Sitting at my desk today in my pretty pink bedroom, listening to a few hours of original audio recordings that Brené and I recorded last year this time in preparation for this. They’re so funny and raw and wise and tender, I feel so happy and lucky that those conversations ever happened.

I have the funniest history with Brené and her work. I’m always asking her, What are you talking about? What are you even saying? To which replies, Brené, You really haven’t read my books, have you? And then I say, No, no I have! and we both laugh.

But I have to say that more and more I think I’m getting what Brené is about. I’m coming to the edges of my vulnerability…those spaces where I wonder if I made a mistake (guilt) or if I AM a mistake (shame). I think of my new frontiers of exploration…love and relationships and see all the places I obsess, wondering if I’m too much when the real question is Is this a safe space for me to reveal what’s in my heart? or this very important question… Do I have the courage to reveal what’s going on with me, even if it means I might face bewilderment, indifference or rejection? even if it means I’ll be welcoming in unnerving sweetness, kindness or joy?

In less then a week, we’ll be on Day One of Ordinary Courage again, a five week class where Brené shares her field-tested wisdom about shame resilience, and I ask a lot of questions and make a lot of safe space for you to wonder out loud, too. It’s beautiful work, really, and I’m so proud to be a part of it. If you wanted to join me there, I promise you won’t be making a mistake and you’ll be glad to realize that you’re not the only one who needs to grow ordinary courage. God knows we all do.

Register here.

See Brené here…

After the heroics, the drama, the dreaming…there’s a simple quiet and the task of stringing days together one after another. Days of kindness, days of lovely lunches, days of swept floors, days of simple heartfelt requests and so much goodness. This is my work these days. Not the abnormal, but the simple courage…

The Abnormal is not Courage
by Jack Gilbert

The Poles rode out from Warsaw against the German
Tanks on horses. Rode knowing, in sunlight, with sabers,
A magnitude of beauty that allows me no peace.
And yet this poem would lessen that day. Question
The bravery. Say it’s not courage. Call it a passion.
Would say courage isn’t that. Not at its best.
It was impossible, and with form. They rode in sunlight,
Were mangled. But I say courage is not the abnormal.
Not the marvelous act. Not Macbeth with fine speeches.
The worthless can manage in public, or for the moment.
It is too near the whore’s heart: the bounty of impulse,
And the failure to sustain even small kindness.
Not the marvelous act, but the evident conclusion of being.
Not strangeness, but a leap forward of the same quality.
Accomplishment. The even loyalty. But fresh.
Not the Prodigal Son, nor Faustus. But Penelope.
The thing steady and clear. Then the crescendo.
The real form. The culmination. And the exceeding.
Not the surprise. The amazed understanding. The marriage,
Not the month’s rapture. Not the exception. The beauty
That is of many days. Steady and clear.
It is the normal excellence, of long accomplishment.

Where’s your edge today? To entertain the abnormal or to make room for long accomplishment?

