The Power of Staying
Photo by Marcel R. via Unsplash.
Holy moly. A lot is going on over here.
Back-to-back client intensives, developing a podcast, rebranding my website and offerings, plus phase one of our move—decluttering, packing, making the house look less lived-in before we list it. It's all wonderful. And the deadlines are converging at the same time, so the energy demand is higher than I've experienced in a long time.
For the most part, I've been feeling light and spacious amidst the doing.
Until last weekend.
My old, familiar push-and-override pattern came online Sunday—without my conscious awareness. On Monday, fear surfaced: I won't get everything done in time. I met that with rationality and kept going at the same pace. On Tuesday, I woke up with a crick in my neck. Somehow I managed to hurt myself while sleeping.
Is this what happens after turning 50?! ;)
The good news: the pain got my attention. It broke the doing spell, and helped me see how unconsciously I had resorted to a strategy that worked in the past—but that I could no longer sustain. Not even for three days.
I took myself to the chiropractor and decided to take the rest of the day to slow down. My body was very much onboard for that plan. My mind was not.
Slowing down only invited more thinking. At 3am—which seems to be when my system is most stirred up—I found myself wide awake, tossing and turning. So I opted to meet the experience as it was happening.
I felt the tightness. The bracing. The this is too much, you can't handle it story. It was painful because it felt true. I was believing the narrative. And because I was believing it, the mind got to work solving the "problem."
You need to stop and restructure your plan to meet these deadlines.
But something about that instruction didn't feel true. So I stayed with that feeling—the this doesn't feel true feeling.
What surfaced next surprised me.
A wave of fear. About my body. About it changing. For the first time, my cycle is becoming irregular—and all these concerns about menopause have been taking up space in my unconscious that I had no idea were there.
At the root of it was fear of the unknown. What changes are coming? What will this process be like? Will I be okay?
There it was. In all its earnest concern.
Will I be okay?
That vulnerability was what had been underneath all of it. Hiding behind the defense mechanism of overriding, of labeling experience as too much, of pushing through before the feelings could catch up.
And of course that question makes sense—if my okayness is attached to my body being a certain way. And beyond that, if my okayness is attached to being in a body at all.
So I met this vulnerability with an open heart. I let the fear move through. And discovered the peace that was underneath it.
This is the beauty of self-intimacy.
Of building our capacity to stay connected with ourselves no matter what our inner experience may be. This is hard, I don't like it—and I'm here. I'm willing to be curious. To lean in. To not run away.
From that vantage point, the fear of the unknown dissolved. So did the desire to stop and restructure the deadlines. What was happening had nothing to do with that. And had I believed the instruction and stopped the process there—the fear would've lingered. And likely found another way out.
Learning to stay. To linger in our experience when it doesn't feel good is life-changing.
There are layers to this process. The deeper, more vulnerable places are often hiding under sheets of protection. Rightfully so. And this is why an open heart is all that's needed.
Can I open my heart to this? And this too?
Next weekend, I'm gathering with a small group for The Gift of the Open Heart: A Weekend of Receiving. And I can't help but notice the brilliance of Life in all of this. The perfect material, arriving in perfect timing—lived in my own body, just days before we gather. Life really does know what It's doing.
What a gift.
Sending you lots of love and staying power,
Amber
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