Letting It Be
And letting it not be.
My eye’s feel tired today, but a little bit more open. It is as if my body and the other bodies that live in my home all had enough adequate rest last night; yet, my vision feels a bit blurry, like it doesn’t exactly know where to go, or where to look. I keep osculating from my computer screen, to my notebook, to the window, to my right that only has a view of a sliver of gray sky. But in some way, when my eyes find it, it provides me with a nice little stretch. For days, my restless eyes have been making this circuit while my heart is searching for a place to land.
I can’t seem to stop beginning essays right now—while seemingly not being able to complete any of them. Instead, I have ten preludes of half-written stories without any endings at all. I have been witnessing this internal struggle for weeks, and I can’t help but wonder about this disrupted, unsatisfying, frustrating hold that I desperately want to change. I have even thought about what it would be like to create an essay with all of my beginnings, like a journal entry. Day 4…Still nothing. Day 6…Still waiting. Day 10…What if? I think to myself, “Maybe if I compiled all of my beginnings, then possibly a pattern might emerge—like my own little research study of this odd holding place that might lead me possibly to an ending.”
Yet, in this place, I can’t help but wonder, “Maybe I don’t want to finish. Maybe I don’t want to say goodbye. Maybe I want to just live in run-on sentences and fragmented thoughts. Maybe flow is lost or just unreachable at this moment. Maybe it all can wait until later in the new year. Maybe resting looks like looking away. Maybe everything just has to be open-ended right now—flexible. Maybe it's all too much to say. Maybe I just need to trust the process, and even trust wintering. Maybe instead, the story is still being lived out.”
Whatever the case may be, here I am, longing to try and make sense out of what I have been experiencing while also feeling quite wordless. And although I am trying to trust the ebbs and flows and the cycles of which breath and creativity come, I am also craving a story with an ending. I am craving an exhale.
Furthermore, I can’t help but think of all the ways in which my experience is mirroring our world. And how deeply I am craving peace, an exhale—with an ending in liberation. Yet, there is still a paused breath, a hold filled with so many complex sensations and emotions.
To be honest, what has been taking up most of my time is just being. A state in which I am overcome by what my eyes are seeing, what my heart is feeling, and what my body is needing. This experience of needing to tend to what is right in front of me before doing anything else, feels louder than it ever has before.
Lately, I am finding myself needing a lot more space in the being. At first, this scared me. Thoughts rolled in, wondering if something may be wrong with me; if I am burnt out, if I am in the middle of some sort of identity shift, if I am no longer a writer. And while all of those might be true in some form, I am no longer worried that something is wrong with me internally. Instead, I am beginning to witness the ways in which I am feeling touched by the world around me and within me. And the truth is that I am and that even the word deeply doesn’t do the impact justice.
So just being. That’s what I have been doing. Living and being in the moment. For the moments have been so big, so enormous. The most potent beauty and awe strikes me at the same time I notice the deep hollowness in my belly from the grief that also inhabits me. I guess one could call this presence—this being with. But it feels a bit more forced than what I usually think of when it comes to that word. Instead, it feels like in these big moments, there really isn’t another way, at this time, for me to be.
The experiences that I’ve been having all feel so profound. The sweetness is getting sweeter, and the grief is getting heavier. So perplexing, so wondrous, so intense. All of these instances have been showing me how fully alive I am, especially when I am able to stay in the situation and not look away, which isn’t always the case.
This idea of just being has also been deeply felt in my home. I have been witnessing my four-and-a-half-year-old becoming and growing into a little person. Watching his way of moving around and navigating the world, at times, just takes my breath away as I am overcome with love. I am in awe of him, and his heart. The awe is kept within the moment longer; it keeps me in the being. A lesson I know he is teaching me. A lesson that I am pulled to learn at this moment.
This feeling of not being able to look away from all that is surrounding me feels new. It feels different. My connectedness feels stronger. Again, the sweetness is sweeter, and the grief is heavier. All happening at once and all being held in my body.
And I am arriving at the thought (finally) that maybe that is just okay. Well, even more than okay. I think it is essential that when we are overcome by the hugeness or realness of life, we might need to take time to let that experience integrate. To let it seep into our bones without needing to know what will grow from it. For in a way, the urge for an ending tends to skip over the actuality of what is happening.
And goodness, there are so many lessons and insights one might find in the being. In the book, This Is Flesh by Cole Arthur Riley, she writes, “Wonder requires a person not to forget themselves but to feel themselves so acutely that their connectedness to every created thing comes into focus. In sacred awe, we are a part of the story.”
Cole goes on to say, “I think awe is an exercise, both a doing and a being. It is a spiritual muscle of our humanity that we can only keep from atrophying if we exercise it habitually.”
I found the words right when I was needing words, one of my favorite feelings. Having your experience reflected in another’s voice, helping you to make sense out of a longing to understand.
Lessons I am (re)learning come in the quiet too. They come in beginnings, not just endings. They come in wonder and awe. In connectedness. They come in the just being of moments, of the taking in without needing to make sense. They come in the wordless, in the being.
A few other things I wanted to share:
Thing one: I have been trying to navigate this pressure to be writing exclusively about motherhood because that is what I sought out to do in this space. And as I am discovering, in some ways, everything is about motherhood. I am about motherhood. The world is about motherhood. Our voices do not need to change, for once you are a mother, everything is about motherhood.
Thing two: For the past few years, I have been working on a teachable memoir titled, Labor Land, that delves into the profound intersection of past trauma and childbirth. In the book, I speak from both my own personal experience and also the knowledge I hold as a Trauma-Informed Somatic Psychotherapist who now specializes in Maternal Mental Health. Throughout the book, I explore the emotional and physical complexities that survivors face from the initial thoughts of pregnancy through the postpartum period. It also serves as a guide, offering insights and tools to empower survivors, educate healthcare providers, and foster empathy and understanding, while promoting change in these much-needed systems.
More to come…but within part of this book writing experience, I have also been submitting articles for publication to try and begin what I feel is a profoundly needed conversation.
Last month, an article that I wrote was published in Motherly, and I wanted to share it with you all.
Navigating pregnancy as a survivor: The intersection of trauma and birth
A while back, I also wrote a bit more on this topic in one of my newsletters:
Thank you for being here.
Beautiful words. X