TIA LEVINGS

 

In this place, pictured above, I unplugged for a weekend with friends. Burnt out, frustrated, stressed and frazzled, I leaned into the advice circulating from various resistance groups to acknowledge fatigue. My friends and I set up camp. We built fires and set out elaborate and beautiful food spreads. We poured wine, broke bars of chocolate, and slept late. All of us mothers, we spent rare hours doing nothing. I plunged into that clear spring water and felt it wash away the aches, the muscle knots, and probably the tears. Our unflinching conversations unbraided the threads of habits, hopes, and fears that have been holding us back from who we want to be.

The internal clarity gained rivaled my view down through the blues into the caves. I’m leaning on it today throughout discouraging national news and throughout the realization of how many friends prefer to know me without knowing what I think. Redrawing boundaries and rules of engagement with the world was a little overdue. It was meaningful for me to re-realize that some benign contact points empower more direct energies in other places. I think I can be more effective in areas I care deeply about and use my voice and my words with more precision than I could before the insights gained on this trip.

“It is good for me to cling to God,” reads one of my favorite liturgical lines, “and to place in Him the hope of my salvation.” It reminds me of hunkering down, digging in– of the steady work of potato farmers in the field placing one foot in front of the other. Eyes down. Know yourself, know your priorities, do your work (and do it well). These are good boundaries for me to have.

*photo taken at Ginnie Springs, Florida