I could care less, pt. 3

it began with a fall...it ends with one.

Hello gentle-people,

I am learning how to move at the pace of flourishing.¹ And this series has been helpful for helping me find that rhythm. I am entering my fifth week of a new job and still feeling like I'm getting my bearings.

I am still asking myself how many cares one person can hold, as I find my ability to get a grip (on all the things) lessons on some days. The power of community is special to me & I want to share my gratitude for my community here. To everyone who sees me, in the various depths and shapes of real—thank you.

Someone once wished that I found the kind of accompaniment that I offer others. And I can now tell that person I am nestled in care.

This is my testimony….and it begins and ends with a fall.²

This is part 3 of a series, anchored by the poem below, “water sign woman,”³ which you can also listen to here:

water sign woman by Lucille Clifton

the woman who feels everything
sits in her new house
waiting for someone to come
who knows how to carry water
without spilling, who knows
why the desert is sprinkled
with salt, why tomorrow
is such a long and ominous word.

they say to the feel things woman
that little she dreams is possible,
that there is only so much
joy to go around, only so much
water. there are no questions
for this, no arguments. she has

to forget to remember the edge
of the sea, they say, to forget
how to swim to the edge, she has
to forget how to feel. the woman
who feels everything sits in her
new house retaining the secret
the desert knew when it walked
up from the ocean, the desert,

so beautiful in her eyes;
water will come again
if you can wait for it.
she feels what the desert feels.
she waits.

i'm not done yet by Lucille Clifton

as possible as yeast
as imminent as bread
a collection of safe habits
a collection of cares
less certain than i seem
more certain than i was
a changed changer
i continue to continue
what i have been
most of my lives is
where i’m going

find on Pinterest

“Forced into caring hands,”

“We are going to be forced to create community in order to survive.”

—Sonya Renee Taylor, on the climate crisis, Becoming the People Podcast with Prentis Hemphill (fka “Finding Our Way”)

I must begin by saying—I will no longer wait until I have the most quiet and eloquent words I can find before I ask for help. I got here because there was once a time where I used to do this. For example, when I started the project “Dear Soft Black Woman,” through podcasting and content creating I was hoping the clues I was leaving behind would guide people to two very simple words:

Help me.

But more often than not, I was high-fived while I was drowning. I was praised for the words that I could find to articulate the fury in my bones, shaped by a desperation to do more than survive. I was publicly learning how to take care of myself. I was in a sea of voices that promised to re-member me while echoing platitudes I had heard time and time again. I was publicly unlearning how to dismantle the myths that were ruining my life. I kept wanting something more grounding than the promise that my life mattered, that I could be soft, and that it was possible for me to have more than the bare minimum. This space of desolation is one that the mystic I studied remind me comes around every once in a while for those whose bodies and spirits are shaped by an intense sensitivity to the world.

I was known for paying attention and it was getting very hard to continue to do so as I was tossed to and fro by a sea of cares I could not swim in. So what I remember are the hands, of course. The ones that reached out while I was flailing. The ones that form the ethic of communal care that I hold so dear. From the spring of 2023 until the fall of 2023, I was watching things slip out of my hands and into the hands of my community as I re-learned the baby steps of care beginning with myself. So it wasn't until the fall of 2023, that I began to feel a love of nurture again, a deeply seated joy that comes from watching something other than yourself grow.

….I realized I couldn’t hold all the things.”

I named this series “I could care less” because I truly did try to—I tried hard enough to convince some that I was calloused. But in April of last year, I felt a rush of feelings coming to me as I sat in a hospital room, squeezing the hand of a Black woman who was among the firsts to come to my aid. As all my cares poured out, it really did feel like my life was in danger. Who was I if I could not hold all the things?

I remember wanting to give everyone who stepped in to care for me more context for how to care and carry me. I felt exasperated by the task and I slipped between the tensions I was trying to hold for everyone else. My descent into the lowest place I’ve ever been led me to realize I had to figure out how to live my life in “a collection of safe habits, a collection of cares.”⁴ Yes, I had a multiplicity to offer the world, but it would have to be grounded in a gentle landing. It was

The Fall that showed me which hands were actually there for me to grasp leading me to realize I am connected to everyone I need.

I couldn’t hold all the things, but I could be held.

That was all I needed to know.

our definitions of “care”

Remember the four definitions of care I have been working with in this series? I see them all at work in my story:

1. Care as a tending (or attending), once again, with particular emphasis on attention.

2. Care as an attachment or interest. It often feels like the things we care for and/or about are a part of us..sometimes we are indeed connected.

3. Care as avoidance of danger or risk. I will use “caution,” instead here, since I also love the phrase “throw caution to the wind.”

4. Care as a troubling or a burden, a feeling stirred up by what we brood over. I will use the word “burden” here, since something of this definition reminds me to remember the weight.

5. I will also be playing with caring and carrying in order to drive home one central point: we all have a carrying capacity when it comes to care…even if we hate to admit it.

Following the hospital, I started tending to other things little by little, remembering the simple things that help carry me. I was learning “how to carry water.” Slowly but surely, I could find myself saying, “It feels good to pay attention.”

I said those words in a conversation a month ago with a friend who responded “you had to get free from ___ to be free to ___.”

I keep picking up my guitar, which is one of the few attachments that feels like an extension of me. As a poet, I could write on multiple scraps of paper, and still feel like a poet, but this one guitar, combined with my voice, feels like the only right way to make music sometimes. I was finding balance as I threw caution to the wind on this platform and with real life attempts to move at ease and at my leisure I am increasingly getting more clarity about the things that truly demand my carefulness. I started replacing the toxic “pick me ups” I had collected when to mask my burdens. I began to remember my heart and give her space to feel again. And soon, I was ready to open her up to a housewarming.

