Rejection is an arrow that pierces straight to the core of a wound called “inadequacy.”

The two tend to happen all at once.

A rejection will arrive via an “I’m not interested” or a “We’ve decided to go with another candidate,” a silent or a blunt “No” — and inadequacy will often start coursing through our system like a silent hormone.

When we feel inadequate, the ego is there saying: “Something about me wasn’t or isn’t enough.” We might see ourselves as “less than” or “not whole.” There is almost always a self-image issue at play.

The ache is primal when it gets punctured. It often hits at a speed of zero to raw, a pace that can easily drive a person to want to “rend their clothing” (tear it in two) or “keen” (to make a loud and long cry of sorrow) . . . two words I had never heard before reading this passage.

The loudness of the pain can also blot out the details surrounding the “no,” the behind-the-scenes backstories that prove the rejection wasn’t really about us at all.

The person who said “no” to coffee? They had a sick pup they needed to get home to. The hiring manager who didn’t challenge her superiors on their decision? She was depleted because she’d been battling for custody and had to pick her fight.

The details are always there pleading for air time. But the ego is sly. It quickly steps in with an eye on the wound and salt in its back pocket. It takes the “something about you wasn’t enough” and almost always follow it with “so you’re going to be denied something valuable.” 

In Lamott’s hypothetical case, it is a writer being denied a partner who can take a look at a draft of writing.

There is something poignant about the setup, a vulnerability built into the very framework itself. A draft is a thing that a writer has poured their heart into. It holds weight. It also isn’t fortified yet and in its work-in-process state, feels all the more tender.

A draft is also the newborn that lives within each of us. It is the part of ourselves that feels like it is somehow being reborn or coming into being or trying to find its footing. It is the part of us that wants to be bubble wrapped and protected, the seedling whose roots may or may not be strong enough to stand on its own and weather the elements. The draft is fragile.

One of the things I appreciate about the brief two lines that I pulled intuitively for this month is the very basic notion that it’s okay to fall apart in the wake of rejection. We’re not supposed to hold it all together. In fact, Lamott encourages her readers to let it out. She tells their aching draft selves to go have a primal scream.

It has been a minute since I’ve gone into the thick of the woods, sat in my car, or walked out to the edge of the ocean and screamed like a bear grizzly in ache.

Sometimes we don’t know where to put the pain, and a primal scream is a kind of “reset.” It can stop a negative energy build from building.

What do I mean by “energy build”?

Good question 🙃

If the perception — the part of us that sees ourself as “less than” — doesn’t get cleaned up, it will sit there quietly cementing itself in place. Then it grows. Our brains will consciously and subconsciously replay the thought of “the problem was me, I wasn’t enough, the fault was mine.”

A thought that replays itself 10,000 times becomes a full-fledged belief, a lens through which we see ourselves. It doesn’t matter whether the thought is true or not true. What matters is the repetition. Repetition creates beliefs. Beliefs shape our reality.

A good friend in Spain once said to me:

“Remember, roses have thorns.”

Rejections are kind of like those thorns. They can catch you off guard. They can even pierce through the skin. They are also always going to be there. On the road to blooming there are sometimes as many thorns as there are petals.

So if you’re thinking: “A primal scream for every thorn isn’t exactly sustainable” . . .

I agree.

If you’re thinking: “Brooke’s probably going to bring up a tool for this” . . .

You’re right.

I’ve got a homemade one designed to curb the rejection thought-belief beast.

At some point between childhood and adulthood, the notion of Unconditional Love became the stuff of marshmallow fluff and fairytale sparkle dust packaged as a farfetched myth.

I lost touch with what the term really meant.

I did not know how to define it.

There are many facets to Unconditional Love, but the most important thing to know for now is:

Unconditional Love is a state of being in which you do not put conditions on why or how or when you love yourself.

It is the ultimate soft-landing but it is also unbreakable. It is the power tool that will build you a house no tornado or gale force winds could ever level into the ground. Start to cultivate the lens of unconditional love for yourself or hold it for another person and it will be a forcefield like no other.

In my mind, it is a lens that looks like the window inside of an airplane. You open the shade and you’re met with the softest clouds gauzed in the softest light. You’re met with bigness.

When I was 17, I took the bus to New York City to interview at the college of my dreams.

At the time, getting into this school was everything to me. I believed that I did not fit in where I grew up in Maryland and I decided that college in New York would be my ticket to “going big in life.” It would be a place where I could become the version of myself I most wanted to be.

To make that happen, I needed a scholarship. So I spent four years pouring every ounce of effort into getting good grades and doing extracurricular activities, and going above and beyond. I took every advanced placement class on offer, I signed myself up for track and field despite my notoriously turtle-like pace, I stretched myself thin beyond belief.

By the time the interview for this dream college arrived, I was entrenched in a version of Lamott’s writing partner situation. All I wanted was to be wanted back. All I wanted was to be accepted, to prove to that I mattered. I wanted to belong.

My older brother was living in New York at the time and parked himself on a bench outside of the admissions building.

“You’re going to do great,” he told me. “I’ll be right here waiting for you.”

I don’t know how it works today, but back then you walked into the admissions office and filled out a questionnaire about what you were doing in school.

I wrote out my answers and next thing I knew, I was sitting in a private office with my posture upright and my legs crossed professionally as the admissions counselor read through what I’d written. 

