haileybwilliams-blog-blog

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“You were born to become the adult your child self wished existed”

-My Human Design 6/2 The Exemplary Human

“The questioning is simply your soul challenging you to keep raising your standards higher and higher to go above and beyond”

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When I first was titled as the “earth” element in acupuncture, and told that it meant I was a very nurturing being, for some reason I rejected it.

This makes me curious as to why I seem to reject my nurturing part. It feels like there is a part that thinks that’s if I’m nurturing, that I can’t also be strong and independent.

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“In the absence of belonging, you become it”

Mark Groves podcast episode 122

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Sometimes it feels like my past self has been making lots of decisions with my future self in mind. Except without thinking about it, like it’s happening subconsciously. As if I’m acting out of the collective

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Become a kindergarten teacher

“What lights you up and what breaks your heart?”

-Cathy said this right after (to the second) my body started feeling so much sadness and my eyes teared up thinking about working with traumatized children or just trauma in general

“The dream is: don’t do any job. Do your life’s work”

-mark groves podcast Ep 161 Cathy Heller

“Becoming who you are is unbecoming everything you’re not”

I’m having a very emotional response driving back from running at evergreen this morning thinking about working with children. I thought to myself how it scares the hell out of me to work with children because I have absolutely no idea how to interact with them.

Then I realized: I’ve been wanting to work with children for as long as I can remember, as I was shown a memory of the leadership card I wrote on that said “become a kindergarten teacher”

Even funnier: Hannah just texted me and told me that she saw me this morning on my way back when I was having the above moment ^

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Crowders

It’s so funny isn’t it. To come out into the world, the grand ole opry/art show that is nature. The trees chosen carefully one by one as they line the red carpet like spotlights, leading me to something bigger…yet what do I chose to ponder?

A boy.

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Dolce Far Niente

Jonas,

I sit here at the airport, thoughts swaying back and forth in rhythm with the legs of the rocking chair, and an Italian phrase I heard recently comes to mind: dolce far niente or the sweetness of doing nothing. I heard this phrase years ago and found myself reacting in an almost robotic way "beep boop bop, does not compute" for the insistent pressure to never slow down, to never stop moving, to never waste time was the fuel that kept my tank from ever considering its contents. But today, I feel the string of a new meaning materializing, slowly beginning to drop it's line into the pool of my thoughts hoping to catch a bite. Today, I find myself in a whirlwind of memories, both alone and with people, that are beginning to make space for this phrase to be defined differently.

I remembered a conversation we had while walking on the beltline in Atlanta on one of your last days here (well technically one of your last days but you already know how that story goes). We talked about the beautiful little moments in life and how easily they can be forgotten, but even more so, how pertinent they are to remembering why we should keep ourselves here, upright, feet on the ground and head however far up in the clouds it'll allow us to go. We talked about the reason why continuing to push through the hard things matters because we can look back and catch those little moments to hold them dearly in one hand until you need them again. So, I attach here some of the little arbitrary memories in hopes that they help you catch those moments once again (and also, I'm realizing now, in hopes that they’ll even load, oof). Dolce far niente redefining itself before my very eyes. Beep boop bop, I guess the computer found itself a new operating system. Lastly, a short story: As a 2 year old wearing coke bottle glasses and living with my grandparents, I would ask my grandpa every night what we were having for dinner. With astounding certainty he would reply "Wellllll rutabaga pie and fried rabbit tracks!" in which I would undoubtedly collapse with laughter and demand the name of the REAL thing we were having for dinner and this would foster on practically forever until a meal graced us with it's delicious presence. This whole debacle is something that lived on for years and years to come, my reaction transforming as time went by but the joy it brought remained the same. Then, at the celebration of life event that my family held this summer for my grandpa, I was asked to bring a dish. I can imagine you know where this is going because you bet your bottom dollar that I brought............. strawberry cake and hashbrown rounds! Well sheesh, that's all the local market in Cedar Falls, Iowa had alriiight. (I’m no baker but I know a red pie when I see one) And although they weren't exactly the same thing, the memories it stirred in me brought a familiar light all the same. Now I'll end this anecdote by clarifying that I have absolutely no idea what fried rabbit tracks or rutabaga pie are, but I imagine in time as my hairs start to grey and my mouth begins to grow quieter than my mind – I'll find out. Lastly #2, a Carl Jung quote that's been replaying in my mind often: "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate." As we all continue to explore the unconscious, the conscious, the transformation of enjoying doing nothing with chosen family and the like, I look forward to trading all of these thoughts and no thoughts at all over a little dolce far niente. Love, Hailey B.

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The milk carton remains picture-less

Zeb and I ended things. Again. If I had a quarter am I right.

My heart plays a game of air hockey, forcefully banging the puck down the neon lit air table with a knock that feels like it has no direction. I still can't keep track of the whiplash the puck gives me as it travels back and forth, up and down, left to right on the table, moving with so much speed that I can barely predict where it will end up next to block it. Sometimes I don't even get that far. Sometimes the puck gets through, scoring an emotion that sends a stream of liquid through my body and out of the corners of my eyes.

