shedding. trusting. growing

There’s a natural deciduous effect we all go through, many times throughout our lives, our months, our days, our breaths. Where we shed. Where we release. Where things seemingly fall off us, slip out of our ordinary, wilter and die.

There’s a grief in that. Letting go of something that once was. And that once sustained us in some way.

I have been playing around with the words ‘letting go’ for the last few years. Noticing the blunt, rugged, textured sensation it creates in my body. Creating expectations of efforted removal. The words ‘letting be’ always created a more spacious feeling for me, that relaxed my shoulders down my back body and reminded me I was breathing. The letting be of things naturally wanting to play part in the cyclical rhythms of the universe. That will leave 🍃 when the phase is complete, all nutrients have been absorbed and it’s time to offer itself in its death to the new growth.

Some of us might feel we need to rush this process. To shake our trunk, rip off leaves, cut down branches. Leaving open wounds, bleeding, without the right resourcing to grow in replacement yet, in the wrong season.

And in the same breath, some of us might feel reluctant to allow this unfurling. Scooping up dead leaves and trying to glue them back onto the branches with the sap of their grief.

My eyes dart up from my laptop as I write this, to follow the flash of electric blue whizzing past. They land on the attractor as it lands on the hammock. A dragonfly. I have never seen dragonflies around here in the 3 months I have lived here. As I write about change. Transformation. Rebirth. Renewal. Cycles...

Of course.

And it’s just like that.

That’s it.

To allow ourselves to be absorbed in the presence of what is here now. A wider glance than the forward motion trajectory we think we are meant to be on. To help us remember we are part of a wider body with an intelligence, growing and breathing us into connection.

I dream of this remembrance. Where we embody the trust that there is an ancient rhythm, a timeline thundering along under the souls of our feet, deep beneath the soil, and reverberating off the curves of our stars.

Where we make space for the cycle to be as it is. For us to seemingly, get out of the way, and allow. And by us, I am referring to our conscious mind, the fabulous sense-making-logic-analyzing-thought-creating-miracle that is our mind. Who tries to control and adjust the timeline to what is “suitable”.

It’s hard. I get it, you know. The fullness of our life, perfect rows of order and shoulds. We could marry ourself to this, just like the majority. Until our body’s offer us an expression of our truth we can’t ignore, beckoning our awakening to the steady river of knowing, flowing under foot.

A throbbing force began to pulsate from my upper back right gum. Drumming for my awareness. I cup the sole of my hand against my cheek in acknowledgment - There is definitely something trying to come through here. Something pushing for attention. There is movement happening. In eyes wide realization, the pain of my jaw signals that its arrival doesn’t have a clear path. Rows of teeth all intricately stacked, blocking its natural momentum. My wisdom tooth was trying to come through and there isn’t enough space in my gums for it to… There’s some wisdom trying to come through and there isn’t space for me to see it…

In the discomfort of my shedding the last month, the dental extraction of blockages, I felt the exposure to the cold of the unknown. My tongue tasting the new nubs, attempting to familiarize the unfamiliar.

And in this process, I began to see with a sideways rested glance what was already here. To trust in the innate capacity my body has to be with the curls and unfurls, the waxing and waning. To adjust. To always be able return to homeostasis, to home. Just like the Earth. That needs the variety and diversity of biota in order to achieve equilibrium. We need the cyclical variety, we need the diversity of bacteria within us to be with our experience.

Strengthened through the reminder of an external belief delivered to me under fluorescent white lights: “it is an open wound, you will get an infection so you need to have antibiotics”. I smiled and trusted in the beat of my knowing, this capacity we all have to resource ourselves in change. The acknowledgement that vulnerable exposed parts of us need to experience range in order to learn how to regulate.

So I said no thank you to the prescribed fear and antibiotics and surrendered to the intelligence of my body.

Again.

Again, I devoted my intentions to nurturing and empowering the capacity we all have to be the medicine. That health is actually a measure of our capacity to heal. Heal-th. To be able to go out of balance, and return to equilibrium. I organized my priorities to give my body the conditions it needs in order to be able to return to wholeness.

And so it is.

A wonderfully healed socket. 

And a space for me to follow the path that is flooding to fill it.