“My how you’ve changed, since I’ve changed…”
(-my breathwork teachers Dana and Ashanna)
Over the past few weeks I’ve gone on vacation with my family (which is why you see me pictured with Chewbacca), gotten really sick, gotten better and then sick again, made lotsa of plans that I then had to cancel, tried to rally and accomplish things that I genuinely want but am currently just not capable of, and overall had to come into acceptance of something…an unexpected season of rest.
Harrrumph.
Accepting that I am in a “restorative” season (rather than an expansive one) came with a fair amount of claw marks because I had a lot of big plans — ways that I planned to spend the next few months of my “one wild and precious life.”
Do you know that Mary Oliver poem that I’m referencing? If not, I’m including it below, and then I want to explain something about that line.
I used to read that last line and feel a bit of pressure…this idea that, “I only have one life, time is fleeting, better make it count, do something important! AAAAAAH!”
Reading the line in that way (right now) would make me think “there I go missing out on months of life, work, not doing and creating the things I thought I would, wasting time, and time in my one wild and precious life is running out.”
But I don’t think Mary Oliver meant for us to read that line as a cattle prod toward expectations of productivity, or how our life should look. After all, she also encourages us to let the "soft animal of our body love what it loves.” Here’s the poem that line is from:
Lately I’ve been trusting that if my soft animal body is called to rest, that is the exact thing I should do with my one wild and precious life. That the creative work I’m not doing is simply not mine to do, and to trust that when it is mine, I will be resourced enough to do it.
And as I let go of things that don’t feel right or easeful, I am embracing those that do: reading books that I love (that have nothing to do with growth or productivity), sleeping as much as having two toddlers will allow, and burrowing into my own healing.
I am using my limited bandwidth to pursue things that have felt easeful and good, like the breathwork circles I attend and facilitate, and the live journaling classes I hold in the Living Questions, Breathing Answers membership (this month’s theme is intergenerational healing.)
At this particular moment I am not doing or being many things that I thought I would be. Perhaps you aren’t either. And perhaps allowing that (rather than pushing ourselves) makes our life MORE precious.
This week, whether in a season of rest or expansion, composting or creativity, I encourage you to ask yourself these questions…
What does the soft animal of my body need and love?
How can I honor those things and lovingly let go of those that it doesn’t?
How can I rest in the sacredness of my life already being wild and precious?
Witnessing your wild preciousness exactly as you are,
Melissa
PS: The tools I’ve found most helpful on my healing journey are breathwork and inquiry. Asking ourselves powerful questions (and then breathing and writing out our answers) can release stories and trauma that otherwise take years to discover. The online membership I run incorporates them both - learn more here and join us.
***
Are you asking the questions you’ll wish you had?
With the holidays coming, I want to remind you about the Questions You’ll Wish You Asked journals for parents and children. Consider writing down answers for your kids, asking questions of your family members, or sending one of the Questions You’ll Wish You Asked journals to a person you care about today. Find them here.
If you know a motherless mother, I made a few journals for her. Learn more about them below.
