When You Feel Yourself Bracing Against Life

Photo: A November view from the mountain top - Montana (2018). Copyright SJPhotography

When You Feel Yourself Bracing Against Life

When I feel myself bracing, and hardening to life’s events I know it is my inner call to pause, and find patience in my desire to get back to smooth and easier lanes of life again, and to lean into myself and hear my own inner messaging that is speaking as despair, fear, sorrow, and futility. These are the voices of wisdom asking me to come closer to myself and accept these voices and sensations as the way toward my own self-loving heart and the grace of just being.

If the measure of the world’s intensity is growing stronger and my mindfulness practice is not keeping pace I will also feel out of sync and thoughts and fervent inner voices will begin to magnify and drown out the calls to my heart; the ways in which my heart can hold, navigate, and attend to abrasive events and harsh voices of life. Author and poet Nayyriah Waheed says this:

And I said to my body softly, ‘I want to be your friend.’ It took a long breath and replied, ‘I have been waiting my whole life for this.’

_Nayyirah Waheed, “Salt.”