113 - Deep Roots & Rich Soil: The Gift of Thresholds
Today’s episode is for you if you’re in the midst of a threshold and wondering how you’ll make it through.
When certain parts of our identity are stripped away, we go into the fertile void. In that space, we may not be able to find the rhyme or reason why it’s happening, but I promise that the darkness enriches us all the same.
Join me as I dip into the past decade of my practice and offer reflections on how to feels to be in the middle and make it to the other side. I also share thoughts on pausing and the future of this show.
Thank you for listening and for your heart.
Episode Transcript:
Sarah Tacy [00:00:06]:
Hello, welcome. I'm Sarah Tacy and this is Threshold Moments, a podcast where guests and I share stories about the process of updating into truer versions of ourselves. The path is unknown and the pull feels real. Together we share our grief, laughter, love and life saving tools. Join us.
[0:40] Hello, welcome to Threshold Moments. This is a mini musing, which means that it's a quick love note to you. Often these are about the nervous system, and this one is a little bit more about thresholds and the ground they create, creates meaning, the richness, the compost, the root systems that thresholds when tended to with care can create for healthy, sustainable growth. When my husband and I were in New York City, we were walking through Central Park, as you may have heard in the awe episode, and he asked me something along the lines of, what about our lives is different than you could have imagined 10 years ago? Did that make sense? Like 10 years ago, you had imagined our lives. What is true now that you couldn't have imagined to be true then? And I perceived in this question that my husband for himself was thinking about a lot of the external things, a lot of the places is that he's had great success, maybe beyond what he thought was possible 10 years ago.
[2:20] And was really happy about it, right? Our family, our house, his business, and it's really something to celebrate, and the internal work that we've both done, and maybe where our marriage is at today. And so I think it was really a celebratory question, but I, I don't want to say I, of course, I was like, I could not have imagined that.
[2:49] All of the ego death and all of the hardship and the grief that I've experienced over the last 10 years. I, you know, we had a period that felt rocky, I told him, and I'm not sure he experienced it the same way I did. And so, yeah.
[3:14] And, right, like for me, when I became a mother, just weeks before that, I left my New York practice of yoga therapeutics that I had built for seven years that was booked out for weeks at a time with, you know, 23 clients a week, teacher trainings on the weekend, a few community classes. And it was built step-by-step in alignment with who I am, not through a specific physical therapy practice or psychology practice, but weaving together from a variety of specialties that interested me from working with people and learning from people and creating something that I felt was so unique and so valuable. And I was so proud of the people I had been able to help and the things that were accomplished. And I freaking loved my work. And I also felt like almost like this graduation of how I'm leaving all of my clients and my business and everything we've built and we're heading up to Maine and I'm going to have a baby in a month. But I could not. And then my husband started as a doctor. Like he had just graduated from his specialty. And so it just so happened to be this threshold where he went from being student and I went from being primary earner and building my business and living my dream and getting feedback from my clients about how life-changing the work was for them to full-on motherhood and having my husband be the primary provider. And having a child who did not sleep for the first four years and having a pregnancy that ended early, that was so—I went into states of grief I had never experienced before. And really, really, I feel like experiencing what I could now see as like the patriarchy culture where there is not enough support for moms, for families, for kids, and so much unseen labor that became so exhausting.
[5:43] And feeling like, wow, I'm this really empowered, like, have always been this really empowered young woman with all of these goals and able to, you know, do the things that scared me. And at points feeling really disempowered. And at the same time, I had these kids that I loved and love. And I made all of these really rich friendships and was able to be authentic and work through some hard friendship moments. And so when I look at where we are now, I can go, gosh, I have these two amazing, beautiful girls. I have this work that I love again. Really, really been through it these last 10 years, and I wouldn't change it. I would do it all over again. I would do it all over again.
[6:39] But what can be seen on the outside feels so small in comparison to what I feel on the inside. I feel rich on the inside, which doesn't mean I don't have days of depletion or exhaustion or frustration, but I feel rich. And I saw this painting of a mushroom, and I don't remember the text over it, but it was this little tiny mushroom. And beneath it, beneath the soil, was, of course, the mycelial web. And it was broad. It was vast. It was deep. It was connective. And that's how I feel. And I may not have said it that well to him because I don't think it was like the happy, oh, my gosh, look at us. We've accomplished so much more than we thought we ever could. But.
