I’m doing deep and uncomfortable dives over here, in my inner life, to ready myself for the leadership that’s calling me (splashes of this process are showing up on my Facebook page). And as I do so I’m struck by what feels to me like the cradling in this sketch.

There is a wholeness to this process we’re all in – this process of experiencing so much (ache, challenge, growing pains; joy, connection, victory, light) on internal and external fronts. I can’t prove it, and wouldn’t press the idea onto anyone who’s in a dark night.

But I feel it. I feel the weave of darkness and light being somehow inseparable. Somehow part of our healing and of some long, mysterious process of being set free.

+ + + + + +

This week’s give-away will happen Sunday afternoon. Comment here by Sunday at 12 noon Pacific Time to be entered to win a 5×7 of today’s sketch.

Update: Comment #4 is this week’s sketch winner (generated thanks to random.org). Congratulations, Lindsey! Shoot me your mailing address and I’ll drop it in the mail.

Tweet

Maybe living in your flow will look nothing like you thought it would.

Maybe it will mean letting go of something that feels safe right now. Or holding that more lightly.

Maybe it will mean saying yes, for a time, to something that seems unexciting and mundane.

Or the opposite! – maybe it’ll mean finding fairy dust (or some comparable thing) in unexpected places and actually nodding a “yes, this, too. This TOO!”

But no matter the details, your flow is the experience of not resisting the Life that wants to flow through you.

The gifts.
The opportunities.
The healing.
The power.
The creativity.
The emotions.
The work.
The relationships.
The play.

It’s not tensing constantly up in the face of it.
Or building walls around your heart or mind against it.
Or drinking to stay numb to it.
Or pouring your hours into that Facebook-email-Twitter-Pinterest loop.

Finding your flow is living the life you ultimately, beneath and above and surrounding all your fears, want to live. And in a real way, too. Not a touched-up for the masses, scripted like a movie way. A real, beautiful, gritty, sometimes wholly inarticulate, unpolished way.

THAT life.

That YES.

That, oh-my-god-we’re-all-benefitting-from-your-existence flow.

I so hope you find that! I’m giddy at the thought! I have this image of us all dancing our flow like that hippo above.

And here’s the surest route I’ve discovered to finding it: some important, I’ll-know-the-nature-of-it-when-I-see-it type of surrender.

This is all so current for me, too – such a current surrender and dawning of a new kind of flow.

I’m here to be as big of a support as I can be as you seek to find yours, as you feel your fears around it, and as you take steps to soften into whatever surrender you feel is yours to make. I love catching your stories – by email, in comments, or through Deep Listening Sessions. Whole-heartedly, I’m cheering you on!

+ + + + + + +

P.S. Each week I give away a free print to one random commenter. Comment by this Friday at 12pm Pacific Time to be entered. This week’s print will be an 8 x 10 of today’s sketch. Archival quality, ready for matting or for framing alone.

P.P.S. Do you know about Trust Notes? Once each week I send one out – personal meditations on the lessons and experiences behind what I post here. Sometimes these include announcements, coupon codes for products or courses, or a sketch, and all are focused on nourishing trust. Sign up for these in the sidebar.

Update: Comment #2 is this week’s sketch winner (generated thanks to random.org). Congratulations, Pam! Shoot me your mailing address and I’ll drop it in the mail.

Tweet

We are all always changing.

The cells in our bodies.
Our need for sleep.
The levels of sugar and adrenalin in our blood.
Our bank of life experiences
and relationships
and conversations
and surprises
and griefs
and joys.
Our body temperatures.
Our desires.
Our dreams (waking and sleeping).
The feelings and thoughts that keep passing through.

So it isn’t any wonder that in the shiftiness of everything, in the cannot-predict-what-I’ll-be-thinking-or-doing-next-year-let-alone-tomorrow-ness of it all, there come moments, and even entire seasons, when we just don’t know.

We don’t know what we’re feeling.
We don’t know why we’re angry or sad.
We don’t know what job to leave or stay with.
We don’t know what relationships to leave or pursue.
We don’t know what our bodies or souls long for.
Or where we’ll come out in the end.
Or who we think god is.
Or how to build a good life.

