Staying Long Enough to Arrive
Moss of the Tide
Stillness reveals what busyness cannot.
I trust the wisdom gathered over time.
July Greetings!
Last month, I wrote about finding the pace that lets me stay. A few weeks later, my husband and I moved into a new home. Since meeting twenty-one years ago, we have moved seven times. For most of those years, moving was attached to motion. A new opportunity. A new job. A promotion. The next chapter. The next best thing. There was always somewhere to get to. This move feels different. For the first time, I am not moving toward what comes next. I am moving toward what I hope will remain. A place to stay. A place to age. A place to build a life slowly. And perhaps because of that, I am noticing something I never noticed before: I am allowing myself to arrive gradually.
In the past, I would rush through a move. Unpack everything immediately. Get organized. Get settled. Push through the disruption. Emotionally, I often stayed numb until the experience caught up with me months or even years later. This time, I am trying something different. I am letting myself acclimate. Letting the house become familiar. Letting my body learn where it is. Letting belonging unfold at its own pace. There is a strange tenderness in that. Especially as I continue reflecting on the truths my nervous system has been teaching me this last year and what it has revealed about the ways I learned to move through the world.
One of those things that I am noticing more clearly is how much energy I have spent performing. Performing okayness. Performing capability. Performing organization. Performing resilience. Not because anyone explicitly asked me to. But because for a long time, I didn't realize there was another way. Lately, I have been practicing something else. Telling the truth sooner. Allowing pauses throughout the day. Resting before exhaustion forces it. Letting people see a more honest version of my experience. And while that brings its own discomfort, it is also bringing an unexpected kind of freedom.
The more I practice unmasking "performance" in safe spaces, the more I understand my relationship with energy itself. What drains it. What restores it. What actually matters. I am beginning to see that slowness is not the absence of growth. It may be the condition that allows growth to take root.
This has become especially important during this summer season. Summer asks for movement. More people. More activity. More invitations. More outward energy. And yet, I find myself asking a different question: How do I remain internally slow even when life becomes externally busy? Not withdrawn. Not disconnected. Rooted. Because the older I get, the less interested I am in building a life that looks sustainable from the outside, while it quietly exhausts me from within. I want a life I can actually inhabit. A pace I can continue. A way of being that leaves room for aging, changing, grieving, loving, and belonging.
In a world that asks us to keep moving, perhaps July's medicine is this: Stay a little longer. Long enough to feel. Long enough to belong. Long enough to arrive.
Much love to you and your spirit,
Sara
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