May Energy Update

Hey friend,

It’s been a while since I posted an energy update on here. Minneapolis has been rough. Some aspects of my individual circumstances have been rough. And overall, it really seems like most everyone is going through a rough time. I truly believe it isn’t anything we can’t handle - I think all the time of the section in Glennon Doyle’s book “Untamed” where she says that her daughter went through the hardest thing a child that age could imagine and came out the otherside, walking through fire to realize she was fireproof. I think we are all realizing the degree to which we are fireproof because we are making it to the other side. A little stronger, a little weary, and much wiser.

But it also bears stating that the rest period after these fiery times is a crucially important piece of the equation. When we’re hit by the heat over and over again, we need time to let the burn come to pass. I have walked through my fair share of fires and I know what I need within me to balance and come back to myself. Sometimes I’m right where I left me, and sometimes I need to find my new way home. But I have learned to give myself all the time I need.

If that’s you too, I get it. Welcome back.

This month as a whole has the energy of “we’re coming back.” April was time to let ourselves be in the bubble, allow ourselves to be separate, and focus on the internal as much as we needed. There was plenty of noise to be had but April was a month of tuning it out. May, on the other hand, is coming back fully up front. I don’t event want to say that it’s “full force,” since I think we’re redefining what “force” means through this collective journey. In the past we certainly showed up in force with strength, might, pushing, and competitive assertion. I think we have learned the force of wind, to go with the whims of wherever life may take us. We’ve learned the force of earth, not needing to move even the smallest bit and that sturdiness is a strength its own. And we’ve experienced the force of water, soft and relentless in a way that is just as powerful. This is a force of all the elements, almost Avatar-style, if you will. This is knowing when to push and knowing when to stand and knowing when the silence says more than words ever could. But it is time that our whole selves face what is before us again.

This month very much feels like it is time we step directly to the path and events in front of us. We are putting the barrier and the bubble down. This doesn’t feel combative, at least not on our part. But it is a realization that no matter what comes in front of us, that our ability to stand in the truth of ourselves should remain unchanging.

This could be towards people that we strongly disagree with, of course. But this also feels like standing tall with those that we consider friends and need to create boundaries or growth with. As an example, it’s really easy to state your truth and disagree with a stranger online, arguing with a profile picture as big as your thumb nail. It’s another thing to call out a friend or colleague, a family member, or someone who hold close or in high regard. We’ve been in survival mode for so long that we’ve developed a with-us-or-against-us mentality and we’ve let too many sins go past us to keep the peace. But we’ve developed enough experience with accepting conflict head on that we can use both a hard and gentle hand, and both are needed.

I’ve had the feeling lately that the only thing left for us to do is pull the rug back and examine everything we’ve swept under it. We’ve talked about the big events. The big differences, the big themes, the big divide. But so much has been ignored or let go in favor of keeping the peace in your circles. But we are at a point that it has become stagnant and stale, the same arguments being presented over and over with no growth. We have to start calling each other in for fine tuning. We have to call our own circle out to talk about the tangled gray area. And we have to use all of our elements to keep moving forward.

All of this is on our path to seek balance. Not standing perfectly still and letting balance become complacency. But the balance a child has to develop in learning to walk, falling over and over but it’s the only way to move forward. The balance of crossing a tight rope, using our strength to reach greater heights, taking our time to reach the goal. And the balance of those who can hold on to each other and trust that through the bumps and forces we face with each other, we can always hold on together.

It feels like we’re at the absolute peak we can reach of imbalance as a collective. People who don’t trust their neighbors or open up to their colleagues. People who don’t look each other in the eye or even engage in basic greeting, let alone the words that matter. We’ve been divided against each other for so long that we’re even just tired of the roles we’ve been taught to play, and we’re tired of being tired. We’re ready for something new.

This month feels like the beginning of us shaking off the dust of division and imbalance and our first steps back towards each other. No more niceties and relying on small talk, no more roles that we play to keep any semblance of a status quo. We’re tired of not looking each other in the eyes, we’re tired of not knowing each other. We’re going to be willing to be the stone that the sword can sharpen itself upon. The diamond edge that can shine through the process of curating each other. We know however painful and awkward the process might be, it can’t be worse than the ache of staying the same. And so moment by moment, day by day, we’re going to hold the mirror for ourselves and for each other and help each other rise.

As much as these past few months may have been rough, as much as it may have tested every inch that we have within us, we stand at the end knowing that we have gained strength we could not have had otherwise. The only way we can collect the wisdom needed on this path is to experience and learn. We’ve had experiences as a collective, and most of us have gone through our own individual journeys as well. And the best way to honor this path, these lessons, this textured journey is to allow ourselves to be better for it.

There are moments that it feels strange to focus on joy, on choosing to be happy. We’ve tricked ourselves into thinking that happiness is something we earn with the right conditions, and that if others are limited in their happiness that we shouldn’t be allowed to have or share ours. I know quite a few people who are almost guilty or embarrassed to share that their year is going well. That is the time we should be shining it the most. What we have cultivated through the dirt and rain hard days. The days we have in front of us now are the time that is given to us, and so it is right to use them the best we can.

And of course, that isn’t to say any self-help, pull-up-your-entrepreneurial-bootstraps type of pressure. Remember that line of the Mary Oliver poem in which she asks what you are going to do with your one wild and precious life? The part that people often forget is that in this poem, Mary lays in a field with the grass and the insects. She ponders life. She has a sense of balance and peace that she could only cultivate through whatever life had brought her. She says that she knows how to pay attention, how to be idle and blessed. There are so many states of being that we can learn that feel so foreign to everything we’ve been taught, that confuse us and astound us feel like stretching parts of us we never knew existed. And I would venture to say that’s how we know we’ve grown in the authentic ways that all of this was for. It can’t come from anyone else, cut into someone else’s dimensions or from someone else’s cloth. It HAS to come from us. And we deserve to step into ourselves fully and celebrate it. It starts now.

We’re at the last possible edge of the old and we have to be willing to step into the new. We have to open up the gate of the boundaries taught to us and face the unknown. We’ve gone as far as we possibly can without. And I don’t know about you, but I can feel it in my bones that tomorrow and the next tomorrow and the next tomorrow are going to bring something better than our wildest imaginations. It’s going to bring something we used to dream of when we were smaller, before we were told it was impossible or unrealistic or that’s not the way the world worked. May is the beginning of us sprouting our new world, and these new selves we’ve created are going to make our younger selves so proud. We have to step away from playing small and following all the old rules because we’re not there anymore. We’ve leveled up. We’ve gone through it, and we’ve done it all to get to where we are now. And there’s no way but up. Let’s go.