The lessons we keep learning

Embracing what we keep circling around

As I type this I’m fighting a headache. One that sears through my jaw up behind my eye socket. I’ve gritted my teeth trying to get through the last six months/three and a half years/four decades. And what I’m bearing down on, ironically, is an attempt at finding some peace here.

Here in my real life.

I’m trying to find little spaces to exhale into right now. Little pockets of oxygen that bring a safe bubble of reprieve. Outlets to release the pressure. Because I’m tired of having to hold my breath. I’m exhausted. My head hurts and my jaw aches.

I wrote these words on August 9th of last year. And this morning, as I sifted through my drafts folder, pressing into various areas of my face to relieve the pressure, I realized I could have written this again today. I’m tempted to give in to a dose of self-criticism, harshly reprimanding myself for continuing to wrestle with the same darned things on repeat. Instead, I’m going to lean into what I’ve been practicing:

tread gently. and see if there’s space to relax that jaw…

Weaving into a canvas I embroidered many moons ago.

If grit, discipline and barrelling through were the ticket, well, I’d have arrived long ago. If ignoring my limits and denying my humanity were the path to success, I’d have reached mastery already. But this isn’t the way - and I know it. It makes sense so many of us fall into this trap. The message relentlessly surrounds us. (The Daft Punk song, “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger’ starts to play in my head.) No matter how hard I resist, I can’t block any of it (including that catchy tune.)

So, this is why I create each beauty breather. It is why I give myself permission to keep circling around the same ol’ themes. It is why I continue to let myself wonder and wander and wander and wonder in every corner of my life, because I’m certain there’s another way through. If the world amplifies instructions to an existence that grates against my values I can be equally persistent to align my own life with what I truly believe.

Over and under, looping on repeat.

Have you ever looked back at something in your life, perhaps a moment of illumination, and felt foolish that it hadn’t occurred to you earlier? What you notice now seems so obvious. But I wonder if we only get to the gift of those places of clarity when we circle around them, peeling back layers, adding more on, removing them again, ad infinitum. I’m in a constant hustle to arrive somewhere as some perfected person so I can feel allowed to breathe. I’m racing to learn all the lessons so I can put down the weight of the world. I want to know how to fix it all - myself - the world - so I can feel allowed to receive peace.

So much of life cycles. Over and over, a hundred springs, summers, autumns and winters. But, it’s not the same thing over and over, is it? The repetition brings something new with every turn. There’s something fresh waiting for us to notice every single time. What would it feel like to willingly, unapologetically, cycle with it all?

Over the last week I returned to an artwork that I created in 2016. It was a mountain range embroidered into a canvas using thread I stained with herbal teas. It was part of a series entitled, “Processing”. I wanted to know what new thing it might have to say and was curious if I could use the embroidered pattern as the warp on a loom, weaving new fibres into it. The permission to return and experience a similar thing in a new way, proved to be a timely work. I will keep choosing to embrace that I need to circle and cycle.

“Perpetually Processing” | natural & synthetic fibres, tea-stained thread, canvas | Erin Stinson 2016/2024

I leave us with this blessing from poet, John O’Donahue:

For the One Who Is Exhausted

When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight,

The light in the mind becomes dim.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laborsome events of will.

Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.

The tide you never valued has gone out.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life.

You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken for the race of days.

At first your thinking will darken
And sadness take over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.

You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.

Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.

— John O'Donohue ("To Bless the Space Between Us”)

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Reflections for your own wandering/wondering:

• What lessons/themes do you find yourself circling around?

• If you peer into something you find yourself continuing to wrestle with, can you identify one thing that is no longer the same in that journey - something that reminds you that you are indeed learning and growing?

• What would it look like to “be excessively gentle with yourself”?