STOP

The sun is shining, on a day we expected constant rain and I’ve found the first moment in two weeks where I can sit and listen for words. It’s not that there has been nothing to write about but the opposite. So much that has been swirling but also needing time to process, integrate and settle into the right words to share.

We hit the ground running when we went back to school and work two weeks ago. It felt amazing because we had tricked our bodies and biology into feeling the vibrancy of summer in the middle of winter. We had soaked up the sun, felt warmth in our bones and had space to fill our cups to overflowing. The first week back felt great. We had been realistic about the time we would need to unpack, reset and rest. We had powered through a bit but also made sure to recharge in balance. We kept the trick going for a week before the universe got stroppy with our cockiness and put her foot down! She started to say, too loud for us to ignore “Nice one but it is still actually the middle of Winter. You need to honour that even though you’ve found a way to hack it.”

She threw us a few curveballs and I imagine she sat back chuckling to herself as we danced with the disappointment in its various forms over the first part of the week. We were juggling, I tried not to be rattled, as I rolled with the punches and flowed up and over each bump. Things just happened one after another, they just kept coming…until I accepted the rattling and stopped cleverly and resourcefully avoiding and moving against what she was bringing to me.

We hadn’t stopped, we’d managed and resourced and mindfully made sure we could keep going, keep up the vitality and intensity we had soaked up during our time in the sun. She said slow down, she said slow down, she said slow down and then when she was tired of being ignored she said STOP. We were forced to stop dancing and sidestepping it and spend some time actually in it, drowning.

Disappointment says that’s not fair, that wasn’t the plan, that’s so inconvenient, that’s not what I expected. I planned and I pushed and I worked for something, an outcome, and then I didn’t get it. Disappointment is one of the tough, heavy ones, it’s not pretty or fun and it often calls on it’s friends frustration and anger to join it. To bring along some stomping and seething, to move the energy of it through with grunt and gusto. To make it about someone or something else. Anger turns the drowning, heavy feeling into someone else’s problem through blame if we allow it to.

Disappointment can also say, if we can keep frustration and anger in their place, hang on one second, take a breath. Where did you get the idea that planning and pushing is the currency required to get what you want? It asks, how do you even know that outcome is the best way forward, is what you need? It says slow down, look up, remember what you are a part of here and what your role really is. A tiny little cog in a magically intelligent universe. A single stitch in a great and complex tapestry of life.

When disappointment caught up with me it made me look properly and see. We didn’t spend our holidays recharging and mindfully filling our souls with all the things we thrive on as a family, to come back and dump it out by the bucketful and be empty within two weeks! We powered up so that we can feel full, vibrant and able to serve in all areas of our lives through the second half of the year, until the sun is close enough again to be recharging us daily.

We were heading down a path that was leading us to a place we don’t belong, can’t sustain, can’t be our best or serve others best. We were blinded by the feeling of seeing what was possible up ahead, the idea of getting there quickly, without acknowledging the cost of going that quickly. The cost that her move protected us from.

In 2016 Gabby Bernstein was publishing a book called ‘The Universe Has Your Back’ at a time when I would have scoffed at the idea if I’d come across it. The universe had my back then, when it’s steering of me and my path was confusing, painful and no fun at all. It had my back then and it has my back now, when it brings me joy, beauty and an abundance of the things I need to thrive and also when it brings me the icky nudges back onto my path when I can’t see that I’ve veered off it!