I keep hitting these moments and seasons myself, and by trial and error and sometimes frustrating, circuitous routes, this is what I’m learning:

There come times when our surest route to peace and to knowing our next steps more clearly – including what in heck to tell dear people who keep asking – is to soften into not knowing.

To surrender into it.

To invite it wholly in.

To admit to the feeling, releasing whatever stories we have about what “should” be known by us by now.

To consider the possibility that there really are no shoulds. None. There is only who and what and where we are right now. And now. And the impulse toward wholeness.

And to hold the possibility in our hearts that maybe not knowing is a blessed, even supported in ways we can’t see, place to be.

I’m practicing this over here on many fronts these days – with work, with my wish to be more organized about meal planning and housework, with how to navigate surrender and choice, with how to manage money, with what to do with old grief.

Want to join me? What don’t you know today that you’d like to sink more consciously into?

+ + + + + + +

Each week I give away a free print. Comment on today’s post by Friday at noon Pacific Time to be entered into the random drawing. I’ll choose one random commenter Friday afternoon to receive an archival-quality 5×7 print of today’s sketch.

Update: Comment #7 is this week’s sketch winner (generated thanks to random.org). Congratulations, Stephanie! Shoot me your mailing address and I’ll drop it in the mail.

Tweet

Surrender can sometimes feel like a major EVENT – an all-caps, black-or-white collapse into, “Fine. I give up,” or “YES. Just…yes.”

But I think far more often we experience it as a lengthy and layered unfolding.

I’m struck as I move through new layers of my own unfolding by the ways my efforting – the hard work I’ve done these last years to grow more conscious of my fears, to soften my tensed-up heart around spiritual pursuits, to launch and grow a business – by the ways this hard work has felt like the first leg of a relay race.

It lowered some of my defenses, healed some of my wounds, got me intensely aware of my wish for more ease, and able to finally verbalize that I want to inhabit a different way in the world than I’ve been inhabiting – a way that doesn’t eschew hard work, necessarily, but that is fueled by a powerful softness and openness to the mystery of Life/Spirit/Universe/Creation working in and through and around us all in ways I can’t plan for or predict.

Once I got to the brink of this latest surrender, though, it felt like a different part of me took the baton. A part of me that feels much more supple than the part that got me here – much less interested in trying to logic-mind every next step and much more interested in listening for and helping me align myself with “flow”.

And the hand-off! No mighty, all-caps event. Just a clear, quiet decision inside to put the baton of volition into the hands of something other than my tensed-up self. To say yes to the flow I’ve been resisting. Though potent, the movement was as subtle as standing in place, shifting weight from one foot to the other.

And I wonder whether you can situate your own life right now, or pieces of it, inside an unfolding of surrender…whether you can imagine your hard work or your struggle or worry taking you to a point of readiness to release your tight grip on life and open your arms to the sky.

…Whether your already-open arms might be speaking something to your heart about what flow might mean for you today and in the days that stretch toward your horizon.

+ + + + + + + + +

Each week I send a free print to one randomly-selected commenter. Comment on today’s post before this Friday at 12pm Pacific to be entered to receive a 5×7 print of today’s sketch. Winner will be announced Friday afternoon.

UPDATE: This random number generator gave me comment #11 is this week’s winner. Yay, Karen! Send me your snail mail address and I’ll put this in the mail to you.

Tweet

The decade of my 20s was INTENSE for me, marked by the painful loss of a particular religious worldview and the simultaneous unraveling and awkwardization of the identity, relationships, and future I had long attached myself to. I felt like Neo in the Matrix a LOT.

And my approach to all of those changes was to meet them head-on. There was a feeling of inevitability about them that I decided, because of my intense discomfort with them, could be sped up by not running away. I found a fantastic therapist, some wonderful mentors, and set up shop for nearly 10 years as One Who Works Through Shit.

By the time I reached 30, however, I had not only worked through a lot of things internally, but I was SO TIRED of that work. I was ready to shift gears dramatically from deconstruction to construction, from constantly focusing on who I WASN’T anymore to who I WAS. Or, far more simply…to shift into what it meant to just BE.

