“In March (of 2027) (perhaps), I’ll be rested, caught up, and human.” Sylvia Plath

Here I go again, forgetting to remember; forgetting I’m human; forgetting to “Be,” & what Sea Turtles have to do with it!

Photo by Caleb Fisher on Unsplash

Quote: Sylvia Plath; ( ): Me; Photo above by Caleb Fisher.

I’m gonna be brutally honest. Brutally? Hmm, I’ll just start with honest.

Lately, I’ve been struggling. No; I am struggling.

Struggling to not feel in physical pain, (a carry-over from an auto accident over 5 yrs. ago now), struggling to simply drag myself out of bed & keep my promises,

(& I’m not even talking about the ones to my family, all the littles & not so littles that depend upon me, [4 of my own kiddos & 1 8yr old I raise for my brother for now] or my husband, or my clients, or my siblings, 91 year old Daddy, 2 best-friends, nephews, nieces, cousins, aunts, uncle, neighbors, & so on).

No, I’m just talking about:

the baby promises I’ve made to myself like:

*jotting down just 5 things I’m grateful for,

*intentionally breathing through my nose & in to my belly,

*stretching my body, (ideally with a few yoga poses)

*scribble journaling some of the gunk jamming up my mental gears aka “Morning pages,” see Julia Cameron.

& walking, especially in the woods).

All of these activities combined can be accomplished in under an hour, and needn’t even be undertaken in succession. In fact, if we leave out the walk, they can all be done in 15 minutes. They are the minimum daily requirements (MDR’s) I’ve decided *for myself* were what I would do, just for me, on *most* days, to help keep me, well me. 🤗 To keep me from sliding into the whirlwind default behavior spin of “grind, do, fast, faster, more, hurry, now, clench, no, not good enough, react, complain, panic, spiral, collapse, repeat,” that is my well-worn path.

In an effort to pave a new path, I’ve chosen things that I’ve noticed genuinely feel good, in my body, both in the moment, and after the moment; and lead me away from mental, thorny patches where I would historically play several rounds of the “shame, blame game” & cap it off with all the “low-lite reels” of my life spliced with a “choose my own adventure” of future catastrophes. Ugh.

So yeah, in addition to selecting what feels good, I’ve tried to make my chosen practices as “excuse proof” as possible: portable, easy, visible, flexible, all the things that go in to good habit building.

For example, I granted myself permission to jot the gratitudes on the back of receipts, and the intentional belly breaths to happen absolutely anywhere-in traffic, standing in line somewhere, even before I get out of bed (which honestly, I think is the best way to set the tone of my day). Sometimes, I do my stretches in the shower. (There won’t be a forthcoming video on what this looks like! Ha!)

But, I did say I’d be honest, so yeah, shower stretches.

And while I sometimes light a candle and sit somewhere cozy with birdsong and breeze wafting in to scribble my “pages,” there are days I just pen them quickly during my morning pee.🫣

Yup! I keep a journal in a basket below my window there, so it’s “easy” to reach for, pen attached. Many days, this is delightful, and I feel so proud of myself; so settled and centered; perhaps purged of what feels akin to my long hair pulled from the shower drain, dripping, clumped with soap slime & grime preventing the easy flow of water down the pipes. That’s a gross image, huh? (I guess I’m going for brutal after all.🤷‍♀️)

Well, it’s rough in there, and there’s little chance of any inspired anything coming out until the muck is cleared, the windows wiped clean. An added bonus is scribbling down a dream fragment before I’m quite awake and stumbling on it some random day (maybe even making it into a poem!); stumbling on anything I’ve written from these mornings really. Just a minute or two of visiting of these ‘past versions of me’ can feel like finding something treasured I forgot I lost, or alternatively, a piece of half-eaten candy stuck to an old Kleenex.😂

Truly, there are so many days I feel deliciously grateful as I take triangle pose in the woods next door to my baby girl’s high school (the same baby girl I have a 645 day Snapchat streak going with; the one who dings my phone with daily messages of “don’t forget how beautiful you are today Mama!” or “Look forward to seeing your beautiful smile when I get home!”); sunlight literally beams through tall pines while I inhale cedar, and touch wet moss on my walk to my favorite giant American Oak; the one I have (illegally🤫) sprinkled just a teeny, tiny smidge of both of my Mama’s ashes 😇beneath; the one I’ve been walking to now for 5 yeas, ritually, before they even passed.

I press my ear to this Oak and listen, just listen for any message I might hear. Sometimes, I ask a question. I nearly always receive some type of message that seems to come from somewhere not related to my ego, and this feels like I’m in on some serious secret magic.

