There is a massive upheaval of my and my family’s life coming up very soon. The enormity of the task and the anticipation of the emotional reft is making me want to turtle into myself.
Sea turtles are my totem animal. I am drawn to them by their calm demeanor and the way they easily glide over coral reefs. But I’m not gliding right now.
I’m not even on the plane yet and all I want to do is…
- Pull myself in
- Protect my being
- Guard my heart
- Make myself small and hide
- Avoid the pain
But avoiding and hiding is what I have been doing for 6+ years. And in my / our avoidance, things have only gotten worse. A friend who is helping us get organised warned me,
“Watch out for spiders,” He said.
I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me, but of course there would be spiders. Spiderwebs in our storage, on our furniture, on the boxes of books, photo albums, on the cherished memories and keepsakes left behind.
Dust, cobwebs and years of neglect.
An analogy for the emotions that I have been neglecting and avoiding and that I am now finally ready to face.
I can’t help but draw connections between the cobwebs in my closet, the emotions in my head and fascia in the body.
Like the fascial lines of connective tissue in our bodies; the network holds us together and facilitates our movement in a balance of symmetry and tension.
When our movement becomes unbalanced or asymmetrical because of physical or emotional injury, illness, disuse or neglect our fascial lines can become tangled with webs of sticky tissue that bind and lock us into place. Limiting our movement and freedom to experience life and fully live.
Releasing these sticky bound up webs can sometimes take time and effort and can be potentially quite painful. But the freedom and lightness that follows afterwards is well worth breaking through the discomfort.
I have been holding on so tightly because I was afraid that If I let go that I would never have that happiness again. But because I have been holding on so tightly, I haven’t actually allowed myself the freedom to BE happy.
“While you are staring at a closed door, you fail to see the open door beside it.”
I wasn’t ready 6 years ago, or 5 years ago or 4 or 3 or 2 or even last year.
I am ready now.
I realize now, that I can take the best of what made me happy and find jewels of it wherever I go.
After my awesome team does the HBF Run for a Reason on the 27th, I’m probably going to turtle into myself for a couple of months. I’m going to be doing some of the hard work, breaking up those sticky webs.
But I’ll be back, calmly gliding over the coral reef soon.
