2023 has been a painful year. I didn’t quite realize this until many months in. It took one small trauma piling on top of the next and my plethora of self-awareness (which is sometimes slow to catch on) to realize that no amount of meditating could help me process the events that transpired. There were a lot of good outcomes, so I don’t want to make it like its been the complete year from hell, but as I sit waiting for my postpartum clients to show up to class, I notice the heaviness through my whole body, the dull headache, and a bit of a heavy heart. I came early today to ground myself extra well before I lead a group based on support.
Pain is a teacher. All I can keep thinking of is how much I am learning this year. School is in session and I have a front row seat in class. They say nothing can prepare you for these types of events but I completely disagree. I think I have been training my whole life. It’s the work that I have done that precedes all of this that keeps me from crumbling into a million little pieces. I’m crying a lot at 7 months pregnant. I’m worrying a lot. But I am also meditating, bolstering my self-care by adding Epsom salt soaks at night, down-regulating my nervous system whenever possible. I have found time in my schedule to take 2-3 meditation breaks a day. And I started hugging my family more. Squeezing my anxious dog who is picking up on my energy. Cuddling my toddler and kissing her between her eyes and nose, holding my husband’s gaze longer and hugging him tighter. I’m no longer too busy to stop and do these things. Everything else can wait. Stress kills. Mitigating stress is a full time job when life events are out of your control.
The biggest concern for an anxious person is uncertainty. Not knowing what the future holds. It’s taken me years to learn, but I am much better at sitting in the “shit” and waiting, without knowing. There is comfort in surrendering. It took me almost 30 years to truly understand what it means to surrender, but now that I do, there’s some freedom in it. I can’t control the outcome of this pregnancy, and the maternal fetal doctor made it clear to me yesterday that he is stumped, unsure what steps to take, not something an anxiety prone person would want to hear a high level physician charging them $600 a visit per week. I don’t want to smear my personal life all over the page, it suffices to just say that 2023 started with the ICU, the middle of the year was grief over the loss of my mother-in-law, the painstaking heartache of watching my husband carry her casket up and down stairs. Watching their pain and everything that followed and continues to linger as grief does. A pregnancy journey that no one would wish for, all the while balancing a home, raising a toddler as sensitive as I am, and working in mental health care, trying to impact our broken system.
It’s heavy stuff, isn’t it? It regularly makes people uncomfortable. People don’t expect to hear that your day isn’t going as planned. But it’s made me gentler with everyone else in the world. I listened to my ultrasound tech tell me about the chaos in her home and my heart reached for hers. I saw a mother in the self-checkout line at Harris Teeter, sweating, trying to balance a cranky baby and check out. I felt the weight she was carrying. The weight of feeling totally under-resourced and yet 100% responsible for so many outcomes. My heart reached for her. My heart reaches for every patient I see. I protect my energy but I also see what our world is producing. People can’t afford to pay their rent and their minimum wage jobs lead them to homelessness which leads them to self-harm, which leads them into a room with me. My heart reaches for every single person. I hope along the way, hearts are reaching back towards mine, towards others in their path. That collective healing is what we all need. The collective stress in our world plays a role, but each human on earth can help it.
I started doing this work at age eight when I was in a mental health hospital. That was the beginning for me. I am 31 now, and this past year I have had less anxiety than I have in my entire life. Not less discomfort, not less pain, not less devastation. I have had all of that this year. But my relationship to that pain, that loss, that unbearable discomfort is different. I know now that it is not a part of me. I am not my pain, or my circumstances, or even my body. I am the light inside it all, trying to guide this body and this brain to the path of least resistance. I am not a victim or even a survivor, I am just me.
My hope through this lesson over the past year is that I can use this pain and this experience to radically shift the way I move through the world. To be less negative, to be more open, more creative, more accepting of self and others. I hope to infuse my wisdom into my work, write a book and launch a new component to my business. But first, I must birth a healthy baby and hibernate with her for a while. Taking in every inch of the human that has been growing inside me, connecting with me, and waiting for me to evolve so I can handle motherhood of two and so much more.
All I ask from each one of you is that you also open your hearts. To the stranger passing you on the sidewalk in the morning, to the flustered person rushing out of the Harris Teeter parking lot, to your medical providers who DO sometimes have limited knowledge, to each other, every day. If we can all be self aware and lead with compassion, I think we will see a huge shift on this planet. It takes waking up to start. So the question is, are you awake? It’s never too late to start the work.
This month is National Suicide Prevention Month. I see the impacts every day at work, Suicide rates and attempt rates are sky rocketing. Open your heart. Meditate. Take care of yourselves and those around you and remember that no matter what your circumstances are, you can find peace.
Yoga and Sound Healing will resume in January! But you can catch us at Seven Oaks Lavender Farm, where we will be practicing our yoga and creating healing soundscapes on October 14th!
https://www.sevenoakslavenderfarm.com/wildflower-wellness-festival
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