SUNDAY SELFIE SERIES #61

Keith Meacham

SUNDAY SELFIE SERIES #61: The ever wise and beautiful Keith Meacham. Keith makes being great at it all look effortless — she’s a mama, a wife, a business owner, an unparalleled hostess, an attentive friend. I don’t know where she gets her energy, but I’m happy to be in her orbit just to at least observe so that I might pick up a tip or two — even if I don’t use them, I know she’ll be in my corner anyway.

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1.What has humbled you more than anything else?

Asking for help. Asking people I love in a really direct way to give me something I need. It never feels less humbling. I'm really good at helping other people. I'm also good at outsourcing. And I take pride in my self-sufficiency and competence and in looking really put together to the outside world. Sometimes, though, not asking for help from the people you love is a form of arrogance. When I do humble myself to ask, I receive exponentially more grace than I ask for.

2. Do you feel like you’ve gotten a good education?

I’ve definitely had a great resumé education with all the right schools and degrees, but my best teacher has been my sister. We grew up three years apart in a pretty complicated family, the two of us and our mother mostly, and that made us a little like twins. When she’s feeling something a thousand miles away, I know it, and vice versa. She has taught me almost everything I know about honesty, about setting a boundary and keeping it even when it hurts somebody else’s feelings, and about loving myself exactly as I am. She takes absolutely zero bullshit from me, and even if I wanted to be something I’m not (which I do at least a thousand times a week), she reminds me that who I am is 1000% better in her eyes. 

3. Do you believe that forgiveness benefits the forgiver or the transgressor?

The forgiver. I read this NPR interview not long ago where Brandi Carlile was describing forgiveness as this “radical” and “filthy” process, and that resonated with me. I had an experience of forgiving my dad recently that felt very much like that. It was so ugly getting to the other side of it, but once the energy got spent, it was like some raging storm-eye in my body just broke apart and the skies settled.  

4. What is your proudest accomplishment?

Being married for 25 years (this year) and loving Jon more now than I did when I met him when I was 18. We’ve faced down some stuff that could have completely blown us to smithereens. By some combination of hard work and a willingness to “let it lay still” (as my sister likes to say), we’ve gotten to the other side. The collateral and no-less astonishing accomplishment that comes from our marriage is the love around our kitchen table when we are sitting there with our three kids.

5. How would you like to live out your golden years?

In a farmhouse on a mountain in Sewanee, Tennessee, looking Southwest into the Cumberland Plateau, gardening, talking to Jon, taking care of a lot of grandbabies, and hopefully letting my hair go gray and not caring how much I weigh.