Hi {{ subscriber.firstName | default('love') }}
Thursday morning, I re-read a post I wrote about creating MoonRise Self Care when I first launched it. I had written "The name MoonRise is significant because to me, it symbolizes rising to your best self during any phase or circumstance." Of course I couldn't have predicted the circumstances that our family of humans would collectively be in just 6 months later.
Wednesday night, I was participating in a virtual meeting for our yoga teacher training group, my friend Lisa Reeder was leading our trainees. Her inspirational words about adjusting to social distancing reminded me of a situation that came up when I was pregnant with my Kai...
The last 8ish weeks of my pregnancy, I was put on bedrest and it felt like my whole world as I knew it stopped. I was so grateful to have had the warning that I needed to stop and that things would most likely be ok with us if I did (and BLESSED beyond belief that by taking bedrest, Kai and I were just fine) ... but was faced without warning of needing to stop my daily strolls around the lake that I thought were so important to our health throughout the end of the pregnancy; needing to figure out how to walk away from my busy and thriving business and my income - a dance fitness studio downtown; needing to cease the final plans of nesting I had scheduled and was looking forward to. Everything needed to stop when I was in the hospital for 2 weeks and then on bedrest for over a month at home. And I didn't know how it would be ok.
I had to pause everything. In an instant, everything as I knew it changed and seemed to come right out from under me. It felt impossible, but it was completely necessary, there was no other choice.
You know what? Everything with work and planning for babe fell into place. It needed to, so I figured it out. I adjusted how I was able to show up for work and scaled back big time, putting some hours in online and rallying my staff to take care of the rest. My husband and family took care of everything we needed to finish up to get ready for Kai to come. All of the previous work I had done to be healthy in what I ate and with my fitness kicked in for me when I needed it.
The two most ✨ MAGICAL ✨ things that happened though? (this is what Lisa reminded me of last night with her own story...)
1. Things that WEREN'T IMPORTANT fell by the wayside. YUP, read that again.....things that weren't important fell away. I let them go. It became SO CLEAR to me what I could MINIMIZE in my life and work. I began showing up only to things that truly mattered. It was like a total cleanse for my life - my routines, my values, my schedule, my habits, my passions, my work, my health - I slimmed down to only what mattered and once I came to terms with my pause, I was easily able to walk away from everything else.
2. I realized things that were of the utmost importance to me, that I didn't have the capacity to see before my pause. All of a sudden, I had time to see clearly what routines, values, schedule, habits, passions, work, health - all of it - was what I WANTED to show up, give my energy to and have in my life. Things appeared that I never could have imagined before my pause. Stopping all the things made room in my life for so much more.
The most beautiful thing of it all was that once I had my Kai, I continued my pause out of choice. Kai and I stayed in bed for weeks and weeks and weeks just getting to know each other. I wouldn't give that time up for anything in the world. My new values, routines, habits and passions stuck around.
I now fully understand what I was writing 6 months ago, "...rising to your best self during any phase or circumstance". It's not just during the easy breezy times when rising to our best self happens. Those times are important to keep it ourselves in check. It's during times like these when we are challenged to do our deepest soul searching and really LISTEN to what we can discard and what we actually need and want. It's during times like these that we RISE UP to our true selves.
Love, Jenny
