the time where I think. I'm not going to practice guitar today because I'm in pain. I'm not going to write today because I'm angry. I'm not gonna. Podcast today because I'm sad. Incredibly grieving sad. 

And it's understandable, because those are the ****** emotions, and we don't really have a culture that allows us, that trusts that we can, that teaches us how to hold space for those things, and also trust that we can hold space for those things, and that those things are entirely part of the human experience. You're not meant to feel all good, all amazing, all the time. Um. But we just were out of practice with those. Emotions, and I know I am often wanting to certainly fix my own. I'm not very comfortable feeling ****** and angry. I'm pretty getting better at feeling it on my own. I'm really bad at feeling it in front of other people. Which is again the problem. I'm an actor. Yeah, always wanting to make everyone else comfortable. Make sure that they are cared for. Make sure that I'm. Managing my emotions. I'm taking care of myself so I'm not spilling out. And the truth is, what I am learning is you can feel those things and it doesn't mean that you yell at someone or you kick someone or you take it out on someone. I can feel my grief and it doesn't have to land on somebody else. There is a way to. Allow your. Suckage. I love this word today. Allow your suckage to be. In the company of others without. Exporting it onto them and I think that is a next level skill and I think that is also what we're missing in a nuance you know a lot. Of what's hard about um. Sometimes for me, it's, you know, an empath and wanting to fix people is is sometimes it's really hard to be with someone when they're taking that anger and that frustration out on you or that grief out on you. And we again don't have tools to sit with our stuff. So it lands on someone else and that can be really hard, and I never want to do that. Because I'm so sensitive to it myself. Anyway, I might be feeling that miserably today. I might be dumping all over all of 

you guys, but I'm here because I think that there is something incredibly important about feeling the grief, feeling the loss, feeling the rage, and letting that lead you into the thing that needs to be said. There's a reason we have emotions. They have things that are important that they want us to know, and they are part of our deepest wisdom. And we get very caught up in chasing the good ones, the happiness and the joy and those sparkly moments of fireflies and rainbows. And. And I just wanna encourage all of us to make a little bit more space, maybe a lot more space, especially given what we've all been through in the past couple of years, especially given what's coming. You know the world is not going to get easier. Things are hard and they're always going to be hard also, just being a humanist hard. So as a life skill, being able to allow things to be ****** without having to pretend they're not. Without having to quit your day, because they are. And. 

Allowing people to be part of that experience. Whether just in relationship? And by that I mean the doctor's office and or your loved ones. And also in your art and your creativity, there's something. 

There's something when I read, when I listen to Kate Boller talk about her rage at being sick and undiagnosed for a long time, a lot of doctors told her she was too young and looked too healthy to be. As sick as she was and they didn't run tests on her, so they kept missing the cancer. Which makes me see red, but I've had a similar experience. Fortunately, mine wasn't. As serious as cancer is life threatening as cancer. But yeah, undiagnosed for a long time. And so when I hear someone else express their rage, express their sorrow, express their. Darker moments in life. I think it lights the way for me to say, OK, yeah, I can do that too. 

I think that is part of the artists. Um, mandate. That's the wrong word. But inclination, right? We share the things that are hard because we hope it lights the way for somebody else. 

So. Here's hoping this lights the way for somebody today. Be well my friends.