A Year to Celebrate — Lindsey Adventures

As I write this, I’m sitting on a bluff overlooking ocean, the line of the horizon blurred by the lingering, distant fog gently moving away from the coast. There’s not much out there but the occasional, gentle lapping of a white cap and a sailboat lazily drifting at the will of the inconsistent thrusts of wind. I take a deep inhale and experience emotions welling up in my body as I breathe out.

I made it.

One long year and 4 days, and for the first time through it all, the ache isn’t overwhelming. Instead of consuming pain and grief, I can acknowledge what I’m experiencing and let it pass in an authentic and full way, noticing that it doesn’t linger.

Everyday won’t be like this, with ease. But since the ease is here, I embrace it and hold onto it, enjoying its company with an understanding that it won’t last, but a gratitude that it is present.

It’s been a hell of year, for us all.

And we still have so much to go.

But if you’re reading this, let me remind you that you’re here.

You are alive.

You made it to now.

Just as there is breath in your lungs, may there be hope in your body.

And if hope isn’t what is true for you, know that there is someone else holding onto it for you and at this moment it is me.

I think that is the gift of ease.

It makes space for other things, other people, other ways of being when usually we are at the will of the chaos or confusion or crisis that tends to demand our immediate attention. When ease shows up, I often hold my breath in disbelief, followed by a joyous laugh or releasing cry, or crying laughter that is a release of both at once. It’s quite efficient, really. Not that emotions are something one can be efficient in…

A couple of weeks ago I learned that for every message our brain sends our body, our body sends 6 messages back. 1 to 6. Yet for most of my life I was brain-led—thinking about things to make sense of it, reading or writing or talking to people to better understand how things work or what people need or to become a better version of me.

It’s in the knowing, you know? Knowledge is power, so they say. (Who is ‘they’ by the way?)

But now I’m learning that brain knowledge is not exactly the first tool I should be tapping into; it’s my body. If I let myself move past the top of my skull and pay attention to the responses and sensations in my body, I find that there is so much more below the surface, swirling, shifting, swelling, settling, signifying an even deeper knowing that is expansive within and seeks to connect with all that is expansive beyond. The brain and the body do, very much, work together, and both are important; but I am doing myself a disservice to uplift one over the other, especially when the one I have leaned into the most tells me 6x less about myself and how I am experiencing the world.

This has been so vital in my healing.

I’ve fought it.

I’ve tried to control it.

I’ve ignored it.

I’ve excused it.

I’ve been frustrated by it and fearful of it.

My head told me the grief would eventually change, at least a little bit. Then I’d let myself feel the grief and my brain would almost instantly point to it as a place of despair. When it feels so big, how could it possibly be less of a burden over time? How could inviting this tsunami wave to crash over me do anything but leave utter destruction once it retreats back to its home in the ocean?

It never makes any sense to my brain. It still doesn’t.

But somehow, some way, it makes sense to my body. And more than ever before, I’ve given myself permission to let my body lead.

In letting my body lead, I’ve been terrified.

I’ve been discouraged.

I’ve been confused and lonely and exhausted, completely and utterly exhausted.

Yet, people in my life kept making room for me and my process, with wisdom, with silence, with shared emotions, with presence, with listening ears and open hearts.

Telling me it would get better, when I didn’t believe it.

Holding hope for me, when I had none.

Gently walking with me, a step at a time, celebrating every made bed, every shower, every nap, every moment that I’ve been alive, because when life is devastatingly hard, all we can do is celebrate the tiniest movement we made, even if that movement is a gentle rocking in place to give our weary souls rest.

To say that I’ve made it, is to feel victorious.

Things in my life don’t look much different externally than they did a year ago, but that’s not why I’m celebrating.

I’m celebrating because this week I have felt hope root and rise in a way that I haven’t in a very long time.

I’m celebrating because I have felt a little bit more release, in a real and authentic way.

I’m celebrating because life is already difficult enough, and when those moments of ease invite themselves in for dinner, I offer them a drink and dessert, knowing that as quickly as they appeared, they will leave, so we might as well live it up and enjoy the moment at hand.

I turn 36 on Sunday.

Another year around the sun just a week after the marking of a year of pain and grief.

Since today ease has come to visit (and, fingers crossed, has hinted at the possibility of a weekend sleepover to last through my actual birthday), I am resting in her embrace and the comfort and joy that she brings.

And when her stay has come to an end, with a tearful wave, I’ll bid her farewell, knowing that I’ll be seeing her again soon, and that in the meantime, absence makes the heart grow fonder.