As many of you know, I spent last weekend in the North Carolina Mountains with three of my best friends. We signed up for an amazing women’s retreat that included, of all things—Mahjong! Yes, my friends and I are somewhat obsessed with this quirky game of tiles. So we thought it might be exhilarating to join 56 other women in a weekend filled with matching pajamas, morning hikes, delicious food, and endless games of Mahjong.

During the afternoon of our first day there, the facilitator of our retreat asked us to mix things up and play with people we didn’t know. Suddenly, I felt like I was back in junior high school. Women began standing up and leaving their familiar, comfortable tables and personal friends in search of new tables and unfamiliar faces. My three Mahjong besties began walking toward new tables, while my mind scanned the room for people who looked especially kind and easy-going.

Finally, I approached a table not too far from me and smiled at the three faces already sitting down. As I pulled the only empty chair from the table, the most curious thing happened. The three women who I had never met in my life stood up and left.

Um…What just happened? Was that about me? Did I approach them strangely? Is there some Mahjong-retreat social code I have already violated? Do I smell weird? Have I somehow become the woman no one wants at their table?

My mind spun for a moment, trying to make sense of the apparent snub. Did something about me suggest that I was some kind of social pariah?

I quickly maneuvered to a new table of three and sat down. Thankfully, one of my besties was sitting across from me, and the two unfamiliar faces at this table smiled brightly and introduced themselves.

And here is the part of the story where I would love to offer you some tidy little explanation for why those three women got up and left the moment I sat down.

But I never found out.

No one circled back later to explain. My mind’s urgent, insecure questions were never answered.

But something else was available—something so much better than answers.

There was a simple remembering that my OK-ness is never tethered to anything temporary.

My Ok-ness is never dependent on anything that is in constant motion. It certainly is not tethered to the presence or absence of an emotional state such as embarrassment or cringe, since emotional states are always shifting and changing. I cannot lose my Ok-ness—my wellbeing—simply because I am experiencing cringe or awkwardness or embarrassment.

This was something that I saw so clearly and deeply back in 2019. My OK-ness is not and CANNOT be tethered to any emotional state, mental state, or even physical state. After all, those things are ALWAYS in motion. They are always changing, moment by moment.

I think of it like tethering my okay-ness to a sandcastle at the water’s edge and then asking the tide not to come in.

The sandcastle may be magnificent. It may have towers and bridges and a moat with tiny seashells lining the edges. I may love it. I may have spent hours building it. I may deeply, passionately prefer that it remain exactly as it is.

But it is made of sand.

And the tide is coming.

Not because the ocean is cruel or out to get me.

The tide comes in because tides come in.

Similarly, emotions shift and change because that is what they are designed to do. Every human emotional experience from humiliation to rage is simply moving through whenever it is moving through.

When we believe that the goal is to pin down happiness and push away grief, it’s like building that sandcastle of happiness on the shore’s edge and then spending all of our energy pushing back the tide. It’s exhausting.

And from the moment we are born into these physical bodies, they are changing in ways we cannot even wrap our heads around. Why? Because that’s what bodies do. If my Ok-ness—my wellbeing, my worth, and my value—is dependent on this body maintaining one particular set of criteria, then I will suffer, by design. It’s such an incredible gift.

Imagine a dog collar and a leash. Whoever is holding the leash gets to determine where the dog goes—whether the dog wants to go there or not. In 2019, I sometimes imagined wearing a little pink dog collar, and then handing the leash to my physical symptoms. I allowed the symptoms to determine my OK-ness. Big symptom day meant I was not OK. It meant that my value, worth, wellbeing, wholeness, and completeness were gone.

But a day with no symptoms meant my OK-ness is back! I have value, worth, and wellbeing again! I am whole and complete! Awesome. And, since my symptoms changed and morphed all the time, that leash took me on quite a roller coaster ride.

I’m OK. I’m not OK. I’m OK. I’m not OK. Sometimes, I felt like I had whiplash.

But the exhaustion of it all finally caught up to me. So, I removed the dog collar. I could no longer tether my Ok-ness to anything unstable. And this thing we call health, with all of its ever-changing made-up rules, IS unstable.

And that’s when something else began opening up within me. I began to get a vague but palpable sense that my deepest wellbeing—my worth, value, and OK-ness—has always been completely stable all on its own.

And if your adorable little mind is asking, “If I do not tether my okay-ness to my emotional, physical, and mental states, then where DO I tether it?”

If I do not tether it to a peaceful emotional state, a calm mind, a secure relationship, financial stability, the approval of other people, or my ability to hold my entire life together, then what is left?

What is stable?

What does not change?

And the crazy thing is—I don’t really have words that can explain this in a way that will quell the mind once and for all.

I really don’t.

But something in my body—in my belly, as I always say—knows.

It knows that the deepest part of me—the part of me that was here at conception, long before I had a name or a story or even a recognizable body—has always been here.

