leap year
beauty breather five
{beauty breather: a photographic pause for rest}
Join me in a guided visual meditation - an invitation into noticing the wilderness within and without while making space for the fullness of our humanity. These beauty breathers are collections of my nature photographs, part of Notes From the Wilderness.
I am in Western Canada and experience four distinct and rather extreme seasons. This cycle is integral to my experience. I acknowledge this frame of reference may not be familiar to everyone yet I hope you will still be able to enter in and feel welcome.
You can return to each beauty breather as often as you desire. Notice what is the same and different in how you experience the words and images.
If you’re wanting to slow down but find yourself rushing through, try setting a timer (I really love the Insight Timer app.) Go at whatever pace work for you.
Meet yourself with kindness and gentleness. Let curiosity lead.
366 days. 24 more hours. We have to add an extra day, every four years, to get back on track. I could do with a whole lot more.
Yesterday morning my chest was tight with anxiety, the urgency police sounding all the alarms. There’s just so much to do and I can’t, for the life of me, get caught up. So I sat down in subversity to the system shouting my name.
Shhhhh.
exhaaaaaaale
As I sat cross-legged, entangled with a racing mind, the word unproductive becomes my mantra. It’s not yet another judge but a soul-serving invitation. (One my therapist offered as gentle homework… practice being unproductive.)
inhale
exhale… permission to be gloriously unproductive
inhale
exhale
inhale
exhale
There is a discomfort in the reality that no matter how hard I work, how many ways I can optimize my schedule or reevaluate my priorities, there is always more on the list of tasks to do and dreams to realize. I’m trying to straddle two worlds - the one where I have nothing to prove and the one that demands I am endlessly, profitably productive. What is the point of all this hustling if I’m left perpetually breathless?
I need to catch my breath.
inhale
exhale
inhale…. permission to breathe
exhale… gloriously unproductive
And then, this phrase bubbled up from within me:
I am not running out of time.
The irony of its presence a welcome balm.
I am not running out of time. Because I’m no longer running.
Is this true?
Am I allowed to no longer run? Will I allow myself to stop running?
inhale
exhale
I yearn for a life that permits my undivided attention. Where can I make space for a life not divided? Even when I stop for 5 minutes, I give myself the gift of a leap year - a moment of realignment to get in sync with the season I’m in. I stop to allow time to expand. It is a moment to remind myself the life I want is not a breathless race. Where on earth am I running, anyway? I’m still learning my worth isn’t found in endless pursuit of making the most of my time in unrelenting productivity.
I’m still learning I’m free to be free.
Maybe somehow, miraculously, even from time.
inhale
exhale
inhale
exhale
inhale
exhale
If this leap year beauty breather resonates for you in anyway I’d love to join you in conversation in the comments. I’m so glad you’re here.
This post filled me with such awe, Erin. So many things to love about it! The idea of purposely being UNproductive resonates hugely. I’ve been following a similar way since my burnout a few years ago. I’m still in the allowing myself to stop running, but each time I’m slowing down from a less frantic pace, and often simply resisting the urge to start running. (Ha, I say ‘simply resisting’ though it doesn’t always feel simple!) That line in your poem - “The change in pace enough for my soul to become steady” is sublime! Thank you.
Gorgeous 🤍