what is grace? what does it mean to be graceful? how does one give grace?
this community is severely lacking in grace.
grace for ourselves, grace for one another.
grace requires thoughtfulness, awareness, self-awareness, empathy.
real empathy.
do you believe that everyone is always doing their best?
everyone is always doing their best.
this is a matter of fact.
if that person you can’t stand is always doing their best, what does that mean for you? what boundaries do you have to establish? do they know that their behavior bothers you?
what about the person that hurt you
do you think they were doing their best?
they were.
they were going through something. they were being a human. you were being a human. a healthy human does not harm other humans on purpose. “doing our best” does not mean we are at our healthiest. it means we are. we simply are existing, contributing what we can contribute, on any given day. we are, by nature, survivors.
we all are.
we all are human.
we all make mistakes.
sometimes we make big ones. sometimes we make small ones, like tripping over a crack in the sidewalk. we know it was an error; we are doomed to repeat it if we do not learn from it. next time we walk on the sidewalk, we’ll pick up our feet.
but do not hate us for tripping on the sidewalk & grabbing onto you for support. we knew it was an error, but we were unprepared for it. now we know better.
and next time, we might trip--but we won’t bring you down with us. we now know how to balance & how to avoid trips in the first place.
but trips still happen, even when we are prepared & aware of the cracks.
being human is tripping.
being human is tripping & getting up again, brushing ourselves off.
remember this:
you are doing your best.
you are always doing your best.
breathe in & breathe out.
grace is a sustainable, life-long practice.
give yourself grace.
forgive yourself for the mistakes you made while you were surviving.
you’ve survived, love.
you’ll keep surviving
but not without grace
