Reflection

Written December 19, 2022 and originally posted to Facebook.

As I reflect on what would have been the beginning of the 52nd year of Stephanie’s life, I want to share my thoughts.

Most of life is mediocre and full of truly uninteresting day-to-day bullshit.

If your relationship with yourself or with others is unhealthy and harmful, please seek help.

It is okay to be “unproductive.” I am not sure why we, as a society, push a different narrative. I wholeheartedly disagree and am a huge fan of “unproductive.”

I have always been uncomfortable with phrases that include “deserve that” or something similar. It implies that there exists a worthiness scale somewhere. Why?

“Success” is arbitrary. We might each have our own definition of what it means, and I think that is okay. A constant pressure for achieving and striving for “success” standards of another person is painful, unrewarding, and probably unachievable as you cannot really know what someone else means or is after. That “success” goal was probably set to fulfill something inside the other person.

Nourishment has many components. It includes nourishing the body, the mind, the spirit or soul, relationships with self and others, and relationships with nature. Excess in one area can lead to an imbalance in another area.

I believe suffering is an inherent component to being alive and I feel like we, myself included, go to great lengths to avoid it in the U.S. It is okay to feel pain, hurt, disappointment, and heartache. What we do with that, how we sit with and in the suffering and find our way through it matters.

Mental health and illness are every bit as real as physical health and illness. Take care. Life is not easy and there is so much about the experience of being alive that we still don’t understand.