Our March Rest & Rise was the last in the series.
We had a beautiful session together exploring resting, sensing, impulse & action through deep rest, somatic movement & an introduction to the practice of Authentic Movement.
If I had my business hat securely fixed on my head, if I was intent on pushing through and evaluating my worth by the ‘success’ of my career, I’d have been prepared with somewhere to point the wonderful folks that have joined me over the last few months: a year long exploration or more workshops or regular classes.
Instead, I turned toward the truth of my experience and spoke it into the space and to the gorgeous people that sat in circle with me: I am tired and my kids are still young. I’m still effectively a full time mum and the demands on my time and energy are huge just now. I don’t have the support systems in place, in the form of a village and financial abundance, that may allow me to free up some energy to feed the other parts of myself. I want to see my kids through this stage of their emerging in to the world and be responsive to both their and my needs around the spaces that can slowly open up between us and allow for more to come in, for me to take on more ‘out there.’
I also need to (somehow – super hard without the support systems named above in place) create some space to receive and replenish after years of digging deeper than I knew I could and finding both strength and wounds I didn’t know I had, through my process of motherhood.
While I feel deeply nourished by my work and will keep a toe in the water and offer things out sporadically, it’s been a gift to sense that I’d be overriding something essential in me to dive in too much too soon.
The offerings are here and are gestating, percolating and refining in this time of parenting and dreaming that I seem to be in.
The year long exploration is formed and refining, the regular sessions are ready and my collaborative somatic therapy practice is full in the capacity I have to hold it at present… and I rest into the unknown and a responsive interaction with life with regards to the timing and birthing of these works. (Do feel free to join my mail list if you want to hear about these offerings as and when)…
I’m writing this not through some sense of martyrdom or victim consciousness that feels hard done by through all I feel I have to hold. Sure, that is there sometimes as I meet the wounded facets of myself. However, this the deeper driving force that this journey evokes in me through a lived experience that I cannot deny, is the stark recognition of the loss of village and systemic issues that separate children from the adults ( alloparents) they so desperately need in communtiy in order to grow into healthy adults. Our culture tends toward being very peer oriented right into our adult years.
Overstretched school and social care systems try to replace these necessary attachments… however, they are over stretched., underfunded and , often, inconsistent. So children turn toward their peers who are not equipped to offer the holding they need.
All this, whilst grown adults attend workshop after workshop searching for connection and satiation or disappear in to their screens and social media in search of the same… a chocolate covered carrot dangling always out of reach. All, whilst the opportunity’s for connection are often right next door to us, or out on the village green… or in the love one may receive from a child when the commitment is there and the attachment formed.
So much of this challenges so many of the ways I have lived my life or related to community. When I look back now I am struck by the lack of children in many of the ‘communities’ I have had involvement with over the years…
So much of this asks me to reach out, to learn to receive and yield in ways I am still learning how to do and am so unfamiliar with. The exhausting part, often, can be feeling like I’m reaching out into a village that, often, doesn’t seem to respond – not through anyones fault, simply because we are all just so busy and so not used to moving with the rhythms that include young children.
And so, yielding and receiving often become things that can be done in paid spaces rather than through community.
Ah, this is turning in to a long post and I’m meeting so many complexities and holding many different angles of perspective as I write.
At the base of it all is a hope that, through all this, we will move toward each other more. That we will find out way back to our interconnection with each other, this Earth and all that inhabits it.
I know many mothers who are holding this same grief and who, if offered space, could be powerhouses for change. First – they need to receive support.
Thank you for reading! (also, I am trying out that thing I see so many folk doing on social media – posting a photo of myself! I have to name that I feel a bit awkward doing it. Maybe I will get used to it! So, here I am in the embrace of the woods by the river – one support system that is ever present!)
