Stephen Bryce(bsky@stephenbryce/🧵@stephenhdbryce)

Hope is holy imagination. And somehow it’s always tied close with grief - the loss of what was precious to us. Thoughts of beauty for the future. What could have been. And what still could be.

You don’t have to be defined by your past. You’re not what you did or what happened in the past. You’re not who you were. You get to choose who you are every new day.

It’s a good thing to be a soft and compassionate place for others to land. It’s also a very good thing to be a soft and compassionate place for yourself to land.

I’m not very detail oriented. You could say my mind yeets the deets.

You often won’t see the growth that happens from moment to moment. But when you look back on things and see where you’ve been and where you’ve gotten, I hope you recognize that the growth has been there all along.

@lancejorton And those need to be addressed first. It also leaves me with questions around “pearls and swine” or “shaking the dust off your feet”. Seems to me that there is a time when energy needs to be put into the places where there will be fruit. But I can’t make that choice for others.

@lancejorton That’s fair. And it’s a valid concern. We can’t really control what others do, but we can be true to what we think we need to do. And we can exhort others to come to the table. But there are so many deeper reasons folks feel the need to entrench themselves.

I will probably get a lot wrong. But I am going to err on the side of love and of hope. I’m going to try and miss on the side of the things that make life brighter and lighter.

All of us have our insecurities that get in the way of loving ourselves and others as best we can. We try. And we learn. And we grow. And we heal. And we move towards secure. So we can love better.

Every situation is completely new. Our past can help us predict some of the possibilities of how things may go. But hope leaves space for the awe and the wonder and the possibility and the surprise.

Love is all around us. It just takes so many forms. It can look so many ways. But it’s there for us to see. And it’s there for us to create and channel. No love is ever truly wasted, even if it never comes back to us from the places we gave it.

Being soft is my act of resistance. Being tenderhearted is how I choose to show strength. Compassion is my act of resistance in the face of everything that’s trying to force us to fit whatever they want us to be.

I’m going to try and love you as much as I can wherever I am and wherever you are. But I’m also going to hold onto boundaries. And I also may love you best by leaving you to your own devices. But I still love you.

@AlaskanKate Totally. It’s definitely more just a fact. And at the end of the day we’re allowed to feel how we feel about it. But we also need to choose how we live in the face of it.

@stephenhdbryce Interesting how this feels really good or really bad depending on how you feel now and how you regard the past.

Going back to the way things were isn’t an option. It’ll never be the same as it was because we will never be the same as we were.

@amandasharoncd Yeah! Same handle as here on all the others. Making the shift slowly myself towards focusing on those spaces

@stephenhdbryce Stephen! Are you on any other apps? Leaving here soon…but I will be sad to leave you and your kindness behind

i don't know who needs to hear this, but don't stop making art

What was isn’t anymore. And it won’t ever be again. Which can be scary. Because the future is unknown. But… it’s also kinda exciting. There’s so much potential for a better world. If we get involved and make it.

Expecting everyone else to do things the way you do or have things only ever look the way you want it to will only ever close us off to the possibilities out there. Some things we should expect in common. Others, we can enjoy the diversity.

Our defence mechanisms often involve some tunnel vision. When we’re healthy and secure, we’re able to understand more deeply, be more curious, and seek out more prospectives.

Whatever light you have always fights against the darkness. It may seem dim at times, but wherever it is it is pushing back against what is dark.