Reflections on our first birthday
There’s a photo I’m fond of that I recently put up on my fridge. In it Monica and I are holding a tiny bowl of chocolate-covered almonds. A sparkly first birthday candle juts out from the center, its wick burning bright. While I don’t remember where we found that birthday candle or those errant almonds, I do remember holding that tiny bowl and feeling more like myself than I had in years.
That day marked the end of a year-long passion project called The One and the fulfillment of a promise we’d made to ourselves to battle perfectionism and crawl out of a creative rut.
The idea of starting a business had not yet crossed my mind, though I knew I wanted to spend my hours doing something different, something that made me feel how I felt in that photo. For the last five years, I’d chased jobs that looked good on paper but left me feeling hollow by the day’s end. When I finally started listening to myself, I realized all I wanted was to make films and help people tell their stories. There was no turning back.
Not long after, Monica and I quit our jobs, moved across the country, and brainstormed ideas for a business that could honor our strengths and reflect our values.
This month that business turns 1.
A photo that now graces my fridge.
To have spent an entire year doing what I’ve l always wanted doesn’t feel like fireworks going off or the pinnacle of a hero(ine)’s journey. It feels like relief. After years of resistance, I was finally following poet Mary Oliver’s advice to “let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”
I’m genuinely in awe of everything Monica and I have accomplished in the past year and all the ways we’ve grown. We produced a YouTube series and a 10th-anniversary video, all from the confines of lockdown. Our doc-in-progress, The Body Is Not A Thing, was awarded funding from the Southern Documentary Fund. We even got to witness the release of Georgia’s rarest frog species.
Throughout it all, the best part has been getting to share our clients’ stories. We’ve been very lucky.
But when it came time to write this post, my urge to celebrate was noticeably absent. Despite all our wins, joy feels out of place in the midst of a once-in-a-century pandemic and a string of racial injustices that have broken our hearts again and again.
To celebrate feels almost profane. But emotional denial doesn’t feel right either.
Monica recently lent me a book called When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön. Written by a Tibetan Buddhist nun, it’s a collection of teachings that offers solace during difficult times. In it Chödrön writes:
“Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”
When I read this, I was shocked. I had no idea that my grief could sit alongside my joy. That I could hold space for everything that can and will happen. I think that’s the lesson I want to take away from these past few months and bring with me into our second year.
Here’s to more growth and collaboration, to coming together and falling apart. To all of it.
— Steph
