Spontaneity

A phenomenal thing happens often in my SacredSeat, especially when I’m asking myself how this Purejoy journey for me began.

I revisit the different internal versions of myself- child, maiden, young mama, mama of 2, then 3 kids. I spend time with my memories, and it’s curious that it connects them all into one incredible body of being. 

This story of spontaneity comes from a version, a part of me, that knows how to drop everything and follow the HEART.

As I reflect on it, it reminds me that Life, or Universe, or God was getting me ready to meet Purejoy, long before I actually joined Parenting Paused, and experienced Leslie and the work.

I became a mama one week after I turned 22, again at almost 24 and was carrying babe number three just months before I would turn 26. In those years my husband was finishing college and getting his Masters’s degree while working full time, and buying and sprucing up our first house… we were not taking life lightly.   It felt like a grind.  There was a method to this madness, maybe?

And it was catching up with us. We were tired. We were defeated. The road ahead seemed long and paved for us- if we just followed it, we would win, have success- BE HAPPY.

We were driving on an old dirt road one afternoon in late winter, the Earth beneath us in that hanging phase between sleep and awake. 

The question- always, what are we doing? Is this it? Is this life? Is this what works for us? Are we missing something? Its hard, we felt like that Earth, hanging, waiting, wondering…

And an old idea came visiting again- one we had blown off a couple of times, it was audacious and wild, and it didn’t fit so well on the paved road plan.

And I still remember the sense some 15 years later, that part of me speaking up in my body, my thoughts, my feelings – that said, YES to spontaneity.  It felt so alive. I called it wild and crazy and thought- who knows if it will work.

But if we didn’t say YES, we would find ourselves again the next year, crawling out of winter, wondering if the life that someone else promised us, and then trained us to believe, would fulfill the deep longing for the truth of who we were as a family.  We might still be asking – is this it?

Then a flood of fear, that was rooted somewhere in a young voice that said, will they still love us if we are far away?  And so the same spontaneous vibe we just picked up, saw us turning right off of that back country road and heading straight to tell our beloved ones we were moving our young family to a far away place, to Alaska!

It’s important that I’m writing this to you, right now, because it’s 15 years later and I can close my eyes and still feel all the fear and excitement that was sharing my body. I didn’t know then how important that sensation would become, but from this point now- it’s part of my embodied wisdom. 

We were met with devastation, and disappointment from our family. As best we knew how then, we absorbed a lot of it. It felt heavy to activate those feelings in our loved ones.  We stayed with this other curious part that said, check it out, find out what your WILD HEART is calling you to, what if it’s okay to get off the paved road?

And so in a matter of just weeks, maybe a couple of months, we reduced our belongings to the size of a 91 Toyota 4 Runner that also fit our most precious cargo- two zesty toddlers and the one that rode right inside my body the whole way along.

I can see still the clothes I wore nearly every day of the trip North.  My favorite yellow shirt getting tight and wearing out, and my trusty stretchy mom jeans held on my a hairband to extend the waistline around my growing belly. 

It was by far the most spontaneous moment my life has held- the dirt road, that conversation, that feeling- that led us all the way to a small sea town on the Cook Inlet that hails as the end of the road. 
We landed in our new home just in time to explore and settle in our new surroundings and find the care that would support our transition to a family of five. 

Next week will be the Summer solstice, and here in Alaska we have daylight all day long ! I was up just last night looking for the full Sagittarius moon and all I could find were partly cloudy, sunny skies at 1 am- makes it tough to moon gaze. It also takes me back to this story I am telling you- and how there was no such thing as bedtime.

Back then, we spent our days in the salty sea air. I have to laugh at the tenacity of those little toddler legs and my pregnant sway- and how much ground we covered like that. But we did! And every night- at exactly who-knows-what-time it is? We went to bed exhausted. 

And woke again to the same sun, ready for more play, more adventure.

Before that, I had never felt more free in my being, more in touch with what it meant to be alive.

I grew up around a conversation of God- and how HE could be met and communed with through meetings at a building, through a life of economic success, and duty.  I know that worked well for some, but for me, it was binding, and so many rules and regulations, I couldn’t feel, let alone find life force. 

That one brave spontaneous moment on a back road near home led me to a beach, an ocean, mountains, and a handful of salmon roe, my son kicking and bubbling in my tummy- and something deep inside, maybe my soul, said loud and clear- GOD IS RIGHT HERE.   

The colors of sun-kissed skin and glittering eggs of life melding in my eyes- I looked up to the mountains, to the sea… 

I learned something so vital in those short 3 months, in the spontaneity that led to that one moment of nature,  before Ezra was born, exactly 15 years ago right now.

That when my Heart speaks wild and clear – and I know- but all that is in the way is the form, or the rule, or the structure, or the certainty- to really check that out, and see if it’s true, for me.

To ask myself, what feels most ALIVE- and follow that spontaneity with curiosity and courage of HEART.  Sometimes ALIVE is about feeling that fear and excitement simultaneously.

I have a practice that goes like this- I am feeling (insert feelings) and it activates a sense of aliveness.

I am feeling FEAR and it activates a sense of ALIVENESS.
I am feeling JOY and it activates a sense of ALIVENESS

Living by this mantra reminds me that when my house looks like chaos, that the order will come, and when the order is here, I can also listen to the voice of the wild one who still sees the expansion and adventure of being absolutely spontaneous.