Do you have an eddy?

Down I went

It happened to me last week. Predictable, at this point. Preparing for a work '“push” during a very full season in general + anticipation around a hard unknown. Boom. In the middle of “getting it all done,” down I went, like a balloon losing air, until I landed first under a tree with my dog’s jowls hanging over me, then on my bed, then standing in front of the fridge realizing I hadn’t procured the food I wanted for my precious children or my precious family or my precious me, nor had I finished any of my work, also precious to me, then the cascade of overwhelm around how to let one thing give when it’s all so precious to me.

Get down, stop and get down. I knew it would take 24-48 hours to metabolize. Maybe that’s part of the middling age—knowing and trusting the mood will eventually end.

I have to befriend my computer everyday or else; celebrating my perimenopause curls; beautiful word I saw from my friend Blair, a camel my daughter Eula drew for The Loam, taking Bo on her "last month of being 7 yrs old" overnight; trying to explain my collapse on my bed in a video (b/c I thought that would help me, nope) that I never did anything with...

I sent a long teary voice text to a fellow entrepreneur mother friend who loves her family and work as much as I do: how do I do this kind of life again, shouldn’t I know after a decade, please remind me? I put myself to bed with my eye mask and ear plugs and weighted blanket early. Chris added my share of domestic responsibilities to his share (how do single parents do it?). I spiraled into feeling guilt for being supported by my partner when so many people aren’t. Once I crawled out of that pit, I said no to my children a lot. Cue: a few bouts of more guilt + guilt for even being a woman who still has guilt (bah, boring). Then being gentle with my judger self. Instead of waking early at 5am to strength train (hi mid-40s), I stared at the dark ceiling with my hands holding onto my hip bones as if they were the joy sticks of an airplane controller. One of my mentors encourages me to “go limp.” Okay, fine. So there I stayed, under a camel-colored wool blanket, waiting and waiting and waiting, what I’ve come to call, “hanging in the eddy,” swatting away the reality of pressing work deadlines come and gone and the expected consequences. Waiting some more, until… my second born arrived in my bed, sick and unable to go to school, and then I really gave it up, wrapped my arms around her and then… thank the sweet great Elk Spirit of the sky and earth, a subtle, sparkly, gold-ish movement began in my head, like a serpent made of stardust. This, I knew! A familiar sensation of how life force shows up in me. It was faint to start. I paid attention and followed it and eventually, an hour or so later, my feet found the ground and I began the day. Not with a cartwheel, not with force, but with a slow and buttery willingness.

That whole scenario was a win.

I’m unlearning muscling, the brawn energy that has no care for the cost. You know. Wouldn’t it be easy to prove (calling all scientists) that muscling more often than not backfires? You might achieve the "‘outcome” but at great expense—short term or long term.

How about you?

The no longer wanting to override in the face of overwhelm is in the Zeitgeist, or at least “a” zeitgeist somewhere. People are reaching for slow but the irony is that our collective nervous system set-point is so fast that anything “not fast” feels painfully slow, or we have demonized fast when actually fast is an important speed on our dial too. We simply need access to all the speeds. We have almost no access to slow.

It’s likely that if you are reading this newsletter you are 1) a highly sensing human for whom the modern world can feel both magnificent and like too much AND 2) you aren’t willing to abandon the world or the causes or purpose.

Enter: The Bind.

How do we live, what do we do? You probably know that experts say that anything experienced as “too much too soon too fast” creates trauma in a body. How do we listen to ourselves in a world that is categorically and unprecedented in it’s too much too soon too fast?

I believe there is a way. I believe we are unwinding this together. I believe it requires what Resmaa Menakem calls “culture building.” If we are changing the way together intentionally that new way of being is held up by a net.

That is what I love doing best.

I’ve run a virtual community of 100+ vibrant people for the last three years.

If you are a person invested in evolving yourself and offering your particular spark to the world (teeny, tiny, small, medium or large circles) for the greater good, then, yes, you are a change-maker. And that is who I support—you, so that you can do your change-making in this saturated and noisy and expansive era without losing yourself, so that I can too.

It’s called The Loam.

It’s magic in there. If you are curious, check it out. Doors open on Dec 11th. We begin our 4th year on Winter Solstice.

People get traction. People are transforming into deeper self-connection. Can you identify your impulses, do you know what kind of rhythm works for you, where does art come in, do you know your own sensations map ?

From the inside out, as opposed to through strategy, the way most of us have been raised and socialized.

Substack is my art space, not my marketing space; therefore I will mention The Loam 1-2x more times. The webpage has all the info—if you are on my Mailchimp mailing list you’ll receive more detailed stories and emails about it, but not here. Though I am descended from many charismatic sales people, I would rather do almost anything than sell myself or my work. It burns for me. I am born to be facilitating circles, not trying to bring the people to the circle. But so it is. I have chosen and made this career and—alas—it involves sales.

So, do you have an eddy?

Do you have a way to access the eddy?

Do you have a group of people who can help support this in you, who you can learn from and share with and test the waters amongst? If not, please find one—whether it’s with me or elsewhere. The historians, or rather the grandmothers, know that gathering is the surest way to accessing the wholeness.

Internal whispers carry the way forward.

Let’s find a way to listen,