Growing pains

I'm in the itchy phase of healing

My reading chair looking lonely

I haven’t read a book for pleasure in two months—highly unusual behaviour for me. The reason? I can’t focus. I’m lacking the inner peace and tranquility that reading requires. I kinda hate it when people bang on about how busy they are, especially if they treat it as a badge of honour—as if it’s a competition, and the winner gets to take home indigestion and a stress disorder. I’ve built my life to be un-busy, and I take great pride in that. However, I’m sorry to say: I’m in a busy season.

It’s the move, obviously, and everything to do with it. Our house stuff is done, but we’re also moving several buildings—my She Shed, three bird aviaries, and a barn—and it’s a lot. The to-do list is never ending and always growing, and it’s mentally, physically, and financially exhausting. There are all the usual hiccups and complications, made more difficult by the fact that we don’t have a landline yet and very poor cell service. We’re also in the process of getting the old place ready for sale, which is a huge undertaking requiring heavy machinery and a lot of elbow grease.

We are currently living in the part of the movie that’s usually shown in time lapse: the protagonist physically training for a big sporting event, or going through a hard time like a breakup, or being buried in exhausting work, all squeezed into two minutes before the story resumes at normal speed and the heroine emerges victorious. I wish we could fast forward through the messiness, but that’s not how life works.

But! Don’t, not even for a second, feel sorry for me! Every morning, I wake up in my new house filled with joy and gratitude. I’ve spent three years dreaming of this house, visualized living on this tranquil piece of earth halfway up the mountain, and seeing it all come to life in front of my eyes is the thrill of a lifetime. My soul belongs here—I can feel it in my bones.

As I shared last time, I’m also on the lowest dose of SSRIs I’ve ever been on, and I’m monitoring myself closely. Am I annoyed because of my medication change, or because that person/situation is annoying? It’s the age-old question, isn’t it.

My struggle right now is that I’m not as calm and serene as I’d like to be. On the contrary, I get pretty fucking mad, and I’m still in the process of reconciling it with my yoga practice, wanting to be non-judgmental, and figuring out how to show up in the world with kindness when I sometimes just feel like yelling at people to quit being so selfish and stupid!

Many wounds start to itch when they’re healing. I feel like that’s where I’m at right now: I know exactly where I belong and where I’m supposed to be going (for the first time in my life!), but it’s uncomfortable and sometimes irritating. It’s so much work, it requires faith and patience, and it’s just like the physical healing of a wound: raw and tender.

Part of healing is to recognize your nonnegotiable needs—the things, activities, and habits you need to make you feel whole. For me that’s enough sleep, a daily walk/hike, writing, connecting with loved ones, and making the space I occupy orderly, pretty, and calming. I’ve prioritized decorating our new space right from the beginning, painting some accent walls and putting up art and personal knicknacks, because surrounding myself with memories, photos, personal gifts, and trinkets I collected while travelling makes me feel grounded and loved.

I’m also trying to make my yoga practice and stretching part of my daily routine. That one is still a work in progress, tending to fall by the wayside when I can’t squeeze everything into the day. The old me would beat myself up for “failing”* , but the healing version of me is approaching my behaviour with curiosity and compassion instead of judgment:

Am I skipping my yoga practice because I don’t want to do it? No.
Am I skipping because it feels like yet another item to check off my to-do list? Yes.
Will my plate always be as full as it is right now? No.
Do I practice yoga in other ways (being mindful and present, taking breaths throughout the day, studying literature, thinking about it all the time)? Yes.

Is it “failing”* when we listen to our body and honour its boundaries? No, it’s not. On the contrary, that’s what yoga is about: using the body to discover the self.

Healing isn’t linear. It’s something my therapist reminds me of regularly, and I need the reminder, because I can’t help but think I already know all of this. Why is it still so fucking hard?

source

We’ll have to learn and relearn the important lessons over and over. That’s what I also love about yoga so much: it’s always a practice; we are never “done”.

That’s where I’m at right now: deliriously happy, grateful, exhausted, irritated, excited, blissed out, tender, tired, emotional, worried, exasperated, appreciative, open.

Beautifully, wildly, alive.

* I put “failing” into quotation marks because I don’t agree with the negative connotations it evokes. Failing is such a universal, common experience all humans share, that we should never see it as something negative. It’s just feedback that tells us that something didn’t work. I look at it as a lesson, nothing more.