Month: March 2021

Season of healing…

Every season shift I do a stave draw, asking what the season will bring. In this case, the ‘season’ will last from the spring equinox to the winter equinox. But the stave I drew was èabhadh, which hints at rising up, bouyancy and healing.

I find it well timed, as nature – where I live is starting to lift out of the ground and come alive. The trees, where they were pruned in their dormant state will start the process of sealing the wounds. So I’m taking my cues and starting in on myself, again.

This last year has been recovering from years of hustling and trying to make ends meet. At the onset, the loss of income sent me into a depression. But that soon gave way to a peace, that I would be ok. And I have been. It gave me the opportunity to finally get my stress levels under control, learn some new skills, and work on my transition in my career track.

It’s also given me the opportunity to look at all the things that have been holding me back. I was able to take a hard look at what was an anchor dragging me backwards and what was pulling me forwards. Many of my clients fell off, and whether or not they will return post-vaccine is yet to be determined. But regardless, I will need to hold to my decision to let space go.

I’ve found, that when I make a decision that is truly for my benefit, either things move faster or they just naturally work. That was what happened with my decision to consolidate my space and let go of half of it. In my decision to fully let go of the space, I’ve been shown spaces that are open in supportive complimentary businesses and the other half of my business (coaching) has seen an uptick in client work and responsibility.

It’s also allowed me to get back to the spiritual realm of things. In the Irish Book of Invasions, the cultures that were of benefit to the land lasted longer than those whose goals weren’t of mutual benefit. And in that vein, I’m doing what I can for the land that I inhabit. Building steppes to keep the trees from eroding, controlled burns to build up the nitrogen in the clay and create soil. Leaving the leaves down so the butterflies and fireflies have ground cover to hibernate and hatch. Creating small pools for the dragonflies and pollen patches for the bees, hummingbirds, and other nectar drinking beings.

These are small steps for me, but in the long run it’ll get me back to me. Society has done a wonderful job of pulling me away from that person, and my struggle to get back to her has been exactly that. My hope, is that more people have realized how they’ve been changed from their core, and have had the opportunity of space to rediscover that person and emerge again.

Being vulnerable…

Note: Nothing in this post should be construed as me thinking the people who care about me don’t. This is just a note of where I am at mentally, in this moment, and how I feel/think about this placement.

I don’t have an inner circle anymore. I’m starting to accept that thought and my part in creating it. I’ve always felt more the outsider, everywhere, even in my family. I’m not sure how to move out of that frameset, but a goal of mine since the beginning of the forced solitude era has been to create a new one. And to start building the web that might make this one a little stronger and last even a little bit longer than the last one.

I hold no grudges in the why’s of it falling apart. I don’t force people to pay attention to me, talk with me, or wonder about me. Maybe I leave too much of the upkeep to them, knowing that my effort needs to increase, now that I’m not constantly chasing/recovering from work stuffs.

I think some of it also has to do with this idea of ‘reaching out’. Which I’m sure some folks, who know how to contact me, reading this will start doing. Which will create its own panic due to too many inquiries – and that statement will reduce it for those who decide not to because they don’t want to add to it. How’s that for a Catch-22?

But I guess, in all of this, it makes those memes of mental health useless. I honestly find them a little hypocritical, in that this is how folks slip through the cracks. If it weren’t for the car groups I’m part of, I honestly think I’d disappear from social media. As summer starts to peek out, the offer from a friend to kayak (not ready to go back to rafting with strangers) is definitely going to be taken up on weekends and days off. Car meet-ups can be back on the menu, and maybe I can create a local inner circle that involves sitting around fires and sharing those deep, vulnerable conversations that can only happen when the shadows rise and all pretenses can drop.

Breaking ground…

I was out working in my yard yesterday and noticed the first fruitions of Spring displaying to the world. Tiny daffodils in all their glory, waiting for the last frost wind.

I can feel it within me, too. My life prior to this last year was pulling me away from the core things that are important to me and the lessons I really should be focused on. But in the negative reaction of everything, my positive has been the spiral back to these things.

It doesn’t come without its own problems, as I have been forced to shift, work-wise. The shift itself is needed and something I’ve been wanting to do for a while but always figured I could build into it. Nature has shown me otherwise and I have been taken care of. It has also shown me a bad habit trait that I need to work on and have listed it as my ‘summer project’.

Namely, I have a bad habit of not focusing on the larger goal and am side-tracked by the ‘ooooohhhhh shiny!!!’ aspects of my car project. So the major things, like replacing mechanical parts that make it run get monetarily out prioritized by the ‘that’s a cool mod’.

Doesn’t help that I’m trying to get my financial house in order. Running my business this last year was not pleasant. I was in the process of a contraction that I had to support for the better part of a year, which drove it seriously in to debt. This last year, had everything continued as normal would have put me on even footing. But Nature didn’t have that plan. I am mearly a casualty in her strive to put us back in our place. As stewards, we’ve largly failed. What the every day person does is helpful, but unfortunately cannot negate what is being done in our name.

People rail about job loss, all because we want to maintain the status quo of our lives and not look at the other side of those who will be impacted by our choices. We don’t ask ourselves why we do the job we do and what benefit we actually provide in doing that job and to whom that benefit is bestowed. We also aren’t willing to look at the real sacrifice behind those benefits and whether or not it is given willingly and freely.