It was here when I took my first breath, and when I was five years old and when I was fifteen. Something was here through heartbreak and the victory, through childbirth and loss, hives and healing, terror and laughter, certainty and complete confusion.

Every version of this body has been known. Every emotional state has been felt. Every thought has appeared somewhere.

This body—this miraculous Earth costume— has been in a constant state of changing since the moment it arrived. It has grown and stretched and healed and hurt. It has been energized and exhausted, comfortable and uncomfortable, strong and shaky, calm and buzzing with more energy than it knew what to do with.

My emotional state has also changed millions of times. I have been heartbroken at breakfast and belly laughing by lunch. I have gone to bed certain that something was unbearable and awakened the next morning wondering why it felt quite so enormous the night before.

My mental state changes before I can even keep up with it. Thoughts arrive, sound completely convincing, and disappear. Beliefs I once built my entire life around have fallen away. Things I once knew with absolute certainty now make no sense to me at all.

Relationships change. Plans change. People come and go. Sandcastles wash away. Women stand up from Mahjong tables without explaining themselves.

Everything I can point to or name MOVES.

And still, this deep part of me—this stable, unchanging, miracle within—has been here for all of it.

I do not know exactly what to call the something that has remained.

Awareness.

Aliveness.

Love.

God.

Life.

Or maybe just ME. I’ve been here all along, for this little temporary me called Missy.

And maybe what we call it matters far less than that quiet recognition in the body when we brush against it.

Oh. This has been here the whole time.

Maybe that is why the question, “What never changes” gives us tingles before we have an answer.

The body recognizes truth long before the mind can explain it.

There is a lightness, a loosening, an exhale. The body recognizes truth. It senses this deep, abiding, unchanging OK-ness that runs like a river current near the floor of the river. It knows that the thing we have been desperately trying to protect and defend has never actually needed our protection and defense.

Our okay-ness was never tethered to anything that moves. Anything with a name, a label, or a conceptual story.

It was never stored in a healthy body, a calm mind, or a happy relationship.

What if our true wellbeing—our Ok-ness—is already here when the mind is racing? Already here when the body hurts? Already here when we feel rejected, embarrassed, left out, furious, ashamed, or deeply disappointed?

Not somewhere behind those experiences.

Not waiting for them to pass.

Here. Within them. Around them. Somehow holding the whole wild mess without asking any of it to become different first.

And here is the coolest part of all—we are not in charge of eradicating the tethering.

Tethering our OK-ness to an emotional state, a bank account, a relationship, or the apparent health of our body is never a problem to solve.

It’s simply something to notice. To open just 2% to seeing. That’s it. That’s more than enough.

And thankfully, we all have these brilliant, wise bodies to help us in this seeing—in this noticing.

When we attach or tether our OK-ness to something like a relationship or a symptom, our amazing nervous systems will let us know. Thank goodness, it will tighten up or feel queasy, or break out in a sweat or a rash. Thank you, brilliant body.

That is not a sign that something has gone wrong. It is not a sign that you have failed or messed up. And it’s definitely not a sign that you need to go to work figuring out how to remove the tether.

It’s SO much simpler.

I think of it more like a self-cleaning oven. The attachment happens. The tethering happens. Cool. And then the body swoops in with its clever, efficient little waking-up symptoms to…well…begin the waking up.

To help you begin to notice—even just 2%—THAT your wellbeing and OK-ness are tethered to something that is unstable, always changing.

Noticing it is its own little miracle.

And then, kindness and grace prevail.

I find myself saying things like,

Oh, sweet girl. That felt like rejection for a second, didn’t it? It felt like something was at stake, didn’t it? I’ve got you. We’re good. Now, let’s go play.

The kindness notices both. It notices the tethering of my Ok-ness to those ladies’ opinions of me. AND it notices the adorable, wonderful little me who feels rejected and insecure.

Maybe we spend so much time looking for okay-ness in the absence of pain that we miss the quiet okay-ness that is holding the pain.

We look for it in the absence of fear and miss what is here, tenderly noticing the one who is afraid.

We look for it in the absence of grief and miss what remains present for every tear.

We look for it in the absence of confusion and miss the wide, spacious I don’t know that requires no answer.

What if my body can feel uncomfortable, my mind can be noisy, my preference can go unmet, my plans can fall apart, AND none of those experiences has the power to reach deeply enough to dismantle what I am?

What if there is something within me that simply notices, “Oh, awkwardness is here. Cringe is here. Embarrassment and humiliation are here. Hello. I have space for all of you. Please stay as long as you need to.”

What if there is something within me that simply notices, “I F-ing HATE these symptoms! I want them to go away!” And that something says, “Hello. Even you are included. You are welcome here.”

Every version of me is welcome within the stable, unchanging ME. Even the version of me who still sometimes attaches my OK-ness to things like finances, marriage, and health.

None of that needs to change. And ironically, in those small 2% moments of noticing and offering kindness, everything begins to change.