Returning (Sort Of)

It’s been awhile, no?

I used to post on Facebook and Instagram almost daily, had a couple year run of doing weekly posts and newsletters and then...nothing. Silence. A pause, if you will.

I’m still here, and thank you so much to those who have been checking in. As I’ve mentioned, it is often difficult speaking into the void of the internet and not knowing if anyone is listening. Your emails have reaffirmed that someone is, and I cannot tell you how valuable that is.

So why the “poof”? I can’t tell you. I mean, I could tell you, but I wouldn’t really be telling you. There were no major events, no tragedies. In fact, life has been ...good.

What did happen was a very odd and slow movement into a growing awareness. 

Have you ever been outside and confined in your thoughts, and all of a sudden you notice the sky and then you notice the WHOLE sky and suddenly your being feels like it just opens up and you can breathe?

In a sense, that’s where I’ve been - breathing with the sky. I’ve known, ever since this started, that putting words to it - creating a blog post defining it, creating some takeaways from it all even for myself - that it would shatter it. So I’ve just….been.

It did mean that life as I had been living it had to slightly change. If I kept on writing, sharing, defining and labeling, I’d chat myself right out of this space. I kept doing the laundry, taking my kids to their practices, making meals (ok, I don’t cook a lot - so … um, making SOME meals). 

It felt odd not sharing photos from our Thanksgiving morning walk/run as I’ve done every other year. (This was our 10 year anniversary!) It felt weird not jumping online to wish happy birthday to multiple people who’s birthday notifications came and went on Facebook. (Yes, I was still on Facebook. I was just scrolling and noticing - not really engaging.) It was strange to have an idea and not rush to flesh it out into a blog post. Some rather important events happened in my life during the past few months, and I’ve simply set with the knowing in my own home, chatting with my husband and kids and immediate family. 

This isn’t a “better” way of living. I’m not getting ready to tell you to get off of Facebook, set down your phone, and go commune with nature. I want to make it very clear that this isn’t where this is going.

In truth, I’m not sure where it is going - only that this - here, sharing this with you - is where I find myself.

It’s like when I started my daily, 30-minute walking years ago - there was no “practice” I was starting, no intention to keep going. But I did, and now this #365ish journey has led me to 1, 424 days of walking in a row...and a profound shift in my daily experience because of it.

Now just feels like the time to share. 

And while this awareness continues to grow and there are some things that still aren’t ready to be put to words, there are a few ideas that I’ll offer now and expand on over time. These are the concepts that have been flittering about like birds in that big sky, concepts that have caught my attention and feel so important to be acknowledged.

One.

You are co-creating your reality, right now. With each thought, each emotion, each word you continue reading of this, each shift in your posture, you are popping onto another path forward in life. With each belief you carry into your evening (it’s important to share family meals together or Netflix is a god-send for night-time relaxing), you act in accordance. That behavior creates an evening, a relationship, a month, a life. Through those thoughts and beliefs and behaviors, you come to understand what “life” is, what “living” is. Alongside the rest of us who are doing the same, we co-create this chaotic, messy, beautiful thing we understand as “reality”.

The important part here is that YOU are ALWAYS playing a crucial role in this creation. Much more on that later.

Two.

We’ve forgotten about what we can’t see, and it has led us down a regrettable path. This is a really broad statement that applies to MANY things, but here, I’ll narrow it to thoughts and emotions and feelings. We spend so little time in mundane life giving conscious, non-judgmental attention to our own thoughts and emotions. Most of us were never taught how! For those who have dedicated time to figuring out HOW to notice, we still exist in a society that would rather silence, ignore, or argue against such expression. (Do you think it’s completely fine to cry at work? When someone asks, “How are you?”, do you feel that it’s appropriate to answering anything deeper than, “Oh, I’m fine, thanks!”? When was the last time you took a mental-health-awareness day - a day where you simply focused on your thoughts and nothing else? (Would you even know how to do this?))

These invisible aspects of life guide EVERYTHING that you understand life to be. Again, much more on that later. For now...just try noticing what you haven’t been noticing.

Three.

I wish we could all understand how confined we are by SHOULDS. Societal shoulds and your own, personal shoulds. I wish we could all understand how oppressed we are by JUDGMENT. Societal judgment and especially the judgments inside your own mind. We restrict and limit our own expression and every one of us - “good guys” included - restrict and limit others’ expression through these shoulds and judgments.

An example - I felt so guilty over not posting for several weeks. It was what I SHOULD be doing. I judged myself for not being able to find the words, then went to bed with anxiety countless nights in a row. And then, I breathed through it all and found some peace. Then I just repeated the whole cycle. I’m becoming aware and practicing right alongside of you.

There is a LOT to expand on this. Let the thought pop into your mind every once awhile to take a look at what you are doing in that moment - what you are wearing, what you are looking at, what you are eating. How much of that behavior was consciously or unconsciously driven by a should - I should do this? How much of your behavior (and that of others’) have you been judging as wrong, or right? How has that influenced your mood and how you behave because of that mood?

I’m going down the rabbit hole here. No need to pull you into Wonderland with me at this point.

There’s more, so much more. Some of you might not be into these “big ideas” and that’s ok...for now.

My ultimate hope is that I can continue to breathe in this awareness, this big, beautiful sky, and find ways to relate these ideas to our mundane lives - because these concepts are SO crucial to helping all of us feel more free, helping all of us to act with more empathy and kindness and when needed, ferocity, helping all of us to re-member - to come back together - who we are. 

Thank you for allowing me the space to pause. Here’s to the dishes that just finished washing, the banana bread that’s almost done baking, the laundry that just finished downstairs,

and whatever fascinating things arise for all of us from this moment, on.