Dear Becoming Ones,
I’m arriving to the page later than usual today. I spent most of the afternoon going back and forth on whether I would record a video conversation with my friend, the jazz trumpeter Dr. J. Kyle Gregory—but I didn’t have it in me to perform. I wanted to paint instead with language, to let the words open a door rather than the camera catching my face. So while Kyle practices his trumpet in the living room, mute in, making the house feel like it’s breathing a slow ember of song, I am here writing. The cats are circling, waiting for dinner, and I’ll have to pause soon to feed them—but that, too, is part of being in the world: we place a gentle bookmark, we return, we continue.
This is the question I keep returning to, like a tide against the shore of my ribs: How does one be in this world and become without breaking? I don’t know that I have the answer. What I do have are stories—your stories, my stories—threads of grief and belonging woven through every conversation I’ve had this week and weeks prior. People are tired. People are hurting. People are longing for a place to set their heavy down. And I feel it, too. The world is trembling with loss, and still we are asked to love.
So how might we listen more deeply to one another? How might we hold the trembling with care? I am beginning to believe that the first gesture is gentleness toward ourselves—self-compassion as an orientation, not a fleeting mood. To attune to ourselves is not a selfish act; it is the condition by which we can truly attune to others. When I soften toward myself, I soften toward the world.
I founded Our Collective Becoming with this in mind: to curate networks of trust that nurture networks of care so that we can build networks of solidarity. It is a practice of social repair, yes—but also a practice of sitting with the quiet truth that we need each other. So today, I offer you permission to pause, to breathe, to let the heart unclench even a little. Becoming is not something we rush. Becoming is a slow exhale.
Maybe you need that, too.
Paz,
RCE+