Staying With the Connection Flinch

A Thursday Offering, with two bonus practices!

A friend recently told me, “You’re so good at naming things I can’t say out loud.”

The words landed with more weight than I expected. My throat tightened. My chest pulled in. Every instinct in me wanted to laugh and shrug it off, to hand the attention back, to dissolve the light before it could touch me.

But I didn’t. I stayed.

The moment lasted maybe ten seconds. Just long enough to feel the urge to flinch — and to notice what happened when I didn’t.

We imagine intimacy will be soft and easy. More often it is sharp, unsettling, too bright for the nervous system to accept without recoil. The body treats being known like a threat. Chest contracts. Breath halts. Throat closes.

The flinch happens before we can think. But it doesn’t have to decide everything.

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Here is your invitation for this week:

Notice the flinch, but don’t collapse into it. Stay. Let yourself be unsettled. Let breath return. See what is possible when you soften into being seen.

And for paid subscribers, this Thursday Offering includes four practices — a meditation, a journaling reflection, a mantra, and an embodiment practice. Each one offers a different doorway into the same truth: that you are worth knowing, and connection is already waiting for you when you stay.