[7:43] Because I don't think it was received that way. But it just feels really important to share, because I'm guessing there are others out there who have been through a number of thresholds, or maybe are going through one now, and you're like, will I ever get through this? And the really cool thing about running this podcast for the last three years is that some of the women that I had on two years ago are now in the best place that they've ever been in their life. And two years ago, they were either just getting through the hardest time in their life, or one of them was in the middle, not at the beginning, but in the middle.
[8:28] And now their happiness that they're experiencing is quite extraordinary, but it's also just rich, because they know themselves in ways that they didn't know themselves before the threshold. Even if everything before that was about getting to know themselves, when certain parts of our identity are stripped away, and we go into the fertile void, and we can't find the rhyme or reason why the thing is happening, we can't find the silver lining while we're in it, And even if I look back and say, like, I don't know the exact silver lining. Like, when I had my back injury when I was much younger, I could say the silver lining was that it led me to my career. The silver lining was that it helped me to help others, that it helped me to learn different therapeutic methods. And this, for me, is more just that I feel rich. That my soil feels rich.
[9:33] Nourished compost that my roots feel wider. And I wouldn't necessarily draw the picture of me of a tree with really wide roots that have therefore grown this massive tree as much as I would that little mushroom with a mycelial web. And maybe I would say like, oh, I wonder if my husband's experience is more of like being that really big tree that has grown so much and accomplished so much and it's visible on the outside and that my experience is more like the roots and the mud and the muck. But I feel good about it. I feel really empowered about it. I don't feel bad about it. And I one woman once said to me I feel bad for you or I feel sorry for you and I was like oh that's so interesting I don't feel sorry for myself at all I'm sure there are times you know I'm sure there are times during the waves where I may have felt victim to things but I, Like I said, standing where I am now, I would do it all over again.
[10:53] I couldn't have imagined any of this 10 years ago. And as I'm recording this, I am standing on the edge of a trail in the woods that is behind my house. The leaves are orange and green and yellow. So there are these tiny wisps of something flying through the air that's just touching the sun in such a way. There are lily pads and clearly therefore a pond and cat-and-eye tails and trees and the earth beneath me. And in this moment, I just feel really grateful to be the little mushroom with a mycelial web that connects me to so many amazing women, communities, the earth, spirit, family, family, family, family, and self. I feel deeply connected to myself and I am so grateful for that.
[12:07] So I wonder, I wonder, I wonder, the producer of this show is going on a sabbatical, which I so honor because she really holds up the idea of opting out of urgency. The producer, Amelia at Softer Sounds, right? And she signs off often saying like, “softly, Amelia.” And she's been the one to say like, why don't you take a break or a pause instead of like, you must do it every week. And so having these last few episodes be about awe and hear about being the rich soil in the mycelial web I wonder if I too will pause and I'm pausing I think here so that I can wait for the impulse and the feel of like oh my god I want to interview this person I want you know there are a lot of emails coming in. Can I be on your podcast or this person? But just like, I want to be moved again the way I was when I started the podcast of like, oh, this person's story. And I'm starting to feel it. And I'm starting to feel my desire to speak to people also of thereafter.
[13:20] So podcast guests who have already been on, who are now in a whole new place just three years after being recorded or two years or one year and to really tune in to what it is like to be them now and one of them posted just the other day like it takes backbone to really be who you are consistently even in the summer of your life and so I'm guessing this is where the podcast is going to go, is that this next season is going to be speaking to these people in the after.
[13:59] Ah, that feels good for that clarity. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being with me in season three. Thank you, thank you, thank you for returning after I take breaks. I went for two years every single week, and it feels so great to now say, let's do seasons. Let's have a break. Let's wait for the impulse and to start again. I send so much love to you. Thank you for your stories. Thank you for your listening. Thank you for your heart.
Sarah Tacy [00:14:41]:
Thank you for tuning in. It's been such a pleasure. If you're looking for added support, I'm offering a program that's totally free called 21 Days of Untapped Support. It's pretty awesome. It's very easy. It's very helpful. You can find it at sarahtacy.com and if you love this episode, please subscribe. And like, apparently it's wildly useful, so we could just explore what happens when you scroll down to the bottom. Subscribe rate, maybe say a thing or two. If you're not feeling it, don't do it. It's totally fine. I look forward to gathering with you again. Thank you so much.