Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
I was part of a discussion yesterday, at one of our local adorable boutique stores. We were having a conversation about the start of the new year and yesterday’s gorgeous, illuminating full moon. Everyone was talking about how this year feels like more of a slow, yet steady start out of the gate. We’re definitely in a forward motion, but not at a frenetic pace.
Interestingly, a young turtle appeared in front of our house, by our garage door yesterday afternoon. He was easy for my daughter and I to pick up, and to move into our backyard, closer to the lake. The turtle’s self protection was to clam up into his hard shell. The turtle knew that he would never be able to outrun us. He knows that his own pace is slow, deliberate and steady, with a hard armour of protection surrounding him. The turtle played to his strengths, and so he stayed closed up into his shell, until he realized that he could trust us to help him to get to a better place.
Perhaps this is a good allegory for this upcoming year, or at least the start of this year? One woman in the discussion said that she does not like to say “low energy” or “low frequency”, because unfortunately we have given “low” a negative connotation in our society. Instead, she uses the terms “slow energy” or “slow frequency”, because sometimes it is important to slow down, and to pay attention to the road ahead and to the direction which you are taking. Another woman chimed in with this thought: “You can only go as fast as the slowest part of you.” This made me think: What is slowing you down? What is holding you back from marching forward? Do you have heavy baggage that needs to be let go? Are there cords that need to be cut? Are there parts of your bodily and mental health that need to be healed, and to be nurtured, before you move on down the road?
The moderator of the discussion suggested this journal prompt written below. I am taking my slow, sweet time meditating on my own answer to this prompt. The answer hasn’t become apparent to me yet, and that’s okay. Stews and soups that have simmered for a long time, tend to make for the best melding of ingredients, resulting in the tastiest of concoctions. Here is the prompt (and we all giggled a little bit, because although this was a groupshare event, this prompt does not necessarily encourage ‘sharing”):
What is something this year, that you will keep to yourself for yourself?
My daughter went “to town” furiously writing her answer right after the prompt was announced. I mentioned to my daughter that I noticed this fact, and she was immediately forthcoming with sharing her response to the prompt with me. My daughter told me that she likes her evenings to be completely “chill.” She doesn’t like when most of her evenings are filled with activities and stimulation. My daughter likes to ease into nighttime. As a freshman in college, she recently came to the realization that she had lost her boundaries around this fact, and she plans to go back to school with a firmer, protective shell around her personal needs. Wow. I love my girl. It is times like these in parenthood when you see the blossoming of your children turning into adults, and you open up your mind to all that you can learn from them, too. It also makes me realize that just like how baby sea turtles inherently know to follow the light to make their path to the sea, so do our baby children inherently know to follow the light of their own souls to find their path to the vast adventures of life that lie ahead of them.
And I would add to this, “and at ease with your own pace.”