running for my life
Waking from a dream, wondering if I am running away from what's best for me.
I had a weird sleep this morning. I am going to tell you about it.
But first, let me say hello, and how are you doing? Let’s talk briefly about practical things.
When I consider the months ahead, I am (like many others) eager to experiment and shake things up and get stuff done. I’m sure you’re feeling it too? The energy of this new year is very giddy up and let’s go girls. But, hold your horses. The “new year” doesn’t technically begin in the Chinese calendar until mid-February, and beyond that, most would consider March a better starting line. If you’ve been tuning in and feeling a shift, that’s good insight that change is nigh (neigh). But just remember that we usually have a heads up not because it’s happening immediately, but so we can prepare and be ready.
January is an ideal time to continue doing deep wintering work. Think of it as our preparation month. If you haven’t been shaking off dead weight, stripping down old concepts, and moving as close as you can to your tipping point, this is the time. Take some space and get clear on what you want and where your path is so that when it’s time to run, there’s no hesitation. I have included a few little suggestions below on where to start.
How to prepare for new things:
Respond to the pull to simplify. Remove or wean away from any objects, commitments, habits, relationships that aren’t helpful anymore. Making space is a powerful yet understated ritual that declares you are ready for what’s new. I would recommend the feng shui 27x9 ritual (getting rid of 27 items everyday for 9 days in a row).
Prioritize rest and healing. Our bodies need time to restore strength, so focus on gut-healing ingredients, warm liquids, hot baths and/or saunas, body brushing, exercises that support flexibility (cross-lateral movements are also good), and sleep health. Care for your nervous system with prolonged silence, time alone, and if you can, massage therapy.
Identify limiting thoughts and beliefs. Ask yourself what might be causing blockages for you mentally, spiritually and emotionally. What are you afraid of? What worries you? What keeps you from starting? Why do you feel you can’t? If you want to level up here, ask yourself where the belief comes from and whose it is (ex. your dad’s, your childhood best friend, etc.). Then! Make a new choice by stating the new thought or belief in the present tense (ex. I am, I have, I believe, etc.).
To aid in my detoxing, I completed a three-day water fast last week. Ever since then, my spirit feels more alert, my digestion easier, and my dreams more vivid. If that’s in the cards for you, I highly recommend a water-only fast (make sure the water is purified and ideally mineralized).
Shall we get to the good stuff? I enjoy talking about and interpreting dreams, so for your weekend enjoyment, I am untangling some subconscious threads as I ask myself some of the real questions I have been running from.
lvs
xx
running for my life
I wake abruptly because I feel a spider on me. Jumping to my knees and throwing off the covers, I turn on the beside lamp and push my hands through the pillows and sheets. Breathless and confused, the image of a thick, furry tarantula flashes through my mind; its dark body somewhere in this bed. After a few minutes rummaging I can see that there is, unsurprisingly, no giant spider crawling on me at 4am. I lie back down knowing that the likeliness of a spider of that caliber even existing in the wintery spaces of Alberta is about as likely as me waking up as a cockroach tomorrow.
My heart is racing, as I lie down and think god, what the—? I am haunted by this crawling presence, feeling that I have been awoken by a small, though harmless, fear. It’s hard to define the sensation singularly; it’s more of an emotional net, or a web, if you will, than a single feeling. Threads of great optimism, disappointment, hope, confusion, and desperation all entangle together like sheets and blankets and loose pj’s. I have spent these last years propelled forward by the idea that life can be magical, miraculous, inspiring, vibrant, abundant. Believing I was just one, maybe two, decisions away from occupying any of the above, I pushed my body into destinations I can only describe as promised lands: rich, sumptuous landscapes teeming with the fulfillment of long-had longings. Briny gildas on long sticks, curated sardine wonderlands, cups overflowing with passion fruit agua fresca, sunset baptisms in the warm ocean, love-filled cheesy pastizzi, and so on. What pleasures these lands have held for me; a cornucopia of delights I had only imagined tasting while living in Calgary, dreaming of the future.
After two years away (with small visits in between), I arrived in Calgary the second week of January with a feeling I might be here a little longer. More specifically, I landed in the small town of Okotoks to stay in a friend’s parent’s home while they spend the winter elsewhere. Weary from many months of travel, this time I didn’t have a return ticket booked or an end date in mind. I relished in this decision to find refuge in a less-than-tantalizing environment. No car, no plans, no schedule. My palate wanted something softer to chew on; bland to digest. After unfettered feasting, sometimes the body just wants plain rice and white bread. This is what the winter offers: a table of simplicity. A return to the mundane. I had been craving winter, but still holding images of sweet tomatoes and fresh prawns and plump figs for another time. Tomorrow, tomorrow I will taste you again. But for now, we rest.
