On Listening
And embracing the act of surrender.
Welcome to, from the desk of Rachel Leeke!
I share weekly on love + travel, including tidbits to create the adventurous life you deserve.
My latest is a poem - For Mothers, and you can view the entirety of my work here.
Thank you for taking the time to read work that comes straight from my heart.
To support my creativity, I invite you to upgrade your subscription, slide me an iced coffee, or slap a book down on my desk.
Listening is a skill and one I desire to master.
It is an active, full-body practice that goes beyond perception with the ears. I love the definition offered by the Listen First Project on the topic:
“Listening is personally attentive and responsive communication that leads to awareness, understanding, and empathy.”
Beyond hearing what is being said, listening is a process that requires us to yield the spotlight to someone or something else and be present with whatever is coming up.
I find this act especially challenging when it comes to myself. I’d love to save face and say listening to my needs in the moment comes easy, but that’s not always true. My knee-jerk reaction when faced with resistance is to go harder.
With an “I’ll show them” attitude, I tend to view the challenge as an opponent to my inevitable success instead of an indicator that I should maybe try another approach.
For example, I thought resting this weekend would be enough for me to feel spry and energetic when settling behind the keyboard this week. However, that has not been the case.
It’s taken me three days and feedback from my husband to accept that I will lose every single time I try to make reality bend to my will.
Here’s the truth: I am tired. I need to rest.
As such, I’ve let go of how I wanted things to look this week and recommit myself to listening when my body talks. Being able to do so the first time around is the hope, and I’ll continue to offer myself grace when I inevitably fall short.
TLDR: my productivity does not determine my worth.
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I hope you like today’s offering. It reminds me how very big and also utterly small we humans are.
Cheers to a week and lifetime full of listening to our hearts.
XOXO,
RL
TINY
An ant crawled on me And I wonder Does it know I am living and breathing? Does it know I am a whole world? I looked up from my leg Glancing from the darkness of the ground To the light of the sky Do we know the same of this place called Earth
TODAY’S TIDBIT
I have a goal of reading 13 books this year, and these are the titles I’ve completed so far.
I’m currently making my way through Sarah Jakes Roberts’ “Power Move,” “How to Say Babylon” by Safiya Sinclair is on deck, and “Wildflower” by Aurora James is waiting in the wings.
I didn’t intend to read only women authors this year, but now that I’ve noticed the trend, I have no intention of rocking the boat 💅🏾.
COMMUNITY CORNER
💌 Resonance is how we live forever. I'm grateful something I shared inspired
to dig in the crates for “Getting Through It: An Open Letter to My Mother”, a piece she penned three years ago.🧐
is gem dropping in “What if we normalize motherhood as a temporary job and not a woman’s purpose”. She rightfully asserts a persons lifelong job is being with themselves.🙅🏾♀️ One of my favorite aphorisms is “Hands in work, heart to God,” which is a reminder there is the possibility for divinity in everything we do.
makes a similar case for sharing creativity and resources in “Do Not Hoard Things.”LET ME KNOW
-How do you recharge when tired?
-What’s something that makes you feel amazingly big? What reminds you, you are frighteningly small?
-What’s a book by a woman author that you regularly suggest?
-Do you have any goals for the year?
Listening requires being able to regulate myself at the pace the person you are listening to is communicating. And then I have to maintain that mental state whilst not containing my self. To me that’s absolutely hard, because I’ve never had the time not to move or not to engage. And that goes hand in hand with finding time to rest, so I absolutely feel with what you are writing about. Thank you for sharing.
I always recommend A Place For Us by Fatima Fahreen Mirza. I reread it every year. And with each read, a new version of me mourns and celebrates. It’s pretty incredible to grow alongside the same words.