I am currently tucked up in my room, drinking chai tea and feeling the breeze coming in through the open window. I have less than an hour of time to finish this newsletter up and prep for my next project, and then I need to take a quick shower and get ready for a baby shower. After that, I have progress notes to do, a bathroom to finish cleaning, weeding to do, and some photos to sort through. By the time I finish all that, IF I finish it, it will be time for dinner and then a family activity.
It seems like all my weekends this summer have been feeling like that. One thing after another, with very little time without other people around, let alone down time for relaxing and recharging. Last summer, I was adamant about focusing on play. On letting go of the pressure to be productive, and just play in the sun for three months. And I did, and it was wonderful. I have memories of lazy Saturday mornings sitting out on the patio with my husband, chatting about anything and everything. Poking around in my garden and eating green beans straight off the vine. Writing poetry. Watching the stars come out from our porch in the evenings. There were stressful moments, sure, like when I was trying to get my photos sent out to galleries in other states, but much of the summer was so restful. It was the exhale that I needed, and when fall came, I felt ready to take on some new projects again.
I was going through an old journal the other day, the journal that I finished up just a couple weeks ago, and I came across an entry I wrote at the very end of May. In it, I was writing about how I wanted this summer to be about play, just like my intention from last summer. I wanted to let go of my to-do list and adulting responsibilities a little bit, and let my inner child run the show a bit more. The first half of 2024 has been brutal for me and my family, and the idea of focusing on having fun sounded delightful. I wanted to recapture the feeling from last summer.
But then something happened. I don't know what it was, exactly, except that a little bit of anxiety and overwhelm took over my brain. I spent most of June focused on doing more, adding more to my plate, instead of taking things off of it. Sure, the things I was adding were fun things, but at some point, it all just becomes more obligation that I feel pressured to get done. The fact that the pressure is only coming from within me doesn't seem to matter one bit.
And so now it is the end of June, and I am becoming more aware of how my internal self-talk and beliefs have impacted how I actually approached the start of summer, versus how I wanted to approach it. I defaulted to old attitudes, old beliefs, old tendencies. Probably shouldn't be a surprise, because the emotional load of grief has been causing a lot of regression to happen, both within me and my husband. It makes sense that I would return to my old overachieving habits. They were my protection when things felt out of control, and a lot of things have been feeling out of control lately.
But I am not the same person I was then, and I have different, more supportive relationships around me now. My relationship with myself is different, too. Instead of letting the instinct to push myself harder and accomplish more take over, my practice now is to notice my tendency to go go go, and to respond to myself with love and awareness.
My work now is to gently remind myself that I don't have to do more in order to prove myself. I am allowed to rest, and the voice in my head telling me all the things I should be doing instead is the voice of capitalism, the voice of an engine that benefits from me constantly producing as much as possible, and it isn't the real truth. The real truth is that I am a soul inside a body that needs air and rest and play and sunshine, and that soul didn't come to earth simply to cross to-do's off a list. As much as I love a clean bathroom, and I really do, it isn't the point of my existence here. While the negative voice in my head might tie my worth to how much I get done, there is another voice that knows that I am worth so much more.
And so I will continue leaning into that soul voice, and away from the negative one. And the more I can talk kindly to that negative voice, and show it love while gently challenging it, the more I can heal another layer, the more I can remind myself that I don't need that protection anymore. There is a lot of summer left ahead of me, and I am hoping to enjoy as much of it as I possibly can.
I hope you have a wonderful week, and feel free to share your thoughts or this. I’d love to hear from you.
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Your heading says it all. Lean in to My Soul Voice!! Beautiful. So important. But not easy. It's a journey. Thanks for sharing. 💜
Love this! Yes yes to the soul voice!!