The Steadiest Ground I Have Ever Found

I aspire to be the one whose presence in a difficult room makes the difficulty easier to move through where I can feel the shape of who she is and how close I am to actually becoming of her,
I aspire to be the one who doesn’t require chaos to be resolved before I’ve practiced this more extensively in the past season than in all the years prior combined,
I aspire to be the one whose calm is not a performance but an actual internal architecture that holds regardless of who is watching or whether anyone notices the peace at all,
What would it cost the people I love most if I gave them the steadier version of myself instead of waiting for some future version of my life where the steadiness would come easier,
I aspire to be the one who carries calm into the room the way some people carry light without announcing it as I intend to keep walking toward her without needing to arrive all…

I have built things that were never only mine and I am learning to hold that truth without it diminishing the part of the work that genuinely is, the voice and choice of my own self,
I have built things I am finally able to feel grateful for instead of being anxious about whether my contribution on top of it is substantial enough to deserve standing there,
I have built things that needs collaboration with people I will never meet and ideas I want to absorb before I had language for them, no longer pretending the building to make the work feel cleaner,
What becomes possible for me creatively the moment I stop needing every piece of work to prove that trusting was always the actual source of whatever made the work good,
I have built things that were never only mine and started feeling like the most honest and steadying truth I have about how anything real has ever actually been made...

I am the calm in some rooms, I notice the difference it makes when I stay rooted instead of reaching for the nearest available worry as if it were useful information,
I am the calm in some rooms, other people borrow their steadiness from the moments they cannot generate it themselves and actually choosing it to feels more natural,
I am the calm in some rooms, it does not mean I feel nothing underneath it, but that I have decided what I feel does not get to author what the room experiences in that particular moment,
Who in my life right now needs the steadier version of me more than that unfiltered reaction, am I willing to give them that even when it costs me the relief of simply reacting,
I am the calm in some rooms, I can feel it becoming less of an effort and more of an identity, something closer to who I actually am, even on the days where I have to choose it...

I am part of something larger that includes the steadiness other people long before I had the words for what we were doing and the calm I offer now is partly theirs before it was ever mine,
I am part of something larger than any single piece I make or something that erases me and started feeling like the exact thing that lets me stand here without needing to hold everything alone,
I am a part of something larger, beyond the calm, I am learning to carry the weight of my learning and to trust in it, I know that this discipline is just like the same thing, but with different names depending on the day,
What would it mean to enter every remaining room of my life, convinced that I am wholly accountable for the stability I bring and that I have, in fact, created that stability from the very beginning,
I am a part of something larger, with the calm and the makers, the hands I will never meet, and still standing on the steadiest ground I have ever actually found to build the rest of this...

Watchwords:
Closer to her than I was a year ago,
The not-only-mine became the steadying truth,
What I feel doesn't get to author the room,
Becoming less effort and more identity,
The steadiest ground I have ever found to build from