Narrator: She tiptoed gingerly towards the door, hesitant to knock. It had been so long since they’d shared presence, and she felt certain that re-engagement would be awkward in that way of fumbling for words and tenderly reaching for reconnection. Giving herself a little shake, she stood up taller and took a breath. “Life is a river”, she reminded herself. We go where the flow takes us (even if sometimes, that means a detour from the intended path). “I trust the river,” she affirmed, closing her eyes and recentering her intention and prayer. Opening her eyes, she strode forward towards the door, reached out her hand, and knocked.
“Knock knock.”
Who’s there?
“Writer's block.”
Writer’s block, who?
…
…
…
“Writers block time for their own silence, to nourish the wellspring of their creativity and then return, again and again and again, to the craft that calls them.”
Narrator: She laughed at her own joke.
(cue breaking the third wall)
Hi, it’s me. I’m She.
It wasn’t my intention, to be honest. The past month just swirled me up in a rush of finals, opening a yearlong visionary women’s council, bringing on new clients, and somehow all of this during Taurus season just asked me to slow wayyyyyy down and be present with what was in front of me.
And the page kept whispering in the background, asking if I was ready to return, and I kept shushing them, saying “I really don’t have time for you right now. Come back in a few days… weeks… ok a month, come back in a month.”
So the page showed up today, and my finals are complete, and the council is tuned in, and I’m making space to write again. The only thing is, it feels like I’ve been away so long that I don’t know how to catch up with myself again.
And yet, there’s not really any need to do that. I mean, the relationships I choose to keep close are the ones where, even after all this time (weeks - months - years), once we’re in the same space, it’s easy to drop into our own unique rhythm, that way we have of just being together.
As I gently let myself land back in my devotional commitment to writing, I’m aware of an old familiar thought pattern, one that says, “but I don’t know what to write about!” Then I laugh, because I realized recently that “I don’t know” is a doorway to the divine. If you’re curious about this epiphany, you can watch my presentation below (if you're just here for the storytelling, skip ahead to minute 0:33).
This 'not knowing' is very alive in me now, as I'm getting ready (T-3 days) to head back to Ireland to sit with a powerful group of women, the Hawthorne tree and the Swan. I don't know what's going to happen, I don't know what to expect, I don't know who I'll be on the other side of this journey and ritual remembrance.
I thought maybe I'd wait to write again until after this trip, but then realized that was just me not wanting to show up and be seen in the 'not knowing.' But these liminal realms - however micro or macro - where we stand between what was and what will be... actually, when we think about it, those might be all there is - the liminal realm we call the Now.
Landing back in the now, I'm sitting in my bed with the TENS machine on my back, because my body has decided this is the ideal time for my back to get funky and tender, right before travel. I'm feeling uninspired to write, but in the same way that I used to feel unmotivated to workout, and I'm reminding myself that for both, it's not so important if I feel like doing it. What matters is the habit of showing up to the mat, showing up to the movement, showing up to the page, showing up to MY LIFE.
So here I am again, showing up at the doorway of Life, the doorway of the Unknown, the doorway of Divinity, the doorway of Now.
I'm reminded that wherever we went, however long we've been gone, we are always invited to come back home to our practices, commitments, devotion, and decision. Like Rumi says -
“Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. It doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again, come, come.”
So I remind myself again, it's always a little awkward at first. I might be a little rusty. Doesn't matter, really. What matters is just that I return, again and again, to my promises to myself.
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