“I Can’t Relax”
If there was ever a picture that could say a thousand words, it’s this one. I took this picture at 10:36am this Thursday morning in the midst of my morning ritual practice when I recognized the story I wanted to tell with it.
On first glance it may seem inconsequential that I was sitting on the couch in my office wrapped up in a blanket drinking tea and reading at this time. “Well that’s nice” may appear the appropriate response to the fact that I was surrounded by plants and four candles too. But the truth is that these things are extraordinary. They are the splotches on the canvas of my painting entitled
“One Extraordinary Woman Saves Her Life”.
Before I read I did yoga, and before that, I said a meal chant and ate my breakfast. Before that, I went through the morning routine of getting my son ready for school, and I also drew him a picture and snuck it in his lunchbox. Before that, I lit candles, offered incense, practiced meditation and recited a taking refuge chant. Before that, I made my bed and before that, it was 7:00am and I was waking up.
In that time frame, I did not check my email. I didn’t wake up late, get flustered, and rush myself and my son out of the door. I didn’t check social media or anything else on my phone. I didn’t turn my computer on when I got to the office and launch into emails or work tasks. I didn’t clean anything up, even though I recognized at least 20 things that needed to be tidied. I didn’t act on the tasks that were popping into my head that needed to be done. I wrote them down.
All of those things I used to do in the morning, not by choice, but by a felt sense of obligation. I have felt driven for as long as I can remember. Always needing to accomplish, do, do, do, more, more, more. I told myself I would be able to relax if only I could take care of these things that needed my attention. But that was bullshit. I could never get to the finish line of those things. When the brakes finally came on, there was no contentment, no peace. There was exhaustion and stress about how much was left undone.
I couldn’t relax.
I couldn’t relax to the point that I didn’t even realize how tense I was. I didn’t have a reference point for what it looks and feels like to move through the world with a joyful, light heart.
I couldn’t see myself. I couldn’t recognize the life that has been burning inside me, desperate to find a way to find expression all these years. I didn’t know what it felt like to enjoy the rapture, the pure delicious rapture of just being alive. I didn’t know how it felt to love my life with total abandon.
I couldn’t feel the beauty flooding and bursting through the seams in every moment.
I couldn’t understand why I was in such severe gastrointestinal distress. I couldn’t feel the contraction in my belly. I didn’t understand why I became seriously ill out of nowhere.
I couldn’t rest. I worked myself to the point of having to take medical leave from my job out of sheer desperation because I could not go on. Even after that, I filled my schedule. You see, I couldn’t relax. I didn’t know how to be still long enough to let life in. It felt scary, overwhelming.
Encountering the raw power of the unadulterated life force reminded me of the helplessness I felt so many times during my traumatic experiences, but I couldn’t see that because I kept moving so I’d never have to confront this truth.
I was not here. I left myself long ago to manage the pain of the gaping wounds inside of me, right here, right now, that I didn’t have any salve to put on.
I wasn’t here with you. And I wanted to be. I needed to be. I longed to belong with you, to see all of you as my family, as my mother, my father, my sister, my brother, my child. I have been alone in my pain for so long. I really needed you there with me, but I didn’t know how to find you.
I wanted to feel safe, to know this body as my home, as my protector and nurturer.
It amazes me how stunningly obvious something can be and yet how oblivious we can be to it, for years!
My unresolved trauma has been calling to me for attention for so long. Only in the last several years have I learned how to listen well enough to hear it loud and clear and begin to respond in a deeply healing way.
Recently, this has looked like creating morning, late afternoon, and evening rituals to keep me connected to my spiritual practice throughout the day so that I can be here to open to and rejoice in the one precious life that I’ve been given — so that I can learn to feel safe and connected when I relax.
And this is the story that my sweet, unassuming photo tells, one of impeccable beauty, of the courage and devotion and immense strength that it takes —
to give ourselves the space for the rituals that nourish our souls and call us back to life,
to open our hearts again,
to be still enough to let life peek through the curtains and creep inside our rooms at night,
to allow life to flow through our bodies unmediated by thought,
to love again,
to become innocent children of the Earth again,
to give ourselves to rest and play,
to surrender to the vastness of the universe,
to love ourselves without holding back,
to see who we are when we do nothing,
to step into our power and feel the immense anger that has been trapped inside a being too vulnerable to say NO,
to deeply, genuinely claim our passions and express them,
to long for belonging,
after many years of being deeply wounded and traumatized, especially by other human beings that we have loved, some of them, with all our hearts.
My story is not mine, however. It doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to all of us. And this is why I’m sharing it with you.
It’s not my fault. It’s not your fault. It’s not my parent’s fault or your parent’s fault. Or their parent’s.
I can’t relax because a piece of the collective trauma of our human ancestry was passed down to me. I can’t relax because of the pain of our collective Earthly existence that has not received the love, care, and protection needed to heal yet. I can’t relax because our ancestors haven’t been able to relax.
I am learning to relax so that I can Return Home, to life, to love, to my body, to you, to my son, to the birds and rivers, to my natural radiance and wisdom, to my passions and gifts.
More than that, I am learning to relax so that I can help others return home with me, and so that my son and all the beings that follow in our family lineage never have to leave home.