✨There are walks so wondrous, just me and the trees, that I have a hard time convincing myself to leave the woods at all.  Oh, and I’m forgetting the birds! 🐦‍⬛

I don’t watch them. I listen for them, distinguish their sounds & calls, and it’s the most enchanting new discovery (for me, anyway, lol). If you haven’t checked out an app called Merlin Bird App, it’s the truly the neatest thing! So grateful to a client for turning me on to this. You just hold up your phone, and it records the birdsong, identifies it, and up pops the bird it is! Every time a new bird is ID’d, it’s added to the mix, & lights up when its voice is heard.

It’s become one of my favorite things to do. I can catch 5-8 different birds in the span of 2 minutes! Ha. Yes, the woods is my sanctuary. I run my fingers along the different barks, take note of rot, fallen trees, pick up acorns & stones, and stop to stare at deer. I have called the first line of tall Pines I approach, “The Hall of Wisdom,” and I can physically feel my blood pressure drop when I reach this spot. I can confidently recommend a walk in the woods as soul medicine to anyone who needs it.(In fact, “green therapy” or “Forrest therapy” is a thing. Forrest Bathing and woods walking will promote “soft eyes,” and “long exhales,” a couple of tools to engage the calmer “rest & digest” part of your nervous system; all of which can lower those nasty “stress hormones” dripping continuously for most of us in this culture).

✨But lately, lately, in spite of all the magic I find in the woods,

in spite of all the heaping blessings in my life,

I am feeling overwhelmed, ill-equipped, heavy, exhausted;

like I’ll never catch up; never feel at ease in my body; never accomplish my dreams.

Add to this, I’m bitter about the current state of *a few* of my affairs, and my utter lack of control over them. Ya know those things that you literally just have to patiently wait on?

Those things whose shape, or outcome you genuinely don’t know?

Yeah. Those. And I have 2 giant boulder sized “things” in my life, that if I’m not diligent, threaten to swallow me whole, and not even bother to burp me back up. I try to be wise, remember:

“It weights nothing if I don’t pick it up!”😃 But dammit, sometimes, it simply obstructs my path & I can’t see the way around.

These ‘lately days,’ in spite of all of the delicious truths about my MDR’s,

I find myself wondering if I will ever not feel like a project?

I wonder why even “ease” feels like a chase for me? Boxes to tick?

Am I now the dog, & the tail is wagging me?  Sometimes, it feels this way.🤪

And on days I don’t get to my chosen practices, (my MDR’s) days that I allow other things or people, [or other people’s things] to take precedence; well, I forget to extend myself the same grace that I tell my clients to; that I would for anyone else in my life. I become cynical, & irritable. I compare myself & start up worn out narratives I thought I’d burned long ago about being “not good enough;” “always behind,”

(I do try in earnest to catch myself using “always” or “never” as they are big red flags, but am not 100% on this). Nope, my self-talk becomes ridden with the “shame/blame” spiral, or daunting self-criticism that would shake even the most aggrandizing of egos. Why is this?

After all, didn’t I decide to embark on these practices in an effort to feel good, be in touch with the soul of me? Surely not to add more “shame on me” to my inner narrative for not doing the very things that I selected because, among other things, they are meant to assist me in being kinder to myself! Sheesh.

I navel gaze a bit more, pondering, was I just born this way?

A messy mass of contradictions?

Oh so tender, but terrifically tense; craving calm, but somehow maybe…

Am I opting for chaos instead?🤔

After all, how else to always end up in this familiar place?

Scrambling, resentful, exhausted;

Caring for others first & scurrying to squeeze myself in, maybe.

I know better, and yet, here I am again. Ugh.

The swaths of pre-school children that my ego seems to have fractured itself into like some cousin of the Horcrux, bicker with one another. Ok, some of them are more like middle schoolers, or tantrumming teens. Boy can they can be a lot to handle at times. A few are of the mindset I am ungrateful, spoiled, a diva, lazy, will never be satisfied; others weep they “don’t get any attention!” Whine, “When’s the last time you played with us? Danced barefoot? Had a carpet picnic?”

✨Well, dear reader, gratefully, at some point along my loathsome continuum this week,

I’d had enough of myself!

(Yes, today is Sunday, and I believe I started this waaaaay back on Monday).

If you’ve made it this far, I applaud you.

Or perhaps I shouldn’t, as you are likely a masochist of some sort!😂

This was a scary look behind the curtain of my “attempt” at creating something to share;

something honest, & true, vulnerable & real,

and in the end, I had hoped, helpful somehow.

