“At Your Leisure” - Moving at the Pace of Flourishing

A guest post by Rose J. Percy

Welcome to Healing is My Special Interest, the newsletter at the intersection of late-diagnosed neurodivergence and healing from high control environments. Today we have a gorgeous guest post on accommodations by the poet and essayist Rose J. Percy. You can check out her Substack here for more of her rich (and hard-earned) wisdom:

I invite you to grab a cup of coffee or tea and prepare to read this post several times through. Rose speaks of her own experience of inviting leisure into her life and into others, but I know you will find sentences and phrases that jump out at you, longing to be unpacked.

Thank you to everyone who financially supports this newsletter and enables me to pay writers like Rose for their expertise!

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“At Your Leisure” - Moving at the Pace of Flourishing 

A guest post on accommodations by Rose J. Percy

Leisure:

-at one's ease

-for enjoyment

-unhurried 

-unoccupied or free

One of my commitments as a womanist¹ contemplative poet is to find the roundest words I know to write my way of being across the lines that have been drawn against me.  But I am someone who is soothed by the presence of the lines I draw for myself. I am often stumbling to make sure those lines are straight, unbroken, and bold.  I could write essays for days on the sense of safety I feel reflecting on the simplicity of knowing where the lines are drawn.

A word that feels derogatory to me is “rigid.” I keep wanting not to be called rigid. I keep wanting to show others how much I have loosened up. “Look at how cool, calm and collected I can be! I am SO RELAXED!”

Google Calendar and Tasks help me draw lines across time to prioritize and organize the demands on my life. In many ways, this helps me make space for the pleasures that nourish me. I have a calendar that I intend to use to schedule times to connect with my friends. It was once a dream to be able to schedule regular check ins with friends so I could bring some order to the natural chaos of our intersecting lives. But a fear of being called rigid because of my deep affinity for planning often leaves it bare. It now reminds me of a deeply seated shame: the things I do to calm myself and bring order to a world of overload can be interpreted as micro-managing (to) others.

I used to bend over backwards to make time for other people whether or not it work for me. Flexibility for me often meant releasing my hold on getting details for gatherings that would help me show up less anxious.  I would walk away from events, certain that the mask I put on to make it through would lead to flares and fatigue the following day because I was not managing my energy according to my needs. So by necessity, I learned how to draw lines against myself to make up for the ways I could not draw them with others. I became known for a smooth and swift decline, my boundaries so rigid, there was no room for amendment.

These days, while I don’t bend over backwards for just anyone, I will recline. For the people I love and the things I am committed to, I have found three words to recall our humanity — “at your leisure.”

Seasons are round. The Moon is round. The feeling you get when you are full is round. The smile that rises to your face when you are satisfied is round. The way your cheeks lift when you laugh is round. A kiss can be the kind of round you dare to let yourself feel again. Forgiveness is round as it is rooted in return—we can begin again. Love is round when it pulls you into an embrace, and I keep wanting it in the roundest ways.

“At your leisure,” feels round to me, in a distinctly womanist way. There is an invitation here to take your time or give it away. I often describe this posture as “the pace of flourishing.” And flourishing takes time, doesn't it?

My love of poetry helps me to write, read, and interpret the world in ways that weave through the lines that I constantly see everywhere. As someone whose neurodivergence calls for the simplicity and clarity of lines, poetry provided a space for a rebellious love of shadowy and curvy nuances. Poems bend things into shape, often revealing the ways this body cannot bend. The lines of the poem “night vision” by Lucille Clifton centers me and anchors my vision for what is possible when I can move at the pace of flourishing:

night vision by Lucille Clifton

the girl fits her body in
to the space between the bed
and the wall. she is a stalk,
exhausted. she will do some
thing with this. she will
surround these bones with flesh,
she will cultivate night vision.
she will train her tongue
to lie still in her mouth and listen.
the girl slips into sleep.
her dream is red and raging.
she will remember
to build something human with it.

I often think about the posture that is required for the girl in the poem as she seeks to rest in “the space between the bed / and the wall.” She feels the weight of rigidity, hers and those imposed on her. Without the protection of flesh, her bones are being grinded away as she tries to shut her eyes against a rock and a hard place. I have been this exhausted girl often. Before I had all the words formed to explain what it was I was looking for in a desire to “build something human,”  the most certain thing I could affirm about myself was that I was a Soft Black Woman seeking “a gentle landing.”

