Hello and happy summer!
It’s been ages since I’ve managed to sit myself down and write. Quieting myself and settling into stillness are not strengths of mine, but I am working on it.
My kids have been away for four days, it’s 6:30pm, and this is the first time I’ve really sat and felt settled since they launched. Me thinks it’s not them that causes the whirring frenzy, perhaps, but me. That is good data. And, also, each day presents a new day to practice.
It’s funny because I vaguely remember vowing to myself in those pandemic months that brought the world to a stand still that I’d bring forward into my future life the lessons I learned then about finding quiet (inside me as much as around me) and saying no sometimes to preserve open spaces on my calendar. How quickly old habits return and suddenly life is leading me again versus the other way around.
Today, in this moment, though, I have found my way to quiet. And I am celebrating the calm that is washing over me, even now as I write.
To close I am sharing a poem that resonated deeply with me when its author, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, read it aloud to our writing group last week. I have turned to these words daily since. I hope they resonate for you as well.
Take a deep breath in….and then blow it out. That always, always helps. If only I can remember to do it.
How soon I seem to have forgotten
how to be still, how to not plan,
how to step out into the day
and let the world itself write
the story of how a morning becomes
an afternoon becomes a night
becomes a woman.
How soon I seem to have forgotten
the value of not doing,
the gift of unscheduling,
the blessing of dipping my toes into the stream
of no time, then wading in full body,
where I remember I am part of an infinite story
at the same time I relearn how fragile it is,
this life.
How soon I forgot I could change it all.
Even now, I could be still again.
I could choose silence.
Even now.
Put Your Own Oxygen Mask on First 