Tending to

wholeness through wonder, practice, small, and play

July was a beautiful teaching month for me, full of heart-opening connections with educators, caregivers, families, and children. All happening alongside a nest-egg-sit-hatch-feed-fly cycle of the third bird family to make their home under my front awning this summer.

To witness care. To witness tending. To witness want and need, give and receive. To witness the ease of effort that flows from love. To witness hope.

This is nothing of abstraction or fluff (except for maybe the bird feathers). I am consistently connected through my work with incredible people who care, who tend, who want and need, who give and receive, who love and let their work grow from love. Educators, leaders, designers, parents, creatives—people who love children and know how to remember the soulful child inside themselves, too.

My mind continues to delight in reflection about one course in particular, Feelings on the Page. We gathered online for four weeks to explore practices for ourselves (and the children in our lives) connected to the idea of feelings as material. Here are some take-aways from this time with the brilliant people who were part of the class:

Wonder Creates Space

A simple invitation to wonder—What is a feeling?—opens space for play, learning, revision, and more questions: How are feelings defined in various contexts? What stories and names get attached to feelings? Without a story or name, what might we do with feelings?

Discussion about feelings, and practices to support children with feelings, are frequently held inside fixed language and set structures of knowing. When we open space for wonder about the language we use and understandings we operate within (that over time become embodied), we invite a playground where before there were lined and labeled rows.

Here we can dance and play and shift perspectives. We can revise and invent and release. We can listen and try without defense. We can allow all that we know and dream to emerge from an expansive, multidimensional space. And we can be surprised and whole and alive as we learn.

Adults Need Practice

I work with people who are deeply invested in their care for others. They typically see themselves (and are seen by others) through a narrow and specific frame determined by their caregiver “role/s.” To take time to explore outside of these “roles” and connect with the wholeness of themselves can feel anywhere from vaguely unfamiliar to extremely uncomfortable. This, coupled with culturally programmed stories around what’s “practical” and “useful” and will “result” in the most immediate “outcomes,” can bring resistance to the surface.

This is why I continue to feel awe, delight, and deep respect when people show up for this work—when leaders ask for this work for their staff, when people take on this work for all stakeholders of their organizations, when people say, “Yes, this is important, we can’t skim past this part,” when people recognize that caregiving adults are whole people who need practice, too.

I have been significantly shaped as an educator, writer, and leader by the National Writing Project. One of the central principles of NWP is: the best teachers of writing are teachers who write. I believe this holds true for everything (and we are all teachers to someone). The best teachers of reading are teachers who read. The best teachers of play are teachers who play. The best teachers of dreaming are teachers who dream. The best teachers of feelings are teachers who feel. The best teachers of wholeness are teachers who are whole.

Small is BIG

The biggest transformations in our lives (and organizations, classrooms, homes) grow from the smallest shifts of practice. Think of any habit you’ve ever started or released. Any thought that loops in your mind. Each word you choose to say or not say. Every moment of every day.

When we explore in the landscape of feelings as material, we learn to notice the value of a word choice, a ten second pause, asking a different question, the slight shift of our lens on a moment. We discover expansiveness in nuance and we delight to tweak in subtleties.

What do you notice? (instead of: What do you feel?). Let yourself feel what’s there (instead of: Why do you feel that?). Tell me more (instead of: Let me help you fix it). Maybe, perhaps, hmmm. How does it move? What colors do you see? What else might you find if you stay with it for a while?

Play is Everything

Play is the process of being fully alive. It’s not a technique or one way of learning. It’s not something for separate parts of the day. It’s not romantic or nostalgic or out of reach. You don’t need someone to let you do it. Play is always inside you. It can’t be taken away. You always have wonder and rigor and delight. You can always change your view, flip a scene, invite something else. You are joy. You are play. Always already now.

Unless… you don’t feel safe to be who you are. Unless where you are doesn’t see you (or let you see yourself) as whole. Unless you don’t feel free to feel fully. Unless you’ve learned (for your own protection) to compartmentalize and numb and distract and detach from yourself. Unless you’re not even sure what it means to be fully alive and don’t see how you could possibly allow play from inside yourself.

This is why SEL programs, play-based curricula, mandates, mission statements, or policies, although they sound good and important, somehow miss what is most needed. They rest on assumptions that there are “problems” to be “fixed.” They add things to an already overflowing pool of “remedies” and “solutions” and “helpfulness.”

They miss the point: Everything we need we already have inside ourselves. We need only to be invited to remember. Exploring the material of our feelings is a beautiful way to remember. To feel all the feelings—allow, describe, explore, express, create from them, with them, through them. This is how we learn to be whole again.

Although this is simple, it can feel hard (“Let it be simple”). Although it can feel hard, we can still show up. We can look to others for support, we can let our work be guided by what resonates most deeply inside ourselves, and we can be inspired by others who are learning that…

wonder creates space, adults need practice, small is big, and play is everything.

love+light, Melissa