Healing
Comes in many forms, and beauty is a radical act of healing for me. Both creating it, and receiving it.
I go to incredible lengths to seek it. Mostly long drives that feel like pilgrimages. Every time I arrive I feel held, I feel a sense of harmony, I hear myself exhale, sometimes tears well up, and I quietly observe everyone around me as they attempt to capture the essence of the beauty that surrounds us.
Because my spirit grows weary from the amount I hold, and I feel waves of incredible sadness roll over me. Because the tenderness of life pierces me and because most of the time I just want to be held. I need to be awash in color, in sweetness, in creativity, in the devotion it takes to keep a space divinely tended too. This medicine revitalizes me.
I suppose the next step might be : EMBODYING it and noticing it in the mundane.
Until then the places that currently spark this deep within me are : Longwood Gardens, Terrain / Anthropologie, (PA) and Prema Yoga Clinton Hill Boutique / The Barn Upstate, ABC Carpet, + Shelter Island (NY), and Italy….
The Shame of Hiding
It eventually became so comfortable, I couldn’t imagine unearthing from my invisibility cloak.
When my third child was born I put myself on the bench.
He tipped the scales, and I didn’t have a strong infrastructure to hold it all.
Within self preservation : a part of me died. A release of the current self in order to evolve.
I am reassembling the parts, for I feel I have replaced one of my own limbs with a baby for these past 16 months.
Like a game of hide and seek, I was desperately waiting for someone to find me. The more I waited for that external discovery, the more I realized no one was looking for me. Except for myself. I was frantically searching as I understood : I get to set myself free.
It is me who gets to step off of the sidelines and get back into the game. To claim with arms wide open :
HERE I AM.
I needed time to heal, and I will continue to mend, but I wish for it to be more of a dance : expressing and resting, both vitally important and a healthy exchange.
For right now I’m ready to enter back into my life in a meaningful + engaged way. With my three children witnessing me as I step back in.
Compassionate Revolution
She was hungry; I fed her.
She was thirsty; I offered her something to drink.
She was tired; I let her rest.
She was sad; I felt her tears stream down.
She was desperate to move; I let her shake her hips.
She was filled with rage; I let her scream.
She was tired of hiding; I found her.
She was me.
Replenishment
May you locate the source of your deep replenishment and engage with it often
May you find creative pauses of opening and closing. Big adventure intertwined with nourishing sustenance, preferably on a picnic blanket.
May the inhale be deep and unhurried; flooding your body to feed your spirit. Allowing the exhale to be a natural response, a conversation with what was just received.
May you trust that the depths you travel will serve as a launching pad to higher heights.
May you access your center while in motion.
May your heart intuit the answers your mind may be searching for, as you follow the breadcrumbs while present to the support around you.
May you thrive.
It Is Not Lost On Me…
That how I do anything is how I do I everything.
It is not lost on me : the sensational beauty of the flowering trees.
It is not lost on me : the fleetingness of it all.
It is not lost on me : the incredible relief I experience sinking into a bath.
It is not lost on me : the need to tend to my roots so deeply, consistently, and kindly so I do not reach and seek for external validation.
It is not lost on me : the sweetness I require during this intense phase of motherhood, which are all parts healing, joy, and tremendous frustration.
It is not lost on me : the women who have come before me and are gently guiding me.
It is not lost on me : that consciously pausing is how I recalibrate the frequency of my being.
It is not lost on me : that meeting the moment exactly how it is is a portal towards freedom.
It is not lost on me : my deep desire for presence, for tenderness, for compassion.
It is not lost on me : that I am worth it.
Except for all the times it is, and I haven’t a clue.
Currently
Reorienting myself towards beauty.
As a way towards claiming wholeness, while becoming conscious.
Practicing awareness as a tool to lift out of past patterning. For the quality of this moment will inform what is to come.
My power is my presence.
I nod to the daffodils + crocuses who are unapologetically sharing their unique color after a winter void of such boldness.
During this spring awakening I commit to beauty as a way to own my inherent value. Stepping into myself even more, while thanking all the past iterations of me for their service : careful not to shame them.
