I have exciting news to share with you!
My pack and I are moving!
Into a house! With doors! (We currently live in a studio mother-in-law with the only interior door being the bathroom door.) With a huge shop! And a potting shed! A front yard! A back yard! And a steep slope beyond the back yard!
I'm grateful to be able to experience all that's next. I'm grateful that I feel willing for this change.
I'm beyond grateful that emotions are mutable because gosh, I have felt so. many. feelings about this personal change.
My favorite podcast just released a new episode. The episode pulls creative people's voices from other interviews and one person (I'm pretty certain it's Rick Rubin but I could be wrong) shares this about 3 minutes in:
It's through the doing that the universe comes through us.
Parts of me have wanted this move for several years. The thing is, desiring and dreaming of a change feels wildly different than doing the change. Desiring and dreaming only get to be experienced in one's mind and in conversation. Doing is a fully embodied and immersive experience. The moments before the full embodied immersion.... they can bring up so much fear. Fear because of how unknown it is.
I told Nathan it feels like we're in the page turn.
From one chapter to the next, we're existing in the moment when the reader knows the story is going to morph and the characters are going to transmute but it's all yet to come. Sometimes the page turn between one chapter and another is a simple place to pause one's reading session. But other times the story is calling to the reader, "keep going! Keep reading! We want to be known by you!"
I'm tired and exhilarated by all the dancing between the quiet pauses in the moments between the exhale and inhale and the frantic rush of the need to be known – and to know.
Another voice in that same podcast episode (I don't know who it is, maybe you will know if you listen) shares something else so on point:
I was talking to my therapist and I was saying to her, I was in like a low, just feeling, just low. I said to her, like, I really want to control. I hate that my highs feel so high in my life and the lows feel so low. I just wanted to be in the middle, just be nice.
She says you have to realize if you're looking at a heart monitor, it's going up and down. And if you are in control, you put it in the middle, that means you flat line.
So what you need to remember is... life is all about the highs and lows. That's a good one.
And whenever you're in a low or a high, life has told you and will remind you that you'll go to the opposite at any given time.
I've had this exact thought before: "I want to be balanced! I want my days to feel even and easeful!" But in reality, I get bored when all I can do is walk on a flat path. My body wants to walk up and down and breathe into the effort.
So it's not balance or ease, actually – it's predictability. The parts of me that feel fear about the unknown want to know how everything is going to turn out. But there are equal parts of me that feel excitement about the unknown. Those parts of me trust the inherent dance of highs and lows, twists and turns, pauses and rushes.
Are you in a page turn moment, too? Perhaps in the middle of a chapter, at the end of one, or the beginning of another? I feel both fear and excitement as we write our stories into the unknown, alongside one another.
Til soon,
Cassandra
P.S. Maybe you've noticed, maybe you haven't – I'm going to a fortnightly (every other week) posting schedule for the next month or so. I'm playing with the possibility of posting spontaneously as well. I did it for the first time a few weeks ago! The spontaneous posts are simply to my website, they don't arrive in your email inbox. Read the first spontaneous post here.
P.P.S. I've decided to keep the Spring enrollment window to Moment of Slow open for a few more days! It'll be open until Sunday night. Your presence is welcomed.
It's a small, simple every-two-week podcast episode and email that feels like a pause by the creek with me offering a touch of intentionality to your day.
Moment of Slow's intention is to weave with your existing care practices, it's a right-sized offering that loves basking in its smallness and watery creek sounds.
I'll open Moment of Slow up again in the summer if you're interested but not ready to join at this moment in time.
P.P.P.S. For those who are wondering... we're moving 1.5 hours south of where we live now. If you know, you know. If you don't know but you live close or are curious, reach out and I'll for sure tell you more details! :-)