“I see you recently read Catcher In The Rye,” she said. “What did you think of it?”

“It was good,” I told her, followed by a long empty pause. 

“You operated a sound board for the musical productions at your school,” she said. “What was that like?” 

“I really liked it . . . I had to hook up the microphones,” I said, followed by a long empty pause.

On the inside my ego was ripping me a new one:
You’re bombing this. Say something, ANYTHING, tell her a story, use your words!  

The whole thing must have lasted 15 minutes but 15 painful hours later she was wrapping up the conversation and thanking me for coming in while my inner voice was screaming at me: Stand up and shake her hand! Make a strong exit! This isn’t over yet!

So I stood up —

Only I couldn’t stand. 

My legs had been crossed so tightly that my foot had fallen asleep.

It was completely numb.

Down, down, down I began to collapse. About to hit the ground, I somehow managed to grab the wall and catch myself.

“My foot…” I gestured and tried to smile. “It just . . . fell asleep.”

I limp-shuffled out of the office, out of the building, out of my body to find my older brother waiting outside with a smile on his face and love in his eyes. Then I burst into tears. 

My older brother didn’t care about where I went to school, what my GPA was, or whether I collapsed at the end of an interview. For the rest of the day he just supported me. He took me out for dinner, joked around, and told me how proud he was of me. If anything, he loved me more.

Almost 20 years later his reaction exists as a kind of gold standard for me. Can I love and support myself the way he did when I felt like a total buffoon? What about when the stakes get higher?

In the time since I wrote this post and never posted it, my Dad passed away.

The title of Lamott’s book, Bird by Bird, refers to taking life’s overwhelming tasks and approaching them one piece at a time. It’s a version of what I’m having to do over here.

Some days it feels like there are sandbags in my body and the tasks I used to zip through on a daily basis now take hours. Time has not been standing still but I’ve been standing still within it. I stare at walls and trees for long periods of time—for minutes or hours? I don’t know.

My life is in a state of revision.

I have always appreciated that the word “revise” was derived from the Latin word reviser — meaning, “to see again.” Sometimes that’s what unconditional love feels like: to see yourself or another person through every draft stage of your life again and again and again with both new eyes and eyes that see the magic of what’s already there.

The most expert revisers are the ones who don’t take a hatchet to the work. They see the parts of the writing and the person that might feel “imperfect” and they let those parts live while guiding what needs guidance.

I had a few measly hours to write my Dad’s obituary, something that felt like the most important piece of writing I’d ever attempted. Then I needed to write his eulogy. My system was emotionally fried and sleep deprived, so it probably shouldn’t have surprised me when my inner critic began to rev up.

What did surprise me was the sound of my Dad’s voice cutting in.

My Dad was always writing homemade equations and posting them around the house or in letters to me and my siblings.

In the wake of his death while I was struggling to write, I heard him cheering me on and loving me. “Brookie, Don’t sweat the small stuff. Who cares if it’s ‘perfect’? I love you! Keep going!”

All that mattered was that I write it with soul. Soul was more important than perfection. The feeling was what mattered.

Like him, I turned it into a math equation:

Soul > Perfection

Then I saw the deeper equation, a revision I think he would have gotten down with:

Soul = Perfection

My Dad was a huge reason why I ended up getting into that college where I had to hoist myself up using the wall, by the way.

When I got home with my “I blew it and it’s all over” attitude, he refused to let me give up. He told me to reach out to the admissions counselor I’d met with.

“Tell her you’re going to be in New York with your Dad,” he said. “Tell her your Dad wants to experience the school for himself and ask her if she has just a few moments for us to say ‘hello.’”

He wanted me to revise how I saw myself, to see myself bigger. He also wanted to prove the point that there was no situation that couldn’t ever be revised, reworked, revisited.

After a grueling work week my Dad drove me up to New York City. We met with the admissions counselor again, only this time the conversation was filled with lightness and personality.

In the same way a riverbed will hold down space for the water to flow, there he was saying: “I’m gonna hold down the space so you can just be . . . you. Whole and perfect you, exactly as you are — draft seedling and all.”

He was pretty much doing a version of that my whole life. When I ran the New York Marathon, there he was on my block in Brooklyn with a hand-painted sign that said:

“Go Brookie! Go!!!”

After many years and many moves that homemade sign is one thing I have not been able to let go of yet. Made with wooden stakes from his garden and paper bags from Trader Joe’s that he taped together and painted over, it was one of the most perfect and imperfect things I ever saw. Held in his hands, it was coursing with soul. He was coursing with soul.

My Dad’s magic is a big part of what powers this newsletter. My very way of being in this world was shaped by the wonder that pulsed through him. So many of my most treasured books were gifts from him — things he found at Goodwill or Salvation Army or held onto from classes he’d taken in college. The photo that’s on the landing page of this newsletter was one I chose specifically because it had a breadcrumb trail of him in it. His art, our bond, books he gave me, his handwriting.

His love was the ultimate soft landing. His love was a force like no other. It was radiant and unbreakable, and something no gale force wind or tornado could ever level to the ground. He could do no wrong in my eyes and I could do no wrong in his.

The love was unconditional.

Until our next page turn,
Tony’s daughter,
Brooke