On New Haircuts, Self-love and Great Art

Grief is an opening to self-reflection.

It’s been more than a week since the last newsletter - a product of travelling and it being hard to write, but I want you to know I’ve missed you. There are more than 100 people subscribed to this newsletter now, which is amazing to me. If you like it, please do share and subscribe, and suggest it to another friend.

Before I left, though I’ve never really seen the television show, I saw the ArtsClub’s production of “Kim’s Convenience” in Vancouver at the Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage. It was a tremendous show, and one that brought tears to my eyes in the way that only good art can do. The play is about a Korean family living and working in Regent Park in Toronto, and looks at what it means to run a small business as growth surges around the store, condos go up and big box retailers move into the neighbourhood. Is it better to sell and “have an exit plan?”, his neighbour asks. “Without selling, how will it be possible to retire?”Until that point, running the business has been a 24/7 all hands on deck type of project, and something that was needed in order to support the family when they moved to Canada.

In one of my favourite parts of the play, Mr. Kim shares with his daughter a project she did in elementary school when she had to pick something/someone she admired, and she did her project on her dad, writing about him and taking his picture outside the store. That moment and knowing that his daughter admired what he did, was his proudest moment. And through the play he asks, “What is my story? If I sell my store, my story ends, if I keep it going, my story continues.” 

He is asking essentially, what his legacy is, recognising as the play goes on that his children and their lives together are what his life is about. Yes the store isn’t a dream role, it isn’t the thing he trained for, it is hard, endless work without paid vacation days, but it matters because it helps the neighbourhood and it has helped him support his family. His son working at a rental car company is doing something similar - a job not for love, but to meet his responsibilities.

As  I watched the play, loving the Toronto references, loving the small business love that suffuses this play, tearing up at moments that resonated, appreciating that the play shows the parents speaking Korean to each other (because of course, if English is not your first language, you wouldn’t use it to communicate within your family home), it made me think about what legacy is.

For many people, the legacy, and social good that motivates their daily work is their family. If not family, (or in addition to family) for others, their source of hope is the house that they are saving up for. The car. The dream neighbourhood.  The dream of travelling.  Or it is simply the project of existing/meeting your living expenses that keeps you doing what you do. When I was a career strategist a few years ago, students would come see me and talk about their financial goals and needs and how that was motivating what they wanted to study, were studying, and the competitive programs that they were trying to apply for. 

All to say, there are many things that bring us to our work and the shape of our lives. And what we do and what our lives look like are part of how we shape our identities.

Lately, after my last miscarriage, I have been thinking about what gives me hope and meaning. If not a nuclear family, what are the possibilities of my life? Miscarriage is an opening - metaphorically and physically, and there is a moment, or series of moments in a miscarriage, where life and death feel much closer together,  and you can only surrender to the experience. The pain, and if you’re alone, the solitude, forces you to confront yourself. Whatever truth you’ve been shying away from, that you’ve shoved into little corners of your being, it all comes out. Those truths come out not right then, but afterwards, when in the weeks and months and years following, your life speaks to you. Everything has shifted, and you need to find a new way forward. You need to re-understand who you are. You recognise that life is short, extremely short, it is an act of wonder that you even exist, and you want to honour the gift.

One way of honouring that gift, and a question that sparked this newsletter in the first place, was the question of how one does social change work, or any type of work with a sense of portable peace? With a sense of centredness? How does one do equity work well - with excellence and being well oneself? And away from my daily routine, encountering the challenges of travel, one emerging answer is that rootedness comes from finding the core within you, and knowing who you are, independent of circumstances and challenges and the company you keep. That rootedness comes from deeply loving the person that you are.

That core is a sacred place that is only yours. Success or failure does not shift it, the opinions of others do not have access to it, and it is a place where you are a true friend to yourself. Where you find self-compassion when you make mistakes or take a wrong turn instead of critiquing or shaming yourself. Spaciousness helps keep the channel to that place open, urgency, perfectionism, fear are blockers. The more you are aware of that place and what it feels like when it is clear or when it is feeling cloudy, or at risk, the more you only do so much as you can without endangering that core. The more connected you are, the better able you are perhaps to engage with the world, to build, to solve, to create.

Favourites this week:

Turning Red: Like many people, on the day it came out,  I watched Turning Red, Pixar’s new film about a 13 year old girl going through puberty, family relationships, expectations, female anger, mother-daughter relationships, befriending your hormones, mind-body integration and so much more. I LOVED it, it made me homesick for Toronto and I want to watch it again.

Respect: This moving, sensitive film about Aretha Franklin and featuring Jennifer Hudson blew me away. In particular, I appreciated how the director approached sharing stories of abuse within Aretha Franklin’s life without actually showing images or sharing explicitly what happened. This film about purpose and pain and staying true to oneself is a beautiful watch.

The Kindest Lie by Nancy Johnson: I inhaled this story of motherhood and families and secrets and race in America over the past couple of days. The storytelling is deft, and despite all my feelings about Chicago after catching COVID and quarantining there, I appreciated reading a story set in Chicago.

deep practice: This blog post about practice from adrienne maree brown is about how the small is big, and practices that help keep internal freedom strong.

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