Part 1: When Support Seems Scarce [A Post Launch Reflection]
On the Beauty & Exhaustion of Backing Yourself, the Pain of a Shared Joy Deficit, the Need for Believing Mirrors, the Power of the Reframe, and Celebrating Anyway
There’s an old photo of me at my third birthday party. I’m sitting on a wooden bar stool at our mustard yellow kitchen counter. In front of me is a round birthday cake decorated with white frosting. Garfield’s face is hand-drawn in icing, and three candles are lit. Circled around me are a crowd of familiar faces, smiling at me and singing “Happy Birthday.”
But I am not smiling. In the photo, my face is turned away from the cake, trying to hide from all the eyes staring at me. One of my small fists is wiping tears from the corner of my eye. Thirty-six years later and my body still remembers the discomfort that three-year-old, party-hat-wearing me felt.
Don’t get me wrong. I had a very real desire and need to be seen, heard, recognized, and celebrated (we all do), and yet, moments like this felt frightening and overwhelming to my nervous system. 1
This photo comes to mind and I meander through this memory just two weeks ago—the week I released my newest journal, Rise.2
Adult me would have loved being seated at a table surrounded by familiar faces and celebrated with a cake. As I launched my journal, I longed to feel supported and to share my joy with people who believed in me and my work. But that support and shared celebration were not on the table for me (pun not intended), and I felt like the little girl in that picture, but for different reasons.
My journey of launching Rise: A Journal for Perseverance was fueled mainly by self-belief and happened without the support of some pivotal people in my life. This became a tender point of grief amid the joy of this good thing.
The timing of my journal launch coincided with the releases of several writing friends’ books. I envied their bouquets of flowers, beautiful launch parties, and celebratory dinner dates. My reality looked like a pity party for one. Well, actually, there was one loud, unwanted guest: my loud, mocking inner critic. I felt foolish for even dreaming of a celebratory launch party or dinner out.
I wasn’t a “real” author, a publishing house didn’t choose me, and my journal didn’t have any marker of success in terms of sales, rankings, or lists to celebrate. What was there even to celebrate? Choosing myself, investing in myself, taking a great financial risk, having 1,000 copies of my journal still to sell? Why would I think myself or my work was deserving of support or celebration?
When a good, creative friend (who is an expert at reminding others about the importance of celebration as a practice) kindly asked me how I planned to celebrate, I wanted to weep.
“But then, some things are too important to skip. It’s easy to let life pass by unmarked.”
— Katherine May, “Introvert Parties”
The Pain of a Shared Joy Deficit
I have spent the past decade resurrecting belief, pride, and joy in my creative work. I knew celebrating this milestone of publishing my second journal was an important spiritual practice. I knew I could buy myself flowers (insert Miley Cyrus singing “Flowers” here). And I did, in fact, buy myself a colorful bracelet as a mini-celebration and marker. But the truth is, I was exhausted from backing myself, and I was hurting from a relational place and a shared joy deficit.
Without going into detail, the weeks leading up to the release of my journal were painful and lonely. My saying this isn’t part of the pity party chorus or my being overly dramatic or attention-seeking. This was my experience brought on by circumstances and facts that required a deep tending to with my therapist.
Throughout this entire launch process, I’ve done what I could with what I had. I’ve shown up, tended to personal wounds, stewarded my work the best I could, asked for help, and grieved the lack of support and relational celebration I needed but didn’t get.
Perhaps those things in and of themselves are worthy of being celebrated. Perhaps this celebration is one of courageously showing up, defiant perseverance, and forging a path for the work I believed in, in spite of all the obstacles before me, including the unbelief around me.3
The Beauty & Exhaustion of Backing Yourself
I spent at least a third of my life burying myself and my dreams, but eventually, there came a resurrection season. I learned how to come back home to myself, heal all kinds of wounds, choose myself, and love myself. I learned how to pick myself and my work first, no longer waiting for someone else to do this for me.
I’ve also cultivated a hyper-independence to survive difficult situations in the past. This even served me really well, especially as an Army wife. While it was good and beautiful to come alive to my life and choose myself, that veering off into extreme self-reliance and hyper-independence isn’t healthy or sustainable.
But the lack of support and community and the shared joy deficit wasn’t for lack of trying. Frequent moves, uprootings, the weight of personal wounds, and grief have made friendships and finding community a common challenging thread in my life (even as I name some of these layers, this is still an oversimplification of the matter). It’s been another lonely season.
On the first Saturday in June (10 days prior to launch day), I attended a Masterclass with Aime McNee (@inspiredtowrite) in San Francisco. During an open mic conversation, I raised my hand. I looked into Amie’s safe and riveting blue eyes as she held the mic in front of me. I lamented to her and the room full of creatives that I was exhausted from choosing myself and backing my work every single day.
Cultivating an inner belief in ourselves is a beautiful, healing thing, and we need external voices who support and believe in us, too—because sometimes we forget. We need others to remind us.
The Need for Believing Mirrors
Merideth Hite Estevez, in her new book, The Artist’s Joy, puts it this way, “Sometimes, when we are faced with our own insecurities, we need to find a friend to tell us something true.”4
I recently discovered that Julia Cameron calls these people “Believing Mirrors.” In The Artist’s Way, she explains, “‘Believing Mirrors’ are people who mirror us back to ourselves as powerful, strong, and in our most positive light. Our Believing Mirrors are valuable people in our creative lives.”
