I’ve realized in recent years that, ever since I was a lowercase c, I’ve seen my worth as related to what I do rather than simply who I am. Somewhere along the line, I received and codified the message that doing things, doing them well, doing them well for other people and therefore providing them with something to merit their respect, approval and love, matters more than simply being. This makes my worth variable, subject to change - subject to my performance - which  also makes it exhausting, a never ending chase towards an ever moving target.

This feels to me like another layer of the onion I started peeling in this April post, where I wrote about my discomfort with being taken care of. And once again, it’s unexpected health challenges that have forced me to reckon with some of these deeply embedded beliefs about myself. In April, it was being knocked sideways by Covid. This time, it was surgery. 

The procedure was relatively minor - I had a rapidly growing lump removed from my breast after several mammograms, ultrasounds, biopsies, and an MRI over the past nine months. But it was also my very first surgery ever; I somehow made it 44 years without ever having gone under general anesthesia. And this was the part, prior to the surgery, that worried me most. In the end it was fine, the results came back non-cancerous. All a huge relief and something it seems I can now move on from.

And yet.

The post-surgery healing process forced me into a kind of hibernation - a wintering - which I initially resisted. It once again surfaced themes of needing to rely on others and not doing my “fair share” (I couldn’t lift things, or walk the dog, or do household chores) and admitting my limits (I was, and still am, easily fatigued and a bit overwhelmed when venturing out in public since I’m nervous someone might bump into me). It seems the universe keeps trying to teach me the difference between forever doing and learning to just be. I felt very confronted and unsettled by this idea of just being, just recovering and resting. What value was I providing to Chad, to Xochi, to my friends and family, to my coworkers? How dare I not DO? 

But after a few weeks of recovery, and some time off of work, I can see a bit more clearly how aggressively individualistic and ableist this self-judgment is. There’s a certain amount of ego that goes with doing but also a very generous dose of anxiety. Believing I have to do it all on my own, that I’m responsible for solving it all, despite the many brilliant and competent people around me: if I don’t do the thing, it might not happen, or it might not happen in the way that I wanted to, so it’s better to control for that. This means less uncertainty in the short term, but also cuts off any opportunities for others to step in and do for me, in their own way - i.e., to lean into my community.

As Sonya Renee Taylor says in her brilliant, The Body is Not an Apology, “To move beyond the narrative of individuality is to move beyond the narrative of scarcity and no enough-ness. Its is in community that our stories are held up to the light of connection, and we begin to see clearly how we are having a shared experience of being human with other humans.”

Which was and remains the purpose of this blog. Connection through storytelling.

But then we return to the question of how I understand what I am and what my worth is for my people - loved ones, family, friends, coworkers - if I’m not constantly doing things to earn their respect and love. Is it enough to sometimes just be, be present, be embodied?  Can I become more comfortable simply showing up in spaces - the work Zoom or conversations with friends or even here writing on this blog - being present and allowing things to emerge rather than always feeling that I need to facilitate, solve, control?

Questions without easy answers, but still important to ask.

Since this all happened during the darkest, shortest, coldest hours of our winter here in Cape Town, I found myself reading Katherine Mays’ gorgeous Wintering while I was trying to wrap my head and heart around. I found myself desperate for the moment things would be calm, when life would return to some recognizable normalcy. But the truth is, things haven’t been normal or calm since my father in law passed away last July, and there’s no point in continuing to try to finalize comfort and security. As Mays says:

To get better at wintering, we need to address our very notion of time. We tend to imagine that our lives are linear, but they are in fact cyclical. I would not, of course, seek to deny that we gradually grow older, but while doing so, we pass through phases of good health and ill, of optimism and deep doubt, of freedom and constraint. There are times when everything seems easy, and times when it all seems impossibly hard….The things that trouble us now will often come around again. Each time we endure the cycle, we ratchet up a notch. We learn from the last time around, and we do a few things better this time; we develop tricks of the mind to see us through. This is how progress is made. In the meantime, we can deal only with what’s in front of us at this moment in time. We take the next necessary action, and the next. At some point along the line, that next action will feel joyful again.