Tag: aging

Meditation on Change

“Open the window of your mind. Allow the fresh air, new lights and new truths to enter.”

Amit Ray
@ Home in Middletown, CT

Aging is a funny thing. It happens constantly. In every moment. While we are awake and while we are sleeping. Most of these moments just pass by, unnoticed. It is a natural and inevitable part of life and yet we often fight it. Or at least I fight it.

The gray hairs that start to slip through, harder to hide. Wrinkles on my face. An increase in aches and pains when I don’t work out as much. Or when I do work out. I’m growing older. Most of us don’t have too many outlets to make sense of this process. Instead we buy our way into stopping the aging process. Try this beauty service. Use this jade roller. Meditate more. Eat lighter foods. All of these recommendations on their own are perfectly reasonable and ones we could likely benefit from, but taken together, they feel overwhelming and at times counterproductive.

Our six year old Portuguese water dog, Halligan (aka Hal), was recently diagnosed with aggressive liver cancer. He was given a prognosis of about 1-2 months, if we pursue treatment. And if we don’t pursue treatment then we are looking at weeks or even days. Of course no one can say for sure and the research is spotty but either way you look at it, we have very little time left with him.

How on earth do you process something like this? One moment he’s seemingly healthy, running 2 miles in the woods with us and the next we are talking about comfort measures and how we want to talk to our toddler about mortality. (Tips on this are welcome by the way.)

As I remain hyper vigilant to Hal’s symptoms, I notice that so many of my waking hours are spent in a state of subtle scanning. I think I’m channeling my ancestors and looking for a fire to put out or a threat from neighboring tribes. I’m almost always in problem-solving mode, planning out my week ahead or doing the math on how I’m going to get to my new job on time while “lightly” guiding my daughter through her morning routine. (She’s rounding 3 years old and the concept of “threenager” feels apt.)

As I prepare to return to work full time, I’m asking myself, how did this happen again? I took the last year a half to step back and find a sense of calm and balance from the the frenzied pace I had been moving at. And, yet, if I’m being brutally honest with myself, I think I’ve recalibrated bit by bit so that I’m still following the same patterns just a little less intensely. All of these behaviors I’m sure are adaptive and in place to protect me from unseen threats. However, they are still getting in the way of me being in the here and now.

In this next phase, as I return to work, I want to reflect on what I’ve learned since “Taking a Pause” 20 months ago. In no particular order…

  • Our relationships are sacred. Our partners, our children, our parents, our colleagues, our neighbors, our friends…They are primary and deserve to be elevated above all else. No work stress or drama or inconsequential, petty argument is worth jeopardizing the connections we’ve built with those around us.
  • Parenting is hard. Full stop. Give myself grace as the journey continues to unfold.
  • When I feel cynical, which I do often, try to reframe or consider a new perspective. How am I learning, growing, and stretching through this hard thing? What is another way to look at this moment?
  • Dream. Imagine. Rest. Allow myself space for rest and creativity. Having just finished Tricia Hersey’s, Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto, I’m moved and saddened by how consumed many of us are by “grind culture.” The oppressive nature that white supremacy and capitalism have on us is dripping in plain sight and yet we can’t see it because we’re too busy grinding away. It’s in our blood and our social makeup, but it doesn’t have to be our fate. We can resist.
  • It’s okay to not have it all figured out. Multiple times throughout the past year and a half I thought about making major career and life changes. I researched schools, ministries, organizations, yoga teacher training programs, etc. I shadowed, I prayed, I asked for answers.

And…now….I find myself returning to something very familiar, to an organization for which I worked previously. I think my search and quest for change has ironically (or not so ironically) brought me back to where I started so many years ago when I first moved up to CT.

Perhaps though, while I have come full circle in some ways, I have changed in the process. I have grown and surely aged (as is evident by my greys). And hopefully I’ve garnered a little more wisdom about what matters.

