Take it Easy on Yourself
How are you doing? This is a question I have been asking everyone and everyone has been asking me, and it has this *tone*. A huskier sound to it like when you had to put your dog down and your friends call and they ask “How are you doing?”. Yeah, that kind of “How are you doing?”.
Honestly, I don’t even know how to answer that anymore. For now months on end, I feel so restless, yet lazy. I feel full of energy and ideas, yet like some force is thwarting me at every turn. I feel confused, bored, un-inspired, behind the eight ball, overworked yet like I’m starving for more.
I have never felt so off-kilter in my life. I am a walking contradiction and conundrum 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
And the thing is everything is GREAT. The kid is thriving. The husband and I are getting along great. The businesses are full steam ahead. My friends are doing well. My family is still hanging tight. Life is good!
You know what that means to me right now? It means on top of everything mentioned in my second paragraph, I get the added gift of feeling guilty because everything is going right and I’ve never felt so wrong!
Good times…good times…
So, I do what any curious, bored to tears, responsible woman does: I read my horoscope. OK…there’s a new moon, which means you should be ready for action. But wait, the new moon is in Libra, which means be still and reflect. Hmm…ok. Mercury is in retrograde so everything is crazy right now and as soon as I get still I read that the full moon is now in Taurus, which is known as a blue moon, which is apparently very rare and I should do some kind of ritual to celebrate that. There is some kind of conjuncting (yes it is a real word cuz I said so) going on with Uranus and Venus is poking in…I’m supposed to be grounding myself and after reading all of this I somehow have a hankering to pull my hair out, rather than become one with the universe.
*sighhhhhhhhhhhh…….*
OK. Deeeeeeeeep breath. That feels better. Do it with me one more time….deeeeeeeeeeeeeeep breath.
Whether we like it or not, the world is in turmoil right now. Whether we realize it or not, it is deeply affecting each of us in very real and different ways. Everyone I talk to seems to be feeling the same way. It’s like we’re each in auto-pilot zombie mode going through the daily grind and somehow we get from point A to point B but we don’t even know how we did it. Is it just me or is the world, and everyone walking around in it, starting to lose color? It’s almost as if everything is desaturating and we’re all starting to take on a bluish hue of gray. What is happening??
More and more I’m having women tell me that they haven’t changed any of their habits but they’re gaining weight, losing hair, watching as fine lines become less fine and more pronounced…I even had a friend tell me the other day that her reiki master told her she’s the SIXTH woman she’s talked to that had a very terrible fall…not autumn…fall…like, fall down the stairs. We’re confused, crabby, jumping out of our skin, sad, bored, and all just in time for the winter blues.
Good times…good times.
But here is something I want you to think about and this is important so open your eyes wide here. When a person goes through a prolonged difficulty in their lives, no matter what it is, the mind does this thing and it tells the body you’re in crisis mode. When that happens, your body goes into a survival state and it holds onto EVERYTHING. It’s not sure what’s going on but it knows it wants to survive and to do that it conserves. This same thing happens when the collective conscious is in a state of crisis and right now, our globe is feeling the pain. We’re all walking around waiting for the pandemic to end, all while being told it’s just gearing up. While that’s going on, and our dear humans still on this earth mourn the loss of other humans that have left this earth because of the pandemic, the world is also watching what happens on November 3rd. Not only are we on display, but the inner, outer, neighborhood, community, city, state and country turmoil we are slugging through every day is taking its toll. Make no mistake, I don’t care how well you think you’re doing, this is affecting you.
So here’s what I want you to do. Number one, I want you to remember that when we do start to come down from this mode of survival, your body will too. It will start to let go and it will start to calm down. That extra weight will fall off, your hair will grow back, and your wrinkles might not disappear but they won’t be so agitated. I pinkie swear. Number two, I want you to find something, anything, that will help you feel like you’re taking care of yourself through this. Read the book you’ve always wanted to read, take the class you always wanted to take, journal, walk, talk on the phone, take baths, give yourself homemade facials, cry, binge-watch stupid TV, meditate, follow the cycles of the moon, pray, write a book, start that new business, sleep in more, go to bed later, drink more water, take your vitamins, laugh more, let yourself be vulnerable and reach out to someone when you’re just not having a good day.
On the other side of this is hope, breath, peace, and maybe not the life you once knew, but a life worth living again. In the meantime, be kind, be patient, take care OF yourself and take care of your neighbor…even if she voted for the other guy.
