Day 3 - new moon, new beginnings

It has been a very long day so my thoughts might not be incredibly coherent tonight. It is also a New Moon. My friend, awesome astrologer Teri Parsley Starnes, writes with insight and knowledge about this in her blog, so I won't even try to address this in any detail here, apart from saying how much her words resonated for me. Deep recuperation from personal and global crisis sounds exactly what the soft animal of my body is yearning for right now... There seems to be so much to be engaged with in the world. So much that I often forget the need to stay engaged with myself. I have been doing a pretty decent job of feeding my body wholesome, nutritious food. I have re-established a regular exercise routine and, when I am not in too much pain from the fibromyalgia, I even get enough sleep. Well, it is simply not enough. As I think about the needs of my body during this New Moon, I know in my bones that I need rest, the kind that comes from the ability to treat myself as a precious beloved.

Sometimes I get glimpses of what that looks like: I give myself a break from the 'shoulds' and 'musts' that pepper my days, I smile at my image in the mirror and remember that I am a precious human being, just because. I need more of that. I need to ground this sense of worth deep in my bones so that it can settle there for those days when I feel that doing is all I am and yet I have no strength to do anything. Because, you see, at the bottom of my story, there is this fear of being seen and found inadequate, and that is what so many of the walls are for. My actions, my achievements, even my words can create an edifice in which to hide my vulnerability, my deeply human fear of being found to be imperfect and maybe even unlovable. Yet, as Mary Oliver says (and I am so grateful to Teri for reminding me), I do not have to be good to find my place "in the family of things". So tonight I breathe, and soon I will go to bed. It was a good day. There was exercise, there was work, there were projects dear to my heart, there was a doctor's visit, blood work and there is a prescription for testosterone in my pocket. New adventures await, new beginnings of the same story. Yet all that matters right now is the call to rest, to be present to the tiredness of the soft animal of my body and to know the rightness of tending to this moment.

Photo by Michael S. Wright