1. i’m really happy. deep down happy.
2. i’ve made some sort of peace with being sad. it’s normal. and it’s not the end of the world.
3 i’m not looking for true love anymore. i want to be true love and i want to love others for who they are. period.
4. i’m starting to let go of regrets…
5. like blowing up my family, getting those girls out, letting friendships go
6. i think hopelessness is as important as hopefulness
7. i’ve never been straighter in my entire life but i’m always happiest when i have a work/play/life partner like rachael maddox
8. i kiss on the first date. and then tell.
9. i think letting everything break has made me more beautiful and more strong.
10. i’m tortured by self-doubt, but i’m starting to see the way out of that forest
11. i once asked a married man to run around the world with me and then spent six months tortured hoping he’d change his mind and say yes
12. i didn’t feel guilty about asking for one millisecond.
13. but i did feel 1000% times better when i let that relationship go.
14. i love foul language, misogynistic hip hop and trash talking with the boys.
15. nothing makes me laugh more than inappropriate humor.
16. i don’t know what appropriate is so much of the time.
17. this bothers me. but then i’m inappropriate anyway.
18. i’m in a deep dark exploration into the ways and wisdom of men
19. this must be what it was supposed to be like in college, only with better liquor and nicer beds and yummier kisses
20. i’m more sensual and uninhibited and free than i ever imagined
21. i learn best through experience
22. i’m not afraid of heartbreak, but i’m deathly scared of losing my equilibrium
23. i’ve never felt more alive
24. i don’t want to be famous or popular or known for anything other than that i was deep and wise and had a soul that was wildly beautiful, full of mercy and light.
25. i believe that real religion is the willingness to lie down in green grass naked and call everything in the world blessed.
26. and i mean everything. the haters, the murderers, the evil-doers, the righteous, the forgotten, the lost, the fighting, the weary, the wandering and the found.
27. i’m not as interested in love as i am in peace, but it’s a close contest. i think love is the intersection of acceptance, joy and irrational belief in the totality of the other.
28. i think peace is knowing that all is well, deep down on the inside, no matter what is going on around you.
29. i would bungee jump off the side of a bridge if you asked me to.
30. but then i would forget when we agreed to go and then feel awful about it.
31. i’m not very good at taking care of basic things.
32. i think apples is a reasonable dinner.
33. food is the gateway to both my soul and my vagina. if you feed me, i will cum.
34. i’m endlessly impressed with a man who sees things clearly, keeps his perspective to himself and then adjusts accordingly to meet the need and make a difference. it’s a cross between insight and intuition with a dash of courage.
35. i’m not that impressed with monogamy, but i’m not ruling it out either.
36. i think much of our suffering comes from trying to either stay in the lines ourselves or insisting others do the same.
37. i manifest my extreme sense of responsibility by never asking for help, taking on too much and then heaping tons of judgment on my head when i can’t pull it off and need to go back and ask for help. which i should have done in the first place.
38. that little africa adventure i had? it totally and completely kicked my ass. i’m still a little PTSD, but getting better everyday.
39. getting those girls out should have come with the warning…don’t try this at home.
40. i really love to drink whiskey
41. but i really like to stay in control
42. knowing where that fine line is is one of my superpowers
43. i’m unimpressed by good behavior, but tender hearts that desperately want to be of service to the world in some way? that gets me every time.
44. if you try to be hopeful, you will discover how to be a disaster. hoping means unleashing your desire, and desire unleashed wreaks havoc.
45. at the bottom of that havoc is a weird kind of all knowing peace. and joy.
46. and a new kind of hope that’s better than the one you started out with.
47. i really want a simple life
48. i recently hitchhiked to avoid cab fare in new york city. it felt mildly dangerous and fun.
49. i’m rarely afraid in these situations and i wonder if this is a problem.
50. i have a finely tuned sense of what is truly dangerous and what is not.
51. it doesn’t have to be dangerous to be scary. in fact, the real danger for me lies in the overwhelmed feeling i get that everything will be okay, no matter what and not wanting the no matter what part to not be too unpleasant.
52. i was so depressed this year, questioning and reviewing my entire life, i didn’t talk to anyone except my immediate family and one or two friends for about four months. it was a dark night of the soul but without the necessary medication or emotional support.
53. i let everything go during that time and watched it all break around me.
54. this was a kind of clearing away of the last of my old life
55. i believe in destruction
56. i don’t think we should always try to save things or make them work
57. i think that everything changes and everyone leaves and that we have no guarantees
58. and that’s okay.
59. i get a lot of energy from being very quiet and peaceful.
60. i’m realizing how naturally passive and even submissive i can be sometimes.
61. i like this.
62. i really am tired of being a know-it-all. of having all the tips. of having all the ideas. of knowing how to fix shit and make shit happen.
63. i’m easing into a more organic way of being.
64. i hate it when i let people down
65. i’m learning that this sometimes happens when i’m an asshole, but more often then not, it also happens when who i truly am is in direct contrast with who this person imagined i am. sometimes that discrepancy has nothing to do with me and is not my fault.
66. i really like assholes.
67. of all the things needing nurturing, my body has been the most neglected. which is why touch is better for me right now than anything else.
68. i’m learning how to say that won’t work for me, which feels radical and strange, since i’ve always been the girl who only knew where the gas pedal was, with or without power steering.
69. i’ve had delicious affairs involving motorcycles.
70. i used to think audacity and hubris were virtues, but now i prize tenderness and humility more.
71. i’m learning how to say i’m sorry and mean it. not just say the words because i know that’s the right thing to do.
72. i’m worried i’m actually a crappy mother. i see all the ways i could improve or even just bring myself up to average but then i never change. i hate myself for banking on forgiveness more than transformation and growth.
73. i don’t care about money. i’d rather we all just traded pens or sang each other songs as some form of currency
74. i prefer fucking to making love.
75. i’m like a light skinned woman of color in the nineteenth century trying to pass into white society. by virtue of not being covered in tattoos and wearing dreads, i might be accused of false advertising.
76. i take all those pictures of myself because there’s no one here to see this physical and emotional transformation i’m going through that manifests itself by pouring out of my skin. i want there to be a record of how i became so alive again and so free.
77. i only take my face because i think the rest of me looks like shit 90% of the time. i’m worried i’ll always have a big stomach.
78. i want a man who will come home late at night and drink whiskey with me on the front porch while we tell stories and joke and then who will climb up the stairs, and let me undress him so he can fuck me silly.
79. and until that man shows up and wants to stay awhile, i’ll be cavorting with poets and writers and painters and artists and hopefully a motorcycle mechanic who wants to take me on rides every saturday until i’m sixty.
80. i need to write my memoir and i’m getting scared i won’t do it
81. i want to wander around the world with madeleine so she can see how smart i am and how free she can be
82. i want to wander through forests with carter so he can feel how deep i am and how fearless he can be
83. i want to sit under a tree with the ones i loved and lost as dear friends and brothers and talk about all our mistakes and all the ways we wished it could be
84. i want to spend my old age couch surfing on the sofas of all the twenty-somethings who lounged on mine. i want to eat their leftover takeout and tell their daughters scandalous stories and give them marginal marriage advice and be a cackling old source of truth and healing.
85. i’m not afraid to be old alone.
86. i know there’s so much more unraveling and shedding and grieving to do before i die.
87. but i also know there’s so much more delicious hope, wild laughter and deep down joy.
88. i’m not afraid to be alive.
89. but it’s easier when i take lots of naps and cry as often as necessary.
90. i’m worried about being too late and saying no when i should have said yes.
91. i’m so horribly slow at learning.
92. i feel most alive when kissed, and also when we’re laughing.
93. i want to lead a revolution for three year-olds. i just love how they cry and lose their shit and how everything is about identity and power. i’m right there with ya, kid.
94. i’m making peace with the fact that some people might view me as spoiled, privileged, whiny, self-absorbed, narcissistic, megolomaniacal and/or insane.
95. it’s all true! and choosing to see it helps me melt my hard heart into humble growth, confession and gratitude.
96. owning your shadow is perhaps the most powerful thing you can do
97. aside from letting someone see you and love you fully with your eyes wide open because you are beautiful to them and they don’t fucking care if you know it or not as long as you let them do whatever the hell they want to do with you, from head to toe
98. i’m getting everything i deserve…all the lessons, all the suffering, all the heartbreak. but also all the joy, all the passion, all the love, all the companionship
99. i wouldn’t trade what i know now for what i had then
100. and i can only say that because i’m awake now in a way that i never was before and i had to go on a journey of hopelessness, despair, courage, truth, power and love to uncover what it means for me to be human, what it means for me to really love, not just a family in africa, but myself, my children and the whole wide world.

