In a season of catching up

Letting things integrate :: Originally published on APril 26th 2022

Winter 2022 for me was about catching up. Catching up with all the books on my shelf that I hadn’t read. I think I read like 12 books in a matter of a few weeks. Finishing all the tv shows I had bought or started streaming that I never got the time to enjoy.

I finished the process of getting my 2nd book (my first memoir) ready to be birthed.

I finished a newsletter project I had been doing for a year.

I ripped apart journals and burnt them.

I sat in front of the fire and asked myself, is there anything I really want to say to anyone that I haven’t yet? Could I?

Is there anything I need to forgive that I never got relational resolution around?

Do I need to forgive myself? For things I did or said when I was feeling under resourced and less than considerate of others?

I finished blaming and criticizing and instead got vulnerable.

The past 2 years have largely been a catch up process for me. I had lived so much (for better and for worse) in the first quarter of my life. I had so many experiences that I hadn’t had the time to fully integrate. My life was almost lived on this hyper speed setting. Partly, this was because I lived very dense developmental trauma followed by an event trauma when I was eighteen, so the way I knew life was very “too much, too soon, too fast,”… without my consent.

But even the good stuff that I fully consented to was fast as well. My career. My travels. My relationships. My coming out.

I don’t regret any of it. In fact, I think I’ve lived so richly already. AND I also knew it was not sustainable for me long term. I started getting the ‘settle down and think of building a family’ nudge and I knew I would have to do a lot of slow recovery pace lifestyle years in order to be in a position where I would be available for that desire of mine and available for the people who would need me in that life.

At the end of 2019, even though I had no real concept of the upcoming pandemic, I started telling myself, I NEED TO SLOW DOWN.

I need to stop living on my phone and my computer 24/7. I need to walk on grass and have a garden. I need to sleep. I need to wake up and get to a place where I am healed enough that I have energy and I consider myself healthy (not perfect, or not not disabled, but healthy - happy to be here kind of healthy.)

I need to pause and marinate and understand and unpack and just straight up chill.

The pandemic, minus the stress of possibly dying as a disabled person with a history of severe chronic illnesses or becoming much more disabled to the point where I could not provide for myself if I got covid, was a great opportunity for that.

I caught up. I socially isolated so hard though.

And before I choose what is next in my life, as I am now vaccinated and feeling safer in the world…

I’ve had to finish everything I started.

Before I could even consider what would I like next, I’ve had to finish everything I started. Now I can ask, so what is the vision? What am I moving towards?…

Letting things integrate is good. It’s a process we skip far too much in non trauma aware spaces or under capitalism if you ask me.

If you needed a permission to catch up, here it is. From my point of view, and in a nervous system health context, doing so allows us to build resilience. It is never a waste of time or unwise to rest and digest and process before beginning any new thing. If we skip this part, we don’t assimilate any of the nutrients we’ve eaten properly and the meals we’ve had don’t offer us their full capacity. You know… metaphorically. ;) Not skipping integration actually allows us to gain strength in the long run.

So may the medicine be chewing and breathing and relaxing always - as much as possible. Many blessings. xx