I have half a dozen unfinished articles saved to my laptop. The writing comes in stops and starts. I’m reminded of my blogging days when I wrote weekly articles to share learnings on life and the teachings it offered me. Many were left unpublished.
This past month feels reminiscent of those days. Writing has become a way to sort through my inner world and separate the milk from the cream. The milk being the proverbial messiness of daily life. The cream undoubtedly is the beauty gleamed from life’s tougher lessons and experiences.
Today I witness from a distance many of the things that kept me from relaxing into my life. The belief that raising my children was hard work. That my life should look like the ease I was perceiving in the lives of others. That I could feel less sensitive than I do. And when I did, life would get easier.
The hard truth is life keeps cycling. Bodies keep talking. And sensitivities grow alongside conscious awareness.
The more layers that peel back, the less comforts and distractions we have left to lean on. Comforts that previously softened the blow of our conditioned, victim revelling self. And my goodness can’t we play the victim!
The older I get the wider my view grows. I see more, I understand more, though I don’t necessarily know more.
It has taken the best part of 15 years of hard mothering to discover that my children, bless their cotton socks – don’t fit the nuerotypical mould. Many days felt hard. Emotions spilled over. Illness manifest. I was parenting based on an outdated model without fully knowing how to parent myself. Gratefully, a lot has changed since those days.
- We know that control doesn’t work. Even when it’s a desperate attempt to change the environment so your insides don’t explode.
- Apathy doesn’t work. Weak efforts to feign disinterest eventually catch up with you when attachments are challenged.
- Avoiding conflict doesn’t work. Going under the radar results in wishing yourself into oblivion. Lost under the heavy feet of those you’re willing to let trample you.
It would seem we humans are really good at telling ourselves lies. To face our conditioning we are forced to cast ourselves into a hot cauldron of fibs and half truths. We are remindered of moments in time when we would do/say/be anything to avoid the warts and all version of who we really are. Human.
The Sickness of Being Human
Humans get sick, overwhelmed, burnout, angry, out of balance and scared. Those that say they don’t often aren’t being honest with themselves. When we get sick of the sickness of being human, we eventually search for a way to crawl out of the boiling cauldron. Yet perhaps the one thing we avoid – showing up to the healing potential in our daily life.
The mundane.
Not the life we imagine on those starry filled nights. I’m talking about the real life that grows at our feet – dotted with illness, loss, repetition, heartbreak, comfort zones and hard to break addictions.
It seems that our capacity to thrive through daily life has become a commodity for corporations. We don’t seem to be able to do it without help anymore. We are sold a cure for every aspect of our lives in the name of making life faster, better, easier or more tolerable.
We don’t know what we truly need to be ok.
Every act of self-care has been commissioned outside of ourselves. From mouth hygiene, to mental health, moving our body and eating foods that support our body/mind to survive through 24 hours.
In our privilege we play the short game. We bargain with our bodies. We give up authority over our life. All in the name of a false dream that tells us we can do and achieve more than this human body was designed to hold and do.
We sold our Soul.
We cut the cord.
We stopped listening to the beat of our unique heart.
We believed that there was something better waiting for us on the other side.
We don’t know what we want because we have been told that our options are limitless.
We are told intuition is witchcraft and in our self-doubt we lose the ability to follow our knowing.
We can’t hold our focus because we are hardwired for an immediate fix.
We moan and bump about in various states of ill health and imbalance.
We buy into the lie that life can be easy.
And in the process of selling out, life becomes hard.
The Cure for What Ails Us
We are so busy with quick fixes that we don’t hear the Life being offered to us.
“Come lay down” Life says. “I have the medicine” Life says. “Rest here awhile” Life implores.
When we hear the call to lay down our mind habitually runs. We are convinced we must work our way through a long list of tasks to be done in an effort to make life easier.
Is that really true?
The body yawns and sighs.
A little spark is felt within.
A memory runs through us that we are of this earth too.
“Yes” we say, “of course I will lay now”.
So we lay our body down. We touch the earth and gently forgive ourselves for the times we forget that Life can be this good to us.
Questions as a Catalyst
When is the last time you laid upon the Earth?
Is it possible that desiring ease has made life harder?
How might we untangle from this so our bodies are not expected to hold more than they can bear?
Can we stop looking for smarter ways to live and get truthful about the wisdom available in our mundane lives?
Can we be present to the dishes, making breakfast, stretching and rolling our bodies, breathing life into our bones?
Can we move slow enough to discover what truly nourishes our life force?
Can we live fully and abundantly with the life that is already here?
I don’t know aaaand I sure as hell hope so.
I grew up in a household of chronic illness and mental/emotional dis-ease. Today I continue to see threads of dis-ease living in my body and the bodies of my children. Some days it feels hard. Other days I lay down on the Earth and let it be simple.
Feeling my heart beat reminds me of who I am. Breathing until my feet feel the earth reminds me that I can do hard things with the greatest of love.
Because the loving is in the living. Wholeheartedly bowing down to the life that grows at my feet.
When I hold life this way, the daily doing gets a little easier. I cook, I clean, I create, I guide, I teach, I learn and I flow with Life as she blesses me with her teachings.
Is to possible that women are often looking in the wrong places? Attempting to find meaning through outer work whilst ignoring a life that requires tending in our heart, in our homes and in the lives we share with our loved ones. When life gets too much we ask our partners and friends to bear the load. One that they willingly carry in addition to their own.
We complicate our lives with an endless search beyond the beauty that blooms between our toes. What if washing the dishes with loving presence is enough to ease what ails us?
I sense there is new freedom to be felt if we refocus our gaze. As a dear friend said to me recently, “it’s enough to tend to the patch we are on”. I don’t know for sure. I’m writing from my experiences, paying attention to the weeds and flowers sprouting at my feet.
In unending love for our human condition,
Liz x