6 months of Cosmic Kudos!
on what I've learned, why I write, and how this this special little newsletter has helped me find healing
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Hi friends,
6 months isn’t a year, but it’s felt like one, and if there’s one thing the last few have taught me it’s that we deserve to celebrate both the little and not-so-little wins. It’s fitting, too, that I’m reaching this particular milestone with my little starry-eyed newsletter on the tail end of this strange and tumultuous year.
So much has changed in the past 6 months, much less in 2022 as a whole. There’s a sense of overwhelming acceleration. It’s hard not to feel whiplash at this point. I’m tired but wired; almost everyone I know is burnt out, disillusioned, depressed and denying it, doing everything they can to dissociate, or medicated. All of the above? Most everything feels distinctly nebulous, and yet.
And yet.
2022 is the year I’ve learned that despite my own best efforts, unfailing—though not unwavering—optimism is my inherent state of being.
I’ve surprised myself again and again (more on that below), or else been surprised. I’ve been supported, buoyed, embraced, and rescued—through the actions and words of others, especially those of my friends; and by the loved ones who have showed up for me repeatedly.
I’ve also been alternately disappointed, appalled, and heartsick that humans still can’t seem to get out from under the the exhausting weight of late stage capitalism, and the patriarchy, and the oppressive structures that force themselves into our daily lives—beneath which none of us can really thrive. (Not to mention the childish and inane yet seemingly inescapable whims of billionaires.)
But. I’m ‘Stacking up this list of lessons learned as threads of hope I can follow into the year ahead. As reminders of the beauty there is in using spiritual tools to better understand ourselves, to help guide us along the path. And of the magic we can find—and make—in our everyday.
I won’t be including graphs of subscriber counts or engagement stats here, but thoughts on how choosing to come back to the writing, week after week, has allowed me to grow, push myself, and find a new joy in the creative process.
You can always surprise yourself.
Life can surprise us at any time; we know this, even if we tend to operate in ways that suggest otherwise. But are we always aware of the many ways in which we can astound ourselves?
I wasn’t, at least not overtly, though I have in more ways than one—especially when I found my way to a new conclusion on the page, or trusted myself to write into something I hadn’t previously thought I had the courage to bare. And I love that I have a record of all these revelations, consciously addressed and otherwise.
“I’ve always loved the exchange, the interplay, the magic of the unexpected. today, I want—I choose—to give myself that gift.
because if we can choose to surprise one another, to revel in the juicy goodness of what happens when we allow ourselves to be surprised, and if we can stay within a sense of wonder at the startling magic of our Selves, is it possible then… that we are (still) (despite it all) going the right way?
even when it may not feel like it. and sometimes, especially then.
I have a long list of affirmations that I run through on the reg, and one of the more recent morning statements I’ve been repeating lately is this: ‘today and every day, I allow the Universe to surprise me. thank you for showing me how good it gets.’
and the thing is, I’m allowing me to surprise me now, too.”
Consistency over perfection, though your idea of what consistency entails may change (and that’s okay).
Still working on this one, because I’m the kind of writer who is constantly self-editing, and for whom a typo is deeply discomfiting, even if it’s one only noticed by my own eyes.
Although I learned, and am learning, that at some point, there’s a need to stop editing and reworking and simply—let loose my words into the world.
And guess what else? Consistency in the creative process can be a subjective and ever-shifting thing. For one, I may not actively be writing, but my subconscious is humming along! Lifting or moving or unfolding, quietly prodding at the problem sitting at the center of it, until eventually an idea lights upon me.
That idea, thought, or phrase then connects to another and another, all flashing ON! in a delightful dizzying rush, and suddenly I’m scrambling to scribble it all down before it’s gone.
Writing happens all the time, not just when you’re able to carve out the space in your schedule to sit down with the empty looming page.
I read somewhere—can’t remember the source, please feel free to share with me if you know!—that the less you subject yourself to that blank page, the less daunting it is to get started. That means to write down everything, and I mean everything that is of interest, or that pops into your head to inspire you on the bus, or that you’d like to come back to later. So that when you return to the page, you’ll always, at the very least, have a jumping off point.
For as long as I can remember I’ve been a hoarder of journals, notes, and docs; a slut for planners; a Big Fuckin’ Fan of collecting an amalgamation of analog and digital memory keepers (Notion and Evernote are my go-tos, but I’ve been known to pop off in the classic iPhone notes app as well). Now I find myself hoarding note after note of thought starters, potential essay topics, and more—all so I’ll keep coming back to you, my wonderful growing community here on Substack, ready to go.
While I started out with every intention of publishing Cosmic Kudos on a biweekly basis—and still intend to get back there!—it’s become important to me that I continue at a pace I find sustainable. If I publish less for now, but keep going, that is ultimately what matters.
Healing is found in the writing, but also in sharing.
I’ve found that I do this thing, sometimes, where I attempt to mask or dull my trauma when asked about it. Someone at work refers to the ongoing human rights crisis in Iran, and I attempt to awkwardly deflect from the conversation. It’s exhausting, trying to both hold my pieces together and explain the lengthy and convoluted timeline of everything I’ve ever learned and known about my parents’ homeland, culminating in the tragedies that are occurring today.
On a good day, the hyphen between my identities—Iranian-American—doesn’t do justice to the experience of being a first generation child of immigrants. It never has. Nor do it attest to the persistent underlying feeling of not being Iranian enough for one side, nor American enough for the other. I’m sure many if not all hyphenated Americans can speak to this.
For me, it’s never so deeply perceived as when a dark trauma is occurring, like a wound that is left to fester on a part of the body that cannot be reached, much less bandaged. They are so far away, and yet their predicament weighs on me every single day.
When I mentioned this upsetting urge to minimize my sadness, anger, and despair about the latest news to unfold in Iran—specifically, the fate of protestors Mohsen Shekari and Majidreza Rahnavard, who were recently executed by the government less than a month after being charged—a family friend responded that she found herself doing it, too. Downplaying the trauma.
But I strive to write the hard things even if I can’t divulge them aloud, and nowhere has that been more outwardly evident than in this newsletter.
Each and every time. Each and every trauma, in one way or another (whether I reveal them publicly or not). I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again; regardless of whether I initially intended to spend so many of these weekly missives parsing out complicated sociopolitical quandaries—spoiler: that was not the case—I did indeed.
And I found healing in it. In both small and expansive ways. Every time one of you reached out personally, or shared a post, and each and every time I heard that my words were resonating.
This is why I lay myself bare; it’s why I share certain darknesses and write into the wounds. Why I choose to reach toward making myths of them, too.
It’s only when we begin to heal ourselves that we can heal one another.
And it makes perfect sense, then, for me to end my anniversary roundup with what was far and away my most viewed post on Cosmic Kudos this year:
If you enjoyed reading this post, please consider sharing it with someone you think will resonate with it too.
Thanks for being here with me.
xx
Kimia
Congratulations Kimia!!