part five: home.

i am listening. 

and to listen to my body, to my crazy, to my needs: i have to slow way down. why is it so terrifying to slow down? in my childhood, most things were compared to brain surgery as that was my fathers profession. what would happen if a brain surgeon slowed down? the patient would die. so i guess, slowing down meant death or you had to perform life saving surgery (or something of the like) to give yourself the gift of a slow down. you had to sacrifice yourself in some grand way to give yourself the gift of rest. i feel we all have some form of this. what is this? who said this?! another wonderful mantra of the time was 'you can rest when your dead' how can you beat that one?! i suppose not resting might take you there a lot sooner, you can finally let go & rest! OY. these words were said in a jewishy kind of a jest yet the heaviness of never stopping, always doing, sprinting toward success whether i knew what it was or not, being famous, wealthy, shining my light till it died out are all laden in a heavy soup of expectations topped off with a blinding compote that has been simmering in the fires of my body for too long. boring story. 

and the listening required stopping. oh god. stopping. scariest place ever. stopping is not trending anywhere these days and i am a leo with a scorpio rising and an aries moon. help! lets step back a minute. i didn't just decide one day i needed to stop, breathe and really go there whatever that means. also, lets just pop the fantasy cherry that i am all good now and stopping comes with ease. NOT THE CASE. i am steeping, drip by drip in this precious forever conversation, in this fearlessly tender practice, this vital listening, that is this being human thing. 

i thought letting the house go would be the hardest part of our journey as we tried to do everything we could to keep it. we were so scared to let go. in the process of getting the house ready to sell, we moved out in the new year. a dear friend offered her home to us for one month. we figured this would be plenty of time to find our new home. i can admit to even a zest of excitement in the unknown, finding a home that will serve our family better with a yard, a conversation with nature, aligning with what we wanted for our family, maybe even a swing set and some bikes. 

one of the last nights at 601 j and i made a fire. we wrote on a piece of paper everything we wanted in a home. we talked about all the things we see, we crave, we want for our family. we put it on the altar. as the days, the craigs list posts, the westside rentals, the willows, the trulias, the MLS' all rolled by we were faced with our story over and over again. on paper, we were not the best of candidates for a clean credit report. every phone call, every agent, every open house we would share the story. we were honest, authentic, up front and deeply exhausted. we were rejected by the first three homes we liked. each place taught us something new. don't involve the kids, speak directly to the listing agent, meet the owners. the month of january was full with tears, carrying a heaviness that only the unknown can bring mixed with a fierce mama lion desire to keep us moving forward in a thick & sticky landscape of letting go, letting go, letting go. i had no idea what i was doing. i made breakfast, lunch and dinner. i packed boxes. i called clients. i watched the end of parenthood. talk about loss.

one of my tools to slowing down is creating altars. creating beauty everywhere i look. i crave beauty inside the suffering: a point in which to pray. a place to stop, to see what i am working toward, to express my gratitude. an installation of intentions that is working while i am surviving. my true self represented inside of a painted rock, a feather, a poem, a louise hay quote, a lit votive candle from ikea as the whirling dervishes inside me dance their dance. all of this inside black beans & rice, potty training, undying laundry, karate, trying not to yell and failing at every attempt, looking for empathy everywhere and finding it in the altar.

::: this is part five in an unraveling series on home :::