I suppose the best way to start this post is life anything we start in life in the wake of so much we are still processing …
Ironically, I’ve always found the best advice to anchor to is often in contradiction to what everyone else’s opinion or advice might be.
How do we start when we’re still sitting in the midst of the rubble?
How do we move through the days, the moments?
What do we do with ourselves when we don’t know what to do?
Having some sort of compass is grounding for us in this human existence. It anchors us, mooring us from drifting off by the unknown currents of life and becoming forever lost at sea.
I find that the problem is often not the compass, but what we’ve been conditioned to point our compass towards – other people, situations, circumstances; and we live with the belief that somehow we can control all of this is we learn to contort ourselves correctly, just so.
No one is kind enough to tell us the truth because I think no one really wants to admit it for themselves.
So if there’s no way we can control any of it, what to do with the compass?
If we’re lucky, we learn to redirect our attention from that which we cannot control, to that which we can – our inner world.
Our Inner Compass.
I wanted to write this post today because I think it’s important to share a secret that no one really talks about.
And it’s important we talk about it.
Because it’s true.
And when we don’t talk about things, they tend to live inside of us, and there, even the truth is subject to the constant casting of doubt as we move through a world that is constantly challenging what we know to be true.
I consider myself to embody a rather high level of mastery around my own relationship to my inner compass.
As a curious human by nature, self reflection, deep inquiry, and years of practice, I’ve always followed my inner sense of self.
I just can’t help myself.
Perhaps it’s in my blueprint and I can’t help but moving through the world in this way any more than I can help that my eyes are blue. There is of course choice and agency because I chose to listen rather than squash the song in my bones.
But here’s the thing.
Even with a “proper” (internal) compass in hand.
Even with mastery in (inner) navigation.
It’s still possible to become unmoored.
Yes.
It’s true.
There is not yet, to my knowledge an antidote to uncertainty.
I think it’s important to say these things because they are part of the paradox of our beingness.
As I move through time and space here on Earth, I realize this more and more.
It’s not so much that we need to learn the tools to navigate, so much as it’s about building our tolerance for being unmoored.
We need to learn how to hold the paradox of both.
An inner compass does not work in the same way a standard issued Suunto from REI does.
It doesn’t always point to True North.
Sometimes the needle is still.
For a few days.
Or a few years.
Sometimes it functions much like a black hole where the mass of the thing keeps collapsing in on itself until it’s barely detectable to the naked eye, but simultaneously captures every available ray of light that comes near it.
Real talk.
Sometimes even if you know who you are, you don’t know what to do.
In January (11th, on the new moon) I decided to close my business.
I had felt the whisper of that moment in my bones months before, but it didn’t really become clear until that moment.
It’s time.
I can’t describe the enormity of this decision for me, the work, blood, sweat, tears, emotional & financial debt, and everything that I had laid out on the line. Neither can I describe the complexity of the feelings that bubble to the surface still around this decision.
Feelings of betrayal by my own inner compass, my own inner self.
Feelings of massive relief and freedom.
Deep grief and sadness.
Deep peace and contentment.
In the wake of my decision, and everything that came with it, I was left with the question (that everyone else was asking me):
“What are you going to do?”
Now in our culture this is a perfectly logical and acceptable question to ask someone …
However, in my bones my visceral response was that of repulsion.
Would you ask a woman who’s husband had just died when is she going to remarry?
Would you ask a woman who’s just miscarried when she’s going to try again?
I knew in my heart that what I needed to ask myself wasn’t “what am I going to start now”, but “how do I need to hold myself right now?”
“What resources hold me and buoy me when I need it most?”
When I began writing this post, I thought it was going to be about permission to start over again.
I thought it was about normalizing the fact that we often will have to rebuild what we think is our lives from scratch perhaps many times in this lifetime.
But I think that’s for another day and another post.
This post is about permission to not know.
This post is a reminder that it’s ok to feel lost.
It’s ok to feel betrayed by life, by our inner compass, at times.
This is a reminder that the antidote to not knowing what to do next is not simply pushing and pushing.
It’s a reminder that it’s ok to do nothing.
It’s a reminder to do what you need to do right now to pay the rent and buy the groceries and take the kids to school, and not worry about the meaning of it.
For just right now.
It’s ok to not know where you’re going next.
Contrary to the lie we’ve been told, there’s no way to “do this” thing called life wrong.
Sure there are mistakes.
Sure we will fuck up (sometimes massively).
Sure there are things that can inevitably never go back to.
But that’s all part of it.
So this post is not about what to do next or how to decide or figure that out.
This post is about normalizing standing in the rubble.
Knowing that this time and space isn’t permanent, but it is necessary.
It doesn’t matter what it looks like – you’re doing it “right”.
Whatever that looks like for you.
Know you’re not alone.
We’ve all stood in the rubble.
And we will stand in it again, and again, on this wild ride of a journey.
xx,
jenn