Unhooked & Held

New season, new Substack

With the changing of the seasons and the Exhale blog hop theme of Reset, I feel now is as good a time as any to rebrand and refocus my Substack. The title “A Glitch in the Good Enough” served me and my readers when I was sharing mostly about my own OCD recovery and resources that I found helpful. As OCD becomes less a part of my day to day story, I find myself still wanting to process and share what I’m learning, document beauty, and mark sacred moments. I believe a broader title and theme will help me step into this season.

Introducing… Unhooked & Held

Unhooked

The term “unhooked” has come to mean something quite specific to me in this season. I feel unhooked from the jagged grasp OCD had on me for most of my life. I am learning to let myself off the hook for “failures” or “shortcomings” that merely point to my humanity. I hope this term may also resonate with you. Perhaps you are unhooking from shame or false beliefs, thought spirals or unrealistic expectations. Most of my readers are in mid-life and I feel a collective desire to let go of rhythms, ideas, and identities that no longer foster our thriving.

Other poets have pointed me to the beauty of a life unhooked:

Don’t we deserve the water? Deserve to float, to heal, to rest, to feel the water sway and support our most tender places?

Held

Unhooked to me does not mean untethered or unaccountable or unsupported. The antidote to being “on the hook” is self-compassion. I am not seeking or espousing an anything goes approach to life, but a softer, more dignifying method of self-reflection. What can life, growth, and wholeness look like when we’re not hounded by guilt and condemnation? Can we be held by grace, self-compassion, community, curiosity, beauty, and God? This is what I seek to answer through my words and paintings and what I choose to share in this space.

A poem/prayer I wrote three years ago on being held:

When you are overwhelmed, may you be buoyed by the love of your community.

When you are overworked, may you be carried by the work you have already done.

When you are overwrought with a grief that swirls like a vortex, may you be cradled in tenderness, like a mother comforting a child, patting rhythmically, rocking and swaying.

Sshh, shh, you are safe. I am here.

You are safe.

I am here.

May you realize that you are that mother, fierce and tender, capable of holding and being held.

In this moment, may you choose to be held.

Unhooked & Held

When I was first diagnosed with OCD, the image of floating was a powerful metaphor for healing, and I still feel that way. I now know that floating is not passive or easy or static, floating requires flowing, changing, adapting, recalibrating, and resetting. The image is still so meaningful to me–that I can be held and cushioned by my own mind, that I am safe to let the water wash over me, to surrender my defenses, that I have become my own safe harbor.

Recovery has been a journey of both/and.

Here at Unhooked & Held we are:

Unhooking from shame and holding on to self-compassion.

Unhooking from false beliefs and holding on to compassionate action.

Unhooking our worth from outcomes and productivity and being held by those who love us just the way we are.

Unhooking from judgment and holding on to curiosity.

Unhooking from certainty and holding on to self-trust.

Unhooking from unrealistic expectations and holding plans loosely, opening ourselves to delight and surprise.

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I’d love to know if any of these words or images resonate with you! How are you unhooking in your life? What are you holding onto or allowing yourself to be held by?

My OCD resources aren’t going away!

OCD Resources: a compilation of my favorite OCD resources on the interwebs

Glitch Fix: a collection of my own stories and tips for OCD recovery

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This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Reset."