Face The Sun

Each year I set a new intention. Ironically my intention for 2020 had been content in the chaos. I laugh when I think, nothing could have been more accurate. I am still holding onto that one too as I embrace 2021. However, with the clarity gleaned from 2020, I am heading into 2021 with the deep intention to:

Face The Sun.

This has many meanings for me, but mostly it means to walk in trust in the direction of my life. Fully embodying who I have become and who I am becoming. It is living with intention and purpose. To fill my life with love, passion, and deep joy.

A few weeks ago I went on a deeply healing walk. One of wandering wherever I desired, but it felt different. I felt different. I stopped for a cup of tea, crimson berry, because I believe it to have healing properties. I walked the local bike path. There was a group playing Irish Folk music. Oh, how it touched my soul. There was a little girl by the shore of the pond wearing a white tutu dress, dancing freely. I wondered when we lose that, the sense of freedom to dance whenever we feel called to. I’d like to find that within myself again. I walked until I found a quiet spot on the dock overlooking the water. The sun’s reflection was sparkling, shimmering pink. It was so calm. As if the world was just happening around me, but I was content to simply be still. We are all in our inner worlds surrounded by an outer one. In that moment I felt a shift. This dawning of anew. It’s okay that I don’t know what that means yet. I just have to know it exists and to honor it.

I sipped my tea. I breathed, more deeply than I have in a long time. I was acknowledging all of the shifts that have come and gone this year and over the last several years. I am meant to be changed, we all are. Resistance to that is futile. We are all on a journey. 

I wondered what would happen if I stopped trying to figure it all out. Question, yes, simply because questions are beautiful. Curiosity is a gift. But, what if I surrender? A deep bowing to the unknown, how incredible. How free. Questions invite us to allow. Can that be all? Letting them be answerless in a simple, yet holy, state of trust. 

2020 has implored some things:

• Surrender. A deep stillness. It comes with it’s challenges of course, because we are not taught the simplicity and joy of stillness. I am learning though.

• Simplicity is more than okay. Making the soups. Baking the breads. I even used yeast last week to make cinnamon rolls. Me! Who am I? There is a gentleness though to holding the spoon with my daughters. The slow motion of whisking together. We are creating so much more than bread, we are building a foundation. Can I be centered and present enough to be the mother that they need and so deeply deserve? They teach me each and every day about the woman that I am. They know her far better than I do. They have lived inside of the woman that I am. They were birthed from her. How sacred is that?

• I desire to live deeply. Connection means more now than ever. I was not designed for the superficial connection of technology. It is not meant for me nor am I meant for it. I am meant for sacred dinners, relishing in the laughter and joy of friends willing to show up as their authentically made selves. My own desire to live as my self, unabashed, unapologetic. I am so tired of sweeping out the eggshells I continue to walk upon for myself. Let them be gone. They are not the foundation beneath me.

• There is a time for reckoning and there is also a time for reconciliation. This year has felt like the battle in solitude one needs sometimes in order to rise from the wake of ash behind them. To sit with oneself. To reckon, yes of course, AND to decide to reconcile it all. To decide and choose to live on from it. To let the light in again. To let yourself LIVE. To be whole, even if you still feel a few loose cracks. Deciding to fill them with gold, kintsugi style. To allow oneself to be human. To make human mistakes. To opt for love. To choose freedom. To decide that you are good enough. More than good enough. To catapult yourself into the life you are meant for, not to continue to dwell in the ashes of the life you thought you were supposed to have or were taught you deserved to have. There is nothing left there. So, you opt in, you choose to go. I have chosen to go. To the unknown. My God, isn’t the unknown such a holy place. Because we really just don’t know. I’d like to believe it to be beautiful though. This place we cannot see, but can feel, deeply feel, if we allow ourselves to.

• I’d just like to face the sun for awhile. I am someone who can try to sort it all out, the past. But it is gone. It has happened. I can only choose to face forward and move in that direction. The people who have traveled with me along the way may not come. They may not like the woman I have become, it’s okay. I don’t need to please everyone. Approval seeking has steered me in the wrong direction too many times in my life already. I know when I am doing it, so I am not going to do it anymore. I can’t. The woman I am is at stake, and I choose her. I choose my daughters, and the women they desire to be. The women they were born to be. The women who chose me, as their mother, to build this life for us.

A river runs in whatever direction she wants to, I intend on doing the same. I am opting for my river. To float, and face the sun. I’d like to see where she takes me in this next chapter. 

So 2020, I bow to you with reverence, because you have been a fierce one. A year we will all come out of forever changed. The woman I have become and am becoming is looking forward to meeting you all once again. Until then…

Face The Sun.

Let’s rise,

ah

Deep Exhale.

The sun is glistening through my window, as if Spring is just over the horizon. My window is open though it is cold. I needed the breath of fresh air. I needed the warmth of the afternoon sun upon my face. I needed the quiet breeze, a sign the day is closing. The sun is setting beyond the trees. I have returned home. I must learn to rest. Learn to breathe and enjoy the joy of life again. I have been far too rushed, in a way that no longer serves me. I do not need to feel so frantic anymore. I can breathe, and I must. I must exhale. Deeply exhale. I need to know and trust that whatever may come, we will conquer it. I can no longer sort through old emotions of memories long past. I must restore my body to a way that feels like an enduring sanctuary. One that will withstand any storm, because she always has. She is a proven temple.

I wish to release all that is undone to the wind. Let it blow it's dust where it may. I no longer need the ash of things gone to remind me how precious life is. I can be in awe, in joy, in depth, each and every day. I can be grateful for life as it is. Of humanhood. I have not endured what some may. Nor have I escaped what some will never know. We all have etched tales our bones could tell. We all have our own bliss. It is the fact that we are alive that connects us. 

Sometimes I merely need a few moments of solitude. More moments as I get older. I used to fear being alone and now I crave it. It helps restore my compass. To set intentions and allow whatever needs to move through me to do so in a way that restores me. To re-align myself with the now. With who I am, sitting here, today.

Let’s rise,

ah