With each choice I am slowly building an updated infrastructure to inhabit new dimensions that are waiting for me.
Dappled with light.
Development of Spirit
Dear Elliot is now six months. With eyelashes that go on and on, fingernails that always need cutting, and a neck when kissed nearly always prompts a deep belly laugh : I am grateful for this cloud of softness and joy.
He has shown me new ways to be, as I suppose babies, new seasons, transition, and change beg of us : to find new dimensions to inhabit. And yet I find myself unconsciously existing in old patterns, old habits, old ways of being that don’t necessarily fit or feel good anymore : but are known, and for that reason comfortable.
And so this gradual quickening, unfolding of life is beckoning me onward to a new frontier, and may I be brave enough to take that step onto a different plane. Existing in a way I have never before. Risking, making, offering, sharing, and honoring beauty in all its forms. Nodding to the contrast of life that both breaks and heals the heart. Making room for my spirit to continue to develop and to embrace total abundance. And deeply remembering in my roots : I belong and so do you.
Self Preservation
I have been in a space of preserving myself. Conserving my energy as I navigate mothering three small children, as I stay warm through winter.
I am following the pattern of the dormant seed, hunkered down out of sight, with seemingly nothing happening to the visible eye…
I’ve honored these primal instincts of protection, of not wanting to overextend. Fearful that I’d repeat past patterns : of overextension and depletion, which most likely informed my struggle with post partum depression.
This made me delay any teaching commitments. It put tremendous weight on whatever I did outside of the house having to be “worth it”. This put me in a seemingly constant state of uncertainty.
And here I am ready to emerge, ready to sprout, ready to follow what feels good, and to reclaim myself once again.
And while I do so, I’m wondering :
How can I open myself up so I am nourished and filled up while giving, while being engaged in the world? So it is a true exchange of energy rather than one great big give, followed by days of taking to restore my well.
I want to be in a constant conversation led by my heart. I want to be vital, fluid, and free.
“It is the speaking of one’s heart that makes a human being human. For even if no one hears us, it is the act of speaking that frees us by letting the spirit swim and fly through the world.” – Mark Nepo
Braid
I reach for strands of hair to weave them so they seamlessly fold into each other – creating a cohesive form of which I have the slightest vision of how it should look.
But then I sit unable to layer sections upon sections, threading above and below.
Sometimes it is because my hands are actually holding a baby, or zipping a jacket, or making a meal.
Sometimes I can’t even find the hair to grasp and hold onto. It feels invisible… images of lustrous strands that have yet to grow. How does one braid with invisible hair? Simply with woven dreams and visions close to the scalp, not even sure if they are ready to come alive.
Then of course there are all these strands that literally [thanks to life postpartum] have fallen out like a tree briskly shakes itself free from leaves. Certain structures of knowing have dissolved, and I’m navigating new territory again.
Then there are those miraculous moments when Elliot is sleeping and the kids are at school, and I have had enough sleep and am fed… and I can gather enough of myself to orient a layering, a listening, a knowing way of organizing over and under. Which lasts for a moment until it comes undone, the next thing beckoning for my attention.
Maybe this wanting of a complete braid comes at the end of a life : when all the strands have shed and reappeared again and again and with that wild head of hair one is able to orient the final masterpiece.
But also can how I find a relief in a wrapping in all that is right now? Even if only to come undone in a moment. Even if I’m only working with little wisps of hair that will continue to grow. Even if tomorrow I might want a bun instead…
In Conversation
I spend so much time in calculation, strategizing, planning : I miss what is right in front of me.
I spend so much time frantically focused outwards : I loose a kind internal gaze towards myself.
I spend so much time focused on what is lacking : I miss the abundance before me.
Plagued with uncertainty I beg to be set free from the muck I am sinking in.
I seek moments of elevation.
I want to commit to reverence in all its forms.
I practice.
I want to be free.
How can I drop the resistance and turn it into prayer?
How can I shift my focus from what is missing : to what is present?
Let my life be a constant conversation with the sacred.
Remind me there is nothing to prove.
For I sacrifice my innate wonder when I believe I never amounted to anything worthy or ever will.
I honor the evolution.
Ascending.
