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I watch the big door close, I give my girl seven kisses, and we say goodbye. Her eyes well with tears, and so do mine. “I love you Alice,” I call. “I’ll see you after school.” I walk away from her classroom window, over to the gardens and the tears flow.
As I walk away I watch the mind’s stories:
What if she’s scared?
I probably need to find a different school!
What if she needs help getting food at lunch?
This school is too big. Too loud too… school…
What if those 1st graders chase her at recess?
What if she’s not okay!?
The underlying story is bigger, it has to do with my school years, the feelings, anxieties, and worries that were experienced in my own childhood. Rather than exact words, it's more like just a very bad feeling. And this is my chance to put the work that I teach into action. And that’s how this goes:
Feel a feeling and wonder, what’s this? Look inside. Instead of running from that “very bad feeling,” instead of…
“Figuring it out.”
Talking about it incessantly.
Wishing public education was different.
Planning our escape from society.
I let all those thoughts pass through in a flash, I see the stories arise quickly, and watch them go but I remain still and at peace to my core. However, I don’t miss feeling my feelings, which is part of the release. And through that full feeling, I let go of so much more than “sending my daughter to kindergarten.”
That’s why I need the moment with the sunflowers, in opening to the feelings that are underneath the story, the old stuff and the emotions it brings, are let go, and I am free. I am free to cry and feel. To love my girl and to let her go. To let her learn and grow, to experience the discomfort of a transition and to parent her gently, and lovingly, while also imbuing her and myself with love and trust that life will hold her. Truly we are life, so what is there to hold?
I trust the community that I’ve helped to build for my family at this school and beyond. And most of all I trust mySelf, knowing that even through discomfort the stillness of Presence never steers us astray. And if I am living a life, led by this still calm equanimity, all is well, even when it is uncomfortable.
The day after I send my message to the kinder parents, others join me, some have tears, some have smiles. We hug, and chat, a friend holds me, she touches my arm gently. No one tries to fix, nothing needs to be fixed, just released, witnessed, allowed. And this is freedom. Freedom to be and to feel, to love and to release, to show up fully in each moment of life as we are called. Freedom to listen to our own hearts and to let them shine.
The common theme of so many of my clients' lives, whether they are grieving a death, facing anxieties from school or work, looking for a new job, healing from old trauma, starting a business or taking a break, is a search for a community of people who can be with them in their hardest and most joyful moments.
What my time with the sunflowers shows is the way that we don’t create community and heartfelt connection by looking “out there,” to external circumstances, to fix or create it, but rather that we have the possibility of creating community simply by showing up fully and completely as what and who we are in each moment of life.
This means, not hiding. This means showing up. This means sharing and connecting with others from our most authentic part, even when it’s uncomfortable, especially when it is. And from here, life rises up to meet us. Others join up at the sunflowers, or start to sing along, or add their dance moves to the music, or laugh at the absurdity of all that we’ve adopted into our lives that isn’t at all who or how we want to be.
This takes vulnerability, risk, and most of all one of the important lessons I ever learned from my graduate professor, Vera Francis, the ability to “assume welcome.” It’s a subtle shift, and a profoundly different way of moving through the world, “assume welcome.” You are welcome here, in this life, on this earth, as you are. Why else would you be here? It simply is, you simply are. We are.
Community, healing, transformation, it doesn’t happen out there, at some moment in the future, it is always and forever here in this moment that we have the opportunity to show up with and as exactly what is needed.
We are living at a time when many of us are working to change the very systems that we are a part of, when we are sending our children to school, while working to make their school experience more inclusive of play, nature, and learning differences, when we are buying food while supporting local agriculture but not always, when we are learning how to rest, relax, and have a more balanced life while also working within a culture that is inequitable and rewards doership. And many, perhaps even most, are working everyday to change the systems of our lives without burning ourselves out, which would defeat the purpose of that very work.
It is a time of deep transformation and it requires the ability to embrace and live paradoxes. Both and And, Head and Heart, Trust and Inquiry.
Wherever you are on your walk through life today, I hope you find your sunflowers and invite exactly what you need into your own life, by showing up as yourSelf and noticing the things that are working, while continuing to change through your own presence and embrace of paradox, that which needs attention.
As for my walk through life, when I leave the sunflowers, I walk into the day able to show up fully and unburdened for all that comes next, whatever that may be.
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