Holding onto hope at a time of endings, change, loss and new beginnings

• What do you cherish?
• What’s important to you?
• Why is that?
• How can you make more time for what is important to you?

There have been times over the past 2 years that I have felt like loss all around me. Globally, it has been a time when the ones we love close their eyes for the last time. When businesses wrap up. When our internal world is upside down. When relationships end … and the grief has felt overwhelming. 

What has been your life raft during this time? Perhaps it’s one thing. Perhaps a combination of steps that have helped to manage how you feel.

Overtime, I have started to get comfortable with uncomfortable feelings that I don’t want to face through the practice of meditation and sitting still. Recognising the thoughts and feelings that rise up and allowing them to come has been a gradual process. Previously, I used to aim to numb my feelings with excessive work, with excessive alcohol, with excessive everything. Excess enabled me to not feel and detach from where I was. I did my best to be “brave”…I’ve recently been learning that this is called ‘dissociation’; where people disconnect from what’s happening as a way to survive, it’s a stress response. Helpful in the short-term, long-term – not as much. Better Health breaks down ‘dissociation’ better.

Sitting still regularly has enabled me to see and feel into the seasons of my life, our lives nationally, and our lives as a global community. Seasons of life and chapters are part of our journey. We are always moving, much like how we see the sun rising and setting, the moon rising and setting, the world turning, so will we. As we have said goodbye to people, businesses, jobs, the world we once knew, we have stepped into a new world. It has been a rebirth, perhaps some people didn’t want to have. Although some moments have rocked my world – life does not stop because we are in a pandemic. Families have welcomed new babies, new jobs, new businesses, better conditions, a fuller version of life. Likewise, I feel like I have evolved too.

As I step into this new place, externally the same and internally, so different, I can see what I used to take for granted the way it truly is. I am filled with gratitude. I endeavour to give grace for what has been and what is, for the people in my life. Reminding myself to be here now. To grieve and to feel is beautiful because it represents a depth of love, of sorrow and human-ness. We are not robots.

• How are you going as we start to wrap up the year? 
• Can you sit still, even for a moment, to feel into what it is to be human and embrace everything that may rise up – your thoughts, feelings, sensations through the body.
• How can you give yourself permission to pause with your breathing exercises and meditation, and to feel into what it is to be you?
• How can you hold onto hope and keep your own light burning bright, while the world continues to shift and change?

Wishing for you to hold onto what holds you at this time of change. 🙂 xo