In our own ways
we all break.
it is okay
to hold your heart outside of your body
for
days.
months.
years.
at a time.—heal
- nayyirah waheed
Hello, dear being. Hi.
It is late March, 2021. We have, at this juncture, spent a whole year sheltering-in-place. A whole year in the slipperiest relationship with time, with it passing and feeling utterly stagnant all at once. Endlessly. But now, in March of 2021, we are on the cusp of springtime and vaccines are being administered and for the first time in a long time, it feels like we can see the light at the end of this very strange and difficult tunnel.
I hope you have been managing okay.
Sometime in the early days of shelter-in-place, as I found myself collapsing under the weight of severe depression—triggered by events in my personal life and compounded by COVID and quarantine—I gave myself permission to not work on this blog. Gave myself permission to stop being hard on myself for my inability to show up to my passion-work. A creative get out of jail free card, with no expiration date.
It was the first time I had ever, in my adult life, granted myself this freedom. The freedom of judgment-free not-making.
Beginning in late autumn 2019 and for months upon months following, I felt inert. Hollow. My days were lived in a heavy lethargy and despair couched in mental frustration about my inability to move. Eventually, by mid-summer last year, my existential status morphed into a state that I best identified as “fallow.” I described myself as such to my therapist; to close friends. During this period, I was beginning to remember the foundation of who I was, but I remained preternaturally unable to bear fruit. To yield any seedlings, let alone bounty.
Some weeks after ruminating on my “fallow” state in therapy, I followed a random impulse to look up an artist whose work I had seen and loved in an exhibition in Vancouver a year and a half before. Scrolling through her Instagram feed, I was stunned to lay my eyes on a caption in which the artist described her experience of feeling creatively fallow—and included the definition of the word:
FAL.LOW /ˈfalō/
“(of farmland) plowed and harrowed but left unsown for a period in order to restore its fertility”
I stopped. Read again.
…in order to restore its fertility.
I took a breath, then broke down crying.
My self-permission to step away from my creative work—not to mention many other facets of life in which I felt I was failing—was not an act of resignation. It was an act of restoration.
Life in quarantine during a global pandemic has taught all of us a great many, varied, often harrowing lessons. Lessons we likely didn’t want or know we needed to learn. Realizing that rest is a necessary part of the cycle of production and that we are all valid, whole and worthy even when we are not producing anything has been a monumental lesson of mine.
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but if you do:
You are allowed to give yourself permission. To stop. To fall apart. To rest. To move through your own unique process and timeline of holding your heart outside of your body, of laying your soil untilled—knowing that this stillness, this active not doing is a vital causeway along the journey of coming back into your bounty.
I have been engaged in so much deep personal work, this past year. Processing severe and acute emotional trauma. Noticing how the route to healing is, in so many ways, through my body. Getting real with myself about my shadows, my patterns, the behaviors I’ve needed to stop repeating and wounds I’ve needed to heal. To forgive others, to forgive myself, and to choose to evolve on from.
Last summer, I shared a candid snippet of what I have been healing from on Instagram. That decision was fueled by a part of me that needed to be witnessed; by my very deep conviction of wanting to contribute to a culture in which these experiences are not hidden or shamed; and by my burgeoning realization that this experience has changed me. That my work and its content would (will) be different moving forward.
In the tarot, suits correspond with the elements. Earth. Air. Fire. Water. Certain cards have a confluence of two; the earth of fire, for example, would be creating something material (earth) out of creative spark (fire). I think, at my essence, I am the air of water: the intelligence of emotion. I am a healer, a transmuter of feeling—in myself and in others. I want to be of service to this. Having been on a long, meandering journey of returning to my wholeness (which, to be frank, may be a lifelong process; a constant returning), I want to use my skills, my knowledge, and my ability to hold darkness with tenderness to help others do the same.
In many ways, food was my gateway to spirituality. It was my gateway to mindfulness; to sparking creative joy; to empowerment. To cultivating a connection with nature and its cycles. To being in deeper relationship with my body via what and how I feed it. I will always, always love food and have borderline obnoxious convictions (depending on who you ask) around it. And. It is not, I think, where my true creative work, spark, and gifts lie.
When we fall apart, we discover what strength lies within us. We discover what we pull forth from our depths that carries us along into our healing and into greater embodiment of our true selves. That inner knowing, that inner fire, that core belief or conviction that was possibly dormant, waiting patiently to be activated, propels us forth. You emerge, without consciously choosing it, fighting for your own life, for your evolution in the way you have always been meant to live it.
\\ ▽ ● ▽ ● ▽ //
And with that…an announcement!
During my year of solo-quarantine, of falling apart and putting myself back together, I spent many hours deepening my knowledge of astrology—which I have been a student and sometimes hyper-enthusiastic teacher of for three and a half years now. I began giving friends birth chart readings, and I adapted the Astrology 101 class that I taught in San Francisco in 2019 for Zoom and led the workshop for a few groups of friends. Teaching, speaking and connecting are activities that I hope and intend to grow in my return to Pollinate and my overall creative work. For those of you who are interested in spiritual growth, healing, and coming into greater self-love—stay tuned.
For now, it is my extreme pleasure to announce that I will be teaching Astrology 101: Fundamentals for Self-Knowing on Zoom next month!
Click HERE to learn more. I hope you’ll join me!
