I THINK I CAN

Since I was let go in March, my pace seems pretty slow. I'm not moving fast but I am moving. After Priscilla passed and I recovered mobility of my knee, enjoyed a family vacation in Antigua, returned to Maine to put in my garden while the men of my life took a five week sailing journey up to Newport RI...I created a schedule for myself. All my excersise plans were easy to keep when I was the only person I had to think about. And it was easy to do a daily write and to update my blog. I don't know what happened but when the guys returned, I stopped folowing my path. I do this all the time. Ever since Stephen and I married, I've put self care on the backburner. It was easy to come between me and myself when the kids were small and we were both so busy just trying to make ends meet. I assured myself that one day in the future I would mend my ways. Trouble with a plan like that is that the future never comes. The mantra of maybe tomorrow keeps the future from ever happening today. I know many women grapple with this very issue. When they commit to a marriage, their creative goals get backburnered...sometimes friends fall to the wayside and often, there is a loss of motivation to workout. Funnily enough...its a time when you most need to practice self care due to the demands on your energy. Everything has changed since the boys grew up and moved on. There is an emptyness that I keep trying to fill. Makes me think of the Very Hungry Caterpillar. Caterpillars move slowly and eat constantly. They can't stop. That is they can't stop until they stop. Their metabolism tells them when they are full and they take the J shape. My next door neighbor, 6 year old Janna, tells me that the J shape is the signal that the caterpillar is coming to a stop. He is approaching his Chrysalis-making stage. When he takes that shape he better be where he needs to be because he won't move again until he emerges from the crysalis as a winged moth or butterfly. I think about this process every day as I move slowly minute by minute, tending my home and garden and spending most of my day alone. My hunger seems to be for creative expression but my actions continue to manifest my usual routine. My garden is a demanding and unruly child and yet it is exuberantly producing food that feed Stephen and I long into the winter. The responsibility of keeping up with the vegetables wins out as my top priority. I have succeeded in putting my creative yearnings on the backburner yet again. It's a comfortable habit even if it remains a mystery as to why I keep sabotaging myself. I wonder about caterpillars. I wonder if they have butterfly urges while they are crawling along the ground like a worm. I wonder if they sense their future before it comes. How do they know when to take the J shape? Do they dream of flight and the unfurling of lovely wings? Or are they 100% in the moment just being true to their instinct to become still and do the inner work of transformation. If the transformation of a caterpillar to a butterfly has something to teach me today, it seems to be...keep moving. Slow motion is motion nonetheless. Keep feeding the hunger. One day soon, you'll curl up in a J and hang around inside a crusty chrysalis...sleeping till the urge to break out can no longer be held back. Then...when you wake up...you will be able to accomplish what you yearn for...flight will be possible. So don't go all negative on me and start calling me names like slug or loser or any of those other mean names that come so easy when you start to get hard on yourself. Try being kind. I think I can...I think I can. The I can track...its around here somewhere.