gifts

I met a friend for late day coffee/tea and conversation yesterday and we both realized that we do this far too seldom. We sat together catching up with what seemed to be momentous in our lives right now. I described the meandering route I'd taken to discover my deep need for recovery time and resulting decision to declare the next year for myself. She responded, "Of course!"

Why is it that others can see what we can't? I listened as she substantiated what I'd taken weeks to determine and all I could say was "I have a high threshold." Yeah, and when doing what we need to do women especially don't see the toll that the stress and strain can exact on us. So now I have someone else in my corner urging me to do whatever it is that I most want and need.

My challenge is not to turn this "gift of a year" into work (read: labor). In fact Kirshenbaum recommends that women spend their initial weeks or months resting. That definitely gets my vote and I'll still be working during this time. My biggest concern, however, is that the year just slips by. So my next step is to revisit Mira Kirshenbaum's questions ("The Gift of a Year"), review my initial responses and complete the exercise to gain a clear sense of what I want. Who knows, maybe I'll realize that I actually need to let the days drift by.

I think I've mentioned here that I pull an angel card each day for a word that serves as a totem for that day. Two came up in my hand on Saturday: Surrender and Openness. When I swept them both up on Sunday before pulling that day's card, I discovered Creativity lying unseen beneath them. What seems to be emerging is similar to that which motivated me in the early nineties. I am being drawn back to my own creative process and the need to embrace the unknown. Now that's an adventure and something to look forward to. To ignore that would be to ignore something in myself.