I care,
I care,
I care,
I care,

I am tending
I am holding
I am cautiously attuned
To this overwhelming burden 

yet I am carrying well, 
wouldn’t you say?

---

our carrying capacity

“How do we be with all the suffering that is happening right now? How do we be with the possibilities that are constantly unfolding?”

—adrienne maree brown, Becoming the People Podcast with Prentis Hemphill (fka “Finding Our Way”)

There are many parts of my journey that surprised me, as I come back to the things I needed to help me carry myself well as a “collection of cares.” I hope to bring care into A Gentle Landing, as I am leaning into the community I have at my house, through my job, in my personal care efforts. As I delve into archival devotion, I am rising and body and Spirit. I can see it reflected back at me through the eyes of all who bear witness. But as much as I hope to stay, this shiny forever, I know desolation is to be expected in life: How do I prepare myself for when I am inevitably reminded of the limits of my capacity? When all of the things I long to hold start to slip from my hands again?

at your leisure

I think of Jesus (as told in Matthew chapter 4) being tempted in the wilderness after fasting for forty days.⁵ As he was training himself to remember where his abundance comes from, the myth of scarcity found him in the prompts of an adversary. He was prompted to embrace a definition of care rooted in the abuse of power and strength he knew he had access to, and yet chose to intimately feel the wants and needs of his human body. It seems he was learning “how to carry water” by sitting with his very real and very human sensations.

In the next chapter, it says that he began his ministry. For those who hold this story close to our hearts, it is important to us, that Jesus understood what it felt like to be deeply human. In the conversation he had, whether it was with a real devil, or a personified scarcity, matters little to me. It helps me see how he carried the weight and carried the wait. He was training his capacity for care by becoming intimately familiar with the kind of care he needed… I wonder sometimes if I can train myself to dismiss the voices of scarcity that linger in my memory. Our devils advocates, formed by imagined or real people, try to train us in forgetting how to feel, as they do the water sign woman.

But Jesus trained his memory for feeling instead, sitting with the deep feeling of need that overwhelmed his mind, heart and body. Before he could break, he was mending a “collection of safe habits.”⁶ Jesus took the time to learn how to care less in order to focus on the things that were worth caring the most about. He tuned his attention to human suffering and refused to fabricate a material comfort that would insult the laws of nature and thus violate his ethic of care. The empathy and imagination that I recognize as rooted in abundance and joy⁷ carry so much more meaning for me, knowing he did this work to unravel them its of scarcity that found him in this time of desolation.

And they say he did it all leaning on his humanity.

exceedingly, abundantly, & more

I want to keep writing about the hands that saved me, and how important it was for me that the hand I was holding in the hospital was the hand of a Black woman. I recently shared this testimony with her, with more words that I can share here. After all, I did squeeze her hand, I am sure, past the point of comfort — I know she is a part of my gentle landing. There were so many things I was certain that I could share with her that would not shock her. The burden of contextualizing was lifted.

I keep finding the same joy coming to me as I share my testimony with others, such as the housemates I used to live with who cared for me during the tumultuous season that was early 2020 into the summer of 2021. As people were talking about Black Lives Matter, and very few actually demonstrated, I remember a hug from one of them after an incident jarred me one particular day. I remember long conversations holding the tension of the communities we care for with another. I remember witnessing and cherishing the love a third housemate had for a wounded bird that we temporarily housed.

As I write, I am sitting in my gentle landing space. Of course, I want to be here for awhile and spend some more time with you all to tell you a bit about how I got here. I also want to share some dreams about where I hope the next gentle landing will be…. But for now, I just want to sit here and love that I feel whole. I feel whole, knowing what a good hold feels like. I feel home, knowing that I couldn't have imagined it would look this way – but I continue to believe I will only experience more of it. More than I could ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20).

They keep saying to me, a waterfire sign woman, that “little (I) dream is possible,” but I keep dreaming anyways.

As the fall approaches, you are welcome to stay and bear witness to this imaginative effort. This invitation comes with risk, doesn't it? I know some of you are here to carve out some piece of me that serves you. Just know that I am working to care less in some ways and care more in others—and wanting to fill the voids of care with my own body will never again be my portion.

🐦‍⬛ landing tracks

1. Take a break with me. I am taking the month of September off from publishing and posting on social media. I have plans to unveil when I return, but this will be an intentional time to rest and write for myself. In October, I will take you through a series based on some reading I am doing the past few months—reading I hope will continue to enliven the worldbuilding project that is A Gentle Landing. If you cannot take a full month off, try a week or a day. Try lessening your screen time on one device by 1 hr.

2. Come to office hours. My break from Substack begins September 1st. But we could gather in the paid subscriber chat for office hours this Friday, August 30th. I am building on a dream of mine to create more interactive space here. (I will write more on what the themes of “the office” or “the study” have meant to me as I seek to reclaim them as spaces for the practice of joy.)

1. I invite you, if you haven’t already, to read a piece I wrote on this phrase over here:

“At Your Leisure” - Moving at the Pace of Flourishing

2. Well, one of them. I believe we are meant for testimonies.

3. I also mention Lucille Clifton’s “i’m not done yet,” which you can read here.

4. Again from the Lucille Clifton poem, “i'm not done yet.”

5. You can skip to the section “exceedingly, abundantly & more” to skip the sermon.

6. Once more for Lucille Clifton's poem, “i'm not done yet.”

7. Such as the “Sermon on the Mount” story. I am partial to the account written in the gospel of Luke.