I’m not doing so well with my pages this morning. The season has shifted and the feeling is almost immediate. Last night we randomly, with no planning whatsoever, began to pull out the lawn mower, and get some new yard tools. My yard looks like the Secret Garden before it’s magical transformation. It has been 6 years of neglect of having an owner whose last primary focus was it. The yard that time forgot. I’d be ashamed, but how can I rightly do so when I’ve opened a successful counseling practice, learned how to do billing, become a better parent, learned to manage Crohn’s Disease and all that comes with it, gotten a much better handle on my anxiety, and found a love that makes me a better person every single day.
So I guess now it’s the yard’s time for a little attention. To hopefully help me slow down as I learn to tend to it’s needs. To take the effort to do something that doesn’t yield an immediate gratification and to enjoy task for the sake of being tender and nurturing, without requirement from the task. It seems daunting at first this under-taking. How do I even attach this blade to this long handled saw? Am I qualified to prune trees? I’ll probably kill them. I’ll probably cut off a finger, and then I won’t be able to write. I’ve always had a black thumb. Honest. I used to tell people that if you truly cared about that plant to give it a different home. But perhaps over time I’ve become more able to attend and nurture and maybe I could be a gardener now. We can try on a new self anytime we want. Did you know that? I sure have and boy have I learned a lot along the way. It’s what I have learned the most from.
Could I be the environmentally conscious person with a compost pile and dirt under my finger nails? Ok I couldn’t do the dirt under my finger nails, that strikes fear into my highly sensitive heart. That’s why I can’t keep finger nails. I would obsess about the dirty nail until I had to take it off immediately with or without the tools to do so.
I would also like to try out being the person with an exercise routine. And maybe even one who runs a 5 k. Also could I be someone who has the edgy fun short hair cut without worrying that my weight gain would make it unflattering or someone won’t take me seriously in my career with the hair. Why do we give ourselves such little permission for the things we really want? Conditioned and trained with so much outside commentary about who we should be and what we should do. Lately I am feeling like rebelling against this in every way possible. I recognize the pain caused to self from shame and feeling not enough or too much in some way. I’m spending lots of time thinking about this.
Guess what person I am though? I realized this after my post and this is an edit actually to the original. I remembered how good it felt last night. We played and worked outside together. I was the house in the neighborhood that kids wanted to be at. They played four square in the court that someone who isn’t in our lives anymore, but loved us at an important time we needed it built. We have been loved and supported, so we can also give love and support and a space to others. This is how it looks. The more we receive the more we have to give. And I realize in this moment I’ve never been short on receiving. I just had a lot of expectations about where I was supposed to get things from, and what they were supposed to look like.
I am in love with my life. Truly, madly, and deeply. I complain and get cranky sometimes and my kids probably think I’m the strictest mother ever. But I am seeing us all becoming more compassionate of one another and conscientious people, and that’s always been important to me. And I have moments where everyone is laughing and playing and I’m surrounded by love and being love. Those moments are my gold.
I’m less in the mood to think and write as I am to DO this morning. To be present with people I love and to share the joy I’ve found in myself. The only thing nagging at me is all the supposed to’s of my Sunday expectations of self. Cleaning, shopping, and most importantly to my heart right now. Preparing myself for Martha Beck’s Light Writing Course. I am going to be a Light Writer! I am already one is the conclusion I’ve come to from listening to the initial materials on the psychology of light writing. Basically it’s how to access our higher selves, the compassionate less reactive ones. I am relieved to notice that this is my life’s work already. I just didn’t have the language for it she does. So I’ve found my place. That’s one of the best feelings.
Another new feeling of belonging. Belonging has been on my mind a lot lately. It’s been one of my biggest battles in life on so many different fields. I never feel like I belong even when I could. And now I’m trying to give myself fierce permission to belong to myself so I’ll never have to fear the sting of taking personally that I don’t belong somewhere for some reason outside of myself. Belonging, like love, is an inside job. It’s whether we feel worthy to belong, and in the face of much information towards the opposite it feels impossible.
I am a light writer and I am a being who who accesses her higher self a good portion of the time. And when I don’t I am committed to looking at my part in things and learning to be humble and take the lesson. I think this writing course will also be humbling for me, it will show my painful parts to me and I know I need to be up to the task. I admit I’m a little nervous.
So I will be here guys tending to my internal garden and the external one and writing about everything along the way. Thank you for supporting me. You are the kerosene, the candle, the electric current, and the sun to my shine. I’ve never been alone. I believed I was for so long, and that belief held me back. All my supports were just waiting for me to reach out and find them. For me to love myself enough to ask and to teach, those willing to learn how to love me.
💜