essays – gianna soderstrom

don’t rush a feeling

April 10, 2020Posted in beauty, courage, writingTagged blog, blogging, comfort, emotions, essays, Gianna Soderstrom, processing, self care, stillness, sunshine, treesLeave a comment

Sometimes when I am tired or sad or full of angst, I get annoyed at people who try to help me feel better. I don’t want to feel better right away. I need to get good and frustrated, to actually feel what I’m feeling, before I can start to turn it around. And sometimes people who want to help seem reluctant to let me feel my emotions. You can’t chase the rain clouds away before they’ve started raining. They’re not even your rainclouds if you don’t feel a few wet drops. It’s the same with the weird, sad, intense feelings. They need a moment to become real. If you welcome them in and offer them a glass of water, they’ll be more willing to leave when you show them the door.

I’ve maybe had more tough days than normal lately. That’s probably true for all of us. We’re locked in these four walls and coming face to face with selves we didn’t quite know. That’s a hard thing all on its own – meeting parts of us we didn’t know existed and aren’t sure if we like. Don’t worry. You’ll adjust. Just don’t rush yourself. It’s ok to recognize angst and feel it and get to know it before you move past it. If you ignore sadness and hurt and frustration, they’re not going to leave, they’re going to hover. You may have less outright tough days but there will be a black-ish tension lying under everything instead of the open type of pain that comes when you sit down and make introductions.

I’m not saying we should make Grief our roommate, give Frustration permission to rearrange the furniture, and let Angst do all the meal prep. There are limits. You like your couch where you like your couch, and it’s better to cuddle those throw pillows you’ve ordered online than it is to snuggle up with pain like a long-term houseguest. Besides, Frustration is notably terrible at remembering (or caring enough) to open the curtains and windows on a sunshiny morning, and frankly sunshine is as important for you as for your houseplants. Trust me on this. Open your window. I didn’t yesterday and look where that got me. Crabby by dinner time, and nothing short of two strawberry muffins and a walk under the stars would do for a cure.

While we’re talking about open windows, when you need a place to sit and get acquainted with all the heavy things walking with you lately, find an open window. The trees aren’t trying to fix anything. They know how to listen, murmuring their own indistinct and indirect sympathies. They won’t share your secrets with anybody but the nosy squirrels – and maybe your frustrations will get planted with the autumn’s acorns. In a hundred years you can walk through the forest and look for the strength of oaks that grew out of your pain. The birds will gossip about their own hardships in sing-song lilts. Hey that’s a good idea – sing like a bird. They say getting tipsy and embarrassing yourself with karoke break-up songs is good for a broken heart. Maybe it’ll help to get our own angst out in the sad songs we’ve saved from the last season of grief. And the breeze somehow knows just how much you do or don’t want a hug even without your saying. Having your hair teased around without needing to respond might be the most therapeutic thing yet.

Whatever happens, whatever it is pressing down on you right now, even as you’re lifting the blinds and wincing at the sun in your eyes, remember: There isn’t a quick fix. It’s a big feeling and it’ll pass, but it can’t go well if it’s pushed. Sometimes we just need to create a landing space for those things. Let them come to pass. If they’ve been greeted and acknowledged and offered a drink, they’ll be less clingy when we ask them to go.

last year

January 8, 2019Posted in courage, habitsTagged change, courage, discipline, essays, goals, New Year, resolutions, writing, yoga, Yoga with AdrienneLeave a comment

This is a story about last year. 2018. The year of New.

I have a page in an old art journal that I labeled just like that: The Year of New. Twelve months ago I sat at the faded yellow kitchen table and held my toes over warm air vent while I wrote down a long list of new things to try.

Recipes
Camp life
Try a new coffee drink
A new ethnic food

I set no stipulation on myself to succeed. I am already chronically afraid of failing. Somehow or other, I convinced myself that trying was succeeding. My only real goal was to find one thing to do every month that I’d never tried before.

