Do you recognize your own readiness?

It's important. Here's why.

Mar 24, 2025

I’m going to skip over any analysis of or sigh about the state of the world.

Let’s go straight to YOU, the human among humans, the only you there will ever be. The world is re-making itself—rapidly, with muscle and rockets and large sweeps of destruction and local gathering circles. It’s happening and you are alive right now in March 2025. For that reason alone, YOU ARE READY.

Even if you feel like a squishy jellyfish floating in water that doesn’t taste right.
Even if you can’t pull yourself off the couch.
Even if your caring, do-gooder self doesn’t even know where to start.
Even if shock and sadness have taken you by the arms.

I drove down to the red rock desert with my family last week. We needed sun and heat after a very potent and difficult month. For us, the desert is a yearly return; it has the quality of a pilgrimage, a sacred pause, reverence and a deep bow for a landscape and its history, bighorn sheep, prayerful, adventurous. As we meandered through the pinks and oranges, I heard “recognize your readiness”—my own voice speaking to me.

Lounging, laughing, getting annoyed with each other, reminding my kids that just because I lie down and do nothing for longer than 30 minutes it doesn't mean something is wrong with me, lots of lying down, lots of revealing family conversations about tough stuff, lots of assurance and biking and picking of cactus needles out of tiny butt cheeks

In many challenging moments (personally or collectively), the voice in my head can sometimes sound like, “What the actual fuck?” but, more and more, I am starting to recognize my own readiness for all that is, no matter what it is. My hips widen and I grow into an old willow tree. With roots. Connected to other roots around me. It’s not a metaphor at this point.

Readiness doesn’t mean sparkly balloons.

It means fuerte and soft-hearted.

You are ready for something, some part of this/your current lived experience. Maybe not all of it, but some of it.

Can you identify how you are ready?

When my 6-year old niece shuffled up to me and said, “Uncle Molly [that’s her name for me], I made a necklace for my mama and I want to give it to her.” Her mother had died 48 hours earlier. I crouched down, took her hand, and knew exactly what to say and to do. My whole life had readied me for that moment.

(I’m keeping much of that absolutely holy week private because there are too many details that share a story that isn’t my story to share. I will say, though, that I noticed that one of my family’s response to grief, along with the tears and laughter and cleaning and food, is to re-model. Make new. We grew up that way, making new in so many new places. We are really really good, for better or worse, at pivoting.)

It has taken me 10 years to develop my readiness for a potential surgery this fall. I now see how part of that preparation required instilling self-compassion for all the ways I have not been ready until this year and moment.
My always-lit fire is blazing with ideas about how to gather people, how to do what I do best, how to offer my small drop into the wide ocean because all the drops make the ocean. I am and have been ready for the focus of my attention, to be devoted to it and not let shiny news flashes yank me off my center.
I am ready for the throat-hollowing conversations the precede growth.
I am ready to inhabit the unresolved space of a profoundly painful disagreement with a family member that may never find its way; ready to be okay feeling misunderstood and on the receiving end of vitriol; ready to allow my moods.
My body amazes me. It/I/We are so ready to metabolize on the regular. Holy shite!
I am also ready for what is good, that I can sip in small doses or wash myself over with large waves of it, instead of skipping over it or burying it out of shame or fear that I’m not allowed to have a good thing.

So…

Let’s add a new ingredient into the current recipe.

We already have a whole bunch of collapse in the metal bowl, with a heavy dose of overwhelm, sprinkled everywhere with flakes of chronic anxiety. These are real. I have them too. Time to add the readiness. Please notice we aren’t eliminating the other ingredients. They have a right to be there. We are simply ADDING.