What space does this girl have to dream when rigidity and restlessness are her norm? These are the questions I ask often in my Substack, A Gentle Landing, where my goal is to create a poetic playground for restless dreamers. I play with words—sometimes exposing how those words have played me—in order to help my readers sink into the best posture they can find for rest. I make very few declarations and offer even fewer prescriptions. Sometimes, I am in awe that people keep coming back to my newsletter. But I take it as a sign that my simple offerings of roundness meet others where their lines are drawn—by them or against them—in a necessary way. I take it as a sign that there are so many of us seeking a reprieve from a world of urgency. The world of urgency that would have us automate our bodily functions if we could to meet their demands. I counter that urgency by recalling a world of roundness, with an invitation that always circles back to honoring what is most beautifully human in us.

How can we move at the pace of flourishing? As I said, in my newsletter, I don't offer many prescriptions or make many declarations—but I love a good invitation. The best accommodations, like invitations, reflect back to me where I am welcome:

Here is a special entrance for you.

Let’s keep it brief.

I cordially invite you to reflect on how my choice of font invites you to rest your eyes on these words.

Would you like for me to speak at a volume that does not assault your nervous system?

Though I still wear stripes often and enjoy drawing lines, they do not often feel inviting to me. Ask anyone who knows me, I take great pleasure in articulating a boundary. However, as I reap the benefits of taking things at my leisure, I  have learned to pair the expression of my boundaries with openings for the people I love and with the things I love. I am unavailable to do ____ but I would love to do ____if invited².

I noticed that I can name these openings better when I have had time to sit with what would be most dignifying to my humanity. I am committed to “build[ing] something human,” and I begin with my own life and body. But I don't get to those expressions without pacing myself. But at my leisure, I get there in good time.

I have a love-hate relationship with deadlines—I would rather have living ones. So I honor them by remembering my own pulse, my own bones and flesh, my own tongue that seeks rounder words for building a more human life. In that life is a neurodivergent mind that often refuses to fall in line, even when I demand them from the world. I invite my people as often as I can to engage in the things I write at their leisure.

I know there are certain things in this world that will always come with a deadline. I know I will continue to be haunted by whatever it means to make “good time.” Like sliding through a closing door with all your limbs secured, I may continue to celebrate all the ways I am making it. But for me, the invitation to move “at your leisure,” is unbound to urgency and concerned with freedom and pleasure, especially in the spaces that honor my humanity. There is no cut off deadline for building something human.

“At your leisure,” in its roundness, expects the loops my neurodivergent brain demands and creates a buffer so the spirals of my disabled body are accounted for. “At your leisure,” is what I say to remember all my beautiful friends—even the ones who do not always fall in line. “At your leisure,” is the only pace I can imagine for a community that desires to create the gentle landing I keep returning to in my dreams.

“At your leisure,” because it truly is yours, remember? The pace of flourishing is open to us. It’s okay if you need help remembering sometimes. The lines drawn against our humanity are long—we may never wrap our bodies around them. But we can embrace one another by taking things at the pace of flourishing whenever we can and wherever we can. 

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Rose J. Percy (she/her) is a being becoming. A poet, theologian, artist, teacher, facilitator, and musician, Rose brings a womanist/Black feminist approach to questioning and noticing what is normalized by the status quo. Through her newsletter, A Gentle Landing, Rose writes about her experiences living in a body familiar with disablement, burnout, and trauma. As a Lucille Clifton scholar, Rose engages new paradigms for vocational discernment through a poetic approach to spiritual becoming. You can listen to Rose on the Black Coffee and Theology podcast alongside her colleague in softness Robert Monson.

1. Womanism: Loves music. Loves dance. Loves the moon. Loves the Spirit. Loves love and food and roundness. Loves struggle. Loves the Folk. Loves herself. Regardless. (from Alice Walker’s 4-part definition of Womanism).

2. Yes, there are times when a simple “no,” without openings is necessary. “No is a full sentence,” right?