What Are Your Next Steps?

This question has been coming to me for some time now. Folks ask me this question. It appears as a question, a genuine question. One that folks ask because they care, because they are curious. Because they love.

Yet this question meets me and evokes unease, tears, nausea, uncertainty- at times. Sometimes I can answer this question with confidence and in a knowing. Other times, I allow the stories and perceived stories, the perceptions I make up in my mind that align with the societally narrative of what a 44 year old woman is supposed to be doing with her life, in her life- these markers of status, of success, of accomplishments. And when this question meets me in a place of fragility, a place of not trusting, not owning my path and that which I am already doing, here and now, I get tangled. Tangled.

I recently read The Dreamer by Pam Munoz Ryan. it I accepted her words as an invitation to look within. She writes, “When a ball of tangled line unravels, what remains on the barb?”

So I sit with this, I ask myself what is it that gets me hooked in the first place? I sit with this. I sit in the stillness, I sit and sift through the voice in my mind, the one that justifies, explains, protects. The one that quickly finds an answer, to excuse my tears, my discomfort, my tiredness. The one that puts up a shield to hide, to deflect. I reflect. What is it on the barb? What brought me into this place, this space?

That I am not enough.

Those are the words that arose just now, those words arose from the stillness and silence of the mind. I am not surprised. I am not at all surprised to meet these words here, for so long this is the story I have told myself, this is the story I have taken on, this is the role I have dutifully played. Over and over and over and over and over again.

There are so many events in life, words, phrases, interactions with others that light me up. Light me up on the inside. In this context, I am referring to the lighting up as being stirred up, churned up, evoked. The stuff that brings feelings of nausea, clenched jaw, tears, tiredness. The stuff that indicates that there is much more still here, waiting to be excavated, addressed, brought to the surface. Or as my teacher says, the stuff that is being highlighted so it can be deleted.

Last week, to mark my solar return and the next journey around the sun, I went to the beach.  I went to be with the ocean. Together we were. She and I. I entered her.  She was fierce, she was strong. As I stepped, my foot would drop down and the next step it would rise up, different from most other times when I would walk in on a flat, sloping surface. She carved the surface below to rise and fall, to have dips and peaks, these ups and downs. As I walked, she knocked me over and turned me around. I lost my sense of direction, I felt her force crashing over me, spinning me, pulling me down and spitting me out. I was exhausted.

That is exactly how I feel when I am being lit up. Disoriented. Turned around. Churned up.

While I was in the water, I did not see the debris. When I was in the water I saw the waves rising from the ocean and returning, crashing down and into one another. It was only when I stepped on shore that I saw all that had once been in the ocean, maybe in her depths, maybe on the surface, I saw all of the debris, that which is not meant to be there. I located the green foam from flower arrangement, bottle caps, a pen from a Comfort Inn, Styrofoam pieces, plastic wrappers, a golf ball, straws… all of this stuff that does not belong there. Stuff that was not noticeable while I was in the ocean, but stuff that was once clearly there and now deposited on the shore.

This is exactly how I feel when the stuff is brought to the surface, it surprises me, as if I forgot that it was there while simultaneously knowing that it is does not belong.

And here we are, with all of this stuff exposed. Brought to the surface. Litteraly. Yes, I know it is not spelled this way, and this is how I spelled it here in this moment. Full of litter. Literally and figuratively. Both.

What to do?  What does one do?

What do you do? What do you do when stuff is turned up, there in front of you for you too see?

You know what I do, I see it. I acknowledge it. I face it. I accept it. At times I own it. That which is mine to own, I own. That which I bring in to situations, my biases, my judgement, my lens, my perceived perceptions, I look at closely. Where is all of this coming from? What is at the root?  Where does this all begin?

Which brings me back to where I began, the simple, unassuming question of “What is next for you?”

For me, the question implies that what I am doing in this moment, is not enough. That there is something else, something more that I am meant to do, supposed to do, should do. And, here is it is, since I am not doing, says “I am not enough.”

Wow. This is deeply entwined. A big root ball, tangled, twisted, intertwined. Connected. Deeply rooted and deeply connected.

It plays into the story of what is successful, what is right, what is the path that society deems is necessary to be worthy and deserving.

I know I am not alone in navigating this. I can’t be. There are others, there are others of us who are asking themselves similar if not the same questions.

Am I enough?

Am I doing enough?

Am I worthy?

Am I deserving?

I often ask, “what more do you want me to do?”

And then I laugh. I full on laugh. Laugh out loud.  Who am I asking?

Who is the You? Who am I talking to? Who have I given that power to?

It is not you, it is me.

It is the conversation I have with my own self, the discussions in my mind, the intimate one that no one hears.

And here I sit. With this knowing and acknowledgement that, the very thing I am resisting is all within. These stories, these narratives, these feelings- all deposited by something else, all debris that is not meant to be here. Yet it is. And here I sit. Sit with all that is arising. That which brings me to laugher, that which brings me to tears, that which brings me to nausea, that which brings me to exhaustion.

That which brings me to this very moment.

Here. Now.

Not thinking about the next steps or where I will go or should be.

Because what matters is what you do in this very moment. Not when. Not then.

Now.

Sitting here now, grateful for the opportunity to share my voice, to use my voice.

To have a voice.

Humbly,

Sara