Inside: I don’t often wish to go back in time but there’ve been seasons where I wished I could slow it down. I have needed more time.
I’ve been thinking a lot about time lately. I think it’s in part because I just read a book called Where Reasons End by Yiyun Lee in which she has a meandering conversation about time with her 16-year-old son who recently died by suicide. My son liked talking about time, about multiple universes and physics, and about losing the rhythm of his own life.
But also because exploring time is something I’ve always been drawn to. More, perhaps, as it relates to the rhythms of our lives. Or never having “enough” time. The interplay of melatonin and cortisol to help us sleep and wake, our ultradian rhythm and how it influences how we move through each day, our monthly cycle, seasonal shifts, the cycles of a human life, the ebb and flow of grief and creativity and introspection and being in the world.
I am in a season of making space and holding space and living in liminal space. Just a little bit outside of normal time. Life, I think, is less linear more circular.
(There is great wisdom in even our Winter Seasons.)
I don’t often wish to go back in time but there’ve been seasons where I wished I could slow it down. I have needed more time.
One of my practices this year more than ever is slow everything- slow grieving, slow business, slow writing (including a book I’m writing but also mail – I ordered some stationery from Etsy), slow, slow, slow so my spirit and body and mind have time and space to regain equilibrium.
This makes me chuckle a little – it might give the impression that I’ve ever moved other than slowly. I limp and trip over my own feet and sometimes I think I’m walking fairly briskly and folks with full heads of silver hair gracefully bypass me.
So my body has always moved to the rhythm of slow but my mind does not like to sleep. Anxiety spins and whirls around me and a deep sense of personal responsibility bounces around in my belly and brain telling me I can only breathe a little bit, this much rest but not more, freedom feels good but do not dare tip too far.
I am looking forward in time too, thinking about when I get my first book into the wild (an important personal victory as it represents a choice to keep living fully), that I would like to take some time off completely. Maybe a few months or so just to putter and rest and read and go for walks. I recognize that slowing down is a privilege.
I build rest into my day and week and year as well (something I only learned out of necessity but now practice joyfully) but I have a sense that I need to give myself a chunk of time off of outside the home commitment or engagement, something I’ve never had since 10 years old when I started working.
I don’t think I ever gave myself time to be a kid.
At 10 years old I started babysitting. At 12 and 13 I worked full-time in the summer as a babysitter. At 14, once it became legal I started working in shops. At 17 I left home and often struggled to make ends meet. From university into motherhood and volunteering and homeschooling and losing people I love, and building a business (all privilege), I wrestled my way through my life. Never enough. I couldn’t quite keep up – I didn’t yet know that I didn’t have to.
I was allowed to go slow. To honour my wiring, to tell the truth about what I needed. I am allowed to go deep and listen and breathe and to love the full truth of how and where I am.
Slow. Imperfect. On purpose.
Here for a mere moment in time.
Krista xo
NOW WHAT? The bird photo is courtesy of M. Sedestrom Guthrie (you can follow her at @m.sedestrom on IG). Most Monday mornings I send out my HOPE MAP, an invitation to you to pause + consider. If you’re curious, you can sign up below (I’d love to welcome you there).
Hi Krista! Just reading this had me taking a deep breath and then settling down into my body. Thank you–I needed that! I do tend to live far too much in my head and the future and yet, as you suggested so well, it is really best of me to breathe deeply and stay centered and just pause. And yes to taking the time to rest. I do believe that as I age it is getting easier to give myself the permission AND the space to do that…but like so many other practices, that requires remembering and mindfulness or else it is so easy to just slip into old habits of being. Something else you mention is actually “scheduling” downtime. If we don’t it is another way to forget to do that. Thank you again for all these reminders. ~Kathy
I continue to learn, practice, shift as I go. I’ve learned A LOT about my tendencies, beliefs, and needs in the 5.5 years since starting my business. These days, for instance, I know to FIRST block off time for rest, to mark birth and death dates, to plan for my natural ebb and flow as much as possible and THEN decide what to do with the time that remains. I’m far more aware and honest about who and how I am, what I need to live mind-body-spirit healthy, and where I am heading and the truth that my only speed is “slow and steady.”
I would like to take some time off completely. Maybe a few months or so just to putter and rest and read and go for walks. <<< I would like this too. I haven't taken time off, REALLY off, for a very long time, either. Like you do, I build rest into the days, but there's something about multiple days that has a unique power to replenish.
Agreed – it can feel quite emotionally challenging to take time off and working through FOMO or addiction to the phone (or whatever bubbles up) is healthy as is the decompression and deeper rest that we eventually settle into when we have the time and space.
I echo the sentiment of starting work at a young age and never really being a kid. I was an able-bodied, responsible person, growing up with not a lot, and I shouldered the responsibility for my finances very early in my life. I just kept rolling with that mentality as I was released into the world after university. I began to slow down a couple years ago (also recognizing my deep privilege to now do so), but that is hard with two young kids – even harder in a pandemic with online learning and no outside childcare. Thank you for the reminder. This writing felt like a deep breath and permission.
Sometimes I hesitate to talk about this because I know some people have had extremely hard childhoods (my husband and dad for example). I did not. There were definitely challenges and we lived a humble and simple life but always had enough food, clothing, a home, etc. Yet I think this is something valid and important to talk about, for our sake and the younger generation, even when we had enough and grew up safe and loved. The stories we carry with us (ex. I must prove my worth), the inner sense of responsibility that can lead to never feeling enough or like we carry the whole world on our shoulders, etc. By 14 I was solely responsible for buying all my clothing, toiletries, etc. My parents never discussed this except to ask me at 14 if it was ok to discontinue my small monthly allowance. But if I could rewrite that part of my story/control that bit, my parents would clearly let me know that I didn’t HAVE to do this BY MYSELF. That I was allowed to want and need and receive help. This was a lesson I did not learn until around 40. It was a doozy.