Spring is a reminder that winter doesn’t last, that it’s simply a season, and only one of four. It reminds us that after night comes day, that death is inevitable but there is new life and possibility all around us, all the time. In spring, the song of birds in the early light of morning returns, a shock after the quiet of winter. The grass starts turning green, trees begin to bud and the earliest of blooms open. Somewhere, there are eggs kept warm in nests and newborn kits in dens. We sit outside and turn our faces toward the sun, eyes closed as if in prayer. Easter is celebrated in spring, along with the Spring Equinox, both representing the renewal of life and a return to light.
It is the way it goes, this natural cycle of beginnings and endings. It feels like something you can trust. And yet, recently, things have gotten…weird. The reasons are clear but that doesn’t make it any less strange.
The week after Easter this year was filled with three days of earthquakes and “once in a lifetime” weather events, culminating with a total eclipse. It can be difficult to feel any certainty in the ongoing inevitability of life when the earth shakes, the winds are so strong, and the sky goes dark as night during the middle of the day. The next total solar eclipse will happen on August 23, 2044, 20 years from now. If I am here, alive and in Colorado, I still won’t be in the path of totality — immersed in total darkness in the middle of the day, the moon momentarily blocking the sun.
And yet, I feel swallowed by the whale like biblical Jonah or like I am experiencing the dark night of the soul in Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey. The years leading up to this one have felt like that, except rather than looking forward to release, rescue, or rebirth, it’s hard to imagine any ending where anyone is any version of “saved.” It feels a bit more like maybe there will at least be music and dancing as the Titanic sinks. There certainly aren’t enough lifeboats, so our choices are to be the musician or the dancer for as long as we have left.
“For human beings, the process of living stains us repeatedly with the grit of being here, with heartache and disappointment and the pointedness of being human, which can sicken us if harbored or make us whole if released. Again and again, we, more than any other life form, have this majestic and burdensome power to harbor or release the impact of our experience.” ~Mark Nepo
The chronic tension in my shoulders is a reaction to stress and anxiety, my body’s response to a rise of cortisol in my system, an ancient strategy to protect the neck and heart from harm. My body shrugs the shoulders up towards my neck and hunches forward to block my heart, to defend them from the teeth or knife of a predator. I do it without even thinking, without intending to, and so far, it’s a habit I haven’t been able to shake.
At first, to try and lower my stress levels, I took a close look at my environment. I set out to determine the people, places, or projects that caused me stress, and considered ways to mitigate their impact or get rid of them altogether. I stopped hanging out with people who made me feel bad. I left a few groups and lost a few friends. I quit my job, thinking that was the primary source of stress. I examined my habits. I stopped drinking alcohol, drank more water, took lots of naps, went to bed earlier, did yoga, and started meditating.
After a purge of what wasn’t working and implementing better habits, I considered the remaining chronic tension in my shoulders a body problem. Through body centered efforts, I thought I could process and release what I was holding, learn new patterns of movement that enabled more ease. I tried a mix of therapy, body work, and movement practices.
And yet, here I sit, seven years later, my shoulders still tight and aching.
“Like fallen leaves our memories cover our path until they are remembered out of existence, setting us free…Experience covers us over, and the expressive journey lets us come clean to the table of light.” ~Mark Nepo
Rather than finally figuring this out, finding a solution or “fixing” it, I’m remembering something I’ve always known. And that is: The way forward, for me, is to write my story, to tell it in a way that I can fully understand it, process it, free myself from it, and maybe even turn it into something that might help someone else.
I’ve been so sure that along with my teaching this meant writing a book, or even multiple books. I’m not giving up on that, but I’m realizing it can’t be the point, the goal, my whole life. If the book becomes the thing, then what does that mean if I don’t finish it, what does that mean if no one ever reads it, what does that mean for me once it’s finished – am I “done,” is that success? Then what, and so what? That can’t be it.
“But aren’t you already working on a book, Jill? Didn’t you say that a few years ago? Isn’t that why you haven’t been blogging as much?” Yes, yes, and yes. To be honest, I’ve been saying for more than two decades that I’m working on a book, and while I have been trying and efforting, starting and stopping and then starting over, after multiple drafts and attempts, I still haven’t finished it. Sometimes I feel no closer to finished than I did when I started.
A friend asked me recently how my writing was going. I tried to explain that it was a struggle, that as I worked, I was simultaneously doing other, deeper work that made it all so much more complicated. There’s so much I don’t understand, so much I haven’t reconciled about just being alive and it can be hard to know what or how to write about that.
It’s like what someone said about the only way out being through. I can’t get to the other side of this unless I write my way through it. Resisting the writing, the story, feels worse than facing it, and every moment I stay stuck feels like a little death. The objective then is to liberate myself from my own self, my own story, my own suffering. The intent is to be free. I hope I can figure out how to do that and that I still have time.
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 