One part of me is so sad. She worked so hard, sleepless nights and weekends, sifting through the things he did and the words he said to try and pinpoint all of the ones we'd decide to keep and file away in the back of our mind just in case we decided to re-file them into the long term memory one day. She clutched these memories so closely to her as she gave them a kiss and wished them the best on their merry way. "Hope to see you again one day, " she'd say "when maybe, just maybe, we'd be sharing these memories as something that could only be titled as Our Beginning."

She works so hard, that part.

Another part of me is sad because of how much I enjoyed the vulnerability and the comfort of it all. A protective part of mine rarely allows this vulnerable girl to be comforted by another, but this time she had taken a step back and allowed herself to be loved for a moment. It's scary, the act of allowing yourself to be loved when you'e so used to desperately clinging to the expectation that we can handle everything all on our own. But for a moment, I had toyed with the idea, softly testing its malleability between my fingertips while letting Zeb take me into his arms.

In the end, it's the classic case of knowing something isn't there, but not being able to put my finger on the missing component. The ghost trait that takes up so much space in my mind. The milk carton remains picture-less.

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I realized today

That finding a partner has never been just about being loved. It’s been about creating a new generation of love.

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Time to Spare

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April 22, 2021 - Coloring myself in

“But relationships morph you. They twist you and turn you and mold you to fit into the reflective twists and turns of another person. Slowly, you start becoming the person they’ve always wanted you to be. Foolishly, you trick yourself to believe that’s who you are.” 

This is something I wrote in July 2012. So much sadness for a wee 16 year old. So much loss of self. Although she clings so passionately to her own self-awareness, it’s as if you can feel her making the decision to deny her authenticity right before your eyes.

The relationship she’s talking about continued on for 5 more years after spilling her truth onto the interminable scrolling of tumblr where they held no other ground than that of a click. 5 years of continually telling herself that she was someone else. Telling herself that she was someone else and yet even that person she longingly strived to be still wasn’t enough for the person who had her authority.

Not being enough for someone takes its toll on the mind. You start to become a shell of a person, piece by piece of your internal system slowly fading to grey as you deny them over and over again, begging to be colored in with the color of their choice. “What color do you want this part of me to be?” followed by choices made only to fulfill their request. 

But the colors don’t stick. You wonder why. You wonder what you’re not doing right. Why you can’t be as thin as they want you to be or as sexy or as pretty or as put together or as wealthy or as perfect. You wonder why those things just won’t stick. Weren’t you meant to be loved? Didn’t you deserve to be all of the things he wanted you to be? Keep trying, keep reaching, keep trying to color yourself in. Try harder, deny yourself. 

I think back to those days and I feel so much compassion for that young woman doing everything she could possibly think of to be loved by the person she thought was supposed to love her. Laying awake in bed after weeks of killing herself at the gym per his request and he still would barely turn her direction. A deep cavity inside her growing larger with each passing night, feeling like any moment she might collapse taking both the breath and the heart with it. Hadn’t she done everything he’d asked?

---

Years of denying yourself is exhausting. Even now, some of my internal parts are still grey. But with each passing day new colors reveal themselves to me and now I get to wonder “What color do I want this part of me to be?”

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April 20, 2021

I watch as the people around me come out of their shell and I learn how to stay in mine.

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April 12, 2021

Sitting at the Charlotte Douglas Airport with nowhere to go but home, I’ve decided to start a Tumblr. There’s something about writing with a keyboard, feeling the flow of my fingers over the little black buttons, piecing together key after key into words that find themselves pouring over the page like water. Writing is easier here. I can barely even read the combination of cursive and scribble that I get out onto paper, much less do I often find myself with enough patience to take the .238230 grueling seconds longer to write something on paper rather than through the screen on my laptop. I laugh to myself because I can hear the judgement in my own words for not keeping things in a notebook. But the flow is different here, so I’m going to trust that and lean into it like Danny Zuko on his 1948 white Ford De Luxe Convertible.

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April 9, 2021

Jonas,

  I laugh to myself when first opening your letter email because it feels like somehow we've unintentionally joined a 7,371 mile-away book club. I ordered When Things Fall Apart shortly after you told me about it and dove in a few weeks ago. This concept of hope precedes me and I'm curious how this idea and your thoughts on it continue to take form. I'm also curious what your days look like, the kinds of people you've met and the different perspectives you've probably been building and rebuilding since you left. That being said, I can't wait to hear more about the tidbits when you have the time and space to share them.

As for this hope debacle, my initial reaction is to agree. Yes, hoping for one's self alludes to their own unsatiated place of discontent in where they reside... but it makes me wonder if hope (or even a wish) for another could be a different debacle all together. It makes me wonder if this wish would instead hold positivity and ambition for someone else. Maybe hoping for another makes sense because you don't know the inner workings of their current state of mind so holding a space of hope for someone else, even if it's only a wish that their current state is present and well, could be inherently good. Pema Chodron doesn't talk about that (or maybe she does and I haven't gotten there yet), but I'm curious as to what her stance on having hope for someone else would be.