I had already begun setting new goals for this year when I saw a post on Instagram asking people to share their best goals, memories, and reflections from 2018. Oh, this is easy… I typed “Trying new things!” and smiled as I sent it to her. “Great!” she responded, “What’s something you plan to keep?” I hadn’t thought of that. I knew all the courage last year required had changed me. I knew I’d learned things about myself that I never realized before, but I hadn’t paid attention to what those things were.

I’ve been thinking about it all week since then, and I have an answer. I realized it when I rolled out my yoga mat and began Yoga with Adrienne’s annual 30 Days of Yoga challenge. I did this challenge last year. It wasn’t easy; I was out of shape and my 6 month old had a thing for interrupting me for meals and attention. But when I sat down on the blue mat and started following the video this year, I remembered how good it felt at the end of January 2018 when I finished.

When February began, I had finished one new thing – I finished a fitness challenge. And I’d finished something I needed discipline for. I couldn’t rush through all 30 days of yoga practice; the videos were posted one day at a time. After half-an-hour I was too sore and shaky to keep going even if I could. I’m the classic work-ahead girl. You give me a book to read over a few months and I’ve got it done in a few days. But last January I was forced to pace myself, to accomplish something better by stretching it out.

That yoga challenge changed the rest of my year, really. I began to write more. I didn’t sign up to write a novel in the month of November, though that achievement sounds glorious. But I did sit down almost every day between May and December to write and edit, write and edit. I published blog posts here, submitted essays to competitions and judges, completed a writing webinar, got my work published on other blogs. The long slow discipline of practicing every day was paying off.

My New Year’s goal last year served its purpose; I was challenged to try new things and I had to try them slowly and consistently. That is what I love about 2018.

My goals this year are different. They’re more specific, for starters. But they’re written like torches lit in the dark, pointing me in the direction I know I want to go. So here’s to last year. Here’s to slow steps in the right direction. Here’s to discipline and patience, the much that is accomplished little by little. And here’s to 2019. Happy New Year.

I’d love to hear your goals for this year, or how last year shaped you! Chat with me in the comments!

original

October 16, 2018Posted in courage, habits, writingTagged Anselm Society, art, artists, blogging, Colorado, Colorado Springs, creativity, essays, ideas, insecurity, learning, originality, photography, truth, writingLeave a comment

There is mysterious soulful glory in a community of artists. When you gather with people whose mission it is to manifest the unity between ethereal beauty and true holiness, magic happens. Conversations are spun out of real joy and gentle criticism and intangible dreams that may yet become reality. I’ve joined an Arts Guild. It is the most encouragement my writing has seen in years.

I used to worry that I didn’t think very original thoughts. All my ideas were old; they felt spoon-fed and recycled. I wanted to think fresh things but I didn’t know how. I was envious of the people who seemed to think of new wonderful things without effort; the people who could think a thought and write an essay and paint a picture without stagnating in the same repeated ideas. The ease of their intelligent communities frustrated me. How could I get there? Why was it so hard to think things?

I wanted more of this originality; if not my own, then to sit in on theirs. “They” was non-specific. Podcast hosts who somehow had new ideas every week. Writers whose words were fresh and thoughtful. Friends whose conversations seemed alive and interesting. I remember a conversation I once had about insecurity with a close friend. I don’t usually get intimidated by people who are better than me, she said, I think of them as examples. I can learn a lot from how they work. I have struggled with that idea for years, honestly. Envy is often my default reaction to excellence. I wish I didn’t think that way so often and I’m working hard to change it, but that used to be my default mode of thinking.

So this summer I began trying to change. If I couldn’t bring forth my own original ideas, the next best thing I could do was listen to them, immerse myself in them. So I kept listening to the podcasts. I even found more good speakers to listen to. I read the blog posts and essays that seemed beyond any aspiration of my own skill – perhaps they would rub off on me. I spent time with people who entertained big ideas and philosophies. At least I could learn from them.

I began to lean into knowledge instead of begrudging those who had it. And slowly, I learned: we become like those we surround ourselves with. The more I listened to these original conversations, the more original thoughts and ideas I began to have. I realized that my own mind could generate ideas, craft thoughts and story lines, put together questions and answers in new ways. I was learning how “to be governed by [my] admirations rather than [my] disgusts…” (Henry Van Dyke). It is a beautiful place to be.

