What I Stopped Doing to Make Space

Noticing is not, as it sounds, a passive thing. I've been practising this more deliberately this autumn, and what I've been noticing is how much of what I do is not, strictly speaking, necessary.

Not the care and the love — that's always necessary. But some of the management that I've built up around care and love: the tracking and the anticipating and the double-checking and the quiet verification of things that others have been trusted with and are handling perfectly well without my verification.

I am still, in some corner of every day, doing the work of someone who doesn't quite believe the work can be done without her.

Stopping this is not a matter of having the thought once. It's a practice. It requires noticing each time you pick up something that isn't yours to carry and choosing to put it back down.

I do this better on some days than others.

But I do it. And that's new.