I keep seeing these gosh dang red cardinals. And when I say keep seeing I mean KEEP SEEING. You won't believe this but as I'm sitting in my bed writing this, feeling the warmth of the sun as it starts to sprinkle light onto the trees outside my window, a small, chirpy guy has landed right within my line of sight. I just laugh to myself again because at this point that's the only reaction that will suffice. Could it be that there's just a fuckton of cardinals around at the beginning of spring? Absolutely. But hey, this is my world to interpret.

A few weeks ago, but more specifically a week before the dress-like-a-dad birthday barbecue, I found myself continually reaching for meaning in these cardinals. Which reminds me of the Tibetan word re-dok, a combination of the words meaning hope and fear. Chodron writes "In the world of hope and fear, we always have to change the channel, change the temperature, change the music, because something is getting uneasy, something is getting restless, something is beginning to hurt, and we keep looking for alternatives." And I realized... this searching, or hoping rather,  to find meaning in one of these little red encounters all came down to restlessness. It all came down to a combination of hope for better and fear of not enough that led me to search for alternatives in the life I was living. It sent me on a mental quest for some kind of reason to make a call that I already knew my intuitive self wanted to make. I'll spare the details, but in short – I ended things with Alec. I'm not sure if I'd shared this previously but we were on that whole official, 7th-gradeesque boyfriend/girlfriend terms thing. Oof. There were cardinals left and right (one landed at my dang feet as I walked down 36th street one day I almost squeeshed the little bugger!). All the while there might not be meaning to any of it. But I think the curiosity for it, the drawing in, the reflection, the time spent pondering and all that comes with it is what makes it worth the time. In the end, all that humbo jumbo of signs and interpreting them aside, it was just me asking for my intuition to come forward. Even as I'm writing this though, I'm starting to see that hearing my intuition isn't the hardest part anymore. It's actually listening and choosing to act from it.

Since then it feels like the flood gates have opened. Or maybe they've only begun to crack at the edges, spilling water over the sides of the walls my conditioning has built around me. I guess I'll never be able to gauge the amount that feels to be transforming at the time because there always seems to be more to uncover. Either way, it looks like your birthday wish made its way here. Maybe it attached to your email and traveled through however the heck emails travel through the emailverse, but that's exactly how I spent my day – just allowing for what is. Being that it was Easter, the world around me seemed both happy and quiet all at once as folks spent time with their families and it seemed like the outside world melted away for a bit. I intentionally spent the majority of my day alone, but not lonely (because we all know those are two different concepts), walked to a park to read at sunset, then cooked my first fun meal in ages, all sparking what feels like the beginning of an internal forest fire. As simple as this day was, I hope it was an indicator of how 26 looks. I'm questioning everything these days, engulfed in a state of bringing forth new ways and letting go of old. It's exhausting or ye tang che to strip oneself of bits of an identity that my defensive parts have clung so longingly to. But it's also exciting. My yoga instructor recently said "Fear is excitement without the breath." And so I've decided to step into this next unknown chapter with excitement while gently reminding myself to breathe. I laugh in the face of danger mwahahaHA (an image of little Simba in lion king that I seldom forget).

I've laughed a lot writing this. Not in the "haha" way but in a way that feels funny in it's own right (and not only because of all the run-on sentences). Chodron has me thinking a lot about words and their definitions (because let's be honest, the English vocabulary isn't very creative) which has me thinking a lot about inventing new words. I'm searching for a word that means "to laugh at something with appreciation for materializing in spot-on alignment" This is how I laughed when I opened up Ashley's book of knots, rope dangling in hand and eager to somehow soak up the pages and regurgitate their forms with a quick over-under maneuver. In conclusion - knots are freakin hard. But I'm knot gonna stop trying (ey ey, you know the drill). Thank you for my birthday wish and thank you for my books and rope kit, I (insert new word here) at their timing and intention. You just wait, ya hear – I'm gonna be king-of-tying-knots, you-want-your-knots-tied-you-go-to-him good by the time you get back.

P.s. I attached the meditation (along with a photo of Mooji's happy lil caterpillar face) that I listened to this morning when I woke up. I'm not sure what kind of audio you have access to or if this clip will even load but heck I thought I'd give it a shot to sharing. In this mediation, Mooji talks about starting your day at 0 before you start "counting' or "bringing in the thoughts and places and others of the world. First, be with yourself and who you are before the rest rushes in." I realized that this is why I've enjoyed the mornings more than the nights these days, soaking up every ounce of the time I have before the rest of the world rushes and bringing with it waves of unknown (there's a sailing pun out there for everything isn't there?).

Sending you hugs often. I know that all of us Tom Hanks folks back home are sending our love in addition to the cheery "You've Got Mail" dings accompanied by words of support for your journey. They might get to you faster if only you were running the old bookshop across the street. Speaking of streets, if you somehow get an address let us know.

Love,

  Hailey B.