One Step, then the Next

I wake up feeling anxious. Do you know that feeling in your chest? The tightness and contraction that says everything is going wrong and I'm about to make a terrible mistake and there's too much and I can't do it all and I want to go back to sleep. Yeah, not my usual waking state, but today? Overwhelming panic. Don't ask me why, I've stopped giving too many stories to explain WHY I feel what I feel. I feel it and it must be addressed and released. That's it. No judgment. Thank you panic for reminding me that I've been procrastinating a LOT.

I count back from 30 and give myself a Reiki treatment, which lulls me into sleep for another half an hour or so. Then I smile up at the morning sun and check in with myself. I sleep with the blinds open because I like the light. Let me be more clear: I adore Sol first thing in the morning. I may be carrying on a little affair with bright and early sunbeams and morning birdsong. The river is my main passion right now, but I don't think she'll mind.

I have been working on expanding and cultivating a morning routine for years. I wake up, meditate, make my bed, and set the tone for my day with some intention and guidance, get hydrated, move, and start work. For guidance, I pray, pull some tarot and oracle cards, and listen to my heart. That sounds so woo-woo and silly, but I am feeling overwhelmed about the transition from student to work life. Looming school loans and making decisions about career and deciding how I am going to move forward and future goals and where I want to live now that I've graduated are all swirling in a vortex of overwhelm around my head. There are too many options and my nervous system isn't coping well. I crave a direction, a vector, a first task to ease the discomfort.

My cards are eloquent and helpful. A gentle reminder from the Queen of Cups to be with my emotions, to fully feel. I sense a rising panic in my body. I am not immune to fear. I have found, through years of Jungian shadow work, that fear is the undercurrent of all my unconscious behaviors of self-sabotage. I force myself to acknowledge the closed fist of a heart in my body. I stop looking away (do you distract yourself, too?) and sit with it to listen. Today's fear presents as massive overwhelm and fear of dying alone and poor. Fear of becoming my mother is right up there, too. Instead of following my instinct to distract myself from the panic, I bring my attention inward toward the tight ball of terror, and ugly cry to let it out. I do that a lot. If I don't tell myself a story about why I need to cry, the emotion just flows out of my eyeballs with the tears and my body relaxes and space for feeling more pleasant things opens up inside me. I just have to be brave and feel my feelings first... ugh.

Seven Pentacles encourage me to keep going. I am reminded that I don't have to handle everything at once. I can cut up tasks into smaller steps and accomplish things that way. A little reminder that I've come a long way and I've done some deeply rooted healing and whole-ing work and I have developed deep roots and the capacity and tools to keep going. I contemplate how much I've been procrastinating, and then sit with the feelings of fear around getting a job: will my nervous system, so burned out, be able to hold consistent and daily tasks? Will I fail miserably? It wouldn’t be the first time. My inner story is that I used up all my resilience by homeschooling my six children and choosing the path less traveled, that I'm delicate and I need to baby my nerves. Every day is a new challenge and it's never easy for me to take steps forward. Still, I keep moving, even if it's crawling on my knees. My inner child is a little toddler, face all snotty and red with tears, but I'm still doing the scary thing, I keep walking. I tell myself it's courage and give myself a little metaphorical pat on the back.

Keep Going

This is where you're headed, girl, keep walking. It's gonna get good.

The oracle Going Forward, echoing the last card, gives me an image of grass. So many blades of grass eating carbon dioxide and making oxygen, holding erosion in check, providing a cushion for feet and body. Grass can keep homes dry, and provide building materials and food in the form of grains. A small, simple thing, that when multiplied many times can accomplish a lot. I hear Dory sing, "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming." The image on the card is a vista of pastoral beauty, my ideal place, with ancient mountains rising in the distance. This is where you're headed, girl, keep walking. It's gonna get good.

Finally, the Scribe, a constant repeat in my readings for the last year. I have been feeling guided to journal more in digital form, to be revelatory, to cease the pretense of having it all together... and then to let people read it. I feel naked while I'm typing this... I know I'm going to publish it and I'm all tensed up and a little nauseous in resistance. That's a good sign it's the direction my soul is taking me if my past experience is any indicator. Bleurgh.

I meditate (this I have well mastered and you're welcome to check out my protocol here) and do some journaling about procrastination and what I am afraid of. I visualize what it would be to feel free to be messy and try things, and what it would feel like when I've navigated this time of transition and limbo successfully. My body feels open now, flowy, ready to move. I go for a walk. Not toward the river where I go for respite, but instead, I choose a pattern disruptor. I turn in the opposite direction, toward town. Maybe eventually, I can walk all the way downtown and hit my favorite coffee shop before I walk home to start work, which would take about an hour in total. That feels kind of dreamy in my imagination. Perhaps it'll make its way into my morning routine.