I have come to accept the feeling of not knowing where I am going. And I have trained myself to love it. Because it is only when we are suspended in mid-air with no landing in sight, that we force our wings to unravel and alas begin our flight. And as we fly, we still may not know where we are going to. But the miracle is in the unfolding of the wings. You may not know where you’re going, but you know that so long as you spread your wings, the winds will carry you.
~C. JoyBell C.
Some days, just getting through the day is like slogging through molasses. Sometimes, even when you can list a thousand things for which you are immensely grateful, and point to many things that are going well, the wet blanket of all-that’s-wrong/all-that’s-lacking/all-that-could-go-wrong covers everything, even the good stuff, in a heavy, grey, cloudy mass. Eventually, you reach a point where trying to throw off the blanket seems like so. much. work.
How do you get out of those periods? How do you scrabble your way up through the murk to the light again? I don’t think there’s one way that’s right for everyone. However, I do think there is a truth inherent in such periods of darkness. This truth is that, just as the body signals disease with physical symptoms, these periods of dark discomfort let us know there is something that needs our attention, something that needs to be looked at more closely, something that we’ve been sweeping under the rug, hiding behind the door, shutting away in a closet.
This is where I’ve been in recent months. First, I swept because I was busy. Then I hid because I was exhausted and not ready to look. Then I shut because it had become too painful. Continue reading
What you’re missing is that the path itself changes you.
~Julien Smith, The Flinch
The doors to the world of the wild Self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.
~Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
I popped in here last night and was surprised to see that I hadn’t posted anything in more than a week—not even a quote du jour. Then again, my schedule the last couple of months has been morning til night, seven days a week (plus a house guest for ten days)—and this coming on top of a 6- to 8-month period that’s been pretty intense emotionally. No sudden, earth-shaking events or anything, just a lot of emotions coming up, recognition of patterns and realizations about my life, about where I’ve been and where I am now and where I want to be. Big life stuff…yet outer things have demanded my attention and left me little time to sit and sort and assimilate these thoughts and feelings.
When I finally got past a big deadline on the 12th (opening night for a show I’d choreographed), it all fell down around me, so to speak. I felt heavy and sad and listless and overwhelmed, depressed and unable to focus. The ice storm and single-digit weather last week didn’t help, keeping me mostly indoors for several days running, layering cabin fever on top of the cloud that was already hanging over me.
Now, ten days later, I’m finally feeling a bit more normal, but there’s still a sense of “Now what? Where do I start? What do I think? How do I feel? How do I sort this all out?” I’ve been pushing hard the last few months, but now that the pushing is over and I have some breathing room, I don’t know how to act.
So…I’m trying to give myself some time to adjust, to find my center (which has been AWOL for some time now) again. I need some long(er) walks in the woods, less time on the computer, more time reading and writing, a lot of time in the garden, and a lot of time just being. I need to find my inner rhythm again, to find the middle ground between fast forward and full stop.
Thanks for your patience in my absence. I am (sort of) back now, and I’ll be posting quotes du jour and sharing random thoughts on a regular basis soon.
pathwriter’s note: Liz Gilbert hits the nail on the head again and again, whether she’s sharing her own thoughts or the thoughts of others. This is her Facebook post from yesterday (12/1/14).
THE CRAB BUCKET
Dear Ones –
A few months ago, I was on stage with Rob Bell — minister, teacher, family man, great guy — and a woman in the audience asked him this question:
“I’m making all these important changes in my life, and I’m growing in so many new and exciting ways, but my family is resisting me, and I feel like their resistance is holding me back. They seem threatened by my evolution as a person, and I don’t know what to do about it.”
Rob said, “Well, of course they’re threatened by your evolution as a person. You’re disrupting their entire world view. Remember that a family is basically just a big crab bucket — whenever one of the crabs climbs out and tries to escape, the other crabs will grab hold of him and pull him back down.”
Which I thought was a VERY unexpected comment to come from a minister and a family man!
Rob surprised me even more, though, as he went on to say, “Families are institutions — just like a church, just like the army, just like a government. Their sense of their own stability depends upon keeping people in their correct place. Even if that stability is based on dysfunction or oppression. When you move out of your ‘correct place’ you threaten their sense of order, and they may very likely try to pull you back down.” Continue reading
I’ve been juggling a lot since last spring. Some of the juggling has had to do with external, day-to-day stuff out in the physical world, but most of the juggling has been in my mind/heart/spirit/soul. I’m creating what is, at heart, a completely new life—saying goodbye to some things, hello to others, and trying to figure out how to tweak still others and keep them a part of the whole as I go forward.
To be honest, I’m a little worn out from all the changes in my life over the last few years, and frankly, I’d just as soon take a break. My faith and trust muscles have been getting quite the workout. However, a couple of things happened in the last week that have shifted my perspective, albeit in an odd, out-of-left-field kind of way. This post is about one of them.
Last Saturday, I bought a rug for my living room. Mind you, we’re not talking about a major purchase here. I have a small cottage, with a small living room to match, and I’ve never spent more than $100 on a rug. As a lifelong independent/freelance artist, my decorating budget has never been large, which has, shall we say, encouraged me to be creative in more ways than one when it comes to furnishing my home. Luckily, my taste has never run to “new” things, and I love doing DIY projects, so I’ve been quite happy to inherit furniture from family and friends and buy shabby thrift-store-furniture-with-potential, as long as the pieces suited my personal style. I’ve ended up with a home that I like and that visitors regularly call “warm and inviting.”
The rug I bought from Target six or so years ago was a perfectly nice rug when I bought it, and I received a number of compliments about it over the years. However, it’s lived through the usual pet accidents and incidents and a fair amount of general wear and tear during that time, and it’s been looking pretty sad for a while now—rips and tears and places where you can see through to the backing. In the last few months, it started to smell musty and old, like it had been slept on for many years by my dog (which, of course, it had). It was time for a new rug.
Before we get to the new rug, however, I need to back up and tell the story of the amazing Restoration Hardware chenille throw. (I know this post probably sounds like it belongs on a home decorating blog, but bear with me.) Continue reading
