I've been trying to write this for days

I’ve been trying to write to you for days now but the world is noisy and my fingers keep getting pulled away from the words or the words keep getting pulled from my brain by all of the distractions we all know too well.

The endless chorus of tweets and chores and emails and Wednesdays.

The terrible headlines to gloss over - initially without too much thought - and then find lie awake ruminating on at 3am.

The pizza shop simulator game I foolishly downloaded and now keep returning to because sometimes it’s just nice to show up to a workplace where someone tells you exactly what to do, and the assignment is easy and clear, and you know for sure that at the end someone will tell you this is the best pizza they’ve ever had and tip you $3.50, and at soon you’ll be able to buy another potted plant to sit in the corner of your virtual pizzeria. And there’s no need to choose which project to focus on today, and no spending the workday wondering if the project you chose was the wrong one, if in fact the entire life path you chose was the wrong one and everyone can see it but you.

the aforementioned pizza game

Anyway. I probably don’t even have to describe it to you because this is how most of us are living, right? Trying to catch the faint whispers of our own thoughts underneath the hum, trying to fit out passions, opinions, and desires into the cracks in our calendars. Forever floating outside of ourselves watching ourself react, reply, oblige.

So today I just want to remind you that you have a center. There is a home at the heart of you, knitting you together and holding you up. Muscles and ribs, yes but also truth and soul, both physically and emotionally making you something strong and solid, holding elements of you that remain real no matter what swirls around the world - or on the world wide web - surrounding you.

Maybe you can bring your attention to it now, breathing in and feeling it expand, breathing out and noticing it deflate.

Breathing in and allowing your inhale to gather in what you need from the enviroment around you, like the roots of a plant going out to find the nourishment the world holds for them.

Breathing out and imagining all that your inhale collected getting plugged directly into that truth at your center, feeling it click into place where it is needed most.

Breathing in and imagining any piece of yourself that has been left outside of you, any aspect that’s been abandoned or stolen or handed off to someone else to define, being reclaimed, pulled back to you on your breath.

Breathing out and imagining those recovered pieces relaxing back into their rightful place, feeling the tension dissipating as you notice yourself more whole, more here.

What would change in your world if you lived even 5% more of your life from this place, this center? Spent just a little more of each day rooted instead of reacting?

You are always here for you to come back to. The truth of you still exists no matter how long its been since you remembered or listened to it. At any moment you can feel your feet on the earth and notice the light slipping in through the window to your right and come home to yourself.

And, if you need some help (because easier said than done), I’d like to let you know that the Church of Bread and Roses is returning this Sunday, September 22nd!

My weekly Instagram lives filled with non-religious guided ritual and unconditionally accepting pep talks - which started in 2020 and then went on hiatus in April of this year - are back to offer you at least 30 minutes a week spent in that energy of grounded nourishment. These lives are designed to be an anchor in your calendar, so that no matter how chaotic your week was, no matter how far you might have strayed from yourself and your truth, no matter how many hours you spent making pizza on your phone and ignoring how you feel, you always know you can return. And breathe. And speak kindly to yourself.

The tagline I used for Church of Bread and Roses for awhile was “the sacred practice of being a person, not a product”, because it truly is designed to be a space that has open arms for the fullness of your humanity. You are invited to set down the striving of trying to be who you’re supposed to be and relax into the grace of who you naturally are - whether that’s grumpy, ecstatic, exhausted, confused, or all of the above.

Week by week, you can remember what it sounds like to hear your own voice, and week by week you can watch it be easier to access that truth at your center, as a result of your weekly practice.

We’re kicking off on Sunday, September 22nd, at 8pm central, and the live will be available for all paying subscribers on Substack. When you sign up you’ll be able to be added to my close friends on Instagram, and then I’ll go live to close friends only on Sunday! On Monday, the captioned replay will be uploaded to my Substack for any paying subscribers who may have missed the live.

I’m so grateful to exist in a corner of the internet where so many people are doing the slow, spirally work of coming home to themselves and finding their own voice amidst the noise. I am deeply honored to be small part of facilitating that work for some of you! And I can’t wait for Sunday.

Deep breath in, deep breath out. You are a real and solid person with ideas to share and you are deserving of your own attention.