On Fear, Love, and Softness

Dear community,

I've been sitting with our September theme of Softness and journaling about what this word means to me right now. What keeps surfacing is a realization that has become a helpful compass in my life: generally speaking, we can move through the world from one of two places—fear or love.

I know that sounds oversimplified, but it's become such a useful check-in for me. "Where am I operating from right now? Fear or love?"

When fear is at the helm, I can feel it—my heart is defended, my body is tense, my mind is more rigid. There's a guardedness and closed-off energy that creates more stress and makes life feel hard and more brittle. In this space, I find myself trying to dictate how things are going to unfold. I grasp for control, with this urgent sense of needing to "figure it out" or "take responsibility"—and that rarely works out in my favor (and usually just causes me, and others, a lot of suffering!).

When I'm operating from love—what Tara Brach calls the "undefended heart" (love that!)—there's a softness that opens. There's much more trust, less urgency, and more capacity to surrender and allow life to take me exactly where I need to go. In this space, I discover more room for authentic connection, for giving and receiving…and joy. Not to mention heaps more equanimity.

Of course, fear is primal and essential for keeping us safe. Recently on vacation, our 2-year old daughter was terrified of the ocean and didn't want to get her feet in the sand or go anywhere close to the water (“Can we go back to the swimming pool mommy?!”). It made complete sense—the ocean is a big powerful scary thing and her body's wisdom was saying NOPE. Fear serves all of us in lots of important ways, but unfortunately, it’s also maladaptive. When we're operating from fear by default, often connected to our ego or small sense of self, we create hardness and limitations that simply don't serve.

While this dance between fear and love certainly impacts my outer world, it has also been transformative for my inner world. For many years, I operated from a place of inner harshness—stemming from fear—and it was really hard to live that way. Mindfulness has taught me an inner softness and gentleness that feels like a dear and reliable friend now, instead of an ever-reprimanding enemy. It's been a beautiful thing and has given me so much strength and peace that ripples back outward.

I do want to acknowledge that softness isn't always what's called for. Sometimes we need firmness for healthy boundaries, a solid dose of tough love, or even fierceness and boldness—especially when facing injustice. With so much that feels scary and unjust happening in our world right now, particularly politically in our country, it’s really important to ask ourselves where the “starch” (as my mom says) is needed. Usually, I find that I’m exerting a lot of “starch” energy in areas of my life that aren’t actually useful (like wanting my morning routine or my partner’s actions to unfold precisely to my expectations), whereas that energy could be reallocated to something far more constructive, like advocacy, resistance, etc.

Like the ocean that is both velvety and mighty, I'm deeply curious and excited to explore together how softness can serve us. And how we can individually and collectively continue to fuel love more than fear.

What I keep discovering for myself is that tenderness—toward ourselves and life—doesn't weaken us. It actually becomes the very thing that carries us through.

xo,

Rena

Rena Satre Meloy

Pause Cofounder