this is what will save you.

or, how i've been waiting for someone who is never coming; and it's actually great news. they're never coming because they're already here.

Small announcement about a big favorite thing:

This weekend I’m doing my final songwriting clinic for the spring—I hope to bring them back in the fall. They’ve been SO fun, for me and the people attending, and there are still seats at this one. We’ll be looking at the idea of creative blockages and how to move through them, as well as doing some songwriting/poetry exercises and group sharing. Can’t hardly wait. I hope you can join!! Songwriters at ANY level can participate.

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“This Is What Will Save You.”

I’ve been taking more walks lately. Yesterday, between zoom calls, I was feeling a little sticky, heavy, sleepy, and disempowered. I looked down at my phone and saw that I had precisely sixteen minutes until the next one. So I set myself an alarm for 7 minutes, popped out my back door and walked FAST with no headphones in until the alarm went off, then turned around and walked back home. I came into my next session, which happened to be a visit with my therapist, feeling like I’d just had a nap and a massage. Welllll, maybe not quite—but close. :) While I was walking I felt like I heard my body say ‘this is what will save you.’ I smiled. ‘Thank you,’ I whispered, to nobody and everybody in particular.

I don’t remember exactly when I first felt the realization vibrating in me that nobody was coming to save me; not from the sins, not from the apathy, not from the anxiety and hyper-vigilance, and certainly not from the disempowerment or from the void of a total lack of self trust. It felt like my whole life I’d been waiting for a deliverer—after all, I was raised in a religion where deliverance and eternal salvation were the promise, the dangling carrot, the emerald castle. And there were beautiful aspects to this; I learned early that I couldn’t very well go through life alone. No man is an island, and all that. However, I also managed to internalize the idea that I needed someone else to take care of me. In practical, earth-side realms this meant that I needed a husband to care for me financially, to shepherd and guide me spiritually, and to protect me physically. Cosmically, well…you know the rest, I’m sure.

And listen—we all need help. I’m not saying God’s not here to be helpful or to help us live. Life is f***ing crazy sometimes. But what I have finally begun to release is the notion that I can just lay here, waiting and praying, and that my life will change in the ways I need it to. The realization that nobody was coming sounded so terrible at first; so disappointing, so discouraging, so painful because I’d devoted my whole life to the idea that I was living for that Someone, and some day They’d be back. But the more I sat with it, the more joyful the realization became: nobody is coming because they’re already here. All the divine spark or assistance I could ever need already lives in my own heart, in my own body, in my own self.

There’s so much more I could say about this. I’ve had many years of practice at feeling paralysed. Staying stuck, playing it safe, and lamenting my wounds are intimately familiar territories; and I’m often so afraid of spiritually bypassing or dismissing my own emotions (because I’ve done those things too, which are also unhelpful!) that I don’t seem to be able to find the wherewithal to make any moves to change my situation.

That’s when I finally realized the answer is SO SIMPLE (sometimes.)

Feel stuck? Move. Physically — get up and shake, dance, walk, run, yell, do jumping jacks, jump rope, get on a trampoline.

Feel anxious? Get all the way anxious, baby! Get in the bathtub and scream at the top of your lungs! Yell, cry, shake, freak out. (Alone or with a trusted friend/family member, safely, and not lashing out at someone else.)

Feel confused? Mind jumbled? Speak stream of consciousness while recording for at least twenty minutes until you can untangle some knots. Do some deep stretching at the same time. That helps.

There was a voice that arose in me that first time I realized nobody was coming to save me. The voice said “GET OFF THE PHONE, TURN OFF THE TV, GET UP AND F***ING DO SOMETHING.” I knew that, if I wanted my life to feel any different, if I wanted to go through this world thriving instead of withering, I would simply have to begin learning to come through for myself.

Listen; as a (former) card carrying member of the “I Can’t Club” — as a person who has been given several difficult diagnoses in the mental health arena (OCD and CPTSD) and who has struggled with ADHD type symptoms for her whole life, I can say all this to myself as callously as I am now because I have a little time and experience with it under my belt. My ‘paralysis by analysis’ is laughable to me now because I have learned to laugh at it. You might not be there yet. You might be reading this and thinking, ‘easy for you to say.’ And it is, now. But it wasn’t always. Until it was!

For now—if you feel stuck and sticky and heavy today, take a walk. Don’t listen to anything except the wind in the trees. Talk to yourself if you need to. Let your thoughts tumble out like laundry from an overfilled dryer. You’d be absolutely amazed what it can do.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

it me, being my own guardian angel ;)