30 Days of Thanks: November 30, 2020

It's Monday, a full moon, and the end of the month. Tomorrow dawns the last month of 2020, and this post should be a beautiful summary of all of the gratitude that I have recorded over the past 30 days, yet it will not. I could certainly write all of that, but it would not ring true as that is not where my head and heart are at this moment.

Tonight, as I sit here hurting, I am thankful for the ability to love deeply, to be that vulnerable with my heart and myself. I sit tonight with tears in my eyes, sadness present, and fighting the instinct to shut it all down. For when you love openly and vulnerably you may hurt, and my heart wants to protect itself. It is yelling, screaming, pleading to close down, throw up the walls, hide away, and protect! protect! protect! Instead, I sit here letting those feeling wash over me, the tears flowing freely, dripping on my keyboard, my open pages of the letter I wrote but will not send. It simply hurts. It is old traumas coming to surface, it is new experiences intermingling with the old and a moment for cleansing and healing.

I am thankful for the ability to know that I can love that vulnerably. I am thankful for the previous experiences that allow me enough vision in this painful moment to recognize that the instinctual withdrawal is a protective mechanism and I have a choice. I can lean into the pain, or I can flee. You can read here that I chose the pain; fleeing does nothing expect create more trauma. With that I sit here wondering the path forward, yet knowing that in this moment I cannot see the path, nor could I safely choose a path. Choosing a path in this moment would be to grasp the thorny stem of the rose with a fist and squeeze, painful and a poor choice. I will trust that the next steps of the path are there, just hidden under the leaves.

Love, and loving openly, is a gift, and as it blooms so does the individual. I choose to bloom.

30 Days of Thanks: November 29, 2020

As the end of November draws near and today is the first Sunday of Advent I find myself thankful for the waiting period. Advent is a period of waiting, a period of darkness, a period for transformation. I am not by nature a patient person, I have some patience, but never enough it feels to me. This year I am thankful for practicing patience, learning to be comfortable in the discomfort of waiting, and learning to live in the waiting place.

You can put your life on hold while waiting, or you can choose to live it. I have been faced with multiple waiting periods over 2020, as have many of us, and each time I have chosen to live within that period. It was not always easy, it was not always comfortable, and certainly it was not my choice to be waiting. With the beginning of Advent we await Christ's birth, a period of darkness before the star and the light of his birth. I am thankful for this period of waiting now upon us. I use December to reflect, meditate, and ground myself after the year. With all the changes that have occurred in 2020 I am thankful for this waiting period now present. I will wait, I will practice more patience, and I will live. My life will not wait, but will continue to follow and seek a life less ordinary.

 

30 Days of Thanks: November 28, 2020

Every step, every moment is a gift. That impossible appearing hill or mountain is a gift. As I hiked a strenuous trail today, one of my absolute favorites, and my legs were tired of climbing, my lungs burned and my nose itched under my mask all I could think was that I had been given a gift. It feels like a lifetime ago that I rediscovered hiking and my joy of the outdoors. I feel as if I have been backpacking my entire life, not just 18 months. The gift I was given in May 2019 continues to gift me with more. It connected me to an entirely new community, connected me to the American Perimeter Trail Project, and most importantly connected me back to me.

Out on the trail, nothing but nature around me and in me I can hear myself. I hear my thoughts, experience my feelings in new ways. I purposefully choose not to listen to music, but my own thoughts, my own fears, and experience them. It is a gift to be able to walk with myself. I make the conscious choice to connect and communicate with me. This past year I have been seeking adventures with other, not because I cannot walk with myself, but because I craved community. After 11 months of seeking community on the trail with backpacking I have decided that for now I will not actively seek community, I will let the path lead. My adventures with others backpacking went well, I had no complaints and I would go out again with any of the ladies I met, though for me I missed myself. I missed my contemplative time, the quiet I experience on the trail. I am the hiker that prefers quiet and listening to nature. I do enjoy a good conversation, but I also prefer the peace that I find in the quiet. I can find my footing, find myself, and find the gift that is me.

It is a gift to walk for me to walk with me, as me. On the trail there is only me, no longer do I function as mom, manager, coordinator, coach, cheerleader, chef, maid, analyst, laundress, chauffeur, therapist. I am only me. The trail, no matter the length, provides me with that gift. Running used to provide something similar, but I never found the peace in it as I have with hiking and backpacking. Laughing at myself as I stumble, catch my toe on the never ending rocks of Pennsylvania, listening to my poles scratch the rocks, feeling the pole slip off the rock I find myself repeatedly. There I can see the woman I am, perfectly imperfect, yet a gift.