The In-Between Place

A while back, on Facebook, I posted a prayer asking God to help me let go of worry when I’m in the in-between places in my life. It got larger than normal responses. It also continued to resonate in my heart, circle my thoughts and settle into my mind. I don’t care for the in-between places in my life. I want to say I hate them but… [huge sigh here], my experiences taught me they are a necessary part of life when it comes to growth of any kind be it emotional, spiritual, or personal. I have a five-year timeline, technically four and a half years now, for where I am moving my life and work. My yoga and writing figure prominently in this timeline. They will in fact figure prominently in my Life moving forward.

Yet I’ve felt stuck and stagnant again with both. Which seemed contradictory since I attended a writer’s retreat in Hawaii, completed a 20-day deadline oriented online writing workshop, and participated in full weekend workshops in Los Angeles, where I’d previously attend 1 of the 2 days! I teach a regular Sunday morning yoga class at my home studio and I substitute for other classes regularly. I’ve been invited back to the Hawaii writer’s retreat as a writer this year, but more importantly, I’ve been paid to offer my services as a yoga teacher for part of the retreat again!

Where are the disconnect and the sense of stagnation coming from? Part of it is that I have not been writing or sharing any blog posts with any regularity or consistency. Another part is my day job I’ve been at for eleven years and counting. The 9-5 corporate cubicle grind is back to draining and stressing me out. It’s driven me back to many of my old dysfunctional avoidances such as emotional eating, mindless television, and reading. I injured my right knee in early November of last year and 3 months later it’s still not right or close to 100%. I’m unable to walk/hike or do more of the strenuous yoga I’d like to.

I haven’t blogged regularly because I’m tentative about what to write now. When I started my blog I chose to write about building my brave while I  navigated the next phase of my life. This included living a heart-centered life of presence. Yoga showed up on my path almost immediately after I began my blog and the end of my yoga teacher training opened my heart and eyes to the path of social justice and trauma-informed yoga practices. This awakening showed up on my path almost simultaneously with our Presidential election of 2016.

My growing awakening to our current social injustices is so overwhelming and has evoked a reawakened trauma response. All through this, my eyes have been open, my heart has been hurting, but my mouth has been essentially closed. I don’t know about you, but I was raised to sit down somewhere, shut up and be quiet. I learned those lessons as well as I could to survive my childhood, but I was not always successful at it. It leaked out in rebellion, sneakiness, lying and living a dual life of sorts. I don’t want to keep doing that. I can’t keep doing it.

I boycotted the NFL this year because I stand wholeheartedly behind Colin Kaepernick and his willingness to peacefully and patriotically protest the continued killing of unarmed black men, women, and children by the police in this country.  It’s been difficult to respect people I know who deliberately voted for a third party candidate or didn’t bother to vote at all last November, blithely protected in their privilege to do so. The #METOO movement sprung up so suddenly because women in the public and positions of power were coming forward and not backing down. The collective conversations about these injustices and pushback from systems which are the principal cause of the injustices have been swirling about social media.

This has been I feel the source of my fear and reluctance to write in this space. However, now, I believe I can reframe how I feel about my “in between place”. It’s been more of a self-cocooning until I was ready to reemerge on to this path that has been so clearly set before me. Answering His Call or The Call was something I committed to long ago right here in this space. That doesn’t mean I can’t curl up and rest in a protective ball from time to time. As long as I don’t lose track of my path, ever inward.