Emergency Practice #10

Reshaping myself

A quick apology — I hadn’t realised that I’d accidentally set my last post to comments from paid subscribers only. It’s open to all now, so if you had something you’d like to share, please do! I always love to hear from you.

Fraser and I have gone away for a little while. We left the house off the back of an intense, life-changing week, everything coming all at once, and as we sped north, I found I had to hold onto my own body just reassure myself that I could contain it all.

Caring responsibilities have left me overwhelmed, fragile and anxious. The physical symptoms of my illnesses thrum through me like sounds turned up too loud. It is hard to relax, much of my sensory experience feels like pulsing bright lights. My thoughts are unpredictable and don’t feel like my own. I too easily slip into dissociation, freeze, retreat, and yet…

I am in a beautiful city full of people that I want to notice, smile at, love.

I can see mountains, and next week I will get to go home to the place that has restored my spirit like no other.

I am with the man I cherish with all my heart. This trip offers us the first extended time alone we’ve had since he moved in last year.

How then to be? How to navigate the constantly shifting, imperfect, vulnerable experience of being alive, here, right now? How to give myself permission to be complex, but not waste this precious opportunity to see so many things I have longed for?

My practice today is this: to be the vast, strong land around the river, not the water in the river. Not a container — a wide, wide channel. My practice is to let everything I feel and think flow through me, unceasing, unrestricted. Love, delight, grief, pain, fear, shame, sadness, compassion, joy.

Today I open to become a conduit for life itself; a living celebration of everything there is. And as it all flows through me, I will simply notice the view: soft mountains, wheeling gulls, billowing spider webs, loving hands.

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Throughout the month of August, in order to help pull myself out of a downward spiral, I’m sharing some choices I’m making. These choices aren’t trying to change or control anything. Each one is simply a fresh turn towards what I know will help my mind, body and the people around me.

Perhaps you’d like to try them too.

I am sharing this free series thanks to my paid subscribers who allow me to operate this newsletter with freedom and an open heart.