Hello Tender Travelers,
I am traveling this week and am trying my very best to bring myself along. Which for me, is not always easy. Often, I find it so much easier to just let it all go. And while some things would be good to let go of—some other things feel really important to keep close. Things like drinking enough water, sleeping restfully, moving my body in the way it needs and this—writing.
The sun is out, where I am, and the tip of my nose got a little burnt. My son has been smiling at me because he says I look like Rudolph. In return, I chuckle, but am not really sure how I feel about the whole exchange. We haven’t seen the sun in a while, as we are living in a typical Pacific Northwest winter. The sun being out today feels reassuring. I can tell by the way my chest fills up with an ease, a softness, that feels both full and spacious at the same time. My mind tries to tell me that the experience of feeling reassured comes when there is some type of clarity that happens or when something falls into place—yet, at this very moment, my body is speaking a whole other language. A language of reassurance that has no words.
As my eyes squint in the brightness, my gaze finds its way toward the trees lighting up. My eyes, they rest here for a minute; wondering how we get by without the light. Wondering how we have managed to go months without seeing the sun. As I was basking in what I was feeling into, as a bit of a re-birth, I heard my son running up behind me. Quickly, I turned my head and saw the way the light was dancing with his blonde curly hairs. It was as if the light was playing with him. His soft, but gentle smile told me so. An encounter that reminded me that I also must look at what the sun is illuminating, instead of trying to just search for the light alone. Sort of like when you look towards the east when the sun is setting and everything seems to become more colorful and profound.
There seems to be a theme rolling around in me. It is a theme that feels like quite a lesson, but also one that, in some ways, I have told myself I mastered. In the same breath, I am reminded that there is no such thing—for it is a living breathing evolving entity.
The theme that I keep seeing is that of trust. And not the type of trust in which we connect within relationships. But the kind of trust that lives inside. The kind of trust that, like the sun— reassures you, soothes you, and shows you what is not always able to be seen or found with thought.
As I let my face fill up with the sunlight, I tried to imagine, for a moment, that a story was being rubbed into my skin. A story that whispered, “just hold on” and “just follow each passing breath.” I am learning the word “just” is a soft invitation, implying more ease can come with movement or change.
The practice of being in an active relationship with trust becomes the loudest when I am coming close to facing fear or some sort of element of the unknown. When I am in this place, what typically happens is a quick desire to close off, to shut down, to seek refuge inside myself. To do this, everything has to constrict, and as the tightness overtakes me, for a moment, I sense into what I imagine feels like safety: locked inside and ready to defend against any kind of forced entry.
This is my old-rooted pattern when it comes to fear. A pattern that I have been trying to unravel and uproot for a while—especially when I am mothering. Goodness, I don’t want to pass that along. Yet, I also know that the road to change is often a journey. Since my son can sense the unspoken emotions quite well, I have had to develop language around this dance with fear, and in some ways I am happy that he is seeing my attempt to work with it.
What has been so pivotal for me in this undoing is that it hasn’t been enough for me to just change my response to fear. Instead, what I need is to also put in place something else that will counteract it—a practice, a go-to, a deeper action. That deeper action for me has been practicing with an embodied experience of what trust might be like.
Because I didn’t grow up in the context of religion or prayer, this concept of active trust feels a bit foreign to me. Trusting in the greater, trusting in the collective, trusting in myself—all things I long for in some ways but also feel far away from it.
To combat my fear, what I have learned is that I actually need the element of trust or faith—words that have never been a part of my vocabulary before now seem quite important. Words that I teach my son when he is about to reach out for the monkey bars or practice dunking his head underwater.
To unravel the constriction, I also know that there is some part of me that is wanting to face my fears. The fears that come in themes, that have tried so hard to keep me in the illusion as safe. Just as I finished that last thought, a flying bug was coming towards me and my immediate reaction was to retreat before noticing it was a butterfly—for which I caught a glimpse of as she was flying away.
Needless to say…
I want to see the butterfly.
I want to see past the fear.
I want to feel past the constriction.
I want to break this cycle that has most definitely been a part of my lineage.
I want my son to know what trust feels like in his bones so that he can have a touchstone to return to—and I also want to develop one of my own.
So that is what I have been doing. I am coming face to face with some fears. I am about to head into a Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy session at the end of the week. I am about to send out my book proposal to a few more possible agents. I am about to facilitate a writing workshop for mothers that I am so moved by. I am about to explore what school my son is going to go to next (a topic that needs an essay all on its own).
And the thing that I need most of all through all of these unknowns and expansions is to know that I can trust the process. That I can trust myself and those around me. That I can move away from the restriction and possibly stumble upon something quite beautiful.
Six very random things I am saying to my fear:
1. It is okay to not be in control because the reality is that one, often, never really is.
2. It is okay to be afraid of disruption and illness. The reality is, that it is hard to navigate the uncertainties, yet when it happens I always know what to do— even though I might be doing it with exhaustion.
3. It is okay to not know if I am making the perfect decision. The reality is that I am not stuck. I can make another decision, and another, and another—for we are flexible.
4. It is okay that I am scared of the unknown. The reality is that trust gets to share internal space with fear—it is not just one or the other.
5. It is okay to not feel comfortable, and that the experience of being uncomfortable does not equate to danger.
6. It is okay to not trust yet what I can endure. But it is important that I keep trying to practice living in that space of what is actually possible—and that what might be possible may not yet be visible in the darkness—but the light, the sun, has a way of showing us what else can be seen.
Thank you for spending this time with me.
There is still time to join my upcoming embodied writing workshop, The Birth of The Mother, that will be happening on Sunday, 2/18, from 10:00 am - 12:00 pm PST.
This was the last sentence that I wrote during my latest birth storytelling workshop. A sentence that has been lingering on my tongue and in my mind. A sentence that represents a sense of wholeness. For me, this wholeness had to do with the process of writing my birth story, giving it voice, and sharing it in community. The story of becoming a mother is a transformational story. It is a lived story of letting go of that which you no longer are and moving towards who you are becoming. It is a story that is often not given the time and space to be moved through, to learn the lessons that it has to offer, and to also connect with all the different parts of you that helped you to become a mother.
Through the writing of my own birth story, I was able to connect to all of the parts of me that helped me in this transformation. I was able to give voice to those parts and hear what I wasn't ready to listen to while swimming underwater.
When I was finally able to sit in my story of becoming a mother, I was able to connect to the healing woman, the life-filling woman, the laboring woman, the fearful woman, the surrendering woman, the grieving woman, the collective woman, the young woman, the survivor woman. All of these different parts of who I was helped to bring my son into this world.
How we become mothers deserves to be given a voice and shared. These are the stories that get dropped, that go unsaid but continue to live in our bodies.
My upcoming workshop, The Birth of the Mother, is going to entail giving voice to these sacred stories while we connect to our own process of becoming.
If you would like to find out more information or feel called to join us, you can follow this link here: The Birth of the Mother. Also, if you know anyone who might be interested, please spread the word.