“Hello, my name is Deborah, and I am a metaphor-bore!” I jest a bit, but it’s so very true. Anyone who has spent longer than an hour in my company, will know I have a mild - bordering on slightly compulsive - obsession with seeing things in nature that are symbolic of our inner lives. It’s the one of the most powerful ways I can make sense of my inner world and is at the heart of my teaching.
For example, I teach a lot about the power of transitions on my retreats and in 1-to-1 sessions, often using the metaphor of a snake shedding its skin - which by the way, is painful as hell, but necessary or else it will suffocate and die.
I teach this because I see SO MANY WOMEN who are having a reckoning with their life, which simply doesn’t work or feel good anymore. The busy career, the stuffed family life, being the one who ‘does it all’ with a terrible but persistent habit of putting happiness and meaning and rest on hold until a, b, c…..z happens (they leave school/uni, the next promotion, parents are taken care of). All the while feeling stuck – and not knowing how to move through into something that feels more real, more meaningful, more spacious, more joyful! When do we get to really LIVE?
I was on a long hike recently with a dear friend of mine. She was describing some issues she’d been having with hip pain and, having had her gait assessed, discovered she’s overworking her hips, and not using her ankles to move efficiently.
I stopped in my tracks as my body tingled with a truthy-truth being felt through my entire system. How often I’ve walked through my life lifting the weight of my whole leg – full of effort and hard work, determined and strong – which is powerful but ultimately exhausting. And how, at this stage in my life, I have no desire to power through like that – no desire to run at full pelt on all engines, but rather learn how to use smaller, more refined movements to take me along the path. I tried this out – pushing off my foot and using my ankles more during the hike, and like magic, there was less effort, tons of power AND a spring in my step which felt like a mini-turbo boost!
Yes, it’s this! THIS is how I’m curating my life these days. Editing out anything and everything that feels heavy – where the weight and cost (time, energy aka life!) just doesn’t make sense any more. Instead making space so I can breathe, I can pour myself into things that mean everything and have the space and time to IN-JOY the fruits of it all.
Anytime we’re out of alignment with the truth - when we deny what we really know, when ignore what we really feel - we end up in a great deal of pain. It can be psycho-emotional (anxiety, frustration, overwhelm or numbness) or physical (migraines, backache, trapped nerve). And if we don’t listen, it will be both. A part of us loves us so much it will poke to get our attention, saying, “Look here, this way! You’re going the wrong way!” As A H Almas said “…a part of you loves you so much that it doesn’t want you to lose the chance. It will go to extreme measures to wake you up, and it will make you suffer greatly if you don’t listen. What else can it do? That is its purpose.”
If your life is talking to you right now, if there’s pain you’ve been ignoring or pushing away, take a moment to pause. Sit with me here for a while, and listen in. Can you hear the quiet voice that knows what you must do? The voice that knows there’s more to this life than what you’ve been choosing. Can you hear the part of you that isn’t afraid – that longs to live in more freedom and is ready to dance with a new reality? Because it knows your life – your one precious life – is so worth it.
I hope you can join me sometime, somewhere along the path. I'd love to be your travelling companion so we can swap notes, tend to our sorrows and celebrate our joys!! Let the journey be a blast and surround yourself with folks who 'get it' - I wish that for you so much.
See you along the road my brave ramblers!
Go lightly, and always, ALWAYS with love
Deborah 💛