Being with it all

Exactly one year ago, I was beginning MY last week of living in Colorado. I was one week away from leaving so much in my life behind to set off on a new and unknown adventure.

Honestly, I was a wreck that entire week. As much as I knew it was what I needed, it hurt to leave a life I loved so dearly. I was happy, sad, anxious, excited, overwhelmed, content, and just about every other emotion that is possible all at once.

Today my body remembered. Today I woke up feeling light and free but then felt wave after wave of so many different emotions. I was confused at first, having no idea why my energy would swing from high to low within an hour. Then I went back to see where I was in my life a year ago and it all made sense.

That is something I do quite often these days. If I am a bit perplexed about what my body is feeling in a moment, I start to get curious. My curiosity almost always starts with seeing if anything big happened on this day in the past. Almost every time I check, I was going through something intense or having big feelings on this exact day in the past.

Our bodies remember more than we can comprehend. It is a type of intelligence that we write off far too often. But I am doing my best to learn the language and expression of my body. I study her as often as I can. In some ways, I have become a student of myself, and it has been incredible.

This remembering of a year ago made me travel back in time, to the person I was just a short time ago. My world was shifting in massive ways. I was letting an entire life that I had so lovingly built fall away from me. It was the first time in my life that I felt like leaving a place wasn’t running away. And if you know my history, that was a big deal!

In ways, this entire year has been built upon this foundation of not running away but rather being with. A year of traveling and not working sounds dreamy and fantastical. It sounds like only fun and adventures. And in many ways, it could have been. I could have ran away from facing everything this year. But I did anything but that.

Every time I lost myself in traveling, my soul rudely pulled me back to awareness. This was not a year to escape. I did not want a break from reality. I was driven to seek answers even though I wasn’t quite sure of the questions yet. And to be honest, I am still not sure what questions I am answering.

My yoga teacher said something back in June that threw me. I can’t remember his exact words but he essentially said, “we don’t seek to find answers, we seek so the questions disappear.”

In an unexplainable way, I never fully knew the questions I was attempting to answer this year. But I no longer feel an insatiable urge to keep asking. I feel satisfied in a way I cannot fully express.

This year has been so full of lessons and experiences. I have challenged a lot of deeply held beliefs and carefully deconstructed them. I have leaned into discomfort while learning to stay centered. I felt my way through the landscape of this reality and revealed hidden worlds. All while also escaping the world a little bit too.

But one of the biggest lessons of this year as a whole has been this getting to know my body. I have been able to take the space, find the energy, and be quiet enough to truly listen. I know more about how my body prefers to operate in this world than ever before. I can hear the whispers of every part of my being in beautiful ways. I can catch the warning signs before a storm much easier.

I believe this type of understanding is transformational. I can never unlearn this new found ability to listen to my body so clearly. I can’t ignore the nudges of my inner knowing and push through anymore because I know it will always lead to a dead end. Society trains us out of this knowing so young, so to come back to it feels like a deep remembering.

This past week in Guatemala has reminded me how much I have grown and changed through the year. I have been traveling solo and taking Spanish lessons this week, two things that require a lot of energy. The gentleness that I have shown towards my self through it all has left me in awe.

Rather than do all the things, running around the city and exploring everything I want, I’ve moved so slow. I have intentionally made only one plan a day. Some days it is just picking one restaurant I want to try. This ability to choose what I am doing depending on how my body feels is a gift. One that I wouldn’t have offered myself in the past.

When we move too fast and do too much in this world, we drown out our inner knowing from speaking up. If I didn’t slow down and give myself space today, I wouldn’t have known why I was feeling a bit off. If I didn’t listen to my inner knowing, I would have become frustrated with the mixed emotions I was sensing. I am grateful that I no longer spiral down this path as often anymore.

For me, it took nearly a full year off to recalibrate my system. And that was after over five years of similar work on a smaller scale while still participating in daily life. I guess what I am saying is getting to know our bodies takes time. Intentional time of being with, not more running away from.

Life is always handing us opportunities to learn and grow. If we don’t make space for it, we will miss it. I am immensely grateful that I have learned to be with everything rather than run away. I know every part of my being has shifted over this past year, and I am slowly putting the puzzle pieces together and beginning to see the whole picture.