I might not ever be able to shake my old habit envying everyone who is better than me. It’s a horrible vice that brings a twinge of shame every time I think of it. But I am learning more and more how to think differently. When envy creeps in, I try to pick out a few things I can learn from somebody else’s success. I look for all the ways that artists and writers and thinkers I admire are reaching back, holding out their hands and ideas to bring the rest of us forward. They share selflessly and I want to learn selflessly.

I am finally seeing that originality does not cohabitate with isolation. Just as giving gifts and having less brings spontaneous joy, so sharing ideas and relying on others for thoughtful community cultivates our own original thoughts and ideas. May we live into this paradox of artistic friendship with joy and generosity.

wild raspberries

July 16, 2018Posted in adventure, camp life, parentingTagged Bemidji, berry picking, blogging, Colorado, Eagle Lake, Eagle Lake Camp, earth, essays, family, learning, memories, nature, parents, raspberries, wild raspberries1 Comment

It was mid-July when I first learned about wild raspberries. We were camping, camping all together on our summer family trip to Bemidji State Park. The hot afternoons we spent out in the boat together, whipping the intertubes in circles and pulling the skiers in straight lines. Cool mornings Mom liked to get us out biking. There were mixed feelings about hopping on our bikes in the midwest humidity, but our motto was “Everybody gets a turn doing what they want.” Mom, Josh, me and sometimes Josiah all wanted to bike.

My parents took the lead and the tail. Mom biked ahead with Josh, competitive nature in full force. I did my best to keep up despite a slight nagging sympathy for Josiah and Kiara, younger legs biking slowly in the back with Dad. We went single-file down the winding paved path; Josh and I weaving side to side and attempting to break each other’s records of Distance Ridden With No Hands. Eventually our family caught up with us, all but Dad and Kiara. I turned around, volunteering to find where they’d gotten hung up. Sitting still at a junction in the trail galled me when we ought to be moving.

Dad was stopped by the side of the trail. Kiara struggled up a hill behind him.

“Dad! What happened?”

“Wild Raspberries,” he said with a sly smile, and popped a red berry in his mouth. His knowledge of the outdoors had identified for him a treasure we all missed; his voice identified the warm pleasure that filled him whenever he spent time in the woods.

“Really? Are they good?” I’d never harvested any fruit out of the wild before.

“Try some.” He handed me one, and bent over to pick more. They were good. I began to pick them with Dad, leaning over with my bike held upright between my legs, the front wheel turning heavily towards the trees. Kiara caught up and sat beside the road, eating the berries we shared with her. Soon the rest of the family trickled back and called us sly names for not telling them about the sweet gems we’d stumbled across.

Every year after that, I paid attention to what month it was when we camped at Bemidji. I found ways to quiz Dad quietly, asking him whether the raspberries would be ripe yet. If they were I hung back from my usual fast-paced riding. I’d race Josh across the bridge, attempt to ride with no hands between the vehicle-prohibiting metal gates on the trail, hold my breath to keep from panting while I tried to be the first one up the hills. But when we came to the large aspen grove, white trees in their haze of golden-green light stretching out between the ferns, I’d drop back – “to check on Dad and Kiara,” I’d explain with a shrug, perhaps just a little too innocent.

We’d spend a few minutes eating all the tangy plump raspberries we could reach from the trail, scheming quietly how long we could stay before the others would turn around to find us and deplete the amount of berries we could each eat.

Grant and I walked around the lake at camp one evening when we first moved up here. He told me again the story of how he and his co-counselors were told to weed the areas between the boulders of the damn, and then suddenly chided when the property manager discovered they’d pulled up not just the weeds, but all the wild raspberries. We laughed together comfortably. I looked down the sides of the damn at the small stiff bushes poking up between stones. The raspberries were certainly coming back well.

