We were designed for work and for rest. Our bodies have valuable insights to tell us – if only we’d tune in and listen! So even if all you feel you can do today is take ten minutes to tune in to your body and ask “what do you need? Where are you at?” I would encourage you to do that. Who knows, it might just be the beginning of a beautiful friendship!
Monthly Archives: April 2018
When Disintegration Is A Good Thing
I grew up in a world that liked it’s boxes.
It liked being able to slot people and activities and music and styles of dress and relationships and beliefs neatly into categories that they then used to judge those very beliefs and relationships and styles of dress and music and activities and people.
The world I grew up in claimed it’s boxes from a religious perspective but other worlds I know claim them from cultural, socio-economic or simply ‘tribal’ bases.
Be Careful Where You Park
I was sixteen when I first got my driver’s license, and as a driver, one of the earliest things I learned how to do is to park. That’s because knowing where and how to park your car is essential to coming back to your car where you left it, in one piece, and in a drivable condition – ready to go on to your next destination.
I was taught rules about which way to angle my tires when I parked on a hill – one way for when I had a curb to butt up against and a different way for when there was a soft shoulder.
I was taught rules about how much space I should leave between myself and other vehicles.
I was taught how to tell if a place was a fire route or otherwise designated as a no parking space.
And someone even attempted to teach me how to parallel park, although that lesson clearly didn’t stick very well!
But the more life I live, the more I realize that we should probably also be teaching our teens about how and when and for how long it is safe to ‘park’ ourselves in life.
Remember … Being Small Matters
I am a small person – stature wise. I’m a little more than a hundred pounds soaking wet; when I can stand I can claim 4′ 10″ if I’m wearing my shoes but in a wheelchair I’m nowhere near that height.
I spend most days in a small space – my living room – working with a very small group of folks who come to me to talk about big problems but also lots of small problems.
When Life Cracks and Breaks
I was thinking about how hard it is to notice these losses and grieve them as we go.
We often seem to jump to dismissing our grief in the hopes that by dismissing it the pain won’t be as bad.
We decide that they’re ‘silly’ or they ‘don’t count’ and sometimes actively minimize them to try to gain a sense of ‘control’ over the randomness of the experience.
Sometimes the changes happen so slowly or silently that we miss that the loss has even happened – so we miss the chance or the need to grieve.
But the problem is that when we don’t deal well with grief it doesn’t just disappear.
Heather R. Morgan 