In this next chapter for myself and for all of us, may we go easy on ourselves and others. May we see the world for all its beauty and all its pain. May we stop for snuggles and cuddles and belly rubs and know the sky will not fall if we don’t send that last email. Perfectionism is dangerous and a form of violence and is perhaps the biggest threat of all to this messy and sacred process of living.

Sending love and blessings for whatever small or big steps lie ahead.

Relationship to My Body

“You are imperfect, permanently and inevitably flawed. And you are beautiful.” 

Amy Bloom
Photo by Tamba Budiarsana on Pexels.com

I took my first in-person yoga class today in over two years. The last time I attended a yoga class that wasn’t virtual was probably November or December 2019. It wasn’t a fancy class. I saw it advertised through my local gym and figured I’d give it a try. I saw it as an opportunity to decompress and move my tired joints, even if it was under bright overhead lighting and with blaring workout music in the background. In the end, this class exceeded my expectations and provided elements of surprise and reflection on so many levels.

For under 55 minutes, my phone tucked away in my jacket pocket in the back of the room, I was able to arrive in the moment and just feel my body move. In the midst of my contorted, stiff, inflexible stretches, my mind floated to just how much I had taken my body for granted prior to having a child. I haven’t written much about this topic to date so bare with me.

My relationship to my body over the last 2+ years has taken on so many new layers. When I learned I was pregnant, I remember having an irrational fear that I was going to “lose” my body. It was a fear of something taking over (like a parasite) and being at the whim of new forces that were outside my control. That, in addition to terrible nausea and morning sickness. Admittedly, the irrational fears did prove somewhat true. I was taken over by forces outside my control and my body did take on a life of its own. I ultimately came to a place of acceptance though and even awe in what the body was capable of. (I could write an entire blog piece on the body and the pregnancy journey.)

What I wasn’t prepared for though were the postpartum physical and hormonal changes that would continue to play out for months (and maybe years) beyond giving birth. Even as I approach 18 months postpartum, my balance is off. I am clumsier and a little clunkier in my movements. I wasn’t flexible prior but now my back can get thrown off by just crouching to put the baby in her car seat. My neck feels stiff just about every morning and I am not a stranger to muscle spasms at random points throughout the day.

I still love the same forms of exercise. For me it’s swimming and a slow walk/run ratio I picked up years back when training for a half marathon (which feels like a lifetime ago). And maybe it’s my middle age creeping up on me, but my body just isn’t the same. It’s subtle, but I’m keenly aware of how my clothes fit differently now. A little less give, a little less stretch. My body didn’t simply bounce back. It bounced into a whole new space.

I guess what I’m talking about is that both my relationship to my body and my body itself have changed in recent years. My rare moments to exercise are no longer with an end goal of a certain figure so much as just the freedom to move…The liberation I feel when I can find a moment in the early AM to do a “cat/cow pose” or “puppy pose” before the baby stirs. My joints are stiff and most days I just long to move. I now wear sneakers almost all the time, even when I’m putzing around the house, giving my daughter a bath, or going to the grocery store. It gives me the most subtle sense of satisfaction that I’m exercising. That I’m moving, even if it’s from one room to another.

As I sit here typing away, my upper back is talking to me. It’s telling me to sit up straighter and to stand up and move around. It’s achy when I sit too long now or when I stand too long. Maybe I need to listen more and respond “thank you” every once in a while. Thank you for making yourself more aware to me in recent years. Thank you for helping me to see that I am intrinsically tied to you and you to me. That we are here together to explore the world and accept the ebbs and flows. And perhaps to slow down enough to catch an extra breath or two even when life tells us to keep going.

As I hunched over in child’s pose this morning and stayed put 5 or 6 breaths longer than instructed, I realized that perhaps I need to fully accept this new reality–This body in all it’s floppiness and less than shapely beauty. Maybe part of its purpose is not to achieve some unattainable shape or figure projected on us from external pressures, but instead to simply stretch and rest and carry us through life’s ups and downs. And maybe it’s not just my body, but my entire being that never simply “bounced back” after having a child. I have yet to get to know a new and evolving version of myself that has bounced into an entirely new way of being.