Start close where the heart is tender

Visiting my inner child, freeing the wild dancing river

Start close where the heart is tender and you’d rather not shine the light. This is where the tenderness seeps from, like water escaping a paper-thin crack in a dam built to contain a wild and dancing river.

I’m always nervous to start there as if I’ll surely find some unexpected monster in that place near my heart, hiding in the shadows, just out of sight.

But I rarely find a monster there; and usually, it’s a little one. A child with wild curly dark brown hair tangled in the Colorado mountain air.

She looks up at me with her brown eyes; Dad used to sing Brown Eyed Girl to her, it was their song. These eyes reflect a rooted strength, the freedom of a child’s joy, confusion, fear, and deep longing.

With a strength twice her size, she holds more than she should have to. She lives between two worlds; where fairies dance on moss and the stars of the big dipper sing lullabies in the night sky; where children who cling to parents with wounded inner children find themselves in the roles of the parents.

And at five, she learns to keep all but her hair under precise control, which will unknowingly become a thirty-year daily practice.

And she builds a fortress of control around herself and she calls it safety.

And the walls get higher and thicker, and what once kept her safe begins to slowly entrap her.

Until a paper-thin crack forms, and with gentile courage she lets go of the illusion of control and starts close where the heart is tender, holding herself in all the ways she always longed for.

And the wild dancing river within her is freed as the need for control transforms into the awareness that: she is safe, she is loved, she is enough, and always has been.

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I wrote this a few weeks ago prompted by Kim, and as I read over it today, on my 31st birthday, it feels like the exact right time to share.

Birthdays have never been simple for me. As a child, I learned to have no expectations as a way to protect myself from disappointment. As an adult, I’m learning that it’s safe to acknowledge my wants, needs, and desires while also holding space for grief.

Today, I feel tender, a familiar feeling, and yet I find myself resisting that feeling, wishing for anything but the deep sadness that is welling up within me.

Yet, I also know that, for me, to feel it is to be fully alive, and I’d rather be alive than spend another birthday hiding from myself and what’s within me.

As I allow my emotions to move and my tears to flow, I feel space opening within me, space to feel joy more deeply, to know love more wholly, and to experience this life more openly in all its tender vulnerability.

So, to anyone else who experiences this paradox of emotions on the anniversary of their birth into this lifetime; I’m with you, I love you.

May we gently hold ourselves and one another through it all.

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1. This album. Indulging my inner teenager by listening to all the music that made up my high school soundtrack and planning to rewatch my favorite film from that time.

2. The gift of watching my boys learn to express their emotions so openly.
   On our drive to school yesterday, after two weeks off for spring break, Cai was quiet for the first few minutes, and then he said, "Mama, part of me is sad to go to school and part of me is excited." We spent the next few minutes of the short drive talking to these parts within him. We asked the sad part what it needed, and we asked the excited part what it was looking forward to.
   I've never explicitly explained parts work to my kids (I’m not sure it would land or be helpful to do so with a five-year-old and three-year-old!) but they are always more perceptive than we think.
   It was a sweet reminder of how important it is to do this work as a mama and I could almost feel any residual guilt I was holding from being away from them last week wash away. I'm so grateful to be able to support them in cultivating emotional intelligence and vulnerability by practicing it myself.

3. Expressions of March 2023. A month devoted to creating space, connecting with myself, and feeling the fragility of it all.

   

With endless love and deep gratitude,
Raina

www.findingstillness.one
@findingstillness.one

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P.S. In the coming months, we’ll be journeying through the elements together learning ways to cultivate inner balance and connect with embodied support as we move with the ebb and flow of the year.

You can read the first in the series here.

If you’d like to join us in this paid subscription offering you can update your subscription through the Substack website or app.

Each monthly newsletter in this offering will include:  
• An introduction to the element corresponding to the current zodiac sign
• How that element and sign manifest in our lives and how we can support ourselves by nurturing that energy within us
• Journal prompts for reflecting
• Affirmations for integrating 
• A few practices for engaging with the element
• Plus a guided meditation

And if you know someone who might be interested in joining, I’d be very grateful if you would pass along this link!

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