My dreams lately have been filled with missing things, about things that are just out of reach. I can’t find my car. I can’t find a store at the mall. I misplaced my dinner. I’m waiting in the salon chair and no one will cut my hair. I wake feeling haunted, wipe the sleep from my eyes, and try not to think too deeply about what I just dreamt. I don’t have to think deeply. I know what it means. Everything is normal. Nothing is normal. Each morning, I still find my way to the couch, …
honest thoughts
What We Have is Today
Now that it’s spring, when I sit in the morning dark, I can often hear birds singing. I think of them waking with song, their voices rising in the darkness, their faith that the light will shine again. For them, it’s instinct, the time of year when everything comes alive again, including them. They have so much to look forward to: nest building and baby making, tending their own square inches of home. They don’t ask questions or wonder if maybe they should be doing something else. They are just …
Waiting and Listening While Things Grow
Last year, after unexpectedly and abruptly ending a major project, a friend wrote to me to say she was sorry things were ending but she wanted to encourage me. Something new would be birthed through this. Something, she said, would shake loose. I wanted to believe that was true. When a door closes, a window opens, or something like that. The things we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel better. But I could feel it. Something inside me was stirring. An idea, an inkling. What it was, I …
Things Take Time: March Recap
At the end of each month, I’ve been reading over my journal entries with a highlighter in my hand. I spend most mornings writing a couple of pages, working my thoughts out or trying to capture what I’m feeling that day. Usually, day after day of writing, a theme starts to emerge. I say the same things over and over, and as I reread what I’ve written, those are the things to pay attention to (and highlight). What I wrote about most in March is depth—how hungry my soul is for deeper things, how …
When You’re Hungry for Something Deeper
I hadn’t been to a Monday morning yoga class for months, but one particularly bad day in March, I found myself on the mat with my toes together, head pressing down in child’s pose. Then, the tears started. The second my forehead touched the floor, I started to cry. And because I was face down, my eyes filled with tears quickly and there was no way to stop it. I blinked and they splattered on the mat. I closed my eyes again, but they keep coming. “Set an intention for your practice today,” …