I've spent some time with modern prophets the last 2 days - Brandi Carlile and Brene Brown, specifically. I'm living story right now that I never imagined would be mine and the part I'm willing to share at the moment is that my children turned 18 & 21, I turned 50 and I now have a cardiologist in the last 7 months. Another pertinent detail for this wee missive is that I'm practicing setting boundaries and realizing I can be brave. In my heart I'm a caretaker - Sister Brene helped me realize today the difference between empathy and enmeshment - turns out I've conflated the two on more than one occasion. And this whole enmeshment bit makes me tired - the way I understood her description in the June 18th podcast episode with Adam Grant on The Curiosity Shop: The Highest Performance Strategy is Caring About People (featuring Simon Sinek - also a prophet) is this: EMPATHY - someone calls you and they're in a hard place, empathy is hearing them, really seeing them and their hurt/distress, and walking alongside them in a supportive role whereas ENMESHMENT - someone calls you from a hard place and you crawl smack down in the middle of their hard place and take their hurt and distress into your own self and end up with both of you in a hard place. Yall - I was listening to this episode while driving and these words hit me so hard I almost had to pull over on I-85 and take a moment. I know I've jumped headlong into enmeshment before, straight up thinking it was empathy. IT WAS NOT! WHOA. This was the SECOND mindblowing realization Sister Brene had given me in less than 24 hours. The first stemmed from her conversation with Susan Cain who wrote Quiet, (which I LOVED and cannot recommend highly enough), and Susan has also written Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make us Whole [arriving soon from my friends at The Brown Dog Bookshop right in my back yard]. Their conversation spoke to the reality that joy is richer when we hold it in tension with brokenness [listen to Part 1 of their conversation from the Unlocking Us podcast HERE and be sure to listen to Part 2 as well]. Their conversation helped me understand myself, my affinity for music that reaches to the core of my heart and simultaneously breaks and heals it, and how looking for shards of light promises a bounty of gratitude. I immediately thought of the music of Jann Arden and Maura O'Connell, Brown and Cain spoke of the great Leonard Cohen, and my thoughts then turned to Sister Brandi.
Having experienced enough brain pyrotechnics through the podcast realm, it was time to lean into this sorrow and longing and wholeness - my newly adopted through line for 2026 so far. I needed msuical wisdom, so I plugged "The Best of Brandi Carlile" into my Spotify search bar and hit shuffle. About 70 miles from the house, the most beautiful album cover appeared on the screen:
The shuffled song played and this image of Sister Brandi and the song (and album) title appeared: Returning to Myself. Just like that, three words captured the work I've been doing for a really long time now. The irony? The lyrics of Returning to Myself speak to this deeply personal work being possible only in community. What a powerful reality. Naturally, I got home and have been on a deep dive into the lyrics of all of the album's songs and I've found a little bit of myself in each and every one of them. This world is beautiful and brutal, full of great light and unfathomable shadows, deep pain and overwhelming joy. We're living in both/and times and somehow, I have to remember to make space for myself to accept and embrace everything on either side of the AND. Boundaries and openness, grief and gratitude, rest and adventure, hope and sorrow - the bittersweetness of it all is indeed what makes us whole.
I spent last night with my mom and dad. Mama and I had lunch and explored a consignment store and mom and pop shops. My nephew and brother-in-law stopped by to drop off the headboard they'd been storing for Lydia's dorm room in the making. My cousin stopped by after he had visited his mom and then he spent the night, too. I woke up this morning and enjoyed leisurely coffee and summertime breakfast BLTs while visiting with mama about all that 2026 has already brought while anticipating the swirl of August on the horizon. Henry happened to call my parents to say hello and didn't even know I was there - we visited over speaker phone as he preps to leave for his ROTC camp in 3 days. Lydia called me to fill me in on all the Montreat fun she's having. Community. Family.
There's been a lump in the back of my throat for over a week now - like tears want to come but aren't quite ready. I think they're confused about their purpose and aren't sure if they want to fall as grief or as gratitude. It's OK - I can wait. I know they're coming in their baptismal glory at some point and that they'll help me feel washed clean and allow me to rest deeply. I spent several years trying to keep tears at bay but now they feel like a balm - I think it's because I'm not trying to hide them. I've accepted their role in my both/and world and I've accepted that my humanity is richer when I show up completely. I'm working on accepting empathy and I'm working on being empathetic without being enmeshed. What a gift to walk in curiosity no matter my age. It took a half century, but it feels like some pearls of wisdom are beginning to take shape. I leave this post with the lyrics of Brandi Carlile's "Human" from her latest album - may we all feel...oh...feel.
Baby, you're only gonna hurt your back
Looking down like that, cut yourself a little more slack
Baby, you're gonna have a heart attack
And they won't thank you, they don't make awards for that
We know by now that time does not take sides
We're only human
I don't need to see how to it ends
To tell you that we'll never be here again
We're only human
I just wanna feel my face in the sun
I never really wanted to hurt anyone
Forever only means we had a good run
We don't need to know to right now
It's hard enough being human
It's not like we're ever really gonna learn
And I'm no angel, I know we're gonna watch it burn
And, baby, there isn't anywhere to run
And I won't blame you for seeing all the beauty in a wildfire sun
Tomorrow isn't nothing but a game that we used to play
And we're only human
I don't need to see how to it ends
To tell you that we'll never be here again
Babe, we're only human
I just wanna feel my face in the sun
I never really wanted to hurt anyone
Forever only means we had a good run
We don't need to know to right now
It's hard enough being human
We don't need to know right now
It's hard enough being human
Baby, when you wake up, and it wasn't a dream
And you're tired of crying, you're too broken to scream
Shake your fist at the city, let it rip at the seams
Be human
You're gonna hammer the street with your hands and your feet
Let the bitterness die, fall in time to the beat
When you look in the eyes of the strangers you meet
Be human
Feel
Oh
Feel
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