Which turned out to be great timing, because that’s when parenthood burst into my life and my space for reflection and introspection got swallowed whole by the work of caring for my son, and two years later, my daughter, too.

My son is 7 1/2 now, my daughter 5, and while time for reflection has slowly increased with their ages, I’ve realized this fall and winter that whatever closing-off I did at age 30 – of the deep dark work I had done in my 20s, of the grief from all those losses that simply couldn’t be rushed through, of my journalling habit and therapy sessions – that closing-off has run its course.

It served me well for many years; I made it through the really super challenging (for me) years of parenting babies and toddlers; I dreamed up and launched a business into which I can pour the insights and ideas that got seeded through my 20s and early 30s; and I’ve learned to juggle LOTS, to experience just how far my body/mind/spirit can be stretched in multiple directions.

But I feel the parts of me that have been pushed largely aside these last years saying, “Honey. Honey, it’s time. Your wholeness and your capacity to do the work that’s yours to do both need you to open to us ALL.”

I’m humbled by my capacity to lug around the self-perception of one who faces her darkness head-on through more than seven years of turning away from it.

But for whatever reason (grace…), I feel kindness toward this me of these last years – this me who needed a break from deep dives and who did what she could to love herself and those in her care. This me who is tired, now, of avoiding grief. And quite honestly, tired of avoiding a type of surrender that feels more potent, more charged with power, than I care to admit. (Who KNOWS where this will lead??)

So I feel a shift in my internal seasons. A new softening to a fuller range of my experience. A releasing of certain identity markers I hadn’t realized I was clinging onto (One Who Has Worked Through Her Grief; One Who Doesn’t Run From Her Uncomfortable Emotions). A welcoming of whatever this is taking me into and toward.

Life has felt hard for many years – full of inevitable challenges and every level of gritting my teeth. And there’s something in the softening I’m experiencing internally lately that is softening that whole view.

Life itself is feeling kinder. More gentle. More full of ease.

I expected the darkness that wanted to rise would be tar-like – dense, thick, heavy – but instead, so far, it’s been light. It surfaces like water from the purest spring: buoyant, bubbling, back-lit by light.

And if that’s the effect of all of these tears – oh, so many tears! – I’ll continue to say yes and yes and yes again to them all.

My dear universe. I’m ready, again, to stop running.

+ + + + + + + + +

Guess what? I want to send one of you a free sketch. Comment on today’s post before this Friday at noon Pacific Time and you’ll be entered into a drawing to receive a free hold-in-your-hand print of today’s sketch. 5 x 7 or 8 x 10 (your choice, should you win). I’ll announce the winner Friday afternoon.

I’m delighted to say that for now, as I ready my shop for a grand reopening, this will be my practice for each post going forward. One free sketch each week!

UPDATE: Using this random number generator, comment #8 is this week’s winner. Renee, email me your snail mail address and your preference of print size and I’ll send you your sketch pronto. :)

Everyone else (including Renee, actually – anyone can enter anytime), come back next week for another sketch give-away. Winners always selected on Fridays.

Tweet

This has been my view for the last few days. Sick – oh, I’ve been so sick!

My heart has been in school, though, and this illness a wonderful lesson in letting go.

Last weekend I attended Hannah’s Vision Book workshop, and that workshop (such a lovely experience! Thank you, Hannah!), combined with a rich conversation with Julie Daley the next day, combined with so many synchronicities before and after it all have me letting go into the most enlivening surrender.

I’m saying yes to the grief that I’ve resisted for so long.

I’m saying yes to listening to and honoring my own deepest voice.

I’m saying yes to the universe aligning my life for the greatest good of all.

I’m saying yes to not working in the evenings anymore because I need space to connect with myself, to journal, to read good books. And to sleep!

I feel a new iteration of my work here readying to birth, too.

And the sparkly sense that, oh honey, you’ve (I’ve) no idea what’s in store!

