I'm inviting you into a new way of being
What the hell does that even mean
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“It is chaos’ great destructive energy that dissolves the past and gives us the gift of a new future. It releases us from the imprisoning patterns of the past by offering us its wild ride into newness. Only chaos creates the abyss in which we can recreate ourselves.”
Margaret Wheatley,
Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World
(emphasis mine)
In my own personal Before Time, certain bodily signals would arise that indicated that I was heading full-steam into anything could happen territory. I knew the train had left the station because from one moment to the next, there’d arise something alive and whirring in my gut, in my throat, at the backs of my eyes; a familiar rev of an inner engine that wouldn’t quiet until inevitably I’d find myself standing at the edge of an infinitely vast abyss where I regularly threw myself with total abandon.
In the daytime, I’d hold up my hands: on one, the image of the person I desired to be, living a values-driven life of integrity and creativity, a person earnest and kind, who wrote books and healed herself so she might help others. On the other hand, the impossible-to-ignore reality of so many of my behaviors that ran so counter to the type of person I desperately wanted to believe I could be.
In the space between my hands, a boundless shitstorm of shame. Imposter syndrome, and the fear that I would be “found out” by the people I loved most. Self-loathing; self-esteem in the gutter. A profound fear that there was something inherently wrong with me.
Recalling this time, a cold slick of sweat returns. My abdomen clenches, my upper back seizes up, my breath constricts. Oh, how I tried to hold it all together. The memory is as close as my skin.
The greatest source of my pain was the disorientation of living a double life. It terrified me that I could shapeshift so completely and that I had no control over when it would happen. On top of this was the painful isolation born of the belief that I was alone in my struggle, not to mention that if I were to admit that I needed help, that would mean claiming a culturally sanctioned label (you know the one), and as such a future that I wanted absolutely nothing to do with. I got stuck in this particular chaos for a long time. I didn’t know how to deal with anything, other than to anesthetize myself from it, an approach that worked great, until, of course, it didn’t. And even after I knew—for years!—that this approach wasn’t adding anything good to my life, I was so afraid of turning and facing the chaos that I just kept scraping away at the thing that had kinda-sorta worked in the past.
And then: I stopped scraping.
Things immediately started to feel better. But I still didn’t know how to deal with anything. So, like a well-trained Western-cultured cog, I did what I’d been programmed to do: I proceeded to channel all that inner chaos into becoming perfect. All I had to do was control, manage, plan, predict every aspect of my entire life, and I’d be OK.
You’ve heard me tell the story so many times: there I was, soaping up my skull in the shower, cliché lightbulb brightening over my head: what’s the point of quitting drinking if I still hate myself?
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In my practice—in my own, personal practice, and in the work I do with others—certain themes emerge again and again. One of the most pervasive is the the way we grapple with the truth that healing isn’t linear.
Intellectually, we get this. Our minds understand that changing our lives is not a straight shot. And yet. When we experience the nonlinearity—when we backslide, when we have a slip, when we fail, fumble, fall—which we most absolutely will—what do we do?
You know what we do. You know the inner dialogue, the self-flagellation, the words we say to ourselves that we would never speak to a friend. You know the panic, the fear, the belief that we’re doing it wrong. You know the comparison, the projection, the self-directed anger and frustration.
When I close my eyes and imagine into the word, “healing,” I see clear eyes and bright skin, a calm and easy moving through the world. I imagine a person rested, measured in their movements, choices, and responses. There’s an innate quiet and peacefulness.
Out here in my actual life, healing is a fire-breathing dragon. It is messy, unpredictable, strange, slow, boring, embarrassing, ridiculous. It always takes longer than I think it should. It laughs at my timelines. It is endlessly self-indulgent; it rattles and disrupts my people-pleasing. It is a sneaker wave, rushing up out of nowhere, destroying my painstakingly prepared beach picnic, leaving me a waterlogged, bedraggled, furious, panting mess.
What I believe: rarely is the slip—the fall, the failure, the fuckup—in and of itself harmful. Occasionally, OK, yes, sure, we make a mistake and there are consequences. And, by and large, what I see in myself and with my people is that it isn’t so much the backslide that is the problem, it’s everything that happens after. More than anything, it is the meaning we assign to it; it’s confronting the nonlinearity of our process—and then being jerks to ourselves about what that means about who we are as human beings—that causes harm.
