31 December 2018

Letting the Quiet Collect

On the Saturday between Christmas and New Year's, I am choosing to let the quiet collect. I have taken a staycation during this time, going to see family for the holiday, and am now home with husband and dog, feeling the quiet of the holiday and of Winter.


Just as the stillness of the season deepens, I feel resistance to the quiet, craving distraction, entertainment, task. None of it works, none of it fulfills, and I am left with only a surrendering to the reflective spaces within myself, where - if I'm paying attention - a new energy emerges.

As I sit in this new place I can feel in my body discomfort and a sense of fragility, almost pain. I am called in to feel, and what I feel, in the quiet, are the small sensations of the past alive in my skin and cells and even the air I breathe. I find myself curious: what happens if I rest here?


What I find is that by allowing myself a safe dive into my melancholy, I emerge with a verve for life, like one who taken a long swim in a cold river. When I allow myself to be sad, supported by the beauty of art and words, an alchemy is performed.


It seems quite natural to me, and not false at all, to be contemplating life at this time of year. Whether that is brought by the coming back of the light, or the shift in the number of the year, there is a natural settling of the old, a reflection on what happened and what did not, a remembering, maybe, of what I was expecting or hoping for during this time last year.

For me, I am feeling like someone who has been in the process of a large garden project for quite some time, and is just now seeing fresh beds ready for seeds, hoping that the coming season will bring growth and light weeding, but less moving of Earth.

As I look at the blank earth of my soul garden beds ready for planting, I am waiting for the inspiration to plant, and trying not to rush. Unlike an earth garden, our soul gardens can be unpredictable: seeds we thought were for one thing grow something else entirely, or the seeds we thought were so necessary turn out to not be so at all.  What a soul garden shares completely with those made of physical earth is the necessity of tending. Whether gentle, mindful tending or radical, passionate tending, life thrives on attention.


It has been found that human connection is so basic, so necessary, so essential to our existence that the simple lack of it registers in the human nervous system as violence.  I wonder what this means for our connection with ourselves? What does it do it to us when we disregard and disconnect from our own inner longings, feelings and desires?  And what does it do when we pay attention to them? When we tend them, love them, honor them?


We are so encouraged by our culture to disconnect from the quiet longings, the disquiet, the places that may reveal these essential places of disconnection, the opportunities for healing. And it can be terrifying to go there. I'm hoping that 2019 is the year that many of us find our bravery, that we are able to be afraid of being with ourselves, with our pain, with the pain of others, but that we find the strength to go ahead and do it anyway.

06 December 2018

For the Wildewomen

It has been a beautiful, wintry week here in Portland. The sun is shining and the air is cold -- the wind blows right through. But I haven't minded. After a beautiful weekend inside, cozily connecting with an incredible group of women, I feel quite warm.


Monday morning, I took my pup and myself to an island outside of the city, to walk on the beach, connect to the Earth, and be.

The morning had been foggy, even as we were driving out, but then it was clear.  So we played...


And saw the mountain and watched boats go by on the river, and birds fly and perch.


As we walked down the sand as far as we could go, the river and the land grew closer, revealing the intertwined roots of the trees that live there at the edge together: growing, falling, and becoming.




I walked through the roots and branches and found a spot where the land is becoming sand and beach, and the river laps at its edge.


All of it reminding me of the luscious, wild beauty of life's continual becoming.


The word 'Wildewomen' is a riff on the name of one of my favorite songs, "Wildewoman", by Lucius.

22 April 2014

40

I turned 40 last Thursday.  40. 4. 0.

The big 40 was big for me, big in love, luxury, surprises, satisfactions, and, of course, ruminations.

What does it mean to become a 40-year old woman? A woman who is no longer in her 30's?

If my celebrations are any indication, it is quite a wonderful thing.  Turning 40 gave all these people who love me (and they do, they really do!) a chance to really show it (and they did, they really did!)  And it was incredible.  Life-changing.

One of my best friends has been pushing me since last year about what I was going to do for my birthday.  I am so grateful to her now because by claiming it and planning it, "it" happened.

And "it" was the simple experience of being around people I love, who support me and make me feel at ease.

And maybe that's what 40 is all about, making those kinds of choices.

So hello 40 and (hmmm... let's see, 1,2,3,4) 5 days! I'm glad to see you. The rest of life awaits.