The spider’s web is web of protection around art-making, around play, and around intentional community. It is an offering for spaciousness from social media. This work is meant to bring hope back into creation. This work allows me to take time with my daily practice, with myself, and with my communities that feels easeful in my body. I hope that these offerings will bring you more ease and consideration in your own body. Thank you for joining me here. Y’all are welcome to share this offering with your communities. I just ask that you credit my work @meredithannewhite. Thank you so much.
I sat down with a lovely friend Lizzy this week for tea and cinnamon rolls—shoutout to Sarah for the delicious pastries. We spoke on how many of our friends are moving into new spaces of life and that those dynamics will inevitably shift the relationships at hand. Many of those relationships have already started to shift. She told me of a moment she shared with another friend. The sentiment was along the lines of “how do we continue to be stewards of friendship?” And I just love the thought of nurturing friendship regardless of the timeline or the outcome. Sometimes people come into our lives in fleeting moments of time and others stick around for much longer. Can we continue to choose to foster relationship outside of the projected outcome?
So what does it mean to nurture a relationship that is moving in another direction from what we’ve known?
What does it mean to honor a friendship that will inevitably no longer be as it once was?
It is absolutely a grief process. It’s one that requires an internal reckoning that things always and forever change. It’s something that brings me back to my sister’s wedding. It was the dichotomy of celebrating her and her life partner, and also noticing that our relationship was going to inevitably change from what it once was. It meant that I got to hold both joy and grief at the same time and how lovely and uncomfortable it was. It meant I was saying bye to that version of us while saying hello to a new iteration of family.
So when relationships shift, how do we continue to show up for each other? Can we show up for each other in new ways?
This is something that is near and dear to my heart after some very tough reckonings this last year with relationships. I dismantled from the inside out. It was not pretty a lot of the time. I was tender and vulnerable. I came out to myself, to my family, and found that I didn’t feel comfortable coming out to others. I found that I was craving different spaces and needed deeper spaciousness to explore that.
For a long time I thought my peers had to have the same belief systems. We had to be aligned in most every facet. Then I realized how limiting that is. Much of my community orients around very different spaces than I do. I think this may go back to my last offering in regards to showing up in spaces with more observation and less judgment. It allows me to push past my initial reaction to someone and move into a space of pivoting that attention back towards myself and my own responses. It opened my eyes to the reality that I don’t have to be like everyone else, and yet I very much need my practices to be respected.
As an earth sign and someone that finds value in surefooted steps,
How might I honor friendship where it currently stands and not skip ahead to the expectation of what it will become?
I often find myself sticking to the same people, the same spaces, and the same narratives because they’re familiar. I’ve already opened myself up to these people, therefore I don’t need to open myself to other humans. Maybe this is the relationship of sticking to what I know. Maybe this stems from growing up in a small school with the same peers for 8 years. Maybe this stems from keeping myself safe because once I start to push past those limits then someone might misinterpret me.
But, I can’t assume that everyone has the same perception of me that I have of myself. I also can’t assume that everyone will like me. I actually think that many people will find that I am too much. That I am too sensitive and emotional. People may find me challenging. However, I’ve spent too much time limiting my speech and dampening my essence so that it’s more palatable for those around me.
What a huge lesson!! Because to me, in honoring relationship it means that we get to honor the absolute absurdities in each other with delight. It means that I allow people to see me with my zit patches and my 3rd day unwashed hair slopped on top of my head like a bird’s nest. It means that I get to be unpacked, unzipped, and queer. I get to be really queer and bizarre and unshaved. It means I talk to my plants and show up with tea to parties. It means I’m allowing people to come up with their own narratives of who Meredith is.
What does the unzipped version of yourself look like? feel like? sound like? smell like?
Mine currently feels like:
big hair with lots of clips
t-shirt layered with a perfectly baggy sweatshirt (I’ve probably sewn or painted on this sweatshirt)
sweatpants!!
socks and clogs
eating something delicious
usually drinking a number of beverages like coffee, tea, or Natalie’s beet juice
maybe I smell like I’ve been outside or like incense from home
So regardless of the spaces and people I show up around, it means I get to show them my unhinged self because then maybe that means that the person on the other side of the threshold gets to show me their unhinged self and we can choose to show up with less people-pleasing! Cheers to being less palatable!
It’s allowed me to sink further into trust with my body knowing that I’m allowed to show up with people in varying ways and offer varied versions of myself. Maybe we allow others to do the same with us?
With sincerity,
you have no idea how much i needed to hear these words this week! wow. tapped in. so many of my friendships are shifting right now, and it's been beautiful and painful.
thank you <3