The Unequivocal Joy of Giving Up

You can do what you want. Why? Everyone is focused on their own hungers, their own needs for approval. Throw the spaghetti.

“Years from now, when all the junk they got is broken and long forgotten, you'll still have your stars.” ― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“Why spend the afternoon making a meal that will be gone in an hour," she'd ask us, "when in the same amount of time, I can do a painting that will last forever?” ― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

I’ve been good my whole life. Done the right thing. Kept my knees together or crossed like a lady. Didn’t cuss (“only uneducated people swear,” they said), didn’t touch drugs, drove defensively, never went back for seconds. I was the first woman in my family to graduate from college, even as I spent my last quarter reading philosophy books while getting my hair and makeup done for runway jobs. I told the truth. I smiled.

My body was long and angular at fourteen, with stretch marks on each side of my rump from where my legs grew too quick, the way a zucchini plant bolts and flowers in the spring. At seventeen while studying for my final exams during high school I fueled myself with late night bowls of muesli and milk. My angles became softer, rounder, more Botticelli than Modigliani.

But I had an agent who said I needed to sharpen my angles, so I worked on shrinking again. This obsession with shrinking became a clarion call for me, another right thing to do, because women weren’t supposed to be big. They were supposed to tuck things away, keep things hidden, retract their bodies from the places they might otherwise fill. We were supposed to be in constant motion, doing our best.

I swam laps, walked miles, biked for hours. I got As and ate salad and avoided carbs. I did the right thing. The good thing. I was going to be ok. I was going to be loved. If I could just do all of these things correctly, the things I’d read about in the Health & Beauty page in the back of Vogue, I’d finally arrive at the destination I longed for —

Approval.

It’s taken me twenty five years to realize this destination is never arriving. Not that no one will approve of me, plenty of people do — but that the only person I’m looking for approval from is me. I’ve come to the realization that the hunger to feel something more than the pit of my vast yearning will never be satiated. It’s up to me to approve of myself, or I’ll be waiting for eons on a stamped passport made entirely out of sea mist. It won’t come.¹

Everyone is looking for the same thing. Sometimes we bump into each other and surprise ourselves with the beauty of our forged connections. Jolted out of our everyday obsessions and preoccupations with self, we see each other. But this is the exception to the norm. On the weekdays of our spiritual lives, we’re all looking for approval. When you go home at night and make dinner and fold yourself into bed yet again, you’re fundamentally alone.

I don’t mean this to sound cruel — it’s likely you’re surrounded by warm bodies of various ages and sizes. What I mean to say is that you can count on people, and you can’t. Even my biggest fans and most beloved confidantes, my most intimate lovers and most cherished, honest friends can’t see what I can from the interior of my home. They just can’t. No one will. Only I can do that. Only I can give the gift of really seeing myself and honoring what I see. You’ll be bereft otherwise. Waiting for that train ticket.

And it will never arrive.

So — the unequivocal joy of giving up.

You let go of what other people think of you. You allow yourself to make a mess. Then you clean it up because the mess makes you panic. Then you throw metaphorical spaghetti around the room again. And you notice that no one really cares. You can do what you want. Why? They’re all too preoccupied with themselves to notice. Everyone is immensely focused on their own hungers, their own needs for approval. They might bump into you as they twirl through space and be delighted at the prismatic image of what they see, but then they’ll keep twirling. To them it doesn’t look like a mess, it just looks like a photograph of you from a moment in time. So keep going. They really don’t mind. The only one you need to worry about, is yourself.

Do you care about what you’re doing? Does it light you up? Does it bring you joy? Is it liberating? Aliveness is what we’ve after. Aliveness is the only thing that will fill that vast soul hunger.

Here’s the thing though — I didn’t get to aliveness by being good. I didn’t get there by measuring, calculating, obsessing or worrying.

I got there by giving up.

I gave up trying to look good. I gave up trying to please thousands of people by folding myself into smaller and smaller boxes. I gave up doing what I thought they wanted, and started listening to the still, bold voice inside that knows exactly what it wants. I quit both modeling and starvation and ate french fries with red wine for dinner. I quit juices and oat milk and ordered pastries to dip in whole milk hot chocolate. I ate pasta and sticks of butter.

I stopped wearing voluminous Victorian dresses and embraced my love of baseball caps and a barely there bikini. I stopped thinking the external environment knew who I should be, and began paying attention to my internal environment and who it knows that I am. I lay in the sun without sunscreen and smoked cigarettes with friends on balconies and reminded myself, “you can do what you want.”

I dressed for comfort and self-expression and reveled in my sexuality, not as a performance but as a power. I gave up thinking I needed more of everything to be safe. I rested in the profound joy of doing less. Wanting less. Sitting back. And miraculously? After twenty five years, it’s this paring back that has filled my cup. That has delivered me whole to myself. That has showered my life with so much pleasure and abundance, the kind no chase could ever catch. Ironically, when I stopped looking for approval, what I’d been looking for was delivered.

Whole and intact. Stamped, paid for. Approved.

Ready to set fire to something? I will be leading a group journey into the twelve weeks of The Artist’s Way starting September 5th, for creatives of all kinds. If you’re done with what everyone else thinks and ready to return with bioluminescent aliveness to your immense creativity, I invite you to join us! Together we will unpack the suitcase of your soul, and put things in their right place.

Critic? We got you. Creator? You’ve got this.

Journey with us as we explore what gets in the way, and what turns the dimmer switch way up.

Life is short – what are you waiting for?

More details here

Early bird pricing ends August 15th. Seats are limited due to the intimate nature of this work. Any questions, just respond to this email or reach out to sophiewardkoren@gmail.com

“To do what you love first find what you love.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

1. Notice that one person’s approval is never enough? If your mother approves of you, now you need your father, and your boss, your partner, your children. It’s never enough. Even millions of Instagram followers will leave you feeling hollow. The one person whose approval you’re looking for? Your own.