The Pause. For Mindy.

(I will be reading all our weekly prompts in an uncurated circle, so I thought I'd read to you here too. Huge bundles of love and thanks to Mara for teaching me how to record and share them.)

.......

"Can you talk more about the pause you mention here?"
.......

Many months ago when the pain was so intense I could no longer numb it or fight it, I paused. Literally, I paused everything and just sat in it. I felt really boring not trying to fix or figure out or question. Really boring.

Just paused.

I was confronting my painpoints. Being in them. Feeling them.
.......

I'd like to tell you it was a sacred time carved out to heal.

It wasn't. It was this place where desperation and fighting against met acceptance in a way I had never experienced before. 

I believe that surrender is the intersection between acceptance and change.

The pause was the space between pushing the pain away and the next iteration.

The pause was my discovery that I could sit inside of huge amounts of discomfort and not try to change it.

The pause is where I discovered the practices that would become an uncurated circle.

It was an accident. And incredibly on purpose in some woo-woo-Universal-divine timing-you gotta feel it woman-kind of way.

I had spent the last five/six years (OK, the last part of my life) trying to fix everything that could be seen as broken. Myself. My marriage. My choices. My flaws. My body. My heart. My addictions. My lover. My diet. My mistakes. My wardrobe. My hair. 

Because I am good at it. Figuring it out. Finding a plan. Putting that plan into action. I hit a painpoint and boom, I am off into the land of discovery. I research. Gather my tools. Get crazy ideas. Rearrange my everything in a manic attempt for change. 

I will find the problem, explain the problem, find data to support solutions to the problem. 

And it is a wild beautiful ride of figuring shit out. The downloads. The higher voices. All there.

One step was missing. Because the things that were broken didn't go away, they recirculated. Then I'd be off on the ride of figuring them out again, explaining, finding data, mixing logic with emotion, the high of seeing something so clearly.

The pause. What was different in the pause?

No figuring out. No fixing. No solutions. It was the most pure amount of truth in feeling I have been inside of. It sucked.

It was more uncomfortable than I have words for. It was acceptance on a cosmic level. Acceptance for shit I had been pushing so hard against and trying to change like it was my life purpose to change them. 

The high of the fix. The data. The creative solution. The high of change. The living inside of the what comes next fix. The talking and talking and talking. Fighting and fighting and fighting.

Paused.

In the pause I let myself feel exhausted. Sad. Bored. 

I felt a truth that wasn't only mine, it was the sensuality of a truth I wasn't trying to fight against. It was beautiful there. 

The rest just happened.

I'm still integrating it.

I created a year long circle of women around it.

I am pretty sure if Spirit and I were chatting over mushroom coffee she would say this is what it has all been spinning towards.

It started with kindness. Could there be a more amazing way to begin?

Wanting it. Feeling it. Making choices because of it. It was about understanding myself and others in new ways that lifted me up without the high of the fix. The solution. 

It became about discovery, which is what my work had been teaching me for years. The small surprises that sweep in and create your next iteration and you can't believe it was that thing that brought you to this place. The simple choices. The guiding words. 

Feeling it before the desire for fixing it came on. Lingering in small discomforts that added up to magic. I had an intuitive tap in. A template of my own self. A ritual of becoming that was ridiculously kind. Within a month of the practices that came from the pause I was witnessing my relationship transforming. My body was physically changing. 

I was eating more. I was speaking my truth more. I was choosing clothes that were more me inside of this kindness iteration. I was taking space in my own life with a gentleness of choice.

I was becoming again. I was being seen. 

.......

Thank you Mindy for asking this question of me, for wanting to know more. Thank you for asking so that I can continue the practice of being seen especially when I am feeling fear, again, around creation.

Thank you for reminding me that stories matter. Matter so much. Heal so much. Bond us so much.

Thank you for the prompt of a question that brings me back to the truth that healing happens in community. Healing is community. A cry for the love of a circle, the ones who say, I feel that too. A longing for story to fill in the spaces that feel alone. 

None of this on purpose. And all perfect. Becoming again. In circle. For a year. Together.