The longer I live at camp, the more raspberries I discover. They grow along the trail up to Raven’s Craig, they grow between the boulders that pile high beside the road. Raspberries bloomed in springtime along the walk down to the dining hall and behind staff housing and on the trail that led back to Halfway Meadow. Now they’re ripening.

We walk around the lake again, this time with little Erik on Grant’s back. I linger, slowing down Grant’s long strides across the open back of the damn. There are raspberries to pick. Nostalgia warms me; I put a raspberry in Erik’s mouth. He grimaces with the burst of tang, and then smiles widely around the sweetness. I shape a memory in the sunshine, saving it for us to taste again next summer.

Every time I find a dark red raspberry, ripe and ready to eat, I remember eating those first wild berries with Dad. I hear the excitement that crept into his voice when he taught us about the woods he loved. I remember learning about the trees from him. Mom quizzed us on our trees by tickling our noses with their leaves, making our homeschool learning fun. Dad taught us from the heart of him; there was no tickling, only a deep love of all things wild that made his knowledge gold and transformed the woods into holy ground.

It is mid-July. I try to remember all the places I’ve noticed the rough shapes of raspberry leaves over the spring. I wander back quietly, hoping to find and collect the sweet red memories before everyone else catches up.

things that don’t satisfy

May 16, 2018Posted in adventure, Bible study, camp life, courage, writingTagged Anne of Green Gables, blogging, courage, Emily of New Moon, essays, fear, L M Montgomery, Lucy Maud Montgomery, persistance, practice, rejection, writingLeave a comment

I want to write a book. Ever since I was little, I’ve loved reading and writing. My mom’s friend, Jill, used to review my papers and poetry. She’d tell me I had promise, and then critique everything I let her read thoroughly. She told me to keep on writing, that I could go somewhere.

For years now I’ve walked the line of ambition and fear. I eagerly subscribed to Poets and Writers, I submitted an essay to a contest through The Missouri Review, my college major was English Literature. But I also took long breaks from writing (years, here and there.) I wouldn’t attend a writer’s group. I wouldn’t keep writing and submitting if I didn’t get an acceptance and the last one was nearly ten years ago.

This year I stumbled across Emily of New Moon by L. M. Montgomery. I’ve always loved Anne of Green Gables. When I first read the novels, I begged my Mom to tell me that “novel” meant “true story”. She wasn’t completely sure on the point, but thought it meant “fiction”. I refused to look the word up, desperate to keep my heroine really, truly alive. Emily is a more ambitious writer than Anne, and reading it inspired me to write more again. Even if most of it is rejected multiple times, keep writing. Even if I only ever write for myself, keep writing. Keep submitting. Keep trying. Don’t let the restless hours of fear win the battle against creativity and effort.

Today I got an email from a blogger I love asking if I’d submit a trial blog post for them. The sleeplessness of last night stopped mattering – I am halfway to an acceptance letter! My Anne-inspired imagination flew towards the opportunity: I pictured myself writing successful posts regularly for this blogger, becoming a loved contributor. And somehow, the taste of the success became a little empty in my mouth. I held the dream in my hand and realized it wasn’t enough.

Writing will never be enough. Success will never be enough. Being loved by people who will eventually forget me or find another favorite blogger will never be enough. I sat with my head back against the couch, turning over the shining blog post I planned to write, and slowly decided to do my morning devotions first. I moved into the sunlight at the table and flipped open to my soft ribbon bookmark in the gospel of John. Peter’s words from chapter six were underlined, and I read them, trying to find my spot on the page.

“Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.'”

The words of eternal life aren’t “Please write for us!” or “Your post has been successful!” or even a book deal. The words of eternal life are Jesus’ words. Nothing related to writing is going to give me more than a temporary high and a sense of accomplishment. The Way of Jesus is not filled with senses of accomplishment on our part, but on his. He accomplishes his work in us; and that is what I truly want, that is what will truly satisfy and fill me.

I hope we keep coming back to this, friends. I hope even after this blog post is lost we keep coming back to the eternal life words of Jesus; the ones that won’t get lost, that’ll keep us from getting lost. Let us lean towards the words and the One who will satisfy.