We already were impressed by Simone Biles.  She’d overcome so much adversity in her life and yet her spark, spirit, hard work, talent, and skill shone bright in her gymnastics competitions.  Watching her star rise was a wonder and an honor to behold.  Then came the Tokyo Olympics and, to the shock of fans around the globe, Miss Biles pulled out of her competitions to take care of herself and preserve the opportunities of her teammates.  

Dearest Marilla

Yesterday I moved out of our office and it feels like a severing of the last connection I had to you.  In all the years it’s been since you’ve been gone, it’s always felt like my space that I shared with you even though I’ve shared it with so many others.  Perhaps that helped me manage the pain of missing you.

Sometimes self-criticism can be motivating, providing the energy and resolve to pursue changes in ourselves so that we can become the person we intend to be.  Sometimes self-criticism just adds weight to the things we feel badly about already.  Often we judge ourselves too harshly, blinded to our own strengths by our own sense of inadequacy and coming up with completely false narratives about ourselves in the process.  We can be our own worst critics and fail to see how valuable we are and how important our own processes are when they don’t look like what everyone else is doing.

“It’s the weirdest thing,” my colleague told me over a zoom meeting, “people start to tell you what’s hard and then they suddenly reverse course and start listing all the things they are grateful for.  Why are they doing that?”

Since this conversation, I’ve had similar ones with other colleagues and I’ve listened as my friends and clients follow the same pattern.  We are observing this new phenomenon where suddenly folks don’t feel comfortable acknowledging their struggles, sadness, or frustration because they have so much to be grateful for.  And they do.  But why do our blessings invalidate our more difficult feelings?  Are those less real or less important because today we are healthy?  I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say maybe sometimes.