I’ve never chosen a word-of-the-year, and resist doing so still, for some reason. But I have to say that if there could be something of the sort in my heart, letting go would be it.

Have you experienced this lighter side of letting go? What’s it been like for you?

Tweet

This image was part of my Santa Pause practice last week and I’m moved to share it with you, too. I send you so much love and a heartfelt wish that peace come to you, in all ways, today, this week, and as we start a brand new year.

With a hug,
Kristin

Tweet

As I feel and think about yesterday’s tragedy in Newtown, I tearfully return to this post that I penned last year. May it be some kind of comfort.

I’m thinking today about readers who are in really rough spots right now – moments or days or entire seasons when fear’s grip is a vice. When that blanket of dark thoughts (Could this possibly by okay? How can I/we make it? Will this really never end?) is heavy and immovable and the thought of it lifting – ever, or at the very least soon – almost funny if it weren’t for how impossible it is right now to laugh.

I’m thinking of people who might be living normal lives on the outside: working, parenting, walking dogs, hanging pictures, picking produce, but who wonder in their deepest, most private places, whether something isn’t truly, fundamentally awful about the way of things – everything, maybe, or even just the way of certain things: a relationship, a responsibility, a circumstance, a life.

I’m remembering a story my therapist told in one of our darkest sessions, a decade ago. She spoke of a Holocaust survivor (I think Victor Frankel, but can’t for the life of me find his Man’s Search for Meaning on my shelves right now to confirm), concluding, ultimately, his long description of the hell that he’d survived with a word so dense with meaning I had to catch my breath when my therapist spoke it.

Nevertheless.

I hear it and feel my own curled up inner places softening, an invisible thread of hope winding its way slowly through, beneath, alongside the darkest things I know our world to bear. It isn’t in a hurry. It winds its way through the dark things and in between them through things like sunsets, moonrises, the sound of wind through pine-dense forests. It moves alongside lovers, newborns at their mothers’ breasts, quiet glances between friends. Spider webs, river ways, a dandelion bursting through a pavement’s crack.

I don’t know what’s real, exactly, but I know that darkness is felt quite deeply, and that our world is holding all of that darkness while at the very same time an enormous amount of light. And that somehow, when the darkness is most deep, a nevertheless rings gently, resoundingly true. It’s a prayer and an answer, both. A window. A seed. A strength that need not be reached for or clung to because no matter what we do or don’t do with it, the net of it is there. And there. And there. It can catch us.

I hope that in your darkest nights you come to feel it, whether you know it by this name or not.

Tweet

My head and heart are so full these days – feeling, wishing, dreaming, listing-making…doing.

Every once in a while I feel my soul take in and exhale a wonderfully deep breath. Her breath isn’t judgment or frustration, and offers no words. But there’s a gentle agitation there.

I’m moved by her breaths to wonder just how much of the urgency I feel around so many things has no real need to be…how much is based in fear, which I don’t want as my fuel, and neither as my North Star.

I’m moved to wonder whether there’s another way to be in this life season – with more spaciousness, less relentless hustle – or whether the reality of raising kids and doing work that I love (and even the work that I don’t) and making money for it just has to carry this price.

And I wonder whether sitting silently for an hour every day could take my life more effectively where I want it to go than all the “doing” I could (and do) pack into that same space.

We carry these assumptions, don’t we?, about what really needs to be done right now, and what’s really our best way forward and through. And I’m wondering whether it’s time to name these assumptions (must follow-through on this commitment at all costs; must produce x amount of work; must make x amount of money; must sign my kid up for x amount of things) and kindly question whether they’re true. Or whether they’re true for us right now.

Maybe they are. But maybe they’re not. And maybe the boxes we feel so constrained by are mostly in our heads, and will vanish as soon as we’re able to imagine our lives differently.

Dear soul,

Thank you for your deep breaths.
I feel them and they’re changing me.

Love,
Kristin

Tweet

This isn’t the same as passivity or inaction.

It’s a posture to cultivate. A practice. An easing of our suffering.

As our hearts and lives and world transform – now and always – this is our great work.

This is where we – all of us – find peace.

Tweet