And rest I have in this quiet sanctuary in a tiny humming town. I’ve needed this, the same way land needs to be forgotten for a while so it can regain itself. But I wake up sometimes, today for instance, wondering if this is it. This is what will always draw me back: the bland white tundra. Is this where I am always going to end up?
For years, God led me to these landscapes of simplicity. Could you find your inspiration here? In still mornings, in Saskatoon, in Calgary. I spent eight years obedient to the call to find the magic in mundane places. Then, released to travel at last, following the path of curiosity and devotion, I was tasting a life ripely picked in the right timing, and I thought: this is it! Finally I will create an inspired life. Finally I will escape this humdrum rhythm and dance around the fire of freedom, joy, exuberance. I saw paradise sitting in the trees, smiling back at me, whispering that this, this simplicity, of sun, of water, of cold coconuts, was the bliss I had been promised.
In those days, I would feel around the bed to find the materialization of wonder, struck by awe and relief. Running my hands across clean sheets, I would discover the evidence of a beautiful life splendidly snoring, and at peace. I would wake remembering a dream where all the faces smile back with love and realize that it’s real. And then I stop dreaming at night entirely; my subconscious left with nothing to say, because all the dreams are real.
But not today, not yet. Today I woke up with a phantom spider on my skin, recalling a strange series of visions from my sleep. In some foreign place, I am in the middle of being followed by an aging, lust-crazed Calgary friend who has stepped out of an old car and is walking toward me. In the dream, I have become a nun and disappeared contently into my convent, quietly, happily, and despite this, he tries to kiss me. He gets close and I push him away the moment his lips reach mine. “I made a covenant!” As if to say, it could have been yours, but this is what I’m married to now. My words are ringing with anguish and indignation. I run down a dry dirt road, between country gardens lined with tall dark hedges, and hope he’ll understand as I kick up dust in my habit. But he persists — he wants me to join him in this world of living pain, where hair and skin alike grey with apathy and resignation. This world, this man, is lifeless and without colour or vitality. He has no love within him; he needs mine. I’ve walked away from everything, from the routine, from a familiar, from a sense of complacency that thinks “this is all there is.” No, I knew there was more. I knew that if I surrendered, gave up the ghost, as they say, I would find peace within absence. In the gentle abiding humility of not wanting, I would realize my wanting had been satisfied. If I stopped trying so hard, I might discover that abundance is in being present; that life is ripe for the picking and I can take as many bites as I want, at any time. Stay back, get away from me, you numb old life.
Somehow I have run back to the convent, where he has now caught up to me. He lays out offerings: food rations and odd gifts and objects plucked from obscurity. The Mother Superior comes and looks down at a table like a flea market picker. She frowns, and tells me to get rid of everything. It’s not mine—I begin to protest but she has already walked away. Some negotiations occur, then I wake up. Personally, I don’t ignore visceral, life-like dreams, so I am now sitting with it. Wondering what I am running from, or running towards.
Last night around 7pm I was offered a long-term housesit in Calgary that would begin February 8th and end on April 26th. A feeling has taken up residence in my body, akin to a thick soup. It’s comforting and nourishing, but also heavy and congealed. I should say yes to the offer, because I know I need to sip on this slowness more, but I am hesitant. There’s a tiny seedling of fear that I will get pulled into an old, colourless life. Into a way of living that makes me forget.
Maybe the idea of being Calgary for three, four, maybe more months has uprooted things in my subconscious and had assembled the parts into this dream. Maybe something in me interprets being here as an old friend chasing me down a rugged trail in the springtime of my life, desperate to pull me away from my refuge of bliss. Come back to me, he pleads. I love you. I don’t know how I feel about him anymore; this man, an entire city. Maybe I did love him once but the feelings have bled out into the land around me and I just don’t feel that way about you anymore. The land is dry, yellow grass bends brittle beneath my feet. Each blade on the surface of the earth catches the softness of my hem in its rough embrace. Out here, life is bleached, and I am afraid of losing something. I am afraid I will forget what the gildas taste like, how the ocean rumbles against my back, how it feels to be alive.
This isn’t the end of excitement, but it certainly feels like it for a while. My central nervous system says shhh, stop, slow down. My heart wants to know if we’ve given up on the vision. My skin doesn’t care; it just wants sunlight. My lips are dryer than ever and knees are sore from kneeling. Altogether, this cacophony of feeling and sound arranges into something real, tender, imperfect, but true. Yes, I’ll slow down; no, we haven’t given up. I’ll find a sunny spot in the living room and reapply the balm to my skin. I don’t know when it will all come together beautifully, but I know it will. I believe and pray and hope it will. Every night on my knees, I am devoted to the mystery. For now, we will find refuge in it.
I send a voice memo to a friend and say I am undecided even though I know I am not. I text back the woman and say yes, I will do the housesit. I am not thrilled, but I am calm, and it’s becoming clearer to me that’s the most important of all.