Wellness Chats: Rachel Wilkerson Miller on The Art of Showing Up

I caught up with Rachel Wilkerson Miller, Author of The Art of Showing Up: How to Be There for Yourself and Your People - TWR’s book of the month for April! We discussed self care, setting boundaries with yourself and the people around you, and what past relationships can tell us about the present ones. Rachel is incredibly insightful when it comes to navigating how to build a stronger relationship with ourselves and what that means for the ones we build with others. What a better way to end Women’s History Month than speaking with an extraordinary woman trailblazing the literary industry.

Jess: What was your process for defining “Showing Up”?

Rachel: University of Michigan's Compassion Lab defines compassion as “noticing, feeling, responding”. I define “showing up” as “noticing, processing, naming and responding”. Noticing is perceiving behavior or circumstances, noticing anything that communicates a need. Processing is using the knowledge you already have to analyze what you’ve noticed. Naming is identifying what's really going on, what the deeper need is, in naming something you acknowledge its legitimacy and worthiness. Responding is reacting in a way that makes the receiver (can be yourself) feel seen supported and more whole.

Jess: What’s your definition of self care? 

Rachel: I see self care as anything you do that tends to your physical, mental, spiritual or social needs.

Jess: Should we care for ourselves the same way we care for ourselves? 

Rachel: Yes. You can’t properly take care others until your properly of yourself. In caring for yourself you learn to care for others. If you can’t be compassionate towards yourself it’s hard to show compassion for others.

Jess: On page 14 of The Art of Showing Up you cite, “how much time you spend on your phone and what your doing on it?”, as an everyday decision that’s tied to our values… how much time do you typically spend on your phone a day? 

Rachel: I don't use screen time or anything like that, I don’t think everything we do on our phone is bad necessarily. Quite often I’m texting and catching up with friends or reading the Kindle. I probably spend between one and two hours on my phone a day. I try to be intentional with my time, and lately I’ve been making a real effort in replacing the phone with either knitting or my nintendo switch. The switch is not necessarily so much better but I feel better after playing a game on switch than I do after looking at twitter haha.

Jess: So you kind of answered my question but I’ve been thinking about how I am definitely extremely addicted to my phone, you’re right there’s certain things we can do on our phone that is useful and fulling - is there anything you do on your phone that you find useful or fulfilling?

Rachel: One thing I’ve done for myself is rearrange my home screen so that the more fulfilling stuff is center and present and the other stuff is hidden. I like hide my apps, which is actually really effective because I don’t have my notifications turned on. I use headspace, my kindle app, NY times crossword app.  

Jess: What’s the most important boundary you’ve set in your adult friendships? Do you think our love languages translate to friends and what would yours be? 

 Rachel: Ooooh. Okay, let me start with the second question. I definitely think our love language translates to friendships. My love languages are gifts and acts of services. That's how I am as a friend and thats how I like being treated as a friend. If I see something when I’m out shopping that reminds me of somebody i have to buy it for them and I feel very touched when friends do the same for me.

In terms of the most important boundaries, I think boundaries around time and communication are really important. A lot of my friends are long distance. We keep in touch by texting and it’s so easy to just feel like you have to respond to everything right away. I think setting boundaries around that for myself ultimately, because that’s what it comes down to, I have to be ok with leaving someone on read for a little while and turning my notifications off. When it comes to boundaries you have to start by accepting them yourself, and saying okay if somebody tries to cross this line with me i'm going to hold firm and not give in. It’s a really hard thing to do.

Jess: Definitely and I’ve learned myself that if I’m dealing with something really hard in my life instead of dumping on them/instantly venting I ask them first if their ok/in the right headspace with me sending a long text.

Rachel: Of course we should ask our friends is this a good time? Is it ok if I vent for a minute? Of course we should be courteous and check in first.

Jess: Is there a time in your life where you struggled to show up for yourself? How did you get through it?

Rachel: I think in college it was fairly hard for me to show up for myself because it's so easy to drink too much… Lets say i was going through a break up and so my thought process is I’m not going to sit at home and feel bad for myself I’m going to out with my friends and have fun, thats self care right? And it can be but for me it was not. It was trying to escape. It was drinking too much and feeling guilt and shame the next day. It wasn’t until many years later I started to understand sometimes going out with your friends and having a beer is exactly what you need and sometimes staying home and feeling sad is actually what you should be doing. So, I think in college I was way more prone to extremes. I would do the same thing with exercise too, when what I actually needed was sleep. I think in college I had a much harder time determining what was good for me in a given moment and I think I’ve gotten a lot better at that as I got older. 

Jess: Yeah definitely. I feel like it’s really hard to find a balance between extremes at that age, but finding that balance is so so important. So what advice would you give to your teenage self on friendships?

Rachel: I think I would give myself the advice that friendships are constantly changing. You won’t have that many friends for your entire life and that’s okay. You might not have that many friends at a given time either, at least close friends. I think a lot of us have this idea in our heads that I need a big friend group of 6-8 people who are my closest friends and I just don’t know if that’s achievable or realistic for a lot of people. I think I’m a fairly independent person so I wasn’t necessarily self conscious about not having enough friends, but I do think it would’ve been helpful if I had known earlier that it’s okay if you grow apart or you fall out of touch or you need to break up with a friend. That’s totally normal,and  nothing to be ashamed of. I think the important thing is to look at your past friendships and do the work to figure out what went wrong. Ask yourself what could I have done differently? Why do I think this happened? But if at the end of the day we are no longer aligned thats okay.

Jess: Yeah exactly and learning that friendships breakups are okay and just because you’ve been friends with someone for a really long time does not mean you owe them anything or they owe you anything.

Thank you for taking the time to speak with me & we are so so excited for April’s discussion on The Art of Showing Up: How to Be There for Yourself and Your People!

Rachel: Aw I’m so glad. It was my pleasure to talk to you. I really appreciate you guys have chosen my book, that is such a huge compliment. I hope you like it & find it useful.