We might be cruising along just fine, diligent in our practices, calm and measured and omg is this what stability feels like?—when, BOOM, we have a slip, a return to a behavior that we so wanted to believe was finally behind us, and instead of taking stock, gathering information, and going back to baseline, we stay low, we smolder at the bottom of the spiral, we pass generations in a wallowing of our own making.
The “new way of being” I’m inviting you to is a practice not only of disrupting our shitty belief systems, but also, of actively creating entirely new ones. Inside of this way of being, we practice living into a future of our imagination, of our own design. We are no longer beholden to the old stories. We practice agency, we assign meaning to our lives that is helpful, rather than harmful, we get curious about chaos—which is to say, the divine order of the universe—instead of numbing from it or trying to micromanage it. Inside of this new way of being, we stay engaged. We know how to take care of ourselves in a way that causes every day slightly less harm. We are helpful out in the world; our healing moves beyond us and into our communities. We stay close to our people (because none of this is possible without our people), reminding each other and being reminded when we forget (we will still forget) who we really are, which is to say, whole and complete, and powerful beyond measure. We create beauty; we delight in each other, we laugh and we leave space for as much joy as we can muster.
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I’m guessing many of you saw the James Webb Space Telescope images NASA released last week. When they first came out, and my feeds were blowing up with galaxies and stars and space, I could hardly look, so verklempt was I. There is nothing that connects me more viscerally to both the total preciousness and utter insignificance of our lives here on this blue planet that the overwhelm that comes when my little pea-brain does its best to fathom the infinity of the universe.
In the center of the Preciousness + Insignificance Venn Diagram, I connect to possibility. We get one shot at this. Why wouldn’t we dream so much bigger for ourselves, and for the world?
I thought when I quit drinking, all my new practices would deliver me a life of order, and my experience of chaos would be a thing of the past. Now I see that I practice so I can face the abyss. I partner with life so that every time life asks me to throw myself into the abyss, I can trust that whatever reordering happens to me will result in a greater sense of freedom. I no longer desire calm, balance, quiet. I am here to be ALIVE: wild, on purpose, creating a life of meaning, and, in the words of my incredibly wise comrade and longtime SELF MADE community member, Yvonne P., “It will be easier to smash patriarchy if we are all sober!”
We are not here to reduce chaos; we are here to partner with her. Partnering with chaos means partnering with life. In order to partner with life we must establish practices that deepen us into trusting our life. Trusting it’s unfolding, trusting what emerges, trusting the order that will reveal itself to us, if we let it.
Best of all: we get to do this together.
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On Monday, August 1st, the SELF MADE community begins this experiment. We’ll be focusing on practices. We’ll be living into big questions, grandiose imaginations. We’ll be showing up messy, angry, sad, lonesome, delighted, frustrated, stoked, skeptical. We’ll be asking for support; we’ll be supporting each other. We’ll be creating beauty, and art. We’ll be participating in community. We’ll be partnering with the principles of Chaos Theory to ground us in reality, which is to say: we’ll be partnering with life.
I don’t know how to do any of this: I am in the water with you. This is a co-creation, and I can’t wait to learn from you, and for your collaboration and contribution.
Oh, and in case it needs to be said:
”Sobriety*” is never a requirement; living into the questions is.
*Air quotes because the longer I’m in this game, the less I give a shit about labels and rules of any kind 🖕🏽🤘🏾
On August 1st, here’s what opens up for paid subscribers:
✍🏽 Content!
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❣️Mucho amor y cariño
Hope you join us. Please reach out with questions - you know I’m here. Or click the button to subscribe👇🏽
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I also invite you to sign up to chat with me about working together 1:1. I have spots still available for an August start. Here’s a video I made about how I coach:
And now I leave you to your wit and charisma <3
Dani
SELF MADE influencers (heh) + recommended reading:
Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World - Margaret Wheatley
The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred - Chanda Prescod Weinstein
Emergent Strategy - adrienne maree brown
Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
SELF MADE is a rebellious recovery community that empowers you to liberate yourself from societal programming and to step boldly into a life of your design. Posts are written by me, Dani Cirignano, founder, writer, coach, and recovery advocate based in San Francisco, CA.
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