no wonder everything hurts right now: birth is painful

image of new stars being born

"Massive Young Stars Trigger Stellar Birth," Spitzer/Chandra telescope images

When something major is falling apart around you (or/and inside), sometimes you have to let go of the reins for a little while.  At least, that’s true for me.

I’d set up a practice of writing in the blog every weekday — then, Thursday and Friday of this week, I just couldn’t do it.  What I wanted to write about I don’t have words for, and if I did have the words, I wouldn’t yet be ready to share them with the world.  So I took a break.  I slept a little bit more.  I did my Thursday workshop with the MedEd folks, worked on administrative tasks (finally got the August writing ourselves whole newsletter out), got my hair cut (again, finally), watched movies. I’m thinking I should re-read Trauma Stewardship. I’m making space to cry, to curl up into a ball. Space, too, to laugh. Yesterday afternoon I went to Bolinas and talked to the sea.  That’s an important part of my self-care routine, and I just don’t do it enough.  I wanted to swim, but forgot my bathing suit or a change of clothes (the last time we came to Bolinas, I had a different pair of jeans in the car, so I went ahead and got all the way in the water in my shorts and tshirt, and it was perfect) — so I just kept rolling up my jeans, and sister ocean kept on splashing me big enough that they got wet no matter how far up my legs they were.  It was a good talk.  I watched the little black dog-heads of sea lions peeking and poking up now and again, far from the little boys running and screaming and throwing logs to their shaggy, soaked dogs. I scoured my feet in the sand and found excellent shells.

I’m trying to slow down enough to hear the change that seems to be emerging.  To listen very very closely, and to stay out of its way, to not muck it up.  To untangle this densely woven nest of trigger points, others’ desires and fears, old stories, family loss, and adult possibility that I’m in the middle of. It’d be nice to have a week at the beach for this time, but that’s not my path right now, so I’m doing what I can with what I’ve got.  And that’s a lot.

It’s always a little befuddling for me, these places without a lot of words.  But here’s what Rob Brezny had to say for us Pisces, at the end of the week of August 5 horoscope: “Life is currently sending you signals that will remain incomprehensible if you insist on interpreting them from the viewpoint of a rational adult. To decipher the encrypted code, you’ll have to get into a mindset that is equal parts child, animal, and angel.”  Here’s what else is interesting:  earlier this week, I wrote a post about, well, about a bunch of things, but it ended with this thinking about human messiness and transformation, how it’s ok to be imperfect and still good, how amazing it is that there are people who love me even though I’m a mess. And in that post, I included an image of a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis.

In this week’s Pisces horoscope, Rob Brezny gives me the same image: a monarch dropping free of her chrysalis. The word associated with the image is rebirth.

No wonder everything hurts right now.  Birth is painful: it’s a process of destruction as well as a process of creation, enaction, emergence. So I’m going to keep on being slow and tender with self, and am practicing being slow and tender with everyone around me, too.  Lemme go make some zucchini-banana-oatmeal pancakes and get into this day.

Thanks for being there and doing all that you do. I’m so grateful for you.

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