OVERLAPPING CIRCLES OF SELF
Remembering And Reclaiming The Original Goodness Of The Body: Childhood Selves and Aging Bodies, 3 Things Worth Sharing, 2 Impactful Films, Body Positive Poems, Ron's World, and more...
Hi, Y’all!
You know that I tend to pay close attention to what comes into my sphere over the week and like a good adventurer, I follow those nudges to see what my life is trying to teach me. My desire is that you find something here that supports your travels along the way and that you will consider sharing with me, too. (Hint, hint, comments). This week’s newsletter is a wild compilation of films I watched, poetry I read, and experiences I lived over the past week.
But first an update on my writing program, Project 444:
GLOWING FEEDBACK FROM THE WOMEN IN MY WRITING COMMUNITY - ONLY 8 SPOTS REMAIN
In my new healing spiritual-memoir course, Project 444, the focus for this week’s writing was on our childhood selves. We spent the week paying attention to the stories that arose in each of us from our childhood and we each shared one story in our private community to be witnessed and supported in the community.
This community has already EXCEEDED my expectations. The women inside are sharing vulnerably about memories that matter and finding the hidden treasure embedded in their stories. They’re reconnecting to their original voices.
Here are a few comments from current participants, unsolicited that I’ll share with you here:
If you're contemplating joining, my advice.....JUMP! Before this opportunity, I had not written anything in years and that was in a journal. I feel like I have a whole new community of friends and support where I feel safe to explore and share things I have spent my life running from. Mary is inspiring, authentic, motivating, and encouraging! Being part of 444 is a gift I treasure. - Current Project 444 Participant
“I am sitting here in awe and gratitude. I have no words to capture the depths of what is happening and I LOVE it! Last week when I sat down to write I had some memories swirling around I thought I might explore, they are memories I know I need to process and work through. God had another plan, a BIGGER plan. The memory I wrote about last week was something I had no idea I had…It just came pouring out. The memory is so clear and vivid now. It was like finding a missing piece to a puzzle… … I know in the depth of my soul… (that these memories)…are crucial for me to understand, connect, and validate to finally begin to heal. .. Here is the kicker (totally new for me). I am allowing it to happen and trusting the process…. I remind myself that it's important for ME. Caring about me and validating me is so new. “ - Current Project 444 Participant
It’s so good, y’all! Everyone is kind. No pressure to participate by sharing your writings. Mary is supporting each person where they are on their life and writing journeys. - Current Project 444 Participant
I invite you to join us here. The last day to join Project 444 is June 24 or at 26 participants.
Our first gathering on Zoom is this Saturday/at 11 am CT, so the last day to join the Circle is June 24. All gatherings are available for replay. If you feel the nudge, reach out soon.
OUR CHILDHOOD SELVES
1. THE FRENCH FILM - PETITE MAMAN ( Little Mom)
It was fascinating for me to notice that this same week I became aware of the French film, Petite Maman. The film’s protagonist Nelly, an 8-year-old girl, has just lost her beloved grandmother and is helping her parents clean out her mother's childhood home. One day, her mom leaves suddenly, and Nelly meets a girl her age who is building a tree house in the woods.
Director Céline Sciamma ( Portrait Of A Girl On Fire) wows us again and captured my heart within minutes of the film’s opening when we watch a young Nelly and her mother drive away from the hospital after the death of the grandmother. Each lost in her own grief, young Nelly feeds her mother Cheetos from the backseat in an adorable and comical moment that then turns poignant as she wraps her arms around her mother’s neck to comfort her in her loss. It is a touching reversal of a well-known moment from most mothers’ lives when we reach back and hand snacks to our kids. Dare you not to get a lump in your throat.
I heard myself tell a friend this week that while I love many French films, sometimes the pacing can feel slow compared to American film. Not so here. The film strikes just the right balance by allowing us to linger in its tender moments and the expansiveness of childhood. “At barely 72 minutes, it breezes by before we realize how deeply it has implanted itself in our memory. There are heavy topics present here, the death of a parent, childhood illness, grief, and the guilt one feels when unfinished business exists with the deceased. But they exist within an aura of the fantastic that elevates them from a level of unbearable pain to a more comforting area of bittersweetness.” - RobertEbert.com
Petite Maman trailer
English film critic Mark Kermode called it his favorite film of 2021, writing "Whether you are six or 60, this astonishingly insightful and heartbreakingly hopeful cinematic poem will pierce your heart, broaden your mind and gladden your soul, even as you wipe away tears."
OUR OLDER SELVES
GOOD LUCK TO YOU, LEO GRANDE
On the other end of the age spectrum, I heard an interview on NPR with Emma Thompson promoting her latest film about a sexually dissatisfied older woman who hires a sex worker to teach her how to find pleasure after her husband dies. (Throughout her entire 30 years of marriage, she has never experienced an orgasm.) I enjoyed the interview and made a note to watch the film. The film is mostly intimate conversation and mostly about the female experience. The chemistry and charm between the characters is palpable. Newcomer Daryl McCormick holds his own with the amazing Emma.
