🧵 Thursday Thread: How Are You Reinventing Yourself?
Going back to school should be a time of newness, possibility, and expansion, not terror and death. Ultimately, back-to-school season is a time of re-invention.
First of all, thank you all so much for your sounds of healing last week. I’ve barely begun to look at them, to be honest. I think possibly because I just wanted to feel … really sad.
But I felt all that love and light, and I will be diving in bit by bit in the days/weeks ahead.
What a treasure trove for all of us and for anyone who needs sounds of healing for any reason, any time.
Like many of us probably do today, after what happened in Georgia yesterday. My heart breaks harder every single time. As Kamala Harris says, it doesn’t have to be this way. I hope we’re all taking every action we can toward change in November.
Because back-to-school season should be a time of newness, possibility, and expansion. It should not be a time of terror and death. In the best of cases, it should be a time of celebration.
My oldest granddaughter was supposed to start first grade Tuesday, but she was recovering from Covid, so she started yesterday. Another granddaughter started kindergarten today at a Chinese immersion school, which is so exciting because
is fluent in Mandarin. As for Z, today was his first day in the Penguin Room, after graduation from the Polar Bear Room last week.Ultimately, back-to-school season is a time of re-invention.
When I started eighth grade in a new house in a new city in a new state with a new parent, I changed my name from Jeannie to Jeannine. It didn’t “take” at home, which meant my closest friends always ended up confused and mostly started calling me Jeannie eventually, creating a conundrum I still navigate today: Jeannie or Jeannine? But while my re-naming remained permanently partial, the claiming of my formal, given name of Jeannine mattered as an on-ramp to empowerment and choice.
How are you or will you be reinventing yourself this year? Please tell us.
Reinvention need not be tied to a giant shift in work or family.
Re-invention can be:
Making a new friend
Learning to cook
Committing to better sleep
Reviving your writing practice
Falling in love with yourself again
Getting a dog
Another thing we’d love to hear this week would be stories of past reinventions, even if you didn’t know you were in a time of reinvention until later. Such stories are inspiring beyond belief—those times when you gently released a former version of yourself to make way for your next iteration.
Thank you, always, for your stories, which matter, which count, which illuminate a path forward for others in ways you might never know.
These reflections might also become the seed for writing later. Because pivots are always sources of aliveness, even when they are subtle.
Love,
Jeannine
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