My Souls’ More
For the past two and a half years, I’ve been consciously downsizing my life to make more room for what really matters to me. It’s been a process of many steps to both explore ways to tangibly put this into practice and help decondition my pattern of constantly setting goals, planning, working, doing and achieving. It’s not that these skills aren’t or weren’t important, but my soul was calling for less — or more — depending which way one looks at it. More space in between all the work, time to pause and be present in my day, more time with my loved ones, for my inner state to be calm, flowing and at times still.
I have no problems with doing. I’m hard wired for it from years of it, and I’m very good at it. Twenty-six years ago I married a man from tribe in Africa with no formal education, passport or way to support us. In order to be together, it was quite literally all on me and I took on this challenge with vigor. This meant I worked in Canada to save enough to go to Kenya and live with him until the money ran out and I’d repeat it all over again. Five years into our relationship we moved to Canada and for the seventeen years we were married, his larger income went to our daily living and my smaller income, went to all the extras. There was always a plan and I was always saving for something — buying our first home, trips for him to go visit his family in Kenya, trips for us to bring our children to visit his family in Kenya, and adopting our daughter from Ethiopia. Looking back on all this, it’s not lost on me that I chose the hardest path possible. It was as if some inner force was propelling me to choose and even create situations that required me to work harder and do more. Not a year went by where I was just living solely for what was happening right in front of me. “Someday I will have time to rest” I told myself, meanwhile making plans to do more.
When I became a single mom 9 years ago, my skills at planning and doing supported me to buy my husband out of our house, take on the mortgage on my own, build a successful business, support my kids on one income and even have room for extras like professional development trainings, family travel and trips with my lover. This was all good, and yet in all the planning, rushing and doing, I began to notice a feeling of misalignment within me. I was supporting clients with connecting to what was authentic for them in their life and intimacy, while at the same time, rushing from session to session with little to no space in between to be present to the voice in my own body saying that something wasn’t right for me. When did the work that I love so much start to feel like work? In my “down time” I often felt overwhelmed and frustrated by tasks of daily living that were stacked on top of each other every weekend. Was it all necessary I wondered? Maybe at one point it had been, but at some point it just became my normal.
This summer we took a trip back to Kenya to visit my children’s family who had cared for me as a young, nineteen year old woman so many years ago. I felt like a shroud of shame was covering me from my divorce, and was terrified of being rejected by them. Would I see blame and anger on their faces for initiating the end of my marriage? As the days led up to our visit I felt resistance build in me to go, as if my legs were knee deep in mud. I tried to find reasons to delay and still — the day arrived. As I walked towards the village surrounded by three of my children and my new husband, I saw the colored cloths of the women’s dresses stand up and move towards us. The sounds of the women crying brought up the tears in me as I ran into their open arms. We cried and hugged — my hands feeling behind them to touch the small, round heads of their babies on their backs. Finally stepping back to look at them, I saw in their eyes acceptance, love and family.
As the days went by we caught up, laughed, told stories and talked about the divorce — how worried they were and had no way to contact me. I told them about my shame and subsequent regret at how it kept me away and from contacting them for so long. Slowly, I felt the shroud of shame loosen it’s grip and fall from me, landing like a thud on the dusty, dry ground below. When the dust settled, I was surprised by how much weight that seemingly small shroud carried over me and how it had — even with all it’s heaviness — acted like a propeller pushing me to do and achieve and prove that I was enough. I realized this shame was there like an appendage throughout my teen years and early adulthood, guiding my decisions even before my divorce. It was fed by the endless pursuit of trying to be enough and, because nothing ever felt like it was, it was fed well. This shame had been a part of me for most of my life and yet strangely, in that moment, I felt more me without it.
The weight of the shroud gone and my propeller now quiet, a distinct feeling of stillness, ease and space has replaced it. In an effort to support this feeling in my body to become my norm, I’ve set a goal for the next year of working less and having no goals. 🙂 Nothing that requires, steps, planning and saving. If things come up that I want to do, I can do them if I have the means. If doing them would take me out of this feeling of stillness, ease and space, or require that I work so much it becomes a chore, I won’t do them.
In this stillness, ease and space, I can feel my souls’ more.