I was intrigued by the fact that Emma Thompson (63 years old) shows up fully naked at the end of the film, her character having finally learned to love and admire her own body in a full-length mirror, perhaps the first time she’s even really taken it in. Though not my story, I wept with the recognition of finally learning to love our bodies and how long it can take.
As embodiment work continues to become more prevalent in the world of healing, therapy, and spiritual circles, we often see 20, 30, and 40-year-olds showing up on social media actively expressing their journey of body reclamation through photos of themselves in their underwear or even naked ( with certain areas blurred as not to be removed from the platform). That’s a post for another day, but what we do not see are many photos of older women reclaiming pleasure in their aging bodies. I need not repeat the patriarchal reasons why here, they are well known to us all.
Check out the 8-minute interview on NPR: GOOD LUCK TO YOU, LEO GRANDE. “Emma Thompson on her new film — and the idea the female orgasm has to be performative”. And then go watch the film.
OVERLAPPING CIRCLES OF SELF
This past week I have looked back at memories of childhood and guided other women to do the same. As we reconnect to our younger selves, we rediscover our inherent vitality, beauty, boldness, and original worthiness before we learned how to fit in, feel less than, morph ourselves into a shape to please others, and hate our own bodies.
There is a short scene in Petite Maman of Nelly in her shirt and overalls. I immediately remembered having overalls like hers and how the buckles hung down before my breasts developed in adolescence. Not worrying about how I looked or what I wore or how I appeared to others. I was at home in my body.
From Good Luck To You, Leo Grande - Nancy has taken the journey back to herself, back to perhaps her original love and “at home-ness” in her own body. Yes, she is older, heavier, and saggier, and yet she is learning to love her body. Her body is her own again. In the NPR interview when asked how the role changed or liberated her in her own life, she replied:
“I think what it did for me, certainly, was it made me re-recognize the waste of time that non-acceptance of one's body is. It's a waste of our time. And God knows I've wasted a lot of time. And of course, that's not my fault, actually. Because the iconography that surrounds us is absolutely inescapable.” -Emma Thompson
From Project 444: As we reclaim our stories and reconnect to our younger selves, we are stronger, clearer, and less divided within. Writing our stories helps us heal our stories and create a new narrative. This work touches every area of our lives.
Registration for PROJECT 444 HERE.
The space where all these circles converge is self-acceptance and self-love. It’s a daily practice to remember my truth. The grooves formed in my brain by my childhood and my culture taught me not to love myself fully or at best only momentarily and conditionally.
The Divine says otherwise. I am loved, I am Loved, I am LOVE. My body is a spectacular, sensitive vehicle that shepherds me through this life. I am whole now even as I heal. I am remembering, reclaiming, and rewriting my narrative.
The stories we share, the stories we rewrite, and the stories we live make all the difference.
3 (MORE) THINGS WORTH SHARING:
1. Some Girls By Alison Luterman
Some girls can’t help it; they are lit sparklers,
hot-blooded, half-naked in the depths of winter,
tagging moving trains with the bright insignia of their
fury.
I’ve seen their inked torsos: falcons, swans, meteor
showers.
And shadowed their secret rendezvous,
walking and flying all night over paths traced like veins
through the deep body of the forest
where they are trying on their new wings,
rising to power with a ferocious mercy
not seen before in the cities of men.
Having survived slander, abuse, and every kind of exile,
they’re swooping down even now
from treetops where they were roosting,
wearing robes woven of spider webs and pigeon
feathers.
They have pulled the living child out of the flames
and are prepared to take charge through the coming
apocalypse.
I have learned that some girls are boys; some are birds,
some are oases ringed with stalking lions. See,
I cannot even name them,
although one of them is looking out through my eyes
right now,
one of them
is writing all this down with light-struck fingers.
2. All bodies are worthy of self-love, self-care, and acceptance; all bodies are allowed to feel beautiful—and the definition of beauty is boundless. EIGHT BODY POSITIVE POEMS for you.
3. Lastly, this week I went to the salon and put some vibrant colors in my hair and posted this on my Instagram. You can click the pic to read my post.
RON’S WORLD:
His fandom has exceeded 2.5 million on our daughter Meg’s TikTok. People are smitten with his “angry comic” humor and lovable dad-ness in his shorts, t-shirt, white socks, and walking shoes. His fans want him to have his own show. It’s been a lot of fun watching Meg and Ron create together and hearing Meg’s fabulous laugh echo through the house as they shoot their videos together. I love my family.
Loving ourselves is a continual evolution. We are so worthy of our own love. Perhaps we can be a bit gentler with ourselves today?
See you next week, friend.
xo Mary
I can’t wait to watch Petite Maman 💗