"Stumbling is a sign of momentum" - Steve
Life-altering advice from someone I've never met
💙 “The Deeper Blue: Finding FLOW in Long-Term Sobriety” I’m giving a talk at Sober Voices on October 2 aka THIS Saturday! The rest of the line-up is hella rad, too. Register here.
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In February 2020, I’d just started dating a man I’d met on Tinder. He had a strong, if constantly furrowed, brow, sad eyes, and rode a motorcycle (say no more, right? Who knew I was such a cliché!). He had a brown belt in Jujitsu, worked in the fine art world, and was fixing up a Vanagon to travel across the country in. Sure, he was just getting out of a sixteen-year relationship, but I was smitten, which meant fantasizing about #vanlife and magically thinking away every last red flag (including the one from our very first date where he told me he was still living in his ex’s basement).
I was dating a ton at the time, and under normal circumstances, I would have moved on pretty quickly from this sort-of-kind-of-only-barely-available person, just dipping his toe back in the dating pool after being out for almost two decades. But then, pandemic. I immediately knew I didn’t feel safe enough to keep dating the other two men I’d been hanging out with, but something about Sad Eyes felt familiar to my nervous system. In the chaos of the early days of COVID, when none of us knew what was happening—when we were fastidiously sanitizing grocery bags before bringing them up from the garage, and bleaching all the doorknobs and light switches twice a day—“dating” as I’d known it stopped being a thing, which meant pivoting (bleh) from ice cream and restaurant dates to long, masked walks in McLaren Park, over and over, for months.
Even as the COVID data rolled in and we learned how to safely start hanging out, Sad Eyes ran hot and cold. He’d be present, and attentive, and then fall off the map. Days would go by and I wouldn’t hear from him. Then we’d hang out, and it would be fun, full of meandering conversations, bad sci-fi, and picking up take-out and driving to some cool view to eat in my car and chat and watch the fog roll in or the moon rise or the sun set. There was something about having someone’s shoulder to rest my head on during such tumultuous times that had me justifying all the bummer disappointments. We’re in a pandemic! I told myself. Everyone is struggling! I was on the roller coaster, constantly bemoaning my upsets to my poor housemates while internally I adjusted my expectations, talking myself out of what I actually wanted. Everything is apocalyptic! Something is better than nothing!
And then…eighteen months passed.
Do you know what it means to be breadcrumbed? It’s when a person you’re hanging out with gives you just enough attention to keep you hooked, but then the second you return that attention, they pull back. If I had a dollar for every time I declared myself “done;” for every time I told him this wasn’t working; for every time my heart would race hoping that ping on my phone was him, and how very rarely it ever was; but also, for how many times I said and thought all these things, and then continued to hang out with him anyway, I would have precisely nine-hundred-thousand-billion dollars.
This, the thing my pobrecita nervous system recognized.
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I finally called it quits with Sad Eyes in back in July, after he went on and on one night about all the PTO he’d racked up at his job, speculating out loud about all the places he might travel to, without once including me in the daydream. It was finally the thing that exhausted me enough to walk away.
Except: we’ve been texting again! We’ve even hung out a few times! It’s hard not to fall back into another familiar-to-the-nervous-system-story, the one that I’ve told myself since forever, the one that goes: there’s something very wrong with me. I’ve worked so hard to change the narrative I tell myself about myself, but when it comes to men and relationships it is still a lot of fumbling around in the dark. The next layer of the onion, as it were.
Anyway: Ashley took me out to celebrate my four years free the other night and I was bemoaning my Issues with Men and Dating and how frustrating it is to know something on an intellectual level (in this case, that no, I don’t want to be with a man who breadcrumbs me) but still behave in ways that are contrary to that knowing. It’s uncomfortable for all the aforementioned and obvious reasons, but also a bit scary, because it’s eerily similar to my pattern with drinking: knowing that the poison wasn’t serving me, wanting desperately to be done, making bold declarations of abstinence, and then inevitably fucking up and falling back into the pit of shame (give me a non-drinker and I’ll show you…an over-thinker).
As I paused to catch my breath, Ashley sat back from the squash soup we were sharing. “Well, you know what my coach Steve says: stumbling is a sign of momentum.” Then she gave me the CUTEST metaphor I’ve ever heard: that we’re like screws, going around the same groove again and again. But with every turn around on those grooves, we’re slightly higher up each time.
Coach Steve! My new hero. The lightbulb’s been buzzing bright above my brain ever since.
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Believe it or not: this post isn’t about relationships. I mean, it is. But only partly.
The other part is the part about the reality of change, and what is required if we are to change in ways that are sustainable over the long-term.
When we seek to blow up a familiar pattern—particularly those that are so ingrained in our nervous-systems that it’s challenging to even see, let alone believe, that a different way might be possible—an abstinence only approach is often, at first, unhelpful, because it keeps us in the cycle of failure and shame. If we take an “all or nothing” approach, all the focus on is the failure, rather than the lessons we might learn inside a more mindful turn of the screw.
Shame is not the way. Nor punishment. Berating ourselves when we falter might seem like a motivating way to keep us from fucking up again, and maybe it does for a time. But if I know anything, hating ourselves into changing ourselves is an unsustainable practice.
If stumbling is a given. If it means that nothing is wrong at all. If stumbling is the path, rather than a sign that we fucked up the path, how might we interact with the stumble in a way that fosters curiosity, an expanded self-awareness, and the resilience to not get stuck in shame or failure, but to simply get back on course and continue apace?
“Stumbling is a sign of momentum” is self-compassion, kindness and forgiveness right at the moment we need it most. This is something we can offer to ourselves, this is how we resource back into ourselves; this is us not dependent on anyone or anything outside of ourselves to make us OK. This is how we begin to trust and take care of ourselves. This is us, reminding ourselves of our precious humanity, this is the joy of not being a robot. This is harm reduction, and harm reduction is recovery. This is how we change.
Four years ago, I was adrift and scared and lost. I drew a line in the sand and made a choice that I never thought it would be possible for me to make, the effects of which still delight me in their mysteriousness. And this choice would have been unsustainable, or certainly nowhere near as joyful, had I not learned to love myself for my humanness.
I am still learning how to do this, y’all. It’s part of the practice.
Just last week I was afraid I was broken, that I’d never find love, that I would end up without the thing I desire most. Then: a dinner with a friend, and, thanks to Coach Steve, an unexpected lightbulb moment. There are still so many lightbulbs!
May they light the way, always.
From the archives ~ this time last year: How to want what you already have
SELF MADE is a newsletter for fellow 🌺late bloomers🌺 with a focus on recovery, creativity and community. It's written by me, Dani, a writer, coach, and recovery advocate in San Francisco, CA.
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Yayayayyaayyyyaaaahhhh Steve dropping the wisdom bombs! LOVE YOU!
This is helpful as my MO is and always has been to beat myself when I stumble. I will try to remember Steve's words. XO