The Underbelly of Urgency

Weeks 1, 2 and 3

Green lawn before me. Thick air around us. The warm summer wind blows in through the screen and flutters the napkins where I sit at a table. Is time standing still?

Cousin-love with wings, trying to write, lawn in the rain,

I watch myself in this moment at this Wisconsin lake house where I have frolicked at all ages, where my 7th birthday happened, where my same-age cousin Lolo and I used to giggle and whisper under covers about what women we would become, where my daughters and niece are now building a pillow fort after a long swimming day, where my 30-something vibrant cousins are currently “dual-screening” (and accepting my teasing and earnest questions about it) while they chat about dinner and cocktail fixings, where the Elders are circled up on the porch deep in politics and life and staying fit, where my Uncle just confirmed to all of us that our grandmother did indeed see a “flying saucer” in Texas when she was a new mother surrounded by tarantulas and snakes, where my beloved sister-in-law Val is lounging on the couch behind me as I marvel and soak up her current vitality amidst the hardest of cancers, where I am missing my Lolo who can’t be here, try as she did, where I noticed this late afternoon down-shift and turned toward work for the first time this week. Despite my own resistance. Truth: I forced myself to the computer. Additional truth: I did want to write you a letter about my 1,000 new awareness on my journey with The Walk. Third truth: Now I can’t. Not right now. I will find a more aligned container of time to write later. I have to get up and walk back into this moment instead of narrating it. It is too fleeting. I hear voices in the kitchen and that’s where I’m headed. More soon.

I’m back.

Back in Montana, back with you.

Words are spells.

I’ve been a student of The Question of Urgency my whole life. As a girl, I crossed my arms in the backseat of the car and plotted how to get the hell away from it. But it soon seeped into my own tissues and I got “all the things” done, became good. Then, building a business + mothering while recovering from postpartum depletion in a modern world consumed suddenly by the speed of technology tipped me right over the edge. Breathless, even as I laid in the hammock.

Is this familiar to you?

To be urgent has function, when it’s actually needed. A life with no urgency doesn’t even make sense. But chronic relentless urgency is a symptom of an imbalance—in a system, in a community, in a human body. Especially when it becomes so familiar it’s unrecognizable.

What will be written or said in the future about the Mythology of this Era?

These last few months, my body has begun to unwind (legit!) from urgency in a whole new way. It’s disorienting, unmooring, I am unmoored! I wonder: is something wrong with my brain, or is this sensation exactly right? I routinely ask my friends these questions. I feel like the witness and the experiment at the same time. This new growth can look sloppy.

In my most awkward teenage bird self moments, me to my children: “Girls, get your stuff, we have to go now! Um, actually never mind, you can totally relax. For 10 minutes. And then we have to mobilize. Relax all you want. Wait, actually there’s no time limit. I’ll just let you know when we have to go and you don’t need to worry about it at all. You have all the time you need to relax. For about 12 minutes.”

“Mom,” whispers my eldest, a laser who never misses a beat.

“Yes?”

“What do you actually mean by all that? I’m confused. By the way, I definitely don’t feel relaxed when you say all of that.”

It is confusing. I’m confused too. Is the human body evolving at faster pitch through all of our cells right now? I’m both a slow and wide whale in the ocean depths and a woman answering my own existential questions as quickly as I’m asking them. An insight that happens on Monday feels old and already integrated by Tuesday and on Tuesday I want to be in Tuesday, not back in Monday and not already in Wednesday. It’s hard to explain this because I want to explain myself less and less. My body bows me down at the altar of The Present. I become a devotee in a trance pressing yarrow flowers and wreathes of willow branches to my nose before I offer them. Time is faster than ever on the planet. I can FEEL the electric whoosh of it happening inside my cells. Bizarre. When something is happening, I am so eager to be there that I abandon all other obligations. When something is complete, I am ready to move on (usually)—tidy up, pack the bag, get on the train. Nothing holds. Nothing is linear. I feel less and less linear somatically. Nothing is certain. Is it me? Is it perimenopause? Is it this world stage moment? Is it actual time? Is it all of the above?

I keep asking spirit, “What is happening inside me? What is being shown to me?”

Opposites but maybe the same:

1. I have zero physiological tolerance or capacity for the fragmented life.

2. I am sensing the continual dissolution and creation of every micro-second.

I gaze at other humans and wonder if the same stirrings are happening inside them. On the outside, I still make lunches for my girls, pay my bills, hold circles and walk my dogs—but, damn, the inside is churning and changing beyond my own cognition.

What is being shown to each one of us? What is being shown to you?

All to say,

It’s been three weeks since I posted about my walking journey and I’ve started and stopped many a letter to you. It rises and then fizzles. “Don’t force it,” I tell myself, “don’t collude with the over-culture.” Go lie under a tree. Wait. It will come.

Today, at 5:25 am, it has come.

Here are some short notes my Walk process has already taught me about undoing urgency and perfectionism:

• In mid-June, I welcomed 15 former retreat attendees to my home for a retreat. Long story of how it came about. Absolute radiance and connection. Working with archetypes and mammals and stories and nervous systems. Very special. My plan: to walk 1-2 hours in the early morning before session everyday and sequester away every night to stretch before bed. Training! Well, that dissolved because my friend and colleague Saadia was staying with me and it was too delicious to stay up late talking with her on my couch. How could I not? By the end, I made the distinction that, though I was tired physically, my emotional body was sparkly and brimming and satiated. Sometimes they don’t match up. When everyone had left and my family and laundry and dinners and lists returned, I wobbled in the transition. I find safety in order. I was trying to establish order in my home. Saadia put her hand on my shoulder and cooed, “Molly go water the garden and I will tell the girls to go to bed.” I really lean on rhythm. Otherwise, the responsibilities feel like too much. It helps to have others around. Some days, are brisk. Others, a flop. Perfection is a fallacy.

• I have historically had a rigid relationship to food and exercise. Do it all or do nothing. In Wisconsin, the fam got into some deep 1am potato chip eating moments (yum!) and the next day group exercising happened. A joy. Not a punishment. I couldn’t partake in the runs and weights (pelvic floor not there yet) but I did what works for me and we all ended up sweaty and happy. Do it anyway. I could have very easily bowed out of exercise because chips don’t make my body feel that great or gotten sad watching all my cousins and my husband and my Aunt run laps up the hill together; my spirit is so there with them. But I didn’t. My past feast/famine pattern is getting more and more scrambled up (yes!) and reformed into a more sustainable way.

• I will not compromise on my health or relationships. The end. Non-negotiable. My intention at the family reunion was to find a connecting and quality moment with each person. There were 20 of us. It happened. I was where I was, not anywhere else. I was able to listen and learn and it was a balm for my soul.

Onward, upward, downward, backward, inward,