Hellooooo,

I am trying to figure out how best to offer 1-on-1 coaching support and spiritual accompaniment to creative folks who are moving through life transitions, struggling with creative flow, or just plain mystified by how to navigate capitalism with integrity. In order to understand more of what the needs are during these times we’re living through, I would love to talk to you! If any of the above resonates with your experiences (past or present), can I connect with you through a 30-minute call? I would love to hear what questions you’re grappling with, what challenges you’re facing, and where you’re finding support or balm during these times.

• 15 minutes for you to pick my brain and get insight on anything you’re grappling with in your creative life.

• 15 minutes for me to hear more about your practices, as rooted in our current world. And what challenges you’re facing.

Or likely a more free-flowing conversation than that! Find a time here. I would love to hear from you!

***

Revisiting an old essay about labels and identity

One of the challenges I constantly face is being able to talk about my work clearly. Partially because I think what I actually am is a monk without a monastery. Instead, I float through life ducking and weaving the labels of ‘artist’ (not a fine artist), ‘writer’ (not professionally), ‘designer’ (not a fashion designer), ‘teacher’ (see below). Even though I am all of those things to my very core, through and through.

Today, I want to reshare a Dear Beloved letter I wrote back in 2018 called “Entirely Busy Being” about the confusion that some of us get into when we are forced to label ourselves as one thing or another in conversation, especially to that dreaded question of “what do you do for a living?”

Fun fact, this series was an attempt to fulfill the urge to write and give dharma talks without a congregation. It was an attempt to channel wisdom for myself through the ether. It worked to the extent that there are a few that I go back to again and again. Because I need the same lessons again and again.

Pre-S: My friend shared this workshop that Jezz Chung is doing on May 1st and 2nd on how to write and talk about yourself as a multi-hyphenate. I signed up. Maybe see some of you there.

Dear Beloved,

Starting when you are not very many years old, people will begin to ask you “what do you want to be?”

In America, we automatically append “when you grow up” — assuming that you don’t become until you are fully formed.

In America, this question is usually entangled with career or profession — assuming productivity as the most valuable of values.

And in America, this question will follow (haunt) you into your teen years (with pressure to choose a path), after you graduate (to bound your job search), and on and on during cocktail party small talk (pack animals sizing each other up upon arrival).

When I was very young, I wanted to be a teacher. Or at least that’s what I said I wanted to be in second grade homework assignments.

As happens, I meandered away from this declaration..(what else to choose at that age? Firefighter? Oceanographer? President of the United States?)..only to return years later.

I was reading Rafe Esquith’s book Teach Like Your Hair’s On Fire, and it lit something inside of me. I lay awake late one night, dreaming of my ideal classroom, thinking into the wee hours of the morning, imagining how I would do things, caught up in these revelations, pulse thrumming, convinced that this was a sign of my true calling. (This will happen again every few years. Don’t worry. They are signs, but they are never mandates.)

I quit my design job to go back to school and pursue teaching fulltime.

And found I couldn’t quite hack it — not the way they wanted me to learn. Not the way they wanted me to teach.

When I got gigs teaching with after-school programs...
I wasn’t a very good teacher.

The kids just wanted to run around; after 8 hours of sitting still, how could I expect 5-year-olds to keep sitting still?

And I just wanted them to try; with such a cool premise as radical theater and art ed to empower the collective, how could I abandon my script?

Around that same time, I was participating in a weekly writing circle and wrote these lines:

When I think of the blank pages of my middle school diary,
I forgive myself for being a bad teacher.

The circle hummed with resonance.

I decided to quit trying to become a teacher and went back to design.

Years later, after I had given up the idea of becoming a certified, bonafide teacher (a bitter taste in my mouth), my friend and I gathered eight women in her empty house and created a long-weekend retreat modeled after one in Iceland that neither of us could afford. I led one of the opening exercises, where we read excerpts from Rebecca Solnit’s Field Guide to Getting Lost:.

“Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go.”

“How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?”

“How do you go about finding these things that are in some ways about extending the boundaries of the self into unknown territory, about becoming someone else?”

I handed out five blank nametags to each person, and I asked them to reflect on the following questions:

• Who am I?

• How would I introduce myself, in the absence of all the past expectations of me?

• Who am I already becoming, and what parts of that are beautiful and mysterious? How might I allow myself to walk through that door?

We sent them off to reflect and write, with an invitation to fill out ALL of the nametags, so that we acknowledge in our introductions that we may never know the fullness of the people sitting in front of us, and so that we may start to bring into the room our full multifaceted selves.

One of the names that emerged for me that morning, sitting quietly in a sun-infused stairwell, was...

(( holder of blank space ))

—

There are those labels we apply to ourselves to help others try and understand us (like a thick layer of make-up, like an ill-fitting smock, like a tin can as temporary shell for hermit crab). We try and use common words in an attempt to connect across some kind of mutual understanding. But a search for common ground often leads straight to common denominator, so we smooth ourselves out to fit into this box or that one. Because we want people to understand this is what I’m trying to do because we ache to be seen.

Fanny Howe says in Bewilderment: “A big error comes when you believe that a form, name or position in which the subject is viewed is the only way that the subject can be viewed. That is called ‘binding’ and it leads directly to painful contradiction and clashes.”

When I was calling myself a 'teacher' for the sake of others, when I was trying to perform 'teaching', when I felt unfit and a failure, I was binding myself up in a label and constraining who I would be(come).

When I was able to name myself, for myself, a 'holder of blank space,' it opened up a quiet space of stillness in my chest, a yes and an exhale. Yes, just this. Yes, just so.

“Wild roses,” I said to them one morning.
“Do you have the answers? And if you do,
would you tell me?”

The roses laughed softly. “Forgive us,”
they said. “But as you can see, we are
just now entirely busy being roses.”

(from Mary Oliver’s “Roses”)

There are all those times we stick temporary labels to our lapels for the sake of conversation. And then there are those altogether transcendent times when we get a rare glimpse of one of our own true names. These names are not about what you do, but about how you are in the world.

There are times when we adopt pre-defined roles as our labels (teacher, mother, organizer), and there are other times when we give ourselves permission to be, to be ourselves and something bigger at the same time, to become the someone else of our future self (holder of ________, nurturer of _______, ________ weavers and tenders of ________).

So, beloved, remember that when people ask you (in that infuriatingly nonchalant way) "what do you do?” and you automatically append “for a living”, and you find yourself scrambling for a box that might make sense...

Take a breath, and realize they are only trying to ask (on some level, even if unskillfully), “Who are you?”

Laugh softly, knowing that your introduction will never be able to convey the whole of you yourself to another...and no matter, because you already bring your full multifaceted self into any room you enter.

With love, and just now entirely busy being,
Christina

If you’re feeling some of this tension in your current life, book a 30-minute connection call, and let’s talk about it!

P.S. Now only if I could find a job where I can be a ‘holder of blank space’! Artist residency director maybe? Spiritual director for creatives maybe? Design researcher for the solidarity economy? Got leads? LMK!

Elsewhere

🔮 Over on Patreon: March zine-of-the-month was an origami fortune teller about wants. Spring Equinox studio update.

🙏🏻 Over on Substack: An essay on honoring self-boundaries and Practices for attuning to intuition

📚 Over at my online shop, zines zines more zines!