*this post comes to you from a yoga mat outside my home, after a 2 mile “run”, the reality of this is way less glamorous than you might picture. There was jiggling, struggling, and probably a decent amount of swearing.
It’s time Christina, my body has kept nagging at me. Having a good relationship with my body might just be my longest standing obstacle I have to overcome. I have been distracted by other things, but I can’t escape my most organic and long standing home base. My current mission is to make it a place I feel proud of. Not curb worthy, but deeply renovated and designed in a way that makes my senses dance with joy.
How could I not honor this home that has been through so very much. My long legs have carried me quickly out of danger many times in my young life. I was always able to run, a gift, and a necessity. It’s only now when I reflect on growing up, I see how so many would comment on it, and I at times do the same thing. Nothing terrible, but just so much focus on it. My Grandpa liked to joke about my large appetite, saying that “I had to fill up both of my legs also.” That memory makes me smile. It’s nice when I can find those amongst the minefield of others.
My young body was in some ways a great source of pride for me. I was slender regardless of eating habits, muscular and lean. Unfortunately due to asthma my stamina has always been poor. I think the fear of not getting my breath back in such a terrifying way, has definitely left an apprehension to running. I am trying yet again to work my way through that now. Despite this I was athletic and excelled at volleyball and basketball. I played on high school teams. I’ll even admit to shaving the underneath of my head. Having a Nike swoosh, and my basketball number in there at one point.
This mornings new try at “a run” is motivated by the visit of my Dear friend Steven, who makes his yearly visit from Virginia. Now that I am thinking about it, it may seem “small” or “odd” this tradition, however again I have found it to be one of the longest standing consistencies of my life. It has outlasted three marriages (don’t worry the third time really is the charm in this case), many relationships, job changes, higher education degrees, and millions of anxiety filled moments. Steven gives us an opportunity to vacation ourselves. When he is here we try new things, and have an excuse to go explore our digs with a new invigoration, the kind that comes with sharing joy with others. My favorite kind.
Anyway for the past two years my routine has been to get straight into the bathtub and write. I am grateful for this, however lately I can’t seem to write much and there is a great restlessness within me. If I am to translate in this moment, I’m picking up that my body is asking to no longer be ignored. It could be saying something like, “ok Christina I get this writing dream, and I’ll do my best to carry you through your many uncertainties, but it’s time you listen to my needs a little bit, you can only go on like this for so long.”
Awhile back I tried to join Weight Watchers. I usually begin things way before I’m actually ready, but somehow the beginning calls me back into line at some point, and despite my criticisms, I usually know what I’m doing. Yeah we will go with that, rather than I failed. There is still time, there always will be until my lungs no long take in oxygen. Until my body has had enough of housing me. This is why we must have a good relationship. Anyway weight watchers asked us at a meeting, what is your why? They say if you know your why, you’ll be more likely to succeed.
I am realizing right now in this moment that my why has already evolved even since beginning, and it includes a beautiful soul of a client who is grieving his mother, and Grandfather, and the childhood he deserved, one full of acceptance and kindness. This client’s courage gives me so much strength. He doesn’t even know what he has brought to my life.
His grief is a special kind of hell, the kind where his parent is between worlds, and asking for release, and he as a witness, would like to be released as well. And since that is not up to him, he allows me to sit in Hell with him. He runs, and writes, and tries to understand, and we laugh, and we cry, and try to understand. We look for glimmers of peace.
But what I have really taken from him is a new motivation for my health. As I watch him miss the Mother he once had, and struggle with the mixture of anger and pain around her having neglected hers for a time. I can’t bear to think of my children feeling what he is now. So I will learn in a new way that my momentary indulgences will not be worth their suffering in this way, if it can be helped. In the end we don’t know what our ultimate end will be, but what does it hurt to hedge our bets.
So dear dear Client, you are my new why. For every moment of your suffering I will run. So I can suffer alongside you 😉 no really running and I were never meant to be, but since there is a why, I WILL find a way.
So for now my routine has to change. Am I afraid I’ll lose my writing?! Of course I am. But I am going to have to trust my body, and ask it to help me adjust. I will ask myself if it could be possible getting up and out, the blood flowing, can’t actually help this cause. And that I lied to myself because that’s easier. I don’t want easier, because easier now is usually more difficult later. I want the whole dirty truth right up front, and to keep facing down my demons and my obstacles as I go. The truth is life is short, and our great moments are not guaranteed to keep building. Sometimes it’s only the memory that keeps us afloat (or holds us prisoner it feels like at times).
They will pass, and that is where the job of the mind, and writing, can capture and etch forever. Dear client, please keep writing your pain, and your heart onto the page, until it breaks and all the love and gratitude flow out as well. It’s all part of the process. And I’ll keep running and working on my relationship with my body, so I can be around to tell my stories, and to hold my client’s sacredly as well. The only constant is change and often we are not warned when those changes will take place. A before and an after. Be grateful for everything as you go, hold those memories close, because a time will come when you will be lost, and they will carry you through.
My Clients and my Family carry me through, they are my why. In my photo I am wearing one of my wife’s old Army shirts, because in it I hope to be brave like her. She had the courage to go to Iraq two times, to leave everything she knew and held dearly, not knowing if she would return or not. She had to know that was a possibility. And she couldn’t even have known at that time, that wouldn’t be the bravest journey she would ever be on. Right now, right here with us is that one. She took the care and time to make sure she knew she wanted this life with us. Again leaving behind her way of life as she knew it.
And now we are venturing into this journey of growing this family, amidst all the challenges that already exist. For all the brave souls I travel with, life is a delicious and grand adventure. I am blessed beyond reason.