Let’s Rest More

2015 was one of my best years ever. I got married in February, graduated with my Master’s degree in May and had a baby in late October.

A friend recently pointed out to me that those are three of the biggest life changes you can undergo in a life time. And they happened for me all within one year.

No wonder I almost lost my mind.

 

These three changes, especially the first and last one, required a lot of me and a lot from me.

Once I had the baby, I was in survival mode. You know that mode. When you fade in and out of insanity.

I lived that way until last week when I went away to quiet camp.

 

There, I rested.

 

At quiet camp there was no schedule.

Nothing on my to do list.

Nothing on my calendar.

Meals were served at 8:00am, Noon and 6:00pm.

I was not obligated to be anywhere, to do anything, or be anything to anybody except myself.

I was able to show up and be present with myself.

I was able to hear and respond to my needs.

 

My needs were simple:

Nourish myself.

Rest.

 

And so I did that.

For four days.

 

I nourished myself with the environment around me.

Lush forest and wildlife to observe and get “lost” in.

Enjoying the sunrise.

 

I nourished myself with the beauty of the place.

The little things that go unnoticed in my busy, hurried daily life.

Enjoying a rainy day

 

I nourished myself with food and drink.

So simple.

So needed.

Coffee, eggs with sriracha and bacon.

 

It was transformational.

I was transformed.

I re-discovered my joy and my gratitude for life. I had been so busy surviving big life changes (oh, did I mention I suddenly changed jobs a month before the retreat?) that I hadn’t even noticed that I had lost my joy and gratitude for life. Before the retreat, I found myself waking up angry, many days. Angry and anxious.

I believe presence with one’s self, nourishment of one’s self, and rest of one’s self, is the antidote to much of our personal anxiety, pain and anger.

We are living in a culture, an era, an environment that encourages us to pack our days, our weeks, our months, with stuff. Lots of it is good stuff! But there isn’t enough time in our days, weeks and months to do ALL the good stuff. Just today I said “No, thank you,” to a lunch with some friends because I need rest.

Yes, you read that right. I went to a camp for a week and rested the whole time. I have been back for a week and I need more rest.

YES! We need more rest! All of us!

 

Please note that I am not generalizing nourishment and rest as the solution to everything for everyone in every situation.

What I am saying is this: our culture does not know how to help us heal from things that have gone right or wrong in life, nor does our culture know how to help us go about our lives with joy FOR life! With joy for the moment, for the present, for our existence, for the world in which we find ourselves.

We need to figure out how to heal and how to live with joy on our own. Western society does not and will not teach it to us. It can’t.

Especially in today’s world of weeping and gnashing of teeth over the American political situation. We must re-discover our joy for life! We must learn how to mourn, how to name our pain, and then how to HEAL. I want us all to come out of this alive. And this fight requires so much of ourselves. It’s hard and it hurts.

We need healing.

And healing requires rest.

Healing requires time and nourishment.

It is my mission now to re-invent how I do life. I will get rid of stuff–even some of the good stuff– in order to make way for the most important things. One of which is rest.

On the top of my list of priorities it now says:

REST, my love

If I am going to be a beacon of hope, love and joy in this world, I need to make those things real in my own life, too.

How are you finding joy today? In this moment?

What does your path to healing look like?

 

My Magical Cure-All?

So, it occurred to me while reading a facebook post from the fantastic blogger over at The Nourished Life that it might appear that I think eating better will cure all of my problems: fertility and otherwise. This is not the case, just fyi. This is what she wrote and I totally agree:

“MYTH: Eating well will fix your life. It’s THE most important thing you can do.

TRUTH: Eating well can support your mind and body, but it doesn’t erase your problems. It can help you feel better, improve your moods, and help you deal with tough times. But it isn’t magic.

Life will still happen when you eat well and take care of your body. You’ll still make mistakes–sometimes huge ones. Sometimes you’ll get hurt by people you love–sometimes you’ll hurt them. Sometimes you’ll feel down, sometimes you’ll run late, sometimes it will feel like life is falling apart at the seams.

Keep your diet in perspective. Eating well is important for your health, but don’t place so much importance on it that you try to cover up life’s problems with ‘healthy’ eating.

Remember to support yourself in other ways, let yourself be human, and accept that life has its ups and downs regardless of how we eat.”

I believe that eating well will help my body heal, partly.

I believe that attending to and deepening my connection with my “higher power”/”creator”/”universal spiritual force” will help my whole self heal in varying and complex ways.

We in the western, American world tend to compartmentalize ourselves into 2, sometimes 3 categories. It’s generally either body-mind or body-mind-soul.

However, this is a false reality.

How can one separate these things? If I’m only attending to my mind/soul, I would be treating myself like a ghost without a body. If I’m only attending to my body, then I would be treating myself like a dead body, for what is a body with a soul/mind? It’s a body on life support. It is incomplete.

Bottom line? I need to focus more on the whole-self mindedness of healing. If I don’t, I will not likely succeed in my attempts to heal.