Plans have changed and we are postponing our drive a
week. Long story, but at least I feel
like I can take a few moments to do some writing. A few weeks ago, I took some time for myself
and had a session with the lovely Sharon Ann Rose from Ministry of the Mother,
and so much came out of it I have been wanting to write about. I think I will start with what came to me
about the concept of balance. I chose
the photo above because that elephant looks pretty damn uncomfortable. I have written glowingly about balance in the
past, and probably will in the future, but at the moment, balance can kiss my
ass. Or at least certain ways of looking
at it. Bear with me.
When I started the session, I was really honest about how it
had been hard for me to stop packing and even show up. But I did.
So that is what we started exploring first. Why did I come? What was I there for? Sharon is very gifted at taking people on
spur of the moment guided journeys that are somehow always the perfect thing, celebrating
the essence of each person, right where they are in that moment. So where was I? I do not switch gears well, at all. My husband calls me a “creature of singular
focus”. It is nearly impossible for me
to go from packing mode to chilling with my husband or self care or really
pretty much anything that doesn’t involve getting things into boxes. At one point during the meditation, I asked
myself what I needed, and my first thought was balance. This word has come up a lot for me in my
spiritual practice as something I want to cultivate. It seems like I always have some project
going on, whether I am organizing an event or working on a family photo book or
searching for quotations to match with my daughter’s photography or starting a
new blog. I tend to make these projects
a higher priority than many other things in my life, and the first thing to go
is usually self care. I frequently go through
mental gymnastics about how I can somehow manage my time to DOITALL – time with
my husband, time with my kids, make homemade food, keep the house clean, pursue
my own passions, and um, take a shower now and then. During that meditation, I had an “aha”. There were several different aspects to it,
which my overtired brain can’t seem to narrate together, so I am just going to
list them.
1. So what if I am a creature of singular
focus? Sharon has this way of framing
everything in a beautiful light, and that is where I am right now, so maybe I was
there to get reminded that was OK. More
than OK even. So what if I suck at self
care in general? If I choose to play a
game with my kid instead of taking a shower, so be it. I long ago realized I was going to have let
go of certain things and decide on priorities because I really do know I can’t
doitall. And I don’t cross the line into a place where
I would become resentful. I do just
enough little things for myself, like lighting candles and listening to music I
love while packing, to maintain my sanity.
2. I had been making an assumption that what I
needed was the opposite of singular focus, which I was perceiving to be
balance. But no, what I need is self
acceptance of where I am in the moment and SLOWING DOWN. (The session actually happened before my last
post, which helps to put that in even more perspective. )
3. The way I had been looking at balance was really
pretty sucky, because I was feeling it as yet another task in a manner of
speaking. It was like I was putting
pressure on myself to figure out the best way to balance everything, and in the
process just setting myself up for another thing to beat myself up for not
doing well enough. Like I said, kiss my
ass.
Don’t get me wrong. I
have nothing against the word balance and see how it can be a powerful
philosophical concept to strive for. But
in that moment, I realized I was looking at it in a really unhealthy way. What I need right now is a fat dose of
mindfulness. So that is what I have been
trying to strive for, and mostly failing in recent days to be honest, but at
least I am trying.
And if you know me, you will also know I just can’t leave a
topic alone without going and looking at quotations, because I am pretty much a
quotation geek, and they often inspire me to think about things a different
way. So you can imagine how floored I
was to come across this little gem:
OK, so maybe balance doesn't have to kiss my ass after
all. This is just what I was getting at
in number 1 above! I had never seen
balance framed quite like this before. This
kind of balance I can get down with. Now
if I can just remember the key is to truly enjoy the choices and not feel
guilty about the thing you decided NOT to do!!!
I think I am going to copy this onto some paper and tape it to
the wall as I finish my packing. AND
keep trying to remember to slow down.
Always I need the slowing down.
“I am putting this pony in a box, I am putting this sauce
pan in a box, I am putting this pair of shoes in a box…”. Yeah.
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