The Space In Between
He sat in the front yard, surrounded by over-grown grass and a haze that was caught somewhere between summer and imagination. I longed to touch his face, for him to grab me onto his lap, to feel close, loved, secure. But he was gone, looking towards someone else.
Dreams are such an intense, magical, and sometimes painful way to let us know some of the healing that still needs to take place. I’ve found the more that I open up and truly witness my shadow in my waking life, the more opportunity I have to heal it through my dream life.
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I love my work, probably more than I have ever loved anything in my life. When I, thankfully only occasionally, get the ‘sad’ look from people about not having kids (most people know this is my choice, and has actually always been my truth, despite pressure from the world to conform as a woman to ‘naturally’ want children), I let them know that my work is my child, and I feel that is true. It keeps me up at night; it needs to be constantly nurtured, even when I feel I have nothing to give; it cries and breathes and sleeps and demands attention. It has slowly moved from the baby and toddler phases into the kindergartner-phase, where it is being helped to grow by forces other than simply just me (whew!).
It has forced ME to grow in all the ways I was able to bypass before.
But, it does not leave much room for true alone time. Time for me to dive into the deep oasis of my incredibly full inner world, one which is absolutely essential for my joie de vivre.
I am by nature, a dreamer (for you Astrology types, my South Node is in Pisces, and my Moon and Venus signs are in Scorpio. For those into the Enneagram, I am a 4). I spent too much of my younger life trapped in that dream world because it was safe. But the first few years of running my own business meant I threw the baby out with the bathwater; I lost the time and some of my ability to sit in that world that reminds me of what connects us all, that fuels my passion and energy, and is a necessary component of my healing.
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I’ve had a variation of that dream throughout my adult life. Different men, different loves, but that same general feeling. Though I used to think it was about that specific man, as those feelings are so intense and seemingly about that person when you wake up, I have known for some time now that they are about me. They are about my own beliefs of worthiness, of being able to trust, of desiring and hidden beliefs that I can’t have what I really want. They have been about the seemingly surface level of not believing I was physically beautiful (this may seem surface, but it is in fact a deep, painful, rotting cultural belief that I guarantee the majority of women experience often in their lives), and then it moved on to a more personality-level attachment to my awkwardness; and finally settled into understanding the fear of someone else truly seeing who I am, and what is asked of me to be raw and show up in ways I’ve gotten used to skirting around.
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The space in between is the time where you can let go of your responsibilities. I can already hear a million people say, “well, I can’t EVER do that”, and I kindly call bull shit. Of course, the world is never going to hand you free moments on a silver platter (or, maybe it does, but you quickly shore up something you ‘have’ to do because people depend on you – this is a moment I would like to remind you that we all believe the job won’t get done if we aren’t there to do it, and yet, it always gets done when we are forced to step away. Time to dampen your ideas of your own grandeur a bit). You have to 1. believe it is important to have true alone time where you aren’t working, doing, exercising, or filling up with tv; 2. face your fear of what will come up when you are without distractions. Neither is easy, though I’d say the second one is what ultimately keeps people from doing it.
For me, a flood of AHAs come when I sit in that space in between. My core wounding has a chance to gently peer it’s head without the overdrive of a situation that makes me all hot-headed, and unable to see or deal with the wounding for what it is. My dreams flow into my waking life, where synchronicity lives and breaths, and the weight of the world is not so overwhelming. The space in between allows for a lifting up to that next stage of purpose and evolution, but a mindful one. I work to create the space in between in Metamorphosis, but I also encourage you to find it in your life on your own, outside of a class, or your family, or a partner. Your best healing comes from those quiet moments of realization and integration.
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He is beautiful, and wistful, and shows me my fears so that I can look them straight in the eye (which, really, is the only good way to work with fear). He reminds me of how strongly I can feel, what I am capable of giving, what my trappings are, how not to lose myself, what to face in my larger life lesson of understanding the safety zone of balance (not a finite thing that you achieve, but a slight teeter-totter to each side, never falling completely to the ground or blasting up high into the sky).
And I believe that the most grounded evolution comes from one balance in particular – the one of driving forward, and then coasting for a while in the space in between. This is where you can make your clearest decisions, and bridge your mind with your heart and your soul.
*photo by Joy Kennedy
