Permission to Be Goo: Body of Wisdom Worm Moon
Our dryer is still squealing, and I have yet to buy a clock. If you’ve been reading my monthly emails, you’ll remember me writing about our squealing dryer in late autumn, and last month about my promise to buy a clock so I don’t need my phone to tell the time. I suppose I tell you how these tasks remain incomplete, unsolved, because it just feels right to let you in on my imperfect fumbling through this human life.
How is your to-do list doing these days? I can’t tell which is most true - if my to-do list grounds me helpfully in reality, if it’s an incessant burden, or if it's a list of all the things I get to do with this blessed human life.
Writing this email to you does not feel like an incessant burden. Ah, I am glad. Yet, it doesn’t feel easy. Amongst all the many things “to do,” I have become more fine-tuned over time in how I choose to invest my energy. When I started this commitment to writing a monthly email, the deepest intention I found was that I wanted it to feel like something I do for me. To be honest, writing these emails sometimes feels hard, like pushing something very thick and knotted through a few small round openings. Yet, it helps me. It helps me glimpse a sense of natural order, if for but a moment. And I think what results, is also art.
As February drew to a close, I became agitated, because life was full with an intensive CranioSacral training and the space to write remained elusive. My monthly processing through writing time delayed. And with so many other “to do’s” built up on the List, that irritation of an undone item began to linger.
Amidst the angst, I remembered my additional angst about the Gregorian calendar, and relaxed a bit as I played with the idea of timing my writing piece instead with the moon cycle. So March 14, and the full Worm Moon, it is.
Irritation, agitation, angst… these energies are part of my cycle, for better or worse. Part of what happens in the process of pushing the thick, knotted stuff through the little round holes into this neat and organized piece of artfulish writing. Sitting here, feeling the stuff inside start to move and take shape, back and forth between relief and then pregnant, somewhat angsty pauses of a blinking cursor and fingers poised to type, stilling their impulse while the words take their time to arrive.
I sure do wish it was all easier sometimes. Don’t you? Damn, being a human in general, but especially now is really hard. If you need to hear that, I gladly offer it to you. It is hard. There’s a lot of thick and knotted up stuff to try to make sense of, many many generations of it.
It feels like I am healing a lot, growing a lot, learning a lot. I feel and see the blessings in my life. And, it’s also kind of a dumpster fire out there right now and no one actually knows exactly what to do or how to navigate it.
I guess my loosely defined “strategy” is to keep riding the waves and see what my dharma has in store for me. In store for me to offer to others, to be of service. In store for me to receive. And in store for me to experience, from absolute joy and connection, to irritation around why it’s so hard and what I’m supposed to be doing, to everything in between.
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These current times for me, feel like they are transforming me, stretching me, and maybe clearing me out in ways I can’t yet understand. Maybe bringing me (us, the collective?) through a metamorphosis. Are we the caterpillar? The goo inside the cocoon? Pretty sure we’re not the butterfly yet. Maybe the caterpillar digging in its caterpillar heels refusing to surrender to the cocoon and the loss of the form it knows?
During my recent training, I experienced a moment of comfort. My healing journey and my work are founded in the belief that the body knows how to heal. And I thought - well what if that’s just how bodies are? All the bodies, even the collective body. Our collective body.
I’ve experienced LOTS of thrashing waves, and feeling squeezed through bottlenecks, and all kinds of uncomfortable sensations moving in and out of that cocoon of healing through these years. Let’s amplify that to the scale of our collective body, our community body, and that’s a lot of discomfort. If I can help, even a little, by accepting the discomfort of change within myself, maybe people out there somewhere thrashing against the Mystery may hear my whisper, and let go for a moment as we surrender to the cocoon.
This is all a big metaphor. I find myself often visiting these realms of metaphor, mythical story, and spirituality to help me navigate. They seem to bring some balance into the harshness of witnessing oppression, war, and the destruction of our planet.
Post shared by @thestorydoula and @storywork.studio
Metaphor opens me to letting go of things I may think I know, to holding many possibilities, and many people’s truths, and seeing how my own truth emerges. Helping me bear the discomfort which transforms me.
A poem that came, for how I experience this.
Balancing with outstretched arms
Longing, grasping, surrendering
Infinite truths rest and slip from my hands
Glimpsed perceptions of a consciousness
Untroubled by the Mystery
Settling, taut vibration of stretching capacity
Softening, landing in the songbird melody outside
Breathing, back to just being again
Returned a hairsbreadth more woven
Into the fabric of belonging
Riding these waves, I find the more resources I have available, the more the process yields clarity, insight, gratitude, and guidance around how to show up. Resources like:
Community
Rest
Supportive relationships with humans, animals, trees
Connecting with the land
Noticing my breath
Nourishing myself with nutritious food, water, sleep, walks, stretching, journaling, baths
Laughter, joy, music, art, play
Being resourced by the sun, the river, and art
And seriously, sometimes I really need to let myself be agitated, angsty, and irritated (the more I let myself have it, the less it comes out sideways toward the people I love). It always shifts to something more pleasant eventually.
One of my favorites is when my wife and I get to let ourselves have a Slug Day together. Those are the days we allow ourselves to feel gooey and sticky, proclaiming “why?!!?”, whining and oozing around until we spontaneously feel better.
May your Slug Days be fruitful, dear one. Until next time.
PS. I gave myself permission this email to leave out my usual sections Somatic Tool of the Month and Rooting in Ritual. What can you give yourself permission to do or not do?
Permission to be like a tree and touch the blue sky
Invitations into Offerings
I would love to weave with you on your healing journey. Here are some opportunities for our paths to cross:
Somatic Journey Toolkit - For folks feeling dysregulated and disconnected, who desire resilience, ease, and liberation from the stuck patterns in your nervous system, this course is designed to help you:
Feel more confident, at ease, and resilient in your ability to regulate your nervous system and emotions
Feel more free, having shed layers of stuck emotions and survival energy
Feel more authentic and connected to your needs, emotions, and desires with a stronger, more stable, embodied sense of self
3/18 Sacred Sisters Circle: Clear Communication - We will explore our own communication styles, what blocks us from saying what we want and need. Then we will dive into the beautiful art of Non-violent Communication and how we can apply it in our own lives! There will be lots of time to connect in community and test out your leveling up of communication skills! *Facilitated by Beccah
4/1 Sacred Sisters Circle: The Power of Pleasure & Joy - Join us as we rediscover the simple yet profound ways pleasure and joy bring aliveness into our lives. While exploring shadows and unraveling old conditioning are essential parts of healing, so too are the moments of delight, play, and enjoyment. We will awaken our senses with simple pleasure practices, move freely in joyful expression, and lift our voices in song—allowing sound, movement, and presence to guide us back to ourselves. *Facilitated by Amanda
1:1 Somatic Coaching - Let’s center your body and nervous system as anchors in your healing and personal growth. I help people who want to spend less time living in survival mode and are ready to shed the accumulated lifetime of stress and conditioning and come back home to their hearts and bodies.
Post shared by @wisdom.weaver
