The first tenderness, an introduction

…in autumn you realize: the greatest bravery is in being translucent like glass

All that fragility, lightness, signs of others' imprudent fingers,

The greatest generosity – is to gift inner warmth amassed,

True maturity – is in being able to trust, remember, be afraid;

It is customary in our lands to come back in autumn,

The time of absence has passed.

Ksenia Zheludova ^[1]

Eight years ago, my life changed dramatically.

In the space of a month, I filed for a divorce, returned to my mom's home, and changed job. The first change hurt, the second one burned with shame, while the third one became an epic challenge: in my little cosy swamp, a rowing contest began.

I got lucky. I joined an editorial team that was going to create a start-up project for women on a major internet news portal in Belarus, TUT.BY, winning my place over a crazy number of other applicants. In the next two and a half years, I worked like Carrie Bradshaw: writing bold news stories about relationships. Those narratives, full of irony, banter, and reassurance, implied that I knew everything about men. When I met my future husband, I realized after a while that I knew nothing about them. My swagger was meaningless.

And it was precisely because when we broach the subject of real, living people, there is no absolute and constant knowledge, and every year spent side by side changes one's worldview. What seemed normal before, ceases to be so, and what was once perceived as a wonder, becomes humdrum. Conclusions and lessons of the past stop being treasured like a museum masterpiece, artifacts from your personal hall of military glory. Where once they served and protected you from harm, now they prevent you from moving forward.

Three years after my divorce (to the day actually) I got re-married. Some more time passed and my husband and I bought a house with a wonderful garden, and we moved from Minsk to the suburbs to listen to apples fall and grass grow.

We became parents.

I continued to write about love and relationships, but more and more often I felt like I was losing the thread of my topic, like sand slipping through my fingers, like it was asking me to leave it in peace. I came to the conclusion that I no longer want to write about love. Other worries seemed more significant, more poignant, and demanded more attention and strength. What is love for… what could I say? “If something changes, I'll let you know”.

I was tired of worrying about love. Tired of scrutinizing relationships, as if they were mistakes on a dictation assignment (do you pair words “family” and “home” with “want” or “have to”?), tired of thinking in perspectives (“Will you still love me when I'm no longer young and beautiful?”),^[2] tired of asking questions, the answers to which are unclear for me, but which I know already I'm still not going to like.

I realized that the only person who would never abandon me and whom I'd never have to dance around for – is me, myself, and I. I have no need to doubt my own desires, nor to prove to myself the truth about my own pain: for me, everything is exactly the way I feel it.

I can trust myself.

I can count on myself.

Nobody will ever love us the way we want – they will love us whatever way they can. Our dependence on other people and their changing moods doesn't make us happy – it makes us convenient. We are so used to adapting and acting as a buffer, to controlling our inner resentment and turning our anger into a silence that it inevitably leads to an explosion. The moment it all goes to hell is only a matter of time.

It is completely exhausting to think for others, feel for them, and predict their reactions. It is also quite useless: to live the life of others instead of doing something beautiful of your own.

It is boring and bleak to live in a world where your cheerfulness depends on how well you adjust to someone else's view of you. It is all right to end relationships and quit jobs that do not bring you value anymore or jobs that you cannot devote yourself to anymore either. It's not because it will be more exciting or interesting with other people or at another place, it's simply because here, at this particular place, it definitely won't be exciting or interesting anymore.

It is normal to be quite overwhelmed by the question (often put to celebrities) “What's your highest and most significant achievement in life so far?”. It's normal to look beyond the voice asking and quiz in return what right they have to ask; moreover, what have they done with their lives so far.

In the world where I celebrate myself, I no longer wait for someone to come and take care of me, I create my own joy. I take myself by the hand and lead myself to where I can feel the things I long for – the trustworthiness of “my people”, the taste of hot shish-kebab, or a sense of light-headedness after a fresh haircut.

In the world where I celebrate myself, I tell myself: I will get to this later, this will be done a couple of months from now, and this one I will never do, because for some things never is the best time possible.

Sometimes it seems like you are so used to being G. I. Jane that talk of some evanescent tenderness to yourself seems so illusory, like childish make-belief, that no one cares to tell you and if they did, you don't have time to listen. Yet I would like to take on this task and start this conversation, because in years of existence of the blog Gnezdo.by I have received a ton of letters from people telling me they're living at the very edge of their capacity, that they sleep three hours a day, work to the point of exhaustion, and take care of others until they themselves break down. None of these stories ended well. There is a point as to why there's a meme on the internet that says “No task is impossible, there are heart attacks at thirty”.

Let the time you spend with this book be an opportunity for you to sit down and get cozy; to listen to yourself and find out how you deserve to be treated and what treatment is unacceptable for you; to discover what you can accept and what not; what brings joy to your life, inspires, amazes, fascinates you, and what leaves you enraged. Listen to yourself, don't let anyone interrupt or devalue what you're about to hear.

Tenderness to yourself is always a journey, not just a strong-willed decision or a promise once given. This journey has no destination point on a map and will not lead you to a better version of yourself. Rather, it will lead you to a point where you refuse to play your own supervisor, critic, and judge, and choose to trust that you are normal.

This means exploring with kind curiosity all your “can-not”, “do not wants” and “will not do's” and not to go with the flow, or against it for that matter, but rather go where you need to go.

You are not eternal. No, really, you aren't.

Let me share all I know about tenderness to yourself and you decide the reason why this book has made it to your hands.

What will we talk about? About the right of each and every one of us to feel the way we do – and not be ashamed of it. About priorities, and what to do when others try to tell us how to live our lives.

About ageing and why it's not worth being afraid of it, and about money and mind patterns that prevent us from panicking and setting a fair price for our work and not feeling guilty for spending your own money on yourself afterward.

About how to celebrate life by having what we have and stop believing that you are not good enough, or wrong, or that you must fix yourself immediately.

We will explore the topic of tenderness to your body: how to stop fighting for it and with it and how respectfully to accept its story. We will take a look at the material things around us. It cannot be underestimated how a place that reflects us can be a source of support and help.

And, of course, we will talk a lot about how to interact with the world coming from a principle of tenderness to yourself: to assert your right to think differently, to stop playing games like “guess what I'm thinking” and “guess what I mean”, and to start asking what you need, to protect what's important, to say “no”, get closer or further away without hurting each other, and always to remember context.

I will tell you about the value of “your own pack” and – kind-mirror people. I will share some principles for getting organized in informational chaos. These principles are based on being mindful of your heartaches and will tell you the miraculous effect that settings like “Mute” and “Cancel subscription” can have.

At the end of the book, you'll be offered a challenge of tenderness to yourself. 31 days of tasks and practicals that will help you to get to know yourself better, dot the i's and cross the t's and find out what you will get out of it.

I am not one for conjuring up castles in the air. I am only going to talk about the things I have tried and lived through myself. For sure, my experiences are not universal and shouldn't be viewed as instructions to live by. Listen to yourself, note when words that you read awaken familiar thoughts (“Oh, it's the same with me!”), but search for your truth yourself. Believe me, you can't miss it, something like a car's parking sensors will start to beep inside you, louder when you get to the core truth.

Ideas are like seeds: if you will feel that what you've just read causes itching and tingling then it means that the seed has fallen on prepared soil and will soon start to sprout. If you like what grows, hug yourself and celebrate. If you don't, then don't take misfortune close to heart. Remember that even if an attempt falls through, it doesn't necessarily mean it was all in vain.

I wrote this book so that you would be able to open it on any page and feel your shoulders start to relax, your breathing become easier and your head gets lighter.

And tenderness towards yourself will fill your body up to the brim like a warm wave.