Hello Beloved,
How have you been faring in this season of shorter days and cooler weather?
This time each year, I never know what to expect or how I'll feel.
It’s not a surprise to me when I feel a little down as the winter and holiday season approaches. Sometimes, like last year, I feel festive and social, other years the total opposite is true – I feel melancholy, recluse.
Over the years of working with seasonal moodiness, I’ve come to know what I need and what responses tend to work best.
This year, right after my birthday I began to feel the dip in my mood. At first I thought it was the natural dip that can happen after peak experiences. But around the same time I felt really challenged by some of the physical changes in my body that come with midlife. (hint: perimenopause!)
The timing turned what might have otherwise been a smooth season into an almost theatrical level existential dread with the long dark nights of fall as the perfect backdrop to the scene.
One thing however that I’ve come to rely on during this time of year is the practice of taking a PAUSE.
To pause means to stop activity temporarily.
When we suspend the action, the movement, the doing – what we find is Being.
Being with ourselves.
Being with life as it is.
Healing what aches.
Hearing inner guidance,
Feeling our heart’s tender desires
Receiving clarity about the way forward.
Peace within our minds.
I’ve learned that a pause is not just OK in life - its healthy, necessary.
“Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for. Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.”
– Maya Angelou
To pause in life can take many forms depending on what is needed. It can be a moment in the day, for a season or a lifestyle change.
For me this season I decided to take several life pauses.
I paused the pace of social outings after my birthday to regroup, to integrate the peak experiences.
I paused on some of my habits - social drinking, sugar, meat to cleanse and feel the rhythms of my body without stimulation.
I paused on mindless eating, I’ve been intermittent fasting daily, because I can see how I’ve created an unconscious layer of protection to the sensitivity that I often feel.
I paused on sex to call all my energy back in and to deepen and re-attune my erotic energy.
And as you all know I even paused with the Sunday Love Note in the last couple of months to clarify when and how I want to share what’s most important to me. To listen to my inner muse.
What I’ve learned as I allowed myself to pause, slow down, integrate, is that pausing brings an intimacy with myself that I can only describe as lush, exquisite, sumptuous.
Pausing creates the space for an “at-one-ment” an atonement with Self.
The original meaning of atone is “to come into harmony with,” and we do this by looking and seeing who we deeply are.
When we atone within ourselves we see and accept our needs,
our perfect imperfections,
the things we feel afraid of,
the things we long for,
the random things that bring us joy,
the tender undersides of our being…
To know all these places, to embrace them all and offer acceptance and love to all of them is, in my view, the greatest gift we can give ourselves. The gift of Self-atonement, or inner harmony.
Times of pause then creates a sacred environment to restore your inner harmony.
As the end of 2023 approaches, and we experience the shortest day of the year this week, we are offered a natural time to take some time of pause, to nurture, to nourish, to become intimate with what life is offering and asking of you.
For some, pausing can illicit feelings of angst, anxiety, a discontent because you’re not doing “enough.”
Or you may be someone who feels that your pace is naturally slower so pausing activates feelings of falling, maybe down a hole of depression, inertia that feels deep, dark.
Or maybe with the holidays approaching you scoff at the idea that taking a pause is even possible.
I invite you to consider pause like something as necessary as the moment between the in and out breaths. The place that allows life to continue. And remember it's temporary.
Maybe it’s as simple as tea in the evening or taking a morning walk while visiting family, or 2 minutes of prayer just before you get out of bed.
There’s always enough time to take a pause, you are worth a moment of inner harmony.
May the moments of pause you take this week be restorative and filled with creative insight.
As always….
Let Love Guide the Way,
Angela