Coming to Write, Part 1
In August 2018 I joined a writing group. We’d all completed Seth Godin’s altMBA and were looking for a way to keep the momentum going. The premise of the group is pretty simple: each week you write something and share it with the group and then you provide feedback to three others on their work.
I spent my first few months in the group berating myself for writing only sporadically. You are missing out on a valuable resource, I’d say to myself. This is a lost opportunity right there in front of you! Each week the tally of wrongdoings. Each week the evidence mounting that my suspicions were correct and I was perhaps not much of a writer at all.
Over the winter I became more consistent. I can’t put my finger on what exactly changed. I merely began writing. What I know for sure is that a space was created and held. The group waits on the other side of keyboards across multiple time zones, eager and willing to read.
Despite my evasive maneuvers, they kept being there. Each week. To see and receive and generously respond. And, in so doing, they gently showed me the asymmetry in my actions. My willingness to neglect myself was at odds with their consistency in showing up for me. They modeled how to give feedback, not that I might give better feedback to others (though that certainly happened), but that I might offer feedback of a similar type and tone to myself.
That’s what community does — first and most obviously, the group teaches you how to be with one another. And then later how to be with yourself. So that you come to accept less and less of your own harshness and unkindness as you see how it goes against the community’s way of being.
