A couple of decades ago, when I was recovering from my divorce and the intense love affair that followed it, I picked up an obscure little memoir about a woman recovering from her divorce and the intense love affair that followed it called Eat, Pray, Love.
In that book, Liz Gilbert describes a practice she used to pull herself out of her depression and intense loneliness. She started writing a letter to herself from somewhere unknown and told herself (or some other entity told her, depending on how you want to look at it) all of the things she needed to hear at the time.
Automatic writing wasn’t new to me. I’d already experimented with it, but it was her description of it that allowed me to get past my own skepticism and approach it as a regular practice.
I continued writing these letters off and on alone until Liz started a newsletter giving weekly prompts for this practice, and I signed up. Last week’s prompt was, “What would you have me know about celebrating my accomplishments?”
I assumed most people read it and thought, “Oh, a nice way to list out all of my accomplishments.” But, for me, it was an opportunity to look at all of the ways I have not yet met my goals.
Here is my letter:
—
My Love,
It’s ok. I saw that as soon as you read this prompt, you said, “maybe I won’t write a letter this week,” and pushed away from your desk. But you came back, even though your stomach is doing flips, so let’s call that one accomplishment.
I know you hear “accomplishment” and you immediately think that it’s about an accounting of how you measure up against other people, and the idea of that accounting is making you break out in sobs, just now.
I know that when you read The Stranger by Camus, it gave you a chill, not because of the idea that the world lacks any essential meaning, but because you related to the main character, and you saw what happened to him.
I know that when you asked Chatgpt how you can better connect to other people, it warned you not to be too open and honest, because that was off-putting to regular people, and that scared the hell out of you. You told it that you didn’t know how to perform in the ways other people performed, and it told you that maybe you just weren’t cut out for community the way it exists today.
And, you thought, that if you can’t connect, you will never accomplish anything, because you believe no one accomplishes anything alone. They do it with help and support, and you feel that’s not available to you.
It doesn’t have to be like that, though. As far as I’m concerned, just the fact that you keep walking this earth day after day is an accomplishment. You wake up every day, and you journal, and you meditate, and you dedicate yourself to your writing, and you go to the gym, and you do your stretches afterwards, and no one steps out of the woodwork to say, “good job,” and you keep doing these things every single day, anyway, and if that’s not a fucking accomplishment, I don’t know what is.
My Love, every aspect of you is an accomplishment. You are one big walking accomplishment. Your bravery floors me every single day. Don’t let preconceived ideas of what “accomplishment” means take that away from you. Don’t let comparison take that away from you. Sit in my love for you. Sit in my pride for you. Sit in your accomplishments. Breathe them in. Swallow them like nectar. Let them in.
Love, Love.
—
Several days later, Liz Gilbert commented on my letter saying she found it deeply moving. I re-read it and was deeply moved myself.
You see, I have a regular habit.
Step One: Look at external measures to see how well I’m doing (comparison)
Step Two: Find myself lacking
Step Three: Feel Bad
Inadequacy is my drug, my desire, my comfort zone. If I can find a way to go there, I will go there. External measures have nothing to do with it. It’s an impulse that has no purpose and amounts to nothing.
Before I go on, I want to stop for a moment to have some compassion for all of us. I didn’t choose this habit. It’s a programming that was foisted upon me from the outside world. I imagine it’s a programming that’s foisted on a lot of people, and if not this particular thing, then something else that’s equally demoralizing.
In that letter, my subconscious, “Love,” or whoever, pointed it out to me. “It doesn’t have to be that way,” but it took another week for it to really click.
Yet, while I recognize this fairly regularly, I also forget this just as regularly. I don’t know how I will keep reminding myself, except to keep writing letters.