Confidence Is Something to Be Loved

The beauty in loving your gifts.

Over this past weekend, I attended a newer friend’s birthday gathering. For her gathering, she requested that we bring something for what she named a gift-sharing circle. Intrigued, I pulled together my thoughts and wishes and found a poem for which I felt called to share. I have always loved card writing. The act itself is somewhat the peak of what I love. Words and giving care, this part feels natural to me — comfortable even. And honestly, it is apart of myself that I really enjoy.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I arrived at the gathering. This newer friend has been someone I deeply admire but do not know very well. What I do know is that she exudes confidence and every time she speaks, it is as if wisdom just pours out of her. When it came time for the gift-sharing circle, I noticed a nervousness that came alive in me. Even though I am still a bit unsure as to its presence, I do know that it was quite potent. I wonder, even now, Was it the invitation for intimacy? The vulnerability of expressing care in front of strangers? Or was it because I am someone who has been in an active healing relationship with practicing receiving showers of love and admiration? As usual — it is probably a mixture of all three and then some.

As we all sat in circle, each of us took a turn sitting next to my newer friend and sharing our heart-filled expressions of connection, gratitude, and friendship with her. And I have to tell you. It was one of the most beautiful co-created love bombing experiences I have ever witnessed. I was and still am incredibly moved by my newer friends’ willingness to receive in such a way. And honestly, I now wish such a gift for all of us. But what I think struck me the most was how comfortable she appeared and how she just seemed to own who she is.

It was beautiful on so many levels.

Even though the awe still feels so alive, I can’t stop wondering why sometimes it can feel so deeply complicated not only to own who you are but also to relish and thrive in it.

Confidence, I tell myself, is beautiful. Confidence is strong. Confidence is contagious. Confidence is something to be celebrated. Confidence is something to be loved.

Yet, the parts of me that have been conditioned and instructed to stay small, to stay safe, to hide and not be seen — do not always feel that way.

And still, I know there is great power in being seen and witnessed. And that even the parts of me that don’t fully believe that all of time deserve witnessing and love, too.

Unlearning is sacred.

Unlearning is beautiful. Unlearning is strong. Unlearning is contagious. Unlearning is something to be celebrated. Unlearning is something to be loved.

I am writing all of this because this is the energy that I am wanting to take with me into this next evolving chapter of my life. I am writing this because I am wanting to sing from the rooftops of my deep love for my work and my deeper knowing that it is part of my life’s calling. I am writing this because I have created a new container for my work to live in — and I LOVE it. I am writing you this because I want to share it with you as I sit with a strong, sturdy spine and an open heart.

For the last couple of months, I have been working with Nadia Mousa to create a new website. A new container for who I have become (up until now). The process itself was such a deep practice in listening deeply, tending to the parts that are still working on their postures, and honing in on what is most important to me right now in my work as well as what I am wanting to contribute to the world.

Here is what has been blooming. It is an honor to introduce you to my new container, my new little corner of the internet that was made to mirror my heart, my skills, and my work.

Let yourself be seen. Let yourself be celebrated. Let yourself be known.

Over the past decade, I have committed myself to learning and living the practice of Somatic Psychotherapy. In my About Me, I write, The thread that weaves throughout my work with clients, my writing, and my offerings is the deep conviction in the transformative power of being able to name what often feels unnamable, being able to look at what often is hard to see, and learning to feel what is often been deemed unreachable.

I came to this work by way of my own history and journey into the self, after realizing that I longed for another way of being. I learned that when we arrive in a held container, we are given the opportunity to delve into ourselves, our histories, and the well of resources that live inside. Through my own experience, I realized that so much is possible, and by gaining access to more of myself, I too, could find healing and wholeness.

Without question, I love and believe deeply in the art of Psychotherapy and Somatic wisdom.

Something else that I love is, Birth and Motherhood, and it just so happens my loves merged. After becoming a mother almost five years ago, it felt like four things came into the world at the same time. My son, my identity as a mother, a deep hunger to support others in navigating becoming mothers, and a book to support trauma survivors in moving through the perinatal journey. A huge part of my postpartum healing was the telling and writing of my birth experience. Through this, I was able to bring my body, the body that birthed my child, into the act of healing and deeper connection. Being able to process and integrate such a transformative and life-altering event, I now know, is so very important. It has also been something that has brought me closer to understanding the word devotion. For I am fully devoted to supporting others in deepening into their own stories of becoming while reclaiming their power and wholeness.

After lots of studying, learning, and unlearning, attending trainings, and trying to absorb everything I could get my hands on about maternal mental health and somatic perinatal healing, new offerings were birthed. I moved to begin working with mothers who were wanting to deepen their connection to their matrescence, to their birth stories, to their communities, and to bring about much-needed healing to those impacted by trauma and birth trauma. These new elements of my work weaved together so beautifully and have cultivated a deep reverence for my clients, birth, motherhood, and healing.

Lately, I have found myself saying over and over that life is wild. By which I am pretty sure I mean. Life is unexpected, life is full of mystery, life is full of deaths and rebirths, paths disappearing and paths appearing. Life is full of discovery, of deep bone knowing, and heart longings. Life is full of new beginnings. Life is full of love and deep wisdom to be learned and shared.

One of my favorite aspects of doing this work is that I am not doing it alone. Through this work, I have connected with so many amazing people who are also walking the path of redefining and reclaiming the wisdom of birth and motherhood. Every time I write here and connect to other writers and readers, I am reminded of how much we deeply need one another and that we are, in fact, joined and not alone. And through connection comes the opportunity to learn from each other, to say, yes, me too, and I see you. Through connection comes the power of co-creation and movement towards a new way of being and healing.

Writing this essay and introducing you to my new container has been one for the books. And I can honestly say that my heart has felt open and warm, and I feel proud of where I landed. And it is more than okay to own that. In fact, may we all learn to own our gifts, our hearts, and our devotions.

My newer friend taught me a lot over the weekend. Her confidence was contagious. May we all continue to learn from one another. Here is the poem that I read and gave her, which speaks to the art of beauty.

Beauty 

is the harvest of presence, the evanescent moment of seeing or hearing on the outside what already lives far inside us; the eyes, the ears or the imagination suddenly become a bridge between the here and the there, between then and now, between the inside and the outside; beauty is the conversation between what we think is happening outside in the world and what is just about to occur far inside us. 

Beauty is an achieved state of both deep attention and self-forgetting; the self-forgetting of seeing, hearing, smelling or touching that erases our separation, our distance, our fear of the other. Beauty invites us, through entrancement, to that fearful frontier between what we think makes us; and what we think makes the world. Beauty is almost always found in symmetries and intriguing asymmetries seen out in creation, the wings of the moth, the airy sky and the solid earth, the restful, focused eyes of a loving face in which we see our own self reflected: the symmetry also, therefore, of bringing together inner and outer recognitions, the far horizon of otherness seen in that face joined to the deep inner horizon of our own being. Beauty is an inner and an outer complexion living in one face.

Beauty especially occurs in the meeting of time with the timeless; the passing moment framed by what has happened and what is about to occur, the scattering of the first spring apple blossom, the turning, spiraling flight of a curled leaf in the falling light; the smoothing of white sun-filled sheets by careful hands setting them to air on a line, the broad expanse of cotton filled by the breeze only for a moment, the sheets sailing on into dryness, billowing toward a future that is always beckoning, always just beyond us. Beauty is the harvest of presence.

By David Whyte

Thank you for joining me on this journey. Also, I am hosting an open mic next Friday, Mother and The Mic, to honor Mother’s Day and to gather in voice and witness. You can find more information here if you are interested.