Hello again
On taking a break, and standing still. Also - what's in my suitcase?
First - the fun stuff…
I'm packing my bags to emcee the 2023 Adobe Experience Maker Awards gala at the Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Center! What did I forget?
Tune in LIVE on LinkedIn, June 21st at 8:00pm ET
RSVP: ktmartell.com/experience23
And now, my first note to you since June of 2022.
TL;DR - I’m back, it’s been a journey, therapy is great.
“Today I'm flying low and I'm not saying a word. I'm letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep. The world goes on as it must, the bees in the garden rumbling a little, the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten. And so forth. But I'm taking the day off. Quiet as a feather. I hardly move though really I'm traveling a terrific distance. Stillness. One of the doors into the temple.”
― Mary Oliver, A Thousand Mornings: Poems
When COVID began, my relationship with time changed. In the midst of lockdowns, standing still as one day bled into the next, full of unknowns and “new normals,” I often joked the only way I knew time had really passed was to see my plants grow.
Otherwise I felt, oftentimes, in limbo.
We lost a beloved grandmother during the height of the pandemic. It was more twisted proof that time, as it does, marches on.
As I visited her grave at Mt. Auburn on a beautiful spring day last month, it was the two-year anniversary of standing at the front of my hometown church to deliver her eulogy.
I realized I no longer understood what a year meant - forget two.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on.
― Mary Oliver, Wild Geese
It’s been a year since sending out this newsletter.
“Hello again” … you are part of a lovely group of thousands of humans that I religiously sent musings and content to week after week, until, last summer, I could no longer.
I took a rest.
A little break.
And I started therapy, for the first time in my life.
If you are “therapized…” I bet that Mary Oliver quote from the top of the newsletter resonates:
I hardly move though really I'm traveling a terrific distance.
Stillness.
One of the doors into the temple.
Hardly moving, yet traveling a terrific distance, describes therapy for me, perfectly.
I’m still here, although I feel a million miles, and a million years, have passed.
I’ve learned about the depth of human emotion, how to carry wisdom forward, the necessary skill of boundary-setting and the power of stark realism.
I’ve learned how our powerful minds, capable of reframing so much in our world of marketing / communications, can hold us back, and create what my therapist calls the “illusion of false limitations.”
I have a new sense of clarity, of peace, and of understanding - though it feels as though the journey is just beginning.
And I’m ready to get back to this nonsense.
I wanted to reach back out to this list and check in. Now is your chance to jump ship, as it were, if I’m no longer a voice you’d like to have in your inbox. No hard feelings - be well. Hit that “unsubscribe” link at the bottom.
But for the rest of you, hello. How are you?
I’m looking forward to being back “together” and sending out a regular newsletter again.
If you are someone who has been considering therapy, for whatever reason, and want to chat about my experiences, reach out. And if you’re someone who is facing a breaking point, for whatever reason, I encourage you to listen to your soul, and seek help.
I’ll be in touch next week with a “real” issue of this newsletter. You may notice the name has changed from The World’s Best Newsletter to simply… A Newsletter.
See you soon,
Katie
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
‘Mend my life!’
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognised as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.
-Mary Oliver: The Journey