The end is the beginning

Regenerate

The festive season is a sensory overload for all. We are spent and depleted, despite the joy and fun. I have never believed January to be the time for new, the time to rearrange yourself into something more palatable for the world. Rather I have always felt January was the calm after the storm. A time to rest, recoup and regenerate. Let you mind have no fixed thoughts of all you should and must be doing; instead, make the most of the minutiae around you and be mindful of all the tasks that fight falsely for your attention. There is time. You are not in a rush to be a whole new you, not while Mother Nature clearly signals you otherwise. Prioritise what much be done. And as for any moments you have to play with as you like, be brave enough to rest. Resting is doing. And it is vital. By the end of this month you will better know what changes you really do wish to make. Let it unfurl as it will. Ignore the shouts from society about a 'a better you' and a 'a whole new me'....hold your paentiend. Your time to rise will come soon.

Donna Ashworth adapted from Growing Brave

I'm here and I'm writing again for the first time in about 18 months or maybe even more. And it feels like a beginning, beginning again. I have been through the most intense transformation over the last few years and I feel like I am just very gently, tentatively, emerging. I am that dragonfly which finds it's skin is too tight and it must shed it, but it cracks it open and then steps a leg out. And then it must rest and wait for it's new skin to firm up enough for the rest of it to emerge. Or maybe I'm a butterfly and an entirely different creature. But whilst I feel I've been cocoooning and loosing legs, I think I am unbecoming, unlearning, shedding masks and patterns, beliefs and habits to be who I always was. The skin I was in became too tight and brittle and I needed to break out of it.

This process of transformation has taken time, and has had seasons but the last year especially has been the autumn and winter of that. The death and rebirth. And isn't it interesting that rebirth is winter. Its that time where you have let everything go, all that you were, all that you did, all that you worked and fought so passionately for and you're left naked, vulnerable in the ashes of everything you burnt down (or was burnt down for you) wondering "what the actual fuck?" (apologies for those offended by swear words but sometimes only they truly express the feeling of it). I moved house and in doing that I finally found the piece of earth where I felt I could finally rest. And in doing so my body let go and every possible health problem emerged. In that process I learnt a lot about how precious my energy and time is and beautiful my body is, whatever shape or size or ability it has. I learnt about working with my body and its rhythms and cycles and how to build that into my life. I rested a lot. I was overwhelmed, anxious, stressed, sick, a lot. I was literally learning who I was now, and how to be in the world. With that also came an adhd diagnosis and that brought a letting go of so much I did because of shame, because of trying to fit in, because of trying to play small.

And so now, I'm here, and I finally feel like I've stuck a leg out. The skin has cracked. I have shed layers and layers of myself and redefined my identity, who I understand myself to be, what I think I'm capable of, and how I move in this wold. I've let go of decades, lifetimes, of conditioning...of what I understand a "good person" to be. Specifically a good woman to be. And fuck that shit! Fuck the patriarcy and how it has tried to control me and all I believed about myself because of it. I am starting to see what others see in me because I've started to surround myself with amazing beautiful people who see all of me, who celebrate me, who believe in me. And so slowly, I've started to believe it myself.

This is both exhilerating and terrifying all at once. The panic sets in from those parts of me that still believe the story of my smallness. And then, in those moments, I hold onto my knickers and remind myself that I will be ok. I have already lived, burnt down, and rebuilt so much more. I am so much more powerful than I think I am. And I will not give my power away again to anyone. Not the patriarchy, not to relationships, not to the people pleasing parts of me, not to working for companies that do not care about people as human beings. What I've learnt is important to me is community. It is everything and it is the way we take down the patriarchy and the excesses of capitalism. And so I've been creating community spaces - through yoga, through circles, through connection. And this is what I want to do. This is who I am. This is what I stand for. I'm studying somatic coaching, so I can bring this to the creating of community because community isn't in the mind, it's in the body. It's the relationships of bodies, the meeting of bodies that creates connection, sparks invention, and creates more than the sum of its parts. ITs what tells us we're safe enough and not alone.

So now I rest. Resting isn't doing, sorry Donna. Resting is non-doing in the Daoist understanding. Resting is a returning back to yourself, its a coming home again, and again, and again. Its a ritual, a practice, an honouring. Resting is the creating of the new deep inside. It's the seeds planted in the very fertile soil of the ashes of everything I burnt down. Now is not the time to dig them up and see if they've sprouted. Now is the time to water them with my tears, to dream and vision the new, to plan, to organise, to not do anything at all! To just be and remind myself where I've second guessed (or never guessed in the first place) my awesomness (that Evita Sawyers for that beautiful phrase)

Because we are all in the seasons, we are all in change. Nature, life, our bodies teach us this so beautifully. Whether that's January, whether it's rebirth, whether its spring or summer. And different parts can be in different seasons, and different relationships can be in different seasons. But the trick is not to perpetually chase the summer sun, but to acknowledge winter, accept it, honour it. The sun will return, we hold onto that promise. Acknowledge and sit in those ashes when you need to. To rest when you need to. To let go when you need to. To burn it all down, let it go, release it, shed it. The beginning is the end. The end is the beginning. And so we begin again.