...that gives birth to the new.
Photo by virginia lackinger on Unsplash
Throughout 2018 and into the winter of 2019, I composted my life.
What do I mean by that?
I let it all go.
I let go of the bulk of the business that supported me for 12 years.
I let go of my marriage.
I let go of my dreams of becoming a mother.
Here I was about to turn 45 and I was faced with the truth that not only would I soon be divorced without children, but I could also no longer bring myself to do the nutrition-related work that had been my financial foundation —which I’d spent countless hours and thousands of dollars building.
Holding onto these dreams was now too painful. I had spent 20 years of my adult life holding tightly and none of them were materializing in the way I envisioned.
I had to let go.
It was brutal. It was crushing. It was scary.
I had to surrender to the grief that I might not ever have children. That I might not ever have the relationship I dreamt of. I might not ever have the kind of impact I’d envisioned in helping people heal.
I couldn’t pour any more energy into any of it. So I let go.
What the composting looked like…
I completely shut down my nutrition coaching work.
My husband and I filed for divorce and moved through the most loving, most graceful separation and divorce I have ever known of.
I let go of the idea of being a biological mother and began to consider the possibility I might, one day adopt a child on my own.
Then I went to Ireland at the end of April, with the intention to hit the proverbial “reset button.” When I got back, in the full swing of spring, I absolutely felt as though new life was beginning to emerge from the compost of the past.
The spring rebirth that the compost is bringing…
I am finding greater clarity and commitment to my work in trauma and ancestral wound healing… helping people who know that their life/health challenges are connected to unresolved wounds (their own, or perhaps a parent or ancestor’s.)
A new relationship appeared in my life in the most magical and unexpected way possible.
This new relationship has brought a child into my life who is welcoming me into hers in the most beautiful way.
It feels as though some aspects of my life I am tending-to as an intentional gardener, whereas others are emerging like robust wildflowers that popped out of seemingly nowhere.
The ease and flow of allowing —rather than forcing- is an ongoing lesson for me…
I am dumbfounded by the turn my life is taking. I am certain it is unfolding in this magical way because I was willing to let go. I surrendered to the grief. I surrendered to not knowing. I surrendered into the life I never wanted, only to see glimmers of the dream beginning to unfold.
It is easier to co-create with life when we flow with it, versus straining against the current. My husband had known it was time for us to release the relationship long before I did. I kept reaching for ways to make it work, when in reality, the relationship had completed its cycle.
For the better part of the past five years, I have known I was meant to let go of my nutrition coaching work. And yet, I resisted pulling the plug. It took the severe grief of my marriage ending for me to realize how much that work drained me rather than fed me, and why I could no longer do it.
Motherhood is a tough dream to let go of. And yet, I know I have the capacity to channel my creative energy into my work. I also know I can open up to different avenues to express the mothering love inside of me. I don’t know yet how things will unfold on this front, but the one thing I know for certain is this: holding rigidly to the dream of biological children would only serve to keep me in pain.
Before the rebirth there is only uncertainty.
It sounds lovely now that flowers are sprouting in my life, but that’s not where I was in the dead of winter.
Composting life, letting go, is a terrifying exercise of complete surrender into the unknown. I had no way of knowing what would unfold.
But it is also absolutely true that we cannot open our hands to receive the new if we hold our grip tightly around the old.