This is a picture from last summer after an experience I am drawing on often these days.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
My daughter Ellie was in some lake water. Cold lake water. And I was standing there…half in, half out.
“Come in, mommy!”⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
I didn’t want to. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
It was freaking cold.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Half in, half out. It’s how I can do many things in my life: parenting, feelings…and especially writing or anything related to using my most authentic voice.
Half doing the work I feel called to/half not. Half present with it/half distracted. There…but not fully there.
Another way of describing it is resistance or avoidance.
Yup.
The magic you’re looking for is in the work you’re avoiding.
For me, the work of writing and using my voice and digging into the deeper layers often feels like cold water. It’s just hard to get in all the way.
But on this particular day at the lake, I did.
I started moving around and getting used to the cold. Then I noticed the delight in my then two year old’s kicking feet, her tiny face buoyed up by the flower floaties on her arms, her little tongue lapping up the water. “I’m swimming mommy,” she beamed at me. And then she’s giggling and I’m giggling and it couldn’t have lasted more than 10 minutes but seriously felt like we were on some magical drug trip together.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
But all we were…was just all the way there.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
And that is what your voice is asking of you right now…to be all the way in with it.
To acknowledge the resistance and then make space, even if just for 10 minutes at a time, to dive into those deeper layers to discover what it has to say.
That which we most avoid is often where our power lies.
The magic is always in the water.
love,
Ps: If you identify as a woman called to make an impact with your work and haven’t yet joined the Untether Your Voice Facebook group, you can do so here, I’ll be live there Tuesdays at noon PST. 🙂
