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!)