Ground.

She asked, then pleaded, then demanded to sleep on the floor. After almost a year of easy ‘all grown up’ bed times and staying in her lovely new bed in her lovely new room all night.

I resisted, I wanted to hang on to the ease- because it had made space for other things that needed me and my attention.

But she demanded, made herself heard and eventually we dragged the mattress down off the loft bed. To find ease again.

Weeks later, he asked too. ‘I just don’t feel like I can fall asleep up here’. And then he told us more, bit by bit and we eventually made the link.

He’s feeling ‘wobbly’ and ungrounded. Being closer to the ground at night feels like it helps. It was the same for her but she didn’t have the words he does. She couldn’t tell us, other than to say, to plead, to demand, to scream ‘I need it!!!!!’.

They’ve both been sleeping on their mattresses on the floor for a week now. Sleeping well, feeling better at bedtime.
And I’ve been aware of, thinking about, talking about other ways I could help them to ground and settle back to balance.

Today, after our first full week back at school we were all exhausted and banging against our edges. We could have all stayed home, collapsed into nothingness in order to recover. We could have said no to going out into the world and we nearly did.

But we made the call and went to the bush, the water, to nature. We put our feet on the Earth, submerged our bodies in her water.

And this happened. After a long swim, instead of wrapping herself in a towel, she laid down and asked me to cover her with sand. She lay there, grounding herself, instinctively finding a big hit of what she has been searching for and needing. All I had to do was take her to nature, take her away from the things that offer distraction and allow her to disconnect from what she needs, and let her be with it.