Taking Space is NOT selfish

This summer I went on retreat to a friends for a whole week. By day two stuff started to show up (big surprise) so I pulled back. However, because this person is so intuitive, and brilliant at not taking things personally she asked me to share what was up.

It was awkward, I felt like crawling out of my skin and hiding even though I'd had the conversation with her in my head a half dozen times. So the words came out all stilted and wobbly and she listened to me. Not only that, she didn't interrupt, try to defend or make faces as I spoke – she just heard me.

What a shift from my last vacation! Not only that, it took us to a new, perhaps slightly awkwardly new space, clear of all the drama. What? No drama – what will I hang on to?!

When I broke down to break through a few days I made space for me and we shared later. I had done the work – sitting there instead of going out partying and faking it and it was so uncomfortable I felt like I was going to be sick. 

However, the running away from myself wasn't working, or the distractions, or the vacation, so I took my time to just feel it.  OMG I felt it! Am I crazy or what?! But it shifted me, and I'm not totally sure how but there is now a spaciousness where once I felt hopelessness and a peacefulness where there was once ungrounded anxiety.

I'm definitely not done growing and doing my work but I'm not broken and OK exactly where I am. I have a new spaciousness in which to face my pain, my anger, my jealousies, anxieties, whatever-ties and just sit in them, ask them what they want to tell me and go through it instead of trying to get around it.

This vacation was a far cry from the last as I left a little bewildered, clearer and shifted due to a great space I made for myself but that was also consciously made for me. Wow. 


NTS: Take space whenever I need it.