Return To the Bronco of Desire

a salve for the accusation of inconsistency

⭐️ This letter is a ~3 minute read ⭐️

When I find myself on the lonesome, rocky road of self-critique-because-I-didn’t-do-the-thing-I-told-myself-I-was-gonna-do, I remember some short and sweet words from my sweetheart.

It’s about the return. 

It’s not how long you stay in the saddle of the mercurial bronco that is your hopes, dreams, and to-do list inspired actions, but about how you return when you get bucked off.

Do you come back, do you try again? Do you come back with the whip in hand, hounding your own hide ~for being so inconsistent~?

This is a crown-jewel tenet in many a spiritual tradition based in mindfulness and meditation, we know. It’s not about how often your golden retriever puppy dog of a mind wanders off into the woods, it's the degree of softness you have when you call the puppy home.

Let’s take this newsletter for example. I told myself and the internet that this is where I’d channel my self-expression on the new and full moon, roundabouts. 

Twice a month. That’s right, a little dose of tell the people what you want to do so you’ll show up for the thing you said you wanted to do.

But then what happens when that doesn’t work? What happens when you slip off the saddle sneaky style, certain no one will notice or care so maybe I just won’t this month?

What happens when you walk out on yourself and your visions and justify it with ‘because life happened?’ And then what about when life actually happens??

I really feel like this is a major both/and puzzle we are all reckoning with in some way or another.

When is it time to be easy and permissive and ‘let ourselves off the hook’ of our own overzealous ambition because we’re healing from the centuries old tyranny of productivity and obedience at all costs, and when is it time to hold our feet to the fire as an act of devotion to our self-actualization.

YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN?

Like how do I hold my feet to the fire in the name of loyalty to myself that doesn’t mimic systems of domination that GODDEZZ BLEZZ are so ingrained in the muscle memory?

It's taken me ten years since ending my practice of rigorous ballet training to heal my relationship to the word DISCIPLINE. It’s taken many a journal page to recast my feelings around the word RIGOR. How to create consistent action towards my visions and not get ensnared by the bear trap of nag-a-licious authoritarian inner rule?

I have zero capital T truths about what I’ve learned except to say that its freaking fascinating research to be swimming in–Reframing grit. Reframing tenacious hunger. Reframing brow sweat and elbow grease as the spoils of devotion.

Here’s a wacky notion that came to me in meditation recently on this topic.

I was chatting with my higher-Self asking some ‘which way forward’ kinds of questions. I asked about my projects. I asked about my newsletter, and what to make of my saddle slide-off and how to redirect and reenter.

This is what I heard and scrawled into my notebook:

Let it be, let it be itself. Your newsletter and everything else you create and want to create are living, breathing beings. They have a life and rhythm of their own design. They have wants and needs and timelines that will be revealed to you if you are willing to listen. If you want to turn the sword on yourself and believe that something NOT HAPPENING is because you didn’t do it right, then you are free to do so, but know that it is an unnecessary, burdensome activity. Your creations are collaborators, not inanimate possessions to exert will over. 

WELL OKAY THEN DAGGUM.

And then I wrote to myself:

Ok YES BIG TIME but maybe this is also some woo-tastic gobbledy goop bypassing and excuse-making for not staying accountable to the thing I said I’d do and also and maybe it's a perspective shift that makes me less mean to myself. 

Hello to the bold and audacious claim that we are actually always in dialogue–whether we know it or not–with the more-than-human-world. That the more-than-human-world has agency and will and its own designs on what is needed here.

Not every outcome in my life is about me. Not every undone creative act is because I just couldn’t get it up for it. 

My ideas are wild broncos, are soft bunny rabbits, are golden retriever puppy dogs, are goldenrod stalks busting loose from winter’s grip like WHOA. They have an energetic signature that I am to read and listen to, not squash into a spreadsheet or imposed timeline. 

I imagine a lot of folks reading this have heard Liz Gilbert speak her hot take on ideas and their prerogative as sentient beings. She talks about how ideas are like fish swimming in the expansive ocean of our collective unconscious. They want to be born into this world of form. They choose their conduit human and come to us to dance and play and get born with our special flare and flavor bespeckling it. They do not belong to us. They move through us. 

My pal Narinder also speaks about her work as having a life of its own. Sometimes the work is a wild witch who runs away to the woods to commune with Baba Yaga and brew new teas from old bark, and she will come back when she’s ready with many new tricks up her sleeve. 

The lull is not because I am a bad worker, a bad dance partner, a bad puppy.

It’s about the return. I listen for when the return is right. I put down the sword. I honor the autonomy of all beings involved. I keep the fire alive. Sometimes it's a match, sometimes a wildfire. I greet the mercurial bronco, the wild horse of my visions, goals and desire. Sometimes I put a saddle on them and ride, sometimes they leave for mysterious, unknown pastures. We dance together when our time is ripe and I rejoice in the electric return. 

It’s good to be back in the saddle. 

✴ what else ✴

Well round one of Grief Threads is an unbelievably gorgeous gaggle of humans sorting through their shit in the zoom loom together. 

I am humbled and in awe of the tenacity of the human spirit. 

Everyone you have ever passed on the street has loved something and lost something and we really just can't imagine the things people are carrying with them. I am learning about new dimensions of radical empathy and community care with each class 

and gah lee just so grateful for this kind of medicine. 

If this is something that tugs on your interests--exploring grief through textiles in an intimate group setting--the next round of this workshop will get rolling in mid-May.

Sign up HERE to get on the waitlist, and send along to anyone who could use this kind of creative support group. We need you, we need one another. 

❤️ Melissa

photos: Jamie Hopper