Bearing The Weight
When No One Else Can Do It For You
There’s a saying: we come in alone and we’re going to die alone. As a woman who has birthed two children, I would argue that notion ignores the Mama Elephant in the room. None of us comes in alone. We come in through the courage and willingness of our mother to offer her body in service, and the enormity of that offering on our behalf sets the stage for everything that comes after.
What the saying points to obliquely, however, is that there is an essential aloneness to being alive in this finite existence that is inescapable. We need other people in order to survive and thrive, but there are also experiences that no one else can have for us. Some of them involve submitting to constriction and obligation; bearing the weight and consequence of our choices. Some of them involve, conversely, opening to expansion; allowing ourselves to express and create.
You’d think the commitment to constriction and obligation would be harder and the opening to expansion would be easier, but for some of us, the reverse is true. Through some mysterious mix of temperament and training, we know how to be obligated and responsible. We are steadfast, disciplined, and dependable. We know how to climb ladders, work systems, master the material world. We accept limitations and approach them as a challenge rather than an insurmountable obstacle.
Where we falter (where I falter) is in faith in abundance and benevolence. This faith allows for not only the exposure of our tender underbellies but also the confidence to believe that our essential spark, our creative potential, has value, and is worthy of the same dedication we offer to the world outside ourselves.
Safer to stick to obligation and responsibility than to invite in the wild, anarchic, insistently individualistic, creative impulse. This tender, fierce, particular wild spark has no interest in ideas of “will it be good enough”? It is unjustifiable, the root word being just. The communality inherent in the notion of just— appropriate, deserved, or well-founded— does not apply. It simply needs to exist for its own sake. It just is.
Its key purpose is not relational, per se. Despite whatever external systems of valuation exist around art or creativity, its essential value is entirely subjective and self-oriented. If you never make or express or create a damn thing the world will spin on, and the only person who will obviously and palpably suffer the absence is you.
Birthing our creativity is the closest we come to immaculate conception. It is not conceived in partnership with any force other than the Transcendent. And whatever that transcendent force is— whether God, Genius, Collective Unconscious, Muse, or whatever it may be— It cannot bring our creativity to birth. Only we can do that through our imperfect, finite, human selves, our courage, and our willingness.
I quail in the face of the enormous weight of responsibility to birth my creative projects for no other reason than that I need them to be alive outside of me.
For the third time in the last dozen years, the drive to write exclusively and commit to a big project has risen up. At the same time, as if by magic, my life has conspired to see if I can dig deep enough to fuel that drive despite the obstacles and terror. Of course, I don’t believe it’s actually magic. I believe we keep getting confronted with the lessons we need to learn until we learn them.
What have I needed to learn? So many things: which relationships feed me and which deplete me. To be alone and how to withstand loneliness. To submit to the endless, repetitive necessities of nurturing a healthy body, home, and heart. To always, and unapologetically, have my own back. To believe in my talent for its own sake; that I was put here to offer it up with no promise of the outcome. That to show up in the world in the fullness of myself, with integrity, courage, and vulnerability is sacred service.
All this to say, I’m writing a book, and in September I will be moving to paid subscriptions for this newsletter. Funding my life in part through this newsletter, and picking up freelance work besides, will allow me the freedom and flexibility to gestate the book.
The third time’s the charm. I am ready.
I’ll be rolling out the details of paid subscriptions over the rest of August so you can each weigh your options. I hope you will subscribe. I promise I will bring my writing my whole heart. I will bring you my whole heart. I am terrified, and so, so excited.
Please share this edition of the newsletter with someone you think would benefit, or browse the archive and find another that moves you. This is a grassroots, crowd-disbursed, art and love effort over here and I am grateful for your help getting the word out.
Not a subscriber yet? Use the box above. XO, Asha
Yay! I can hardly wait to see the beauty you create.
Good luck! Looking forward to learning more.