Finding growth in the stillness…

Somewhere along the way, I forgot how to rest. I’m not uncomfortable with silence. I’m content alone.

I was fearful of still.

Still means stagnant, and I need continual movement to create, to inspire… to be.

I was wrong.

Over the years I’ve done energy work with amputees experiencing phantom pain. Depending on the abruptness of loss, fractured nerve endings tangle into a frenetic energy trying to call to something that’s no longer available.

There’s a necessary transition of unwinding to allow the body to quiet and rebalance. It’s not a forced process, unraveling takes time.

For me, that’s 2020. A year of awakening where old truths have been severed followed by months of unwinding and untangling.

I can’t ignore the role that trauma has played throughout my life, but I also refuse to allow myself to be defined by it. Although it spans several chapters, it’s only one part of my story.

I recently read that we often focus on post-traumatic stress, but forget to acknowledge post-traumatic growth…

and that growth happens in the still.

After the storm.
After the fire.
After all the shit has crumbled and is quiet…. that pause, that rest, facilitates transformation.

I didn’t come into this rest easily. It took the emotional and physical exhaustion of watching my son quickly spiral from a minor infection to a septic one to surgery within a matter of 5 days to knock me on my ass.

Not during, of course. No, those five days my cape was tightly tied.

But by the end, rest was my only option available. And with the energy to defend my walls depleted, support seeped through the cracks…

and I got scared.

My cape was gone.
I was exposed.
I was vulnerable.

Even worse, I was content.

For the first time I allowed myself to receive; I let myself be still.

Instead of mentally wrestling for the ability to do, I found in that space the ability to create.

My life seemed to appear in panoramic.

I’m finding a calm happiness which is entirely new — and yet still somewhat uncomfortable. Frenetic energy was home.

I’m by no means the epitome of patience yet, but it seems to be unwinding.

In the past couple weeks- I’ve been presented with a few opportunities that I didn’t believe existed. I also didn’t realize forgotten dreams could circle back.

Regardless if they all come to fruition, I’m still left with possibility.

And maybe that’s the growth that comes from the still… not stagnation, but rather possibility.