why is allowing so hard? 🙄 - a mindful musing

May 22

Happy good day, dear friend

I hope this week is finding you well in health and spirit 💚

Today I found myself wondering why allowing is so hard. It seems like it’s so much effort for such a passive-sounding thing. And I know I’ve written about that recently, and yet here I am again. The phases of life are indeed cyclical by nature.

Yesterday I spent much of my therapy session giving myself a pep talk about how what I’m feeling right now is just temporary. It’s a normal thing that I experience during my luteal phase, and there’s always an end to it, and always it comes round again (such is the nature of cycles).

If you have a menstruating body, you may share this experience. Hell. Whatever body you have, I’m sure you know these experiences: your body feeling strange or in discomfort, or your brain shifting too easily into negative narratives, or just a general feeling of unease in life with a tendency towards easy irritation. They’re all very human experiences.

And.

This phase and all that it brings feel like much right now for me, and I’m trying really hard to just allow it without pushing. But allowing can feel like giving up, counter-productive, lazy, shameful, even weak. And I know in my brain that these are not the case at all. That what I experience at this part of my cycle is nature speaking through my body — telling me to slow down and take my time and rest and find nurturing ways to be because my body is a work of fucking art.

But sometimes it’s hard to feel good about that except in the abstract.

It seems like allowing shouldn’t be so much work. Like it should be a default mode. And perhaps it was once upon a time. I like to fantasize that way, at least. And I like to daydream that it will be a common reality in future upon a time.

But what about the NOW? When it feels sooooo hard?

I peeked back at what I shared in the Worm Moon Lunar Love Letter earlier this year:

“To allow something is just seeing what happens. To not exert force over it. To give it space to spread out and do what it’s going to do.”

And, in a desperately motivated search for some sort of step by step instructions 🫣, I googled the definition:

“give (someone) permission to do something”
“give the necessary time or opportunity for”
“admit the truth of; concede”

That last one evokes the audible OOF.

The connotation that comes with ‘concede’ is a doozy, am I right? Setting aside some complexities, I think this is about clear vision or understanding. What is the simple truth?

I feel like this right now. This feeling will end. This cycle will repeat.

And that’s as neutral as I can make it for now.

And — hold your horses! — what if I give these feelings permission to be here right now and to go when it’s their time? What if I just say that to myself?

Seems I have something new to experiment with, and I’d be very interested to hear what you think and if you have any hot tips/tricks. Shoot me a reply here or a message on the social medias.

✨ For now, may our hearts stay tender regardless of cyclical fluctuations ✨

With good energy 💚

photo credit: Emanuel Ekström on Unsplash