For the past few years, I’ve learned that there’s a part of me who doesn’t know how to exist professionally without a lesson to teach. Without a mechanism to explain. Without offering some kind of intellectual value to my reader.
For most of my career, I’ve shared the lessons that felt most valuable to me at the time. Especially after I’ve already made sense of it. After I’ve found clarity from it. After I can offer something useful, something grounded, something that feels complete. That’s where I feel comfortable. That’s where I feel valuable.
But lately, I’ve been somewhere else personally. In the middle of something I don’t fully understand yet. Without the clarity. Without the lesson. Without anything to offer except the experience of being in it.
Truth be told, I feel lost in this phase of my life. I feel disappointed with how certain things in my life have turned out. I feel heartbroken by the roads not taken. I’m also grieving people lost. I want so much to share those experiences as they’re happening, but I don’t know how to show up like that. I don’t know how to allow myself to be seen like that.
I’m usually the one with the answers. I’m the one with advice. I hold the sage wisdom. I run off onto my metaphorical mountain top, suffer alone, dig for the wisdom, and then I come back with jewels for everyone else. That’s how I always do this.
I think there’s a part of me that believes something has value only when it’s been figured out or can be explained. Once it can help someone else through the clarity gained.
But there’s another part of me that’s starting to see something different. That maybe there’s value in being in this liminal space, too. In the not knowing. In the unfinished. In the parts of me that are still trying to understand what they’re feeling.
I think people don’t just connect to clarity. They connect to what they can relate to. They connect to seeing themselves in something that hasn’t been resolved yet. Because they don’t feel resolved yet.
And maybe that’s what this space is asking of me. Not to teach. Not to be sure before I respond. But to sit here, honestly. To share, honestly. And to let that be enough for now.
I don’t know how to do that yet. I don’t know how to let myself be seen in that way yet. But this is me trying.
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