mass of sleepy eyes, morning pages, and moving slowly

Some mornings are just a mass of sleepy eyes and hurting stomachs and trying to convince myself to just go my own pace. Go slowly if need be. Let the lists hold the things your brain is too swollen to hold. There is no race to a finish line here.

-----

Sometimes morning pages can help me slow down or let go. Have you ever kept morning pages? I admit I do laugh every single time I stumble across one of my past morning pages notebooks or files on my computers. They are just filled with "fuck-this" and "nooooooo" and "oh-my-gawd-i-hate-this" and "whyyyyyyyyy!?!" Sometimes there's a spark or two at the end where the fog lifted and there will land an "ooooooooh. okay." :) Are your morning pages like that, too? Or is it just me?

-----

One of the most difficult creative practices for me is the practice of not getting attached to any particular part of a process. Dealing with chronic health stuff means confronting this on a regular basis. One day, things go swimmingly and ooooooh it feels great. Energy levels stay with me. Stuff gets done. It seems relatively easy to be engaged with other humans and creatures. But as with any process, sometimes things slow down or an ache arises or some new combo of some "solution" makes me react in unexpected ways. And so maybe the energy isn't with me. Staying hydrated is the major accomplishment of the day. Engaging with any living being is risky at best.

That is all shared from a chronic illness perspective, but even as I type it, I can hear friends and loves in my head saying, "Hell, that's my everyday, health stuff or not, that's humanity." Cycles. Processes. All our glorious messiness. For me, the question continues to be, "How can we be present with whatever IS rather than judge it, hate it, try desperately to change it?"

-----

Springtime in the garden often is really exciting and teaches me these lessons over and over. Look at the deep rich colors and beautiful shape of those rose buds in the pic with this post! I adore this plant. It shows up for Spring in a thriving manner each year. New legs of it bushing out at the bottom. The top of it brimming with new flowers like this. I get all attached to it and tend and weed around the bottom, make sure it has water, fall in love with it.

Inevitably though, somewhere along the line, the deer fall in love with it, too, and will show up, ghosts in the night without a sound, and leave me with munched limbs and flailing leaves. This often leaves me so frustrated. Even though the bigger picture is that we put a garden right in the middle of one of THEIR paths, and they are foragers who have just discovered good food. :) Can't blame them for eating well!

-----

Glorious messiness. Of being human. I find it hard to love it. I find it easy to hate it. I find it difficult to practice just allowing it all to be *IS*...is-ness. Just *IS*. No judgment. HARD to do. How do you practice it in your grief and life experiences?

Reiki to all eyeballs who've made their way here!
Kara

[Previous version published 2016 in Radical Creativity]