Just over a week ago, I had an energy reading with Limitless Megan. In 30 minutes, she validated everything my intuition had been screaming at me about 2013. It’s time to slow down, to simplify, to dream and vision and turn inward. To write and create and take extra-special care of myself. It’s a foundational year – one that the next decade can build on. I knew all this but it helped to hear it from someone else. This kind of turning inward can be scary, particularly when our culture values constant forward motion. We fear losing momentum…we fear floating in the unknown.
The next day in yoga we did a kriya (a set of exercises) for disease resistance. My teacher reminded us that sometimes getting sick is a necessary letting go. It can be what we need to release the old and make space for the new. Knowing my session the day before included a massive energy clearing, my inner warning bells rang loudly.
That afternoon my husband come home from his business trip with the flu. I ran to the health food store for immune boosters, nodding at the synchronicity of it all, fingers and toes crossed I could keep myself and my daughter healthy.
Sometimes we get sick because it’s the only time we allow ourselves to slow down. To clear the calendar and sink into the couch. To sleep as much as we need for a week, or read that 1300 page book, or stop checking email.
I found myself listening to my body’s cries for rest. As I did the dishes and made lunch and swept the pet hair off the floor and helped Ada, I noticed that all I wanted to do was stop moving and sit down. But I didn’t. I felt like I couldn’t.
Then the realization came. I was going to get sick because I needed to learn this lesson. I needed to clear the old and make way for this new year, this new way of being. My prayer became, Please let me coast over the top of this flu. Let me be sick enough to give myself permission to stop, but not so sick I can’t take care of myself, or my husband and child.
Everything I thought I could keep on my calendar canceled. My fever lasted 20 hours and the fatigue stayed all week. I got exactly what I prayed for. As I lay awake at night, my hand on my daughter’s burning body, I wondered, How can I give myself this space when I need it, without getting sick?
We’re all feeling better physically now. But yesterday at lunch, I started to cry. I don’t want to set the alarm on Monday morning. I don’t want to go back to stress and to-do lists and feeling 2 steps behind. To other people’s timetables and expectations.
Months ago I read a friend’s newsletter where she talked about needing a lot of blank space in her calendar. Time to stare at walls. She’s also prolifically productive, happily building her third six-figure business.
I need that time too, that space, and I can’t remember when I stopped giving it to myself.
There are big dreams wanting to be born. My soul is done waiting for me to be creative and the call is insistent. But I need to create the space first. I need time to stare at the ocean or the walls or the back of my hands. I’ve forgotten how to do this. I want to remember.
What do you need to create for yourself? What do you want to remember?
