When is the last time you celebrated just how far you’ve come?
This theme has emerged in sessions where we get the chance to talk about how things could be better, but gosh, they are also so much better.
“I got really mad, but not as mad as I would have previously.”
“The grief wave hurt, but it only took me out for a day this time, not a week.”
“I’m ready now, to process that part.”
“I knew the healthy thing to do and I didn’t choose it. But I felt the choice!”
“I didn’t overshare, and I allowed it to be as simple as I needed it to be.”
“There’s a lot we’re still working through, but there’s a lot we’ve already worked through.”
“I think I can move to ‘as-needed’ sessions.”
We’ve been trained to look for problems, and solving them has often helped us feel safe. So of course we look for more of them in need of our solving.
When is the last time you you looked for progress over perfection?
I’m preaching to myself here. I’m a “what’s next” kind of person. And it pulls me so far out of gratitude I can hardly see the shore sometimes.
This isn’t actually about celebrating achievements. It’s about developing the capacity to witness yourself.
The invitation isn’t “stop noticing what needs attention,” but “expand your awareness to include what’s working.”
The invitation isn’t “stop noticing what needs attention,” but “expand your awareness to include what’s working.”
Imagine a world in which we stopped along the way to celebrate. The finish line? Certainly. But there also aren’t really many “finished” lines in healing. Imagine there was a pause halfway through (or where you estimated might be as halfway as you could predict) and you turned around and said “damn, I have come a really long way.”
And then instead of taking a sip and continuing on, you stayed for a minute and you named all the ways you’ve changed so far. All the versions of yourself you’ve become so far.
What if you stopped to bask in that light of progress instead of perfection?
I think there is much that prevents us from celebrating:
Some of it wrapped up in cautious hope.
Perhaps we fear that the progress we’ve made isn’t impressive enough.
Maybe we fear that if we speak the pride and the celebration, it will derail us, and we won’t carry on.
That last one is the sneakiest of them, I think. It speaks to that idea of celebration requiring full completion. It alludes to the idea that “keeping our head down and getting through” is the only way - and that to say “hey, guess what, I did a little something cool. I started, I initiated, I launched” isn’t enough.
And that’s just wrong.
I’d like to celebrate and acknowledge more than I do. I’m inviting you into that too. I don’t think we have to look hard for all the ways we can improve. They will offer themselves up, and we will attend to them in their own time.
But can we search for all there is to celebrate? All there is to witness? All there is to love into transformation?
So my questions for you, dear ones:
What is in need of your celebration?
What needs to be witnessed even if it’s so small a sparrow could carry it?
Share below. I bet there are loving hearts here at Sated Soul ready to throw some confetti in your honor.
“I’m ready now to process that part…”
Those are sacred words, aren’t they?!
They indicate that so much has been walked and worked through that now there’s space for other things to be walked and worked through!
You are such a tremendous gift to all of us fortunate enough to have you hold space with and for us.
Sometimes I refer to you as “my Jesie” to my closest people. In my journal you’ve been described as “my balm of Gilead.”
I believe with all of me that God led me to you…that we were led to each other. What an immeasurable gift.
Thank you for holding my beginning, celebrating the middle and walking me toward the end of one chapter and beginning of the next.
I love you so much. 🩷
"When is the last time you you looked for progress over perfection?"
Being chronically ill I easily start thinking of my body as a project that I am constantly working on, and as a perfectionist I am never content with just improvement. I have been in a symptom flareup all week and disheartened about it. But tonight as I journaled I realized that this flare was helping put into perspective the progress that has been made. Progress like, I still have splitting headaches and fatigue but I led worship on the piano at church this past Sunday for the first time since my surgeries - and actually felt like doing it and was able to enjoy it. It's really a huge thing, but I gloss over it in my flared up symptoms and ingratitude in wanting more and more. Here's another, I am getting better at savoring the mundane. And another, I am not fainting nearly as much since my surgeries. And another, I actually considered going to an event that in the past would have been completely out of reach (it didn't happen, but I made progress in that I considered it).
Thank you for encouraging me to turn around and see how far I have come, even if I still have so far to go. ❤️