if you're changing, too

pebbles №1: a resource roundup for navigating un-comfy transitions

illustration via Georgie Mosley

hey hi hello!

Are you, like me, in the process of turning yourself into caterpillar-soup and trying to not freak out about the general lack of chill in your life direction and choices right now? Do you need some encouragement that you’re not lost, screwed up, or doing it wrong?

Great, because in today’s five pebble pile, we’ve got resources for navigating un-comfy transitions, like when:

• you know who you want to become, but how feels confusing, blurry, and far off

• you need reassurance that this is not, in fact, your flop era

• changing this much feels like a betrayal of your younger self

• you’re worried you’re ‘not handling things very well’

• you want to redirect some of this ‘who am I?’ transformation-energy away from self-obsession and toward building in community

“Alexis, wait—did you just say ‘pebble pile’?”

I did! Some penguins search for the perfect pebble and gift it to another penguin they love. Like many of my neurodivergent friends, I'm a resource pebbler, like: here's this random meme that made me think of you, here's a song I think you'll be into, oh hey I found this cool resource, I'll just leave it here for you... 

*lovingly lays misshapen pebbles at your internet feet*

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in case you know who you want to become, but how feels confusing, blurry, and far off

The debt of gratitude I owe to Lenéa Sims for this April 2023 newsletter is AStroNOMical. She writes:

“…your evolution is inevitable.

I had a thought recently that we have visions because they are bound to happen. We don’t have them because we need to figure out how to make them happen or because the universe wants to taunt us with what we can’t have – we have them because the universe wants to show us what’s coming. Just like all beings in nature, our evolution is inevitable. It requires no strategy or plan for us to grow.

…So often we get down on ourselves for not being “there” yet – in a set of material or emotional conditions that we think will bring us happiness and peace. We berate ourselves for thinking the same unhelpful thoughts again and again. We feel frustrated that the thing we long for hasn’t yet arrived. We forget all that we’ve learned and we forget, to our detriment, that we are practicing.

Throughout it all, it’s important to remember that the visions, dreams, goals, ideas about how we want things to be are all already coming. Each day is a practice in walking towards “there” but that doesn’t mean we have to worry about it because it’s only a matter of time! It also doesn’t mean we have to fixate on it – no one is asking you to build the road and walk it. It doesn’t mean we have to do more – repeat after me: I don’t need to be anyone besides who I am to see my dreams come true. We just have to keep practicing. We just have to keep holding the vision as possible, inevitable, true.”

—Lenéa Sims

EVERY. LINE. IS. BRAIN-ALTERING!

Your evolution is inevitable.

The visions, dreams, goals, ideas about how we want things to be are already coming.

No one is asking you to build the road AND walk it.

You can thank Lenéa by subscribing to her Newsletter, Living Liberation, and supporting more of her work, here.

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in case you need reassurance that this is not, in fact, your flop era

I’ve got just the thing!

ayandastood

coming in clutch with the “make it make sense LATER” message we need right now.