It’s been a full, busy weekend with the boys. This is our last week of a full month without our nanny, Grace, as she’s in Costa Rica until next Monday, saying goodbye to her beautiful grandmother. Having her gone for a month is really something - going from having half-day support to having no support. With COVID, and with the therapy and healing that the boys are doing right now, it's made more sense to not have people coming in and out of the house, but to receive support in other ways. We've been receiving gift certificates to have food delivered, people have been delivering food, and someone's delivering our groceries every week. So we've had support in those ways, some texts, and just supportive words of encouragement to keep us going. Now it feels like we're coming to a close here. We're on the final stretch, but it was just kind of a draining weekend a little bit in that my husband Christopher and I are sharing the duties with the boys so that we can get breaks. So I'll take half the day and he takes a break and vice versa just so we can stay full. It's kind of tricky though because then there's not too much time that we have together as a family. It's just been kind of a tricky dance of making it work here over this last month.
When I came into work this morning I was just kind of dragging a little bit, feeling tired, and I ended up getting stuck on social media like it’s so easy to do. I did learn a lot from the rabbit hole I went down. It gave me a lot of education and insight into a certain situation, but at the same time, it took a chunk of my morning and that didn't feel so great either. So with feeling tired and then just finishing an activity that didn’t fill me the way I would have hoped, I was thinking, “Well, let's see how this day is going to roll out for me.” At that point, I decided it would be good for me to do some sort of self-care self-love practice, since I was feeling mentally, emotionally, and physically drained. So I decided to do my meditation sit that usually happens every morning. I do it in the evening as well, but it's for a shorter amount of time between parenting two-year-old twins and having time to connect with my husband and my beautiful cats. This morning I was able to take a full hour to sit and do my sacred chanting, which is so healing for me. Then I sat with my mantra I've been getting from a meditation teacher and then went into Savasana, which is this lovely rest pose, on my heated craniosacral table. It's so heavenly now with the cold winter here and the snow outside. I just rested into the warmth of my table’s lovely radiant heat right underneath me, and then the softy blankets. If you ever come to my warm healing studio here in Madison, you'll know I'm all about the softies. I love having soft blankets for people to wrap in and cocoon themselves as they go through this process of healing their minds, their bodies, and their hearts with yoga therapy and craniosacral therapy that I offer. So I gave that all to myself today, which was so lovely.
After that, I had my lunch. Then I had an appointment, and then I stepped out into the last of the sun here this afternoon, into the woods, which is Quarry Park, right behind my studio here. It’s such a gift to have these delightful woods, and a little park, right in the middle of the city. And this is my favorite snowfall - where it's just wet enough that it sticks to the trees. I often say it's like someone took a paintbrush and just painted white frosting on each of the trees. Many of you know that have gone out here these last couple of days in the Midwest. Oh, it's just so much beauty.
I was having fun in these woods today hiking around, and I found this open space in all the trees with all the white frosting painted on them, and I just danced. I just spun in circles and I danced with ways of words and ways to uplift myself. My mantra or affirmation for today is, “I am love. I am wisdom, I am hope.” This is prepping me a bit for my Facebook Live on Wednesday, which is talking about my two weeks that I was on the psychiatry floor with my severe depression. I’ll be speaking about that experience and how to give others love, and wisdom, and hope, that also have to walk a similar path, or they're contemplating that, or they have loved ones that have walked it, and they want a little deeper insight into what this type of healing entails when we're on the psychiatry floor for two weeks to deeply help us. I’m using that affirmation today - I am wisdom, I am love, I am hope - to uplift me for that conversation I want to have on Wednesday at 10am. As I danced I was just taking those words in, and taking in that I am a gifted writer. I am a gifted Speaker. I am a gifted practitioner of yoga therapy and craniosacral therapy. It just helped me align with my essence, align with my light, step into my true nature.
Mother Nature feeds me like no other, just being in the snowy woods for half an hour, with the sun still very bright. At one point I came to where the dusk sun was reflecting right on the snow in the trees and I just stood there and took her in - eyes open, eyes closed, eyes open, eyes closed - just the pulsation of the orange and the yellow warmth and radiance of the Surya. Then these little birds, a little community of robins, danced right above me. I have a sweet connection to my calico cat Callie who passed a couple years ago, and she came through to me in the form of a robin in that very park and woods days after she passed away. She'd been with me for 20 years and helped me through so much, so it was such a gift to be dancing in the snowy woods today, and letting my affirmations and mantras uplift me, the sun fill me, the snow’s beauty, the crackle of the snow underneath my feet.
As you read this today, as you take this in, notice for you what's beautiful. if you're in the Midwest or somewhere you also get snow, perhaps in the mountains, maybe there's some beauty in the snow that you haven't seen before, or can you take a moment to just be with the sun. Even if that’s just a couple minutes of standing outside with the sun on your face, filling you, warming you, guiding you. Let nature do her healing. She knows how to do it, and she will fill you.