I’ve been sharing some reflections now and then on my personal Facebook page and figured I may as well offer them here too, because why not? Why not preserve a record of this time and these lessons here too?

As a therapist/yoga teacher/mindfulness and meditation facilitator, I keep thinking I have a responsibility to offer helpful things related to dealing with anxiety and trauma, and how to use meditation and mindfulness practices to help. Yet, I haven’t quite been able to make that happen … but then, maybe that’s a ‘should’ I don’t need to carry right now!

And some of the other productive/creative ideas I’ve had about how to use the extra time that not needing to commute gives me? Reading, writing, doing more therapeutic training? Sometimes I find myself feeling weary, aimless, unfocused … and not being productive or redeeming the gift of time that this new rhythm of life seems to offer me.

So I considered just how much energy it has taken to shift my practice home and online. And the immense energy it takes to engage therapeutically online! Creating attunement, reading emotional and nonverbal cues, being present – these elements are all essential to therapeutic relationship in any context, but also practicing them through a cyber connection requires a deep intentional retuning of awareness and maintaining quality of attention.

And this is on top of parenting my kids through a tremendous transition for them, all of us learning to live together in this new reality. Being present for them, overseeing home learning and chores, dealing with challenging attitudes … whew!

And shepherding a community organization …

As a mentor pointed out to me, each one of these is in itself a tremendous amount of emotional labor … but all together, and at a time where there’s already a deep river of stress energy and collective grief running through the world, of which I feel acutely aware.

So of course I don’t have the energy to give and do and be everything I feel a longing to give and do and be! Of course there are limits to my human strength that provide boundary to my desires … though those limits don’t hem in hope or love.

I’ve seen articles that remind me that it’s okay to feel unproductive right now, that it’s okay and necessary to allow time and space to just be, that the time doesn’t all have to be filled with amazingness of productivity and creativity. That feelings of overwhelm, exhaustion, ennui are all valid right now, that it’s okay and necessary to allow grace and space for feeling them and moving through them. That simply adjusting to this new rhythm of living and parenting and being is in itself an act of intense emotional labor that takes much energy. Considering what personal expectations of productivity and creativity are fair in light of that is an act of grace toward ourselves!

So this is a reminder to myself that I’m sharing out loud in your presence – to be fair to myself and rest from burdensome expectations that sap needed energy, to find what nourishes my energy and what heals me when I feel depleted, and to allow space and grace for all feelings.

May you all find these things, may we allow ourselves to be and to grieve and to heal together, beloved ones!

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There will still be a review of last month’s Abundance Project theme, coming soon. The era of coronavirus, quarantine, and social solidarity/physical distancing has cast a different light across my project, but this light has brought out things I might never have seen otherwise and has shifted my perspective of abundance and its relevance!