I was reminded this week about the importance of stillness in finding my path. Letting things settle so that I can feel what is happening in my body. Over the last few days, I’ve started a few different essays and abandoned each one as it required some part of my brain that refused to push through.
This morning, I am sitting still. Remembering that my intention for the summer was to let our family just be. Be together. Be unrushed. Be who we are when we aren’t trying to fit in or follow rules that require us to abandon some part of ourselves.
A child is pushing his bottom onto the side of my chair and talking at length about what he is finding to put on his wishlist. As I was typing that, he scooted up and over onto my lap to interrupt my typing, wordlessly letting me know that he required my full attention.
Stillness is not always easy to come by in our house. But I also forget to look for it.
As essay after essay refused to flow, and as my to-do list remained stubbornly intact, I was feeling stuck. Looking around for movement, judging the lack of progress and the lack of energy for any major effort. Adrift because I had forgotten that the goal has no set course.
This week, I completed the Wayfinder Life Coach Training program. Martha Beck and the instructors shared their wisdom and, as was my experience throughout the program, directed me right back to my inner knowing to guide my next steps.
I know that each member of my family is already whole. That we are full of love and wonder and creative power. I know that each of us is sensitive, open and affected by energies in the world to an extent that is different than for many people. I know that we have been overwhelmed and pushed past our senses of felt safety as part of the ordinary course for so long that we often don’t even recognize that it is happening.
I know that we can heal. Not to be less sensitive, but to see and value that sensitivity as an integral part of ourselves that requires care and allows us our strength and our joy. There will come a time for stretching, for taking our renewed sense of being out into the world. For now, it is enough for us to be as we are here, in process, already whole.
And, here we are. Week 8 of a 12-week summer. Messy house. Tired parents. Kids creating cardboard “businesses,” watching YouTube, playing pretend, mastering phone games, and getting a little more comfortable at the pool. Fighting, working together, melting down, ramping each other up, losing patience, coming back together. Eating all the ice cream.
When I get still, I don’t feel stuck. I see beautiful movement all around me. It is subtle and profound. It is grounding us for what comes next, whatever that may be.
A gift to read. Thank you. ❤️
And here I sit in my stillness and silence and awe loving your whole selves. just as you are.