Ashlee Gadd recently wrote on Substack, “Every script needs a friend. And we could be that friend.”
We need believing mirrors and friends of the script.
And it’s painful when we sense we are without them.
Sometimes, the people we look to for external validation and shared celebration, who we want to be our believing mirrors, won’t be that for us. There is valid grief to name here. But it’s not a reflection of our worth or the worth of our work. And it doesn’t mean we have to wear the mask of hyper-independence and go it alone or talk ourselves out of our desire for support.
When I expressed my lament in that room of creatives in San Francisco, I did so in community. Amie McNee was a trusted voice and responded with her trademark validation, and all the heads around me nodded in shared understanding. The validation of grief was a healing moment—as it is in any situation.
The Power of the Reframe and Celebrating Anyway
I began to reframe some of the soundtrack playing at the pity party in my mind (and I don’t say that in a mocking, self-deprecating way).
After validating the reality of my grief, I started to remind myself that there were other people who wanted to see me “win,” who celebrated me, prayed for me, cheered for me, and supported me—and my work. Most live very long distances away, but that distance doesn’t discount the meaningful nature of their support.5 I needed to refocus my gaze.
I also began to reframe and pivot what I imagined celebration to look like. I turn my bracelet on my wrist and smile. I share a dinner out with a few local friends, not for the purpose of celebrating my journal launch, but who still celebrate with me nonetheless. I receive and sit with the celebratory texts and Voxer messages from friends.
I have a few more practices that helped me celebrate and recover that I want to share more in-depth. I’ll be back with Part 2: The Art of the Refuel (On Healing Practices for Recovery After Putting Yourself Out There or Cures for Vulnerability Hangovers or something like that—still working on the title). Stay tuned.
If support seems scarce and you lack believing mirrors in your life, I see you. The pain of that is valid. But don’t let it diminish your worth or stop you from being vulnerable and putting yourself out there. You are worthy of being seen and celebrated. May you be abundantly compassionate towards yourself, get curious and pivot your gaze to see the other supportive faces around you, and keep going.6
I want to end with these borrowed words to help you remember the wonder of you when you start to forget:
Why do you break? Not bend? And even broken, why not mend? You do know how. Walk with me to the edge of the city. Take off your shoes and feel the earth. It is softer than a woman. It is safer than your father. It is water. It is air. It is where you are returning with this yearning you can't name. Cast off your shame. It's an old coat. Remember who you are. You are a star, a mountain, that fountain in the sun. Your heart is the velvet cave where birds sing. Are you remembering?
—Julia Cameron, “Remembering”
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As I reflect back on this memory as an adult, I see the many threads informing my inner stitching: a shy temperament, a highly sensitive nature, an anxious attachment, trauma responses, and more...
Rise: A Journal for Perseverance was released on June 10, 2024. It’s available exclusively through my personal shop: https://kristinvanderlip.com/rise.
I’m reminded of Brene Brown’s words shared by Merideth Hite Estevez in The Artist’s Joy: “Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen.”
Merideth goes on to share the concept of “Everybody” coined by Martha Beck. Merideth includes two creative journaling exercises to help you name your Creative and Personal Everybody Committees, which include “individuals whom you trust to give feedback and counsel on your creative endeavors” and personal life. You can find these exercises in Chapter 9 of The Artist’s Joy: “Ode to Feedack” (pages 125-126).
Special thanks and acknowledgments to my “believing mirrors” for your space-making and space-holding, your listening ears, your kind words, your supportive shares, your prayers, and more: to Katey, Deb, my LYLAS group (Merideth, Ariel, Mara, and Ericka), to my Stanford friends Sarah, Jenn, Kellie, and Debs, to my mastermind alumni (Jillian, Amy, and Rachel), to my long-time writing friends for your long-time support, Amanda, Heather, Thelma, and Sarah, to those who directly contributed to this launch: Karla (The Inspired Foundry), Taryn (Typewriter Creative), and Katie (thank you for allowing me to include your poem), to the many creatives I haven’t named I’m still so grateful to have connected with over the years online and at conferences, and, last but not least, to those of you who are my readers, my Pen & Mend members, my Instagram friends who support and back my creative work—I do see YOU and am so grateful for you.
Sometimes, we find our believing mirrors in books. Special mentions for this piece go to Ashlee Gadd’s book Create Anyway: The Joy of Pursuing Creativity in the Margins of Motherhood and Merideth Estevez’s book already mentioned, The Artist’s Joy: A Guide to Getting Unstuck, Embracing Imperfection, and Loving Your Creative Life.
This is so heartbreakingly true. Creative work is already lonely and when you don’t have external validation and support and celebration around you it can be crushingly lonely. Thank you for not giving up. Your work matters.
And as an aside, I’m not very active on social media anymore (pretty disillusioned by it all) but I will happily go share your posts. Big congratulations on your journal launch. It looks beautiful, Kristin!
Oh Kristin, so thankful for your vulnerability here. Thank you for going first and naming this isolation out loud. I know what it’s like to launch something without the support of “pivotal people” in your life, and regardless of how things appear on the outside, that lack can run … deep. Sending you so much love ❤️ I am continually inspired by your self believe and dedication to seeing the projects and ideas God has set on your heart all the way through!