Holding it All Loosely

From words on the page to parenting and life, how releasing the reins creates forward momentum

Spring in D.C. is excellent practice in holding things loosely. Like Forrest Gump’s chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get. This year’s spring has been a delight of mild weather and beautiful vignettes.

You know the feeling.

You’re in the midst of drafting a scene, but you’ve got one unruly sentence that refuses to align itself with the others. It’s clunky, or worded imperfectly, or doesn’t follow the cadence of its neighbors. It’s problematic.

Many writers struggle to experience satisfaction unless the version in front of them feels complete. We might toil with a single sentence for 20, 30 minutes, reaching for a thesaurus, or revising the same fifteen words until we’ve muddled the product so badly, we’d have been wise to stick with version #1.

When we can’t move on until something is 100% right, guess what? We don’t move on.

Now substitute writing with whatever work eludes you.

I have a habit of keeping a tight grip on most things - my writing, my physical environment, my children, and especially the narratives in my mind. For that reason, last week’s post felt like the equivalent of jumping out of a plane. For someone who revels in the concept of growth, I’m extremely uncomfortable revealing the messy middle of the process. I’d much rather hold my life lessons close until they’re fully integrated and ready to be tied with a bow.

Last week, I took a chance. I fell down in public and admitted the thing that’s true for most (all?) of us at moments, though we’d desperately like to pretend otherwise: I don’t know what I’m doing!

I can’t thank you enough for your compassionate responses. If you’re new to this community of lifelong learners, welcome. I hope you’ll fall down with us (and get back up), and repeat that process for all the days of your life. Because if we’re not falling down once in a while, we’re probably clinging too tightly to something we’ve already outgrown.

As my friend Julie recently advised, it’s a good season to hold things loosely. Graduations, big moves, summer - whatever this season holds for you, change is probably an active ingredient. Love it, hate it, welcome it, or slam the front door, the only constant in life is change, so we might as well learn to accept it as the ever-present variable it is.

This week, holding things loosely has looked like…

• Writing faster than I ever have, without worrying if it’s great.

• Canceling plans when they no longer suit me.

• Granting my son full decorator privileges for his new bedroom (this required no small release of control - black walls and Star Wars memorabilia are not part of the mellow, coastal vibe I’d envisioned).

• Reminding myself that no change is permanent. We can always make alterations.

• Allowing my #90,000WordChallenge to take whatever shape it needs (some days, it’s 1,000+ words, some days it’s reading and making minor revisions. Every day it involves sitting with my words.).

• Turning off Grammarly (the constant AI suggestions can be roadblocks to my flow).

It’s also an important moment to hold concepts loosely. When I joked about my midlife moment, Julie responded, “Just sounds like life to me.” Attaching labels to experiences might satisfy the part of our brain that craves order, but there’s so much that doesn’t fit into a tidy box.

Take ADHD, for example, a disorder I’ve never seen operate precisely the same in two people. The more we cling to a particular word or hard-and-fast definition, the less we open ourselves up to understanding the wide range of experiences and behaviors it encompasses. This is something we’re currently exploring in our family (and if you’re interested in a hot take on ADHD, be sure to check out this recent article).

Holding things loosely is particularly challenging during times of uncertainty. Right now, many of our brains are working overtime to control what we can. We want guarantees about our safety, our health, and our financial futures. Learning to live in the liminal space of right now requires one giant exhale and a trust-fall into the hands of the universe.

Hopefully, with better results than this.

It’s also a beautiful carte blanche to relax, enjoy the ride, and keep moving. When we release ourselves from the construct of absolutes, we not only grant ourselves permission to get unstuck, we invite space for all kinds of possibilities and happy surprises.

And if you’re a fellow writer embarking on #1000WordsofSummer, I bid you happy writing. Be kind to yourself over the next two weeks (your creativity is counting on it), and celebrate the achievement of just showing up to the page.

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What I’m Reading This Week

The School of Life by Alain de Botton: I’ll choose de Botton’s generous and affirming definition of a crisis over my own self-berating one any day! These words were such a balm to my soul, I had to share them:

“A breakdown is not merely a random piece of madness or malfunction; it is a very real — albeit very inarticulate — bid for health and self-knowledge. It is an attempt by one part of our mind to force the other into a process of growth, self-understanding and self-development that it has hitherto refused to undertake. If we can put it paradoxically, it is an attempt to jump-start a process of getting well — properly well — through a stage of falling very ill…

In the midst of a breakdown, we often wonder whether we have gone mad. We have not. We’re behaving oddly, no doubt, but beneath the agitation we are on a hidden yet logical search for health. We haven’t become ill; we were ill already. Our crisis, if we can get through it, is an attempt to dislodge us from a toxic status quo and constitutes an insistent call to rebuild our lives on a more authentic and sincere basis. It belongs, in the most acute and panicked way, to the search for self-knowledge.”

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans: Any recommendation that comes via my kindred spirit book buddies has me leaping with excitement (that’s you,

Emilie Sommer

). I really think Evans’ publisher should use my neighbor Bailey’s note as a cover blurb. The Correspondent is an epistolary novel for anyone whose life has been enriched and comforted by literature.

(And, yes, that’s my baby nephew in the background. In two weeks, he turns one!)