Month: December 2020

Jake and I are waking up in a new Airbnb this morning…still here in Madison. Yesterday was moving day. We are in a much more spacious place where I have my own room for writing and working and for my altar…which is absolutely lovely to have.

Through the rest of this year and into next year let me focus on joy and gratitude. Let me focus on the beauty and grace that are in my life.

Let me look to the direction of the whispers of my heart. Microscopic delights. Quotidian Miracles. Bits of light shining through the sheltering darkness of winter. 

I am thinking now how much I love the seasons and their rhythms. Their moods. Let me be cracked open with that love. Now is the time of the sheltering womb…the darkness of winter. Rest. Slowing down. As I go through these days…as I write…as I work…as I meditate and pray…let me remember to fully receive that deep blessing.

It is a time of moving inward…inward…inward.

It is a time of acknowledging grief…and as the sun begins, as of today, to shed more and more light for us each day…to hold the possibilities of spring.

The light at the end of the tunnel. The light of the new year. Meanwhile, patience and trust. Faith. Carrying a small and steadfast light toward the future.

I am tired of feeling afraid.

I am tired of being on “high alert” and in survival mode for what feels like a long, long time.

So I will do the small things to take care of myself. Doing some work…allowing myself to see what will happen. Opening to exploration. I will allow myself to be tentative…and hopeful…soft, and malleable…moving with what I learn. I will be forgiving toward myself, and kind as I navigate new territory. It seems there is forever a next adventure. (Not such a bad thing, right?)

I will give myself space for creativity…and some sort of movement…and gratitude. Space for cups of tea and meditating and paying attention.

Sometimes panic and anxiety seems to be calling me to rush ahead, to fix, to control. I am so grateful also for what I have learned over these last years about trusting the way things are…and trusting myself. And I am grateful for what I am learning now about cultivating the calm and confidence of feminine wisdom. I am grateful for this ongoing work in breathing, and checking in with my body and listening…being receptive.

Where can I go to create love, acceptance, tenderness, kindness, ease, comfort, joy?

Where to be safe? Where to belong?

Where to be free?

The answer is always an inward journey…to begin there. To do the work required to be rooted in loving and belonging to myself first. It is never to try to control circumstances in the “outside world”. Peace within is not created by a war with “What Is”.

It does not create peace to be at war with my own grief…or anger…or my past…or regret. To accept means to accept the messiness of my own life and my own humanity. I must accept, first, what feels like weakness, shame, incompetence and fear within myself and love all of it. I must begin by loving what feels unacceptable and repulsive before I can begin to create an “outside world” that feels safe to live in.

So I stand.

I breathe.

I let my body sway in prayer and my heart call out as it pleases. Wild. Primal. I begin to let my feet root themselves energetically, deep into the earth. My body, by being, belongs here. 

I am a part of this earth. Held by this earth. Nurtured by her sweet dark soil that grows the plants, by the air I am taking into my lungs, by the fire of the sun and by the phases, the cycles and the moods of the moon. The water of her rivers rush to hydrate me as I stand, my throat opening and my voice humming with the rhythm of her sound. My body is animal. It is welcome here. It is beloved here. 

I need only to be as I am. I need only to sing with her, to feel her vibration to know that I am home.

(With gratitude to Dr. Kate Dow and the lovely women in the Cultivating Calm and Confidence coaching program. Thank you for the techniques and exercises we are learning and for all you do!)