You can read How To Be Happy, Parts One, Two, Three, Four and Five here

Whatever you do, don’t play Cold Play. Try this instead. Or this. Either one will work just fine.
Do, however, lean in. Let your eyes shine.
Say yes.
Kiss, when the moment calls. There’s no point in being any other way.

Everything you ever wanted is coming. And it will be fantastic. But only after it’s horrible. And only after you already understand that fantastic is just a moment like any other moment. And that horrible is just a state of mind. And that you’ll see plenty of both before it’s all over.

In the meantime, there’s this:
You are lovely.
More lovely than you can imagine.

And you are meant to be loved, but don’t start thinking that the love of anyone else will make you happy. Happiness is made up. It’s all in your head, and don’t you forget it.

So put that in your head.
Plant it like a seed. Pour it into your brain with super glue. Whatever it takes to make you full of hope. Whatever it takes to remind you, you aren’t the only one.

This is what I can tell you:
Hopelessness is not a problem. You will survive it. It will burn like hell on the way down but at the bottom you will find your truth. Your horrible fantastic truth. That true love is not out there or over here or with this person or not with that person.

It is a state of being that you yourself can embody.
It is a way of moving in the world that expands beyond borders
and then closes in when you’re about to compromise your basic constitution.

It is the meaning of sorrow and the entrance to bliss.
You will be disappointed that it was this easy after everything was so hard.
You will forget in five seconds and then remember in five hours, after you swore you could never do such a thing. You’ll forget and remember and remember and forget, but all the while you’ll still be here. You’ll still love. You won’t stop dreaming. Even after all this remembering. Even after all this forget.

There’s more I can say, but remember this.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

–Mary Oliver

I had a baby while I was gone. You should go say hi to her. Or put yourself on a list so I can send you her baby pictures while she’s growing. She’s so incredibly beautiful, you’ll want to stay and visit awhile. Here’s her first smile. Here she is sitting up like a big girl. You’ll love her. Promise.