While I’ve now abandoned my (clearly too🤪😂) ambitious notions of creating some clever, enlightening, metaphorically laden, insightful, wise piece here, (never having made it to the part where I tie everything together with beautiful prose and tell you how I pulled myself out of my funk);

I am going to finish this, dammit. Ha. No more lofty expectations, just finish.

So yes, the truth is, I struggle too.

That I’m a Trauma therapist, and a nurse and a yoga teacher, matters not. Depending upon what’s going on in my life, the “demands” I’m facing, and whether or not I have capacity to meet them, (along with the mental frame I take with them,) I may find myself in a less than ‘optimal place,’ (refer only to the paragraphs above for reference😂) forgetting to remember what I know, which includes not only the knowledge of neurological tools, skillsets, and cognitive reframes, but the epic truth of my humanness, & the delightful miraculous truth that I “get to” “Be” at all!

✨Like seriously!

The chance of any of us being here, alive, breathing, feeling, in bodies, with minds, and hearts, and senses, able to love & make art & enjoy a planet that sustains our need for warmth, and oxygen, and water (among many other things like love ;-)…well, I once read, (analogy credited to article written by Dr. Ali Binazir) is statistically more significant (hopefully that means ‘less likely;’ a math wizard I am not) than throwing a buoy into the ocean (you pick which one! Ha!) and the one solitary sea tortoise there in this ocean, just happens to stick its head out at the very moment necessary to be rung in a Single Attempt!! (I don’t know about you, but this analogy immediately made me think of those pop up carnival game and how they look so easy until you go to ring the glass coke bottle yourself, and realize what a shitty shot you are!😂 Or is this just me?)

Anyway, it’s about 1/700 TRILLION.

No matter. Point being, we get to “BE.”

Somehow, I remembered, I “Get to” “BE.”

And I wish I could pin point for you what, very specifically helped me to. I could site the Owl card I pulled from my Tarot deck & the absolutely serendipitous wisdom he spewed,(about putting the needs of others ahead of my own). I could just as easily say it was leaving my window cracked one night so I woke to birdsong, and upon holding my phone up, learned it was an American Cardinal (the bird I pretend comes when my Mama is near). Perhaps it was learning I lost my cousin far too young, tragically, which reminded me my hours and days are finite. It could have been watching my daughter laugh, (my little “Potato,” minus the bit about not reaching her full potential ;-) Carl Rogers & Potatoes). Maybe, it was that moment when, tucking my nephew in, after singing him the same lullaby I’ve sang to him since he was a baby, his tiny little 8 year old voice whispered in the darkness, (surrounded by swaths of his “stuffies”) “I love you Lala, goodnight.” Maybe it was all of this.💕

I’m sure it was. And in this very moment, I am struck by how remembering the abundance held by the moments of my days fill me with a rush of “life,” how going back to saturated moments lightens my sense of “being” somehow.

It truly does change our brain chemistry to shift to gratitude! (Brain Benefits of Gratitude)

*I know that every thought I have, has a chemical attached to it. So while a positive outcome from dwelling (even momentarily) on positive thoughts seems so obvious, I’m laughing at myself, because when I’m in a funk, the last thing I want to do is feel grateful.😜

But ah, the fact that I have spent over 5 years building nourishing practices for the very purpose of enhancing my well-being, not only on my average days, but most especially on my struggling ones, make this shift possible. I know clinically, that “neurons that fire together, wire together;” “that passing mental states, become lasting neural traits.” (Dr. Rick Hanson of The Buddha Brain) & that engaging in practices that support my nervous system, and bring me home to my body; remind me, ironically, that I am not a “body,” or even a “mind,” but a soul.

Through practicing my own chosen “minimum daily requirements,” (MDR’s) I can tune in to who I am, which is a soul residing in a body, having a thought. Rather than merging with them, I can allow them to be a weather pattern, just a dark cloud, or even a tornado. No matter the havoc they threaten to reek, I can remember I am the sky. (Ram Das)

I remember. I remember! And it all comes back to me.

The story we tell ourselves about the life we are living, become the life we live. (Esther Perel & The Power of Stories)

So, returning to Sylvia, & her hopes-

I may not be “rested,” (but I hope I never stop hugging trees & I hope I keep noticing my breath & Yes! spending time WITH my “Soul Self” scribbling “pages”) because attention is the currency of relationship, and I deserve my own attention dammit! (The Preschoolers Cheer!!)

and while surely, I will never be “caught up” (as this is a laughable premise that can turn in to a whole post in and of itself),

I am hopeful that perhaps, perhaps, at this time next year, (& in 2027 too!)

I will be luckier than a carnival ringer, or a sea turtle in the middle of the ocean with a buoy around its neck, and still be here.

Perhaps, I’ll still “get to” “Be.” I hope so. 🤗