Somewhere Amid Cancer Season
The culmination of these feelings + exhaustion frothed to the surface under the new moon in cancer, a watery road map of my heart space that seems to return me in such an absolute way to the truth. And that truth keeps me coming back to the inner child shadows of gendered society, and that of how little girls spend time working through the insecurities of childhood while little boys play. Running through my head lists of things that needed tending, leaving little time for play or for mothering myself. These weights I’ve carried with me into womanhood, into motherhood, and into restless thoughts about how to achieve a radical form of rest + nurturing that is so necessary for me, for the practice of community care, and for changing the course of these binary roles in our lineage.
I listened to a podcast with Glennon Doyle while returning home from a long overdue visit with a dear friend, and as she spoke about the “invisible labor hours” expended by women creating + organizing mental lists, often around the clock- a privilege that the co-parent/partner in the household does not have to endure, it was the first time that I’d heard someone explain the bubbling up of exhaustion in a way that felt so real to my own. Having someone ask you how they can help only confirming that they in fact, do not bear your same load. Is this the season of life, or is this the future? And then I come back to remembering. Rest is not an action that is put on the list, it is the intention put before all other actions. Rest is the practice.
A morning coffee ritual, breath work, writing, capturing the beauty of life in photographs, a nourishing meal. However it is you choose to honor the pause, to bring life to your practice, rest. There is no better way to honor the women + mothers from which we have come and allow our daughters to play than to live a life of reciprocity with the practice of rest as a normalized form of self and community care.
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