by Raven Bren
I am cranky. My brain won’t stop bouncing. I itch from the inside. No “solution” I come up with feels motivating. I am not sleeping. It’s been this way for days now and it’s becoming frustrating. Is something trying to get out? Am I shedding a skin now too tight?
What I know about myself speaks to this. My ego is a great distractor. “Don’t change”, she says, “it’s too scary”. Distract, distract, with all the doing-ness. Get this done and you’ll feel better. But is this true? I do want to feel better and doing feels good. Accomplishment is my reward. But there is so much I can’t seem to focus on one thing long enough to move. Overload, overload. The mirrors of my world feel shattered and splintering, overlapping images, all out of focus.
Turning away from the mirrors, refocusing. Re-new focus from foci. Singular from plural. I turn away from the plurality out there to the singularity that is self.
So I move back to the basics of self care. Shower, dress, eat, go outside… just move… in any direction that is movement. Far out there on the fringes of my consciousness are all the things that need doing but my heart is asking me to come back to the center… the singularity of self care. Of baby steps when put in alignment with the harmony that is the universe, bring me back into the dance. The heart beat that continues even when I no longer care to hear it. The breath that moves when muscle cannot. The structures of bone that hold like standing stones of the monument that is self. Back to the elements of this body is the beginning of motivation out into the larger world of creation. The self reflects outward and colors the entire creation.
So it’s about choice … again … always. To care for the gift that is self. To step out of my mind and into my body, give in to the cravings for deliberate, slow, conscious care. Four steps. I need only choose these first four steps. There is no need to know where they will lead.
Sometimes, some days, reducing it down to what is essential is enough to crack that bitch wide open. But there are no promises.
Raven Bren is a Crone, a writer, a grandmother, mother and wife with stories to share from her many years of life experience and too many hours in the sun pondering the meaning of life. She has recently moved back to her beloved Columbia after spending the last twelve years out on the west coast. Now retired to the boondocks, she has even more time for sharing thoughts in her areas of interest: the cosmos, why are we here, relationships, physics and consciousness, manifesting the life we desire, and how to keep deer from eating the lilacs. With wit and wisdom, rough edges and all, Raven invites you into her world… bring coffee.