7 Comments

A wonderful read Elise, thank you.

I'm reminded of Sarah Wilson's work around anxiety in kids, to which she draws a connection between anxiety and lack of resilience building opportunities in modern childhood — schools that cutt down trees and remove monkey bars so kids can't break an arm, etc.

Via text messaging, email, social media, we were all handed "an out" for doing the hard things face-to-face, but in sitting behind screens managing to avoid life's conflicts, don't we also manage to avoid life itself?

I'm also very impressed with your mum...says a mum who is ready to skip the seventh sausage sizzle fundraiser for this year!

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I’m inspired! I’m going to start submitting work to be published. Success can feel like a list a of publications I’ve been rejected from! And eventually something will hit I’m sure. 👍

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I was recently rejected from a job I applied to. Thank you for this article - it really helped me reframe the situation as an opportunity to practice rejection instead of as a failure. People rarely talk about their rejections, so it’s nice to have the experience normalized!

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I agree with you, It's so true, people rarely talk about rejections or failures. My sense is that's because we wish to avoid being judged by a culture that doesn't have a lot of capacity to hold the fact that "being chosen" isn't always due to objective merit or even being the best or ideal candidate for the position. There are a lot of nuisances to why one person might "win" and why sometimes things don't work out that way for others. Like many experiences that we tend to hold close and solo if we rather share it in community and realize we aren't alone, it can help with putting it into a more accepting and loving perspective. I often long for this to soften the added harsh self-rejection or isolating shame that can follow disappointments of all varieties!

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Excellent, love your perspective on this subject. Just what I needed to hear today

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Agreed! It was the nudge I needed to dive more fully into rejection this week :)

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I really enjoyed reading this! Makes me want to be braver and put myself out there even more. Rejection, here I come 🤓

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