Happy Friyay friends– not sure about you, but I’ve been sliding into the holidays like a seal on a slip and slide in all its blobby slippery giant black-eyed cuteness making its way across the ice, calm, but cautious of any predators ready to pounce.
I find it funny that a seal comes to my mind as what I’m relating to most these days — feeling kind of blobby but owning it, at ease, and not fighting it in a way I used to.
Knowing my body has been changing the past few years — not in menopause yet (please God let that take its sweet ass time), but still something obviously happening, I’ve been on a strange range of wtf denial, to indignant anger, to exhausting frustration, to resigned curiosity — like how is this happening to me?
Having been a health and wellness coach for many years along with my passion for holistic healing and what I’d call a heavy focus on clean living and eating, all this change really threw me for a loop.
I believe the changes are primarily due to elevated and sustained stress over the last few years — lockdowns, vx and mask hysteria, kids social stress, moving, etc. it all accumulated in my body and as we’re shown in Bassel van der Kolk’s book — The Body Keeps the Score.
Yes, it certainly does, and I was no exception.
It all picks you up and shakes you around like a snow globe — but not like the nice relaxing, mesmerizing part of snow globes when they transform into a shimmering scene of fluffy white flakes floating down on the little town below in all their sparkly glory — but the initial vigorous, violent shaking part that precedes all this magic.
That is after all how you get the best, fully immersive and dreamy landscape to come to life. You shake shake shake the shit out of that globe, sending those glitter particles out of their familiar comfort zone into a chaotic sea of confusion where they hold on for dear life. Until… it stops.
The particles gather themselves, open their eyes, realize the shaking has ceased and they are free to let go and just…fall. Allowing themselves to just be in the glittery goodness of who they are.
Is the shaking gone for good? No, never. But sometimes the shaking is more excessive than other times. Either way, the metaphor of this growth process helps us to realize the gift in the chaos.
Maybe sometimes you just need a powerful shake in order to get to the glimmering goodness on the other side.
That’s the story I’m stickin to at least.
It takes time and much ongoing inner work especially when the shit show shake shake goes down, again (cuz it will). What’s helped me is knowing that it’s a natural part of our spiritual ascension, one we have to go through over and over again.
The good news is, as you go through it over and over again, kind of like Groundhog Day, you start to realize how you can do it differently and have less frustration and resistance around the whole thing.
You start to really understand why you’re so shaken up and why it all means so much to you, until you go through a bunch of shake ups, and you realize it really doesn’t.
Seeing it through this lens helps me let go of the “it shouldn’t be this way” arguing with reality to loving what is (per the beloved work of Byron Katie) so I can allow my sparkly lights to gently descend, seeing them for what they are and choosing my response to them, allow them, let them move through and move on.
From there, we can simply enjoy the ride.
Shake & Shine, friends,
xo Aim
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