It’s my last regular post! I’m letting that lead me. Endings are something I’ve been exploring lately, letting go, allowing change to flow through me instead of resisting, struggling, raging.
It started with the pandemic, so much started with this goddamn pandemic. Everything I understood to be true about my world was up for debate. Isolation, constriction, struggle and then a refocus on what was really important. I started to let go. I began to understand that I couldn’t play the same character of me in my life under these different circumstances. It wasn’t that I wasn’t me, but rather that how I showed up and what I had with me changed. Social exercise, the bike rides, the group classes, all faded away. I was left with just me and what I wanted to do with my body, and my heart. It turns out, I still really dig the one on one interactions, even over video. Once I settled down, my therapy practice stabilized and zoom work became just fine. My supervision practice (supervising other therapists in their work and mentoring them) blossomed. Being a mentor fuelled me and I leaned in to that new and thriving space of connection.
Physically, it turns out, I really only want to walk my dog and do yoga. I patiently found ways to get to my mat, trying to be gentle and not push. I hurt my shoulder but I didn’t give up on practicing. It just got softer and softer, only as far as I could swim out and make it back alive.
All around me the world pulsed and convulsed. There was still a lot of struggle. There was a struggle to teach in group online. I still hate that, hate it with the passion of a thousand suns. We had a glorious in person masked term in the fall and having it ripped away from me again by the latest crisis has put my body in a raging uproar. I’m on fire in my spine. I know this to be my grief and struggle to connect with my family of students and colleagues through square boxes. I will never be okay with a group thing online. There just isn’t enough energy in the world to hold all those souls sufficiently to do what I need to do with them.
But back to letting go. I had been practicing and meditating and feeling into all the corners and I was so excited to do Adriene’s 30 days in January. But when I began that movement project, that should have been exactly what I needed, I collapsed. She was tumbling ahead of my body and I couldn’t keep up. There was something frantic about it. The words were right but the feel was wrong. I stopped after 7 days, went on an Adriene strike and I haven’t gone back. I’m staying true to my insides. It wasn’t right for me, danger, danger, danger. I’m on the mat still with others, staying true to what my body needs and says. I feel confident, and sad. I loved her and she’s gone.
Then there is this blogging practice. I’ve only ever blogged for my own good, hardly thinking about you, audience (sorry, not sorry, just how I do things). I would hit nerves or not but it was just about what comes out of my fingers. The more me I could be, the more true I could be to the exact moment of my writing, the better I felt about it. I wonder sometimes how it made you feel, to read mundane or very personal or very rant-y posts. In the end, that wasn’t why I did it. I just like to write. But now I am in some process, moving into a liminal space that is reforming something again. I don’t know what it will be yet, shadows just out of reach, but it feels important. I think it has to do with my teaching and an explication of the magic I’m finding there. I still want to write, I’m scared of letting go of this monthly practice, but I need to. I’ve said what I need to say for now.
So Adieu my friends, my dear fellow bloggers and the people who looked forward to what I had to say, or happened upon it and said “hmmm, cool” or however you were while reading. I have appreciated this space and your eyes and hearts that have been moved here and there. I may come back when I really need to say a thing in this community but until I do, keep moving your beautiful bodies and keep your precious hearts open as much as you can bear.
