I am rich (and it's not what you think)

I feel rich.

Not because I have more things or fewer demands, but because my soil feels nourished. My roots feel wide. My inner world feels steady and spacious.

I feel rich.

When my husband and I were walking through Central Park, he asked me a question:
“What about our lives is different than you could have imagined ten years ago?”

I perceived he was thinking about the visible things. Our family. Our house. His work. This lavish trip we were on. This success is clear and worth celebrating. 

And yet, my first thoughts went somewhere else entirely.
To the ego deaths.
To the grief.

To the love.

To the confusion.
To the years that felt rocky in ways I am not sure he experienced quite the same.

To depths traveled that I had never traversed before.

Of course to our girls.

And to a sense of returning more steady and integrated.

As we walked through the park by some massive trees, I thought, “Those are like Steve!" visible to all. Broad base, wide limbs, fruiting branches.

I feel a bit more like soil, composted, seasoned, and regenerated into something more whole.

I feel rich.

I imagine we aren’t meant to sustain one role forever.  We're not always meant to be the soil, the seed or the tree.  There's some importance to rotating. 

Ten years ago, I was the tree.

I had a New York practice of yoga therapeutics that I built for seven years. Booked out for weeks at a time. Teacher trainings I led on the weekends. Community classes. Work that came from weaving together my passions, and helping people I cared deeply about. I felt proud. I felt purposeful. I felt visible.

Meanwhile, my husband was in school.
Studying.
Commuting five hours a day.

Missing most weddings and gatherings.
Building his roots and skills mostly underground.
Paying money and accumulating worthwhile debt.
His season was depth and foundation.

Then we swapped.

We moved to Maine.
I “graduated,” my business.
We became parents and I became the primary parent.
Monumental efforts were an expected minimum. 

Dedication at night, every night, for eight years. The endless moments at home that few witness, all day, every day. I felt the impact of a culture that does not support mothers or families. So many demands. So little support.

I went from summer straight into fall, then into a long winter.

I could not have imagined the love or the grief I would experience. 

These last few years have felt more like spring.
Energy is returning.
Creativity is returning.
My voice, my work, my sense of self returning.

If I veer a bit from the tree/soil analogy and lean into this painting, I feel like that little mushroom.
Above ground, awakening, emerging, and taking shape. 
Below ground, expansive, fortified, nourished, connected, and resilient. 

Less dependent on the external conditions to make me feel whole and worthy.

I feel rich.

One woman once said to me, “I feel sorry for you.”
And I remember thinking, that is so interesting. I do not feel sorry for myself at all.

Standing where I am now, I would do it all over again. Every season. Every threshold. Every unraveling and re-rooting.

I think about the those who may be in a threshold now. The ones who wonder if they will ever get through it. The ones who cannot find the rhyme or reason. The ones who cannot locate the silver lining. The ones who feel stripped of the identities they once relied on.

Maybe the silver lining in the dark isn’t a line at all.
Maybe it’s the mycelial web.

Maybe the dark is the compost.
Maybe it is the communal wisdom that comes from rooting, and rising in turn.
Maybe it is the deep knowing that we are part of something interconnected where the visible and the hidden all feed each other.
Maybe it is the understanding that it doesn't all look the same at the same time, and that is exactly how it should be.

Blessings to the times that shake us to our core and return us to ourselves.

Blessings to the seasons that pull us underground, where “the most significant growth is often invisible to the eye.”
 

Blessings to the roots we tend in the dark, and to the way we rise stronger, steadier, and more whole.

I feel grateful. 

Blessings,

Sarah