Stillness, Nothing, & Grace

This past weekend, I decided to be still.

For the last many years, I have found myself consumed in busyness. I have a full-time psychotherapy practice. I write and present professional development trainings. I’ve written three books, and promote them through social media posts and other media appearances. I volunteer my time for the new Niwot Wellness Program. I also moved six times in the past eight years. Something I am not proud to admit, but it is true. Of course, I always take the juice out of everything I do, so there is some gold in all of those stressful experiences of change, transition, and loss.

I’m tired! And I’m getting older!! Part of the busyness is an urgency for me to make sure I’ve got enough work to support me for the remainder of my life. I am the only one who takes care of me. I’ve never had a trust fund. Never had an inheritance. Never had a husband that made any money. It’s all on me and always has been.

I have four children and now four grandchildren, all who live far away, which requires a lot of money to travel and have the quality time I feel is important for my family.

Oh, and did I mention The Inner Space Project Podcast? 

In January 2024, I was fortunate to have two interns from the University of Colorado create my podcast and graphic design as unpaid internships. Since they’ve graduated, I’ve had to find other people to continue engineering, editing, and marketing the podcast, with NO budget for that. Luckily, my son’s friend Mack who is a professional film editor from LA has been graciously offering to help me with the edits. At some point I’m gonna need to find sponsors to help me pay him or whomever else continues on. I do the work of many people, since I don’t have the resources to pay for help. A problem that I am not sure just yet how to fix.

I started the podcast because of all my years of witnessing  how little people know about emotional literacy and agency. What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to experience the full spectrum of emotions from joy to sorrow? How do we deal with what many of us experience– anxiety, grief, overwhelm, frustration, etc. How do we tap into the authentic expression of self?  Or what Greg Braden in his new book, Pure Human calls our divinity. Soul or essence are other words that I might use to describe who we are truly are.

So, back to this weekend with my list of to-do’s and my desire to not do. I ended up sitting on my back porch for hours. I watched the leaves fall from the trees. I listened to the gentle breeze blowing. One evening I took a walk across the path from my house to a labyrinth. As I walked this meditative maze-like circle, a murder of crows were cawing nearby. Then a red fox strutted slowly by. It was so close I could clearly see the reddish-yellow fluffy fur and the white tall sticking straight out in fox-like fashion. I grabbed my phone but couldn’t quite capture it soon enough.

I took in the stillness. I took in doing nothing. And I stepped into a state of grace. As I wrote down my dreams in my Kuan Yin Oracle journal given to me by a dear friend many years ago, I stumbled upon this quote about grace on the bottom of one of the pages- “Grace is the intervention of compassionate, unconditionally, loving, divine intelligence that helps you realize you have learned all you can. It is now time for you to be assisted out of a situation to be lifted up.”

I took that in and wrote down the words–stillness-nothing-and-grace, with the intent to at some point write about how it felt to be in those spaces. But not then while I was in it!

Another quote that I often use came to mind. My seventh grade math teacher Sr. Claire once gave me a card that read– “We find ourselves in the quiet moments when the earth pauses and we are still.” 

I’ll admit being still and doing nothing also meant feeling my aloneness, sadness, and frustrations of having to work so hard. Instead of working harder to fix that, I surrendered into the void. That empty space where new things are born. Much like an embryo in the womb. Waiting and not knowing what is to come. Stillness and grace live there. Not necessarily easy to sit in. However, I have learned through the years it is where magic happens.

I started my Monday today with a renewed sense of awe and wonder and curiosity. All important attributes to have when consciously choosing the things we want in our lives.

Synchronicities showed up in the comments clients had about the candle burning on my office table. A woman who lost her father shared her experience of grief. I worked a dream with another woman who is integrating paradox in her life, and on and on the stories go. I feel so honored to have people share these intimate pieces of their lives with me and trust me to offer guidance and support.

Today, I also practiced singing a song with my voice teacher. A new song by Sarah McLachlan called Gravity.  The song speaks to me on many levels. She wrote it about her daughter who had gone through some really rough periods growing up. The song expresses the depth of unconditional love and what it means to never give up on someone we love. As I sang the song, I could feel the experience of what Carl Jung called transcendent love. A rare thing for us humans. We live so much in fear.  Loving freely without expectations and witnessing another human being wherever they are, however they show up, is tough to do.

After singing the song many times, while stretching my range of vocal highs and lows, I realized the song was for me. I’m cautious to share too many of the lyrics because I know musicians work hard on writing music and have copyright limits. I will just share this little bit and then highly suggest you listen to her new album titled Better Broken.–“Though life will come apart, break, and unbreak your heart, I will be like gravity, always true. I won’t give up on you.”  

I’m not giving up on me, especially in these precious, final years of my life. The quiet pause in my busyness this weekend led me here to write this piece for you.

Another poem also came to mind in my stillness. I remembered a  man I fell in love with after my divorce many years ago who liked to read Pablo Neruda poems to me. The title of one of them rang in my ear–

I Like For You to Be Still.

“I like for you to be still: it’s as though you were absent, and you hear me from far away, and my voice does not touch you. It seems as though your eyes had flown away and it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth. 

As all things are filled with my soul you emerge from the things, filled with my soul. You are like my soul, a butterfly of dream, and you are like the word Melancholy. 

I like for you to be still, and you seem far away. It sounds as though you were lamenting, a butterfly cooing like a dove. And you hear me from far away, and my voice does not reach you: let me come to be still in your silence.”

I’m doing the best I can here to find words to describe how I am feeling after my pregnant pause. I suppose the best thing I can say to you is–I encourage you to be still.